Short History Of... - Pompeii and the Vesuvius Eruption

Episode Date: September 5, 2021

What happens when a volcano erupts just six miles from a bustling city? In 79 AD Mount Vesuvius is regarded as a source of bounty by those who live in its shadow. But one of history’s most infamous natural disasters soon unfolds. How did the lucky ones make their escape? And how did this Roman settlement become such an extraordinary archaeological site? This is a Short History of Pompeii and the Vesuvius Eruption. Written by Dan Smith. With thanks to Kevin Dicus, Professor of Classical Archeology at the University of Oregon. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's a little before midday, on August the 24th, 79 AD. The sun beats down on the busy forum, the central square, in Pompeii. It's a well-to-do coastal town of some 10 to 20 thousand people, nestled in the Bay of Naples. Life is abundant in this corner of Campania, a region of the Roman Empire. But life here is about to change forever. Darting around the market stalls are two young children, playfully chasing a dog. Crowds throng around them, buying food and wares from the many market traders.

If you have the money, it's easy to live well here. The skyline is dominated by Mount Vesuvius, which looms 4,000 feet above Pompeii, some six miles beyond the city walls. On its mountainsides, farmers tend their crops and nurse bountiful orchards and vineyards that thrive in the rich soil. Down in the Forum they sell their produce to customers who haggle over the price of olives, grapes, barley, figs, pears, peaches and dates, and much else besides. Others barter for pottery and textiles, manufactured mere minutes away, or buy fish for their supper, straight from the nets, pulled in by the boats bobbing around in the bay.

The aroma of freshly baked bread carries on the air, filling the nostrils and prompting mouths to water. In the streets that spread outwards from the Forum, bustling cafes and tavernas serve locally produced wine, typically mixed with honey and herbs. The drinkers are eager to sate their thirst in the simmering heat. There are bars where you can play dice and gamble, for those intent on finding them several brothels too.

They are sometimes tucked up against the opulent homes of the city's elite, sunlight glinting on brightly coloured mosaics and expensive wall paintings. sunlight glinting on brightly coloured mosaics and expensive wall paintings. Dotted around the forum, aspiring politicians vie for attention, delivering speeches against the backdrop of the stallholders, hollering their daily deals. There are elections due soon, and every vote counts. There are hopeful poets, too, seeking an audience for their verse. And the walls are emblazoned with announcements about upcoming gladiatorial contests and the dates of the next markets.

It is, all told, an ordinary day in this always vibrant town. But all is not as it seems. For four days now there have been light earth tremors. All is not as it seems. For four days now there have been light earth tremors. Most people have tried to ignore them. But for others, they're disquieting. It's only 17 years since Pompeii was struck by a devastating earthquake, one that knocked the town back on its heels. Many buildings had been destroyed and businesses badly hit. Even today, 17 years on, the impact of the earthquake is still in evidence in the Forum,

where teams of sweaty workmen lug heavy stones as they slowly erect new temples and civic buildings out of the ruins. Many of the ruins, though, are destined never to be rebuilt and for now serve as storage depots. The workmen piling wall stones and other architectural debris within them, until they can be used in some new project. But while the town is still not quite as prosperous as it was prior to the earthquake, it has bounced back well.

And these recent tremors? They're nothing compared with 17 years earlier. A mere grumbling beneath the earth. It will take more than that to stop the good people of Pompeii going about their daily business. Nor does anyone make an association between the tremors and the specter of Vesuvius that looms over them. Most of those working the land do not even realize that they are planting in volcanic soil. The mountain is regarded not as a threat, but as a source of bounty. That faith in the mountain will soon prove to be hopelessly, tragically misplaced.

