The Ancients - Pompeii: Life Before the Eruption

Episode Date: August 6, 2023

The ancient city of Pompeii is one of the greatest archaeological discoveries on earth. Frozen in time since 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius erupted, its story is one that continues today.In episode one of this special series, Tristan Hughes takes you into its bustling streets: from markets to homes, experience the vibrancy and intricacies of Pompeian life. Meet one of the city's most impressive residents and unearth the textures of everyday existence in a world paused in time, only to be rediscovered centuries later.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.For more Ancient's content, subscribe to our Ancient's newsletter here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. So we're just walking up Mount Vesuvius now, a thousand metres above sea level, which infamously erupted in 79 AD, almost 2,000 years ago, when it blew its top off and cast its entire area in a dark

cloud of pumice, lava and ash. And you can also see now, you can probably hear in the background, we've got visitors. It's a very popular place to come up to Vesuvius today with good reason, because there is so much history here. And we do have an eyewitness accounts of the eruption itself by Pliny the Younger in nearby Mycenaeum and he describes what he saw he described the eruption as like being in a room with the lights turned out it would freeze in time both Pompeii Herculaneum and other places nearby but standing here today you can see the whole of Naples in front of me an overwhelming blue from where the sea and the sky meet cascading rock formations in the distance marking the outline

of the city ginormous caverns that make up its rocky terrain with steep sharp drops the only thing stopping me from going over is this a slim wooden railing marking our bumpy path along the side. It's also, at times, when the people have gone, incredibly quiet. A world away from what it must have been like on that defining day, all that chaos as people saw the sky turning black and then these deadly rocks raining down from the sky. You're listening to The Ancients from History Hit Hit with me, your host, Tristan Hughes. This is our special series exploring the life and destruction of Pompeii. From the Bay of Naples in Italy, we're bringing you the dramatic story of how a city synonymous with human tragedy

was also a great centre of Roman life. They would have been talking about the politics of the day, the aedile who didn't let them do something and, you know, build something somewhere, the mayor, if you like, of the town who obstructed them doing something. They would have had their gripes about what was going on in politics. We'll be discovering the story behind one of Pompeii's most impressive residents. The name Julia Felix. We don't know whether she's a widow, but she probably hasn't got a guardian looking after her,

which is usual in the Roman period if you're a woman. You either have a husband or a father to deal with your businesses, but she seems to be going it alone. So I think what we can tell is she's a kind of a savvy entrepreneur. And what the evidence is revealing about the people who called Pompeii home. And straight away people have said in the papers, here we've got a man and his slave,

because looking at these compressed vertebrae, it would be unexpected to find a man who was aged 18 to 25 with that kind of condition of his body. Having said that, that's quite an inclusion to leap to. Before we jump in, though, I want to quickly break down why Pompeii has gone down in history. I know some of you are old friends around here, but some of you may be new. So let me explain. Picture this. It's over halfway through the year in 79 AD and Pompeii is a thriving port town. The forum is busy, with people selling food at markets,

debating local issues, children are having lessons, while a stonemason repairs cracks on the Temple of Vespasian. The city had been rocked by a massive earthquake 17 years earlier, and the damage it had sustained was severe. Nevertheless, the people of Pompeii had been determined to rebuild in the wake of this disaster, and by 79 AD, Pompeii was a settlement very much on the mend.

Although never usually as severe as that massive one in 62 AD, earthquakes were something that Pompeii's residents had been living with for years. Tremors were frequent in this area of Italy. But never in their wildest nightmares could the people of Pompeii have anticipated what was about to happen to their beloved town. They knew there was something special about Vesuvius, but no one could have foreseen the sleeping monster that was about to erupt. When Vesuvius finally blows, a great column of volcanic pumice, ash and hot gas spews miles into the sky above the volcano. From this column it quickly extends into a cloud that is carried southeast by the wind towards Pompeii. Very quickly this cloud covers Pompeii in a veil of darkness.

Molten rock, pumice stone and ash then begins to fall from the sky. Within hours more than a metre of this material covers Pompeii's streets. Hours, more than a metre of this material covers Pompeii's streets. Those hoping to ride the storm out in their homes are trapped and crushed as roofs begin to collapse under the weight. Those trying to flee the city are caught by rocks falling from the sky. Later on, the second phase of the eruption begins. Pyroclastic surge after surge seeps into the city and surrounding areas, exceeding temperatures of some 300 degrees. Death in an instant.

