I first heard of Pompeii, an ancient Roman city near modern-day Naples, during my first year of learning Latin. My school used the Cambridge Latin Course, and it was through this book that I was first introduced to the language and fell in love. While teaching vocabulary and grammar, a series of stories follows a family living in Pompeii: Caecilius, the head of the household who is perpetually in horto, Metella, his demanding wife, Quintus, their adolescent son, and Grumio, the sexy cook who flirts with the ancillae. Think ancient Roman Keeping up with the Kardashians. (Spoiler alert: everyone died at the end of the book when Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE). Because of these characters, I was eager to learn more about Pompeii by visiting the city. Five years later, I have finally realized that dream.
In Mr. Sheppard's words, coming to Pompeii felt like being transported backwards in a time capsule. It was almost disorienting to see tourists wielding selfie sticks, which felt more like anachronisms than anything else. Unlike the ruins we saw in Rome, which were scattered across the city, Pompeii was a town of Roman buildings, preserved by the volcanic ash and pumice from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Walking through the streets of Pompeii, I was able to get a strong sense of what it was like to be an ancient Roman. We visited several temples, a villa, a bathhouse, the forum, a fast food stand, an amphitheater, a graveyard, and even a brothel (complete with some non-PG frescoes). Along the way, we saw graffiti, amphorae storing olive oil and grain, and frescoes depicting scenes of Roman life. Reading Pliny the Younger’s account of the eruptions as we stood amongst the ruins felt surreal; it was easy to imagine Pompeii as a living city, inhabited by ancient Romans, abruptly brought to an end as black clouds descended over the city. One of the highlights of our visit to Pompeii was being able to see plaster casts of the bodies that had been petrified. Plaster was used during excavations to fill in the voids in the ash left by the decomposed bodies, creating gruesome images of the inhabitants of the city as they were dying. There was one of a man, clutching his face in his hands, perhaps in a fruitless attempt to avoid the searing heat and volcanic ash which would kill him. Another cast was of a young child, less than five years old, lying prostrate on the ground with his eyes closed. I learned from our Paideia guide, Alex, that of the 20,000 people who had lived in Pompeii at the time of the eruption, only 2,000 casts were found. Historians speculate that some were able to escape due to this body count, but I wonder what happened to everyone else. My favorite part about visiting ancient cities is the amount of questions that come to my mind and all the things that pique my curiosity. Why are there crevices in the walls of the baths? (Storage lockers, just like the ones we would find at a spa), what keeps the water in the frigidarium cold, (The water is not stagnant. It is transported from the aqueducts through pipes leading in and out of the baths, what does the fresco in the Villa dei Misteri show? (It might be an initiation into a cult of Bacchus, but we don’t really know). I learned so much from walking through the streets of Pompeii, and I am excited to learn more when I return home.
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