My name is Paul McGann, and welcome to Short History Of, the show that transports you back in time to witness history's most incredible moments and remarkable people. In this episode, we're in the Bay of Naples, watching on as one of the world's most infamous natural disasters unfolds. As the terrifying power of nature comes to bear on a mountain foot community, the residents of this town will appear to be lost to the ages. But under the ash and the lava, they will in fact be frozen in time. In due course, they will be uncovered,

becoming one of the world's most extraordinary archaeological sites, a snapshot of life nearly 2,000 years ago. This is a short history of Pompeii and the Vesuvius eruption. In August 1789 AD, there are telltale signs of what is to come. But for the residents of Pompeii, life must go on. Kevin Dykus, professor of classical archaeology at the University of Oregon, explains. There is a famous story of many, many sheep that were on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, suddenly falling over dead from the vapors that were on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius suddenly falling over

dead from the vapors that rose from the volcano during the earthquake. So there were a lot of signs. The Pompeians probably did not associate the earthquake with the dangers that the volcano presented. After all, Pompeii has dealt with many ups and downs in its long history. While the exact origins of the city are unknown, there has been a town here since at least the 6th century BC. It's been a Roman town only in the last 160 years. Before that, it was occupied by the Greeks, who'd begun to colonize southern Italy in about 750 BC.

At other times, it's been inhabited by local Oskan-speaking peoples. The Etruscans have also been here, building Pompeii's earliest temples, and the Samnites too claimed dominion for a time. It's only in 80 BC that the Romans turn the city into a colony of the empire. Among their earliest endeavors is the construction of the spectacular amphitheater, one that predates the Roman Colosseum by 150 years.

Under Roman rule, Pompeii has thrived, its natural harbor ensuring the town's position as a major trading center. But Pompeii has borne witness to some startling events too. Even before the earthquake of 62 AD. Mount Vesuvius was also famous because of a very important historical event back in 73 BC. And this was when Spartacus, the slave Spartacus, led his famous slave revolt. Well, in 73 BC, they hit out on the top of Mount Vesuvius. And from Mount Vesuvius, they could see the pursuing Roman army. And the pursuing Roman army came up the mountain. And at night, Spartacus' slaves snuck into the Roman camp and devastated them, routed this far superior

Roman force. And this was something that was just incredible. And it happened on Mount Vesuvius. And it added to the mystique and the danger of the revolt, but it really added to the fame of Vesuvius for the people who lived in this area as well. Just three years before the 62 AD earthquake, Pompeii hosts gladiatorial games in its amphitheatre against the neighbouring town of Nusiria. Excitable rival fans enthusiastically shout abusive chants at each other as their heroes strive for glory in the arena.

High spirits fuelled by the Neapolitan song and the local wine soon descend into something more unpleasant. There is riotous violence that results in many fatalities. The authorities in Rome issue an edict that the city shall not hold gladiatorial games for ten years, although the ban is lifted early by the Emperor Nero. He considers that the Pompeians suffered punishment enough in the earthquake three years later. When you've lived through such things, the odd earth tremor does not overly concern you. Meanwhile, just a few miles up the coast in the smaller resort town of Herculaneum, life goes on as normal too. There the streets and squares are abuzz with officials from the empire and their families

who choose the Bay of Naples for their holidays. And those not there for leisure earn their money by providing goods and services to those who are, working in the bars and restaurants, keeping houses and villas up to the standard that the Roman elite expect, and taking the holidaymakers out for trips on the sun-blessed sea. So I don't think an increase in trembling really put them on guard that much. I think the day that Vesuvius erupted,

the Pompeians and everybody else in the Vesuvian plains simply woke up to continue just a normal day, and it would not become a normal day. As noon approaches, there's something disquieting in the air around the Bay of Naples. Those tremors are growing in strength. The sky is darkening. Seagulls fly inland into the woods. Suddenly, the atmosphere changes again. There's another earth tremor, but this time it's big. In Pompeii, strangers exchange glances.

You felt that too? Buildings shudder, their stone creaking under the pressure. Then, all eyes turn to Vesuvius. Perhaps the first major sign was an enormous cloud rising from Mount Vesuvius. Perhaps the first major sign was an enormous cloud rising from Mount Vesuvius. It ascended into the sky like a long trunk and then branched out miles and miles above the earth. This was incredibly new and this would have drawn the attention of everybody. Soon after, this is when all hell broke loose. Down in the forum, the children, so playful just moments ago, run home to their family. Their parents await them anxiously. Memories of 17 years ago now return,

vivid and chilling. Their brave faces begin to crumble. I do not like this, the mother says. Her husband nods agreement. They quickly gather their most precious possessions and head for the harbor. One of his brothers has a boat there. They'll persuade him to sail to some place of safety across the bay, until whatever is about to happen is finished. While there's not yet wild panic, they're not the only family to have the same idea. Growing numbers head for the shore, intent on putting out to sea until the land is calm again. The boats are being tossed about on waters increasingly whipped up by the tremors. Group after group piles into vessels and heads out into the bay. The children are scared, sensing the adults' anxiety, but also excited by this unexpected adventure.

