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This programme contains some strong language. | 0:00:03 | 0:00:06 | |
In 79AD, this volcano exploded. | 0:00:16 | 0:00:21 | |
Down below, around the bay of Naples, there were farms, houses, | 0:00:21 | 0:00:27 | |
luxurious villas, Roman towns. | 0:00:27 | 0:00:30 | |
The best known is Pompeii. | 0:00:30 | 0:00:33 | |
The eruption which wiped this ancient town off the Roman map | 0:00:35 | 0:00:39 | |
is one of the world's most famous disasters, | 0:00:39 | 0:00:42 | |
but the tragedy has given historians a priceless legacy. | 0:00:42 | 0:00:47 | |
The inhabitants were overwhelmed by gas, lethal gas, volcanic debris | 0:00:49 | 0:00:55 | |
and we found their bodies exactly where they died. | 0:00:55 | 0:00:59 | |
Many have been cast in plaster, frozen in time. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:05 | |
They've tantalised the world with their last horrific moments of death. | 0:01:05 | 0:01:10 | |
But they tell us little about their lives. | 0:01:10 | 0:01:12 | |
Now, in a cellar just two miles outside Pompeii, | 0:01:16 | 0:01:20 | |
are 54 well-preserved skeletons lying exactly where they died. | 0:01:20 | 0:01:26 | |
They were hiding from the full force of the volcano. | 0:01:26 | 0:01:29 | |
2,000 years later, they're about to give up their secrets. | 0:01:29 | 0:01:33 | |
I'm wondering whether they can tell us something | 0:01:35 | 0:01:38 | |
about the most interesting question in Pompeii, | 0:01:38 | 0:01:41 | |
which is not how the people died, we know how they died, | 0:01:41 | 0:01:44 | |
it's about how the people in Pompeii actually lived. | 0:01:44 | 0:01:49 | |
For the 25 years I've taught classics at Cambridge | 0:01:51 | 0:01:54 | |
I've been fascinated by what life was really like day to day in ancient Pompeii. | 0:01:54 | 0:02:00 | |
I am hoping these skeletons will help take this understanding | 0:02:00 | 0:02:04 | |
one step further and put my theories to the test. | 0:02:04 | 0:02:09 | |
I'll explore the opulent and the ordinary. | 0:02:09 | 0:02:13 | |
Don't have to be rich to wear jewellery. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:15 | |
In a city of the refined and the rude. | 0:02:15 | 0:02:19 | |
It looks to me as if the woman is on top of him but sucking his toes. | 0:02:19 | 0:02:23 | |
I'll see the hardship endured, and the pleasures savoured. | 0:02:23 | 0:02:27 | |
These guys don't look too pissed yet. | 0:02:27 | 0:02:30 | |
I can't find where I left my glass. | 0:02:30 | 0:02:34 | |
I want to see if we can probe a bit deeper and get beneath the skin of this ancient town. | 0:02:34 | 0:02:40 | |
-You don't get closer to real Rome than being in a cesspit, do you? -No. | 0:02:40 | 0:02:46 | |
I am hoping that the people in the cellar will help me discover | 0:02:46 | 0:02:50 | |
what life was like before Vesuvius forced them to flee. | 0:02:50 | 0:02:54 | |
Pompeii is the most important archaeological site in the Roman world. | 0:03:06 | 0:03:11 | |
Nowhere else do we come face to face with antiquity | 0:03:11 | 0:03:15 | |
up close in quite this personal way. | 0:03:15 | 0:03:18 | |
These perfectly preserved ruins | 0:03:18 | 0:03:21 | |
bring millions of us here each year to see a snapshot of Roman life. | 0:03:21 | 0:03:26 | |
But that's all we see, a snapshot. | 0:03:28 | 0:03:31 | |
Of a society where it appears the rich enjoyed a life of luxury | 0:03:31 | 0:03:35 | |
and everyone else, the poor and the slaves, lived lives of drudgery. | 0:03:35 | 0:03:39 | |
That's always seemed too simple to me. | 0:03:39 | 0:03:41 | |
It's much more interesting than that. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:44 | |
I want to bust a few myths about the rich and the poor in Pompeii. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:51 | |
This was the stretch of coastline where rich Romans, | 0:03:52 | 0:03:55 | |
I mean really, really rich Romans from the capital, | 0:03:55 | 0:03:59 | |
used to come for their holidays. | 0:03:59 | 0:04:01 | |
It was supposed to be particularly popular with the fast set, | 0:04:01 | 0:04:05 | |
they came here to gamble, to have fun, to have sex. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:10 | |
Sort of a cross between Las Vegas and Brighton. | 0:04:10 | 0:04:14 | |
And that's what makes Pompeii so remarkable. | 0:04:18 | 0:04:23 | |
It was a town where ordinary people lived cheek by jowl | 0:04:23 | 0:04:27 | |
with the hedonistic rich. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:29 | |
It had all the essentials of a Roman town, with a forum at one end, | 0:04:32 | 0:04:36 | |
and at the other an amphitheatre and training ground for gladiators. | 0:04:36 | 0:04:41 | |
