tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/pompeii-8562/articlesPompeii – The Conversation2024-03-12T18:53:02Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2243342024-03-12T18:53:02Z2024-03-12T18:53:02ZAncient scrolls are being ‘read’ by machine learning – with human knowledge to detect language and make sense of them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580263/original/file-20240306-30-3x4aw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1040%2C0%2C1253%2C379&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Vesuvius Challenge incentivizes technological development by inviting researchers to figure out how to ‘read’ ancient papyri excavated from volcanic ash of Mount Vesuvius in Italy. Columns of Greek text retrieved from a portion of a scroll. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Vesuvius Challenge)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A groundbreaking announcement for the recovery of lost ancient literature was recently made. Using a non-invasive method that harnesses <a href="https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/machine-learning-explained">machine learning</a>, an international trio of scholars retrieved 15 columns of ancient Greek text from within a carbonized papyrus from <a href="https://www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk/about-us/story-of-herculaneum">Herculaneum</a>, a seaside Roman town eight kilometres southeast of Naples, Italy.</p>
<p>Their achievement earned them a US$700,000 grand prize from the <a href="https://scrollprize.org/">Vesuvius Challenge</a>. The challenge sought to incentivize technological development by inviting public participation in the research. </p>
<p>It emerged from collaboration between computer scientist Brent Seales — who has <a href="https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2304.02084">a long-standing interest</a> in non-invasive <a href="https://www2.cs.uky.edu/dri/the-scroll-from-en-gedi">technologies for studying</a> manuscripts — and technology investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross. </p>
<p>While the developments are exciting, technology is only part of the progress of scholarship. The work of reading and analyzing the new Greek and Latin texts recovered from the papyri will fall to human beings.</p>
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<img alt="Painting showing a mountain with a volcano erupting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘An Eruption of Vesuvius,’ by Johan Christian Dahl (1824).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(The Metropolitan Museum of Art)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<h2>Buried in ash</h2>
<p>Like Pompeii, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5b8igA644o">Herculaneum</a> was buried by the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. </p>
<p>Much of the ancient town remains underground. But <a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-will-let-us-read-lost-ancient-works-in-the-library-at-herculaneum-for-the-first-time-223583">in 1752</a>, excavation uncovered hundreds of papyrus scrolls in the library of an elaborate Roman villa. The Herculaneum papyri <a href="https://www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk/research-and-publications/papyri">are the largest surviving example of an</a> intact ancient library preserved in the archaeological record: the library was found as it actually existed in 79 CE. </p>
<p>The precise number of books is unknown, says Michael McOsker, a research fellow in papyrology at University College London, and different methods of estimating give different results. </p>
<h2>Carbonized papyri</h2>
<p>Starved of oxygen, the intense heat of Vesuvius’ <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/pyroclastic-flow/">pyroclastic flow</a> carbonized (but did not ignite) the papyri. Resembling lumps of coal to the eye, 18th-century excavators did not immediately recognize them as ancient books.</p>
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<img alt="Three dark grey rectangular objects seen in a box." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Three unopened papyri from Herculaneum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Bodleian Libraries/University of Oxford)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>The papyri are so brittle that many were destroyed by early attempts to access their texts. Studying them has therefore always required ingenuity. In 1754, a <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/buried-ash-vesuvius-scrolls-are-being-read-new-xray-technique-180969358">conservator and priest at the Vatican library</a> devised a machine for slowly unrolling them. </p>
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<img alt="A dark grey scroll." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C7027%2C4995&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A portion of an unrolled Herculaneum papyrus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/cac4db6a-8af5-4234-%20acb8-4b1ce819ef14">(Bodleian Libraries/University of Oxford)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More recently, <a href="https://www.imaging.org/common/uploaded%20files/pdfs/Papers/2001/PICS-0-251/4625.pdf">multispectral photography</a> has dramatically improved their legibility. But until now, a non-invasive method that would leave the scrolls intact remained out of reach. Its development marks a significant breakthrough.</p>
<p>McOsker notes there are 659 items in the catalogue listed as “not unrolled,” but some of these are parts of scrolls. </p>
<h2>Sparking innovation</h2>
<p>To kick-start the challenge, Seales <a href="https://scrollprize.org/data">made public</a> an array of high-resolution X-ray computed tomography (CT) scans of two scrolls as well as similar scans of detached fragments with visible ink. The latter are essential as a reference point (or “control”) for innovative approaches. </p>
<p>The competition’s design encouraged transparency and collaboration: data published in the pursuit <a href="https://scrollprize.org/winners">of smaller goals</a> benefited all competitors. Additionally, transparency enabled the independent verification of results. Teams coalesced around shared ideas and approaches to the problem.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-will-let-us-read-lost-ancient-works-in-the-library-at-herculaneum-for-the-first-time-223583">AI will let us read 'lost' ancient works in the library at Herculaneum for the first time</a>
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<h2>Text mentions music, taste, sight</h2>
<p>The challenge made news in <a href="https://scrollprize.org/firstletters">October</a>, when the first letters were read: πορφυρας (a noun or adjective involving “purple”). </p>
<p>By the end of 2023, the criteria for awarding the grand prize were met: four passages of 140 characters, with 85 per cent of the letters recovered. <a href="https://scrollprize.org/grandprize">A PhD student studying machine learning, an engineer studying computer science and a robotics student</a> were declared
the victors.</p>
<p>According to McOsker, the text they retrieved mentions music twice, as well as the senses of taste and sight. He thinks it is likely a work about sensation and decision-making, in the tradition of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/ENTRIES/epicurus/">the philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BCE)</a>. The challenge’s papyrological team is still analyzing it.</p>
<h2>Hundreds of rolls to be studied</h2>
<p>This year brings with it new goals: after five per cent of one scroll was read in 2023, the challenge set a <a href="https://scrollprize.org/2024_prizes#2024-grand-prize">2024 grand prize goal</a> of reading 90 per cent of four scrolls. With hundreds of rolls yet to be studied, the new method of recovering the contents of the Herculaneum papyri is only getting started.</p>
<p>But several obstacles remain. The production of scans at sufficiently high resolution can’t be done via ordinary equipment, but requires access to a facility with a particle accelerator. Access to the right equipment is limited and costly. To date, four scrolls and numerous detached fragments <a href="https://www.diamond.ac.uk">have been processed at a facility</a> near Oxford, England. </p>
<p>Most of the unopened scrolls are housed in Naples, and getting them safely to a facility will be complicated, as will reserving and paying for the beam time required to scan them.</p>
<p>Another limitation is that the technology for unrolling and flattening out a papyrus by virtual means — a process the challenge calls “segmentation” — is slow and expensive. Via current techniques, which involve a fair bit of manual manipulation, fully segmenting one scroll would cost US$1–5 million. Segmentation needs to become much more efficient to avoid a bottleneck.</p>
<h2>Critical minds needed</h2>
<p>Technology is only part of the equation. Essential to the challenge’s work is an international team of papyrologists. Their role is to analyze the model’s output of legible ancient Greek — and in so doing determine which approaches are most effective.</p>
<p>Papyrology is thrilling work, but also challenging and painstaking. It requires mastery of ancient languages and ideas as well as the puzzle-solver’s ability to fill in the inevitable gaps. Papyrology is a niche specialization: in the larger world of classics, papyrologists are rare birds. The number of Herculaneum specialists is even fewer. </p>
<p>For the challenge truly to succeed, we’re going to need critical minds as well as whizbang technology. There’s potentially a fair bit of new ancient philosophy headed our way, but it needs to be pieced together into a coherent text — letter by letter, word by word, sentence by sentence — before it can be studied more widely. That’s going to require scholars.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224334/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>C. Michael Sampson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for 'the Books of Karanis,' a project that studies fragmentary Greek literature from the Egyptian village Karanis. </span></em></p>However exciting the technological developments may be, the task of reading and analyzing the Greek and Latin texts recovered from the papyri will fall to human beings.C. Michael Sampson, Associate Professor of Classics, University of ManitobaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1979782023-01-20T12:32:34Z2023-01-20T12:32:34ZPompeii’s House of the Vettii reopens: a reminder that Roman sexuality was far more complex than simply gay or straight<p>As Pompeii’s <a href="http://pompeiisites.org/en/comunicati/the-house-of-the-vettii-reopens-to-the-public-after-20-years-stunning-beauty-and-crude-reality-in-the-iconic-house-of-pompeii/">House of the Vettii finally reopens</a> after a long process of restoration, news outlets appear to be struggling with how to report on the Roman sex cultures so well recorded in the ruins of the city.</p>
<p><a href="https://metro.co.uk/2023/01/11/pompeii-home-that-doubled-as-a-brothel-has-some-interesting-wall-art-18078361/">The Metro</a> opened with the headline “Lavish Pompeii home that doubled as a brothel has some interesting wall art”, while <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/10/astonishing-pompeii-home-of-men-freed-from-slavery-reopens-to-public">the Guardian</a> highlighted the fresco of Priapus, the god of fertility (depicted weighing his oversized penis on a scale with bags of coins) as well as the erotic frescoes found next to the kitchen.</p>
<p>The Daily Mail, on the other hand – and arguably surprisingly – said nothing about the explicit frescoes and instead centred its story on the house’s “<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/real-life/article-11620515/Pompeii-house-owned-two-men-freed-slavery-reopened-public.html">historic hallmarks of interior design</a>”.</p>
<p>As a scholar who researches modern and contemporary visual cultures of sexuality, I was struck by how the heavy presence of sexual imagery in the ruins of Pompeii seems to confound those writing about it for a general audience.</p>
<h2>Rethinking Roman sexuality</h2>
<p>As a gay man and a researcher on sexuality, I am all too familiar with the ways modern gay men look to ancient Rome in search of evidence that there have always been people like us.</p>
<p>It is now clear among the research community that such straightforward readings of homosexuality in classical history are flawed. That is because same-sex relations among Romans were lived and thought about in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/10391">very different ways from our own</a>.</p>
<p>Roman sexuality was not framed in terms of the gender of partners but in terms of power. The gender of a free man’s sexual partner was less relevant than their social position.</p>
<p>Socially acceptable Roman sexuality was about power, power was about masculinity – and Roman patriarchal sex cultures were assertions of both. An adult free man could have sex as the penetrating partner with anyone of a lower social status – including women or slaves and sex workers of both genders.</p>
<p>Despite this, I understand how politically important and strategic it was for the early homosexual movement to invent its own myth of origin and to populate history with figures that had been – they thought – just like us.</p>
<p>The flip side of modern notions of homosexuality being read into Roman history, is the way in which the widespread presence of sex in ancient Roman (including in the graffiti and visual culture preserved in Pompeii) has been disavowed or – at least – purified by mainstream modern culture.</p>
<h2>Pornography in Pompeii</h2>
<p>This phenomenon started when sexually explicit artefacts were first discovered in Pompeii, propelling archaeologists to preserve them due to their historical value, but to keep them hidden from the general public in “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520207295/the-secret-museum">secret museums</a>” on account of their obscene content.</p>
<p>Indeed, the coinage of the word “pornography” was a result of the archival need to classify those Roman artefacts. The term “pornographers” was first used to designate the creators of such Roman images in Karl Otfried Müller’s Handbook of Archaeology of Art <a href="https://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/mueller_kunst_1830?p=624">(<em>Handbuch der Archäologie der Kunst</em>)</a>, from 1830.</p>
<p>The news coverage around the reopening of the House of the Vettii is one such example of mainstream modern culture sanitising Roman history. </p>
<p>When focusing on the fresco of Priapus, for instance, news outlets are quick to claim that the god’s oversized penis was merely a metaphor for the wealth accumulated by the men who owned the house. The pair had made their fortune selling wine after being freed from slavery.</p>
<p>This reading of the fresco, while not necessarily incorrect, overlooks the more complex – and for that reason, more interesting – role of phallic imagery in Roman culture.</p>
<p>As classicist <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/roman-homosexuality-9780195388749">Craig Williams</a> writes, the images of a hyper-endowed, hyper-masculine Priapus that were widespread in Roman culture functioned not only as a source of identification but also as an object of desire for Roman men – if not to be penetrated by the large phallus, then at least to wish it was their own.</p>
<p>Priapus, with his large manhood and unquenchable desire to dominate others through penetration was, Williams tells us: “Something like the patron saint or mascot of Roman machismo.” </p>
<h2>What’s missing from the story?</h2>
<p>News coverage of the erotic frescoes found in a smaller room of the house has been similarly too straight forward in claiming them as evidence that that room was used for sex work.</p>
<p>While some scholars have certainly <a href="https://www.academia.edu/31136857/Erotica_Pompeiana_Love_Inscriptions_on_the_Walls_of_Pompeii_2_edit_Rome_2002_pp_1_24">argued that perspective</a>, others believe it unlikely. Some academics suggest that the erotic frescoes in that room (which probably belonged to the house’s cook) had more likely been <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520229044/looking-at-lovemaking">commissioned as a gift to the Vettii’s favourite slave</a> and very much fit the wider aesthetic of quirky excess that marks the house as a whole.</p>
<p>In a culture where sex was not taboo but instead promoted as a sign of power, wealth and culture, it is fair to suggest that erotic images wouldn’t just belong in brothels. Sex was everywhere in Rome, including in literary and visual arts.</p>
<p>When reading the recent news stories, I could not help but think that their interpretations, while not wholly wrong, were too skewed into presenting the explicit frescoes as either metaphors for something more noble, or as something that was restricted to a specific site of Roman life – the brothel.</p>
<p>Perhaps these readings are privileged over others because we’re reluctant to accept that sex in ancient Roman culture – a culture we so often mythologise as our “origin” – was performed in ways that we are uncomfortable with.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197978/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>João Florêncio receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>Sexuality in Ancient Rome was more preoccupied with power dynamics than it was with gender – as an expert in visual cultures of sexuality explains.João Florêncio, Senior Lecturer in History of Modern and Contemporary Art and Visual Culture, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1805572022-06-13T20:04:02Z2022-06-13T20:04:02ZThe explosive history of the 2,000-year-old Pompeii ‘masturbating’ man<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468156/original/file-20220610-16487-4dtdsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1599%2C1197&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">mararie/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you were suddenly frozen in time, there are a few things (I’d imagine) you would rather not be caught doing. This is the unfortunate fate many believe to have befallen the “masturbating man” of Pompeii. </p>
<p>In 79 BCE, the ancient Roman city of Pompeii was buried in the volcanic ash of Mount Vesuvius, a volcano located in Italy’s Gulf of Naples. The bodies of over 1,000 inhabitants have been frozen in the moment of its eruption – including one suspected to be having his own eruption at the time. </p>
<p>The plaster-cast body of this 2,000-year-old man can still be seen clutching himself tightly with his right hand. The photo was initially shared on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/pompeii_parco_archeologico/?hl=en">Archaeological Park of Pompeii’s Instagram</a> in 2017 and quickly exploded across the internet. The masturbating man became an immortalised meme.</p>
<p>But was this man truly caught getting a hard-on while the volcano was getting its hot-on?</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/BVHhxpyhlPo/?utm_source=ig_embed\u0026ig_rid=5c5914a2-3aa5-4f05-af01-b7d279d0d670","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ancient-rome-didnt-have-specific-domestic-violence-legislation-but-the-laws-they-had-give-us-a-window-into-a-world-of-abuse-179460">Ancient Rome didn't have specific domestic violence legislation – but the laws they had give us a window into a world of abuse</a>
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<h2>The horny city of Pompeii</h2>
<p>Pompeii is remembered as a place of surprising liberality. Tourists continue to flock to the ruins of this once vibrant city, often finding themselves shocked by the number of stone phalluses carved into the pavement and walls (some even hanging invitingly above doorways and ovens). </p>
<p>Stories have circulated these phalluses served as an early form of advertising; if you follow the direction of the shafts, it is claimed, you would find yourself at the nearest brothel – “penis pointers”, if you will. </p>
<p>Such establishments were popular in Pompeii. Prostitution was not only legally permissible but it was generally regarded as the social norm for men (and, in some cases, wealthier women) to frequent such establishments. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463481/original/file-20220517-20-sg6kvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463481/original/file-20220517-20-sg6kvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463481/original/file-20220517-20-sg6kvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463481/original/file-20220517-20-sg6kvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463481/original/file-20220517-20-sg6kvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463481/original/file-20220517-20-sg6kvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463481/original/file-20220517-20-sg6kvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463481/original/file-20220517-20-sg6kvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A stone phallus in Pompeii.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Atlas Obscura/ Steve</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sexuality and sexual behaviour did not carry the same shameful stigmas we know today. From what we can understand, sexual behaviour was regarded no differently than other bodily behaviours, such as eating and defecating; it equally came with its own social rules on the acceptable ways to engage in the behaviour, but it was otherwise regarded as an immutable aspect of human life.</p>
<p>One brothel in the city remains open for customers today (though, of the tourist variety, rather than those it was initially built to accommodate). The <a href="http://www.pompeii.org.uk/s.php/pompei-proibita-en-214-s1.htm">Lupanar of Pompeii</a> began to be excavated in 1862. This two-story establishment has been of particular interest to the curious traveller due to the erotic (and generally humorous) graffiti and artwork found inside. </p>
<p>Over 150 of the scrawls on the walls have now been translated for the wider public’s enjoyment, including <em>Hic ego puellas multas futui</em> (“Here many girls poked”) and <em>Felix bene futuis</em> (“Lucky guy, you get a good fuck”). The art throughout the establishment is equally as engaging, putting to rest any doubts humans have been experimenting with positions and their bodies since ancient times.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463484/original/file-20220517-14-sg6kvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463484/original/file-20220517-14-sg6kvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463484/original/file-20220517-14-sg6kvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463484/original/file-20220517-14-sg6kvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463484/original/file-20220517-14-sg6kvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463484/original/file-20220517-14-sg6kvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463484/original/file-20220517-14-sg6kvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463484/original/file-20220517-14-sg6kvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Lupanar of Pompeii is the ruins of a brothel in the Ancient Roman city of Pompeii.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To the matter of our penis pointers, it is far more likely these phalluses were in fact powerful symbols in Ancient Rome rather than advertisers for their beloved brothels. </p>
<p>They functioned as an emblem of good fortune and protection which could ward off the ill-intending visitors and the evil eye. The prominence given to the penis at the time could perhaps explain why our infamous man was so keen to protect it from the explosion. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the real explanation isn’t quite as fun. </p>
<h2>What really happened to the masturbating man?</h2>
<p>With the masturbating man exploding around the internet, experts were asked to weigh in on what they truly believed had happened. </p>
<p>Along with the other victims living around Mount Vesuvius, this man was killed by a <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/pyroclastic-flow/">hot pyroclastic surge</a>. </p>
<p>The effect this heat has on the body is responsible for causing arms and limbs to flex. This effect takes place not only during impact but also post mortem, meaning the bodies continue to <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mount-vesuvius-boiled-its-victims-blood-and-caused-their-skulls-explode-180970504/">change position</a> after death.</p>
<p>This is thought to be the reason many of the bodies – not just our masturbating man – have been found in strange positions, many appearing as though they are grasping or groping parts of their body. </p>
<p>What happened to the people of Pompeii is a genuine tragedy which continues to move us centuries later. If there is a silver lining to be found in this immortalised devastation, it is that the effects of the disaster have allowed us unprecedented access to the ancient world. </p>