They are, they will soon realize, the lucky ones. Even as they drift from Pompeii into deeper waters, they can feel the air around them heating up and the sea churning. Then, at some moment between noon and 1pm, the real devastation begins. Vesuvius erupts. The mountain blows its top, spewing a deadly mixture of poisonous gases and rocky debris into the atmosphere. Most of the debris consists of pumice, light and porous rocks formed when the glassy lava contained within the mountain explodes into the air and rapidly cools. This combustible mix bursts from the mountain's peak and forms a plume that soon extends several miles into the atmosphere, causing the sky to darken further. The showers of ash and pumice intensify. The material itself is not particularly heavy, but it falls thick and fast.

There was a raining down of ash and pumice, and this happened for about 10 hours or 12 hours. The sky became dark like night. The cloud had covered the sun. And this is when people really realize something is going wrong. A layer six inches deep descends upon Pompeii in just an hour. It's possible to wade through it, but already it's becoming hard work. Back in the streets of the town, panic begins to descend.

More and more people plan their escape, some by sea and others by moving inland. They make for towns that are nearby, but they hope far away enough to escape the volcano's wrath. Most go southwards, but refugees from the city will end up as far afield as Naples, Capua, Sorrento, and even Rome. Others are less certain about how best to proceed. Some opt to seek shelter indoors, reluctant to abandon their properties for who knows where. Some are simply frozen with fear. Can you imagine the sense of panic that these people are feeling who are just a few miles from the epicenter? Now, I think it was very difficult for these people to decide exactly what to do. All right, this was a hellscape.

Do you stay inside and just sort of ride out the storm hoping for the best? Or do you stay outside in this terrifying environment and head out? Further across the bay from Pompeii is Mycenaeum. There, a bookish 17-year-old boy called Gaius Caecilius Chilo is staying with his mother in the grand villa of his mother's brother, Pliny the Elder. Pliny is in his mid-fifties, a big man, a figure of power and startling intellect. He is the author of a landmark encyclopedia on natural history, and as a friend of the recently deceased Emperor Vespasian, he is also a senior Roman official. of the recently deceased Emperor Vespasian, he is also a senior Roman official.

In Mycenaeum, he enjoys the position of commander of the Imperial Navy. As the cloud, reminiscent of an umbrella pine tree, grows over Vesuvius, Gaius' mother nudges her brother over lunch, urging him to take a look. His curiosity is piqued, and he decides to take a boat out to inspect the phenomenon more closely. This might make for an interesting chapter in his next book. He invites his nephew too, but Gaius declines, preferring to stay at home with his studies. But just as Pliny is about to leave, an exhausted messenger arrives at the house. He's been sent by Rectina, a friend of Pliny's, who lives at the foot of Vesuvius.

The messenger passes on her plea that Pliny send a boat to help her escape. With a navy at his command, Pliny changes his plans and orders a fleet of huge galleys to take to the water. Meanwhile, over in Pompeii, the dark, dreaded rain continues to fall on the town until a layer of volcanic debris lies several feet deep. Roofs crack and collapse under the weight. Moving through the streets is becoming harder than ever. Those only now deciding to flee struggle to find a route out. It's no longer a

case of walking along the road. It's about somehow negotiating the ever-deepening sea of ash and pumice. Others decide it's already too late, banking that staying inside is their safest option, hoping that the crisis will quickly pass and that they can begin a second rebuild of the town in less than 20 years. As Pliny and his fleet approach the shore of Pompeii, powered by hundreds of oarsmen fighting with every sinew against the volatile sea, the rain of ash and stone grows denser and darkness descends. Activity in Vesuvius' magma chamber causes the sea first to pull away from the shore and then crash back towards it in mini-tsunamis.