Pompeii becomes a city buried by some six metres of ash, dust and debris. Today, it's one of the greatest archaeological sites on Earth. And whilst this part of Pompeii's history is undoubtedly fascinating, I want to find out what life was like before the eruption, about the people who lived here, who called Pompeii home, from wealthy villa owners to gladiators. This is Episode 1, Pompeii before Vesuvius. of Roman Pompeii. It kind of feels like I guess this wide open space in the middle. I can see the remains of columns in front of me, columns to the side, inscriptions, Latin inscriptions, the remains of buildings all around varying from I'm guessing there would have been shops but also over there

you have the remains of the basilica, the law courts and I guess as a comparison maybe think of something like maybe Guildhall in London today with that wide open courtyard, maybe Trafalgar Square or Leicester Square, something like that as well. This great centre of this ancient town. The size of a football pitch today, Pompeii's forum was the settlement's central focus. Like many Roman cities, it was the hub for politics, culture and religion. A seat of political and religious power. If you had your statue here, then that meant something. It meant you were a big deal in Pompeii.

Around it immediately are the big civic buildings that you would need to go to at some point. That's Dr Sophie Hay. She's an archaeologist who has been specialising in Pompeii for over 20 years. So you've got the big marketplaces, there's one that's specifically designed for fish selling, then there's a large market which they call the wool market but we think in the end that this is probably used for a number of different sales, including possibly even the selling of enslaved people. Then opposite that, you've got the big temples. So you've got the Temple of Apollo.

You've got the classic Capitolium temple at one end of the Forum. Oh, you've got even a place where they have standardized weights and measures. So from that, we know that that's where the market was taking place and that things being bought and sold actually had to go through some sort of system of standardization to be fair to everyone you don't just get a scoop of this or that it's actually all measured out which is lovely and then you've got civic buildings like the basilica which to us we always think of a Basilica as a sort of a church, but Roman times, it's much more of a sort of just a place for justice. So if you had a dispute with your neighbour over something,

you'd probably go there to try and iron it out. There's loads of graffiti on the walls in the Basilica because obviously there's lots of people like standing around waiting to be dealt with. So there's a lot of time to scratch your thoughts, good or bad, into the walls. This is the era of Ovid and Virgil, after all. So what epics can we expect to find etched onto these walls? The reality is not much different to what you might find in a pub bathroom today.

There's one that says, We two dear men, friends forever, were here. If you want to know our names, they are Gaius and Aulus. The ancient equivalent of Gaius and Aulus was here, 2K23. There's also some from the Basilica saying, Epaphras, you are bald. And also, Epaphras is not good at ball games. Poor Epaphora, whoever they were. And a personal favourite. Kie, I hope your haemorrhoids rub together so much that they hurt worse than when they ever have before.

A cutting ancient insult right there. And then you've got other little political function rooms, basically, as well. So it's a sort of the civic hub of the town and certainly anything that's going on in the town would sort of vaguely happen around there. But yes, the square itself, it could be used for processions, games even, as well as a marketplace. So there's a list of the days that the market would visit Pompeii and we know from these frescoes what would be sold, these pots and pans, textiles,

shoes, as I say. But yeah, it's a general hub. There's also, there's a fresco of some men reading a banner which has been strung up in between these equestrian statues in the Forum. And we know it's the Forum of Pompeii because there's a double colonnade. And if we see it in the Forum today, we see this double colonnade. So obviously they it in the forum today we see this double colonnade so obviously they're reading political news of the day catching up with what's going on so it's an area to get information but above all I think for the Romans the Pompeians it's a place where they go to do business deals they could bring clients to their own homes to do business but often you'd go out just as you'd go to the baths to do business.

