How Advanced Was Life In Pompeii | Pompeii with Mary Beard | Absolute History

in the year 79 AD. This volcano exploded beneath the Bay of Naples. There were farms, houses, villas, luxurious Roman cities, the best known being Pompeii. The eruption that erased this ancient city from the Roman map is one of the most famous disasters in the world, but the tragedy has given historians a priceless legacy, the inhabitants were overwhelmed by lethal gas, volcanic debris and we found their bodies exactly where they died. Many have been cast in plaster frozen in time. They have tormented the world with their last horrible moments of death, but they tell us so. little about their lives now in a basement just two miles from Pompeii 54 well-preserved skeletons that lie exactly where they died were hiding from the full force of the volcano 2,000 years later are about to reveal their secrets I wonder if they can tell us anything about the most interesting question in Pompeii, which is not how people died, we know how they died, but how the people of Pompeii actually lived during the 25 years that I have taught classics at Cambridge.

They have fascinated me. what daily

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was really like in ancient Pompeii. I hope these skeletons help take this understanding a step further and test my theories. I will explore the opulent and the ordinary, you don't have to be rich to wear it. jewels in a refined and rude city, it seems to me as if the woman is on top of him, but subtly stones, I will see the guy's difficulties and the pleasures savored, these guys don't seem very angry yet, I can. I can't find where I left my shine. I want to see if we can dig a little deeper and get under the skin of this ancient language.

You get no closer to the real Rome than being in a cesspool. I hope the people in the basement will help me discover what

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was like before Vesuvius forced them to flee Pompeii is the most important archaeological site in the Roman world nowhere else to come face to face with antiquity up close. You have such a personal way of being perfectly preserved. The ruins bring millions of people here every year to see a snapshot of Roman life, but that's all we see, a snapshot of a society where it seems that the rich enjoyed a life of luxury and everyone else, the pool and the slaves, they lived lives that always seemed monotonous.

Too simple for me, it's much more interesting than that. I want to break some myths about the rich and the poor in Pompeii. This was the stretch of coast where the rich Romans are. I mean, the really, really rich Romans from the capital used to come here on vacation. It was supposed to be particularly popular with the fast set, they came here to gamble, party, have sex, sort of a cross between Las Vegas and Brighton, and that's what makes Pompeii so notable, it was a twist where the Ordinary people live side by side. with the rich hedonists it had all the essential elements of a Roman city with a forum at one end and at the other an amphitheater and training ground for gladiators a market temples birthplaces even a brothel perhaps 12,000 people crammed into less than a square mile.

Located between the Mediterranean and Vesuvius, Pompeii is 17 miles along the coast of Naples, not far from Herculaneum and is in a suburb of Pompeii, a plantus where the cellar of skeletons was unearthed, it must have seemed a sensible place to come, it is partly underground and that would have seemed safe but it has good access from the outside road it is very difficult not to be moved by this place I mean they may be 2,000 years old but they are still victims of a terrible human tragedy on the other hand I can't help but wonder What these bones could tell us about the lives of these people.

The first thing we can see from the basement is that these people seem to be divided into two groups. On the one hand, they carried money and jewelry. These bodies have been cataloged and arranged in boxes. The others that were left where they were. They fell were found with nothing so how can we explain this division? One could generate all sorts of theories as to why this might be the case, but for my money, we are most likely dealing with a distinction in wealth. These skeletons are important because many of the bones found at Pompeii have simply been mixed together and the molds of plaster are very moving but are much less useful for forensic science because the bones inside are contaminated remains preserved like those in the basement.

Exactly where people died are rare for the first time, these will be analyzed by a forensic team led by Fabian Cans. So far we have found at least 54 people here and this gives us a broad cross-section of the Society of the Romans at that time the point is that we have a great opportunity here because we have a snapshot of the society, we could have slaves, we could have people upper class and we can discover if there were great differences, one of the most complete skeletons. He is a man of about 55 years old, apart from some dental cavities, he seemed to be doing quite well Nick, if we look closely at the other bones, I noticed this, you know, I don't know much about skeletons, but it seems to me something that has a large size . muscle connection yes, yes, it is the right arm above and it is a muscle connection for the brachialis and as you can see on the left side it is almost the same and he must be a very strong man, he is my age, he has as good teeth as me, but he is much stronger, these are the rest of his bones, but why are his bones green?