Pliny's navigators fear their ships will be stranded by a sea that can shallow beneath them in a moment. One of his most senior officers tries to persuade him to turn back, but Pliny is adamant. Fortune favors the brave, he tells him stoically. But even he must know the chances of success are tiny. I really don't think that rescue operation would have worked, even if he worked as quickly as possible. The sea was becoming just so rough and just getting worse and worse and worse. It was becoming just so rough and just getting worse and worse and worse. You could sail into the coast, perhaps, but the water wouldn't let you sail back out, right?

It was just simply too rough. Meanwhile, you're getting meters and meters of floating volcanic debris in the water, further blocking your passage. So while his intention was great, the execution didn't work out. Realizing it's impossible to dock at Pompeii, Pliny redirects his fleet to Stabiai and the home of another friend, Pomponianus, three miles further along the bay. They arrive a little before seven o'clock. Pomponianus is already preparing to escape, but Pliny manages to calm him. He encourages his own frightened crew members too,

who through the darkness can see Vesuvius' mountainside aflame. But as the night goes on, even the courtyard at Stabiai fills with the volcanic ash and debris, and the buildings rock as more tremors strike. Pliny and his companions consider whether it's safer to be inside in an unstable building or outside under a shower of rocks. Everybody was terrified, and in order to allay the fears of his comrades, Pliny the Elder was pretty sanguine about all of this. He was like, don't worry about it. You know, you see those fires over in the distance. Those are just fires from people trying to see maybe torches or small camp

fires. Well, no, that's not the case. And fires were a result of the volcanic eruption. But he was telling them, oh, it's not as serious as your eyes are telling you that it is. And what he does is he goes to a bedchamber to take a nap. Meanwhile, the ash and the pumice begin piling up. The buildings of Stabiae start to shake. He awakens to an even worse situation and Pliny the Elder realizes, oh my gosh, we have to escape.

In Pompeii and Herculaneum, the conditions are worse still. As night descends, the possibility of escape is gone. Those who remain in the towns, perhaps over half of their populations have managed to flee, now lock themselves inside their homes or in public buildings, hoping they can withstand the bombardment, or climb onto roofs in those places where the build-up of ash and pumice is deepest.

By one o'clock in the morning, the cloud over Vesuvius stretches for over twenty miles. The only light comes from the fires raging on the mountainside. As Pliny's nephew observes from his base in Mycenaeum, the brightness of these broad sheets of flame is all the more vivid for the surrounding darkness, of these broad sheets of flame is all the more vivid for the surrounding darkness, darker and thicker than any night. Eventually, the cloud,

visible 150 miles away in Rome, becomes too big to support itself and collapses. The rain of Ashen Lapilli was not necessarily fatal. You could escape. It was terrifying, I'm sure. It was pitch black. The only light was coming

from buildings that had caught on fire, but you could escape. Unfortunately, there were different stages of the eruption. After this raining down of Lepili, you get a pyroclastic surge. And this is when this massive cloud of ash and super hot gas rushes down the mountain and overwhelms everything in front of it this was fatal the ash the gas coated moist long walls like plaster and you simply stopped breathing so if you remained in pomii too long, if you did not escape during those first many hours, hoping to wait it out, say, inside of a house, you were certainly dead. This would have killed you. By the early hours, Herculaneum is overcome. There are shouts of terror in the darkness, disembodied voices powered by last desperate breaths,

as the deadly tides of ash and gas, reaching temperatures of over 250 degrees centigrade, pour through the streets and into homes. Every sense is assailed. The air is too thick to breathe in. Eyes and throats are suddenly raw dry. The skin first tingles and then blisters and burns. Those not asphyxiated are killed by heat shock.

Wood, leather and foodstuffs are instantly carbonized. The surge even melts the lead-tin silverware commonly used in homes here. Human flesh stands no chance. Soon Herculaneum is deluged by ten feet of burning hot ash. The city and everyone within it is obliterated in a matter of minutes. The ash forms into a deadly cocoon around the victims. What was so recently a town astir with life now resembles something closer to a moonscape. Pompeii somehow manages to weather the first few

surges, but around 630 a.m. it too succumbs to yet another pyroclastic wave. The heat is not quite so intense as at Herculaneum. A few of those souls who gambled on staying put now make a last bid to escape, desperately trying to surf over the ash. Some die as a result of injuries caused by the city's once proud buildings collapsing around their ears. Pompeii and Herculaneum are finished as places of human habitation. Yet extraordinarily, most of their populations survive.

