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The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found |  | Author: Mary Beard
Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 124911
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.5
ISBN: 0674029763
Dewey Decimal Number: 937.7256807
EAN: 9780674029767
ASIN: 0674029763
Publication Date: December 15, 2008
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| • | ISBN13: 9780674029767 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Amazon.com Review
Pompeii is the most famous archaeological site in the world, visited by more than two million people each year.
Yet it is also one of the most puzzling, with an intriguing and sometimes violent history, from the sixth century BCE to the present day. Destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, the ruins of Pompeii offer the best evidence we have of life in the Roman Empire. But the eruptions are only part of the story. In The Fires of Vesuvius, acclaimed historian Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. She explores what kind of town it was--more like Calcutta or the Costa del Sol?--and what it can tell us about “ordinary” life there. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, Beard offers us the big picture even as she takes us close enough to the past to smell the bad breath and see the intestinal tapeworms of the inhabitants of the lost city. She resurrects the Temple of Isis as a testament to ancient multiculturalism. At the Suburban Baths we go from communal bathing to hygiene to erotica.
Recently, Pompeii has been a focus of pleasure and loss: from Pink Floyd’s memorable rock concert to Primo Levi’s elegy on the victims. But
Pompeii still does not give up its secrets quite as easily as it may seem. This book shows us how much more and less there is to Pompeii than a city frozen in time as it went about its business on 24 August 79. Amazon.com Exclusive: Author Mary Beard on the Ten Reasons Why the Romans Were Great Lovers--and Ten Books to Tell You How
1. Staying power
Roman lovers could keep going all night (at least if we take their word for it). Ovid – the first-century-BC’s man about town – claims that he could perform nine times in a single night. Read all about it in his âLove Poems” (Book 3, number 7). Read: Ovid, The Erotic Poems, translated by Peter Green.
2. Sweet talk
Roman men could make you feel so good. Mark Antony and Julius Caesar both talked their way into the heart of feisty Cleopatra. The chat-up lines of Rome’s founding father Aeneas drove Queen Dido senseless. Read: Virgil, The Aeneid, translated by Robert Fagles. (Go straight to Book 4)
3. Body beautiful
There was no flab or beer belly on these six-pack hunks. All that gym and exercise kept Greeks and Romans bronzed and trim. Read: Nigel Spivey, The Ancient Olympics.
4. Inventiveness
Sexual positions became (literally) an art-form for the Romans--two-somes, three-somes and more. You’d better stay supple though, or those more testing acrobatics will be beyond you. Read: John Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art.
5. Romantic agony
Roman men could do anguish better than any others. “I hate and I love . . . and it hurts” as the poet Catullus succinctly wrote to his fickle mistress. Don’t expect to escape a Roman affair without tears. Read: Catullus, The Poems, translated by Peter Green.
6. Great pick-up lines
Romans knew they had to work hard at the first impressions. Ovid, in a lover’s manual, gives the beginner plenty of advice on how to break the ice. Stand right next to her at a procession, and when some elaborate display goes past explain to her what it is. It doesn’t matter, says Ovid, if you don’t really know – make it sound plausible, to impress. Read: Ovid, The Art of Love and Other Poems, translated by J. H. Mozley.
7. Open minds
Not many Romans were prudes. Most men were happy to contemplate sex with women, men, or if it came to it, animals – just so long as they were the active, not the passive partner. Read: Apuleius, The Golden Ass, translated by E. J. Kenney.
8. Rough-trade
Roman women went for the rough, tough sporting heroes of the ancient world. Successful gladiators became the heart-throbs of the Roman girls. Read: Catharine Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome.
9. In touch with their inner-selves
The anxiety of Roman men was one of their more endearing features. Images of the phallus were everywhere in Roman towns – but so too were images of castration and mutilation. The ancient man never took his prowess for granted. Carlin A. Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans.
10. Not afraid to say 'I love you'
The walls of the buried city of Pompeii are covered with written messages from satisfied (and a few unsatisfied) men. âOh Chloe, I had a wonderful time, twice over in this very spot, I love you. . . .’
Read: Antonio Varone, Eroticism in Pompeii. And, in case you are looking for the woman’s point of view, try Marilyn B. Skinner, Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture.