A market, temples, baths, even a brothel. | 0:04:41 | 0:04:45 | |
Perhaps 12,000 people packed into less than a square mile. | 0:04:45 | 0:04:50 | |
Pompeii lies between the Mediterranean and Vesuvius. | 0:04:53 | 0:04:58 | |
It's 17 miles along the coast from Naples, not far from Herculaneum, | 0:04:58 | 0:05:04 | |
and it's in a suburb of Pompeii, | 0:05:04 | 0:05:06 | |
Oplontis, where the cellar of skeletons was unearthed. | 0:05:06 | 0:05:11 | |
It must have seemed a sensible place to come. | 0:05:18 | 0:05:20 | |
It's partly underground and that would have seemed safe, | 0:05:20 | 0:05:24 | |
but it's got good access from the road outside. | 0:05:24 | 0:05:26 | |
It's very hard not to be... | 0:05:29 | 0:05:33 | |
moved by this site. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:37 | |
They might be 2,000 years old | 0:05:37 | 0:05:39 | |
but they're still victims of a terrible human tragedy. | 0:05:39 | 0:05:42 | |
On the other hand, I can't help wondering | 0:05:42 | 0:05:46 | |
what these bones might tell us about the life of these people. | 0:05:46 | 0:05:51 | |
The first thing we can tell from the cellar | 0:05:51 | 0:05:55 | |
is that these people appear to be divided into two groups. | 0:05:55 | 0:05:59 | |
On one side they were carrying money and jewels. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:02 | |
These bodies have been catalogued and tidied away into boxes. | 0:06:02 | 0:06:07 | |
The others, left where they fell, were found with nothing. | 0:06:07 | 0:06:11 | |
So how can we explain this divide? | 0:06:11 | 0:06:14 | |
You could come up with all kinds of theories as to why it might be. | 0:06:14 | 0:06:19 | |
But for my money the most likely thing is that we're dealing with a distinction in wealth. | 0:06:19 | 0:06:25 | |
These skeletons are important | 0:06:30 | 0:06:32 | |
because many of the bones found at Pompeii have simply been jumbled up. | 0:06:32 | 0:06:36 | |
And the plaster casts, they're very poignant, but are much less useful | 0:06:36 | 0:06:40 | |
for forensic science because the bones inside get contaminated. | 0:06:40 | 0:06:46 | |
Remains preserved like those in the cellar | 0:06:47 | 0:06:50 | |
exactly where the people died are rare. | 0:06:50 | 0:06:53 | |
For the first time, | 0:06:53 | 0:06:55 | |
these are going to be analysed by a forensic team, led by Fabian Kanz. | 0:06:55 | 0:07:00 | |
So far we have found at least 54 individuals here, at least, | 0:07:02 | 0:07:06 | |
and this gives us a broad cross section of the society | 0:07:06 | 0:07:12 | |
of the Romans at that time. | 0:07:12 | 0:07:14 | |
The point is we have a great opportunity here because we have a snapshot of the society. | 0:07:14 | 0:07:20 | |
We might have slaves, we might have upper class people, | 0:07:20 | 0:07:23 | |
and we can find out if there have been big differences. | 0:07:23 | 0:07:27 | |
One of the most complete skeletons is that of a man of about 55. | 0:07:27 | 0:07:32 | |
Apart from some dental cavities he seems in pretty good nick. | 0:07:32 | 0:07:37 | |
If you look at the other bones, I noticed this. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:41 | |
I don't know much about skeletons but that looks to me like | 0:07:41 | 0:07:44 | |
something that's got a real big muscle attachment. | 0:07:44 | 0:07:47 | |
Yes, it's the right upper arm, | 0:07:47 | 0:07:50 | |
and it's the muscle attachment for the brachialis, | 0:07:50 | 0:07:53 | |
and as you can see on the left side, it's nearly the same. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:56 | |
And he must be a really strong man. | 0:07:56 | 0:07:59 | |
He's my age, he's got about as good teeth as me, but he's much stronger. | 0:07:59 | 0:08:05 | |
These are the rest of his bones, but why are his bones green? | 0:08:05 | 0:08:11 | |
Yes, you're right. On the whole left side he's green. | 0:08:11 | 0:08:15 | |
And green comes from metal objects, which means he was wealthy. | 0:08:15 | 0:08:20 | |
There was some bronze or copper | 0:08:20 | 0:08:24 | |
or brass objects buried with him. | 0:08:24 | 0:08:28 | |
He had a considerable amount of metal wealth with him. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:32 | |
Yes, the acid in the soil is reacting with the metal object | 0:08:32 | 0:08:37 | |
and that makes him green. | 0:08:37 | 0:08:39 | |
Nearly all of the so-called rich sample, have been at least one or two bones green. | 0:08:39 | 0:08:46 | |
So they all have been buried close to something metal. | 0:08:46 | 0:08:52 | |
Whereas what we call the poor, do any of them have this green? | 0:08:52 | 0:08:56 | |
No, not at all. | 0:08:56 | 0:08:58 | |
Carrying no possessions at all, the bones of the people on one side are unmarked. | 0:08:58 | 0:09:04 | |
