I’ve just finished The Fires of Vesuvius, Mary Beard’s 2008 book
on the ruins of Pompeii, and thought I would pass along some of
the things that revised my very vague sense of what the lost
city was all about. The book makes a great companion to Pompeii
and the Roman Villa, creating a context for the artworks and the
lives lived among them. Writing on walls and public surfaces was
evidently popular in Pompeii. Some examples: “Epaphroditus and
Thalia.” “Atimetus got me pregnant.” “I won at Nuceria playing
alea, 855½ denarii—honestly, it’s true.” “Celadus, heartthrob of
the girls.” (Beard concludes that this last example and other
tributes to gladiators were written by the gladiators
themselves.) Pompeii was not engulfed by the eruption of
Vesuvius without warning; tremors would have affected the town
hours and possibly days in advance. The town’s population is
figured at between 6,400 and 30,000; of those, Beard estimates,
at most 2,000 died in the disaster. The book opens with the
terrifying episode of some w