Yes, you were right about the whole left side. He shouts and the green ones come from metal objects, meaning he was rich. There was some bronze, copper or brass object buried with him. It had a considerable amount of metal richness with it, yes, and the acid in the soil is reacting with the metal objects and that mixes with the green. Almost every so-called rich Sam has had at least one or two green bones, so they've all been buried near something metal, while what we call the poor ones, do any of them have this point? No, not at all. , without any position, the bones of people on one side are not marked, but on the other side of the basement, people with green bones were discovered with a dazzling array of objects that are now kept in a guarded vault at the Archaeological Museum of Naples for the first time.

I have been allowed to get very close to these incredible things and actually hold them in my hands. This is really exciting for me, it's the first time I've touched any jewelery from Pompeii and I can be very naughty and I can put on the bracelet and no matter how cynical you are, but too boring in academics, it's still exciting. wear the bracelet that was worn 2000 years ago and nothing will ever stop doing Kidnapped Society we think this is very attractive actually pick it up you can instantly feel that it is heavy this is a solid bracelet but what catches your eye instantly is that it is so big it's not just women who wear bracelets this could be men's jewelry like a big honking man this really is a very very delicate piece of jewelry I was told very especially that I can't try this on the links are very small is very high quality workmanship very well made it must have been very expensive now it must have been expensive then there was also a large treasure in the basement near the skeleton of the man with green bones it was a woman in her early twenties who had With it, one of the largest amounts of money found with any body in Pompeii in Roman currency was 10,000 sesterces, which means it is approximately the equivalent of 10 years' salary for a Roman legionary soldier and these are some of the coins in somewhere. in silver, but many were in gold and she had them with her in two separate containers.

You can instantly see that the silver ones are very worn. In reality they have been money in circulation. They are actually buying things on the bomb market, but the gold ones. They are

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ly beautiful condition, so I think what that tells us is that they really help someone's savings. I think you can imagine very easily what must have happened, that people were fleeing, they wanted to take their valuables with them, they get the bag, they fill what's more. important to them this these things they put it inside the bag they put it in a pocket and leave this is what the people in the basement decided to take with them while they were trying to escape they sought refuge from the eruption in what was probably an underground warehouse they never arrived beyond this basement on our plantus the building above the basement looks at first like a two story residential house, but if you explore a little further you will see a lot more of what is going on, there is a large building with two stories of warehouses lots of large containers and wheel ruts made by hundreds of carts this was clearly more than someone's house this is an agricultural warehouse it's ghostly now in Roman times it must have been

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ly busy with people packing things, transporting things carrying them ready to be shipped , whoever owned this place must have been quite rich, but he was not as rich as one of his neighbors because right there, a few meters from this place, is one of the most luxurious villas ever found in the entire Empire Roman. world the seller is just a stone's throw away from this impressive Roman mansion with a hundred rooms decorated with sumptuous frescoes painted with pigments from the farthest corners of the Roman Empire and, to top it off, a 200-foot-long Olympic pool where guests could leaving your hair down so that all the rich people could frolic at their pool parties what life was like on the streets of Pompeii Mattia Wanda knows that his family has lived in Pompeii for generations and he is one of the most experienced guides on the site.

He has a local idea of ​​what this place might be like. It was once your idea of ​​what the ancient city was like, the basics, what life was like here. It's Mel, the main group of people from her, mainly about the business authority activity that was here, it's mainly own everywhere, smelling all morning and the smell of animals. - presumably yes and just think of the smell of a horrible yes for them it was normal life to get a sense of Pompeii as the people in the basement would have seen it. I have come to Naples there it is a modern city there are some striking similarities with the ancient city nearby so it is good to feel in Pompeii here, yes not worse, with the atmosphere of the first floor and the city of BC, it is easy to forget that Pompeii It was a two-story city, people lived above its shops, bars and stairs.