Product Description
Pompeii is the most famous archaeological site in the world, visited by more than two million people each year. Yet it is also one of the most puzzling, with an intriguing and sometimes violent history, from the sixth century BCE to the present day. Destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, the ruins of Pompeii offer the best evidence we have of life in the Roman Empire. But the eruptions are only part of the story. In The Fires of Vesuvius, acclaimed historian Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. She explores what kind of town it wasâmore like Calcutta or the Costa del Sol?âand what it can tell us about “ordinary” life there. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, Beard offers us the big picture even as she takes us close enough to the past to smell the bad breath and see the intestinal tapeworms of the inhabitants of the lost city. She resurrects the Temple of Isis as a testament to ancient multiculturalism. At the Suburban Baths we go from communal bathing to hygiene to erotica. Recently, Pompeii has been a focus of pleasure and loss: from Pink Floyd’s memorable rock concert to Primo Levi’s elegy on the victims. But Pompeii still does not give up its secrets quite as easily as it may seem. This book shows us how much more and less there is to Pompeii than a city frozen in time as it went about its business on 24 August 79. (20081006)
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
Truly original! December 28, 2009
Pierre Gauthier (Montréal)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The British title to this book, `The Life of a Roman Town', is actually more pertinent to its contents since it actually deals with what the ruins of Pompeii can tell us about the functioning of this community before the volcanic eruption of 79 AD that destroyed it. Multiple themes are covered: street life, house and home, earning a living, religion, etc.
The author displays a unique combination of learnedness and common sense. She debunks the myth of a `town frozen in time' as the heat and lava carbonized anything organic that was initially present and as the site was plundered over time. Indeed, she points out how initial archaeological digs in the 18th and 19th centuries were often not so different in nature from plundering. In short, the author brilliantly succeeds in demonstrating both how much and how little the ruins tell us.
Unfortunately, the book's lay-out is very old-fashioned, with colour plates set apart from the rest of the text on separate pages. In addition, sketches are distinguished from photos. This means the reader has to navigate between separately numbered plates, figures and illustrations.
Despite this small shortcoming, this book is highly recommended and will greatly enhance the appreciation of anyone who has ever visited Pompeii or plans to do so shortly.
 A very English perspective on Pompeii June 22, 2009
Kuru (Seattle)
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
Anyone about to visit Pompeii will benefit from reading this book, which provides useful cultural context and encourages a willingness to question received "facts" about the site. The book includes a generous helping of color plates and B&W illustrations.
At the same time, the book says as much about the prejudices of upper-caste English society in the 21st century as it does about Roman society. Economic status always equates with moral quality. Women who earn low wages are likely to also be prostitutes. In an election, a show of support from those not of the upper castes may be unwelcome. Bars must invariably be rough places. People who earn their money must be inferior socially to those who inherit it. Etc. An alert reader will dispute many of the conclusions Professor Beard reaches, but the book's saving grace is that the underlying facts are presented as well, so readers can participate in the process of trying to piece a lost society together from stray fragments.
These Tragic Events Are Not As Clear Cut As We Have Been Taught June 22, 2009
James R. Holland (Boston, MA)
While reading Joseph Jay Deiss's excellent book "Herculaneum" I also discovered this book. I just, almost, resisted the temptation to say, "Dug up this book." Sorry, but that's the mood I'm in today.
For anyone who has visited either/or both the buried ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii, they are quite different even though they are only a few miles apart and both were originally buried by the same eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius. While I enjoyed and reviewed both volumes, this one answers more of the questions I had from my actual tourist's visits to both historical locations.
The author of this book points out that few things about the history of Pompeii are known for certain. Even such basic information as when was Pompeii first settled? When the volcano buried it in 79 CE (AD) it was a Roman City, but it had only been under Roman control for a couple of hundred years and archeological evidence points to the site being occupied as early as 900 years prior to that eruption. We do not even know the names of all the cultures that occupied what we call Pompeii. And many of the names the guidebooks use were not the original names or addresses in Pompeii at the time of the eruption. Most of those names are modern-day nametags. Only rarely has the name of the actual owner of a particular structure been identified by surviving, intact inscriptions on the property. We know from delivery instructions on supplies that landmarks were used to find particular addresses. Such descriptions would read something to the effect "deliver to the two-story tavern on the green and ask for Marcus."