So it's multi-purposed really as an area. To get a sense of who was actually living and working in Pompeii, let's look at one resident who no doubt would have used the forum regularly, and who happened to live on the Via dell'Abondanza, one of the main arterial roads of Pompeii. Her name was Julia Felix. Located near the amphitheatre, the house of Julia Felix is one of the largest properties in the whole of Pompeii. It's a grand villa with apartments that look out into ornate gardens, once decorated with statues and surrounded by marble-embellished columns. It also had its own private baths and an open swimming pool. This is an impressive property, and its artwork was stunning, meant to impress visitors. For instance, overlooking a water feature in the garden, was Julia Felix's luxurious dining

room called a triclinium. Its walls are covered with colour, depicting people in boats on a river and crocodiles. This was a depiction of the Nile, designed to amaze and awe Julia Felix's guests as they dined and reclined. And no doubt, these scenes were also a topic of dinner conversation. But who was Julia Felix? Welcome to the house of Julia Felix. It is incredible, isn't it? Just looking at it. Yeah, it gives you a really good sense of how the Romans kind of enjoyed their life, it has to be said. Yes.

Enjoyed their life, it has to be said. Yes. Surprisingly, we actually know quite a lot about her, and that's because in 1756, when they were sort of amidst sort of digging this insular up, they found a depinto, basically a painted sign, on the facade of this building, and on it, in literally big letters,

was the name Julia Felix. And she was advertising for rent part of her house house so we know that this is her property. In the estate of Julia Felix, daughter of Spurius, to let. Elegant Venus baths for respectable people, shops with upper rooms and apartments. From the 13th of August next to 13th August of the sixth year for five continuous years the lease will expire at the end of the five years. Daughter of Spurius meaning illegitimate which we'll come back to later. In terms of who she is we know she's a citizen which is very important as she's got rights that a freed woman wouldn't have had and although we don't we well we assume that she's not married because it's her name doing the business side of things on in that painted advert so we don't know

whether she's a widow but she probably hasn't got a guardian looking after her which is usual in the roman period if you're a woman you either have a husband or a father to deal with your businesses but she seems to be going alone so i think what we can tell is she's a husband or a father to deal with your businesses. She seems to be going it alone. So I think what we can tell is she's a kind of a savvy entrepreneur. I feel very strongly that she's sort of arrived in Pompeii and is shaking things up. And shaking things up she was. Julia refers to herself as the daughter of Spurius. This likely means she's not an elite member of society,

despite the grandness of her property. How she acquired her wealth is unclear, but even though she was likely of low status originally, well this doesn't seem to have held her back. Just the size of this property says a lot about her wealth. Although she's not an elite member of society, she's obviously got enough money to buy actually two insular blocks. And she had the political sway, apparently. She had words with the politicians and she joined these two blocks together. And in so doing, got rid of a road that ran between them. An important arterial road in Pompeii. She just got rid of it road that ran between them, you know, an important arterial road in Pompeii.

She just got rid of it, joined these two properties together. So we're standing in her garden. Well, this is about two thirds of the size of the property. And so the built up part, her house only occupies a third of the space. So there's a lot being said there about, you know, ownership, wealth and what she could do with her money. Whatever her background, Julia Felix was clearly an entrepreneur. As Sophie has mentioned, we know it was her managing apartments, not a husband or a father, as it's her name literally on the door. But we don't know how independent she truly was. Was she single? Was she widowed?

Or was she just operating outside of her husband's control? We don't know. But what we do know from this is that it was possible for a woman to own property and to make money from it. A rarity in ancient Rome. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and on not just the Tudors from History Hit, my guests and I run through the full gamut of human emotion and experience. From the heartbreak of the Virgin Queen. Elizabeth not being able to marry arguably the only man in the world she ever really wanted to marry may have for that reason not married

anyone else. To a prenatal battle of the sexes. A male and a female seed meet in the womb at conception and whichever one is stronger determines the sex of the unorn child. From Lady Jane Grey facing her executioner. You can't help but feel just the utmost sympathy for this young girl. To why the laughing cavalier is, well, laughing. He strikes me as someone who goes off on a sort of swaggering booze-up. Subscribe now to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are.