<p>The history of Pompeii has remained a point of academic interest, especially for those curious minds interested in the history of human sexuality. And, as far as we can estimate, its treasures are far from fully uncovered. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pompeii-ancient-remains-are-helping-scientists-learn-what-happens-to-a-body-caught-in-a-volcanic-eruption-157979">Pompeii: ancient remains are helping scientists learn what happens to a body caught in a volcanic eruption</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180557/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Esmé Louise James does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pompeii is remembered as a place of surprising liberality – but the ‘masturbating man’ is probably a far less lurid tale than assumed.Esmé Louise James, Doctor of Philosophy, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1660102021-08-20T12:22:32Z2021-08-20T12:22:32ZWhat a baker from ancient Pompeii can teach us about happiness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416823/original/file-20210818-13-1humc70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C246%2C4854%2C3146&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">As they do today, threats of destruction loomed in ancient Pompeii.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/person-killed-by-the-pompeii-eruption-79-ad-vesuvius-news-photo/463921737?adppopup=true">Art Media/Print Collector via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a testament to its resiliency, happiness, according to this year’s <a href="https://brandgenetics.com/human-thinking/speed-summary-world-happiness-report-2021/">World Happiness Report</a>, remained remarkably stable around the world, despite a pandemic that upended the lives of billions of people.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.westga.edu/share/documents/vitae/vita_090977.pdf">As a classicist</a>, I find such discussions of happiness in the midst of personal or societal crisis to be nothing new.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicitas#/media/File:Bible_Museum_-_Bordellzeichen.jpg">Hic habitat felicitas</a>” – “Here dwells happiness” – confidently proclaims an inscription found in a Pompeiian bakery nearly 2,000 years after its owner lived and possibly died in <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/vesuvius-baked-people-turned-brain-to-glass">the eruption of Vesuvius</a> that destroyed the city in A.D. 79.</p>
<p>What did happiness mean to this Pompeiian baker? And how does considering the Roman view of felicitas help our search for happiness today? </p>
<h2>Happiness for me but not for thee</h2>
<p>The Romans saw both <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Felicitas">Felicitas</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fortuna-Roman-goddess">Fortuna</a> – a related word that means “luck” – as goddesses. Each had temples in Rome, where those seeking the divinities’ favor could place offerings and make vows. Felicitas was also portrayed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicitas#/media/File:Romeinse_munten_denarius_Macrinus_217-218.jpg">on Roman coins</a> from the first century B.C. to the fourth century, suggesting its connection to financial prosperity of the state. Coins minted by emperors, furthermore, connect her to themselves. “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicitas#/media/File:Aureus_Valerian-RIC_0034-transparent.png">Felicitas Augusti</a>,” for example, was seen on the golden coin of the emperor Valerian, iconography that suggested he was the happiest man in the empire, favored by the gods. </p>
<p>By claiming felicitas for his own abode and business, therefore, the Pompeiian baker could have been exercising a name-it-claim-it philosophy, hoping for such blessings of happiness for his business and life. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The front and back of a gold coin." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416626/original/file-20210817-24-rj6nle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416626/original/file-20210817-24-rj6nle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416626/original/file-20210817-24-rj6nle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416626/original/file-20210817-24-rj6nle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416626/original/file-20210817-24-rj6nle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416626/original/file-20210817-24-rj6nle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416626/original/file-20210817-24-rj6nle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Felicitas’ appears on the back of a Roman coin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Romeinse_munten_denarius_Macrinus_217-218.jpg">NumisAntica</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But just beyond this view of money and power as a source of happiness, there was a cruel irony. </p>
<p>Felicitas and Felix were commonly used names for female and male enslaved persons. For instance, <a href="https://www.livius.org/articles/person/antonius-felix/">Antonius Felix</a>, the governor of Judaea in the first century, was an ex-slave – clearly, his luck turned around – while Felicitas was the name of the enslaved woman <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/perpetua.asp">famously martyred with Perpetua</a> in A.D. 203. </p>
<p>Romans perceived enslaved people to be proof of their masters’ higher status and the embodiment of their happiness. Viewed in this light, happiness appears as a zero-sum game, intertwined with power, prosperity and domination. Felicitas in the Roman world had a price, and enslaved people paid it to confer happiness on their owners. </p>
<p>Suffice it to say that for the enslaved, wherever happiness dwelled, it was not in the Roman Empire.</p>
<h2>Where does happiness really dwell?</h2>
<p>In today’s society, can happiness exist only at the expense of someone else? Where does happiness dwell, as <a href="https://mhanational.org/issues/state-mental-health-america">rates of depression and other mental illness</a> soar, and work days get longer? </p>
<p><a href="https://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-productivity-vacation/">Over the past two decades</a>, American workers have been working more and more hours. A <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/08/19/magazine/busting-work-family-myth-turns-out-your-job-doesnt-have-be-your-life/">2020 Gallup poll</a> found that 44% of full-time employees were working over 45 hours a week, while 17% of people were working 60 or more hours weekly. </p>
<p>The result of this overworked culture is that happiness and success really do seem to be a zero-sum equation. There is a cost, often a human one, with work and family playing tug-of-war for time and attention, and with personal happiness the victim either way. This was true long before the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<p>Studies of happiness seem to become more popular during periods of high societal stress. It is perhaps no coincidence that the <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-80-years-harvard-study-has-been-showing-how-to-live-a-healthy-and-happy-life/">longest-running study of happiness</a>, administered by Harvard University, originated during the Great Depression. In 1938, researchers measured physical and mental health of 268 then-sophomores and, for 80 years, tracked these men and some of their descendants. </p>
<p>Their main finding? “Close relationships, more than money or fame … keep people happy throughout their lives.” This includes both a happy marriage and family, and a close community of supportive friends. Importantly, the relationships highlighted in the study are those based on love, care and equality, rather than abuse and exploitation.</p>
<p>Just as the Great Depression motivated Harvard’s study, the current pandemic inspired social scientist Arthur Brooks to launch, in April 2020, a weekly column on happiness titled “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/04/how-increase-happiness-according-research/609619/">How to Build a Life</a>.” In his first article for the series, Brooks loops in research showing faith and meaningful work – in addition to close relationships – can enhance happiness.</p>
<h2>Finding happiness in chaos and disorder</h2>
<p>Brooks’ advice correlates with those findings in the <a href="https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2021/overview-life-under-covid-19/">World 2021 Happiness Report</a>, which noted “a roughly 10% increase in the number of people who said they were worried or sad the previous day.” </p>
<p>Faith, relationships and meaningful work all contribute to feelings of safety and stability. All of them were victims of the pandemic. The Pompeiian baker, who chose to place his plaque in his place of business, likely would have agreed about the significant connection among happiness, work and faith. And while he was not, as far as historians can tell, living through a pandemic, he was no stranger to societal stress.</p>
<p>It’s possible his choice of décor reflected an undercurrent of anxiety – understandable, given some of the political turmoil in Pompeii and in the <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1724/the-year-of-the-four-emperors--the-demise-of-four/">empire at large</a> in the last 20 years of the city’s existence. At the time of the final volcanic eruption of A.D. 79, we know that some Pompeiians were still rebuilding and restoring from <a href="https://politicsofdisaster.wordpress.com/0790/06/09/62-a-d-pompeii-earthquake-and-79-a-d-eruption-of-mt-vesuvius/">the earthquake of A.D. 62</a>. The baker’s life must have been filled with reminders of instability and looming disaster. Perhaps the plaque was an attempt to combat these fears. </p>
<p>After all, would truly happy people feel the need to place a sign proclaiming the presence of happiness in their home?</p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>Or maybe I’m overanalyzing this object, and it was simply a mass-made trinket – a first century version of a “Home Sweet Home” or “Live, Laugh, Love” placard – that the baker or his wife picked up on a whim.</p>
<p>And yet the plaque reminds of an important truth: people in antiquity had dreams of and aspirations for happiness, much like people do today. Vesuvius may have put an end to our baker’s dreams, but the pandemic need not have such a permanent impact on ours. And while the stress of the past year-and-a-half may feel overwhelming, there has been no better time to re-evaluate priorities, and remember to put people and relationships first.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166010/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nadejda Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While they weren’t living through a pandemic, citizens of ancient Pompeii weren’t strangers to societal stress.Nadejda Williams, Professor of Ancient History, University of West GeorgiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1625272021-06-21T20:12:14Z2021-06-21T20:12:14ZUnearthing Falerii Novi’s secrets in the hot Italian summer: an archaeologist reports from the dig<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406922/original/file-20210617-23-175mj9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=77%2C51%2C5647%2C3742&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/walls-ancient-city-falerii-novi-260nw-1805172547.jpg">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Located about <a href="https://www.google.com.au/maps/dir/Rome,+Metropolitan+City+of+Rome/01034+Falerii+Novi,+VT/@42.1036845,12.1495407,75455m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x132f6196f9928ebb:0xb90f770693656e38!2m2!1d12.4963655!2d41.9027835!1m5!1m1!1s0x132f3c751f2608b7:0xc0c25340082147d1!2m2!1d12.348941!2d42.294212!3e0">50 kilometres north of Rome</a>, the ancient city of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falerii">Falerii Novi</a> lies buried beneath agricultural fields and olive groves. City walls still stand in an almost complete circuit and visitors pass through the monumental western gate to enter the site. </p>
<p>The findings from detailed <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/groundpenetrating-radar-survey-at-falerii-novi-a-new-approach-to-the-study-of-roman-cities/BE7B8E3AE55DB6E03225B01C54CDD09B">ground-penetrating radar mapping</a> were published a year ago. Now the real business of digging has begun. </p>
<p>At the ancient site, our teams have already discovered remnants of daily life from more than 2,000 years ago. We hope excavation will yield rare insight into antiquity with its preserved urban layout, just like at the buried city of Pompeii.</p>
<h2>A ‘new’ city</h2>
<p>Ancient authors <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Polybius">Polybius</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Livy">Livy</a> tell us the city was founded by Rome in 241 BCE, following the defeat of a revolt led by the inhabitants of nearby <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0006:entry=falerii-veteres">Falerii Veteres</a> (now Civita Castellana). According to one source, 12th-century chronicler <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joannes_Zonaras">Zonaras</a>, Rome forcibly resettled the defeated Faliscans to a less defensible location — Falerii Novi or “new Falerii”. Its construction, intimately associated with the Roman road <a href="https://www.comune.fabricadiroma.vt.it/falerii-novi/la-via-amerina/">Via Amerina</a>, is a rare example of preserved Roman Republican urban planning.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406918/original/file-20210617-19-ukkvf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="ancient ruins" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406918/original/file-20210617-19-ukkvf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406918/original/file-20210617-19-ukkvf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406918/original/file-20210617-19-ukkvf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406918/original/file-20210617-19-ukkvf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406918/original/file-20210617-19-ukkvf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406918/original/file-20210617-19-ukkvf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406918/original/file-20210617-19-ukkvf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Ancient Roman road Via Amerina.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/via-amerina-600w-581326363.jpg">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The city was occupied through Roman antiquity and to the early medieval period (6th and 7th centuries CE). It was on a key strategic trading route leading north from Rome, perhaps from <a href="http://www.sovraintendenzaroma.it/i_luoghi/roma_antica/monumenti/ponte_milvio">Ponte Milvio</a>, through central Italy. </p>
<p>We know little of its later history, except that the still-standing church of <a href="https://www.comune.fabricadiroma.vt.it/falerii-novi/s-maria-di-falleri/">Santa Maria di Falleri</a> was founded by Benedictines in 1036, disbanded in 1392 and the building was in ruins by 1571. It is now largely restored with excavated Roman roads visible beneath the floor.</p>
<p>When and how Falerii Novi became buried remains a mystery. How did such a large walled city become covered in so much soil? And what happened in late antiquity to cause its abandonment? The current dig may answer those questions too.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406804/original/file-20210616-13-1tfdujt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406804/original/file-20210616-13-1tfdujt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406804/original/file-20210616-13-1tfdujt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406804/original/file-20210616-13-1tfdujt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406804/original/file-20210616-13-1tfdujt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406804/original/file-20210616-13-1tfdujt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406804/original/file-20210616-13-1tfdujt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406804/original/file-20210616-13-1tfdujt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The church of Santa Maria di Falleri in 1972.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cave-of-horror-fresh-fragments-of-the-dead-sea-scrolls-echo-dramatic-human-stories-157423">Cave of Horror: fresh fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls echo dramatic human stories</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Old digs, new tricks</h2>
<p>Three scattered attempts at excavation have been made previously. From 1821–30 a Polish team explored around the theatre area and in a (now lost) residential and commercial street-side strip. Towards the end of the 19th century work was attempted at a number of locations near city gates. And local <em>Soprintendenza</em> <a href="https://www.inagrofalisco.it/in-agrofalisco/faleri-novi">archaeologists</a> looked at an area on the western flank of the suspected forum from 1969-75. </p>
<p>The site’s historical importance and immense potential, alongside developing technology, led to renewed archaeological attempts. </p>
<p>From 1997–8, topographic survey and surface collection <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/papers-of-the-british-school-at-rome/article/abs/falerii-novi-a-new-survey-of-the-walled-area/2B230DC150F4A50BED56B5A16B284D79">were combined with magnetometry</a> to get a broader sense of the city’s urban layout, chronology and neighbourhoods. This revealed structures including theatres, bathhouses, villas, temples and a forum a few feet under the ground. </p>
<p>Later, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/papers-of-the-british-school-at-rome/article/abs/falerii-novi-further-survey-of-the-northern-extramural-area/FE27B76317E9E506ACF0880C77DA9E78">this was extended outside</a> the city walls, revealing tombs, buildings and roads leading towards an amphitheatre.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407302/original/file-20210619-34876-zg2t1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407302/original/file-20210619-34876-zg2t1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407302/original/file-20210619-34876-zg2t1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407302/original/file-20210619-34876-zg2t1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407302/original/file-20210619-34876-zg2t1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407302/original/file-20210619-34876-zg2t1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407302/original/file-20210619-34876-zg2t1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407302/original/file-20210619-34876-zg2t1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ground-penetrating radar map of buried structures at Falerii Novi, entire city on right and detail of possible bathhouse on left.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">L. Verdonck, Google Earth, Antiquity Journal</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/groundpenetrating-radar-survey-at-falerii-novi-a-new-approach-to-the-study-of-roman-cities/BE7B8E3AE55DB6E03225B01C54CDD09B">Recently</a> a survey of the entire city using cutting-edge ground-penetrating radar produced sharper images and created a three-dimensional rendering of sub-surface features. Completely new structures were revealed, including a colossal structure, over 100 metres long, thought to be a colonnaded temple against the north city wall.</p>
<p>The detailed map produced by these efforts is now being used to pin-point excavation areas. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/six-reasons-to-save-archaeology-from-funding-cuts-161465">Six reasons to save archaeology from funding cuts</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Breaking new ground</h2>
<p>I’m one of the people working on the first season of systematic excavation (started in June) by a collaborative team from the Universities of <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/margaretandrews/home">Harvard</a> and <a href="https://classics.utoronto.ca/people/faculty/seth-bernard/">Toronto</a>, the <a href="https://www.bsr.ac.uk/">British School at Rome</a> and under the concession of the <a href="http://www.sabap-rm-met.beniculturali.it/">Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Provincia di Viterbo e l'Etruria Meridionale</a>. </p>
<p>We have opened a series of over 120 small test pits across the site. These will provide an initial understanding of various neighbourhoods — domestic, productive, religious, civic — along with chronological and spatial densities of habitation and material.</p>
<p>We start digging at 8am, stopping for breaks through the heat of the day, and finishing around 4pm. The work is sweaty and dirty in the hot Italian summer, but the promise of this site excites and energises everyone.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406807/original/file-20210616-3738-1x2m74.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="people sifting dirt in field" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406807/original/file-20210616-3738-1x2m74.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406807/original/file-20210616-3738-1x2m74.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406807/original/file-20210616-3738-1x2m74.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406807/original/file-20210616-3738-1x2m74.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406807/original/file-20210616-3738-1x2m74.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406807/original/file-20210616-3738-1x2m74.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406807/original/file-20210616-3738-1x2m74.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sampling via test pits is under way but larger trenches will follow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">B. Fochetti</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Work so far has revealed clues to the early occupancy of the site soon after founding in 241 BCE. What archaeologists call “<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Group_of_Campanian_ware_02.JPG">black gloss ware</a>” — a typical type of Roman Republican pottery — has been pulled out of test pits. Small pieces of Roman glass, metal slag and other ceramics are also present. Pieces of shimmering, iridescent green-glazed medieval pottery were also found, highlighting continued, post-Roman occupancy.</p>
<p>Next, larger-scale trenches will be opened at areas of interest. Perhaps around domestic structures and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/insula">insulae</a> (groups of buildings). Revealing the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macellum"><em>macellum</em></a> marketplace, might tell us what was bought and sold, what commercial structures looked like and who was engaged in these activities. A <em><a href="https://www.romanports.org/en/articles/human-interest/687-tabernae-at-ostia.html">taberna</a></em> (typically a one-room shop) on the edge of the central <em><a href="https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Forum.html">forum</a></em> may tell us about the goods and services on offer.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-batshit-experiment-bones-cooked-in-bat-poo-lift-the-lid-on-how-archaeological-sites-are-formed-156865">A batshit experiment: bones cooked in bat poo lift the lid on how archaeological sites are formed</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Testing the soil</h2>
<p>A team from <a href="https://www.ugent.be/lw/archeologie/en">Ghent University</a> is following up previous work on site with Cambridge University. This year they are taking core samples (called <a href="http://www.archeox.net/fact-sheets/auguring.html#:%7E:text=Augering%20is%20where%20archaeologists%20use,cores'%20or%20'boreholes'.&text=A%20hand%20auger%20is%20a,drilling%20down%20into%20the%20ground.">augering</a>) up to 5 metres below the current ground level. This gives archaeologists a snapshot of the site across time: human impacts on the landscape, environmental data, habitation and material changes. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407304/original/file-20210619-26003-3ydug4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407304/original/file-20210619-26003-3ydug4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407304/original/file-20210619-26003-3ydug4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407304/original/file-20210619-26003-3ydug4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407304/original/file-20210619-26003-3ydug4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407304/original/file-20210619-26003-3ydug4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407304/original/file-20210619-26003-3ydug4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407304/original/file-20210619-26003-3ydug4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Analysing core samples from up to 5m below the surface.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">A. Hoffelinck</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Early results are starting to show the very real and profound effect of Roman settlement in the area. Pottery from cores also indicates occupancy over a long time, perhaps even earlier than told to us by Polybius and Livy.</p>
<p>Work will continue in 2022 when the first large trenches are opened and a new view of life at Roman Falerii Novi is illuminated.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pompeii-ancient-remains-are-helping-scientists-learn-what-happens-to-a-body-caught-in-a-volcanic-eruption-157979">Pompeii: ancient remains are helping scientists learn what happens to a body caught in a volcanic eruption</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162527/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emlyn Dodd receives funding from the Australian Academy of the Humanities, Macquarie University, Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens (AAIA), Australasian Society for Classical Studies, and the British School at Athens. He is affiliated with Macquarie University, the AAIA and Centre for Ancient Cultural Heritage and Environment.
