| Transcript |
| 0:01 | · | this is the story of a disaster like no other when Mount fuus erupted it rained |
| 0:09 | · | 7 and 1/2 million tons of debris onto Pompei it sealed the fate of more than a |
| 0:15 | · | thousand people but it also sealed the city in preserved it protected it like |
| 0:24 | · | nowhere else on Earth the rediscovered Pompei gives us access to the ancient world |
| 0:30 | · | and now with new findings and new insights we can tell the story of the ordinary people caught up in this |
| 0:38 | · | disaster these are the Forgotten men and women who lived when Rome ruled and were |
| 0:44 | · | buried when the volcano blw |
| 0:49 | · | [Music] |
| 1:02 | · | ad. 79 as many as 20,000 people live in Pompei and for them it's boom |
| 1:11 | · | time their town is 150 mi from Rome 3 miles from a benign little Hill |
| 1:19 | · | called Vesuvius and it sits on the Bay of Naples both a trade Hub and a holiday |
| 1:25 | · | playground [Music] |
| 1:37 | · | the people who live here have no idea what's about to hit how death is coming |
| 1:42 | · | to many of them how within 48 Hours their town will become both a tomb and a time capsule |
| 2:00 | · | for more than 200 years archaeologists have been digging at |
| 2:09 | · | Pompei because of what happened here the way whole districts of the Town were perfectly preserved in the moment of |
| 2:16 | · | their destruction it shows like no other sight how the people of ancient Rome lived |
| 2:22 | · | their lives often Works focused on the rich and the powerful the most eye-catching |
| 2:29 | · | fines Furniture works of art even whole buildings offer a glimpse of the top level of Roman |
| 2:41 | · | society but now one team is looking at a different group of |
| 2:47 | · | pompeians people who've often been overlooked the blue collar workers the |
| 2:53 | · | ordinary men and women who don't belong to the elite we've got a a whole Suite here of |
| 3:01 | · | workingclass properties houses and shops and workshops and all the bits and pieces that made up a a workingclass |
| 3:08 | · | Zone in Pompei this has given us a fantastic and unique opportunity to look at the the lives of the other 98% of the |
| 3:14 | · | population who've been largely hidden from us for for so long |
| 3:21 | · | now this Block's made up of stores and workshops which are also people's |
| 3:27 | · | homes and the aim of the work here is to build a picture of who those people |
| 3:34 | · | were with this particular building it's even been possible to name the occupant |
| 3:40 | · | a single find unlocks the man's story it came from this storage Niche uh down in |
| 3:45 | · | the corner of this room which would have been next to a bed here and what was found was a a small bronze uh military |
| 3:52 | · | diploma which was a a document given to a person upon retirement from the Roman military service |
| 4:04 | · | now kept under lock and key the document amounts to a full |
| 4:09 | · | resume because it's made of bronze rather than paper it survived still |
| 4:15 | · | legible to this day it's a really important document because it establishes that the holder |
| 4:23 | · | is a Roman citizen his name down here is |
| 4:28 | · | Marcus son of dhama Sirus |
| 4:34 | · | gasos gasos that's a really weird Roman name it doesn't sound like a Roman |
| 4:41 | · | name and it's because he's a Syrian uh as are all his mates who have signed at |
| 4:47 | · | the back uh three of them come from Antioch one of them comes from caesaria and so on and this guy has served in the |
| 4:56 | · | fleet at myum it says Fant fantastic myum is just over the water from |
| 5:02 | · | Pompei they're essentially the police force that keeps the Mediterranean free |
| 5:08 | · | of pirates so he probably didn't see terribly much action um except just |
| 5:14 | · | being a presence there in the Mediterranean going out on their ships visiting various ports making sure that |
| 5:21 | · | no one was up to trouble so ginus is a veteran of the |
| 5:28 | · | Marines a force made of non-citizens Roman citizenship was the |
| 5:34 | · | reward for 26 years service and its proof is the diploma no wonder he kept |
| 5:39 | · | it close this is like your passport it's the most valuable thing you have it's no |
| 5:45 | · | it's more than your passport it's your birth certificate and your passport put together and he keeps it in the safest |
| 5:51 | · | place he knows and so we can be pretty sure that he's the name of the guy who |
| 5:56 | · | was sleeping in that bed in ad79 |
| 6:06 | · | so this man is a respected member of the community and he's made a new life for himself as a Tradesman the building |
| 6:13 | · | houses a workshop and here he produces bronze goods for |
| 6:19 | · | sale when the first excavators came here in the 1870s they found a whole series of of bronze artifacts that were that |
| 6:25 | · | were sold from here what we've since done is excavated in some of the rooms out the back and some of the rooms out the front and found all the different |
| 6:32 | · | bronze smithing facilities that help to do that early on the 23rd of August |
