Steve Coates: Myths of Vesuvius
In Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s popular 19th-century novel “The Last Days of Pompeii,” a scrumptious multicourse dinner of the stereotypically Roman sort is served in the superbly appointed house of the hero, Glaucus. With its peristyle garden, luxurious furnishings, nimble attendants and anatrium filled with paintings that “would scarcely disgrace a Raphael,”Glaucus’ Campanian bachelor pad might serve as “a model at this day for the house of ‘a single man in Mayfair,’ ” Bulwer- Lytton wrote.
In her engrossingly mischievous “Fires of Vesuvius,” Mary Beard recreates the scene with gusto, pointing out that this Pompeiian mansion is in fact based closely on a real one, the so-called House of the Tragic Poet. But among some unsavory facts that Bulwer-Lytton “fails to point out to his readers,” Beard writes, is that the kitchen, too tiny to have produced much of a banquet anyway, was the site of the house’s only latrine. And worse: “Just over the back wall of the garden . . . was a cloth-processing workshop, or fullery. Fulling was a messy business, its main ingredient being human urine. . . . The work was noisy and smelly. In the background to Glaucus’ elegant dinner party there must have been a distinctly nasty odor.”
Beard, a classics professor at Cambridge University,takes cheeky, undisguised delight in puncturing the many fantasies and misconceptions that have grown up around Pompeii — sown over the years by archaeologists and classicists no less than Victorian novelists and makers of “sword and sandal” film extravaganzas. While many scholars build careers through increasingly elaborate reconstructions of the ancient world, Beard consistently stresses the limits of our knowledge, the precariousness of our constructs and the ambiguity or contradiction inherent in many of our sources. “There is hardly a shred of evidence for any of it” serves as her battle cry, and it’s a noble one.
The overarching notion she combats here is that when Pompeii was buried by volcanic debris from Vesuvius in the great eruption of A.D. 79, it became a city “ ‘frozen in time,’ as so many guidebooks and tourist brochures claim,” a pristine Roman town just waiting to be discovered. In fact, Beard points out that Pompeii, “disrupted and disturbed, evacuated and pillaged, . . . bears the marks (and the scars) of all kinds of different histories.”
Those scars didn’t begin with the eruption — there was a devastating earthquake 17 years earlier — and didn’t end with it. Ancient scavengers, looters of all eras and “the rough and ready approach” of early excavators have all severely damaged the site, making it much harder to reconstruct an accurate building history. For good measure, Pompeii was heavily bombed by the Allies in World War II; as Beard wryly notes, most visitors are not aware that many of the houses they pass through, now expertly restored, have in essence been destroyed twice....
Read entire article at NYT Book Review
In her engrossingly mischievous “Fires of Vesuvius,” Mary Beard recreates the scene with gusto, pointing out that this Pompeiian mansion is in fact based closely on a real one, the so-called House of the Tragic Poet. But among some unsavory facts that Bulwer-Lytton “fails to point out to his readers,” Beard writes, is that the kitchen, too tiny to have produced much of a banquet anyway, was the site of the house’s only latrine. And worse: “Just over the back wall of the garden . . . was a cloth-processing workshop, or fullery. Fulling was a messy business, its main ingredient being human urine. . . . The work was noisy and smelly. In the background to Glaucus’ elegant dinner party there must have been a distinctly nasty odor.”
Beard, a classics professor at Cambridge University,takes cheeky, undisguised delight in puncturing the many fantasies and misconceptions that have grown up around Pompeii — sown over the years by archaeologists and classicists no less than Victorian novelists and makers of “sword and sandal” film extravaganzas. While many scholars build careers through increasingly elaborate reconstructions of the ancient world, Beard consistently stresses the limits of our knowledge, the precariousness of our constructs and the ambiguity or contradiction inherent in many of our sources. “There is hardly a shred of evidence for any of it” serves as her battle cry, and it’s a noble one.
The overarching notion she combats here is that when Pompeii was buried by volcanic debris from Vesuvius in the great eruption of A.D. 79, it became a city “ ‘frozen in time,’ as so many guidebooks and tourist brochures claim,” a pristine Roman town just waiting to be discovered. In fact, Beard points out that Pompeii, “disrupted and disturbed, evacuated and pillaged, . . . bears the marks (and the scars) of all kinds of different histories.”
Those scars didn’t begin with the eruption — there was a devastating earthquake 17 years earlier — and didn’t end with it. Ancient scavengers, looters of all eras and “the rough and ready approach” of early excavators have all severely damaged the site, making it much harder to reconstruct an accurate building history. For good measure, Pompeii was heavily bombed by the Allies in World War II; as Beard wryly notes, most visitors are not aware that many of the houses they pass through, now expertly restored, have in essence been destroyed twice....