But, on the other side of the cellar, the people with green bones | 0:09:04 | 0:09:08 | |
were discovered with a dazzling array of objects. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:11 | |
These are now kept in a guarded vault | 0:09:14 | 0:09:17 | |
at the archaeological museum in Naples. | 0:09:17 | 0:09:20 | |
For the very first time I've been allowed to get really | 0:09:20 | 0:09:24 | |
close to this amazing stuff, and actually get my hands on it. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:30 | |
Look, this is really exciting for me. | 0:09:30 | 0:09:32 | |
This is the first time I have even touched any jewellery from Pompeii. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:37 | |
I am going got be very naughty, and put the bracelet on. | 0:09:37 | 0:09:41 | |
However cynical you are, however much a boring old academic you are, | 0:09:41 | 0:09:45 | |
it's still exciting to wear the bracelet worn 2,000 years ago. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:49 | |
Nothing will ever stop me thinking that's exciting. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:53 | |
I think this is very attractive, actually. | 0:09:56 | 0:09:59 | |
You pick it up, you can feel instantly it's heavy. This is a solid bangle. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:03 | |
But what strikes you about it, instantly, is that it's so big. | 0:10:03 | 0:10:08 | |
It's not only women that wear bracelets, | 0:10:08 | 0:10:11 | |
this could be man's jewellery, a big hunky man. | 0:10:11 | 0:10:14 | |
This is really is a very, very delicate piece of jewellery. | 0:10:14 | 0:10:20 | |
They told specifically that I'm not allowed to try this one on. | 0:10:20 | 0:10:25 | |
The links are really tiny. | 0:10:25 | 0:10:27 | |
It's very high-quality workmanship, very nicely done. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:30 | |
It must've been, it would be very pricey now, | 0:10:30 | 0:10:33 | |
it must have been pricey then, too. | 0:10:33 | 0:10:35 | |
There was a vast treasure horde in the cellar. | 0:10:36 | 0:10:39 | |
Close to the skeleton of the man with green bones, | 0:10:39 | 0:10:43 | |
was a woman in her early twenties. | 0:10:43 | 0:10:46 | |
She had with her | 0:10:46 | 0:10:49 | |
one of the very, very biggest amounts of money found with anybody, | 0:10:49 | 0:10:54 | |
anywhere in Pompeii. | 0:10:54 | 0:10:56 | |
In Roman currency, it was 10,000 sesterces. | 0:10:56 | 0:11:01 | |
What that means is it's about the equivalent | 0:11:01 | 0:11:06 | |
of 10 year's pay for a legionary Roman soldier. | 0:11:06 | 0:11:10 | |
These are some of the coins. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:12 | |
Some were in silver, but a lot were in gold. | 0:11:12 | 0:11:16 | |
And she had them with her in two separate containers. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:20 | |
Instantly you can see | 0:11:20 | 0:11:23 | |
the silver ones are very worn. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:26 | |
These actually have been | 0:11:26 | 0:11:29 | |
money in circulation. These are for actually buying things in the Pompeian market place. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:35 | |
But the gold ones are in absolutely beautiful condition. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:40 | |
I think what this tells us is these really have been somebody's savings. | 0:11:40 | 0:11:44 | |
You can imagine very easily what must have happened, that the people were fleeing, | 0:11:44 | 0:11:51 | |
they wanted to take their valuables with them, they get the purse, | 0:11:51 | 0:11:55 | |
they stuff what's most important to them, these things. | 0:11:55 | 0:11:59 | |
They stuff it inside the purse, put it in their pocket and off they go. | 0:11:59 | 0:12:03 | |
This is what the people in the cellar chose to take with them | 0:12:04 | 0:12:08 | |
as they tried to escape. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:09 | |
They sought refuge from the eruption in what was probably an underground storeroom. | 0:12:09 | 0:12:15 | |
They never made it further than this cellar in Oplontis. | 0:12:15 | 0:12:18 | |
The building above the cellar appears, at first, | 0:12:18 | 0:12:22 | |
like a two-storey, residential home. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:25 | |
But, if you explore a little further, | 0:12:28 | 0:12:30 | |
you see that much more was going on. | 0:12:30 | 0:12:32 | |
There's a large building with two floors of storerooms, | 0:12:39 | 0:12:43 | |
piles of big containers and wheel ruts made by hundreds of carts. | 0:12:43 | 0:12:49 | |
This was clearly more than somebody's house. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:52 | |