| 6:40 | · | ad79 ginus is amongst his tools and his pots the sun sets the rhythm of the day |
| 6:47 | · | in the ancient world and as soon as there's enough light work begins up and down the street |
| 6:55 | · | other businesses are opening up but what you would have seen here in ad7 9 is a Street Front teaming with wide |
| 7:01 | · | entranceways into shops and workshops but we've also found a series of stairwells that would add up to uh |
| 7:07 | · | second floor apartment above up there we can imagine hanging balconies that would have reached out over the street as |
| 7:14 | · | well when the eruption comes many of these upper stories will collapse under the weight of the |
| 7:21 | · | debris but today in the building next door to ginus a family starts its |
| 7:28 | · | day AR archaeologists have determined that the business here is a |
| 7:35 | · | restaurant in this threshold here there's a double door which opened up from the center here and so the guest |
| 7:41 | · | could come to the front here and look straight down the center of the property into a dining room up the far |
| 7:51 | · | end so one of the clues that this building was operating as a restaurant in Antiquity was found in this room in here in the corner of this space we have |
| 7:58 | · | an oven with a counter in front of it we also found many coins in this |
| 8:04 | · | space uh these give us a fantastic indication of just how much money was changing hands in this |
| 8:13 | · | kitchen it's a diner there are many like it across the Roman Empire simple |
| 8:19 | · | relying on regular customers passing trade and long hours within 48 hours all |
| 8:26 | · | they have will be gone but for now everyone has their job to |
| 8:33 | · | do and the streets are coming to life the Block's exclusively working |
| 8:40 | · | class but the street is a Melting Pot Rich poor all trades all |
| 8:46 | · | Races the people of Pompei are packed tight inside the city walls and their lives all |
| 8:53 | · | interconnect in fact the first business of the day is the coming together of people of different status our humble |
| 9:00 | · | restaurant owner also the head of his household leaves his family to their chores and walks the short distance to |
| 9:06 | · | the house of one of his |
| 9:12 | · | neighbors it's only a couple of streets but it's a world away from his own home |
| 9:18 | · | this is one of the most important addresses in the city and the buildings are very public display of wealth power |
| 9:25 | · | and status |
| 9:32 | · | a house like this is built to stun the visitor first with the view that you get as you come in through the narrow |
| 9:39 | · | entrance way and it opens out into this great space The Atrium and you look through the broad |
| 9:47 | · | tolinum and through to the Garden the peristyle garden |
| 9:54 | · | there and it's all using a standard Roman formula The Atrium is built |
| 9:59 | · | typically with the roof sloping into the center so that the water comes into a pool where it's connected and goes down |
| 10:06 | · | to the well and the light of course comes in |
| 10:12 | · | here this house takes up the same space as the entire workingclass block two |
| 10:18 | · | streets away and every morning outside its door |
| 10:24 | · | the rituals the same the local men form alive |
| 10:30 | · | they're here to make a formal gesture of respect and here is the tolinum which is |
| 10:38 | · | the traditional morning reception room of the house here traditionally the |
| 10:43 | · | owner of the house is meant to sit perhaps on a throne and you can see what an impressive position it'll be he's |
| 10:50 | · | framed in this space and the the the visitor coming in looks through and sees |
| 10:56 | · | him with a with a bright light behind him too a stunning |
| 11:03 | · | sight the owner of the house papus is a patron a Godfather figure to his clients |
| 11:11 | · | he safeguards their interest gives them advice even money in return for their |
| 11:16 | · | respect and their loyalty their daily morning ritual is |
| 11:22 | · | called the [Music] saluta the theory is that after the |
| 11:28 | · | salutat you set out to the Forum and the crowd that is gathered around you will |
| 11:33 | · | then accompany you to The Forum where as a magistrate you will give Justice or or |
| 11:39 | · | whatever and it's that retinue following you through the streets that's a sign of your importance big people never move |
| 11:47 | · | alone they've always got a crowd around them life in Pompei seems ordered |
| 11:56 | · | stable but as popus and his retinue make their way through the crowd something |
| 12:01 | · | else is happening miles beneath the surface of the Earth a terrible pressure |
| 12:06 | · | is building these people will soon learn that nothing is safe not even the ground |
| 12:13 | · | under their feet today volcanology is a science |
| 12:20 | · | experts try to predict eruptions by monitoring emissions they plot changes in surface |