It opened directly onto the streets just as they do today in Naples. I think we will often wonder where all the things were in a Pompeii and in a shop or a bar. I think what this tells you is that if you can bargain for milk, you can actually hang it. from the ceiling like they did 2000 years ago, as this painting shows us, throughout modern Naples there are echoes of Pompey's past from the doors like those seen in Pompeii and the frescoes there are things like this in Pompeii yes, yes, They had to be careful because we don't want the excessive heel.

We can apply that to the images they left on their walls. I think graffiti is pretty cool. Pompeian graffiti is a little better than me there, Whittier, which I think is very pop now. Not so, poor people, so what is clean under what bay was cleaner than that? So, oh yeah, all the buses here don't make it so we can find all kinds of clues about how ancient Pompeii lived in modern Naples, but what? Can the bones in the basement contribute to the picture of their lives? This seems pretty common to me. This is a leg bone.

This is the bottom of the leg bone. If you compare it to this stone, it is small and you can see all of these. small holes and what is that is skin and bone infection a possible reason for this could be a cut this is an explanation for it so you get a cut you don't have antiseptic yes maybe you don't even know exactly what the relationship is between the dirt and the infection no, so the cut never heals properly and it is a type of lifelong infection really yes, painful or impassable very painful, very painful, so where could this infection have come from?

After all, we tend to think of the Romans as a fairly clean bunch who visited the baths regularly, it is true that bathing was an important part of life, as we can see from the baths near the forum in Pompeii, they give us a better idea than anywhere else in the world of how Roman baths really worked. where you took off your clothes, I think it must have been quite impressive walking in from the hot, sweaty outside through the narrow hallway into this beautifully decorated room. I think you have to imagine the baths as a place where someone whose life might be a little monotonous could come up with bright colors flashing lights splashing water everyone took off their clothes from the bars to the people's palace bathing was a great equalizer almost everyone in ancient Rome, rich and poor men and women would have gone to the baths, including the people in our basement these feats of engineering and underfloor heating, a series of hot and cold rooms and in Rome itself might even have a library attached .

You get all kinds of things that have gone into a Roman bath. You warm up and cool down and rest, but I think it's also crucial.remember that there are also wonderful things to look at and the ceiling still has some traces of the kind of exaggerated decoration that you would expect from a really good Roman bath and they all share those things that we usually think of these luxurious ones. Bathrooms are like pristine marble palaces where people come to clean themselves, but is that really the case here? I guess it's where you spend your time and this beautiful marble pool is a bit like a jacuzzi.

I think I think California or maybe I think Rugby Club, sit down. warm waters around your feet this is a good time to relax and talk with your friends in this beautiful environment. However, there is a nasty surprise in store. We can see very clearly where the water enters this pool. There's a nice little spout here that brings in the water. water in but you can look all around and there is not a single place you can get out, what this means is that there is absolutely no circulation of water in this pool, all the people who urinate here sweat, everything turns into a steaming watery mass, Just as what is healthy is that it is not healthy at all, even some Roman doctors realized that it was not healthy.

There's a great Roman doctor named Callos who says, "Make sure you don't go to bars if you have an open wound because you'll probably die of gangrene if you do it with other people in the basement. He made that connection, we don't know, but the bones offer a clue." extraordinary revelation about another area of ​​population health, so they are two different people, there are two different people, 10 to 12 years old, they are older children, they are both the same age and they both have the same abnormalities in their teeth. We think they were most likely twins, so it was the same boss.

