The Fires of Vesuvius

Pompeii Lost and Found

By: Mary Beard

Narrated by: Phyllida Nash

Pompeii is the most famous archaeological site in the world, visited by more than two million people each year. Yet it is also one of the most puzzling, with an intriguing and sometimes violent history.

Destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, the ruins of Pompeii offer the best evidence we have of life in the Roman Empire. But the eruptions are only part of the story. In The Fires of Vesuvius, acclaimed historian Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. She explores what kind of town it was - more like Calcutta or the Costa del Sol? - and what it can tell us about "ordinary" life there. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, Beard offers us the big picture even as she takes us close enough to the past to smell the bad breath and see the intestinal tapeworms of the inhabitants of the lost city. She resurrects the Temple of Isis as a testament to ancient multiculturalism. At the Suburban Baths we go from communal bathing to hygiene to erotica.

Recently, Pompeii has been a focus of pleasure and loss: from Pink Floyd's memorable rock concert to Primo Levi's elegy on the victims. But Pompeii still does not give up its secrets quite as easily as it may seem. This book shows us how much more and less there is to Pompeii than a city frozen in time as it went about its business on 24 August 79 CE.

©2008 Mary Beard (P)2019 Tantor

Amazing!

As a history teacher who loves to study everything Roman, I've got to say, this is incredible! Mary Beard gives an incredible account of what life was like in the living city of Pompeii and includes a great amount of evidence, interpretation (her own an other historians) and context to help it all make sense. This is a must read for anyone who loves history, Rome, Pompeii, or just good story telling!

Very thorough, a bit dry

Beard’s work is high quality but this wasn’t her best, for me. If you don’t know much about life in the Roman world, this will certainly give you lots of details. However, for most people this won’t be a book you listen to continuously. For every interesting detail there were a few dry ones, eg, the numerous references to cart tracks and the depths of grooves in the streets, which may have more interest to academics.

There was also a focus on points to shock, like phalluses everywhere, profanity, eating gross things like dormice (discussed for several minutes), and Beard’s assertion that most women were unofficial sex workers. I cannot overstate how out-of-the-blue this is. It is NOT the consensus view among academics. FYI, this was a society where women were reliant on male relatives, since they couldn’t own property or be full citizens except in special circumstances. The idea that they were exercising commercial agency is utterly absurd and irresponsible to even include in a book like this. I’m not sure what her goal was in doing that. Furthermore, sex workers in the Roman world were more akin to what we’d consider trafficking victims today. So the terminology used was incorrect and the inclusion of that info was quite off-putting for me.

Exceeded expectations

Terrific book with a short review... author questions several assumptions made about archeological findings - was this "typical" or specific to a situation? Moreover, she emphasizes that Pompeii was a place in its own right, not some sort of proxy mini-Rome. Excellent audio narration adds to the experience.

Interesting details

Good narrator. Loved the casual use of profanity as the pompeiians did. As a woman I’m glad I didn’t live there at that time.

Masterfully crafted and narrated

This was so creatively done and so well narrated! I learned a lot and highly recommend this.