The name of the most popular and remembered exhibit at Pompeii, the Brothel with it's erotic and/or pornographic wall paintings depicting the various services available therein, is detailed and leaves the reader very doubtful about whether the landlords name is even remotely correct. The route used in determining the name is just too circumstantial and twisted.
The author points out that Pompeii was much larger than Herculaneum, but unlike that buried neighbor, after the eruption stopped, residents and looters returned to Pompeii to see what they could salvage. Herculaneum didn't suffer that fate at the time because it was encased in a form of solid lava. There is evidence that the looters managed to uncover parts of Pompeii rather soon after the disaster. The most direct evidence "is found in two words scratched by the main door of one grand house, which was found to be almost empty when uncovered by nineteenth-century excavators. It reads: `House tunneled', words hardly likely to have been written by an owner, so presumably a message from one looter to the rest of his grand, to them that this one had been `done'.
"The message, though written in Latin, was in Greek characters."
Other signs point to the possibility of much of Pompeii being still in ruins from a major earthquake that occurred twenty years before the city was buried. Even the actual date of the eruption is in question and except for some letters prepared as reports some years later, there is much disagreement about the exact date of the final catastrophe.
There are also many signs that when the mountain first started to show signs of a pending eruption that most of the population took flight and in many cases may have taken cartloads of their possessions as well? In Herculaneum the wall of hot pyroclastic flow appears to have caught those residences by surprise because half finished meals were left on the tables, valuables were sitting out in the open on top of furniture, and the city was not in a state disrepair from the same large earthquake two decades before. That fact may also be attributable to the inability of residents or looters to return to the buried city to plunder it. Other cities were simply built on top of the rock hard site, but their foundations didn't go nearly deep enough to reach Herculaneum.
This book is full of fascinating details about Pompeii. One obvious example is that much of it has been reconstructed. It shows pictures of some of the excavated buildings as they really appeared when uncovered and also show similar pictures of damage caused to the ruined city by Allied Bombings in World War II. Pompeii has been a tourist's city for centuries and it became a major tourist site once the railroad reached it in 1839. It was not unusual for "discoveries" such as skeletons to conveniently be unearthed while visiting royalty or other VIP's happened to be there observing the dig. It was in the interest of Italy to give their important visitors something to talk about once they returned home. Naturally, so large a site is still being pilfered. Only now the thieves don't dig in the middle of the night, they sneak in and steal the exhibits on display. The book shows a number of images of now missing fresco's and art treasurers.
One of my favorite bits of trivia was that the rich in Pompeii dined at home and the poor always ate at the cafes, bars, and taverns because they didn't have cooking facilities in their small quarters or they actually lived outdoors because they were homeless. I liked the sections about how children, or it could have been bored workman, stuck coins against the wet plaster near ground level before it dried. The impressions those coins left in the walls helped date the ruins. Workman still do that today. I witnessed some US coins being slipped into the corner stone concrete pouring of one major Boston building project. Even over a period of thousands of years, Boys (both children and adults) will still be boys.
This is a fascinating book that every visitor to Pompeii or Herculaneum should attempt to read before traveling there. It will make what they see much more meaningful.
It's nice to know the meaning of what the eye beholds. And no, I'm not going to mention anything more about the circuitous method used to try and identify the owner of the brothel. And don't forget to visit it. There is a slight additional fee for visiting it. My, my things never change. Sex still sells. One of my teenage son's comments after leaving the exhibit was something I'll always treasure. "You know Dad, if I'd been alive in this era I would have been a great painter."
highly informative May 29, 2009
Sally Polzin (Lawarence, MA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a scholarly but very readable book. It gave me a closer up view of life in Pompeii while pointing out the dangers of making assumptions from the evidence. I particularly enjoyed the discussion on ancient graffiti and advertising. It certainly adds to one's enjoyment of the book if you have visited the site, but I think it would also be a very thorough introduction to Pompeii if you are thinking of visiting the area.
interesting history April 21, 2009
Miriam Kairey (Eatontown, NJ United States)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Engaging, well written. If you like history you will enjoy it. Her British English is a challenging in a few spots.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
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