So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. The role of women in antiquity was usually one of subordination to men. For an everyday woman there wasn't much beyond shop owner, midwife, sex worker, daughter, wife or mother. And what we do know about Roman women tends to come from the writings of men in Rome's most elite circles, which makes Julia Felix all the more interesting. Usually, a woman's value was defined almost exclusively in relation to their fathers and

husbands. This is even reflected in their names, with women almost always taking a feminine version of her father's family name. Sergius Julius would have a daughter named Julia. Guardians were usually required to control the activity surrounding property if there was no father or husband to do this, but it was possible to bypass this formality, as Julia Felix evidently did. And one quick word on how Julia Felix's entrepreneurial fortunes might be linked to the great earthquake that rocked Pompeii in 62 AD, which we covered earlier. The damage that earthquake dealt

to Pompeii was severe. Over the following years, this was a city being rebuilt, both structurally and socially. Like with most disasters, the earthquake would have left people ruined. But it would have also created opportunities. Opportunities for entrepreneurship, to shake up the social orders. And this could have been something that Julia Felix saw and took advantage of. For example, the earthquake of 62 destroyed buildings across the city, meaning a shortage of accommodation and limited use of public bathing facilities at places like the Forum Baths. Could this have been the context for Julia Felix to start renting out her rooms

and open her private baths to the public? Possibly. Let's take a closer look at the social makeup of Pompeii. Pompeii is a port town, so it's super busy. You've got ships arriving, you've got foreigners, so you'd hear foreign accents in Pompeii. It's not all Latin, you would hear Syrians speaking as well as Greeks. And then you've got probably the smells of the bakery, and maybe even the incense from temples and things like that sort of mixed in. So you go from the very sort of domestic smells from kitchens to the bakery and then you get the more mystical smells from the temples as well and then day to day you've got the forum which might have had a market

going on and people are selling textiles so some people are hawking so shouting out come and buy produce you've got pots and pans being sold shoes you might even in the forum have had schooling. So we have a fresco where we've seen maybe some students being schooled. And then you've got the carts which are transporting all the produce from the environment around. They'll be cluttering along the streets in the ruts. Then you've got the hustle and bustle of people just racing around the town. All the enslaved people people running around doing errands. Pompeii was full of life. Throughout history, it's common to see modern towns

form into distinct areas of rich and poor. But Pompeii was different. Everyone is living cheek by jowl. So you've got a shop or a tannery or a fullery, which is where they clean clothes, with urine often. So the stench must have been awful. But yet between these properties, you get sort of narrow entrances into huge, important houses. So everyone's kind of living on top of each other.

And it's certainly not a city that's been divided up into posh areas and commercial areas. It's all happening on all the streets. There were several different social classes in Roman society, from the aristocratic elite right at the top, to those poor mistreated individuals right at the bottom, the slaves, who played a significant albeit horrible role in Roman society. We don't know exact numbers, but some scholars estimate that between 10 and 20% of the Roman Empire's population were enslaved, with a higher concentration in cities like Pompeii

due to its trade connections. Slaves were common in the city and in the countryside, and ownership wasn't limited to the elite. Depending on how skilled they were, the type of work for a slave varied. Hard manual labour like agricultural work was common. A farmer, for instance, who cultivated grapes for wine may have his family to help with the harvest, as well as two to three slaves to keep costs down. Work in households was also common. It's very likely that Julia Felix had slaves working

in her villa, running errands around town, maintaining the baths, doing laundry, going to markets or serving guests. Even though the life of a slave could be varied, they still had no personal rights and were regarded as property, both physically and sexually. A master of a house could also have sex with his slaves, so he's allowed to use his enslaved community as sexual partners for him. It's not that that's not allowed, and often they get pregnant and they bear his children. So, yeah, we look at it in sort of horror or shock potentially, I think, at the explicitness of sex. There were many ways a person could end up in slavery in Roman times.

They could be born into it, they could be captured in war, or they could even be sold into it by someone else or by themselves to cover debts. And it was even common for infants who were abandoned at birth to become slaves. Most of what we know about slavery comes from texts written by masters and the elite. The lower classes are often invisible in Pompeii, so they don't get looked at so much. And I think that's why we concentrate, or why at least studies have concentrated on the more elite members of society because we've got a lot more evidence for them but what's interesting now is that that scholarship is kind of turning to look at the more invisible

people so the enslaved people people working sort of behind a shop front trying to understand what their daily life was like and I think that's where we're going to learn most about general life in the Roman period, but also sort of their world also fed and clothed the elite. The elite do not exist in isolation. So I think it's really interesting that we get to understand a lot more about the lower classes and what they're doing. And there's sort of systems of literacy, numeracy. We forget that to run a shop, you need to be literate and numerate. So we're kind of giving credit now to the lower classes for their sort of talents and skills,