This is an agricultural depot. | 0:12:54 | 0:12:57 | |
It's ghostly now. | 0:12:57 | 0:12:59 | |
In Roman times, it must have been an absolute hub of activity with people | 0:12:59 | 0:13:05 | |
packing things up, carting things, wheeling them off, | 0:13:05 | 0:13:09 | |
getting them ready for despatch. | 0:13:09 | 0:13:12 | |
Whoever owned this place must have been pretty wealthy. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:19 | |
But he wasn't anything like as wealthy as one of his neighbours, | 0:13:19 | 0:13:23 | |
because just over there, few yards form this place, | 0:13:23 | 0:13:27 | |
is one of the most luxurious villas | 0:13:27 | 0:13:30 | |
ever found in all of the Roman world. | 0:13:30 | 0:13:33 | |
The cellar is only a stone's throw from this stunning Roman mansion. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:43 | |
100 rooms, decorated with sumptuous frescos, painted with pigments from | 0:13:43 | 0:13:48 | |
the farthest corners of the Roman empire. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:51 | |
And to top it all, an Olympic-size 200-foot-long swimming pool, | 0:13:54 | 0:13:59 | |
where the guests could let their hair down. | 0:13:59 | 0:14:01 | |
So, while the rich frolicked at their pool parties, | 0:14:03 | 0:14:06 | |
what was life like on the streets of Pompeii? | 0:14:06 | 0:14:09 | |
What I used to... | 0:14:11 | 0:14:14 | |
Mattia Buondonno's family has lived in Pompeii for generations | 0:14:14 | 0:14:18 | |
and he's one of the site's most experienced guides. | 0:14:18 | 0:14:21 | |
He's got a local sense of how this place might once have been. | 0:14:21 | 0:14:27 | |
What's your sense of what the ancient town was like, the basics, what was life like here? | 0:14:27 | 0:14:33 | |
Smell! | 0:14:33 | 0:14:35 | |
Smell of the people, smell of the activities of | 0:14:35 | 0:14:40 | |
commerciality that was here, smell on everywhere, | 0:14:40 | 0:14:44 | |
smelling on money. | 0:14:44 | 0:14:46 | |
And the smell of the animals too, presumably. | 0:14:46 | 0:14:48 | |
-Yes! -And just think of the smell of the shit. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:52 | |
-Yes! -Awful! | 0:14:52 | 0:14:54 | |
For them was normal life. | 0:14:54 | 0:14:57 | |
To get an idea of Pompeii | 0:15:02 | 0:15:03 | |
as the people in the cellar would have seen it, I've come to Naples. | 0:15:03 | 0:15:07 | |
Though it's a modern city, | 0:15:07 | 0:15:09 | |
there are some striking similarities with the ancient town nearby. | 0:15:09 | 0:15:13 | |
-So, you could feel yourself in Pompeii. -Here? -Yes. -Why? | 0:15:13 | 0:15:20 | |
Because more or less, the atmosphere, the first floor, | 0:15:20 | 0:15:23 | |
and the busy town... | 0:15:23 | 0:15:27 | |
It's easy to forget that Pompeii was a two-storey town. | 0:15:27 | 0:15:31 | |
People lived above their shops and bars and stairs opened | 0:15:31 | 0:15:35 | |
right onto the streets, just as they do in Naples today. | 0:15:35 | 0:15:39 | |
I think people often wonder where all the stuff was in a Pompeian shop or a bar. | 0:15:43 | 0:15:48 | |
What this tells you is that you can actually hang it from the ceiling... | 0:15:48 | 0:15:54 | |
Like they did 2,000 years ago, as this painting shows us. | 0:15:54 | 0:16:00 | |
All around modern Naples are echoes of Pompeii's past. | 0:16:03 | 0:16:07 | |
From the doors, just like the ones you see in Pompeian frescos. | 0:16:07 | 0:16:12 | |
-There are things like this in Pompeii, are they? -Oh yes, they had! They had! | 0:16:14 | 0:16:18 | |
-Careful, because we don't want the owner to come. -OK, we can get out. | 0:16:18 | 0:16:21 | |
To the images they left on their walls. | 0:16:21 | 0:16:25 | |
I think the graffiti is pretty Pompeian. | 0:16:27 | 0:16:29 | |
The Pompeian graffiti were better than this. | 0:16:29 | 0:16:32 | |
Yes, they were wittier. Wittier, I think. | 0:16:32 | 0:16:34 | |
Ah! That's very Pompeian, is it? | 0:16:35 | 0:16:38 | |
No, Pompeii was cleaner. | 0:16:38 | 0:16:41 | |
-Pompeii was cleaner than that? -Yeah. | 0:16:41 | 0:16:43 | |
You really think so? | 0:16:43 | 0:16:45 | |
Mattia, you don't, do you? | 0:16:45 | 0:16:47 | |
So we can find all kinds of clues | 0:16:49 | 0:16:51 | |
as to how ancient Pompeians lived in modern Naples. | 0:16:51 | 0:16:56 | |
But what can the bones from the cellar | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
add to the picture of their lives? | 0:16:59 | 0:17:01 | |
This looks quite ordinary to me. This is the leg bone? | 0:17:05 | 0:17:07 | |
This is the lower part of the leg bone and if you compare it to | 0:17:07 | 0:17:11 | |
this bone, it's swollen and you can see all these little holes. | 0:17:11 | 0:17:16 | |