Yes, and they have a problem when they took a closer look at the twins' teeth. The fabulous colleague ma che Henneberg discovered evidence of a horrible and unexpected disease. , they must have a massive disease and a possible explanation for it is congenital syphilis. No, I'm not joking, but I thought syphilis didn't come to Europe and kill much later, I mean Yes, if this were the case, yes. , this would be our first Roman case of congenital syphilis. Yes, of course, well, that would be something to find in this basement, wouldn't it? If this were true, it would negate the idea that the disease arrived for the first time. in Europe with Columbus's sailors, this would be the first recorded case of syphilis in more than 1,400 years, but the nurse selling cufflinks also tells us about another aspect of ancient Roman life.

This must have been really bad in a serious illness, someone had to take care of them. a lot of attention, a lot of medical attention, a lot of effort for them to achieve it. What strikes me is that they were in the so-called poor sample, but they still must have received years of medical care. I mean, it's interesting because it goes from a really nice scientific observation to a look at a family support network, parents who care for them, yes, the very basis of their survival is human care, yes, the possibility of a transmitted disease sexual could, at first glance, reinforce the opinion of many people. of ancient Rome as a society of debauchery and sexual excess there is the great Willie's everywhere when an object was first found in Pompeii and in a bar it was considered too shocking to be displayed in public it is a bronze lamp and all kinds of things hang from it bells and stuff, the kind of wind chimes to us, the Romans would have called it a jingle of attention must have been this guy here a hunchbacked bronze pygmy with a huge penis that he is in the process of cutting.

I like to think that this shows greater anxiety on the part of the Romans for their masculinity but who knows, maybe it is a strange form of eroticism, maybe it is a joke on the guys who came to drink at the bar or in the end it is just a random lamp that Whatever their function, you just need to walk around the city to see the same phallic theme again and well, what do they mean, what were they for? Everyone had a theory and I've been pretty angry. For example, do they point out the nearest brothel?

Well, I'm afraid I don't even hope that if this were the case, Pompeii would be full of brothels. Some people think so, but I'm not so sure. If you look closely at this luxurious bathhouse, you'll see that the displays of sex can be interpreted differently than the painting of the room you enter. presents all kinds of sexual positions from behind from front with the tongue, you name it, here not only is everyone given a number, this has launched the theory that this bathing establishment is not just a birthing establishment, but Maybe it's on the top floor.

An attached brothel is a kind of massage parlor with fringe activities. I'm afraid the truth about these paintings is a little more mundane and what we've really come to is the changing room, you can see along the walls where the shelf is. to hold your clothes he would have put on what are these paintings. I think it's not sex ads that might be happening upstairs, please could I have three hours of number four? I think they are a clever way to help you remember where you left your clothes. In fact, if you look closely at what the numbers are written on, they're written on some sort of wicker baskets, which I think is what we imagine would be on the bottom shelf where you left your belongings, so the idea would be your robe or your toga be hmm, I left my toga near the philario, kind of a joke, but if you go across town there is a building where there is no debate about its intended function, as far as I'm concerned this is the only known brothel in town now .

This is where you can see that the entire wall is covered in graffiti from customers. They are an interesting multicultural group as a couple. In Greek. They are very difficult to read. The Latin writing is absolutely terrible, but this one here is clear and quite typical. I came here and had a good experience, which is as clear as possible. It's a pretty shady place and I think my heart goes out to the prostitutes. You have to work here, obviously, sex here is still sold 2,000 years later because this is the place. The most popular visitor attraction on the entire site, this place is always packed with people because we still have a glamorous view on Roman sex and Roman brothels.

They also tell us a lot of nonsense about it if you listen to what the tour guides say. in these paintings above the cubicles and they say oh what are these are the menu at the brothel you know maybe you can't speak Latin very well you can always ask like in a bar or yeah can I have some of that? one above that door is garbage it doesn't add up to me I think they are fantasy images about sex this place is bad enough it's dark it's dirty the girls are working in the prison cells you really don't have to make it worse by pretending it's you who came and you chose sex like you choose a hamburger between the frescoes the fallacies and the brothel you can see how it ended the image of Pompeii as a society obsessed with sex but we have to think again about this ancient myth my idea is quite simple, honestly, really I don't think the Romans are any more interested in sex than we are.

