a sane voice in a mad, mad world: Pompeii

Saturday, February 14, 2009

5. Pompeii

5. POMPEII
By Rossella Lorenzi

More than 400 finds recorded by 25 international research groups in the past 10 years have provided the most accurate picture of what life was like in Pompeii.

At the time Mount Vesuvius erupted, this was a wealthy Roman trading town, famous for its fish sauce and grand villas. Indeed, it was international and cosmopolitan.

In addition to Greeks and Etruscans, the population included residents from Africa. Of Pompeii's 20,000 inhabitants, half were children. The average Pompeian woman was 4 1/2 feet tall and lived to the age of 39. The average man was a few inches taller and could expect to live to the age of 41.

Pompeians poured their savings into their houses. Wealthy people enriched their homes with elegant courtyard gardens decorated with frescoes of plants and flowers and an abundance of modern conveniences. Each room was heated by hot air running through cavity walls and spaces under the floors, while sophisticated hydraulic pumps provided running water.

The entire city had an excellent system for the control and distribution of water. From a great reservoir, water flowed invisibly through underground pipelines into drainage systems and into aqueducts supported by arches. It reappeared in the city's houses, public buildings and fountains.

"The ancient Romans achieved their power because they had a deep knowledge of technology and science, not to mention that they understood many aspects of nature," Paolo Galluzzi, director of Florence's Institute and Museum of the History of Science, said.

Having studied iconographic sources and ancient texts for three years, Galluzzi has been able to reconstruct models and computer animations of the complex machines created by the ancient residents.

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Pompeii

4. The story of Lupercus

4. THE STORY OF LUPERCUS
By Rossella Lorenzi

Lupercus is one of the only victims whose identity has survived, thanks to his personal bronze seal declaring his status as an imperial slave. This fictional account of his last day is based on the recent findings.

It was a summer night in A.D. 79 and Lupercus watched a young couple sitting cross-legged on the beach at Herculaneum. They looked like they were under the spell of the Cupids on the fresco near the Decumanus Maximus, but it wasn't a romantic moment. The couple was frightened; torrents of hot mud were spewing out of Mount Vesuvius.

Lupercus cleaned his mouth with his left hand. Despite the sea breeze, his tongue felt furry with thin ash. In the other hand he held his bronze seal, inscribed with "Lupercus Augusti servus." It was the only thing he took with him as he rushed to the beach.

He looked again at Vesuvius, worried. "I am close to the water, I shall be safe," he reassured himself. But what would happen to the imperial villa he had to take care of? He had worked so hard to make a good impression on the emperor and be released one day.

After all, he wasn't a just a common slave. He had been appointed with a great responsibility: he had to take care of the garden of the villa that had belonged to the lunatic emperor Caligula.

He looked around at the crowded beach. The women wore their most beautiful jewels. Lupercus recognized the matron of the house with the mosaic atrium: she was wearing rings on every finger and two beautiful bracelets in the shape of snakes. A more modest woman was carrying a basket with nuts and pomegranates, while others carried bronze oil lamps.

"It is going be a long night," Lupercus thought. Some lay on the beach to sleep, while many others decided to find shelter in the boat chambers.

Lupercus entered the one reserved to men. He noticed the doctor with his bag of surgical instruments and a soldier clad in armor, who stood at the entrance.
There was nothing to do but wait. They huddled together in a circle, talking late into the night.

Suddenly, an unbearable heat struck like lightning. The soldier was thrown on his face, his arms outstretched to try to break his fall. Lupercus fell with the others in a tangle of bodies.

Outside, gray ash drifted down like snow. The young couple lay solidified on the beach, the man's arm wrapped around his love.

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\The story of Lupercus

3. Two days in August 79 AD

3. TWO DAYS IN AUGUST
By Rossella Lorenzi

Aug. 24, A.D. 79

1 p.m.: When the people of Herculaneum saw a column of smoke bursting from Vesuvius, reaching nine miles into the sky, they looked around, astonished. As the first ash fell on the roofs of their houses, they understood it was time to run. Most stopped to gather what belongings they could: money, jewels, the family dog. Everybody rushed into the streets. Some thought the sea was their route to safety; those who didn't try to escape on boats assembled on the beach.