| 12:26 | · | temperature and Subterranean vibrations of course the Romans of Pompei have none |
| 12:31 | · | of this few are concerned that their Hill Vesuvius is a |
| 12:38 | · | volcano nowadays if we look to the volcano behind me we can see a very deep |
| 12:43 | · | crater this deep crator tells us of the recent eruption of |
| 12:52 | · | vvus when the people of Pompei would look towards the mountain they could see a mountain with very Lush vegetation |
| 12:58 | · | full of flowering trees and Orchards that didn't give the impression of being an active |
| 13:08 | · | volcano what the town's people and the Shepherds who graze their flocks on the side of the mountain don't know is that |
| 13:15 | · | far beneath them a catastrophic chain of events has |
| 13:21 | · | begun if we could see deep under our feet we could see that under this volcano at 101 15 km of depth there is a |
| 13:28 | · | magma chamber the magma chamber is a space |
| 13:33 | · | deep underground filled with molten rock at a temperature of around 1,000° |
| 13:39 | · | C an extra amount of magma entered the magma chamber in this case creating a |
| 13:45 | · | higher pressure that forced to crack in the Rocks |
| 13:52 | · | above the molten rock is forcing its way out in fact it's effects have already |
| 14:00 | · | been felt some years before the people of the city have lived |
| 14:05 | · | through something which today would be seen as a terrible warning this is evidence of a major |
| 14:10 | · | disaster an earthquake that hit this city in 62 ad just 17 years before the |
| 14:16 | · | final eruption what we find is that in this wall for example where we have the brick in the corner which surrounds this |
| 14:22 | · | nice diamond shaped wall in fact is broken off at this point and is instead replaced by a much more poorly built |
| 14:29 | · | wall and so the walls have been rebuilt with that Rubble into this much more basic |
| 14:36 | · | [Music] |
| 14:42 | · | [Applause] |
| 14:51 | · | design even though the people on Pompei did not know it is clear to volcanologists today that this |
| 14:57 | · | earthquake of 62 BC was a precursor of the eruption it indicates that the magma is |
| 15:04 | · | about to reach the surface and that the new eruption is about to |
| 15:15 | · | occur and so it unfolds the 17 years between the earthquake and the final eruption are on |
| 15:22 | · | a geological scale just the blink of an eye but the Romans don't see the world |
| 15:28 | · | that way to them a natural disaster is the action of an Angry |
| 15:34 | · | God so instead of being able to take the warning and abandon a city that is already doomed the people of Pompei do |
| 15:41 | · | the opposite they try to appease their gods |
| 15:48 | · | by remaking the temples of the Forum the town's main public space bigger and |
| 15:53 | · | grander than before it's a demonstration of Pride and prosperity |
| 15:59 | · | clad in White marble on the eve of the eruption it must appear |
| 16:05 | · | [Music] |
| 16:12 | · | indestructible 2,000 years later and in ruins the Forum is now the focus of a |
| 16:18 | · | startling piece of research for decades archeologists have |
| 16:23 | · | puzzled over this building it's one of the largest here but no one has ever determined what it it was |
| 16:29 | · | full we're standing in some kind of cined porch with a special feature which |
| 16:36 | · | is a raised platform the sort of space which could be used for giving |
| 16:44 | · | speeches making public announcements and almost certainly for |
| 16:51 | · | auctions the question is what was actually auctioned |
| 16:57 | · | here whatever was it was clearly something of value slots in the |
| 17:03 | · | threshold Stones indicate that the doors could be barred there are also two guard houses |
| 17:09 | · | just inside this was one of the most secure buildings in the |
| 17:15 | · | city it appears that the merchandise itself was kept in a long enclosed Corridor whose only Windows opened onto |
| 17:22 | · | an internal Courtyard again the holes in the window |
| 17:27 | · | sills show that there were shutters that could bar the space and over here there's even a hole |
| 17:35 | · | in the wall that might suggest a bar now this has led various people to suggest |
| 17:41 | · | that what was in there was jewelry or something that needed to be guarded but |
| 17:47 | · | this is an odd way to look at Jewels this isn't a counter this is a window sill so what I actually think was one of |
| 17:56 | · | the functions of this Corridor was was the display of slaves for |
| 18:05 | · | sale slaves this building suggests a part of the Roman world that's been largely |
| 18:14 | · | invisible slaves are everywhere in ancient Rome households businesses even |
| 18:20 | · | government they make up 30% of Italy's population and yet because the Romans |
| 18:25 | · | treat them as a commodity rather than as a people were left with virtually no written accounts of their |
| 18:32 | · | lives the story has been pieced together from the archaeological evidence and that suggests that this building was a |