I think it has a lot more to do with male power, I mean, this is a very masculine culture. Roman power has to do with male power, says the phallus. If you say that Roman power is based on its masculinity, we have been too interested in seeing sex in every corner of Pompeii and that may serve another image of Roman life: we imagine the rich gorging themselves on gluttonous feasts while the poor and the slaves who serve them go hungry I wonder if the skeletons in the basement can give us a different view on that - Fabian, is there anything you have been able to discover so far that doesn't tell us about the diet of these people from what we know?

As we can see with the naked eye, we did not find any signs of malnutrition or lack of minerals. There is no significant difference between the two groups, so everyone here was getting enough of what they needed to stay alive and fairly healthy. Yes, this is notable. I expect to see big differences between the rich and the poor. The poor may be smaller and show signs of nutritional deficiency, but not here. So can we find out more about what these people had actually been eating? Fabian. I noticed it when I was looking at some of the teeth. which look very worn, they are much more worn than modern teeth because mainly the process of extracting the grain is completely different and in this era there were a lot of stones in the flour, so when the companions eat, they are pleasant.

Pompeii and bread also eat pieces of millstone, yes, and that wears out a tear. Bread was such a staple food that there are 30 bakeries in Pompeii alone, one of the largest is on the main street of the city and gives us a vivid picture of how the inhabitants of Pompeii baked their daily bread. One thing we can be sure of about all the people who ended up in our winery, both rich and poor, is that they have eaten bread from the same type of bakery, maybe even from the same bakery now. It is a very typical Pompeii bakery establishment.

I am standing now in the area where the corn was ground. Mules would have driven these rotating mills. The main entrance to the bakery from the street was there and this is where the slaves probably prepared the dough. the flour was brought from this area to here, they formed it into unbaked loaves, they cut those loaves on this shelf here and washed them to collect them and put them in the oven here and we know exactly what it looked like a painting from Pompeii shows us loaves of round bread divided into eight portions. In fact, in one of the city's numerous ovens, 81 charred loaves have been found cooked and ready for sale, and that is not all.

Archaeologists have found pomegranates, nuts, even eggs preserved for 2,000 years and Now, extraordinary new research means we can show that it wasn't just wealthy Romans who did well at Herculaneum, nine miles from Atlantis. Historian Andrew Wallace had a role in leading the excavation project. Herculaneum was buried under more than 50 feet of volcanic debris during The '79 eruption on this street was an apartment block inhabited not by Rome's super-rich but by the city's ordinary people. What went into their mouths came out 15 feet below. Let's go down here. Mary, it's not as scary as it seems. Here the evidence of the Roman diet has been perfectly preserved for two millennia to disappear into the bowels of the earth.

We're getting to the part where you can see some really nice downpipes. Here all this sewer is fed from above, the things that come down. it stains the wall generations of things leave a trail and it's still brown you can see very clearly how brown it is it just leaves this trail it feels real I mean, you don't get close to the real Rome, you have a layer of on the floor, yeah, material that covers it exactly, finally sealing things on the floor, so you take out the volcanic material and you get to that, which reaches up to our knees, more or less, it is a really very precious material in archaeological terms, this is gold, It's beautiful because it literally was.

What had happened to these Romans down here was the story of Roman Dyer waiting to be found. This is the largest archaeological sewer excavation in the world. More than 700 bags of human waste were collected from the sewer floor and are being systematically analyzed to tell us more about what the Romans ate in terms of diet. The surprising thing about the content here is the variety: you have bones of all kinds, many fish bones. We are right next to the sea. They had a diet rich in fish, but also chicken and eggs. but walnuts are a good variety of nuts, so you could have a complete mix between local and imported products, which is very difficult for the Roman Empire.

