Bronze female piglet "Buried by Vesuvius" at the Getty Villa through October 28, 2019.

Bronze female piglet "Buried by Vesuvius" at the Getty Villa through October 28, 2019.
This sculpture of a female piglet from the Villa dei Papiri likely celebrated the Epicurean ideals of its owner. It was found at the east corner of the rectangular peristyle on May 17, 1756. In antiquity, as today, calling someone a “pig” was generally an insult, but the followers of Epicurus enthusiastically appropriated the term. The Roman poet Horace referred to himself as “a pig from the sty of Epicurus” - sleek, fat, and well cared for. The statesman Cicero, meanwhile, explained that in Epicurus’s philosophical doctrine, “every animal, as soon as it is born, seeks pleasure and delights in it as the greatest good, while avoiding pain as the greatest evil.” - J. Paul Getty Museum



Images of a female piglet recovered from the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum courtesy of Allan Gluck.

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