| 18:38 | · | Marketplace for human livestock it was set up to handle |
| 18:45 | · | shipments of slaves often transported from the fringes of the |
| 18:50 | · | Empire they were held and sold in this |
| 18:56 | · | space they were probably given a drink and maybe washed off at the |
| 19:01 | · | fountain they were brought up the ramp that leads directly into this krypter and then the buyers were able to |
| 19:10 | · | look at them examine them through these windows at a safe distance but close |
| 19:15 | · | enough to see whether there are any defects and then one by one they were brought outside to the auction block to |
| 19:22 | · | be sold the auction is a defining moment |
| 19:28 | · | for a Slave it can be the difference between a relatively comfortable existence and a |
| 19:33 | · | hellish one and yet whoever buys him his life is not his |
| 19:46 | · | own when the eruption comes some slaves will die still |
| 19:56 | · | chained this man will be found when where he fell unable to run |
| 20:08 | · | away the ash from Mount Vesuvius smothered more of Pompei than its buildings it captured people fleeing |
| 20:15 | · | cowering dying in the face of an unfolding |
| 20:22 | · | disaster as the ash hardened and solidified it held the shape of its victim's bodies long after their flesh |
| 20:29 | · | had gone archaeologists found cavities that they could fill with plaster and use to create |
| 20:36 | · | molds they were able to see centuries on exactly how the dead lay when the full |
| 20:41 | · | force of the volcano |
| 20:47 | · | struck they also found bones so far the remains of 1,100 people |
| 20:56 | · | have been pulled from the ground but one find is different from the others |
| 21:01 | · | because of what was discovered next to the [Music] |
| 21:08 | · | body when we excavated we found the shackle there are two of them so both |
| 21:15 | · | ankles would have been locked up inside the Big Iron rings [Music] |
| 21:28 | · | we found these two objects we definitely knew that the first skeleton we found was a |
| 21:37 | · | slave because he's a slave he has no identity no history Beyond what's |
| 21:43 | · | written in these bones individual number one is a male uh |
| 21:49 | · | we can see that by looking at these brow ridges on his skull he also has several |
| 21:54 | · | features of his pelvis which also indicate that he's a male he was between 5' 6 and 5'9 |
| 22:01 | · | tall he was very young when he died probably between 20 and 25 um his collar |
| 22:07 | · | bone hasn't completed developing um as has the upper parts of his |
| 22:15 | · | pelvis certain bones continue to develop even after a person appears to have stopped |
| 22:21 | · | growing the fact that his collar bones haven't fused says that this man was in the prime of life |
| 22:29 | · | this individual has no signs of malnutrition or deficiency in their diet |
| 22:35 | · | he has no holes in his teeth so this individual appears to have |
| 22:40 | · | been reasonably |
| 22:46 | · | healthy the evidence suggests that this slave was one of the lucky ones probably well treated wellfed and |
| 22:53 | · | not forced into backbreaking labor he could have been a domestic slave |
| 23:01 | · | many Roman families had them and in a wealthy household they performed every menial |
| 23:10 | · | task in the main part of the house it's striking how open and visible everything is if you want to find where the slaves |
| 23:16 | · | are where the people who do the real work you've got to go around the corner to the invisible bits and no no eye |
| 23:24 | · | wants to come into this part of the house it's a a strange sort of dog leg suddenly we've lost all the beautiful |
| 23:30 | · | decoration we're down to to walls with if they're plastered these walls are plastered it's very very plain plaster |
| 23:37 | · | there's no color on it and over here we have a series of rooms that are evidently service rooms through there |
| 23:43 | · | there's a stable and they found a cart and various agricultural implements in it in here are sort of service rooms um |
| 23:51 | · | and it's in these that that the slaves must live and |
| 23:57 | · | work here at the bottom we have a sort of storage area you can see amrey stacked against the wall and then look |
| 24:04 | · | how narrow this passageway is uh it's it's a clear contrast with the rest of |
| 24:09 | · | the house uh everything there is open beautiful decorated everything here is |
| 24:15 | · | cramped narrow dark and it's meant to be different where the slaves |
| 24:23 | · | work remember the slaves are all over the house at all times there's a Slave at the front door there are slaves |
| 24:30 | · | serving you at tables it's not that the slaves aren't there in the grand bits of the house but their area their bit for |
| 24:38 | · | doing work has to be different and feel |
| 24:43 | · | [Music] different sometimes a slave could rise |
| 24:49 | · | to a position of importance in the household he could even be given his freedom in which case he might remain as |