Is it illegal to live well and healthily? The important thing is to try to fix who those people were. we are living upstairs this is bigger than sending your ceases yes intervene yes there are a number of shops immediately above us so some of them are definitely merchants and then above them there are two more floors of apartments and it's terribly tempting to think because they are flats must be absolutely poor, so either very poor or stinking rich and this is a really difficult thing, but you know people often think that the Roman world is there, with really posh people at the top and then everyone else is dark and miserable. yes, no, sorry, it's much more complicated than that.

They are not really elegant people. They are not rich enough to live a life of luxury. They are common and ordinary. The excavation in the sewers supports what we found in the basement, which is that they are rich and poor. We share the same basic healthy diet, but make no mistake, the rich took advantage of every opportunity to show off their wealth and where they ate. With one way of doing it, this is a high-end Roman dining room, we could imagine that some of the richest skeletons in our cellar, even a trillion, something like this could have been eaten once or twice somewhere like this isbuilt around the idea of ​​running dripping, dripping water, the water would rush from that little alcove in the back and then feed into this pond here, feed over the marble and end up in another pond with a fountain overlooking to a garden beyond the other thing, well, I think it's quite interesting because it reveals very clearly how dependent the rich would be on their show eating the slaves I have to get up there to recline how you do it and how you would do it in a toga the answer must be that you were helped by your slaves that is a very good indication of the day to day how the roman elite depended on the servant class let me try to get up its not easy oops now I guess but what I do is lean back like this but I hope They had some cushions because it's really not very comfortable. far from where my wine might be here it certainly seems to me that this is an ostentatious dinner at the expense of comfort, something very different from today, when having money means you can eat out, if you are rich in Pompeii you are dining at home surrounded by opulence, but what about ordinary Pompeii?

Didn't they live in luxury? Where did they eat? Fast food restaurants are one of the most common features of Pompeii's street scene. There are more than one hundred and fifty in the city. There are 20 in this section of Alone on the Street there are so many that there is no way they were just for the rich, they probably weren't for the rich at all, they were the people who didn't have places to eat at home, they were the people who came from the countryside all the people who come from the port and want to eat something you have two options if you are a customer of this bar or you come on the street or at the counter look what they have to offer the dishes here choose what you want take it fast food but if you have more time and I guess if you have more money because you probably like modern Naples they charged you more if you want to sit, does it go to the back room when you spend time eating and drinking at a table?

I imagine it was quite full, maybe six or eight tables with people sitting around and when you sat at the tables he was sitting in the chairs at eye level with his lovely old scenes of warehouse bar life from the Museum of Naples. A fresco found in Pompeii was brought especially so that I could see it in Atlanta. He once decorated the walls of another bar and it gives us an idea of ​​a typical Pompeii and a very clever night, actually, because they are not just paintings, but the paintings have the ancient equivalent of speech bubbles attached to them, so that the little dialogue develops, a little story, the story is not at all. unknown after a few drinks, two men argue over a game of dice, the result of this we see in the sadly beaten last scene, but fortunately the writing still survives when one says, bastard, I won and the other literally says no.

You didn't do it and right in the right corner the owner must be because his speech bubble says look guys, if you want to fight, get out. I think it's good to end this little series of scenes with the owner because he remembers us. that bars aren't just places where people go, get drunk, play and flirt, they're actually someone's business, so we're rich and poor, we ate and drank were worlds apart, but what it was for the most part was very Similarly, everyone shared the same idea. benefit from the food grown in this wonderfully fertile region and coming from the abundant Mediterranean which in those days was right around the corner, it is easy to forget that in Roman times Pompey was absolutely on the seashore, it is just the seismic activity which means Finland is now Pompeii.

It had a harbor and there were other small harbors along this coast. Goods flowed in and out of this rich agricultural land. It might have looked like a small provincial Italian town by the sea, but there is plenty of evidence of that. of the skeletons in the basement of how far Pompey's international connections went what we have here is a beautiful beautiful necklace that was found near one of the skeletons that are probably candidates is that he was with a middle-aged woman and it's incredibly modern in its feel um it has a narrow neck that it's going to go around there's no way i think you could go around me it's too big to hold so it must have been a choker i think tighter on someone's one one of the riddles about these things It is always where exactly the raw material for them comes from.