The author wishes to acknowledge and thank Stephen Kay (BSR), Margaret Andrews (Harvard) and Seth Bernard (Toronto), as well as the team from Ghent University.</span></em></p>New technology mapped the buried ancient Roman site of Falerii Novi. Now archaeologists have started targeted excavation and soil testing to reveal details of life from more than 2,000 years ago.Emlyn Dodd, Assistant Director of Archaeology, British School at Rome; Honorary Postdoctoral Fellow, Macquarie University; Research Affiliate, Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1579792021-03-26T16:58:39Z2021-03-26T16:58:39ZPompeii: ancient remains are helping scientists learn what happens to a body caught in a volcanic eruption<p>The recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-west-iceland-is-shaking-and-may-be-about-to-erupt-156510">eruptions in Iceland</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9Hq6bTBF2A">vividly captured through dramatic drone footage</a>, have drawn public attention to the immense power of volcanoes. Beautiful though they are, and mesmerising to watch, they are also deadly. </p>
<p>History has recorded eruptions so spectacular they’ve never been forgotten. These include Krakatoa in 1883, whose explosion was heard around the world and Mount Tambora, which resulted in famines across the northern hemisphere. </p>
<p>But perhaps the most famous of all is the eruption of Vesuvius in Italy, in AD79, which sealed the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum beneath layers of ash.</p>
<p>Human activity has long been influenced by volcanic eruptions. Now, research into the variety of ways the skeleton reacts to heat is allowing us greater understanding of their impact on human death too.</p>
<p>The catastrophic impact of Vesuvius effectively froze the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in time, like insects trapped in amber. This has provided archaeologists with unique insights into the lives of those living in the shadow of the volcano thousands of years ago. The opportunity to <a href="https://www.pompeionline.net/en/">actually walk around an ancient city</a>, almost as it was, allows us to connect with our past in tangible ways. </p>
<p>The scientific study of the remains of victims of Vesuvius are, however, not without controversy. Until very recently, the prevailing theory was that the heat and force of the pyroclastic flow pouring out of Vesuvius caused the soft tissues <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0203210">to instantly vaporise</a>. </p>
<p>This doesn’t make sense. We know from studies in modern crematoria and from archaeological excavations of incompletely cremated remains that the soft tissues don’t vaporise, even at hundreds of degrees celsius. Instead they slowly dehydrate, contract and fall away from the body.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An illustration of the volcano Vesuvius erupting with small buildings in the foreground." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391915/original/file-20210326-21-13a5t6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=77%2C68%2C2932%2C2180&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391915/original/file-20210326-21-13a5t6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391915/original/file-20210326-21-13a5t6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391915/original/file-20210326-21-13a5t6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391915/original/file-20210326-21-13a5t6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391915/original/file-20210326-21-13a5t6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391915/original/file-20210326-21-13a5t6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vesuvius.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/illustration-eruption-volcano-mount-vesuvius-pompeii-271331441">Shutterstock/Natalya Kalyatina</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Inconclusive evidence</h2>
<p>Work at Pompeii and Herculaneum has shown the temperatures experienced following the eruption were around 300°C-400°C, certainly not as hot as in a cremation. Other recent research has also suggested <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc1909867">fragments of brain</a> and <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0240017">neurological tissues</a> were preserved at Herculaneum. As exciting as this sounds, the evidence is actually rather inconclusive due to a lack of data, unusual protein preservation and insufficient reference to previously published work.</p>
<p>Bodies do change significantly when burned. Skin dehydrates and then splits to reveal the deeper tissues. The body is pulled into the famed “pugilistic pose” – like the contorted plaster cast figures created from the cooled ash of the Pompeii victims. </p>
<p>This appearance had previously been interpreted as the victim fleeing or fighting, but we now know it’s simply the consequence of the muscles contracting. The internal organs will shrink and be destroyed and the skeleton will be made visible.</p>
<p>For me, this is where it gets interesting. I have spent the past 20 years studying what happens to the skeleton when it is subjected to extreme heat. Unlike the soft tissues, the bones are not fully destroyed, nor are they turned to ash. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two plaster casts of victims of the Vesuvius eruption in Pompeii." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391948/original/file-20210326-15-8x0dtd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391948/original/file-20210326-15-8x0dtd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391948/original/file-20210326-15-8x0dtd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391948/original/file-20210326-15-8x0dtd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391948/original/file-20210326-15-8x0dtd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391948/original/file-20210326-15-8x0dtd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391948/original/file-20210326-15-8x0dtd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Victims at Pompeii.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/victim-pompeii-eruption-mt-vesuvius-778490941">Shutterstock/BlackMac</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Extreme heat</h2>
<p>Bones crack and fragment in different ways depending on whether soft tissue is present or absent. They change colour as the carbon is lost and warp and shrink as the microscopic crystal structure of the bone becomes active. This shrinkage can be as much as 30%. </p>
<p>In fact, we can use these heat-induced changes to interpret the context of death. For example, by calculating the intensity of burning from the extent of the changes or, as we did in a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352409X21000675">recently published paper</a> from a Neolithic site in Sardinia, reconstructing the position of a body in relation to a fire.</p>
<p>Recent research by Italian scientists suggested the city of Pompeii was <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84456-7">engulfed in only 17 minutes</a>, causing the residents to suffocate to death. This supports our own work at the nearby town of Herculaneum. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-west-iceland-is-shaking-and-may-be-about-to-erupt-156510">South-west Iceland is shaking – and may be about to erupt</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/reevaluation-of-manner-of-death-at-roman-herculaneum-following-the-ad-79-eruption-of-vesuvius/FD54E5B954D8E86B9B59001C0B0CC0BB">We combined new methods</a> of studying bone collagen and crystal structure to show the people sheltering in the stone boat houses by the beach, rather than being vaporised, were in fact suffocated and baked to death. </p>
<p>Herculaneum is different to Pompeii in that the victims had longer to respond to the eruption, due to the location of the town. Analysis of the skeletons of the deceased shows many people ran to the beach to await evacuation by sea to safety. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/scDy7gt4YEo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Excavation and analysis of the skeletons suggest it was mainly men who died on the beach, while the women and children sheltered and ultimately died in the stone boat houses. </p>
<p>This gives us a poignant glimpse into not only who these people were, but how they lived their last moments – with the women and children sheltering and no doubt terrified as the temperature increased to fatal levels, while their husbands and fathers had been desperately trying to secure a means of escape.</p>
<p>Vesuvius didn’t just teach us about the living, it showed us what happens to bodies when they are hit by such a catastrophic geological force.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157979/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Thompson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research into the bodies of victims of the Vesuvius eruption show how pyroclastic flows affect the human body.Tim Thompson, Dean of Health & Life Sciences + Professor of Applied Biological Anthropology, Teesside UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1470112020-11-04T19:23:07Z2020-11-04T19:23:07ZPompeii is famous for its ruins and bodies, but what about its wine?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360186/original/file-20200928-16-cdgs5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4594%2C3456&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Vines in the Foro Boario vineyard and the amphitheatre, Pompeii</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Emlyn Dodd</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pompeii is famed for <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20407286">plaster-cast bodies</a>, ruins, frescoes and the rare snapshot it provides of a rather typical ancient Roman city. But less famous is its evidence of viticulture.</p>
<p>Wild grapevines probably existed across peninsular Italy since prehistory, but it is likely the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Etruscan">Etruscans</a> and colonising Greeks promoted wine-making with domesticated grapes as early as 1000 BCE. </p>
<p>Pompeii, preserved after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, sits within <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Campania-region-Italy">Campania</a> on fertile volcanic soil with a temperate Mediterranean climate and reliable sources of water. </p>
<p>Pliny the Elder, living nearby Pompeii in 77 CE <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D3%3Achapter%3D9">wrote</a> of the “vine-growing hills and noble wine of Campania” and the poet Martial <a href="https://penelope.uchicago.edu/%7Egrout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/vesuvius.html">described</a> vats dripping with grapes, and the “ridges Bacchus loved more than the hills of Nysa”.</p>
<p>The Greeks even referred to Campania as <em>Oenotria</em> – “the land of vines”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360191/original/file-20200928-16-1tn2f3p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360191/original/file-20200928-16-1tn2f3p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360191/original/file-20200928-16-1tn2f3p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360191/original/file-20200928-16-1tn2f3p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360191/original/file-20200928-16-1tn2f3p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360191/original/file-20200928-16-1tn2f3p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360191/original/file-20200928-16-1tn2f3p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360191/original/file-20200928-16-1tn2f3p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A fresco found in Pompeii, painted c 55-79 CE, depicting Bacchus covered in grapes and Vesuvius with trellised vines in background.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Naples Archaeological Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A famous wine region</h2>
<p>Over 150 Roman farms have been discovered in the Vesuvian region, and many engaged in viticulture. Some of the most famous ancient wines came from this region, including the honey-sweet and expensive <em><a href="https://www.winespectator.com/articles/the-cult-wine-of-121-bc-44663">Falernian</a></em> wine. </p>
<p><em>Falernian</em> was said to ignite when a flame was applied, suggesting an alcohol content of at least 40% – significantly higher than the 11% you could expect to buy from the bottle shop today.</p>
<p>While the <em>Falernian</em> was believed to be white, most ancient wines were red due to the less laborious production process. </p>
<p><a href="https://penelope.uchicago.edu/%7Egrout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/wine.html">A wide variety</a> of wines could be found on the Roman wine market, flavoured with sea water, resin, spices and herbs like lavender and thyme, or even fermented in a smoke-filled room to impart flavour. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360190/original/file-20200928-18-124pta1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Green vines in front of ruins" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360190/original/file-20200928-18-124pta1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360190/original/file-20200928-18-124pta1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360190/original/file-20200928-18-124pta1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360190/original/file-20200928-18-124pta1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360190/original/file-20200928-18-124pta1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360190/original/file-20200928-18-124pta1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360190/original/file-20200928-18-124pta1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vineyards are still planted in Pompeii today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is even possible evidence for early counterfeit wine. Archaeologists have identified imitation ceramic transport jars <a href="https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/files/54542679/FULL_TEXT.PDF">produced elsewhere</a> and stamped with fake Pompeian merchant stamps. </p>
<h2>Agriculture among an ancient city</h2>
<p>Within Pompeii’s city walls, vineyards hid behind taverns and inns as families and bar-keepers grew grapes on a smaller scale for their own tables and wine. </p>
<p>When vines were covered by the volcanic eruption and later decomposed, they left cavities in the debris. By filling these cavities with plaster, archaeologists were able to reveal vineyards over entire city blocks.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360198/original/file-20200928-22-6tfyr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An old photograph, a man leans over a hole in the dirt." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360198/original/file-20200928-22-6tfyr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360198/original/file-20200928-22-6tfyr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360198/original/file-20200928-22-6tfyr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360198/original/file-20200928-22-6tfyr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360198/original/file-20200928-22-6tfyr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360198/original/file-20200928-22-6tfyr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360198/original/file-20200928-22-6tfyr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A large cavity formed by roots discovered in 1966.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.pompeiiinpictures.com/pompeiiinpictures/R2/2%2005%2005%20p2.htm">The Wilhelmina and Stanley A. Jashemski archive in the University of Maryland Library, Special Collections</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Excavations have revealed carbonised grape seeds and even whole preserved grapes caramelised from the volcanic eruption – their high sugar content gives them a glassy appearance easily spotted amongst the soil.</p>
<p>Gardens were everywhere in Pompeii. The archaeologist <a href="https://lib.guides.umd.edu/c.php?g=326514&p=2193250">Wilhelmina Jashemski</a> noticed at least one in each house and, in some larger elite residences, up to three or four. Many included vines to grow grapes for fruit and wine, but also to provide shade over <em><a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Triclinium.html">triclinia</a></em> dining areas. </p>
<p>If you visit the modern town surrounding Pompeii today, you will notice not much has changed in 2,000 years.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/walking-talking-and-showing-off-a-history-of-roman-gardens-138902">Walking, talking and showing off – a history of Roman gardens</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The ‘Foro Boario’ vineyard</h2>
<p>Opposite Pompeii’s amphitheatre is the <em><a href="http://www.pompeiiinpictures.com/pompeiiinpictures/R2/2%2005%2005%20p2.htm">Foro Boario</a></em>. Misnamed because archaeologists originally thought the site was a cattle market, excavations in the 1960s revealed it was once actually an extensive vineyard.</p>
<p>Over 2,000 vines were found, with almost the exact spacing between each vine as recommended by the ancient agricultural writers Pliny and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lucius-Junius-Moderatus-Columella">Columella</a>. Each vine was attached to a stake and 58 fruit trees were also planted in the vineyard.</p>
<p>Local workers at the time of excavation even commented that the four depressions found around root cavities were identical to the holes holding water in their own vineyards.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361789/original/file-20201006-14-4t5651.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A red ute and five people working in a shallow ditch outside an amphitheatre." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361789/original/file-20201006-14-4t5651.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361789/original/file-20201006-14-4t5651.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361789/original/file-20201006-14-4t5651.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361789/original/file-20201006-14-4t5651.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361789/original/file-20201006-14-4t5651.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361789/original/file-20201006-14-4t5651.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361789/original/file-20201006-14-4t5651.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Excavations in 1966 revealed the area in front of the amphitheatre was once a vineyard.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.pompeiiinpictures.com/pompeiiinpictures/R2/2%2005%2005%20p4.htm">The Wilhelmina and Stanley A. Jashemski archive in the University of Maryland Library, Special Collections</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the back of the vineyard was found a small two-room structure housing a lever wine press and ten <em><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah06100">dolia</a></em> – large ceramic fermentation jars buried into the ground to keep temperatures consistently cool.</p>
<p>There are also numerous <em>triclinia</em> for eating and drinking scattered among the vineyard, suggesting the owner did a thriving business opposite the amphitheatre, with gladiatorial patrons coming to relax, eat and drink before and after spectacles. </p>
<h2>Resurrecting ancient wine</h2>
<p>That such large and valuable pieces of land within the city walls were dedicated to wine-making gives insight to the profitable nature and high esteem viticulture held in Roman communities.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361791/original/file-20201006-16-1oijsjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Oil painting of people feasting" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361791/original/file-20201006-16-1oijsjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361791/original/file-20201006-16-1oijsjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361791/original/file-20201006-16-1oijsjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361791/original/file-20201006-16-1oijsjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361791/original/file-20201006-16-1oijsjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361791/original/file-20201006-16-1oijsjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361791/original/file-20201006-16-1oijsjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Roman Feast depicted by Roberto Bompiani in the late 19th century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, many of these vineyards have been replanted as they were at the time of the eruption, with relatives of ancient grape varieties like the <em>Piedirosso</em>: a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/susangordon/2018/01/04/italy-by-the-wine-glass-piedirosso-from-campania/#72c85c3e1d36">fruity and floral grape</a> with light herb and spiced flavours, perhaps related to Pliny’s ancient <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0137:book=14:chapter=4&highlight=columbina#note-link62">Columbina</a> variety. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/wine-and-climate-change-8-000-years-of-adaptation-67028">Wine and climate change: 8,000 years of adaptation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In 1996, the local Campanian winemaker, <a href="https://www.italiantalks.com/italian-experience/mastroberardino-masters-the-ancient-wines-of-pompeii/">Mastroberardino</a>, cultivated and processed these grapes using Roman techniques and created the <em><a href="https://mastroberardino.com/villa-dei-misteri/">Villa dei Misteri</a></em> wine: ruby red in colour with a complex taste, including hints of vanilla, cinnamon and notes of spice and cherry. </p>
<p>It can be aged for 30 years or more – just like the 60-year-old <em>Falernian</em> drunk by Julius Caesar at his <a href="https://penelope.uchicago.edu/%7Egrout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/vintage.html">celebration banquet in 60 BC</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147011/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emlyn Dodd receives funding from the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens, Centre for Ancient Cultural Heritage and Environment (Macquarie University), and Australian Academy of the Humanities. </span></em></p>Pompeii was so famous in the ancient world for its wine other regions made counterfeit wine, sold in imitation ceramic jars.Emlyn Dodd, Greece Fellow, Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens; Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Ancient Cultural Heritage and Environment, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1438422020-09-15T03:30:47Z2020-09-15T03:30:47ZScarabs, phalluses, evil eyes — how ancient amulets tried to ward off disease<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354995/original/file-20200827-22-10ylmwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=95%2C35%2C1814%2C1065&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An Egyptian winged scarab amulet (circa 1070 –945 BC).