-And what is that? -This is an infection of the skin and the bone. | 0:17:16 | 0:17:19 | |
A possible reason for this might be a cut, is one explanation for it. | 0:17:19 | 0:17:25 | |
So, you get a cut, you haven't got any antiseptic... | 0:17:25 | 0:17:28 | |
..you maybe you don't even know exactly what the relationship | 0:17:30 | 0:17:33 | |
is between dirt and infection, | 0:17:33 | 0:17:36 | |
so the cut never properly heals and is a kind of | 0:17:36 | 0:17:41 | |
lifetime infection really. | 0:17:41 | 0:17:43 | |
Painful or not painful? | 0:17:43 | 0:17:45 | |
Very painful, very painful. | 0:17:45 | 0:17:47 | |
So where could this infection have come from? | 0:17:49 | 0:17:52 | |
After all, we tend to think of Romans as a rather clean lot, | 0:17:52 | 0:17:56 | |
regularly visiting the baths. | 0:17:56 | 0:17:58 | |
It's true that bathing was an important part of life, | 0:17:58 | 0:18:02 | |
as we can see at the baths near the forum in Pompeii. | 0:18:02 | 0:18:05 | |
They give us a better picture than anywhere else in the world of how Roman bathing actually worked. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:12 | |
This is where you took your clothes off. | 0:18:12 | 0:18:17 | |
I think it must have been quite stunning to come in from the hot | 0:18:17 | 0:18:23 | |
sweaty outside, through the narrow corridor | 0:18:23 | 0:18:26 | |
into this beautifully decorated room. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:28 | |
You have to imagine the baths as being a place where someone, | 0:18:28 | 0:18:33 | |
who's life could be a little bit drab, could come to bright colours, | 0:18:33 | 0:18:37 | |
twinkling lights, water splashing, everybody with their clothes off. | 0:18:37 | 0:18:42 | |
The baths were the people's palace. | 0:18:42 | 0:18:45 | |
Bathing was a great leveller. | 0:18:47 | 0:18:49 | |
Almost everyone in ancient Rome, rich and poor, men and women | 0:18:49 | 0:18:52 | |
would have gone to the baths, | 0:18:52 | 0:18:55 | |
including the people from our cellar. | 0:18:55 | 0:18:57 | |
These feats of engineering had under-floor heating, | 0:18:57 | 0:19:00 | |
a series of hot and cold rooms and in Rome itself, they could even have a library attached. | 0:19:00 | 0:19:06 | |
You get all sorts of things when you come into Roman Baths. | 0:19:06 | 0:19:09 | |
You get hot and cool, you get rest, but it's also crucial to remember, | 0:19:09 | 0:19:15 | |
you get wonderful things to look at, too, | 0:19:15 | 0:19:18 | |
and the ceiling still has some traces of the kinds of | 0:19:18 | 0:19:22 | |
over-the-top decoration that you expect in a really good Roman bath | 0:19:22 | 0:19:28 | |
and everybody shares those things. | 0:19:28 | 0:19:31 | |
We tend to think of these luxurious baths as pristine marble palaces, | 0:19:31 | 0:19:37 | |
where people came to get clean. | 0:19:37 | 0:19:39 | |
But is that really the case? | 0:19:39 | 0:19:41 | |
Here is where I guess you'd have spend your time, | 0:19:42 | 0:19:46 | |
in this lovely marble pool. | 0:19:46 | 0:19:48 | |
It's a bit like a Jacuzzi, think California | 0:19:50 | 0:19:54 | |
or perhaps think rugby club. | 0:19:54 | 0:19:56 | |
You sit down, the warm water is around your feet, | 0:19:58 | 0:20:02 | |
this is a great time to relax, | 0:20:02 | 0:20:04 | |
to talk to your friends, in this lovely setting. | 0:20:04 | 0:20:08 | |
There is however a nasty surprise in store. | 0:20:08 | 0:20:12 | |
We can see ever so clearly where the water comes into this pool, | 0:20:12 | 0:20:17 | |
there is a nice little spout here to bring the water in | 0:20:17 | 0:20:22 | |
but you can look all around and there isn't a single place where it can go out. | 0:20:22 | 0:20:27 | |
All this means is there's absolutely no circulation of water | 0:20:27 | 0:20:33 | |
at all in this pool. | 0:20:33 | 0:20:35 | |
All people who piss in here, their sweat, | 0:20:35 | 0:20:39 | |
it all comes into a steaming hot, watery mess. | 0:20:39 | 0:20:44 | |
Just how healthy is that? | 0:20:44 | 0:20:46 | |
It's not at all healthy, | 0:20:46 | 0:20:47 | |
even some Roman doctors realised it wasn't healthy. | 0:20:47 | 0:20:50 | |
The great Roman doctor called Celsus, who says, | 0:20:50 | 0:20:54 | |
"Make sure you don't go to the baths if you've got an open wound, | 0:20:54 | 0:20:58 | |
"because you're likely to die of gangrene if you do." | 0:20:58 | 0:21:01 | |
Whether the people in the cellar made that connection we don't know. | 0:21:03 | 0:21:07 | |
But the bones offer an extraordinary revelation about another area | 0:21:09 | 0:21:14 | |
of the population's health. | 0:21:14 | 0:21:16 | |
-So these are two different people, are they? -Yes, two different people. | 0:21:16 | 0:21:21 | |