Emeralds are found naturally near Pompeii. Most likely they come from Egypt. These roughly shaped emeralds belonging to one of the skeletons are not the only evidence. We have global traffic to and from Rome. This is one of the most extraordinary objects ever found in Pompeii. What it is is an ivory statuette and you just have to look at it to see that it looks Indian and it is Indian, that's where it comes from. so it makes you understand in an instant that Pompey and the Pompeian inhabitants know what is going on in the outside world or have knowledge of Egypt, Africa, Asia and all the other places around the Mediterranean in a quite different way.

From what one imagines, the global view of an English village could be in the 18th or 19th century, so Pompeii was a small town with a world view, but to what extent do our skeletons in the basement reflect that we know that Pompeii is in some ways a surprisingly multicultural little place. There are strange objects here. Foreign imports. It has a port. He is looking towards the outside world. What has always been much more difficult to pin down is the extent to which the population was multicultural. Do we have any evidence from these skeletons about the composition of Pompeii in society, I mean really the ethnic or racial composition, we found two skeletons, we are pretty sure they are of African descent, this one is from the so-called rich group and there is another, It's a woman lying face down there and she's of African origin, tell me how do you know she's of African origin, it's just the shape of the face, I mean are you talking about sub-Saharan African, no, no, no, yeah, like black africans?

Look at what you seem to suggest and I think it's a really important point is that there are people living here who have an origin really from the other side of the Roman Empire, yeah that's not the only interesting thing about the African skeleton, its skull is dyed green for metal objects and is in the group found with treasure, it is possible that he was a slave to someone rich, but he could also have been rich himself, we cannot assume that all Africans were brutal and degrading slaves as Roman slavery certainly could be, It wasn't as simple as that in an ancient cemetery on the outskirts of Pompeii.

It is a tomb that paints a much more complex picture of slavery. What you have here is a tomb to keep the ashes of three people and they tell you who they are. There is a criminal man called Publius who is a former slave who tells you it is an x-ray, there is a woman named Sonya who actually owned him and then she freed him and I guess they probably then got married and he is also introducing him to the guy on the right, a friend of his, the first text message says soleus put this up for this trio but the text below says the sequel that is not so happy stop and read this, it says because that guy on the right who I thought was my friend turned out to be fake, in fact it says that the soleus took me to court, we We fought and he took me to court, but luckily my innocence and the gods above saved me, he was a complete bastard, we don't know why this man didn't just remove the statue of his former friend, that's what I would have done . but fortunately he didn't.

This monument tells a fascinating story. Here was a former slave rich enough to raise this large tomb for three and then go to court to settle the dispute with his former friend. The point about Roman slavery is that it's not always a life sentence the slaves get freedom and sometimes they do very well in fact I guess most probably the Pompeian population certainly some of the people in our basement would have had slaves somewhere in their ancestry, so it has been estimated that more than half of the population of Herculaneum descended from slaves and slaves certainly sometimes did what we consider high-status jobs.

There is evidence of that in a very surprising place. Yeah, you have the swamp, there's probably a seat here and then yeah, you can. come sit next to me, yeah, you see, the brilliant thing about this is that the last person who used this bathroom before the rash happened left their name, it starts with an A, that's right, that's what it says, it's their name , it's Apollinaris, yes, tea made. creators, yes, Apollinaris, the physician of Emperor Titus, then you can't read this anymore because it has two phases, but whatever he says, he can make a rug.

Here this name Apollinaris we cannot be sure, but it is very likely that it is a slave name, so the doctor empress is a slave, no, we tend to think that slave jobs are very enslaving manual jobs and someone certainly was. , but slaves also did high-status professional jobs in our terms, like being doctors, so that's another reason why slavery, but more importantly, to be a slave to the Emperor is to actually be someone quite important in some ways. , it is better to be a slave to an emperor than an ordinary person with a small shop in Herculaneum or to be a slave to Emperor Titus. doctor, a salesman on the way up, this guy, yes, so slavery was a reality in Pompeii, it's almost certain that some of the people in our basement were slaves, they died right next to their masters, as they would have lived in the baker's house in the On the main street of Pompeii we find a nice illustration of that closeness in a painting on the dining room wall.

