Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town

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Another recommended book, for younger readers, is my own Bodies from the Ash: Life and Death in Ancient Pompeii. In Ritual, pioneering scientist Dimitris Xygalatas leads an enlightening tour through one of the most shadowy realms of human behaviour. I read this in preparation for a trip to Pompeii this summer and it hugely enhanced my enjoyment of the visit.

This radical essay explores patriarchy and capitalism’s impact on beauty ideals, and inspires us to embrace our own disobedient bodies.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The book explains both how they were made and how archaeologists deduced information about Pompeian life from them. Corelia's father, a former slave and land speculator Numerius Popidius Ampliatus, came to his fortune after he rebuilt Pompeii from an earthquake decades prior.

I also loved Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum by Paul Roberts, which was printed to accompany a 2013 exhibition at the British Museum. More often than not, people forget that the Vesuvian sites are, as gruesome as it sounds, large mass burials – not just of the cities themselves, but of people. At the top, you can walk along the rim (though not too close) to an area that overlooks the ruins of Pompeii. Plenty of streets blocked to traffic here and lots of detailed archaeological evidence to get to grips with, but coming through the book to the reader is the passion of the author and his need to discover and reveal new facts about Pompeii to his readers.Much of what you think you know about Pompeii may turn out, on reading this eye-opening book, to be wrong.

Another thing that struck me was the stuff that has been lost since it has been excavated, for example wall paintings that were pristine when uncovered in the 18th or 19th century, but which have now faded almost or completely to nothing. We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview. It was a place devoted to the pleasures of life, where statues of gods and phalluses were equally popular. Over all, Pompeii was “an assault on the visual senses,” to use Beard’s phrase, not least for the range of art, public and private, it contained.The overarching notion she combats here is that when Pompeii was buried by volcanic debris from Vesuvius in the great eruption of A. It is best to visit the museum after Pompeii, since you will be amazed (having seen the ruined buildings) at what was salvaged from them. Head for the Garden of the Fugitives and then walk as far east as you can to the palestra, the amphitheater and any of the streets along its north side. Heading for the harbor, Tranio and his friend Livia hide on a boat and witness one of the most terrifying moments in recorded history-the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the destruction of their beloved city, Pompeii. The novel is notable for its references to various aspects of volcanology and use of the Roman calendar.