| 24:57 | · | a member of his old Master staff he could hope to end his life as a respected |
| 25:08 | · | figure but that was not how it was for this |
| 25:14 | · | man it's likely that he was ignored as a person valued simply as property and the |
| 25:21 | · | only reason we know anything about him is down to the manner of his [Music] |
| 25:27 | · | death his body was found with that of another older |
| 25:32 | · | man and and what sort of building were they in near we found them near a tower |
| 25:39 | · | and they were escaping during the eruption to the trained eye of a |
| 25:45 | · | forensic anthropologist the state of the bones even 2,000 years after death is |
| 25:51 | · | very telling on skeleton number two um we have a lot of evidence of um exposure |
| 25:56 | · | to some kind of heat um on this vertebrae particularly you can see um |
| 26:03 | · | charring on the front um and that happens on on a number of these vertebrae here and on the foot |
| 26:10 | · | bone here again you can see charring on the inside of the bone uh which |
| 26:15 | · | indicates the bone fractured as well it takes tremendous heat to cause damage |
| 26:21 | · | like this the black color indicates that the bones were exposed to a heat of between |
| 26:26 | · | 3 and 600° Celsius that's between about 600 and 1100 |
| 26:35 | · | F the evidence says that this heat came in a sudden intense |
| 26:48 | · | blast we can see that the bodies were in what's known as a pugilistic pose which |
| 26:54 | · | is a boxers pose um this is caused because uh the muscles begin to shrink |
| 27:00 | · | um when exposed to extreme heat now the muscles that you use to clench everything and tighten everything um are |
| 27:07 | · | stronger than the ones that you use to stretch everything out so as they shrink those muscles take over and you adopt |
| 27:12 | · | this stance that would indicate that the individual died a very short period |
| 27:19 | · | before being exposed to those temperatures because if the individual has gone into what's known as rigor |
| 27:25 | · | mortis and gone stiff they won't go into this pugilistic |
| 27:32 | · | [Music] pose time and again at Pompei |
| 27:38 | · | archaeologists have found bodies posed in this way men and women killed by |
| 27:44 | · | something they just couldn't |
| 27:53 | · | [Music] outrun on the 23rd of August ad7 |
| 27:58 | · | 9 this fate is fast approaching in fact the end is already |
| 28:14 | · | underway as pompei's last day of normality draws to a close the warning signs start to |
| 28:23 | · | appear though the citizens have no idea what is about to happen the world starts to change before their |
| 28:34 | · | eyes the day before the eruption the magma rises towards the surface during |
| 28:40 | · | this process the magma goes in between cracks and the rocks and the rise of the magma itself creates a physical mutation |
| 28:46 | · | of the volcano the volcano grows in height and the external slopes start |
| 28:52 | · | tilting more and the coastline moves slightly further away all these factors could also be noticed by the people of |
| 29:04 | · | Pompei if people don't notice the altered shape of the mountain or the drop in sea level they must feel the |
| 29:10 | · | ground beneath their feet begin to |
| 29:18 | · | shift unfortunately according to contemporary Roman accounts this region |
| 29:23 | · | is used to Earth Tremors the p pans see them as a fact of |
| 29:29 | · | everyday life rather than a cause for [Music] alarm so they carry |
| 29:36 | · | on for most the Working Day which began at Sunrise is |
| 29:44 | · | over now the City |
| 29:49 | · | Eats in the Roman world the day's main meal is eaten in the afternoon like everything else it's |
| 29:56 | · | governed by class the wealthy can eat in their homes |
| 30:02 | · | couches are arranged around a low table family members recline with their invited guests and it can be an |
| 30:08 | · | elaborate luxurious business in this world it's a key social |
| 30:15 | · | activity for the people lower down the scale it's different they don't have kitchens or a space to |
| 30:22 | · | eat from the sheer number of taverns and diners in the town it looks as if for |
| 30:27 | · | many the norm is to eat out so here we find ourselves in one of the other restaurants that we've been Excavating |
| 30:33 | · | in this town block uh as customers would would come up through this long passageway they would reach the end of |
| 30:39 | · | the property where they would find out on the left hand side here two dining rooms in the second one here if we enter |
| 30:46 | · | in what you could expect to have found in 79 ad was uh a few couches around the |
| 30:51 | · | side and the back walls and also very simple very basic |
| 30:56 | · | wall decoration nothing like the fancy kinds of decoration we find in the much better appointed |
| 31:02 | · | [Music] restaurants what we've also found in this area are many of these gaming |
| 31:09 | · | pieces with this kind of a heads and a Tails feature to it these are fantastic reminders that not only eating and |