</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Throughout antiquity, from the Mediterranean to Egypt and today’s Middle East, people believed that misfortune, including accidents, diseases, and sometimes even death, were caused by external forces.</p>
<p>Be they gods or other types of supernatural forces (such as a <a href="https://greekerthanthegreeks.com/2016/10/lost-in-translation-word-of-day-demon.html">daimon</a>), people — regardless of faith — sought magical means of protection against them. </p>
<p>While medicine and science were not absent in antiquity, they competed with entrenched systems of magic and the widespread recourse to it. People consulted professional magicians and also practised their own forms of folk magic.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/spells-charms-erotic-dolls-love-magic-in-the-ancient-mediterranean-98459">Spells, charms, erotic dolls: love magic in the ancient Mediterranean</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Possibly derived from the Latin word “amoliri”, meaning “to drive away” or “to avert”, amulets were believed to possess inherent magical qualities. These qualities could be naturally intrinsic (such as the properties of a particular stone) or imbued artificially with the assistance of a spell. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly the use of amulets was an integral part of life. From jewellery and embellishments on buildings, to papyri inscribed with spells, and even garden ornaments, they were deemed effective forms of protection. </p>
<p>Amulets have been around for thousands of years. <a href="https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-mesolithic-period/amulets/">Amber pendants</a> from Denmark’s Mesolithic age (10,000-8,000 BC) seem to have been worn as a form of generic protection. </p>
<p>Jewellery and ornaments referencing the figure of the <a href="https://archaeologicalmuseum.jhu.edu/the-collection/object-stories/ancient-egyptian-amulets/scarabs/">scarab beetle</a> were also popular all-purpose amulets in Egypt, dating from the beginning of the Middle Kingdom (2000 BC). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354996/original/file-20200827-18-5cszn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354996/original/file-20200827-18-5cszn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354996/original/file-20200827-18-5cszn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354996/original/file-20200827-18-5cszn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354996/original/file-20200827-18-5cszn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354996/original/file-20200827-18-5cszn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354996/original/file-20200827-18-5cszn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354996/original/file-20200827-18-5cszn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A solar scarab pendant from the tomb of Tutankhamen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/michelle-obamas-necklace-and-the-power-of-political-jewellery-from-suffragettes-to-a-secretary-of-state-144741">Michelle Obama's necklace and the power of political jewellery — from suffragettes to a secretary of state</a>
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<p>Two of the most common symbols of protection are the eye and the phallus. One or both amulet designs appear in many contexts, providing protection of the body (in the form of jewellery), a building (as plaques on exterior walls), a tomb (as an inscribed motif), and even a baby’s crib (as a mobile or crib ornament). </p>
<p>In Greece and the Middle East, for example, the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180216-the-strange-power-of-the-evil-eye">evil eye</a> has a history stretching back thousands of years. Today the image adorns the streets, buildings and even trees of villages.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354267/original/file-20200823-24-1j1vh9l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354267/original/file-20200823-24-1j1vh9l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354267/original/file-20200823-24-1j1vh9l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354267/original/file-20200823-24-1j1vh9l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354267/original/file-20200823-24-1j1vh9l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354267/original/file-20200823-24-1j1vh9l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354267/original/file-20200823-24-1j1vh9l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A tree adorned with the evil eye symbol in a Turkish village.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marguerite Johnson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The magic behind the evil eye is based on the belief that malevolence can be directed towards an individual through a nasty glare. Accordingly, a “fake” eye, or evil eye, absorbs the malicious intention in place of the target’s eye.</p>
<h2>Wind chimes</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354270/original/file-20200823-18-2hpg9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354270/original/file-20200823-18-2hpg9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354270/original/file-20200823-18-2hpg9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354270/original/file-20200823-18-2hpg9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354270/original/file-20200823-18-2hpg9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1833&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354270/original/file-20200823-18-2hpg9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354270/original/file-20200823-18-2hpg9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1833&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Greek ‘herm’ (circa sixth century BC).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The phallus was a form of magical protection in ancient Greece and Rome. The Greek sculpture known as a “herm” in English functioned as <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/genitalia-apotropaic">apotropaic</a> magic (used to fend off evil). Such artefacts, featuring a head and torso atop a pediment — often in the shape of a phallus and, if not, definitely featuring a phallus — were used as boundary markers to keep trespassers out. </p>
<p>The implicit threat is that of rape; come near a space that is not your own, and you may suffer the consequences. This threat was intended to be interpreted metaphorically; namely, a violation of another’s property would entail some form of punishment from the supernatural realm. </p>
<p>The phallus amulet was also popular in ancient Italian magic. In Pompeii, archaeologists have uncovered wind chimes called <em>tintinnabulum</em> (meaning “little bell”). These were hung in gardens and took the form of a phallus adorned with bells.</p>
<p>This phallic shape, often morphing into bawdy forms, presented the same warning as the herm statues in Greece. However, the comic shapes in combination with the tinkling of bells also revealed a belief in the protective power of sound. Laughing was believed to ward off evil forces, as was the sound of chimes. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354271/original/file-20200823-24-dcmopt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354271/original/file-20200823-24-dcmopt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354271/original/file-20200823-24-dcmopt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354271/original/file-20200823-24-dcmopt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354271/original/file-20200823-24-dcmopt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354271/original/file-20200823-24-dcmopt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354271/original/file-20200823-24-dcmopt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tintinnabulum from Pompeii (circa first century AD).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One scholarly view of magic is that it functions as the last recourse for the desperate or dispossessed. In this sense, it presents as a hopeful action, interpreted by some modern commentators as a form of psychological release from stress or a sense of powerlessness.</p>
<h2>Contemporary ‘magical thinking’</h2>
<p>In the context of <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/happiness-in-world/200911/magical-thinking">“magical thinking”</a>, amulets may be dismissed by critical thinkers of all persuasions, but they remain in use throughout the world.</p>
<p>Often combined with science and common sense, but not always, amulets have made a resurgence during the COVID-19 pandemic. The amulets are equally as diverse, coming in all shapes and sizes, and promoted by politicians, religious leaders and social influencers. </p>
<p>A traditional form of adornment and protection in Javanese culture, now popular with tourists, <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/04/05/wonogiri-residents-turn-to-amulets-to-protect-themselves-from-covid-19.html">“burnt root”</a> bracelets, known as <a href="https://www.indomagic.com/articles/traditional-medicine/akar-bahar/#:%7E:text=In%20the%20Indonesian%20archipelago%2C%20large,grows%20on%20the%20ocean's%20surface.">“akar bahar”</a>, have been sold by community shamans. Indonesia’s Agriculture Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo, meanwhile, has promoted an <a href="https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3092226/coronavirus-can-be-killed-eucalyptus-necklace">aromatherapy necklace</a> containing a eucalyptus potion touted as a preventative against COVID (useless in terms of science but perhaps less dangerous than <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-29/donald-trump-touts-hydroxychloroquine-again-after-viral-video/12501634">hydroxychloroquine</a>). </p>
<p>This necklace prompts the question: where does alternative medicine end and magic begin? It is not a new question, since there has been an intersection between magical lore and medical knowledge for thousands of years.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-murky-cauldron-modern-witchcraft-and-the-spell-on-trump-73830">A murky cauldron – modern witchcraft and the spell on Trump</a>
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<p>In Babylon, circa 2000-1600 BC, a condition known as “kuràrum disease” (identified as a ringworm, symptoms of which include facial pustules), was responded to by both magicians and doctors. And in one text there is a “healer” who appears to <a href="https://archaeology.huji.ac.il/people/nathan-wasserman">perform the role of magician and doctor simultaneously</a>. </p>
<p>Other ancient cultures also practised medical magic through amulets. In Greece, magicians prescribed <a href="https://folklorethursday.com/folklife/magic-to-heal-the-wandering-womb-in-antiquity/">amulets</a> to heal the <a href="https://academic.mu.edu/meissnerd/hysteria.html">wandering womb</a>, a condition whereby the womb was believed to dislodge and travel throughout a woman’s body, thus causing hysteria. </p>
<p>These amulets could take the form of jewellery on which a spell was inscribed. Amulets were also used to prevent pregnancy, as evidenced in a recipe written in Greek from around the second century BC, which instructed women to: “take a bean with a bug inside it and fasten it to yourself as an amulet.” </p>
<p>In a contemporary religious context, written amulets replace spells with prayers. In Thailand, for example, <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-sg/video/viral/thai-buddhist-monks-give-lucky-charms-to-devotees-to-protect-them-from-covid-19/vi-BB11BITR?ocid=scu2">Phisutthi Rattanaphon</a>, an Abbot at Wat Theraplai Temple in Suphan Buri, has issued people with orange paper inscribed with protective words and pictures. </p>
<p>Designed to ward off COVID-19, the papers represent the crossover between magic and religion; a paradigm as entrenched as the blurring of magic and medicine in numerous historical and cultural contexts. Thankfully, face masks and hand sanitiser are also available at the temple.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143842/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marguerite Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Believed to possess magical qualities, amulets were once widely used. They range from amber pendants worn during Denmark’s Mesolithic age to wind chimes found at Pompeii.Marguerite Johnson, Professor of Classics, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1389022020-05-20T11:41:22Z2020-05-20T11:41:22ZWalking, talking and showing off – a history of Roman gardens<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336186/original/file-20200519-152288-1x9u0i1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C14%2C4898%2C3238&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Model of Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli, Italy showing the _poikilé_, the large four-sided portico enclosing a garden with central pool.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Model_of_Hadrian%27s_Villa_showing_the_Pecile_and_the_Hundred_Chambers_%2814758021758%29.jpg">Carole Raddato/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In ancient Rome, you could tell a lot about a person from the look of their garden. Ancient gardens were spaces used for many activities, such as dining, intellectual practice, and religious rituals. They also offered the opportunity to flaunt horticultural skills as well as travels. As such, gardens were taken rather seriously by Romans. Walking had an important role here, as there is no better way to show off your garden than to take people on walks through it.</p>
<p>The role of horticulture in the construction of elite identity in ancient Rome is one of the topics I am investigating, while the excavation of an ancient Pompeian garden I co-direct is revealing tangible information on settings for horticultural displays. </p>
<p>For wealthy Romans, gardens were a place to exercise the mind, for instance by strolling while conversing about philosophy or literature. The orator and philosopher Cicero famously wrote that if you have a garden and a library you have everything you need. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336193/original/file-20200519-152298-vrid4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336193/original/file-20200519-152298-vrid4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336193/original/file-20200519-152298-vrid4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336193/original/file-20200519-152298-vrid4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336193/original/file-20200519-152298-vrid4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336193/original/file-20200519-152298-vrid4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336193/original/file-20200519-152298-vrid4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The leaves of the plane tree.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plataan_bladeren.jpg">Ellywa/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The type of plants chosen could reveal much about how cultured the owner was. From the writings of Roman authors, we can see that plane trees (which nowadays commonly line streets and walkways in parks) were a good choice. They offered shade in summer and were a way to show that one was versed in Greek philosophy: Aristotle and Plato’s famed philosophical schools were held in garden’s shaded by <a href="https://penelope.uchicago.edu/%7Egrout/encyclopaedia_romana/greece/architecture/retainingwall.html">plane trees</a>, as Plato referred to in his <em>Phaedrus</em>.</p>
<h2>Fruit of the empire</h2>
<p>Rome empire-building military expeditions abroad also resulted in <a href="https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/planting-for-power-in-ancient-rome/">new plants,</a> or new cultivars (a plant variety produced by selective breeding) of known plants being introduced into Italy. <a href="https://www.academia.edu/7174792/_Roman_gardens_military_conquests_and_elite_self-representation_._In_K._Coleman_ed._Le_jardin_dans_l_Antiquit%C3%A9._Entretiens_sur_l_Antiquit%C3%A9_classique_60_._Gen%C3%A8ve_2014_195-244">Roman generals</a> or provincial governors often came back to Italy with specimens that they planted in their gardens. For example, Lucius Vitellius the Elder, the father of Emperor Vitellius, planted several figs varieties in his rural villa estate near Rome that he had encountered while governor of Syria. In this way, gardens could also become a sort of microcosm of Rome’s empire, with plants from different territories.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336345/original/file-20200520-152320-147zh8d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336345/original/file-20200520-152320-147zh8d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336345/original/file-20200520-152320-147zh8d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336345/original/file-20200520-152320-147zh8d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336345/original/file-20200520-152320-147zh8d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336345/original/file-20200520-152320-147zh8d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336345/original/file-20200520-152320-147zh8d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Excavating the House of Queen Caroline (VIII.3.14) in Pompeii.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Horticultural display of grafted fruit trees and other plants reproduced by layering might have characterised the large garden of <a href="http://pompeiisites.org/en/archaeological-site/queen-carolina-house/">the House of Queen Caroline</a> – named in the 19th century after <a href="https://www.archaeology.org/issues/344-1907/features/7721-pompeii-gardens-casa-della-regina-carolina">the queen of Naples and sister of Napoleon Bonaparte</a>, Caroline, who visited during its initial excavation. I am <a href="http://blogs.cornell.edu/crcpompeii/">currently excavating</a> the site in Pompeii in collaboration with colleagues from Cornell University. Here wide walkways seem to have separated the regularly spaced plantings, an indication that it was not a commercial orchard but a garden in which horticultural productivity was an important part of the pleasure the garden was meant to offer.</p>
<h2>Committed to exercise</h2>
<p>Walking in their gardens was a serious exercise for many wealthy Romans. Medical works such as the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3627856/"><em>de Medicina</em></a> by the encyclopedist Aulus Cornelius Celsus, written in the first century AD, give specific indications about the daily exercise physicians recommended: one Roman mile, or 1,000 paces. </p>
<p>Some gardens even came with exercise advice inscribed in them detailing how many laps a person needed to cover. One such <a href="http://db.edcs.eu/epigr/epi_ergebnis.php">inscription</a> from Rome once stood in an ancient orchard. It advised that to cover one mile one needed to go along the path back and forth five times. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.italia.it/en/travel-ideas/unesco-world-heritage-sites/the-emperors-abode-hadrians-villa.html">Hadrian’s Villa</a> in Tivoli, Italy, a similar inscription was found in the <em>Poikilé</em>, the large four-sided portico enclosing a garden with a central pool. The north side of the <em>Poikilé</em> was a double portico, with circular spaces at both ends to allow one to do laps: this was where the emperor could walk sheltered from the elements. Thus, Hadrian could either take exercise in the open air, in the central garden, or under the roof of the double portico.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336375/original/file-20200520-152344-1ez43en.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336375/original/file-20200520-152344-1ez43en.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336375/original/file-20200520-152344-1ez43en.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336375/original/file-20200520-152344-1ez43en.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336375/original/file-20200520-152344-1ez43en.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336375/original/file-20200520-152344-1ez43en.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336375/original/file-20200520-152344-1ez43en.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Excavation of a planting pit, a Roman plant pot is starting to appear. Such pots are usually found partially or completely buried in gardens and planters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All this may suggest that the stereotype associating ancient Romans with excessive drinking and eating is undeserved. But, for wealthy individuals, moving about in a chariot or being carried around in a litter (a “vehicle” without wheels) by slaves in hippodrome-gardens (they were shaped like an elongated U and imitated the shape of the chariot-racing stadium) also counted as “exercising”. Indeed, there are two words in Latin texts for the daily walk: <em>ambulatio</em>, “walking about”, and <em>gestatio</em>, “being carried about”.</p>
<p>Such walking was the pastime of those who owned impressive townhouses or luxurious villas in the country or by the sea. But shrewd politicians such as the Emperor Augustus, who ruled from 27 BC to 14 AD, included gardens among the public building projects they financed. They understood that improving living standards by providing ordinary people with a green oasis to escape Rome’s crowded streets and cramped accommodation was a great way to gain popularity. Augustus opened to the public the groves and walks which surrounded the magnificent <a href="https://www.livius.org/articles/place/rome/rome-photos/rome-mausoleum-of-augustus/">Mausoleum</a> he had built, and before him, Caesar had willed to the people of Rome his large pleasure park (<em>Horti</em>).</p>
<p>Following the Roman dichotomy between <em>amoenitas</em> (delightfulness) and <em>utilitas (usefulness)</em>, scholars traditionally class gardens as either utilitarian or pleasure gardens, but this binary choice does not fully capture the essence of Roman garden culture. Roman gardens were complex physical and ideological spaces. They represented wealth and contributed to wealth and they showed off horticultural skills through aesthetics as well as their ability to produce food.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annalisa Marzano receives funding for her research project from the Leverhulme Trust.
