Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town

The ruins of Pompeii, buried by an explosion of Vesuvius in 79 CE, offer the best evidence we have of everyday life in the Roman empire. This remarkable book rises to the challenge of making engrossing sense of those remains. What kind of town was it? What can it actually tell us about life then – from sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy? A number of myths have to be exploded – the very date of the eruption, probably a few months later than usually thought; or the hygiene of the baths which must have been hotbeds of germs; or the legendary number of brothels, most likely only one, or the massive death count, maybe less than ten per cent of the population.

In every area, telling details illuminate the whole – the one-way system disclosed by the ruts in the streets, the pots of paint abandoned by the decorators, the 153 wax tables offering the financial records of a local banker-auctioneer, an ivory statuette of an Indian goddess, a table that belonged to one of Caesar’s assassins. And here are some of the cast of characters – that auctioneer, Lucius Caecilius Secundus, hero of the Cambridge Latin Course, Eumachia, heiress priestess who paid for one of Pompeii’s biggest buildings, Numerius Festus Ampliatus, bigtime gladiator trainer or Celadus, star gladiator, ‘heart throb of the girls’. These are just a few of the strands that make up an extraordinary and involving portrait of an ancient town, its life and its continuing rediscovery.

This book was the winner of a 2008 Wolfson Prize for History.

Mary Beard is a Professor of Classics at Cambridge. She is general editor of the Wonders of the World series and author of The Parthenon.