Marketing, arquitetura e arte a serviço do comércio em Pompeia

Abstract

Is marketing a modern or an ancient practice? In our opinion, the perspective embraced by contemporary history studies has proved inadequate in collectively adopting the view that most people regard marketing as a modern phenomenon and as something that emerged in the wake of capitalism. In such a case, what should we do about the countless indications that clearly show that people did market their goods thousands of years before the printing press and the Industrial Revolution? That is our argument, and we are going to present some artifacts proving that art, architecture, and epigraphy were employed as means to promote the sale of garum in Pompeii throughout the Principate. Our primary sources consist of residential mosaics in the still life genre depicting images and inscriptions of amphorae of a kind that was commonplace in Pompeii. These mosaics strike us as a kind of ancient marketing strategy — something akin to the billboards of the present day.