She serves on the Board of Trustees for the Herculaneum Society, a registered charity.</span></em></p>The plants a Roman chose could say a lot about the person they were.Annalisa Marzano, Professor of Ancient History, University of ReadingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1155712019-04-16T09:28:56Z2019-04-16T09:28:56ZNotre Dame: writers and the shock of destruction through history<p>Images of the skeletal frames of Notre Dame cathedral, enveloped in billowing smoke and flame, stopped us dead on April 15. What is so familiar from thousands of holiday photographs and postcards was suddenly made unfamiliar, strange. The stunned Parisians watching in horror as a staple of their city <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-47941794">was destroyed before their eyes</a> brought to mind the faces of New Yorkers watching in disbelief as first one, then another tower came down in 2001, or the faces of Iraqi citizens watching the statue of Saddam Hussein topple in Iraq in 2003.</p>
<p>There are obviously very different political contexts to these events – some acts of terrorism, some natural acts of destruction – but what they share is the strange sense of watching one era of history end in real time: the end of a cultural icon that has stood, in Notre Dame’s case, through so many historical periods.</p>
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<p>
<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/notre-dame-how-a-rebuilt-cathedral-could-be-just-as-wonderful-115551">Notre Dame: how a rebuilt cathedral could be just as wonderful</a>
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</em>
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<p>The many comment pieces we will see throughout the next few weeks will talk about the importance of this fire, not only in literal terms but its place in the cultural imagination – the loss of what the cathedral represents, its symbolic value as much as its literal one.</p>
<p>They won’t be the first. These expressions of cultural loss enter a long and storied tradition. Throughout history we have seen examples of writers and commentators expressing shock, disbelief, horror and awe over buildings disappearing before their eyes; wood and steel structures turning, rapidly and unstoppably to debris; of cities turning to dust. </p>
<p>One of the most famous examples we have is Pliny the Younger writing in a <a href="http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/pompeii.htm">letter</a> about the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ashes were already falling, not as yet very thickly. I looked round: a dense black cloud was coming up behind us, spreading over the earth like a flood. […] We had scarcely sat down to rest when darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269520/original/file-20190416-147499-1dqxrhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269520/original/file-20190416-147499-1dqxrhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269520/original/file-20190416-147499-1dqxrhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269520/original/file-20190416-147499-1dqxrhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269520/original/file-20190416-147499-1dqxrhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269520/original/file-20190416-147499-1dqxrhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269520/original/file-20190416-147499-1dqxrhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Last Days of Pompeii by Karl Brullov (1830-1833).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Russian Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is not unlike the physical response that Samuel Pepys recorded in his <a href="https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1666/09/02/">diary</a> of the 1666 Great Fire of London:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So near the fire as we could for smoke; and all over the Thames, with one’s face in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of firedrops. … When we could endure no more upon the water; we to a little ale-house on the Bankside, over against the Three Cranes, and there staid till it was dark almost, and saw the fire grow; and, as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire … it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruins. So home with a sad heart.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Reliving trauma</h2>
<p>These writers typically describe the scene they witness and the physical sensations they experience – an attempt to record the physical experience of the event for the historical record. Writing about an event can also be, in some cases, a form of reliving or reenacting it, especially if the event was personally traumatic. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269516/original/file-20190416-147522-dwamgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269516/original/file-20190416-147522-dwamgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269516/original/file-20190416-147522-dwamgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269516/original/file-20190416-147522-dwamgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269516/original/file-20190416-147522-dwamgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269516/original/file-20190416-147522-dwamgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269516/original/file-20190416-147522-dwamgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Great Fire of London by Philip James de Loutherbourg (1740–1812).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yale Center for British Art</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For many of these writers, there is a linking of the destruction of buildings with dead bodies. <a href="http://www.sfmuseum.net/hist5/jlondon.html">The article</a> the American writer Jack London wrote for Collier’s Magazine about the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco juxtaposes the destruction of buildings with the dead of the earthquake:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Wednesday night saw the destruction of the very heart of the city. … An enumeration of the buildings destroyed would be a directory of San Francisco. An enumeration of the buildings undestroyed would be a line and several addresses. An enumeration of the deeds of heroism would stock a library and bankrupt the Carnegie medal fund. An enumeration of the dead will never be made. All vestiges of them were destroyed by the flames. The number of the victims of the earthquake will never be known. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Edith Wharton wrote in similar terms about the devastation she witnessed on her trips to the war zones during World War I for articles written for Scribner’s Magazine in 1915, published later as <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-fighting-france.html">Fighting France</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ypres has been bombarded to death, and the outer walls of its houses are still standing, so that it presents the distant semblance of a living city, while near by it is seen to be a disembowelled corpse. Every window-pane is smashed, nearly every building unroofed, and some house-fronts are sliced clean off, with the different stories exposed, as if for the stage-setting of a farce.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Fearful and tragic spectacle</h2>
<p>Wharton’s comparison with the theatrical is not untypical. We can see a similar sense of the unbelievable, the farcical, in John Updike’s <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/09/24/tuesday-and-after-talk-of-the-town">response</a> to 9/11 in The New Yorker of September 24 2001:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As we watched the second tower burst into ballooning flame … there persisted the notion that, as on television, this was not quite real; it could be fixed; the technocracy the towers symbolised would find a way to put out the fire and reverse the damage.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is also, of course, in all of these writers a fear for the self, even if we know the self is not in danger: “We knew we had just witnessed thousands of deaths; we clung to each other as if we ourselves were falling,” Updike writes.</p>
<p>The particularly strange sense of spectacle that accompanies the modern destruction of landmarks means the moment can be eternally replayed, as images become iconic. </p>
<p>This can link spectacle with mourning, as visual culture theorists such as <a href="https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/faculty/Marita_Sturken">Marita Sturken</a> have noted. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269518/original/file-20190416-147505-195q91l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269518/original/file-20190416-147505-195q91l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269518/original/file-20190416-147505-195q91l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269518/original/file-20190416-147505-195q91l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269518/original/file-20190416-147505-195q91l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269518/original/file-20190416-147505-195q91l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269518/original/file-20190416-147505-195q91l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Notre Dame cathedral in Rheims after being destroyed by shellfire, 1914.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bibliothèque nationale de France</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wharton, writing about the <a href="https://www.peacepalacelibrary.nl/2014/07/the-destruction-of-the-cathedral-of-reims-1914/">destruction of the Cathedral of Rheims</a> in 1914 – another Notre Dame – found beauty in its strange ruins:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When the German bombardment began, the west front of Rheims was covered with scaffolding: the shells set it on fire, and the whole church was wrapped in flames. Now the scaffolding is gone, and in the dull provincial square there stands a structure so strange and beautiful that one must search the Inferno, or some tale of Eastern magic, for words to picture the luminous unearthly vision. […] And the wonder of the impression is increased by the sense of its evanescence; the knowledge that this is the beauty of disease and death, that every one of the transfigured statues must crumble under the autumn rains, that every one of the pink or golden stones is already eaten away to the core, that the Cathedral of Rheims is glowing and dying before us like a sunset…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There may be either sadness or comfort in knowing that our sensations today of something having been irreplaceably lost, of the destruction of culture and of part of ourselves, is not new.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115571/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Kelly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Words are as important as pictures for helping us come to terms with such a huge cultural loss.Alice Kelly, Harmsworth Postdoctoral Fellow in History, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/976322018-06-26T15:02:36Z2018-06-26T15:02:36ZPompeii should teach us to celebrate people’s lives, not mock their death<p>When current excavations at Pompeii unearthed the remains of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44303247">a seemingly decapitated</a> skeleton, an image was released by archaeologists working in <a href="http://www.pompeiisites.org/Sezione.jsp?titolo=Pompeii%2C+new+excavations+Regio+V&idSezione=7695">Regio V</a>. Thought to be of a man crushed by an enormous door jamb while attempting to flee the deadly Vesuvian eruption of 79AD, the image was widely shared, in many cases with the addition of captions which poked fun at the Pompeiian’s dramatic demise. </p>
<p>Yet the photograph is essentially a representation of human remains – a snapshot of the circumstances of someone’s death – raising questions as to the ethics of the “meme-ification” of the dead and our own often abstract perception of death and dying. </p>
<p>Death in the contemporary age has become a concealed, obscure and managed process – largely confined to the remits of hospitals, care homes and funeral parlours. Yet one sphere in which we more readily confront death is that of the museum. Pompeii is one archaeological site which immediately conjures up deathly narratives for the general population, with the site and its surrounds attracting an estimated <a href="http://www.pompeiisites.org/Sezione.jsp?titolo=Dati+Visitatori&idSezione=9">4m visitors each year</a>. A <a href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/pompeii_and_herculaneum.aspx">ticketed exhibition</a> at the British Museum in 2013 was seen by more than 471,000 visitors and was the third most visited exhibition in the museum’s history after Tutankhamun and the Chinese Terracotta Army.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>While the unfortunate Pompeiians may not have known that they were destined to meet their end by eruption, they did accept – and celebrate – that they were going to die. One particular mosaic from a residential reception room from Pompeii (now housed in the Naples National Archaeological Museum) expresses this ideology in its playful depiction of a single skeleton, which smiles out at you with two <em>askoi</em> (jugs) in hand.</p>
<p>This mosaic – like examples elsewhere – was located on the floor. They were the literal and metaphorical grounding on which the festivities, spontaneities and indulgences of Roman life played out. And their message, however macabre, was simple: drink up! Be merry! As death waits for us all …</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224889/original/file-20180626-112611-1llpbdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224889/original/file-20180626-112611-1llpbdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224889/original/file-20180626-112611-1llpbdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224889/original/file-20180626-112611-1llpbdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224889/original/file-20180626-112611-1llpbdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224889/original/file-20180626-112611-1llpbdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224889/original/file-20180626-112611-1llpbdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Naples National Archaeological Museum/Carole Raddato</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With their morbid message, remember you will die, these early <em>memento mori</em>, along with <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/m/memento-mori">their many counterparts in 17th-century art</a>, might not initially seem relevant to contemplations of death in the modern day. Yet we use – or perhaps abuse – their direct descendant in the digital age, with this particular perspective on life and death hidden in a hashtag: <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23YOLO&src=tyah">#YOLO</a>.</p>
<p>You only live once – a realisation that life is fleeting and death is certain. Whether that last drink, a first date or parachuting off buildings, the message is similar: embrace the risk, put your already condemned bodies on the line, subscribe to a Nike-like philosophy of life and “just do it”. </p>
<h2>Modern <em>memento mori</em></h2>
<p>Whether a smiling skeleton or status update, these statements of defiance in the face of death acknowledge its very inevitability. Yet another movement is working to further the message of <em>memento mori</em> in their acceptance of death as an integral and visible part of life with an arguably more meaningful purpose.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/death-positive">Death Positive</a> movement does not – unlike Roman decorators or certain twitterati – encourage the excessive consumption of alcohol or the performance of potentially dangerous stunts in the knowledge that the physical bodies which we <em>are</em> will inevitably cease to function. But it does advocate for using our present, living lives as an opportunity to discuss and make clear our wishes for their eventual end. It argues that such dialogues are not morbid but natural and necessary and that the “culture of silence” surrounding death in the modern era needs to be broken.</p>
<p>More than a thousand years before the active development of death positivity then, the mosaics of doomed Pompeii were directly echoing the main tenets of the modern movement’s manifesto: know you are mortal, know you will die and know you should act accordingly.</p>
<h2>Man or meme?</h2>
<p>Whether it is this modern abstraction of death countered by the Death Positive movement or simply the remains of antiquity that has prompted the remarkable reaction online to the decapitated skeleton, the image has spawned hundreds of memes since its release. </p>
<p>The thirty-something man represented by the skeleton <a href="http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/pompeii-skeleton-of-unluckiest-guy-in-history-is-the-internets-new-favorite-meme/">has been heralded</a> as the “unluckiest guy in history … the internet’s new favourite meme” and <a href="https://mashable.com/2018/05/30/pompeii-skeleton-rock-memes/?europe=true&utm_cid=mash-com-Tw-main-link#1HNrdm1Z_kqy">Mashable UK noted</a> that “the internet couldn’t help but laugh at the poor Pompeii victim crushed by a giant rock”. </p>
<p>Could we not? Making memes from what is essentially a representation of ancient human remains – perhaps exemplified by <a href="https://twitter.com/PressTV/status/1002073023443283968">Press TV asking their 159,000 Twitter followers</a> “what’s your caption for him?” – has been met with concern from certain archaeologists. Vox Hiberionacum, an archaeological blogger, tweeted:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1001761713614618629"}"></div></p>
<p>It is worth remembering that this wasn’t “Wile E. Coyote’s great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather” as suggested by <a href="https://twitter.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1001537320569450497?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmashable.com%2F2018%2F05%2F30%2Fpompeii-skeleton-rock-memes%2F">one Twitter user</a>. It was a man, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/29/health/pompeii-victim-crushed-rock-eruption-intl-trnd/index.html">seemingly with mobility issues</a>, who died alone and, if we are to accept the archaeologists’ interpretation that he was turning to look back at the impending pyroclastic flow, very afraid. </p>
<p>The astonishing discovery of his skeleton in Pompeii should prompt us to reflect on our modern attitudes to death, encouraging positivity in the face of our own and more importantly, sensitivity in relation to those of others.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97632/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ellen Finn receives funding from the Irish Research Council and the Irish Department of Education. </span></em></p>Excavations on the site of Rome’s greatest natural disaster can tell us a lot about attitudes to death.Ellen Finn, Doctoral Researcher in Classics, Trinity College DublinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/962602018-05-08T18:43:04Z2018-05-08T18:43:04ZLava, ash flows, mudslides and nasty gases: Good reasons to respect volcanoes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218151/original/file-20180508-34021-19wgpzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lava flow moves in the Leilani Estates subdivision near Pahoa on the island of Hawaii, May 6, 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Hawaii-Volcano/5f1db96d69c24dcea1d19c0d5e5401d2/12/0">USGS via AP</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Volcanoes are beautiful and awe-inspiring, but the ongoing eruption of Kilauea on Hawaii’s Big Island is showing how dangerous these events can be. So far this event has destroyed dozens of homes and displaced hundreds of people, but no deaths or serious injuries have been reported. Other volcanic eruptions have had deadlier impacts.</p>
<p>As a volcano scientist, I’m very aware of deadly volcanic eruptions can be, even the “nonexplosive” kind we’re seeing in Hawaii now. Since A.D. 1500, volcanic eruptions have killed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s13617-017-0067-4">more than 278,000 people</a>.</p>
<p>Today there are 1,508 active volcanoes around the world. Each year, some 50 to 60 of them <a href="https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vsc/file_mngr/file-153/FAQs.pdf">erupt</a>. <a href="https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/inconvenient-apocalyptic-or-somewhere-between-why-we-shouldn-t-be-complacent-about-volcanic">Around 800 million people</a> live within volcanic risk zones. Volcanologists study and monitor volcanoes so that we can try to forecast future eruptions and predict how widely the damage could reach.</p>
<h2>When mountains explode</h2>
<p>Volcanic eruptions can be broadly divided into two types: explosive and nonexplosive. Explosive eruptions occur when magma, which is molten rock in the ground, contains gas. These eruptions are so energetic that the magma is pulverized into small rock particles, called volcanic ash. </p>
<p>Explosive eruptions are responsible for the <a href="http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/deadliest-eruption">highest number of volcanic-related deaths</a>. These events can distribute <a href="https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vhp/tephra.html">volcanic ash</a> hundreds of miles from the volcano, causing billions of dollars in air travel disruption, water supply pollution and damage to power lines, structures and machinery. Krakatoa in the Pacific (1883) and Mount St. Helens in Washington state (1980) are examples of explosive eruptions. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">U.S. Geological Survey scientists recount their experiences before, during and after the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, which killed 57 people, including a USGS researcher.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The most dangerous features of these events are <a href="https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vhp/pyroclastic_flows.html">volcanic ash flows</a> – swift, ground-hugging avalanches of searing hot gas, ash and rock that destroy everything in their path. Ash flows produced during the A.D. 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy entombed the towns of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/pompeii_portents_01.shtml">Herculaneum and Pompeii</a>. In 1902, ash flows from the eruption of Mount Pelee on the Caribbean island of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/28/physicalsciences.highereducation">Martinique</a> killed more than 29,000 people.</p>
<h2>Lava flows and fountains</h2>
<p>Nonexplosive eruptions occur when little to no gas is contained within the magma. These events produce small fire fountains and lava flows, such as those <a href="https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/status.html">currently erupting from Kilauea</a>.</p>
<p>Nonexplosive eruptions tend to be less deadly than explosive eruptions, but can still cause great disruption and destruction. Eruptions at Hawaiian-style volcanoes can occur at the summit or along the flanks. New eruptions typically begin with the opening of a fissure, or long crack, that spews molten lava into the air and sometimes forms <a href="https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vhp/lava_flows.html">lava flows</a>. </p>
<p>As reports from Hawaii are showing, lava tends to flow rather slowly. Typically it is easy to outrun a lava flow but impossible to stop or divert it. People can escape, but homes and property are vulnerable.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DNbbNZ5sHIM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Lava flows and fountains consuming homes and property in Leilani Estates on the island of Hawaii.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both explosive and nonexplosive eruptions release <a href="https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vhp/gas.html">volcanic gases</a>, producing a hazardous blend called volcanic fog, or <a href="https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/hvo_gas.html">VOG</a>. VOG contains aerosols – fine particles created when sulfur dioxide reacts with moisture in the air. It can cause health problems, damage crops and pollute water supplies. </p>
<p>These particles have global consequences when eruptions eject them into the stratosphere, where they block sunlight, cooling Earth’s climate. This effect can cause widespread crop failure and famine and is responsible for many historic volcanic-related deaths. For example, the 1815 explosive eruption of Tambora in Indonesia caused <a href="http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/southeast_asia/indonesia/tambora.html">92,000 starvation-related deaths</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218154/original/file-20180508-34038-lqdfa6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218154/original/file-20180508-34038-lqdfa6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218154/original/file-20180508-34038-lqdfa6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218154/original/file-20180508-34038-lqdfa6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218154/original/file-20180508-34038-lqdfa6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218154/original/file-20180508-34038-lqdfa6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218154/original/file-20180508-34038-lqdfa6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218154/original/file-20180508-34038-lqdfa6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">VOG (volcanic fog), produced by gases from Kilauea, hangs low over the Hawaiian Islands on December 3, 2008, producing unhealthy sulfur dioxide concentrations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=36089">NASA Earth Observatory</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Snow-capped volcanoes, such as those in the <a href="https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/observatories/cvo">Cascades</a> and <a href="https://www.avo.alaska.edu/">Alaska</a>, can produce mudflows, or <a href="https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vhp/lahars.html">lahars</a>. These hazards form when ice and snow melt during an eruption, or ash is washed loose from the surface by heavy rain. </p>
<p>Mudflows have tremendous energy and can travel up to 60 miles per hour down river valleys. They are capable of destroying bridges, structures, and anything else in their path. A mudflow from the 1985 eruption of <a href="https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazard/stratoguide/nevadofeat.html">Nevado del Ruiz</a> in Colombia killed 25,000 people.</p>
<h2>Getting ready for the next eruption</h2>
<p>By studying past and current eruptions, volcanologists constantly refine our ability to predict and mitigate the hazards and risk associated with volcanic activity. But people who live within range of volcanic hazards also can <a href="http://www.redcross.org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergencies#About">minimize their risk</a>. </p>
<p>All residents of these zones should develop household plans for evacuating or sheltering in place and prepare emergency kits with first aid supplies, essential medicines, food and water. Events like the Kilauea eruption are reminders that preparing before natural disasters can make communities more resilient when these events strike.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96260/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brittany Brand does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fountains of lava from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano are dramatic, but the most deadly impacts of volcanic eruptions are toxic gases and ash and mud flows.Brittany Brand, Assistant Professor of Geosciences, Boise State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/878592018-02-22T19:12:08Z2018-02-22T19:12:08ZFriday essay: the erotic art of Ancient Greece and Rome<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205459/original/file-20180208-180808-1btn8tj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A fragment of a wall painting showing two lovers in bed from the House of L Caecilius Jucundus in Pompeii, now at Naples National Archaeological Museum</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our sexual histories series, authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today.</em></p>
<p>Rarely does L.P. Hartley’s dictum that “the past is a foreign country” hold more firmly than in the area of sexuality in classical art. Erotic images and depictions of genitalia, the phallus in particular, were incredibly popular motifs across a wide range of media in ancient Greece and Rome. </p>
<p>Simply put, sex is everywhere in Greek and Roman art. Explicit sexual representations were common on Athenian black-figure and red-figure vases of the sixth and fifth centuries BC. They are often eye-openingly confronting in nature.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196595/original/file-20171128-2046-16fj3r9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196595/original/file-20171128-2046-16fj3r9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196595/original/file-20171128-2046-16fj3r9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196595/original/file-20171128-2046-16fj3r9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196595/original/file-20171128-2046-16fj3r9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196595/original/file-20171128-2046-16fj3r9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196595/original/file-20171128-2046-16fj3r9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bronze tintinnabula in the shape of flying phalluses, Pompeii, first century AD.