10 to 12-year-old children. | 0:21:21 | 0:21:24 | |
They're both the same age and they both have the same abnormalities on their teeth. | 0:21:24 | 0:21:30 | |
We think, most probably, they have been twins. | 0:21:30 | 0:21:34 | |
Same age, same teeth. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:35 | |
Yes and they had a problem. | 0:21:35 | 0:21:37 | |
On closer examination of the twin's teeth, | 0:21:37 | 0:21:40 | |
Fabian's colleague, Maciej Henneberg, | 0:21:40 | 0:21:43 | |
discovered evidence of a horrible and unexpected disease. | 0:21:43 | 0:21:48 | |
They must have had a massive illness. | 0:21:48 | 0:21:51 | |
One possible explanation for it is | 0:21:53 | 0:21:57 | |
congenital syphilis. | 0:21:57 | 0:22:01 | |
I am not joking, but... | 0:22:02 | 0:22:06 | |
I thought syphilis didn't come to Europe until much later than this. | 0:22:06 | 0:22:11 | |
If this were the case, | 0:22:11 | 0:22:13 | |
this would be our first Roman case of congenital syphilis. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:18 | |
-Yes, of course. -Well, that would be something to find in this cellar, wouldn't it? | 0:22:18 | 0:22:22 | |
If this is true, it would overturn the idea | 0:22:24 | 0:22:27 | |
that the disease first arrived in Europe with Columbus' sailors. | 0:22:27 | 0:22:31 | |
This would be the first recorded case of syphilis by more than 1,400 years. | 0:22:31 | 0:22:38 | |
But the twins in the cellar | 0:22:38 | 0:22:40 | |
also tells us about another aspect of ancient Roman life. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:44 | |
This must have been a really bad and serious illness. | 0:22:46 | 0:22:50 | |
Somebody had to take care of them, | 0:22:50 | 0:22:54 | |
very, a lot of care, a lot of healthcare, | 0:22:54 | 0:22:58 | |
a lot of effort that they made it. | 0:22:58 | 0:23:01 | |
What strikes me is that they were found in the so-called poor sample, | 0:23:01 | 0:23:06 | |
but still must have received years of medical care. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:10 | |
It is interesting because it's going from | 0:23:10 | 0:23:14 | |
a really nice scientific observation, just to a glimpse of | 0:23:14 | 0:23:18 | |
a family support network, parents looking after them, | 0:23:18 | 0:23:23 | |
the very base of their survival is about human care. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:26 | |
The possibility of a sexually transmitted disease | 0:23:30 | 0:23:34 | |
might at first sight reinforce a view many people have | 0:23:34 | 0:23:39 | |
of ancient Rome as a society of debauchery and sexual excess. | 0:23:39 | 0:23:43 | |
There's willies, big willies everywhere. | 0:23:43 | 0:23:46 | |
When one object was first first found in a Pompeian bar, | 0:23:46 | 0:23:50 | |
it was deemed too shocking to be put on public display. | 0:23:50 | 0:23:54 | |
It's a bronze lamp and all kinds of things dangle off it, | 0:23:56 | 0:24:01 | |
bells and stuff, a kind of wind chimes for us, | 0:24:01 | 0:24:04 | |
the Romans would've called it a "Tintinnabulum". | 0:24:04 | 0:24:08 | |
But the centre of attention was to be this chap here, | 0:24:08 | 0:24:12 | |
a bronze hunchback pygmy | 0:24:12 | 0:24:17 | |
with a huge willy, which he is in the process of cutting off. | 0:24:17 | 0:24:23 | |
I like to think that this shows greater anxiety | 0:24:24 | 0:24:27 | |
on the part of the Romans about their masculinity, but who knows? | 0:24:27 | 0:24:31 | |
Maybe it's a strange form of erotica, | 0:24:31 | 0:24:34 | |
maybe it's a joke on the guys who came to drink in the bar, | 0:24:34 | 0:24:39 | |
or is it in the end, just a lamp? | 0:24:39 | 0:24:42 | |
Whatever its function, you only need to stroll around town | 0:24:42 | 0:24:45 | |
to see the same phallic theme again and again. | 0:24:45 | 0:24:49 | |
What do they mean? | 0:24:49 | 0:24:50 | |
What were they for? | 0:24:50 | 0:24:52 | |
Everybody's had a theory and there have been some pretty mad ones. | 0:24:52 | 0:24:56 | |
Do they, for example, point to the nearest brothel? | 0:24:56 | 0:25:00 | |
I'm afraid, not a hope! | 0:25:00 | 0:25:01 | |
If this were the case, Pompeii would be littered with brothels. | 0:25:01 | 0:25:07 | |
Some people think it is, but I'm not so sure, if you look carefully | 0:25:07 | 0:25:12 | |
at this upmarket bath house, | 0:25:12 | 0:25:15 | |
you see that displays of sex can be interpreted differently. | 0:25:15 | 0:25:19 | |
The painting on the room you come into, | 0:25:19 | 0:25:22 | |
features all kinds of sexual positions, | 0:25:22 | 0:25:27 | |
from back, from the front, with the tongue, you name it, it's here. | 0:25:27 | 0:25:32 | |
Not just that, each one is given a number. | 0:25:32 | 0:25:37 | |