The great majority over the course of the first, let's say, 10 hours did leave in this exodus. It's hard to say exactly what happened to them. You know, many of them possibly died outside of Pompeii and excavations just haven't found them. But I do think that the majority of the people living at Pompeii survived. They did escape. Now, it's difficult to determine how many people lived there. Let's say 12,000 people lived there. Today, we know of about 1,400 victims. Most of them are disarticulated skeletons in the storerooms around Pompeii. Nearly 100 of them are those extraordinarily famous body casts that everybody knows about. Now, if we sort of predict how many more victims we would find by uncovering the rest of the city,

we can imagine that maybe there are 2,000 victims of the eruption, You can imagine that maybe there are 2,000 victims of the eruption, meaning that 10,000 people, if there were 12,000 people living there, escaped. Over in Stabiai, although these are now the daylight hours, darkness still pervades. Pliny sets off to the shore to weigh up the chances of setting sail, but the waves are far too big. He returns to his crew, calls for a sheet on which he may rest, and asks for cold drinks to be brought. But there is no time to take stock.

The smell of sulfur is thick in the air, and there is the singeing heat of approaching fire. The group moves as one to flee inland. Pliny calls for cushions that they can tie to their heads for protection. They make a macabrely funny sight, but no one is laughing. Pliny wearily gets to his feet with the assistance of two slaves. He then falls back to the ground, gasping for breath. There's nothing to be done for him. His body is spent. Within moments, he is dead.

His companions will tell his family that he has died from the poisonous fumes of the eruption. In truth, he more likely has suffered a heart attack, his lack of physical fitness leaving him incapable of dealing with the past few hours of intense exertion. Regardless, Vesuvius is claimed perhaps its most famous victim a giant of the empire. Nor does Stabia itself survive much longer. As with Pompeii and Herculaneum, it too is destroyed.

A great many smaller settlements, farms and villas also perish this deadly night on the Vesuvian plain. Around the time that Pompeii is being overcome, Pliny's nephew Gaius and his mother can sense the buildings around them tottering in the dim dawn light over in Mycenaeum. They fear their uncle's home may crash around them at any moment. They join a large crowd, overcome with panic. The air now fills with the noise of voices,

arguing about what to do for the best. Outside of town, Gaius and his mother board a carriage. Despite the flatness of the ground beneath them, the vehicle lurches with every turn of its wheels. Even when the driver wedges the wheel with stones, they still sway and flounder. In the bay, the sea is sucked back by more seismic activity, creating a mass of exposed sand littered with the bodies of stranded sea creatures. littered with the bodies of stranded sea creatures. In the distance, the volcano's black cloud is broken up by tongues of fire that appear like giant flashes of lightning. A light shower of ash is falling over Mycenae now.

But what really troubles Gaius is the thick black cloud, advancing like a flood across the land towards him and his mother. He fears there'll be a stampede, and convinces her that they should come off the road while they can still see at least a little. But almost as soon as they sit for a moment of rest, darkness spreads over them. Not, he thinks, the darkness of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamps have been put out in a completely closed room. Amid the blackout come the cries of children and the shrieks of men and women as they try to find each other.

Some pray for death to visit them. They may soon get their wish. Gaius, though, is one of the lucky ones. He escapes the onslaught. In the days to come he will learn of the death of his beloved uncle. He will find out, too, that he has inherited much of Pliny's wealth. In recognition of his benefactor, he adopts his name and becomes Pliny the Younger. adopts his name and becomes Pliny the Younger.

Twenty years after the eruption, the Roman historian Tacitus asks this Pliny to recount the events of those awful days in August 79 AD. By now a respected writer and legal official, Pliny supplies the only known eyewitness accounts of the eruption of Vesuvius. But Pompeii, buried beneath some 20 feet of ash and pumice, has already been virtually forgotten. Immediately after the eruption, what little material that remains accessible is plundered. In the days and weeks after the initial eruption, it seems to be pretty quiet. We get accounts of people actually returning to the site of Pompeii.