Gabinetto Segreto del Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Romans too were surrounded by sex. The phallus, sculpted in bronze as <em>tintinnabula</em> (wind chimes), were commonly found in the gardens of the houses of Pompeii, and sculpted in relief on wall panels, such as the famous one from a Roman bakery telling us <em>hic habitat felicitas</em> (“here dwells happiness”). </p>
<p>However these classical images of erotic acts and genitalia reflect more than a sex obsessed culture. The depictions of sexuality and sexual activities in classical art seem to have had a wide variety of uses. And our interpretations of these images - often censorious in modern times - reveal much about our own attitudes to sex. </p>
<h2>Modern responses</h2>
<p>When the collection of antiquities first began in earnest in the 17th and 18th centuries, the openness of ancient eroticism puzzled and troubled Enlightenment audiences. This bewilderment only intensified after excavations began at the rediscovered Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. </p>
<p>The Gabinetto Segreto (the so-called “<a href="http://www.museoarcheologiconapoli.it/en/room-and-sections-of-the-exhibition/3490-2/">Secret Cabinet</a>”) of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli best typifies the modern response to classical sexuality in art – repression and suppression.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://cir.campania.beniculturali.it/museoarcheologiconazionale/Musei/marcheo/thematic-paths/in-museum/P_RA12">secret cabinet</a> was founded in 1819, when Francis I, King of Naples, visited the museum with his wife and young daughter. Shocked by the explicit imagery, he ordered all items of a sexual nature be removed from view and locked in the cabinet. Access would be restricted to scholars, of “mature age and respected morals”. That was, male scholars only. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196596/original/file-20171128-2021-15g95xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196596/original/file-20171128-2021-15g95xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196596/original/file-20171128-2021-15g95xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196596/original/file-20171128-2021-15g95xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196596/original/file-20171128-2021-15g95xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196596/original/file-20171128-2021-15g95xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196596/original/file-20171128-2021-15g95xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Erotic terracotta sculptures in a showcase in the Gabinetto Segreto at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Found in a Samnite sanctuary in the old town of Cales (Calvi Risorta).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Pompeii itself, where explicit material such as the wallpaintings of the brothel was retained <em>in situ</em>, metal shutters were installed. These shutters restricted access to only male tourists willing to pay additional fees, until as recently as the 1960s. </p>
<p>Of course, the secrecy of the collection in the cabinet only increased its fame, even if access was at times difficult. <a href="https://archive.org/details/ahandbookfortra41firgoog">John Murray</a>’s Handbook to South Italy and Naples (1853) sanctimoniously states that permission was exceedingly difficult to obtain: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Very few therefore have seen the collection; and those who have, are said to have no desire to repeat their visit.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The cabinet was not opened to the general public until 2000 (despite protests by the Catholic Church). Since 2005, the collection has been displayed in a separate room; the objects have still not been reunited with contemporary non-sexual artefacts as they were in antiquity. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=3jLjZvb9fxQC&pg=PA175&dq=Philip+Lawton+for+the+gentleman+and+scholar&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjd-MjruuDXAhXMjJQKHawICxQQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=Philip%20Lawton%20for%20the%20gentleman%20and%20scholar&f=false">Literature also felt the wrath of the censors</a>, with works such as Aristophanes’ plays mistranslated to obscure their “offensive” sexual and scatalogical references. Lest we try to claim any moral and liberal superiority in the 21st century, the infamous marble sculptural depiction of Pan copulating with a goat from the collection <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/pan-having-sex-with-goat-_n_2866615">still shocks modern audiences</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196612/original/file-20171128-2089-sayvis.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196612/original/file-20171128-2089-sayvis.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196612/original/file-20171128-2089-sayvis.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196612/original/file-20171128-2089-sayvis.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196612/original/file-20171128-2089-sayvis.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196612/original/file-20171128-2089-sayvis.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196612/original/file-20171128-2089-sayvis.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marble statue of Pan copulating with goat, found the Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum. first century AD.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The censorship of ancient sexuality is perhaps best typified by the long tradition of <a href="http://www.neatorama.com/2011/10/18/the-pathology-of-classical-sculpture/">removing genitals from classical sculpture</a>.</p>
<p>The Vatican Museum in particular (but not exclusively) was famed for altering classical art for the sake of contemporary morals and sensibilities. The application of carved and cast fig leaves to cover the genitalia was common, if incongruous. </p>
<p>It also indicated a modern willingness to associate nudity with sexuality, which would have puzzled an ancient audience, for whom the body’s physical form was in itself regarded as perfection. So have we been misreading ancient sexuality all this time? Well, yes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196620/original/file-20171128-2077-1tq6550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196620/original/file-20171128-2077-1tq6550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196620/original/file-20171128-2077-1tq6550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196620/original/file-20171128-2077-1tq6550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196620/original/file-20171128-2077-1tq6550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196620/original/file-20171128-2077-1tq6550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196620/original/file-20171128-2077-1tq6550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196620/original/file-20171128-2077-1tq6550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marble statue of Mercury in the Vatican collection. The fig leaf is a later addition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Ancient porn?</h2>
<p>It is difficult to tell to what extent ancient audiences used explicit erotic imagery for arousal. Certainly, the erotic scenes that were popular on vessels would have given the Athenian parties a titillating atmosphere as wine was consumed. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196624/original/file-20171128-2004-1yb39rg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196624/original/file-20171128-2004-1yb39rg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196624/original/file-20171128-2004-1yb39rg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196624/original/file-20171128-2004-1yb39rg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196624/original/file-20171128-2004-1yb39rg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196624/original/file-20171128-2004-1yb39rg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196624/original/file-20171128-2004-1yb39rg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Athenian red-figure kylix, attributed to Dokimasia Painter, c. 480 BC. British Museum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Trustees of the British Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These types of scenes are especially popular on the <em>kylix</em>, or wine-cup, particularly within the <em>tondo</em> (central panel of the cup). <em><a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/%7Egrout/encyclopaedia_romana/greece/hetairai/hetairai.html">Hetairai</a></em> (courtesans) and <em><a href="https://womeninantiquity.wordpress.com/2017/03/18/hetaira/">pornai</a></em> (prostitutes) may well have attended the same symposia, so the scenes may have been used as a stimuli.</p>
<p>Painted erotica was replaced by moulded depictions in the later Greek and Roman eras, but the use must have been similar, and the association of sex with drinking is strong in this series.</p>
<p>The application of sexual scenes to oil lamps by the Romans is perhaps the most likely scenario where the object was actually used within the setting of love-making. Erotica is common on mould-made lamps.</p>
<h2>The phallus and fertility</h2>
<p>Although female nudity was not uncommon (particularly in association with the goddess Aphrodite), phallic symbolism was at the centre of much classical art. </p>
<p>The phallus would often be depicted on Hermes, Pan, Priapus or similar deities across various art forms. Rather than being seen as erotic, its symbolism here was often associated with protection, fertility and even healing. We have already seen the phallus used in a range of domestic and commercial contexts in Pompeii, a clear reflection of its protective properties. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196606/original/file-20171128-2004-fd2yho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196606/original/file-20171128-2004-fd2yho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196606/original/file-20171128-2004-fd2yho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196606/original/file-20171128-2004-fd2yho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196606/original/file-20171128-2004-fd2yho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1833&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196606/original/file-20171128-2004-fd2yho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196606/original/file-20171128-2004-fd2yho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1833&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marble Herm, from Siphnos, Greece. c. 520 BC. National Archaeological Museum, Athens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A herm was a stone sculpture with a head (usually of Hermes) above a rectangular pillar, upon which male genitals were carved. These blocks were positioned at borders and boundaries for protection, and were so highly valued that in 415 BC when the <em>hermai</em> of Athens were vandalised prior to the departure of the Athenian fleet many believed this would threaten the success of the naval mission.</p>
<p>A famous fresco from the House of the Vetti in Pompeii shows Priapus, a minor deity and guardian of livestock, plants and gardens. He has a massive penis, holds a bag of coins, and has a bowl of fruit at his feet. As researcher <a href="http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=uhf_2006">Claudia Moser</a> writes, the image represents three kinds of prosperity: growth (the large member), fertility (the fruit), and affluence (the bag of money).</p>
<p>It is worth noting that even a casual glance at classical sculptures in a museum will reveal that the penis on marble depictions of nude gods and heroes is <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24369184">often quite small</a>. Classical cultural ideals valued a smaller penis over a larger, often to the surprise of modern audiences.</p>
<p>All representations of large penises in classical art are associated with lustfulness and foolishness. Priapus was so despised by the other gods he was thrown off Mt Olympus. Bigger was not better for the Greeks and Romans.</p>
<h2>Myths and sex</h2>
<p>Classical mythology is based upon sex: myths abound with stories of incest, intermarriage, polygamy and adultery, so artistic depictions of mythology were bound to depict these sometimes explicit tales. Zeus’s cavalier attitude towards female consent within these myths (among many examples, he raped Leda in the guise of a swan and Danae while disguised as the rain) reinforced misogynistic ideas of male domination and female subservience.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196602/original/file-20171128-2025-ineyrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196602/original/file-20171128-2025-ineyrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196602/original/file-20171128-2025-ineyrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196602/original/file-20171128-2025-ineyrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196602/original/file-20171128-2025-ineyrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196602/original/file-20171128-2025-ineyrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196602/original/file-20171128-2025-ineyrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mosaic depicting Leda and the swan, circa third century AD, from the Sanctuary of Aphrodite, Palea Paphos; now in the Cyprus Museum, Nicosia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The phallus was also highlighted in depictions of Dionysiac revelry. Dionysos, the Greek god of wine, theatre and transformation was highly sexualised, as were his followers - the male satyrs and female maenads, and their depiction on wine vessels is not surprising.</p>
<p>Satyrs were half-men, half-goats. Somewhat comic, yet also tragic to a degree, they were inveterate masturbators and party animals with an appetite for dancing, wine and women. Indeed the word <em>satyriasis</em> has survived today, classified in the World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) as a form of male hypersexuality, alongside the female form, <em>nymphomania</em>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196604/original/file-20171128-2038-667j4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196604/original/file-20171128-2038-667j4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196604/original/file-20171128-2038-667j4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196604/original/file-20171128-2038-667j4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196604/original/file-20171128-2038-667j4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196604/original/file-20171128-2038-667j4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196604/original/file-20171128-2038-667j4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Detail of an Athenian red-figure psykter (cooler) depicting a satyr balancing a kantharos on his penis, painted by Douris, c. 500-490 BC. British Museum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The intention of the <em>ithyphallic</em> (erect) satyrs is clear in their appearance on vases (even if they rarely caught the maenads they were chasing); at the same time their massive erect penises are indicative of the “beastliness” and grotesque ugliness of a large penis as opposed to the classical ideal of male beauty represented by a smaller one. </p>
<p>Actors who performed in satyr plays during dramatic festivals took to the stage and orchestra with fake phallus costumes to indicate that they were not humans, but these mythical beasts of Dionysus.</p>
<p>Early collectors of classical art were shocked to discover that the Greeks and Romans they so admired were earthy humans too with a range of sexual needs and desires. But in emphasising the sexual aspects of this art they underplayed the non-sexual role of phallic symbols.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87859/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Craig Barker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From phallus-shaped wind chimes to explicit erotica on lamps and cups, sex is everywhere in ancient Greek and Roman art. But our interpretations of these images say much about our own culture.Craig Barker, Education Manager, Sydney University Museums, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/888532017-12-12T19:11:55Z2017-12-12T19:11:55ZThe grim reality of the brothels of Pompeii<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198241/original/file-20171208-11315-1xc8pzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Brothels in Pompeii were decorated with murals depicting erotic and exotic scenes: but the reality was far more brutal and mundane.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Pompeii_Brothel_%285949526900%29.jpg/1024px-Pompeii_Brothel_%285949526900%29.jpg">Thomas Shahan/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our series on sexual histories, authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today.</em></p>
<p>Like the anxious men who began excavations at Pompeii in the 18th century and discovered more about the ancient Italians than they had bargained for – such as <a href="https://lavishlife.net/tag/naples/">phallic-shaped lamps</a> – historians of sex are regularly confronted with case studies from the past that challenge their own ethics. Those who worked the streets of Pompeii and served clients in the brothels lived hard lives, yet many of the murals that survive depict the women as erotic and exotic.</p>
<p>Murals from brothels and buildings that served as brothels (such as inns, lunch counters, and taverns) show fair-skinned women, naked (except for the occasional breast band), with stylised hair, in a variety of sexual positions with young, tanned, athletic men. The figures sport on beds that are sometimes ornate and festooned with decorative quilts.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198255/original/file-20171208-11291-q92f7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198255/original/file-20171208-11291-q92f7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198255/original/file-20171208-11291-q92f7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198255/original/file-20171208-11291-q92f7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198255/original/file-20171208-11291-q92f7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198255/original/file-20171208-11291-q92f7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198255/original/file-20171208-11291-q92f7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mural from a Pompeii brothel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nikonvscanon/5770535405/in/photolist-9MVv8K-oDZjeq-8QVyhd-864MGy-gjbeyi-oX9Wgb-fkZkug-cDFrrd-peBqrL-pemN8v-peAEXb-c2DCaY-9REt5B-peCAJa-cDFfqJ-peCMGc-peCKWt-cDFmQG-peCyEa-fPWHXT-4wyyyq-pen1BP-7eNE58-oX9p2Y-cDFcey-pYk7J2-cDFjzm-oX8M7o-cDFo3f-oXajxV-oX8km4-peCxon-qdugjo-shwyB-peDqnM-peCDd8-cDFpcU-penkZB-oXa8Eo-9TWM28-Aedm67-wrNLB-g8t6k7-oX9yVf-dN7jG-pemSHH-qdgvy7-pPbaAt-wrMMS-cDFgpU">David Blaikie/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In buildings identified as brothels, the murals may have been intended to arouse clients. They may also have functioned as pictorial menus or even served as instruction manuals for more inexperienced customers. In buildings identified as private residences, the scenes were most likely decorative but also designed, perhaps, for titillation.</p>
<p>Contrary to the idealised images, the brothels themselves provide evidence that the women worked in cells, usually only big enough for a narrow bed. The absence of windows in most attests to the darkness of the cells, as well as limited air flow.</p>
<p>Excavations also suggest that the cells were usually without doors, which implies that the rooms may have been curtained. They have also revealed stone beds. Wooden beds as well as pallets were likely also used, but would have perished in the eruption of <a href="http://geology.com/volcanoes/vesuvius/">Mount Vesuvius</a> in AD 79.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198249/original/file-20171208-11299-h176bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198249/original/file-20171208-11299-h176bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198249/original/file-20171208-11299-h176bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198249/original/file-20171208-11299-h176bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198249/original/file-20171208-11299-h176bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198249/original/file-20171208-11299-h176bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198249/original/file-20171208-11299-h176bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An excavated brothel room in Pompeii.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chriswsn/10630275313/in/photolist-hcmWuR-7cJL9w-m4Fdgk-7eLSWn-7cJL1A-oX8RLT-7HAMkz-hcmXbk-3X9v9B-7cERPr-AuETEY-pcAGJy-oX9D1t-6ZqCX3-oXa7XF-4Z7bPX-BkoDs-3XdHh1-7cJKAU-a4JT51-Bkopd-7jdVh9-pcAGZU-c2DCD5-8QSvCT-dGvrS-92pkM1-a4G334-3X9seV-4Z7krg-cDFyGS-4ZbANf-92xqjE-cDFqj9-hscx4b-92phFY-oX9dg1-uPgsZ-861ACe-pemG5i-uPgsC-uPgsy-pcBCYq-53qrv9-3XThCZ-3XTeaV-pcB3mu-6ZmBTn-hscAab-9B9CXm">Chris Williamson</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The conditions in which the women worked were of no concern to brothel owners, clients or anyone else for that matter, as most sex workers in ancient Italy were slaves. As the ancient attitude towards slaves was one of indifference at best, and violent disdain at worst, the lives of women were no source of empathy to those outside their class.</p>
<p>The sex workers fulfilled a utilitarian function and nothing else. Confined to the premises by (usually) male pimps who provided them with only their most basic needs, the women were essentially cut off from the outside world. This rendered them vulnerable to the whims of both pimp and client alike.</p>
<p>Women who worked the streets in Pompeii often waited around archways and other standard locations such as graveyards and public baths. In larger towns and cities, where control of the sex trade was harder to manage, some of these women may have worked without pimps. Those who made up this percentage of workers were mostly freed slaves and poor freeborn women.</p>
<h2>Stories from graffiti</h2>
<p>The preservation of graffiti on the walls of Pompeii’s buildings also provides historians with details of the sex trade. Most of it is extremely graphic. It includes information on specific services and prices, clients’ appraisals of certain women and their abilities (or lack thereof), and some sexual advice.</p>
<p>Some graffiti are straight to the point:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Thrust slowly</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Others are advertisements:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Euplia was here<br>
with two thousand<br>
beautiful men</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Or list prices:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Euplia sucks for five dollars*</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Often the names of slaves and, by default, sex workers, had Greek origins. The name “Euplia”, for example, comes from a Greek word meaning “fair voyage”. Sex workers’ names sometimes denoted the function or physical features of the individual in question. In this case, Euplia promised her clients a fair voyage.</p>
<p>Graffiti also attests to male sex workers in Pompeii. As with the writings concerning women, this graffiti lists specific services offered and sometimes prices. As freeborn women were not permitted to have intercourse with anyone but their husbands, the clients who accessed male sex workers were almost exclusively men. The sexual mores of ancient Rome, catered for male-to-male sexual encounters if certain protocols were maintained (a citizen could not be penetrated, for example).</p>
<p>The few literary records that suggest there may have been female clients of sex workers are questionable, as they were usually written for satiric or comedic purposes. Still, it would be naïve to discount instances of wealthy, freeborn women accessing male sex workers or household slaves.</p>
<p>Similarly, it would be naïve to assume that male clients did not seek other men with whom they could participate in acts deemed socially unacceptable (essentially acts in which the citizen male would occupy a submissive role).</p>
<h2>Society and the sex trade</h2>
<p>At the time of the eruption of <a href="http://geology.com/volcanoes/vesuvius/">Vesuvius</a>, Pompeii was a town of modest size, with a population of around 11,000, and a <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/take-tour-pompeii-home-before-9016594">thriving community</a> with sophisticated architecture and infrastructure. Located in Campania, some 23 kilometres southeast of Naples, and near the port of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Pozzuoli">Pozzuoli</a>, it enjoyed robust trade and economy, and had a multicultural demographic.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198266/original/file-20171208-11347-15m5v9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198266/original/file-20171208-11347-15m5v9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198266/original/file-20171208-11347-15m5v9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198266/original/file-20171208-11347-15m5v9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198266/original/file-20171208-11347-15m5v9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198266/original/file-20171208-11347-15m5v9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198266/original/file-20171208-11347-15m5v9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pompeii ruins with Mount Vesuvius in the background.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nikonvscanon/5771074270/in/photolist-9MYgjw-m3piXR-pdhTS6-pAYupC-9Fs1Ej-eivYiK-qb3au1-pjvUCn-pB1gWF-eiwBjB-bNNdM4-gZkkwk-mwRRhH-VYnLe5-dbgc8P-RJPgfe-929Bgv-U45TEh-eTteTS-eThq5P-dbgcun-SYKMER-eTuYwd-SPiHnU-u97bF-eSJRyJ-evYRXv-">David Blaikie/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The prosperity of the town and the continual presence of merchants ensured a strong market for sex. Indeed, the sex trade was integral to the successful functioning of society, particularly marriages. </p>
<p>As marriages, particularly those among the elite classes, were arranged and predominantly for the birth of male heirs, a husband would not seek sexual pleasures from his wife. Rather, out of respect for her, a man would pay for pleasurable sex, especially those acts that were not expected to be performed by a respectable woman.</p>
<p>Indeed, the graffiti attests to five different types of sex for sale: intercourse, cunnilingus, fellatio, active anal sex, and passive anal sex. Thus the sex trade performed a type of social and moral policing of the institution of marriage, as well as the preservation of an adult male’s reputation and masculinity. As
sex work was not illegal (being predominantly structured around slavery) but adultery was outlawed, this was another reason for paying for sex.</p>
<p>The layers of volcanic materials that covered Pompeii and most of its population to a depth of 25 metres left extensive evidence of the ancient Italians, their lifestyles, and their environments. Ironically, the eruption that trapped the inhabitants in both time and place has bestowed a strange immortality upon them. </p>
<p>These people whisper to us, and their tales are varied, joyous and sad. Their stories are sometimes shocking and even heartbreaking, but, like the lives of the sex workers, worthy of remembrance. </p>
<p><em>*Five dollars is a rough conversion of the value of ‘five asses’: the currency in the original graffiti.</em></p>