| 31:16 | · | drinking was important in this establishment but also gambling as well |
| 31:27 | · | [Music] the archaeologists working here have pieced together what was on the |
| 31:33 | · | menu they've taken the garbage and the waste that was trapped 2,000 years ago |
| 31:38 | · | in the drains of this building and sifted through it they add water and force air bubbles through the fragments |
| 31:45 | · | which float the surface are then removed for analysis here we've got some little seeds that we've picked out through the |
| 31:52 | · | flotation got an apple seed in here so we know that they're eating a |
| 31:58 | · | wide variety of apples you know fruit different kinds of fruit like pears and figs a lot of grape seeds there's a lot |
| 32:04 | · | of grape in the diet so those are very common fish a lot of Fishbones fish |
| 32:12 | · | scale in fact even the lower class citizens have access to a wide range of |
| 32:19 | · | foods they're benefiting directly from the power of the Roman Empire vast trade |
| 32:25 | · | networks that brought in goods from thousands of mil away for example we found one restaurant here that had a |
| 32:31 | · | drain that was full of a really varied diet it had everything from small um young mammals like young piglets uh |
| 32:38 | · | sheep even dmice a real delicacy in the Roman [Music] |
| 32:45 | · | world so the people of Pompei eat well but this is also a special |
| 32:52 | · | day oddly enough the very night before the eruption out here would have been the Festival of the Vulcan alad |
| 32:58 | · | this is a a festival to appease the god |
| 33:04 | · | Vulcan Vulcan is the god of fire fire as the force which brings |
| 33:10 | · | warmth and light into every Roman Life he's the blacksmith |
| 33:16 | · | God the patron of metal workers like ginus Roman poets imagine volcanoes as |
| 33:24 | · | the chimneys above his workshop and so he gives them their name [Applause] |
| 33:30 | · | Vulcan is also a God of destruction vcan was the the god of fire |
| 33:37 | · | and earthquake and volcanoes and so what you could imagine out here would have been a series of bonfires into which |
| 33:44 | · | were thrown life sacrifices of fish this was all designed to appease |
| 33:49 | · | the volcano of course the great ironers very next day uh Theus completely obliterated |
| 33:56 | · | the entire city here [Music] many of these people have only hours |
| 34:06 | · | left as millions of tons of molten rock begin to push the mountain |
| 34:11 | · | apart so Pompei begins its last |
| 34:23 | · | night the name Pompei will forever be linked with two things |
| 34:30 | · | disaster and decadence this city has been portrayed |
| 34:36 | · | time and again as a place of sexual Freedom even |
| 34:42 | · | Deery there is some truth in the idea the archaeologists who came here in |
| 34:49 | · | the 19th century were scandalized by what they |
| 34:54 | · | found this is the house of a wealthy Banker a former slave made good it's |
| 35:00 | · | here that we have the evidence for an amazing removal it's the removal of a beautiful painting found by the |
| 35:07 | · | excavator in 1875 and promptly cut from the wall and removed to the museum in |
| 35:14 | · | Naples dozens of pieces considered too explicit for public display were |
| 35:19 | · | forcibly removed for much of the last century |
| 35:25 | · | this collection's been off limits to the public and as late as the |
| 35:30 | · | 1980s women weren't allowed to see some of its contents it's called The Secret |
| 35:36 | · | cabinet so here's the context of a bedroom they've displayed a bed they've decorated the walls very much like pompe |
| 35:44 | · | and bedroom and here they've put the scenes of Love Making in which the |
| 35:49 | · | lovers are on a bed and you can even see here's a here's a little marble plaque and again you've got the bed with the |
| 35:55 | · | lovers on it |
| 36:00 | · | this is where the Banker's painting now hangs it's a rather innocent |
| 36:06 | · | representation it's not showing actual intercourse but rather kind of the delance that might lead up to it it's |
| 36:12 | · | got lots of clues in it about ancient Roman sexual mores for one thing it |
| 36:17 | · | doesn't have a sense of privacy we think that privacy is the most important thing |
| 36:23 | · | about sexual activity but here we have a bedroom servant right in the corner on the left hand side looking out at us and |
| 36:29 | · | attending to the couple in the modern era it's been |
| 36:36 | · | locked away but it hung in the Banker's house for one purpose only it was to be |
| 36:42 | · | displayed it took pride of place between a dining room and a bedroom guests Were Meant to see it and |
| 36:49 | · | see their host as a man of taste and refinement every well-born Roman knew |
| 36:55 | · | that to have a proper picture collection you had to also have the fine erotic |
| 37:00 | · | paintings even if they were very explicit so what we have is a painting |
| 37:07 | · | of luxury love making not in a private place not squired away somewhere but |