Now it is pretty much buried. Now the landscape is just ash, right, for as far as the eye can see, and architectural debris littering the ground. But they start to dig down into Pompeii, trying both to recover the stuff that they have lost in their houses, but also to steal stuff, most likely from the wealthy houses that have been buried. So we get this somewhat calm situation, but it's an absolute mess. Most of the city is buried, but a lot of the structures that did not collapse are probably standing on top. So you can get a sense that there is a city just beneath. Over time, the area becomes a quarry site.

And little by little, people start to take away everything that is exposed to reuse them for later building projects. So probably within a year or two, it's just a blank slate. And eventually people start to build over this and the city is more or less forgotten. Now, when we talk about Pompeii being forgotten, we're really talking about the location being forgotten. Historians wrote about the eruption. Not a lot, but it was there. It's present in the literary record. You have Mount Vesuvius standing there on the plain itself as the reminder of this event.

So the eruption itself is not forgotten, but I would say within one generation after the eruption itself, the location of Pompeii was quickly forgotten. People had other things to worry about back then. They were not concerned about maintaining the memory in the location of Pompeii. So it was actually quite a surprise when Pompeii was quote, rediscovered in the early modern period. Its rediscovery is a slowly evolving process that begins tentatively around 1599. A team of workmen, headed by the celebrated architect Domenico Fontana,

are digging a canal to divert the Serrano River. The exhausted laborers can hardly hide their frustration as they come up against a massive underground wall, then another, and another. They do not realise that they have hit upon a lost and ancient city. But Fontana himself does grasp that this is something major. He registers the discovery, but never gets around to pursuing it. He registers the discovery, but never gets around to pursuing it. Then in 1738, another posse of builders constructing a new palace for the King of Naples stumble upon the remains of Herculaneum.

Herculaneum is incredibly difficult to excavate through. That volcanic mud that covers Herculaneum is now like stone. And so they thought, right, let's go farther south. There's this site that is much easier to excavate. And they actually thought it was a place called Stabiae, a small town farther south. And it wasn't until 1763 when archaeologists uncovered an inscription that had the name of Pompeii. And this was the discovery that everybody was waiting for. This was the discovery of the century. And suddenly, Pompeii and the excavations at Pompeii become the most famous excavation in the world. Aristocrats from around Europe came to watch the city becoming uncovered.

These aristocrats also got gifts in the form of what we would call artifacts and wall frescoes. So in the early days, the uncovering was more of a treasure hunt than anything else, trying to find the treasures of Pompeii. But it attracts worldwide fame from early on. In the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries, there was a custom called the Grand Tour. And this is when the aristocratic Europeans, when they were young, went and traveled Europe, right? And this was really to show that you have the wealth to go on these fabulous vacations. And the culmination used to be Rome.

But after Pompeii was discovered, the culmination of the ground tour was Pompeii. Everybody needed to go and see this beautifully preserved city. A century of haphazard archaeology ensues. The race to find treasures supersedes the need to preserve the city's beautiful yet delicate remains. supersedes the need to preserve the city's beautiful yet delicate remains. The thrill of handling ever more artifacts is prized over the accumulation of knowledge. Today it's easy to spot the houses that were excavated first, because many of their frescoes have been torn off the walls.

The Forum, the centre of economic, civic and religious life, is revealed in all its glory. Similarly, the Masellum, a large public market along with a palaestra or sports ground, the amphitheatre and other theatres, a gymnasium and swimming pool, public baths, temples and whole blocks of housing and commercial properties. Then, in the 1860s, the Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli becomes director of excavations. Work becomes more ordered, better regulated and recorded. He also comes up with a startling innovation. One day he's pondering the many voids in the ash layer

that his team are constantly discovering, often containing human remains. What, he wonders, if these voids are injected with plaster? What might the casts reveal? As he suspects, the forms emerge of the people whose decomposing bodies created the voids in the first place. whose decomposing bodies created the voids in the first place. This paves the way for the physical recreation of some 1200 of those wretched citizens of Pompeii, captured in their final moments, before the eruption of Vesuvius claimed them. The casts are a sensation, consolidating Pompeii's position as perhaps the foremost tourist destination of the age.