These guys don't seem too angry yet, although I think we can imagine what might happen next, but the drawing scene is in the background. Well, that lady. She is clearly about to collapse and the slave behind her has held her up. I imagine slaves were very useful for this type of work, but it wasn't just slaves and masters living on top of each other here in the baker's house right next door. In the elegant dining room there is a stable and in the stable are the bones of the animals that used to turn the mills that ground the grain and undoubtedly delivered the bread around the city.

Here we have the best room in the Baker suburb. Next to where the Mules lived and just a few meters away is the back of a really rich house in Pompeii that was being given a complete renovation at the time of the eruption so that the rich would live right next door, right next to it. workers' side. bakery the baker has his Porsche lying right next to his animals, this is how the Pompeians lived, side by side, and this is how we find the people in the basement, rich and poor, men and women, old and young, lying together in death, just as they would have been in life, but in 79 AD.

That life came to an end neither they nor the others in this town had any idea that they lived in the shadow of the volcano. The last major eruption had been 1,500 years before anything could prepare the population. Because of what happened when Vesuvius exploded, the people in the basement only had one option: try to escape or stay and find refuge in the sea. You get a very good impression of how Vesuvius actually descends over the entire area, but you also feel a little uncomfortable. The feeling of how close the volcano is makes you realize how difficult it would have been to escape it, especially if you left it too late while friends and neighbors fled.

We know that our 54 people sought shelter and many took the best they could. precious belongings with them, why most of them stayed still, we can only guess, but in one case there is a strong clue. I have been told about the remains of this person that you have left here. This is perhaps one of the most dramatic. and tragic people we found in this throughout the sample because these are the bones of a young female and we found with the skeleton this small bone the pelvic bone of a fetus and she must have been pregnant, right if you measure it you can determine it was in the last month of pregnancy and it was yes, it is quite dramatic the idea of ​​being eight and a half months pregnant and trying to flee for your life from the erupting volcano is something simply terrible, surprisingly an eyewitness account of the eruption survives. describes how on that fateful day you could hear the screams of women, the screams of babies and the screams of men, some calling for their parents, others for their children or their wives, it was so dark that they could only recognize them by their voices, many begged. for the help of the gods but more I thought that the gods had disappeared and that the world had been plunged into eternal darkness, it must have been completely dark when the volcanic debris began to fall and our people tried to escape several times and surely they have brought lamps with Para them, this one is quite nice because the center, right where the oil comes in, has a beautiful image here of the goddess of Rome herself.

Unfortunately, it is brokenin half, but he is quite recognizable with his helmet on. People in the basement took shelter there during the eruption. intensified outside plunging you further into darkness God knows how you were able to find your way through the streets at night wearing just one of these. It makes me realize how vulnerable the people in this basement must have felt, they fled through the darkness, all trace of the sun. It has been destroyed by the volcanic debris they have come here in, they are huddled together for shelter and support and the only protection from the darkness they have is half a dozen small lamps like this, of course, in the end these people couldn't.

They were not protected from the same fate as the others in Pompeii, but the Romans in the basement not only left us evidence of their tragic death but of the lives they lived; it may have been a male-dominated world where the rich dined. in luxury and exploited the poor, but Pompeii was also a place where slaves could gain their freedom, where women could possess wealth and ordinary Rome could eat and drink well, it was a place where even the poorest knew something of the world outside of the people who died. Being in this basement helped us understand that Roman society was not as black and white as we often imagined, to be sure these people would have had very different lifestyles, but they lived side by side and also shared a lot of smells. . darkness and dirt not to mention wine, sex, food and fun and in the end, of course, they shared the same fate in the same winery 2,000 years ago.