Words for Board: Vesuvius, Pompeii

In 79, the volcano called Mt. Vesuvius buried a little town of Pompeii which today is near the town of Naples. Why would people build a town near a volcano? It was supposed to be extinct. Besides, after the last eruption, the ash and dirt settled and made some of the best soil in the world for growing. In 62, there had been a big earthquake with a tidal wave. That was kind of common for the area, though. For the next 17 years nothing happened. In 79, there was another little quake. After the 2nd quake, there was a bad omen which somebody should have paid attention to. All the wells, etc. went dry. The water and ash were mixing in the volcano to make a poisonous stream. There was lots of dark in the sky from the poisonous gas. Birds started dropping dead from the sky. Ash started raining down on the people and then little bits of fire. There were a couple of days to get out of town and about 9/10 of the people hit the harbor and got out. About 2,000 people stayed. The gases are what killed them usually, not the boiling mud. Toward the end the mud buried the town for about 30 feet down. After the thing cooled down, some people came back and dug down to the bank and got the money out and made the rest into pasture. Archeologists discovered it and are still digging things out.

Where people fell dead in the streets, the ash and mud settled around them. The scientists found that when they were digging, those places sounded hollow. So they filled the hollow places up with plaster of Paris and got molds of the dead people as they fell. One family went to the basement and at the last minute remembered they had left their gold upstairs. They croaked on the stairs. There was a skeleton of a flying dog. (Huh?) He'd been on a leash and kept climbing on top of the mud until he ran out of leash. There was a gladiator barracks in Pompeii. The gladiators had gotten out early but they had forgotten somebody in the basement where he'd been chained for punishment. There were also the bones of a rich woman found in the room of one of the gladiators. Apparently there had been a torrid affair going cuz she wasn't a prostitute since she was rich. There was ½ a plastered wall complete with tools where they'd been thrown as the workers ran for the harbor. The priests of Isis had packed up the hold objects and were heading for the harbor but they were too late. The last guy holding the sack kept falling down dead and you could trace their trail by the objects as they fell.

You can tell neat things about Rome in the first century from Pompeii. It was preserved very well under the mud. The gladiators had leagues that played around at other towns. Gladiators got wounded but weren't killed much. The buildings were painted nice pastel colors to reflect the hot sunlight. They put houses right up next to the street so they had big back yards with neat gardens. They walled the back yards against the neighbors. There was a bathhouse in Pompeii that was really Hollywood. The tub was painted dark blue. There were fish and sea creatures painted on the ceiling. When the sunlight reflected in the windows, it hit the ceiling and made it look like the fish were in the water with you. (You won't see that in Better Home and Gardens.)

People used to write on walls in the towns. There were political slogans. Prostitutes advertised by painting themselves doing their specialities on the doors so you could have some comparison shopping. Sales and auctions were advertised on walls. Love inspired great poetry (temporary insanity.) Drunkenness inspired some of the same feelings.