This has launched the theory that this bath establishment | 0:25:37 | 0:25:42 | |
is not just a bath establishment but has, perhaps on the upper floor, | 0:25:42 | 0:25:48 | |
a brothel attached. | 0:25:48 | 0:25:50 | |
It's a kind of massage parlour with fringe activities. | 0:25:50 | 0:25:55 | |
I am afraid the truth about these paintings is a bit more mundane. | 0:25:56 | 0:26:02 | |
What we have really come into is the changing room. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:06 | |
You can see along the walls, | 0:26:08 | 0:26:10 | |
the place where the shelf to hold your clothes would have been put. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:15 | |
What this paintings are, they are not | 0:26:15 | 0:26:19 | |
adverts for the sex that might have been going on upstairs, "Please can I have three hours of number four," | 0:26:19 | 0:26:24 | |
I think they are a clever way | 0:26:24 | 0:26:27 | |
of helping you remember where you left your tunic or your toga. | 0:26:27 | 0:26:33 | |
In fact, if you look rather carefully, | 0:26:33 | 0:26:35 | |
at what the numbers are written on, they're written on wicker baskets, which I think is what we imagine, | 0:26:35 | 0:26:43 | |
would be on the shelf below where you left your belongings. | 0:26:43 | 0:26:47 | |
So the idea would be, | 0:26:47 | 0:26:50 | |
"I left my toga near the fellatio." | 0:26:50 | 0:26:53 | |
It's a kind of joke! | 0:26:53 | 0:26:56 | |
But if you head across town there is one building | 0:26:56 | 0:26:59 | |
where there is no debate about its intended function. | 0:26:59 | 0:27:03 | |
As far as I'm concerned this is the town's one and only known brothel. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:09 | |
This is where you can see that the whole wall | 0:27:14 | 0:27:18 | |
is covered with the graffiti of the customers. | 0:27:18 | 0:27:22 | |
They're an interesting multicultural bunch, there's a couple in Greek. | 0:27:22 | 0:27:26 | |
They're very hard to read, Latin handwriting is absolutely dreadful, | 0:27:28 | 0:27:32 | |
but this one here is clear and pretty typical. | 0:27:32 | 0:27:37 | |
"I came along here and I had a good fuck" | 0:27:37 | 0:27:40 | |
which is about as clear as you can get. | 0:27:40 | 0:27:42 | |
It's a pretty gloomy place and my heart goes to the prostitutes | 0:27:42 | 0:27:48 | |
who had to work here. | 0:27:48 | 0:27:51 | |
The sex here still sells 2,000 years later | 0:27:51 | 0:27:54 | |
because this is the most popular visitor attraction on the entire site. | 0:27:54 | 0:28:00 | |
This place is always packed with people because we still have | 0:28:03 | 0:28:06 | |
a glamorous view of Roman sex and Roman brothels. | 0:28:06 | 0:28:10 | |
We are also get told a lot of rubbish about it. | 0:28:10 | 0:28:13 | |
If you listen to what the tour guides are saying here, | 0:28:13 | 0:28:16 | |
they look at these paintings up above the cubicles and they say | 0:28:16 | 0:28:21 | |
these are the menu at the brothel, | 0:28:21 | 0:28:24 | |
you might not be able to speak Latin very well | 0:28:24 | 0:28:27 | |
but you could always ask like in a bar, | 0:28:27 | 0:28:30 | |
"Can I have some of that one above that door." | 0:28:30 | 0:28:33 | |
It's rubbish! It doesn't add up to me. | 0:28:33 | 0:28:36 | |
I think they are fantasy images about sex. | 0:28:36 | 0:28:41 | |
This place is bad enough. | 0:28:41 | 0:28:43 | |
It's dark, it's dingy, the girls are working in prison cells effectively, | 0:28:43 | 0:28:50 | |
and you don't have to make it worse by pretending you chose sex | 0:28:50 | 0:28:54 | |
like the way you choose a hamburger. | 0:28:54 | 0:28:56 | |
Between the frescoes, the phalluses and the brothel, | 0:28:56 | 0:29:00 | |
you can see how we ended up with the image of Pompeii as a society obsessed with sex. | 0:29:00 | 0:29:05 | |
But we need to think again about this ancient myth. | 0:29:05 | 0:29:09 | |
My idea is pretty simple, honestly. | 0:29:09 | 0:29:13 | |
I don't think that the Romans were more interested in sex than we are. | 0:29:13 | 0:29:18 | |
I think it's much more to do with male power. | 0:29:18 | 0:29:21 | |
It's to say, "This is a very masculine culture." | 0:29:21 | 0:29:27 | |
Roman power is about male power, | 0:29:27 | 0:29:29 | |
the phallus tells you that Roman power is built on its masculinity. | 0:29:29 | 0:29:36 | |
We've been too keen to see sex in every corner of Pompeii | 0:29:38 | 0:29:42 | |
and that may go for another image of Roman life too. | 0:29:42 | 0:29:45 | |
We picture the rich gorging themselves in gluttonous feasts, | 0:29:45 | 0:29:50 | |
whilst the poor and the slaves, who serve them, go hungry. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:54 | |
I wonder if the skeletons in the cellar can give us a different view on that, too. | 0:29:54 | 0:30:01 | |