Midnight: The cloud reached almost 19 miles into the sky, and torrents of lava poured down Vesuvius. The beach probably offered a spectacular view of the eruption, but the fugitives didn't live much longer to admire it.

Aug. 25, A.D. 79

1 a.m.: A cloud of gas and ash plunged down on the town; the hot breath of Vesuvius killed the fugitives in a fraction of a second. By studying bone fractures and the position of the remains, anthropologist Paolo Petrone and volcanologist Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo established beyond a doubt that the fugitives were wrapped in a 900-degree Fahrenheit cloud. They died instantly of thermal shock, not from slow suffocation as scientists long assumed.

1 to 6 a.m.: More surges followed.

7 a.m.: A devastating surge killed the remaining inhabitants of Pompeii; they lay down with death on a thick carpet of pumice.

8 a.m.: Silence fell on Herculaneum and Pompeii.

Two days in August 79 AD

2. Herculaneum

HERCULANEUM
By Rossella Lorenzi

Since it was discovered in the 18th century buried under 75 feet of solidified ash, the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum has always been overshadowed by Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius.

Yet, in ancient times, Herculaneum was a dream town. Overlooking the Bay of Naples, it was the aristocratic dwelling of a wealthy elite, a cluster of fabulous villas and gardens.

"Herculaneum could not stand out in all its importance because of problems with digging. The resistance of the volcanic material made it very difficult to excavate, not to mention the urban settlements that had grown above the ancient town.
There is still a lot to discover about this place," archaeologist Mario Pagano, director of the town's excavation, said.

Indeed, a 18-year dig led by Pagano near the ancient seashore has provided the conclusive evidence on how the victims of history's most famous volcanic explosion died.

The excavation uncovered 300 bodies, a significant and precious sample of Herculaneum's population, which at the time of the eruption in A.D. 79 numbered about 5,000.

Pagano's team found bodies of adults on the surface, many carrying money and valuable objects; deeper down, they found children and newborns.
Most of all, Pagano found 80 nearly intact bodies trapped by death as they packed into 12 storerooms on the beach to escape the molten lava and boiling mud pouring down from the crater.

It has long been assumed that the victims died from asphyxiation. But a study of the bone fractures and the position of the remains, indicates that the fugitives died instantly from extreme thermal shock when the surge hurled down on the beach area, covering the seven miles to the coast in about four minutes. Herculaneum was baked in seconds.

"These 80 people do not display any evidence of voluntary self-protective reaction or agony contortions. They were killed before they had time to display a reaction, in less than a fraction of a second," said study author Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo, a volcanologist with the Vesuvius Observatory.

The finding prompted a team of archaeologists, vulcanologists, geologists and anthropologists to draw a diary of Herculaneum's last hours.

Herculaneum

Pompeii: The Last Day - I/7

The Long, Deathly Silence

By Rossella Lorenzi

"You could hear women lamenting, children crying, men shouting. There were some so afraid of death that they prayed for death. Many raised their hands to the gods, and even more believed that there were no gods any longer and that this was one unending night for the world." —Pliny the Younger, circa A.D. 97 to 109

It all lasted 19 hours.

Then, there was only a long, deathly silence. Pompeii lay buried for nearly 1,700 years. It wasn't until 1748 that archaeologists began slowly uncovering the ancient city, preserved under 9 feet of volcanic ash and frozen in time by Pliny the Younger's vivid report.

About three-fifths of the city has been liberated from the solidified volcanic ash and pumice that engulfed it. But many questions remained unanswered for a long time.

What was life like under the volcano? What exactly did happen that summer day in A.D. 79? Here we take a look into the latest findings.

The Long, Deathly Silence