| 37:14 | · | instead right in in view of all the guests were invited to the |
| 37:21 | · | house sexual imagery wasn't only to be found in Fine Art you'd be exposed to it |
| 37:27 | · | simply walking down the street here we find a representation that's almost |
| 37:33 | · | everywhere in Pompei and it is the fallace when excavators first found it |
| 37:39 | · | they thought that it meant that this was a house of prostitution or more impossibly that had pointed the way to a |
| 37:45 | · | house of prostitution but in fact this particular establishment is of all things a bakery and this Bakery used the |
| 37:53 | · | symbol of the fallace like many businesses at Pompei to to Signal good fortune and to bring prosperity to the |
| 38:01 | · | business perhaps even to make the bread |
| 38:06 | · | rise this symbol is carved and painted on walls throughout the city it was even incorporated into |
| 38:14 | · | everyday objects found in the home these bells they're called tinter |
| 38:20 | · | abula and what you have is a phus which sometimes there's an extra phus growing on the phus and from it a suspended |
| 38:28 | · | bells and we really don't understand what they're for maybe some sort of doorbell good |
| 38:34 | · | luck charm um a religious object not all |
| 38:41 | · | clear what is clear is That explicit images were also used with the simple |
| 38:46 | · | intention of selling [Music] sex in a narrow side street is a |
| 38:52 | · | building that was once a dedicated brothel it's still one of the site's biggest tourist |
| 38:58 | · | attractions a pretty startling aspect of this space is that when you look inside |
| 39:04 | · | these rooms they're very unpleasant and it's hard to imagine much more than |
| 39:09 | · | Rough and Ready action going on here yet when we look at the paintings |
| 39:15 | · | in the corridor outside they're quite luxurious they're beautiful in fact the |
| 39:21 | · | men and women are quite handsome there are beautiful bed covers on the beds so |
| 39:27 | · | what we have is the artist feeding the fantasies of the customers outside |
| 39:32 | · | making them think about upper class representations of sex and of course |
| 39:38 | · | matching that with the reality of what he would find |
| 39:44 | · | inside scratched into the walls of one of the cubicles is a remarkable informal |
| 39:50 | · | record it's a selection of customer reviews what we find in this graffiti |
| 39:56 | · | are the names of people people who came here for a quick toss with the |
| 40:02 | · | prostitutes in fact we find that the amount that they paid was very little |
| 40:08 | · | and the graffiti tell us that as well I paid two OES that's pretty cheap because |
| 40:13 | · | you could get a cup of common wine for two to four asses the most expensive one in fact was probably 16 asses or a |
| 40:20 | · | Denarius and that would be a very special slave and I say slave because |
| 40:26 | · | what we know ALS also from these graffiti is that the names of the prostitutes are mostly slave |
| 40:34 | · | names because it was cheap this was a place where men from the lower classes came for |
| 40:40 | · | sex a richer man could keep slaves for the purpose but across this Society there |
| 40:47 | · | was very little embarrassment attached to seeking sex outside |
| 40:53 | · | marriage there was no particular stigma attached to visiting a house of prostitution in fact we know this even |
| 41:00 | · | from literary sources we have Horus talking about the moralist K the Elder |
| 41:06 | · | who praised a young man of elite status for visiting a house of prostitution why because this saved the |
| 41:14 | · | married women and virgins of his class from his lust from the graffiti there is |
| 41:21 | · | evidence that male prostitutes were also available for a Roman man there was no |
| 41:26 | · | shame attached to having sex with either a male or a female as long as he was the |
| 41:32 | · | one taking the active role the people of ancient Rome live by |
| 41:38 | · | their own set of rules compared to almost anywhere in the |
| 41:45 | · | world at the time to be free and live here is to enjoy a high standard of |
| 41:52 | · | living but on the 24th of August ad79 this life life |
| 41:58 | · | ends the morning brings |
| 42:04 | · | Terror at 9:00 in the morning on the 24th of August 79 ad the people of |
| 42:10 | · | Pompei could see a weak eruption column coming out of a crater like this one that was depositing a thin layer of Ash |
| 42:16 | · | on the slopes around the |
| 42:22 | · | volcano then suddenly at 1:00 the full eruption |
| 42:33 | · | the explosion throws almost one cubic mile of rock and Ash into the |
| 42:40 | · | air and the people of Pompei are |
| 42:51 | · | underneath some people are still inside some can't get out |
| 42:58 | · | in one rich man's house a team of painters is trying to finish a |
| 43:04 | · | job for them it's the sound and the vibration which finally tells them of the |
| 43:11 | · | danger they feel the Earth splitting and Spitting Fire 27 miles into the |
