Joanna found lots of new material about life and death on her recent visits to Pompeii and Herculaneum
If you have visited Herculaneum, you will no doubt recognise this image, of the skeletons on the beach front. These poor people were clustered together, almost certainly hoping to be rescued by sea. But it was too late. They all died where they waited. Rescue never came.
I had seen these places before, too, but it’s impossible not to be moved by them. Nearly 2,000 years ago, about 300 people waited down here, hoping against hope that the might of Rome would rescue them. But the fleet was unable to do so. The eruption was in charge and the sea state was impossible. Scientific study has shown that, mercifully, these desperate people all died instantly from “fulminant shock” from the pyroclastic surge.
New displays of life and death, but mostly death
There are now excellent new displays in the museum along one side of the palaestra in Pompeii. (The higher wall in the background is the amphitheatre.) In the museum, we can see how people died — from the plaster casts of the body cavities in the ash — and, in some ways, how they lived. Continue reading