Clayton Fant, professor of classical studies at the University of Akron, will be at Hodges Library Thursday night to discuss the marble trade of the Roman Empire and its connection to street-side bars in Pompeii.

Fant will speak at 7:30 p.m. in Room 253 on “Sleazy Bars, Fancy Countertops: Reused Marble for Status Therapy at Pompeii.” The lecture is part of the East Tennessee Society’s annual lectures on archaeology.

“Our lectures cover archaeology worldwide. This year, topics range from Ancient Greece, Rome and Cyprus, to the Southeast United States and Nepal. We even will have a talk on Lawrence of Arabia, in conjunction with a conference held on Lawrence at Chattanooga in April 2006,” Aleydis Van de Moortel, assistant professor of classics, said.

Thursday night’s lecture will feature Fant as a specialist on Roman marble trade and Roman social and economic history. Moortel said Fant is currently directing the University of Akron Pompeii Sleazy Bars Project.

Fant said he has studied the Roman marble trade for 20 years, working in quarries owned and operated by past Roman emperors in Turkey. He was led to Pompeii by the intrigue of seeing the other end of the shipment cycle, he said.

“It’s clear that a lot of this marble leaked out of Rome to private owners,” Fant said. “There is an awful lot of context available in Pompeii that can be dated back to 1976 (due to several natural disasters).”

Fant said the marble bars he has been studying are actually pieces of the old Pompeii that was devastated by a volcanic eruption, organized and sorted by somebody who sold the marble slabs.

The term “sleazy” comes from the bar’s bad reputation at night as a spot for gamblers and as temporary brothels. Fights were expected, and bars not held accountable, he said.

“It was the equivalent of a McDonald’s drive-thru,” Fant said.