[ News
| Homes
| Life
| Entertainment
| History
| Science
| Community
| Shop ]
| Sport
| Culture
| Cars
| Money
| Broadband
| Learning
| Health
| Dating
| Games ]
[ Text Only: Homepage ]
[ Graphical: Channel4 Homepage ]
Introduction | New
research | Status
Patronage and business | The
household | Pleasures of the
flesh
Core values | Find
out more
Pompeii is famous for the magical quality of the ruins preserved in Vesuvius's volcanic ash. Such is the quality of what remains that it is easy to assume that we can learn there all we want about the Roman way of life. In fact, the ruins raise far more questions than they answer.
Emerging history
Pompeii was first excavated over 200 years ago. The primitive and negligent
excavation carried out early on has hampered the study of the town ever since
– the fingerprints of everyday life were simply wiped away in the enthusiastic
quest for treasure. For many years, historians have almost overlooked Pompeii
as a legitimate source of information.
The story of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 is well known, but the history of the town in the years immediately preceding its destruction is only now emerging. Researchers using new methods have looked afresh at the evidence in Pompeii, drawing on archives of tablet records (see box) and on analyses of ruined buildings that bring the silent walls to life.
This new work has made a key contribution to our understanding of Roman society at the height of the empire. Now we know that Pompeii isn't simply a well-preserved example of an average Roman town. Even before the eruption, it was far more than that.
A social experiment
The mid-1st century AD was a time of great shifts in Roman society. The
highly destructive earthquake that damaged much of Pompeii in AD 62 appears
to have turned the town into a vast, overheated social experiment. The disruption
caused by the earthquake may have removed restraints, and as opportunities were
seized, the pace of change is likely to have accelerated. Changes, which elsewhere
took generations to occur, here seem to have taken place in the space of less
than a decade.
The new academic work on Pompeii offers us a forensic jigsaw puzzle – a vision of a society that has been assembled from fragments. Historians have, among many other things, compared decorative styles to trace the rise of 'new money', examined perspective in architecture as a function of patronage, considered how neighbourhoods were defined by the distribution of water supplies. And through the discovery of a fish skeleton, archaeologists from the University of Bradford have shed light on the town's social inequalities.
Archaeologists and historians have also referred to the great literature in
which this particular period was so rich.The excavation findings really spring
to life when set beside the writings of Seneca, Plautus, the famous republican
orator Cicero, who owned a villa in Pompeii, and, most especially, Petronius,
whose Satyricon is set largely among the freedmen of the town.