Thanks Rebelbase,martin_fierro, and BenLurkin.
Posted on 02/03/2016 7:01:52 PM PST by Rebelbase
Video at link and also at Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY_3ggKg0Bc#t=485
A good disaster story never fails to fascinate and, given that it actually happened, the story of Pompeii especially so. Buried and thus frozen in time by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, the ancient Roman town of 11,000 has provided an object of great historical interest ever since its rediscovery in 1599. Baths, houses, tools and other possessions (including plenty of wine bottles), frescoes, graffiti, an ampitheater, an aqueduct, the "Villa of the Mysteries": Pompeii has it all, as far as the stuff of first-century Roman life goes.
The ash-preserved ruins of Pompeii, more than any other source, have provided historians with a window into just what life in that time and place was like. A Day in Pompeii, an exhibition held at the Melbourne Museum in 2009, gave its more than 330,000 visitors a chance to experience Pompeii's life even more vividly. The exhibition included a 3D theater installation that featured the animation above. Watch it, and you can see Pompeii brought back to life with computer-generated imagery and then, in snapshots over the course of 48 hours, entombed by Vesuvius again.
As inherently compelling as we find the story of Pompeii, modern drama has struggled to capture the power of the disaster that defines it. The late-1960s BBC show Up Pompeii! offered a comedic rendering of life in the city before the explosion, but more serious interpretations, like the 2014 Hollywood movie Pompeii, met with only lukewarm critical reception. Best, it seems, to stick to the words of Pliny the Younger, witness to the destruction and still its most evocative describer:
You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore.
Ha!
bump
Some years ago I attended a briefing by an L A Fire Department information officer. He held up a thumb drive which he carried on a lanyard around his neck and said, “This is my life.” By which he meant copies of every document and photograph which was important to him. And he urged everyone in the audience to do the same.
The reason: After the “big one” there are going to be areas of the city consumed so rapidly by fire that the residents will have to literally run for their lives.
Cool!
Bookmark
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Thanks! Will ping later.
Thanks! I've always liked that one in particular. Pliny the Elder (great ancient scholar; apparently not quite great enough, on that day) died of poison gas rolling down off the mountain; Pliny the Younger was offshore watching the whole thing, and recorded what he saw, plus the eyewitness accounts of the death of his adoptive father.
What happened at one AM (in media nocte)?
The one phrase I remember from Mrs. Collier’s 1962 Latin class.
bttt
Thanks Rebelbase,martin_fierro, and BenLurkin.
I too didn’t realize how long Vesuvius was erupting before the final blast. From what I saw I think around mid-afternoon I would have told the family it’s time to take a trip to Grandma’s and get the heck out of Pompeii for a few days.
Very good, but disturbing.
What an excellent idea.
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