I’ve already written a blog post about our visit to the Pompeii Archeological Park, but saved the elephant in the room for today. Mt. Vesuvius is the big, ominous killer that is forever linked to the demise of Pompeii, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that the people of Pompeii had already experienced a devastating catastrophe just 17 years earlier. In 62 AD, there was an earthquake that scientists now estimate would have been around 5 or 6 on the Richter Scale. The aftershocks lasted for several days.
The entire town had to be extensively reconstructed. That earthquake was a warning sign that they should have heeded, but just as with every community that loves their town, they took pride in staying put and rebuilding. That, and many from Rome had vacation villas there, so they had a vested interest in restoring their property and Pompeii’s infrastructure. The Pompeiians themselves had been Roman citizens since 89 BC, had seen the rise and expansion of the Roman Empire, and believed it was eternal, so they must have believed that their city was eternal, too.
After removing the debris, it became clear that there were not enough Pompeiian bricklayers or decorators to meet the demand. Hundreds of skilled workers had to come from out of town. They included slaves, paid workmen, architects, bricklayers, painters and mosaicists, and they must have had to stay in the town for some time or commute daily from neighboring villages. And all of them had to eat, sleep and rest. The town doubled in size. In addition to restoring what once was there, more taverns, restaurants, and lodging had to be built. So the earthquake, while devastating, must have seemed like a financial boon to the city when all was said and done.
Archeologists have found evidence of the earthquake’s devastation and the city’s reconstruction all over the site. New frescos on top of old ones, rebuilt walls, demolished structures with new ones on top. The basilica, the largest building in town, was so damaged that it had to be abandoned. This relief, found on the shrine of the household gods in the House of Caecilius Jucundus, depicts the Temple of Jupiter and an archway collapsing during the earthquake. And yet the city survived and thrived.
Here and there you can see walls of exposed stones that are in diamond form rather than the usual brick form. It turns out that the Pompeiians had discovered after the earthquake of ’62 that this design made walls more earthquake-proof. Brilliant innovation, that.
They thought they were there to stay. In fact, many of the public buildings and houses had been rebuilt and were embellished with new, ostentatious designs. It was as if the town that they loved so much had risen like a phoenix from the ashes.
Little did they know that that earthquake would be nothing compared to the ash that was to come. Seventeen years of rebuilding, all for nothing. It’s heartbreaking to contemplate.
Which brings us back to Mt. Vesuvius. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t expecting it to be so in-your-face as we headed toward this archeological site last May. It kind of made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. But I have the benefit of hindsight. The Pompeiians had very little idea of the amount of danger they were in.
That may seem foolish to you now, but no one knew that the frequent earthquakes were an early warning sign of volcanic activity at the time. And yes, the mountain got smoky sometimes, but the gods were watching over them. And, as the saying goes, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
One look at the Bay of Naples and you understand how imminently attractive the area is for someone looking for a place to live. I would want to live there too, if I didn’t know what that mountain was capable of. The land was fertile due to eruptions past. And make no mistake: Mt. Vesuvius has erupted at least three dozen times since 79 AD.
Before you dismiss the Pompeiians as fools, know this: Mt. Vesuvius is considered the most dangerous volcano in the world today. 3 million people live near enough to be affected by an eruption, and 600,000 people live in the danger zone. And those people know about Vesuvius.
Yes, it’s also the most monitored volcano in the world, but nature can be fickle, and officials can be hesitant to order the evacuation of an entire region for fear that their predictions might be wrong. So who’s more foolish, the ancient Pompeiians or the modern residents of the Campania region? Knowledge ought to be power.
Regardless, seeing Vesuvius long before you get to Pompeii is a bit intimidating. It made me want to go back in time and save those people. Of course, I would have sounded crazy. Even so, if I could have saved even one person, I’d have tried. Sadly, there’s no way to change the past. I seem to have misplaced my time machine. (It wouldn’t be the first time I had been dismissed as overreacting, when in fact I was the canary in the coalmine. But then, more than half of the country can say that these days, can’t they?)
Onward.
