Aulus Umbricius Scaurus’ date of birth is not known and very little is known about his origins. The available evidence suggests that his family were not prominent in Pompeii prior to the first century BCE, yet he became a wealthy merchant by the early to mid-first century CE and his son rose to high office. One theory, for which there is some, albeit meagre, evidence, is that the family Umbricii were involved in producing ceramics, but with the decline of agriculture in the late Roman Republic, shifted their interests to the production of garum in Pompeii. His date of death is unknown, but he probably died in the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.