ABSTRACT
The tombs lining the streets leading away from the town provide a curious picture of Pompeian society. The streets beyond the Herculaneum and Nucerian Gates have been extensively explored, but much more still remains undiscovered beyond the other gates. The tombs show how people wished to be remembered after their deaths. Writing inside and outside tombs, pictures that have been painted or created in stucco or in sculpted relief, as well as the physical form of the overall tomb enclosure and individual monument, often projected a carefully calculated image of a single individual or of a family as a whole. At first glance, the same people dominated the landscape outside the town as inside: the grandest tombs commemorated the wealthy elite whose statues and buildings dominated the town (G4-12, G15). Nevertheless, sections of society who did not commonly appear in monumental inscriptions within the town’s walls – freedmen and freedwomen (G1, G27-35), children (G54-55), the lower classes (G56-58), even slaves (G42-46, G51) – had more prominence outside the town.