First of all, looking at the museum from the ruins below shows you just how deep Pompeii had been buried, and why much of it remained undisturbed for so long. The eruption covered the entire town in anywhere from 13 to 20 feet of volcanic ash and pumice. But it didn’t happen a11 at once, like an avalanche. (For that kind of volcanic experience in 79AD, you had to be living in Herculaneum.)
On the 24th of August, 79 AD (or perhaps October, as recent studies and discoveries suggest, based on the seasonal food left behind, the plants that had been growing, and the clothes the people were wearing), despite being 5 miles away, Vesuvius poured down a rain of lapilli and stone fragments onto Pompeii. The eruption lasted until the next day, causing roofs to collapse and crushing its first victims. The entire event lasted for 2 days.
The first 18 hours consisted of pumice rain, which of course does not drain away. The people of Pompeii tried to take refuge in houses or attempted to escape, walking over the bed of pumice that was accumulating. They probably took their most precious possessions with them, given the absence of such possessions at the archeological site.
The debris was now almost 6 feet high. However, at 8am on the following day, an extremely violent release of toxic gas and glowing ash devastated the town: it penetrated everywhere, taking everyone, whether they were still attempting to escape or were resigned to their fate, by surprise. It left them defenseless. Many of those are the bodies we see in plaster form today. So far, about 1,150 bodies have been found in Pompeii, and many of them were clutching jewelry, coins, and silverware.
It’s hard to say why those last people lingered for so long. Maybe they were trying to protect their property like those fools who decide to ride out hurricanes, thinking that surely they’d be okay. Or perhaps they had nowhere else to go, and no way to get there. Maybe they were slaves left behind by masters, with no way to pay anyone to take them out of the area by boat. Or maybe they got trampled while attempting to escape, or were hit by falling debris. Or perhaps they thought that this was the punishment of the gods, and that there was no use fighting it. Regardless of their reason for staying, at this point those people didn’t stand a chance.
Next, a rain of extremely fine ash was added to the debris, raising it to 18 feet. That ash adhered to bodies and to folds in their clothes and the straps in their shoes. It blanketed absolutely everything.
Seeing the injected plaster models was really upsetting. The minute details make them impossible to mistake for statues, and I could feel the horror and desperation and shock pouring off them. For me, the most tragic death was that of a dog who had been left chained to a wall, whose plaster cast shows him writhing in panic. Every time I think of that dog, I want to hug my own.
And then there was silence. I’m sure that the people across the Bay of Naples who escaped and watched it all unfold were in a state of shock. Everything they had built, everything that they had considered to be the very definition of their lives, their home place, was gone. Imagine.
The dust began to settle. Things began to cool off. Pompeii slept. But not for long.
Emperor Titus donated a large amount of money from the Imperial treasury to aid victims of the Volcano. He also visited the area twice within a year, but it was obvious that restoring the city would be impossible. But that didn’t stop people from going back and salvaging valuables and robbing the city of its statues and building materials. The roofs of the very tallest buildings peeked up above the ash, so people had a good idea where to dig.
Archeologists found evidence of the looting that occurred over the centuries. They broke holes through walls and tunneled through debris. They even left graffiti on walls to indicate which houses had been dug.
People did occupy the town afterward, in a manner of speaking. There’s evidence of a small settlement that was on the site up to the 5th century. But eventually, Pompeii’s name and location were forgotten, and subsequent eruptions buried it even more deeply. Pompeii slept.
Then, one day in 1592, an architect was digging an underground aqueduct and ran into some walls covered in frescos and inscriptions. His aqueduct passed through many of the ancient foundations, but for some reason he kept his discovery to himself.
In 1689 more discoveries were made by accident, including a wall with the name of the town. In 1693, some excavations took place, and it was confirmed. They had relocated this place called Pompeii that kept popping up in historical texts. But the findings weren’t considered “official” or perhaps they weren’t deemed significant, so nothing more was done about it.