as opposed to just looking at the elite thinking, yes, they ruled the world. As classicist and writer Dr Daisy Dunn elaborates on. Two humans have been discovered in an area called Kivita Juliana, which is about 700 metres northwest of Pompeii, so just outside of the city proper. In 2020, the remains of two people, extraordinarily preserved, were unearthed. They are believed to have been fleeing the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It's two men, it's thought, looking at the build of them, and they look slightly different from one another. So they were found in a little room off the Cryptoporticus, and the Cryptoporticus is a long sort of covered walkway in rather a nice

villa. And they were sort of lying down on the ground, and one of them they think is probably aged 18 to 25 and people have looked at him and they think that some of his vertebrae in his spine are quite compressed and from that they've said maybe he was involved in some kind of manual labour. The other man is slightly taller, we're not talking tall here, I'm thinking I think it's about 162 centimetres or something which I'm not quite sure here i'm thinking i think it's about 162 centimeters or something which i'm not quite sure i'm not very good at my convergence but i think that's about five foot three five foot four forgiven yeah and i think they said that he was slightly older so aged between about 30 and 40 and had a sort of cloak on his body

and one of the things that's really interesting is to see how the media has kind of reacted to this. And straight away, people have said in the papers, here we've got a man and his slave, because looking at these compressed vertebrae, it would be unexpected to find a man who was aged 18 to 25 with that kind of condition of his body. But having said that, that's quite a conclusion to leap to, isn't it? It's difficult to say that that's a slave. I mean, it's possible, like a considerable proportion of the population of Pompeii were slaves, so it's possible. But on that evidence alone, it's very difficult to say who he was in relation to the older man. And the other interesting thing is they said, have a look at the older man, he's wearing a cloak, and that's a piece of evidence of his status and his wealth. And that, again, is very, very sort of problematic as evidence goes because what we know actually looking at a lot of the bodies which have been found in Pompeii is that they very often had

wooden cloaks on them if you think about it it's really kind of sensible you have all the sort of burning pumice falling down on you in the middle of an eruption you're going to put on your thickest layers and venture out you're not going to go out wearing something skim, you're going to put on your thickest layers and venture out. You're not going to go out wearing something skimpy, you're going to be burned. So that in itself is very, very difficult, again, to sort of use as evidence of who this person was. But the fact is, we've got two people who were found there. Their skeletons were buried within the volcanic deposit and the archaeologists poured plaster into the deposit left behind by their bodies to preserve their final shapes. And at least one of these men had his hand in this kind of, we call this pugilistic pose, a sort of boxer pose. And that's evidence that he died of a result of the sort of intense heat that was kind of when he was caught up in the pyroclastic flow which buried them.

And that's kind of a very common cause of death of a lot of the victims of Pompeii, is a thermal shock. In the same villa, a perfectly intact 16-square-metre room, likely lived in by slaves, was excavated showing three wooden beds, a chamber pot and a wooden chest containing metal and fabric items in what must have been a very cramped room, with the only source of natural light coming from a small upper window.

Archaeologists have suggested that it could have been the lodgings of a small family who carried out day-to-day work in the villa. This room is a small but important snapshot into what life might have looked like for the poorest in society and something you wouldn't find in the writings. It's impossible to say what kind of work this family would have done, but a big chunk of day-to-day work in a villa would have involved food. This is ancient Rome after all. I feel like they're sort of perpetually eating. Not only do these villas kind of produce food, so many of the gardens are given over to orchards and nuts and growing of all sorts of food

and wine and we have whole blocks that just have vineyards in them. So the people of Pompeii are producing their food, then on their walls they've got frescoes with things as sort of mundane to us as a loaf of bread painted there, some fish, sort of the preparation for what they're going to cook, the ingredients, if you like. And then, you know, when they finish looking at that, then they're sitting and dining and they're actually eating it. So the whole day to me is kind of, you know, it's there's elements of food throughout their whole day to me is kind of, you know, there's elements of food throughout their whole day. It's easy to forget how agricultural Pompeii was.