But there is much else to explore aside from those casts. The incredible thing about Herculaneum of Pompeii is the preservation and artifacts that would otherwise just decay into nothing are preserved. For instance, bread. The bakeries were baking their bread just like any other day when mount vesuvius erupted and the workers fled leaving the bread in the oven and the bread carbonized and so in the storerooms at pompeii we still have the remains the carbonized bread from 2 000 years ago we have other food carbonized so that it preserves we We can talk about their diet just by

the preservation of the food remains. It really is incredible. We have signs of just quotidian daily life going on. One of my favorite things is the graffiti. These people from Pompeii and Herculaneum had no qualms about inscribing messages, their names, into the plaster face of walls. And so we get this just incredible graffiti, messages and names and pictures. It's really just an amazing snapshot of just the normal people that were living in these cities, you know, just in the days and the months before they were destroyed. We get beautiful wall paintings coming from houses, coming from bath complexes. We get a series of highly erotic wall paintings coming from the brothel. This is a very well-preserved building and obviously a very popular building for tourists today.

And where there's a series of six or seven rooms with plaster of Paris benches in these rooms where sex workers worked. And the rooms are absolutely covered in graffiti from these clients. And some are just simply names. Some are sexually charged messages. There was a lot of entertainment. There were bars. We know where bars are located, but we also have paintings, wall frescoes of bar scenes, people gambling,

throwing dice at tables, servers bringing them drinks, much like we have today. So we can talk about all sorts of hospitality industries, people trying to get the money from these night owls looking for a good time. To date, about two-thirds of Pompeii lies uncovered, while a third remains buried by the Vesuvian ash from 79 AD. Since the mid-20th century, excavation of this last third has been virtually non-existent.

century, excavation of this last third has been virtually non-existent. Archaeologists understand today that as soon as a new part of the ancient city is exposed to the elements, it needs to be taken care of, or it will decay. It's a hard enough job to maintain that which has already been excavated. Each year, millions of feet wear down Pompeii's ancient streets and mosaic floors, Each year millions of feet wear down Pompeii's ancient streets and mosaic floors, and millions more fingertips explore its walls and artifacts. Tourist money is vital to the city's preservation, but the sheer physical presence of tourists is, ultimately, detrimental to it. It's an unsolvable catch-22. So until there is a compelling argument that will change our understanding of Roman Pompeii,

a third of the city will remain protected in its volcanic blanket. And what of the future? There are some two million people living in the vicinity of Vesuvius today. What if the volcano awakes again? Could there be a Pompeii Part 2? So on the one hand, I would say scientists, of course, like geologists, volcanologists, take the threat of a future eruption very seriously. And for good reason. It's overdue.

It will erupt. It's dormant, but it's not extinct. Every couple of thousand years, we get a big one. We had a smallish, medium-sized eruption in 1943, 44, during World War II. That was nothing compared to 79 AD. And another 79 AD eruption is imminent. So scientists are monitoring the volcano constantly, detecting tremors, other signs that Vesuvius is waking up, right? They're doing this, of course, to provide warning for people to evacuate the region in time.

This area, this Campanian plain, is one of the most densely populated areas of Italy. Because it's still so fertile, it's on the coast, it's a perfect place to live. If another major eruption hits without warning, the loss of life will be staggering. Now, on the other hand, the people who live there don't feel the same sense of urgency, I really don't think. In Italy, there's a sound you make, it's boop, and this means it's out of my hands, so why should I stress over it? They're not interested in volcano drills to see how fast they can evacuate. They see the looming threat of the volcano as part of their identity in history, I think. If it happens, it happens.

There's a phrase, carpe diem, and everybody knows that. It means seize the day. But the full quote, the full passage comes from Horace in one of his poems. And he writes, Carpe diem, quam minimum credulo postero. And this means seize the day, trust in tomorrow as little as possible, right? And this is the quote I think of when I think of the people in Pompeii and Naples and everywhere else around this Vesuvian plain. Live for now, because tomorrow might never come. Next time on Short History Of, we'll bring you a short history of Tutankhamun. Tutankhamun lived and indeed was king

at an incredibly interesting point in Egyptian history. This is because his reign follows almost immediately a period when Egypt is turned on its head. That's next time on Short History Of.