| 43:19 | · | sky this is the moment when all normal life in Pompei |
| 43:25 | · | stops when the those who can |
| 43:30 | · | run so when the eruption comes the painters are already at work and they decide to leave in a terrific |
| 43:38 | · | hurry such a hurry that one of them knocks over his bucket of plaster spills |
| 43:44 | · | against this Central painting So this isn't some later concretion this is the |
| 43:50 | · | moment the plaster hit the wall as the painters attempted to get |
| 43:55 | · | away in this piece of plaster that one moment of panic almost 2,000 years ago |
| 44:02 | · | is perfectly preserved they leave so fast that they leave their tools behind them and they get |
| 44:12 | · | [Music] out the wind has pushed the cloud of gas and rock Southeast from the mountain |
| 44:19 | · | directly over the city it cools and loses energy it falls |
| 44:27 | · | the painters emerge into a scene of chaos according to ancient eyewitness |
| 44:34 | · | accounts some tried to protect themselves by covering their heads but the city is now being |
| 44:41 | · | bombarded with rocks some are stunned some don't |
| 44:49 | · | survive by late afternoon The Fallout has filled the streets and Gardens to a depth of around 5 ft |
| 44:57 | · | then for those still Sheltering inside their houses there comes a new danger so |
| 45:03 | · | as many of the buildings are now starting to fall down under the weight of all the volcanic debris we can expect that our workingclass district with its |
| 45:10 | · | poor architecture was one of the first to [Music] go people flee their wooden roofed homes |
| 45:18 | · | believing that sturdier stone structures will keep them |
| 45:25 | · | safe at the back of the restaurant owner's block is a theater with a covered |
| 45:30 | · | walkway it's at this time that many of the inhabitants are now fleeing to these public spaces which held the promise of |
| 45:36 | · | much greater and stronger architecture uh in the weight of all the |
| 45:42 | · | debris 24 hours ago these people had a home a business a job a comfortable |
| 45:50 | · | life now they watch as what hasn't burned is buried and then they are |
| 45:59 | · | helpless in fact it was in here that the first excavators found many of the bodies of pompei's victims many in fact |
| 46:04 | · | probably came from our workingclass |
| 46:11 | · | district most of those victims died in the next phase of the |
| 46:17 | · | eruption a series of pyroclastic currents clouds superheated to over 700° |
| 46:24 | · | C and traveling at up to 200 miles an hour the pyroclastic flows are a mixture |
| 46:31 | · | of gas and Ashes that move very fast on the slopes of the volcano they have a very large kinetic energy with the power |
| 46:38 | · | to destroy anything that is in their way the victims are hit by a wall of heat and enveloped in dense unbreathable |
| 46:55 | · | gas okay this suffocated them at first and then |
| 47:00 | · | other pyroclastic flows buried the bodies these left a deposit in this area of more than a meter of volcanic |
| 47:10 | · | [Music] ash and this is how the two men the |
| 47:16 | · | Shackled slave and His companion meet their end were they trying to escape right up |
| 47:23 | · | to the moment they died so far the bodies of over 1,000 |
| 47:30 | · | individuals killed in this way have been recovered there may be hundreds more |
| 47:35 | · | still buried beneath the layer of Ash which blankets this entire region so much excavation has been done |
| 47:43 | · | here that it is easy to forget that these buildings were completely |
| 47:48 | · | [Music] buried archaeologists have left this area of the city untouched simply to |
| 47:55 | · | illustrate the volume of mat material that the volcano dumped on |
| 48:02 | · | Pompei what we can observe is that this is the basic Roman ground level at 79 ad |
| 48:09 | · | the level was completely changed in a few hours in fact after the 79 ad eruption |
| 48:16 | · | there was an accumulation a huge volume of volcanic materials in this area |
| 48:26 | · | the eruption lasted 3 [Music] days within the city walls 7 and a half |
| 48:35 | · | million tons fell but what this blizzard of Ash fire |
| 48:40 | · | and stone didn't destroy it preserved and the city that had vanished |
| 48:47 | · | suddenly from the map slowly slipped from memory |
| 48:53 | · | too Pompei lay safe forgot en for 1500 years until it was found again purely by |
| 49:04 | · | accident the Roman Empire which had mourned its destruction had gone forever but Pompei could take on a new |
| 49:16 | · | life the volcano has erupted again many times its Ash falling as far away as |
| 49:25 | · | Istanbul but still every year archaeologists historians and tourists |
| 49:30 | · | come back every year they find something |
| 49:37 | · | new though excavations have yielded the finest collections ever found of Roman |
| 49:42 | · | treasures and Roman art they've also revealed something more |
| 49:49 | · | precious the life of a society long dead the lives of individuals who would |
| 49:57 | · | otherwise be forgotten |
