Hi there stranger, hurrying by! Come closer and stand before the tomb in which I am buried. It’s different from all the other monuments in the city: it belongs to a guild of former slaves who were freed by the Flavia family, to which my husband and I belonged. We wanted it to look like the tombs that other freedmen had built elsewhere, with lots of niches in the façade, like the windows of a house through which we look out to catch the eye of the passersby. Many of the busts have been taken away by time and by people, but up there, on the right, you can still see my bust and that of my husband and you can read our names: Flavia Agathea and Publius Flavius Philoxenus. Another inscription nearby repeats our names and reminds the reader that we made the decision to build this tomb while we were still alive. I contributed to funding it myself and for this very reason I was able to decide how I wanted to be portrayed. I didn’t choose a full length statue, neither did I choose the best sculptor in the city. My preference was for tuff rather than marble. I didn’t seek to appear more beautiful, as is the tendency in portraits, out of vanity. It’s true, my neck may seem a bit thick, my chin heavy, and my lips thin, but my upright posture and head veil portray me as a matron. Thus, whoever passes in front of the monument is prompted to remember how dignity and virtue do not belong to the women of the aristocracy alone, but also to the freedwomen, whom I am proud to represent here.

Good luck smiled on my husband and me after we were freed, allowing us to achieve a solid economic position during our lifetime. With this collective funerary monument, we wanted to share in death what the gods had granted us so that all the former slaves of the Flavia family who had lived with us under the same master and who had had less luck than us, could have a place to rest for all time.

THE TOMB IN THE NECROPOLIS OF PORTA NOCERA

Flavia Agathaea was a freedwoman who was buried in this monumental tomb in the necropolis outside the Porta Nocera, arranged parallel to the layout of the city walls and occupied since the early colonial period, with an increase in significant monuments in the Augustan age. Prominent among them is this type of funerary building with niches for busts on the façade, which is unique in Pompeii’s funerary architecture, but widespread in Rome among the libertine social class. The seventh niche contains a female bust made of tuff, 34 cm high, which, according to the inscription on the plinth, represents the freedwoman Flavia Agatea, specifying her origin from the area of the saltworks (Saliniensis). This may have been a settlement near the Herculeae saltworks, located between present-day Torre Annunziata and Castellammare di Stabia, or a district in the north-western part of Pompeii.