<p><em>Tomorrow: the sexualisation of girlhood in 19th century postcards.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88853/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marguerite Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Though their activities were depicted alluringly in murals, the sex workers of Pompeii were slaves who lived hard lives.Marguerite Johnson, Professor of Classics, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/404022016-01-12T12:38:22Z2016-01-12T12:38:22ZDinosaurs thought to have died in Pompeii-style disaster probably drowned in porridgy torrent<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79295/original/image-20150424-14549-epphnv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Doomed dinos, but these Psittacosaurs weren't killed by volcanic ash.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Sibbick</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The discovery of hundreds of extremely well-preserved dinosaur fossils in China in the 1990s, some in the postures they adopted at the moment of death, has kept scientists busy ever since. The finding led to <a href="https://theconversation.com/feathered-dinosaur-death-site-revealed-as-animal-pompeii-22803">comparisons</a> with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/pompeiis-stolen-frescoes-are-the-latest-case-in-a-long-history-of-neglect-24602">Roman city of Pompeii</a>, where citizens were entombed in the falling ash from the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. </p>
<p>But while this is a reasonable comparison, a closer look at the sediments around the small town of <a href="http://www.davehone.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Rogers-et-al.-2015-Chinese-Pompeii-Lujiatun.pdf">Lujiatun</a> in north-east China, where the fossils were found, suggests volcanic ash may not be to blame for the death of the dinosaurs.</p>
<h2>Remarkable remains</h2>
<p>The fossils, stuck in time as thee-dimensional skeletons, are truly unique considering most other fossilised dinosaurs and birds from the same region and era (125m years ago) were flattened, albeit often showing evidence of feathers and hair.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92258/original/image-20150818-12443-19q47ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92258/original/image-20150818-12443-19q47ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92258/original/image-20150818-12443-19q47ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92258/original/image-20150818-12443-19q47ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92258/original/image-20150818-12443-19q47ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92258/original/image-20150818-12443-19q47ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92258/original/image-20150818-12443-19q47ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92258/original/image-20150818-12443-19q47ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A victim of the Mount Vesuvius eruption at Pompeii, petrified and preserved by the volcanic ash.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/schnappi/9870351964/">Pompeii10/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The dinosaurs, birds and small mammals at Lujiatun were found within rocks full of volcanic ash. It initially seemed they were all buried together after a huge eruption created a catastrophic ash cloud.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92113/original/image-20150817-25727-1d6ijan.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92113/original/image-20150817-25727-1d6ijan.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92113/original/image-20150817-25727-1d6ijan.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92113/original/image-20150817-25727-1d6ijan.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92113/original/image-20150817-25727-1d6ijan.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92113/original/image-20150817-25727-1d6ijan.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92113/original/image-20150817-25727-1d6ijan.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fossil of Psittacosaurus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Psittacosaurus_mongoliensis.jpg">Ghedoghedo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A dog-sized horned dinosaur known as <a href="http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/fossil-halls/hall-of-ornithischian-dinosaurs/psittacosaurus"><em>Psittacosaurus</em></a> is Lujiatun’s most common find. Scientists have dug up both isolated individuals and clusters of five or six juveniles, which appear as if they had been buried together. The discovery of another dinosaur, <a href="http://discovermagazine.com/2005/jan/meet-mei-long"><em>Mei long</em></a>, which is preserved curled up in a bird-like sleeping position, was what lead to the suggestion that the animals had been killed by poisonous volcanic gases and then buried.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92147/original/image-20150817-5110-1cp3ymn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92147/original/image-20150817-5110-1cp3ymn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92147/original/image-20150817-5110-1cp3ymn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92147/original/image-20150817-5110-1cp3ymn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92147/original/image-20150817-5110-1cp3ymn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92147/original/image-20150817-5110-1cp3ymn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92147/original/image-20150817-5110-1cp3ymn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92147/original/image-20150817-5110-1cp3ymn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A curled up Mei long dinosaur, almost perfectly preserved.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mei_(dinosaur)#/media/File:Mei_Long.jpg">Cropbot</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Recently, different groups of researchers have investigated the sediments that produced the Lujiatun fossils. They have suggested that <a href="http://volcano.si.edu/learn_galleries.cfm?p=13">volcanic mudflows</a> (lahars) – a destructive slurry of ejected volcanic debris and boiling water – buried the one group of young Psittacosaurus, while another Psittacosaurus specimen was described as having been overcome by a different type of volcanic debris flow. However, we don’t know exactly what location and which rocks they come from, so it’s hard to be sure. </p>
<p>This is a symptom of a much larger problem in Chinese palaeontology, where many fossils are excavated by local collectors. They often make it into museums without important information about the exact location of the find.</p>
<h2>Matching fossils and rocks</h2>
<p>In the summer of 2013, my colleagues and I went to visit Lujiatun village. We wanted to work out exactly where the fossils were coming from and whether they had originated from a single event. </p>
<p>We made a detailed study of the fossil-rich sediments around the village. Once we identified the rocks the fossils were coming from, it became clear the fossils had in fact been recovered from multiple levels of depth, pointing to a number of different burial events. </p>
<p>Detailed study of the rocks in the field and microscopic sections showed that the sediments were very rich in volcanic material, but did not show the combination of characters we would expect from a deposit produced from an eruption of volcanic ash (airfall deposits), such as abundant melt fragments.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92257/original/image-20150818-12418-10as3ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92257/original/image-20150818-12418-10as3ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92257/original/image-20150818-12418-10as3ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92257/original/image-20150818-12418-10as3ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92257/original/image-20150818-12418-10as3ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92257/original/image-20150818-12418-10as3ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92257/original/image-20150818-12418-10as3ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92257/original/image-20150818-12418-10as3ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mudflow after the 1982 eruption of Mount St Helens in the US.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahar#/media/File:MSH82_lahar_from_march_82_eruption_03-21-82.jpg">USGS</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We found that the sediments had a predominantly volcanic source, but were subsequently transported by flowing water. Evidence for this comes from graded bed boundaries and well rounded sedimentary rock fragments, as well as isolated vertebrate material which shows clear signs of transport.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018215001686">Our interpretation</a> then is that Lujiatun is not a Chinese Pompeii at all. Some dinosaurs may have been killed by frequent eruptions in the area, but most of the fossil finds represent single animals and clusters that had been overwhelmed by water-borne ash and volcanic shards that were picked up and reworked by intense bursts of rainfall. The animals were borne along by a churning, porridge-like sheet flood that swamped and drowned them in its rapid motion.</p>
<p>Some animals preserved in the Lujiatun deposits seem to have been resting when they died but it is clear that not all of them were. Even for those that are curled up, it is debatable whether these are really sleeping postures. Since there is no evidence to link the multiple burial events directly to volcanism or other possible releases of toxic gases it has yet to be established whether these animals were alive when buried. But it does seem clear from the completeness of specimens that they were quickly buried and not transported considerable distances.</p>
<p>The rocks themselves contain a wealth of information about the environment that dinosaurs such as Psittacosaurus lived and died in. What’s more, studies such as ours help to demonstrate the importance of considering the deposit as a whole, and the indispensability of fieldwork. It is sometimes too easy to accept a seductive and dramatic story. But the world is often more complicated than that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40402/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Was there a ‘dinosaur Pompeii’ in China? New research questions the claim.Chris Rogers, PhD student in Geology, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/500452015-11-19T11:17:50Z2015-11-19T11:17:50ZTalking heads: what toilets and sewers tell us about ancient Roman sanitation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102339/original/image-20151118-14191-5yzen5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C460%2C4073%2C2379&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ruin of a second-century public toilet in Roman Ostia.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/paullew/7870818466">Fr Lawrence Lew, OP</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I’ve spent an awful lot of time in Roman sewers – enough to earn me the nickname “Queen of Latrines” from my friends. The Etruscans laid the first underground sewers in the city of Rome around 500 BC. These cavernous tunnels below the city’s streets were built of finely carved stones, and the Romans were happy to utilize them when they took over the city. Such structures then became the norm in many cities throughout the Roman world. </p>
<p>Focusing on life in ancient Rome, Pompeii, Herculaneum and Ostia, I’m deeply impressed by the brilliant engineers who designed these underground marvels and the magnificent architecture that masks their functional purpose. Sewer galleries didn’t run under every street, nor service every area. But in some cities, including Rome itself, the length and breadth of the main sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, rivals the extent of the main sewer lines in many of today’s cities. We shouldn’t assume, though, that Roman toilets, sewers and water systems were constructed with our same modern sanitary goals in mind.</p>
<p>The streets of a Roman city would have been cluttered with dung, vomit, pee, shit, garbage, filthy water, rotting vegetables, animal skins and guts, and other refuse from various shops that lined the sidewalks. We moderns think of urban sewers as the means to remove such filth from streets – and of course flush away human waste that goes down our toilets.</p>
<p>Researching Roman urban infrastructure for my new book <a href="http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-5298.html">The Archaeology of Sanitation in Roman Italy</a> made me question whether the Romans shared the same vision. The archaeological evidence suggests that their finely constructed sewer systems were more about drainage of standing water than the removal of dirty debris. And Romans’ sense of cleanliness and privacy around bathroom matters was quite different from our tender modern sensibilities.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102334/original/image-20151118-14183-1m8yeu7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102334/original/image-20151118-14183-1m8yeu7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102334/original/image-20151118-14183-1m8yeu7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102334/original/image-20151118-14183-1m8yeu7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102334/original/image-20151118-14183-1m8yeu7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102334/original/image-20151118-14183-1m8yeu7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102334/original/image-20151118-14183-1m8yeu7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102334/original/image-20151118-14183-1m8yeu7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Inside a tunnel of Rome’s sewer, the Cloaca Maxima.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Sewers managed excess water more than waste</h2>
<p>The Cloaca Maxima in Rome was not part of a <a href="https://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300101867">master plan to sanitize the city</a>. Its purpose was removing water that pooled on the city’s uneven streets and draining water from low-lying areas when the adjacent Tiber River flooded, which happened quite frequently. Its main function was drainage – and what it drained ran right back into Rome’s major drinking supply before the aqueducts, the Tiber.</p>
<p>Roman sewers moved filthy water away from where it hindered cleanliness, economic growth, urban development and even industry. My work in the sewers of Herculaneum and Pompeii – both buried by the pyroclastic flow caused by Mount Vesuvius’ volcanic eruption in AD 79 – has brought me to the same conclusion.</p>
<p>At the bottom of one sewer under a street in Herculaneum, the first excavators found an <a href="http://www.quartoknows.com/books/9780711231429/Herculaneum.html">ancient deposit of hardened sludge</a> measuring about 1.35 meters high. No amount of water, however fast-flowing, would have been able to remove that. Several ancient sources state that Roman sewers needed manual cleaning from time to time, a job often done by city slaves or <a href="https://archive.org/stream/letterswithengli02plinuoft/letterswithengli02plinuoft_djvu.txt">prisoners</a>. I’d argue these urban sewer systems provided minimal sanitary benefits overall.</p>
<h2>Plenty of toilets, few sewer hookups</h2>
<p>Public and private toilets were sprinkled throughout the city of Pompeii. But despite the city’s sewer infrastructure, virtually none of these toilets had sewer connections. We have similar evidence for ancient Herculaneum.</p>
<p>In fact, almost every private house in these cities, and many apartment houses in Ostia, had private, usually one-seater, toilets not connected to the main sewer lines.</p>
<p>And these cesspit toilets were often situated in the kitchen, where food was prepared! The comforting smells from a hearty stew would have mingled with the gross odors from the nearby open cesspit. Collected waste was either sold to farmers for fertilizer or used in <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Columella/de_Re_Rustica/1*.html">household gardens</a> – which must have made for some pretty stinky garden parties from time to time.</p>
<p>According to Ulpian’s Digest, written between AD 211 and 222, connections to the sewers from private dwellings certainly were legal. So why didn’t property owners hook up to the public sewer lines?</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102332/original/image-20151118-14214-1pedy5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102332/original/image-20151118-14214-1pedy5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102332/original/image-20151118-14214-1pedy5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102332/original/image-20151118-14214-1pedy5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102332/original/image-20151118-14214-1pedy5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102332/original/image-20151118-14214-1pedy5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102332/original/image-20151118-14214-1pedy5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102332/original/image-20151118-14214-1pedy5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A private toilet under the stairs in Herculaneum’s Casa del Gran Portale.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One reason may be tied to that fact that Roman sewer openings had no traps. One never could be sure what might climb out of an open sewer pipe and into your house.</p>
<p>We have at least one dramatic ancient story that illustrates the danger of hooking your house up to a public sewer in the first or second century AD. The <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0590%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D13">author Aelian tells us</a> about a wealthy Iberian merchant in the city of Puteoli; every night a giant octopus swam into the sewer from the sea and proceeded up through the house drain in the toilet to eat all the pickled fish stored in his well-stocked pantry.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102408/original/image-20151118-14217-15dco8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102408/original/image-20151118-14217-15dco8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102408/original/image-20151118-14217-15dco8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102408/original/image-20151118-14217-15dco8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102408/original/image-20151118-14217-15dco8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102408/original/image-20151118-14217-15dco8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102408/original/image-20151118-14217-15dco8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102408/original/image-20151118-14217-15dco8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Broken connections in a Herculaneum house’s terracotta downspout within the wall would have caused stinky leaks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Adding to the stench of Roman life, my close examination of ancient plumbing found that many downpipes from house toilets on upper floors would have suffered serious leakage inside the walls as well as oozing onto the outside of the walls too. The fittings of these terracotta downpipes loosened over time, and their contents would have caused stink everywhere.</p>
<p>I was able to identify at least 15 upper-story toilets at Pompeii and others at Herculaneum and elsewhere. In some cases, I <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Roman_Toilets.html?id=bF1jXwAACAAJ">obtained proof through scientific testing</a> for urine and/or excrement that the spillage was indeed human waste from these pipes. </p>
<h2>Public toilets held their own hazards</h2>
<p>Even public latrines – multi-seater toilets that were almost always connected to the main sewer lines of a city – posed serious threats to users. Don’t be fooled by the clean white marble and open-air sunniness of the reconstructed ruins we can see today; most Roman public toilets were dark, dank and dirty, and often situated in small spaces. Those who could “hold it” long enough to return to their own houses with their own cesspit toilets certainly would have done so.</p>
<p>One public toilet at Ostia, with its revolving doors for access and fountain basin for cleaning up, could handle more than 20 clients at a time. I have found no evidence that Romans had to pay to use public toilets, and we really don’t know who managed or cleaned them, apart from the possibility of public slaves. To our modern eyes there was almost a complete lack of privacy in such facilities; but bear in mind that Roman men would have been wearing tunics or togas, which would have provided more screening than a modern man would enjoy with pants that have to be pulled down. Perhaps a bigger problem for today’s standards of cleanliness: the Roman version of toilet paper in many cases was a communal sponge on a stick.</p>
<p>Even worse, these public latrines were notorious for terrifying customers when flames exploded from their seat openings. These were caused by gas explosions of hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and methane (CH4) that were rank as well as frightening. Customers also had to worry about rats and other small vermin threatening to bite their bottoms. And then there was the perceived threat of demons that the Romans believed inhabited these black holes leading to the mysterious underbelly of the city.</p>
<p>One late Roman writer tells a particularly exciting story about such a demon. A certain Dexianos was sitting on the privy in the middle of the night, the text tells us, when a demon raised itself in front of him with savage ferocity. As soon as Dexianos saw the “hellish and insane” demon, he “became stunned, seized with fear and trembling, and covered with sweat.” Such superstition would provide another good reason for avoiding sewer connections in private house toilets.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102328/original/image-20151118-14202-6gj6vv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102328/original/image-20151118-14202-6gj6vv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102328/original/image-20151118-14202-6gj6vv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102328/original/image-20151118-14202-6gj6vv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102328/original/image-20151118-14202-6gj6vv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102328/original/image-20151118-14202-6gj6vv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=712&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102328/original/image-20151118-14202-6gj6vv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=712&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102328/original/image-20151118-14202-6gj6vv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=712&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Goddess Fortuna on the wall of a the Suburban Baths in Pompeii.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Going to a public toilet was definitely a dangerous business, so it is no wonder that the Goddess Fortuna often appears as a kind of “guardian angel” on the walls of toilets. We don’t tend to put religious shrines in our toilets, but we find them again and again in both public and private toilets in the Roman world.</p>
<p>One graffito on a side street in Pompeii directs a warning at a toilet-user himself: “Crapper Beware the Evil”… of crapping on the street? Of putting your bare bottom on an open toilet hole for fear of biting demons? Of the ill health you will feel if you do not move your bowels well? We’ll never know for sure, but these are likely possibilities, I think.</p>
<p>When we look at the evidence for Roman sanitary practices, both textual and archaeological, it becomes obvious that their perspectives were quite different from ours. Gaining a better understanding of Roman life on their streets, in their public spaces, and in their private dwellings shows us that they were in the early stages of developing systems that we’ve adopted – with upgrades – for our own problems with sanitation and clean water today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50045/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Archaeological and textual detective work is filling in some information about how ancient Romans used and thought about their sewers thousands of years ago.Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow, Professor of Classical Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/367422015-01-29T16:23:14Z2015-01-29T16:23:14ZScientists use physics to read scrolls from Herculaneum – but why do we care?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70504/original/image-20150129-22302-23tnwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Teeming with secrets...</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">edella/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recent <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms6895.epdf?referrer_access_token=4woEjfQtcsyy_lpxAStkrNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PmAEgoyrsaLtcEYldey3iJ3AxTM-_8SIj6VvbiHgvICc_aQ2DD0stxbOfx12PXk4-87X6kKT2k_LA7Dwqrbkua">announcement</a> that European scientists had pioneered a technique for reading papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum without unrolling them attracted widespread attention. </p>
<p>At first glance, this might seem odd. Of all the artefacts to have been unearthed from the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum – from the priceless silver to the titillating frescoes, the monumental sculpture to the mundane kitchen utensils – the papyrus scrolls excavated from a grand villa on the edge of Herculaneum seem to be among the least glamorous. Solidified in the volcanic matter that drowned the villa, they resemble nothing so much as lumps of charcoal. Indeed, early excavators in the 1750s, assuming that was all they were, discarded a good many.</p>
<h2>Library of antiquity</h2>
<p>Yet this unremarkable appearance belies their true nature. These scrolls were, in fact, the holdings of the villa’s extensive library, the only library to have survived from antiquity. Their promise of untold literary riches has captivated the world ever since, so no wonder that these new developments have received such plaudits. </p>
<p>Scholars and scientists have been battling to satisfactorily decipher the scrolls’ contents ever since an Italian priest named Piaggio devised a machine, in the 1750s, that could painstakingly unroll the papyrus. The first scroll took four years to unroll, and even then, the black ink on the blackened background was exceptionally difficult to read. More recent technological developments in infrared and multi-spectral imaging have allowed the text on unrolled scrolls to be much more easily deciphered.</p>
<p>But the contents of the many other scrolls (too fragile for modern scholars to risk unrolling them) have remained hidden – until the “x-ray phase-contrast tomography” of the new technique, which enables us, finally, to discern the letters written by an ancient hand.</p>
