Pompeii, by Mary Beard
In the early morning of 25 August AD 79 Mount Vesuvius blew its top. First came a rain of pumice stones; the roofs of Pompeii collapsed under their weight. Worse was to come: a burning lava, flowing at great speed against which no living being could survive. Pompeii was a city in flight, all normal occupations hastily abandoned. The majority, especially the rich, escaped to the countryside. Those who left it too late were incinerated, unable to make their way through streets filled with pumice. The city in flight became a city of the dead buried under thick layers of volcanic dust. It was not rediscovered and excavated until the late 18th century.
Archaeologists have long given us the materials to reconstruct Roman society in digs from Hadrian’s Wall to the Euphrates.The evidence is, so to speak, dispersed. Pompeii is exceptional in that all is concentrated in the remains of a single city. There are the ruins of the palatial houses of local grandees with their fountains, statues and gardens, their kitchens and lavatories. There are the clay vessels in which mice were fattened to be served up as a delicacy in the dining room. The narrow streets were lined with shops, bars and brothels. Most important are the graffiti and wall paintings that survive. The graffiti run from ‘I screwed so and so’ to ‘Good wine sold here’. A wall painting in the house of a very rich woman, now dilapidated, survives in engravings made when it was still intact. It shows a beggar using his dog to soften the hearts of passers-by. There are women sampling cloth and trying on shoes. A schoolboy, held down by two assistants, is thrashed by his teacher.
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