Yes, it was a busy port town filled with various shops and bars and trading centres where everyone was sort of living on top of each other. But the land that people did have was sprawling. People were sort of contributing to the sort of trade and market by growing things such as figs. Figs were very popular in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Cabbages were grown here. About a century before the eruption, Pompeii was a great centre for producing sticky fish sauce. We might have heard of this garumum rather a foul thing which they sort of

poured on everything but like our ketchup today sort of fermented fish basically is what went into it and they sort of made this in these large vats um but what we know is that in pompeii this was quite popular at the time but then it was sort of superseded by industries elsewhere so particularly in biloclaudia in southern Spain. They had this vast processing plant for fermented fish products there. So Pompeii's industry in that area kind of waned. So by the time of the eruption, its focus was very, very much on viticulture. It was the main source of wine production for Rome, supplying Rome in this period. The type of food and the quality of drink that you had access to in ancient Roman society mattered.

And the way you dined was a reflection of your status. The wealthiest in society would have hosted grand banquets in their homes, in tricliniums, or dining rooms to you and me, which consisted of guests reclining on large beds in a U-shaped formation. The horizontal position not only reflected status, which consisted of guests reclining on large beds in a U-shaped formation. The horizontal position not only reflected status, but it was also believed to aid digestion. But while the Roman elite were reclining and dining,

not everyone in a Roman town like Pompeii had access to tricliniums or the means to host banquets in their homes. Indeed, many in Pompeii probably didn't even have access to a kitchen. So something that was particularly big in Roman society, and actually was the lifeblood for many living in Pompeii, well, that was eating out. Going to the equivalent of an ancient takeaway, or even, in some cases, sit-in restaurants. And this is something that we see once again at Julia Felix's house,

as Sophie showed me. So this is a bar counter and people could come straight from the street, grab food and go. But if they wanted to have a bit more of a leisurely lunch or food, they can come through, they would walk in, come through. And they could, They could have food in her restaurant. This is a restaurant from ancient Roman times. Indeed. So you've got the kitchen right there with the hearth and the preparation area. Now Sophie, this is such an interesting

part of Roman dining because this feels more like 21st century going out to a pub or restaurant. Yeah, it feels very familiar, this layout, certainly with these little upright benches, table in the middle. It's what we're used to with the sort of hot food arriving, cold food arriving, drinks. It would have been really amenable, I think.

And I presume the location-wise too, we've got the main street there, the amphitheater not too far away. This is a prime location. This is cunning Julia Felix, isn't it? Again, savvy again. Yes,, no she knew what she was doing and she wanted to rent this space out so she was getting an economy from it but yeah she knew she was sort of in the prime location for this sort of work. I just

love the idea that you know some 2,000 years ago you could have Romans from many parts of Roman society coming in here dining in at this restaurant talking about various matters right here whilst they're waiting for their food to be brought to them from the kitchen just there from the oven it's remarkable to think isn't it that this was a restaurant some 2,000 years ago yeah no and it would have been filled with the voices of Romans you know animated discussions about yes the sort of Romans, you know, animated discussions about, yes, the sort of local matters of the day, what had happened in the forum and dodgy deals. Not all work was done in the forum. Social occasions like this would be just as important to sort of negotiate things

with other people. So yeah, no, it'd have been a very lively place, I think. Do we know what kind of Romans, what status of Romans would have been able to come to one of these restaurants? Certainly freedmen and freedwomen, supposedly. Slaves would be coming maybe to grab food for their masters and taking it back to the shops where people were serving. So there's a lot of hustle and bustle here. And this, for a reason, you know, this little restaurant here is probably a little bit of a scene of tranquility amongst the sort of bustle of the of the bar at the front but still it'd be very lively they're talking animatedly they're having discussions arguments we know that there are brawls in bars drunken behavior so you know we've got a lot of sort of roman life kind of encompassed in this one room I guess you could perhaps also presume if you don't have the food there,

maybe you could get a board game or something here and they could play board games too, couldn't they? Yeah, we have lovely frescoes depicting Romans playing board games. So, no, you're absolutely right. So there we have it. It's easy to associate Pompeii with fire and destruction and to forget about the people who lived here. They ate, they debated, they even insulted each other over a drink. Pompeii was a living, breathing city before which was frozen in time and we've only just

scratched the surface of what Pompeii was like before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius almost 2,000 years ago. Make sure you join us next time, where we will be talking about the pleasures of Pompeii, think gladiators, and so much more. This episode was written and produced by Elena Guthrie. The assistant producer was Annie Colo. It was edited by Aidan Lonergan.

And lastly from me, thank you for listening. you