<p>This is undeniably a big step forward. But it is wise to temper our excitement – the “secrets of the scrolls” are still a long way from being fully unlocked. The new technique has, so far, allowed a series of individual letters to be read, and a couple of words to be cautiously decoded, but no more. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70526/original/image-20150129-22292-1rkuipo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70526/original/image-20150129-22292-1rkuipo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70526/original/image-20150129-22292-1rkuipo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70526/original/image-20150129-22292-1rkuipo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70526/original/image-20150129-22292-1rkuipo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70526/original/image-20150129-22292-1rkuipo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70526/original/image-20150129-22292-1rkuipo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The offending volcano.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Viacheslav Lopatin/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Insatiable desire for secrets</h2>
<p>So an equally interesting aspect of this new development is the view it allows us of how we in the modern world think about antiquity. </p>
<p>The Herculaneum scrolls exert a powerful pull on the modern imagination because of their possible contents. So much ancient literature has been lost – with only 10% surviving into the modern world, on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25106956">some reckonings</a> – that it is hard to suppress our fervent hopes that a great lost work might be discovered in the Villa of the Papyri’s library. Most <a href="http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2007/10/my-five-favouri.html">classicists</a> would give their eye teeth to lay their hands on a copy of Ovid’s version of the Medea, for a start. </p>
<p>Popular representations of the Vesuvian cities have sometimes played with this idea to good ironic effect. Robert Harris’s bestselling novel, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/sep/06/featuresreviews.guardianreview24">Pompeii</a> (2003), has the owner of the villa pleading with her rescuers to save the library, too: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is where we keep the volumes which my ancestors brought back from Greece. One hundred and twenty plays by Sophocles alone. All the works of Aristotle, some in his own hand. They are irreplaceable …</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>No more Philodemus</h2>
<p>Our imaginations run away with us even though, in fact, we do know the subject of a good many of the scrolls. Even the earliest decoders recognised that most of them were philosophical texts written by a 1st century BC Epicurean philosopher, Philodemus. In the latest announcement, it was declared that these unrolled scrolls were likely the works of Philodemus too, based on a tentative analysis of the handwriting. This prompts more than a little disappointment, though modern commentators are usually more measured than 18th and 19th century onlookers. </p>
<p>Both the poet Wordsworth and the pioneering art historian Winckelmann were quite open about their regret that these were the texts that had survived, and not the great canonical works of antiquity. </p>
<p>Today, though, the reality of the Villa’s library – at least based on our current state of knowledge – forces us to confront our relationship to antiquity, and what we hope to get from it. Is there an arrogance to our choosiness over which texts survive (“we’d like more ancient texts, but not from this stuffy philosopher, thank you”), or is it an honest reflection of the fact that some kinds of ancient texts are more intelligible, and so perhaps more meaningful, to modern audiences? </p>
<p>Nor are these idle questions. They underpin the debates over whether archaeological activity on the Bay of Naples should focus on what has already been found, or keep unearthing new finds. Arguments for more excavations in the Villa of the Papyri <a href="http://www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk/files/newsletters/harchissue1.pdf">perennially recur</a>, driven in no small way by this desire to look for more texts. </p>
<p>Of course, the Villa is not the only place to conduct this treasure hunt. Other texts turn up, and the recent discovery of new work by the poet <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-sappho-poems-set-classical-world-reeling-22608">Sappho</a> occasioned a good deal more excitement than discoveries of more Philodemus might. Despite any lingering disappointment felt as the Vesuvian scrolls slowly give up their secrets, their hold on the popular imagination, and the seductive allure of Pompeii and Herculaneum more generally, is unlikely to weaken any time soon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36742/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Paul does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The recent announcement that European scientists had pioneered a technique for reading papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum without unrolling them attracted widespread attention. At first glance, this might…Joanna Paul, Lecturer in Classical Studies, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/260202014-04-30T05:15:03Z2014-04-30T05:15:03ZThe Pompeii film may not be accurate, but that doesn’t mean history suffers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47299/original/g8c2wppb-1398787017.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pompeii and circumstance.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-166016213/stock-photo-mount-vesuvius-and-ruins-of-ancient-town-pompeii-in-italy.html?src=lz7f8Mt5Pv54HNsQ7zgXEw-1-1">Sailorr/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It seems that every time a new film based on historical events is released, there’s a rush to discuss accuracy, realism and what value the film might have for learning anything about the past. This is as true for films about antiquity as it is for films set 50 or 100 years ago. But perhaps these are not the right questions to ask. In such cases, does accuracy matter quite so much?</p>
<p>The purpose of a film is to tell a story – whether entirely fictional or not – not to be an educational tool. That’s why documentaries exist. The makers of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1921064/">Pompeii</a>, the newest film set in the ancient world, may claim attention to detail and historical accuracy, but real accuracy seems an impossibility, and is really an unfair burden to place on what is, in essence, an heroic action film.</p>
<p>There’s plenty of fierce discussion on Twitter and in comment sections about these inaccuracies. There’s the manner in which the eruption takes place (there was no fire raining down on escaping Pompeians) and the location of the amphitheatre (it should be in the southeast corner of the city, not in the north). </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CAqqYBwMeZk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>But these are details which are of course solely driven by artistic license, and license that for this type of film is wholly predictable. Fire is much more dramatic than a lot of pumice and ash, and the foreboding view of Vesuvius looming over the arena must add an element of expectant dread for the viewer. </p>
<p>And isn’t that the point? The elements of antiquity that are altered are done so in order to better tell the story, to enhance the experience of the moviegoer. If the average person in the cinema learns a little something in the process, then that’s just the cherry on the cake. If it spurns someone on to read more, or take a trip to Italy to see it for themselves, even better. Or, if it is just a fun two hours watching some sword fighting and volcanic drama (with undoubtedly a bit of romance thrown in), well that’s good too. History won’t suffer because the film isn’t quite right on every detail.</p>
<p>This is not to say that particularly egregious historical inaccuracies don’t set my teeth on edge – they often do. But films like this aren’t made for scholars who have been working in Pompeii (or Rome, or Greece) for more than a decade – they are for the general public. For the average person sitting in the cinema (expert or not), what it comes down to really is how compelling the story is. The flaws in accuracy can be overlooked if the story and the characters capture the viewer’s attention. This was the case with <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0172495/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Gladiator</a>, the HBO/BBC series <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0384766/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Rome</a>, but not so much with some other recent sword and sandal films – I’m looking at you, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0346491/">Alexander</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332452/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Troy</a>. Until I get a chance to see it for myself, whether or not Pompeii tells a good story is something I cannot judge.</p>
<p>Regardless of what might be historically wrong with the film, I have no doubt that many will see it and enjoy it. Pompeii has always been a huge attraction – the ruins wouldn’t get 2.5 million visitors per year otherwise. And Pompeii has a particular hold on us. This is not, of course, entirely about viewing antiquity – it is the drama, the tragedy. </p>
<p>Whether walking around the city, reading, learning, or watching films about it, the fascinating pull of Pompeii is the thought of a whole community of average people, living their lives, until one day everything stopped. It is the suddenness of that end that engenders a kind of empathy and fascination. As macabre as that may sound, it is an element of Pompeii that can be found from the earliest visitors, when writers such as Goethe, Mary Shelley, and Mark Twain wrote about the spectre-like aspect of the city and its unfortunate inhabitants, frozen in time at their horrific end.</p>
<p>There is something immensely compelling about the tragedy that befell the people living in this city that draws people to its story. This is equally true for those of us in academia who work there as it is for the general public. </p>
<p>These filmmakers have just found another way to tell that story, and in doing so, it will reach far more people than any scholar ever could. For that reason, how accurately they have done it isn’t really that important, and assuming that those going to see the film hadn’t anticipated a bit of artistic license is entirely unrealistic.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26020/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Virginia L Campbell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It seems that every time a new film based on historical events is released, there’s a rush to discuss accuracy, realism and what value the film might have for learning anything about the past. This is…Virginia L Campbell, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/246022014-03-25T06:12:23Z2014-03-25T06:12:23ZPompeii’s stolen frescoes are the latest case in a long history of neglect<p>It was <a href="http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Ancient-fresco-stolen-from-Pompeii/32103">reported recently</a> that a fresco has been stolen from Pompeii. Its absence must have been hard to notice. <a href="http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/impresa-e-territori/2014-03-03/terzo-crollo-tre-giorni-pompei-stavolta-viene-giu-muro-via-nola-101933.shtml?uuid=ABol0O0">Flooding</a> had severely damaged the already disintegrating frescoes in Pompeii, so one might think that the empty space could be easily overlooked. </p>
<p>But officials noticed that one small piece featuring the goddess Artemis, measuring less than fifteen centimetres square, <a href="http://napoli.repubblica.it/cronaca/2014/03/18/news/pompei_rubato_l_affresco_della_dea_artemide_il_ministero_apre_un_indagine-81260642/">was stolen</a> from Neptune’s domus, an abandoned building of the heritage site that was not accessible to visitors. </p>
<p>This is the second theft in three months. The first happened in <a href="http://www.tmnews.it/web/sezioni/cronaca/furto-affresco-a-pompei-a-gennaio-fu-restituito-altro-frammento-PN_20140318_00201.shtml">January</a>, when another small fresco, this time a floral decoration on a yellow background, disappeared from the superintendence’s restoration laboratory. And despite the ensuing efforts of the public agencies involved, from the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities to the local police, Pompeii has once again been vandalised.</p>
<p>Pompeii has always had an almost <a href="http://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/bjah/article/viewFile/814/792">mythical aura</a> for artists and writers alike. Seducing and terrifying, dark and lively, its double nature of eternalised calamity and the heritage of a pagan, sensual past made it one of the Mediterranean tourist attractions most beloved by the Romantics. With erotic frescoes set in a tragic scenery, Eros and Thanatos have left their mark on this ancient city that, along with Ercolano, was destroyed by a volcanic eruption in 79 A.D. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t6TRwfxDICM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Pompeii’s latest incarnation.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The film industry has also found Pompeii’s fascinating history exploitable. Starting with the first silent film in 1900, adapted from Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s book, the story of Pompeii made it the archetype of the just destruction of a wicked, corrupt society. The latest film inspired by the catastrophe is by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1921064/">Paul W.S. Anderson</a>. His <a href="http://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/film-review-pompeii-1201112224/">Pompeii</a> is to be released in the UK on 2 May. British novelists, American directors, art thieves … nobody seems immune from Pompeii’s allure. Its beauty, however, has failed to impress the Italian government for the last four years.</p>
<p>Pompeii’s frescoes have been the Achilles’ heel of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities since <a href="http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/cultura/2010-11-06/scavi-pompei-crolla-domus-135046.shtml#continue">2010</a>, when a flood almost destroyed the Gladiators’ domus. The poor measures of preservation and restoration taken at the time by right-wing then minister Sandro Bondi received <a href="http://www1.lastampa.it/redazione/cmsSezioni/politica/201011articoli/60316girata.asp">strong criticism</a> from many members of the opposition (which, ironically included the current minister Franceschini). </p>
<p>More and more damages <a href="http://napoli.repubblica.it/cronaca/2012/02/27/news/pompei_crolli_senza_fine_danni_all_intonaco_di_venere_in_conchiglia-30583643/">were reported over the years</a>. These were partly due to natural causes and partly due to the ineffectual preservation measures implemented by the Ministry. Because of this, <a href="http://napoli.repubblica.it/cronaca/2012/02/27/news/de_feo_pdl_pronta_interrogazione_pompei_si_sta_sfaldando-30605628/">millions of euros</a> of national and European funding have been allocated both to the ordinary and extraordinary maintenance of the enormous archaeological area. In addition, the <a href="http://www.beniculturali.it/mibac/export/MiBAC/sito-MiBAC/MenuPrincipale/GrandiRestauri/Grande-Progetto-Pompei/index.html">Great Pompeii Project</a>, which includes improving the CCTV system and the restoring the ancient buildings, was launched in 2012. </p>
<p>But the results of all this have been disappointing. Pompeii’s erosion has been accepted as a matter of fact, and the site risked ending up <a href="http://corrieredelmezzogiorno.corriere.it/napoli/notizie/arte_e_cultura/2013/21-giugno-2013/pompei-attenti-black-list-unesco-2221782940500.shtml">in UNESCO’s black list</a> of endangered World Heritage sites. And despite the alarming news about the state of the artworks, the number of foreign tourists that visit the town has been <a href="http://www.pompeiturismo.it/SITE_10.xl">growing over the last four years</a>, a sign that the charm that attracted wealthy youngsters on their Grand Tour two centuries ago is still very much alive.</p>
<p>Crumbling, neglected, vandalised, Pompeii stands not only for the failures of Italian cultural policies to preserve the national heritage, but also for the general lack of interest of the Italian ruling class for culture. Luca Zaia, the governor of Veneto, <a href="http://tg24.sky.it/tg24/cronaca/2010/11/09/alluvione_veneto_nord_sud_zaia_lega_carlotto_roma.html">said in 2010</a>, “it is a shame to waste 250 million euros for those four stones in Pompeii”. </p>
<p>His words are not reassuring. Apparently the UNESCO world heritage site represents nothing but a few worthless “stones” to those who are in charge of preserving and protecting it. </p>
<p>Franceschini has taken some emergency measures in order to <a href="http://corrieredelmezzogiorno.corriere.it/napoli/notizie/cronaca/2014/19-marzo-2014/pompei-furto-arrivano-misure-straordinarie-vigilantes-assunzioni-2224237615216.shtml">face the crisis</a> and improve the security conditions of the frescoes. This is all very well, but I’m not sure whether a state of degradation that has progressively worsened for years due to political inattention can still be defined as an “emergency”.</p>
<p>But there is still room for hope. One of the frescoes – the floral decoration – <a href="http://napoli.repubblica.it/cronaca/2014/03/18/news/pompei_rubato_l_affresco_della_dea_artemide_il_ministero_apre_un_indagine-81260642/">was returned</a>, shipped from a post office in Florence. What is the reason behind this action? Is it fear, guilt or a romantic concern with the preservation of our artistic heritage? We do not know, but the remorseful thief is not the only embarrassed and repentant culprit in this situation.</p>
<p>Just like the anonymous return of the missing fresco, the “emergency meeting” the minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities summoned is something that stinks of shame and guilt, rather than representing the well-thought out, bona fide initiative the Italian government wants to project.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24602/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Borchi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It was reported recently that a fresco has been stolen from Pompeii. Its absence must have been hard to notice. Flooding had severely damaged the already disintegrating frescoes in Pompeii, so one might…Alice Borchi, PhD Candidate, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/219812014-01-13T14:45:23Z2014-01-13T14:45:23ZThe Pompeii diet: leg of giraffe, sea urchin, hold the KFC<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38958/original/qpwbnsxc-1389619674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Before or after dinner?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Drumsara</span></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38954/original/k7gpsqhb-1389617487.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38954/original/k7gpsqhb-1389617487.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38954/original/k7gpsqhb-1389617487.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38954/original/k7gpsqhb-1389617487.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38954/original/k7gpsqhb-1389617487.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38954/original/k7gpsqhb-1389617487.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38954/original/k7gpsqhb-1389617487.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Back off.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rexness</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Pompeii has always been a magical place for me with its vast avenues and huge government buildings, small familiar houses and gardens and, of course, the mummified bodies of town citizens, immortalised as they went about their normal lives when the volcano blew on that summer afternoon in 79AD. </p>
<p>Now we’re <a href="http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=19029">finding out more</a> about what ordinary people ate, after archaeologists from the Pompeii Archaeological Research Project carried out a detailed analysis of food waste found in a busy street – a street with 20 shop fronts mainly selling food and drink and populated by non-elite working citizens.</p>
<p>In the residue of drains and excrement archaeologists found grains, fruit, nuts, olives, lentils, fish, chicken, meat, eggs, shellfish, sea urchins and even a butchered leg of giraffe (the first example of its kind excavated in Italy). There was salted fish from Spain and, the archaeologists say, spices from as far afield as Indonesia.</p>
<p>So what is the Pompeian diet and what does it tell us about our own eating habits – aside from giraffe being strictly off the menu?</p>
<h2>Food is a social event</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38958/original/qpwbnsxc-1389619674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38958/original/qpwbnsxc-1389619674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38958/original/qpwbnsxc-1389619674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38958/original/qpwbnsxc-1389619674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38958/original/qpwbnsxc-1389619674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38958/original/qpwbnsxc-1389619674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38958/original/qpwbnsxc-1389619674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Before or after dinner?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Drumsara</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the modern developed world, food no longer only means survival – we eat for so many reasons other than biological hunger and the drive to stay alive. Food means celebration; a cake for a birthday treat and a family get together over the holidays. It’s a comfort when feeling fed up, a pick-you-up when down, and a useful distraction when a boring task just needs to be done. And it’s also a sign of love, sexuality, control and power. </p>
<p>Back in 79AD it would seem the people of Pompeii felt the same. The food found by the archaeologists wasn’t the fossilised gruel or scraps of meat that some have expected of lower-class Romans, but a wide array of local and imported foods that form the basis of social gatherings and family meals. </p>
<p>These people were not the rich or elite but food still played a central role in their social and probably emotional lives. Perhaps food has been part of our social world for longer than we sometimes think. The Pompeians also loved food (and sex) but their 2000-year-old diet shows it had a lot more variety.</p>
<h2>Variety is the spice of life</h2>
<p>Over the past 30 years I’ve watched as the experts argue over what we should be eating. Is fat, sugar, carbohydrate or salt <a href="https://theconversation.com/sugar-hysteria-wont-solve-the-obesity-puzzle-17384">the real culprit</a> for all our modern-day illnesses and if so, which types should we eat or avoid: saturated, unsaturated, animal, vegetable, simple or complex? </p>
<p>Everyone (including me) has a view about what constitutes the best diet, and as we find out more about the healthiness or not of different foodstuffs and amounts debates will no doubt continue. What they did know – which we don’t always seem to do some 2,000 years later – is the importance of variety. </p>
<p>We may not be certain about what we should be eating but we probably have a greater chance of getting it right if we have a good variety – a “balanced diet”. And in all its rich glory, from the sea urchins and giraffe leg to simple olives and nuts, the Pompeii discovery shows that even less well-off citizens had variety in their diet.</p>
<h2>We eat what’s there</h2>
<p>Nowadays, with our fast and busy lives packed with multi-tasking and information from all angles, we’re at risk of sticking with what we know and limiting our food intake to what is most easy. And what is most easy now, is what the food industry wants us to eat. </p>
<p>If our shops offer grab bags, duo bars and ready meals then that is <a href="https://theconversation.com/banning-packed-lunches-is-a-step-too-far-16155">what we will eat</a>, and archaeologists of the future will certainly have a much less varied and interesting time going through many of our drains when the time comes. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://theconversation.com/time-to-face-hard-truths-when-it-comes-to-obese-children-15323">we can choose</a> to eat differently. The Pompeians no doubt ate what was available. But perhaps today’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-mediterranean-diet-and-why-is-it-good-for-you-12656">Mediterranean diet</a> offers a more contemporary comparison of real food culture over fast food folly.</p>
<h2>The cost of food</h2>
<p>At the turn of the 20th century, the rich were fat and the poor were thin. One hundred years later this has reversed; obesity is clearly a class issue and the cost of food is seen as a cause of poor diets. The balanced diet that dietitians recommend – high in fruit and vegetables, low in fat – costs too much for some. But the working class people of Pompeii, on this normal street, seemed to manage it – although there are clear indications from comparisons between scraps from shops and neighbours that there were some socio-economic differences in the amount of variety. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38957/original/gbrxknmr-1389619295.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38957/original/gbrxknmr-1389619295.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38957/original/gbrxknmr-1389619295.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38957/original/gbrxknmr-1389619295.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38957/original/gbrxknmr-1389619295.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38957/original/gbrxknmr-1389619295.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38957/original/gbrxknmr-1389619295.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fruit and veg.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the discovery shows a balance of ingredients all ready to be cooked up into a healthy meal whereas ours is a selection of ready meals and takeaways all waiting to be peeled open and heated up. </p>
<p>Ingredients are still relatively cheap. We pay a premium for the processing, preparation and packaging. Perhaps if we ate the ingredients of the shops of Pompeii rather than the meals of the modern high street our money would go further and obesity would be less of a financial issue.</p>
<h2>From giraffe leg to chicken drumstick?</h2>
<p>It may not be fair to say that in under 2,000 years we’ve moved from giraffe leg to deep fried chicken legs. Giraffe leg may well have been a special treat in Pompeii, much as we might have a prime cut for a Sunday lunch. But it’s clear that we need to make better choices if we’re to tackle obesity and ill health from our diets. </p>
<p>Some look to the past for what is true and better. Others to show progress and how lucky we are. Pompeii can be said to offer us both. But the archaeological findings from food waste give us a glimpse into a world without ready meals, hydrogenated oils and processed meats. </p>
<p>And perhaps by understanding how we eat, what we eat and how we can make it better, we might prevent our own modern health disaster – and future archaeologists left to ponder on what went so very wrong.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/21981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Pompeii has always been a magical place for me with its vast avenues and huge government buildings, small familiar houses and gardens and, of course, the mummified bodies of town citizens, immortalised…Jane Ogden, Professor of Health Psychology, University of SurreyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.