Posted on 07/01/2015 5:37:25 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
...The two towns remained largely undisturbed, lost to history, through the rise of Byzantium, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In 1738, Maria Amalia Christine, a nobleman's daughter from Saxony, wed Charles of Bourbon, the King of Naples, and became entranced by classical sculptures displayed in the garden of the royal palace in Naples. A French prince digging in the vicinity of his villa on Mount Vesuvius had discovered the antiquities nearly 30 years earlier, but had never conducted a systematic excavation. So Charles dispatched teams of laborers and engineers equipped with tools and blasting powder to the site of the original dig to hunt more treasures for his queen. For months, they tunneled through 60 feet of rock-hard lava, unearthing painted columns, sculptures of Roman figures draped in togas, the bronze torso of a horse -- and a flight of stairs. Not far from the staircase they came to an inscription, "Theatrum Herculanense." They had uncovered a Roman-era town, Herculaneum.
Digging began in Pompeii ten years later. Workers burrowed far more easily through the softer deposits of pumice and ash, unearthing streets, villas, frescoes, mosaics and the remains of the dead. "Stretched out full-length on the floor was a skeleton," C.W. Ceram writes in Gods, Graves and Scholars: The Story of Archaeology, a definitive account of the excavations, "with gold and silver coins that had rolled out of bony hands still seeking, it seemed, to clutch them fast."
In the 1860s a pioneering Italian archaeologist at Pompeii, Giuseppe Fiorelli, poured liquid plaster into the cavities in the solidified ash created by the decomposing flesh, creating perfect casts of Pompeii's victims at the moment of their deaths -- down to the folds in their togas, the straps of their sandals, their agonized facial expressions.
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
Didn’t Romans save their urine in jars to sell to `dry cleaners’? Series. Some of that stuff survived.
And a lot of the surviving Pompeii graffiti advertising prostitutes, random scatology and personal invective is pretty vivid stuff.
Pliny recorded Vesuvius’ rumblings for quite some time so
you would think they would have vacated the premises w/ their Buggus Outtus Bagguses.
Bakery of Sotericus
http://www.ermaktravel.org/Europe/Italy/Pompeii/bakery_sotericus.html
A wine shop sign, Pompeii. Credit: Werner Forman/UIG/Getty [can’t post image]
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02475/numbers-bottles_2475047c.jpg
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/pompeii/9852462/Pompeii-exhibition-a-history-of-Pompeii-and-Herculaneum-in-numbers.html
Thanks. They could break off pieces from the bread wheel in the little street shops where they went for lunch for fish, wine, etc. `Beehive’ like ovens?
The urine was collected by fullers, for the processing of wool (beats me, someone here must know); this actually helped in Roman cities, free-to-use urinals were set up all over, and the urine collected daily. At some point in the prime generations of the Empire, collected urine started to be taxed, imagine that.
Pliny the Elder was quite the naturalist/scientist, but was also in charge of the fleet at Naples. He went into the Bay, despite large chaotic waves, to organize the response. He insisted there was no danger, went to the home of a friend, took a bath, had some food and wine, and then the really nasty stuff started. He was overcome by poison gas as he brought up the rear of the group he was “leading”, and at least some of that group made it back to his ship and escaped. His adopted son, Pliny the Younger, had remained at a distance offshore, or on an unaffected landmass, and it is his description of the eruption that just barely managed to be preserved.
In general, there were not apparently all that many who fled in time to avoid that dangerous phase of the eruption, when large stones rained down, braining people, breaking bones, etc. Those who got outta dodge as soon as the eruption started were either smart or lucky. The town had been badly damaged by an earthquake some years earlier, and repairs were still under way when Pompeii was buried. The plaster of paris effigies that were found were mostly in the streets. There are probably more remains in the still-unexcavated sections of the town.
Interestingly, there was at least one find in modern times of an ancient shaft dug down into the fresh ash, presumably well after the eruption was over, and presumably by the property owner retrieving something important from his ruined home. Various coins and things have emerged from the couple of centuries of continual digging, including what appears to have been the temple treasury from the Temple of Isis.
The surviving restaurants have holes in the counters, as if they had open fires, or fished the cooked items off coals inside the structure. Might have been bowls.
Here’s an indoor restaurant from ancient Ostia, the menu (like fast food places today) of their most popular products is made into a mosaic on the wall above the counter. People might not be able to read, so the pictures made it easy enough, they’d pay, they’d get their food. Nice shot of it here:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Ostia_antica-13.jpg
FMCDH(BITS)
It’s actually a very large area. We only saw a part of it and we were there for only three hours (we took a bus tour as a side trip from Rome). Not even close to enough time. We did not get to even see the museum they had there, which really bummed me out. I would say you need all day. If felt somewhat rushed, but I will treasure the memories of seeing it nonetheless. I actually wanted to rent a car and drive down but my wife thought that was nuts, driving in a foreign country and all. But the highway travel looked no different than it does in the US, to be honest. If you geta chance, you gotta go. Just an amazing experience.
I said something along those lines when we were there: Who knows what amazing artifacts have yet to be uncovered... We are planning to go back some day (hope Italy survives!)
The Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum belonged to one of Julius C’s fathers in law at one time; by the time the place got buried it was in the same family I think (Piso) and had a library of scrolls, apparently filled with nothing but philosophy texts. Now there’s speculation that there’s another storey to the house, and that, perhaps, there’s another room filled with scrolls (hopefully a little more interesting). I’m a doubter, but it’s something else that we’re not going to find out for a long time.
Ideally, some really deep pockets would come along, pay to build an all-new town off the site of the ancient Herculaneum, move everyone into their new places, and then clear off the modern town to get at the ancient town in ernest. I’m not optimistic. :’)
Thanks again, fascinating stuff, a society frozen in time.
Pompeii is amazing
Living in Spain for three years and traveling throughout Europe and North Africa between 1957 and 1960 was a life-long changing experience. I still have hundreds of pictures from our time there that I look at from time to time to relive the memories. It was a one of kind learning learning experience for a kid growing up in that era.
To this day, I am a student of ancient history and my early visits to Rome and Pompeii played a big part in that interest.
I hope to get there one of these years.
Thanks so much for all the links.
Please keep these articles and information coming. I have found this stuff endlessly fascinating since I was a kid. I mean, a lifetime of reading about and seeing documentaries about Pompeii, and then I was standing there looking at it with my own eyes.
:’) Will do!
Yeah, and it looks about as hard as the stale bread the guy at the local deli sells.
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