In 1738, Herculaneum was rediscovered by construction workers who were building a summer palace for the King of Naples. Because they found so many amazing things there, they decided to take another look at Pompeii’s probable location in 1748. Finding antiquities would reinforce Naples’ political and cultural prestige, so they were highly motivated. In 1763, an official municipal sign was uncovered, and people were now believers. This was Pompeii.
Scientific excavations began in 1764, and a lot of progress was made. Then the French occupied Naples in 1799 and in fact ruled all of Italy from 1806 to 1815. They really got to work on Pompeii, employing 700 people to do more excavating. Pompeii was starting to look vaguely like a city again. After that, though, things slowed down due to lack of funds. Still, some of the more significant houses were uncovered.
In 1863, a man named Giuseppe Fiorelli was in charge of the excavations, and he noticed that occasionally they were coming across these strange voids that contained human remains. He was the one who came up with the idea of injecting plaster into these voids. The technique is still being used today, with one significant difference: Now they are using clear resin, because it’s more durable and doesn’t destroy the bones, so they can be analyzed later.
Fiorelli was also the first to systematically document his finds, dividing up the city into areas and regions and numbered houses. He also published the first periodical about the excavations. Documentation has become increasingly precise since then, with one unfortunate exception.
Sadly, in the 1950’s, the director was a bit less accurate in his documentation. He also did a lot of reconstruction without documenting it, and to this day, archeologists are having a hard time distinguishing the reconstructions from the originals. Those areas are now avoided, and the focus has shifted to the previously excavated areas. Even though 1/3rd of the city still lies buried, there are no plans for further excavations.
Now the priority is slowing the decay of the already exposed ruins. Weathering, erosion, light exposure, water damage, poor methods of excavation and reconstruction, introduced plants and animals, tourism, vandalism and theft have all taken their toll. And of course, it didn’t help that, during WWII, bombs were dropped on the city by allied forces.
Yes, you read that correctly. The allies dropped approximately 165 bombs on Pompeii. And not all of them exploded. A fun fact that I’m glad I didn’t know when I visited is that experts expect that there are about 10 unexploded bombs in the unexcavated area that have yet to be recovered. But those same experts claim that there is no risk of explosions. That doesn’t make me feel confident. If the ordinance hasn’t been recovered, how could they possibly know that there’s no risk of explosions?
Pompeii has been through a lot over the centuries. If it were a sentient being, intact bombs would probably seem like child’s play to it. And now, it gets to put up with as many as 20,000 tourists a day. That’s a bit ironic. It seemed so crowded to me, but that was just about the size of its population at it’s height, so we got the true Pompeii experience, indeed.
This photo is of modern Pompei (they dropped one of the i’s in modern times), as seen from old Pompeii. As you can see, the population is even more dense, numerically and locationally. They are in the perfect position to be wiped out once again during the next big eruption.
When will that be? Well, long range volcano predictions are all but impossible. Some scientists say it is overdue. Others say it won’t occur for a few hundred years. Either way, due to its current inactivity, which is allowing it to build up gas and magma, it has been estimated that, at a bare minimum, it will be worse than the last one, which was a level VE3 eruption, in 1944. The next eruption is expected to be much worse, and will most likely rain down at least 20 pounds of debris per square foot, collapsing all roofs in the danger zone. Think around a VE4, which isn’t as bad as 79AD, but worse than 1944.
To this day, Mt. Vesuvius is hauntingly beautiful. But Burmese Pythons are beautiful, too. I still wouldn’t want to be locked in a room with one when it’s about to get really, really hungry. According to this chart, Pompei is in a high risk location for any eruption that is VE3 or higher.
According to Wikipedia, “Ongoing efforts are being made by the government at various levels to reduce the population living in the red zone, by demolishing illegally constructed buildings, establishing a national park around the whole volcano to prevent the future construction of buildings and by offering sufficient financial incentives to people for moving away. One of the underlying goals is to reduce the time needed to evacuate the area, over the following twenty to thirty years (i.e. by 2023–2033), to two or three days.”
I believe the people of ancient Pompeii are still speaking through this archeological site. They are trying to send a message, and locals would be well advised to take it seriously. That message is that two or three days won’t be good enough.
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