Fabian, is there anything that you've been able to discover so far | 0:30:01 | 0:30:04 | |
which might tell us about the diet of these people? | 0:30:04 | 0:30:08 | |
From what we can see with the naked eye, we didn't find any signs of malnutrition or lack of minerals. | 0:30:08 | 0:30:15 | |
There is no significant difference between the two groups. | 0:30:15 | 0:30:19 | |
-So everybody here was getting enough of what they needed to keep alive and pretty healthy? -Yes. | 0:30:19 | 0:30:26 | |
This is remarkable. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:29 | |
We might expect to see big differences between rich and poor, | 0:30:29 | 0:30:33 | |
the poor perhaps smaller and showing signs of nutritional deficiency, but not here. | 0:30:33 | 0:30:39 | |
So can we find out more about what these people had actually been eating? | 0:30:39 | 0:30:45 | |
Fabian, I noticed when I was looking at some of the teeth, that they seem very worn, | 0:30:45 | 0:30:51 | |
much more worn down than modern teeth. | 0:30:51 | 0:30:53 | |
Because mainly the process of milling the grain is completely different | 0:30:53 | 0:31:00 | |
and in this time there was a lot of stones in the flour. | 0:31:00 | 0:31:06 | |
So when our Pompeians eat their nice Pompeian bread, they're also eating bits of the millstone and | 0:31:06 | 0:31:14 | |
-it abrades the teeth. -Yes. | 0:31:14 | 0:31:15 | |
Bread was such a staple food that in Pompeii alone there are 30 bakeries. | 0:31:19 | 0:31:24 | |
One of the biggest is on the town's high street and it gives us | 0:31:24 | 0:31:28 | |
a vivid picture of how Pompeians baked their daily bread. | 0:31:28 | 0:31:31 | |
One thing that we can be certain about all the people who ended up in our cellar, rich and poor alike, | 0:31:35 | 0:31:42 | |
is that they would have eaten bread from the same sort of bakery, maybe even the same bakery. | 0:31:42 | 0:31:48 | |
Now this is a really typical baking establishment of Pompeii. | 0:31:48 | 0:31:53 | |
I'm standing now in the area where the corn was ground, mules would have driven these rotating mills, | 0:31:53 | 0:32:01 | |
the main entrance to the bakery from the street was there | 0:32:01 | 0:32:05 | |
and this is where the dough was prepared, probably by slaves. | 0:32:05 | 0:32:10 | |
Flour was brought from this area, round to here, they formed it into loaves as yet unbaked, | 0:32:10 | 0:32:18 | |
they put those loaves on the shelf here and they whooshed through | 0:32:18 | 0:32:25 | |
to be picked up and put in the oven here. | 0:32:25 | 0:32:29 | |
And we know exactly what it looked like. | 0:32:31 | 0:32:34 | |
A painting from Pompeii shows us round loaves of bread, divided into eight portions. | 0:32:34 | 0:32:41 | |
In fact, 81 carbonised loaves cooked and ready to be sold | 0:32:41 | 0:32:46 | |
have been found perfectly preserved in one of the town's many ovens. | 0:32:46 | 0:32:52 | |
That's not all. | 0:32:52 | 0:32:54 | |
Archaeologists have found pomegranates, walnuts, | 0:32:54 | 0:33:00 | |
even eggs preserved for 2,000 years. | 0:33:00 | 0:33:03 | |
And now, an extraordinary piece of new research | 0:33:08 | 0:33:12 | |
means we can prove that it wasn't just rich Romans who ate well. | 0:33:12 | 0:33:17 | |
In Herculaneum, nine miles from Oplontis, | 0:33:17 | 0:33:20 | |
historian Andrew Wallace-Hadrill is leading the excavation project. | 0:33:20 | 0:33:24 | |
Herculaneum was buried under more than 50 feet of ash and volcanic debris during the eruption of 79. | 0:33:24 | 0:33:32 | |
Above this street was an apartment block inhabited, | 0:33:32 | 0:33:36 | |
not by Rome's super-rich, but by the ordinary people of the town. | 0:33:36 | 0:33:39 | |
What went into their mouths came out, 15 feet below. | 0:33:39 | 0:33:44 | |
Let's come down here, Mary, it's not so scary as it looks. | 0:33:45 | 0:33:48 | |
Down here, the evidence of Roman diet has been perfectly preserved for two millennia. | 0:33:48 | 0:33:53 | |
I am not great on ladders actually. | 0:33:53 | 0:33:55 | |
You appear to be disappearing into the bowels of the Earth. | 0:33:55 | 0:34:00 | |
You can see some very good down pipes here. | 0:34:00 | 0:34:04 | |
This whole sewer is fed from above, the stuff coming down, | 0:34:04 | 0:34:08 | |
smears down the wall, generations of stuff, leaves a trail | 0:34:08 | 0:34:12 | |
and it's still brown - you can see very clearly how brown it is - | 0:34:12 | 0:34:17 | |
it just leaves this trail of shit. | 0:34:17 | 0:34:19 | |
It feels real! You don't get closer to real Rome than being in a cesspit, do you? | 0:34:19 | 0:34:23 | |
-No! -So, you've got a layer of shit on the floor and then volcanic material covering it. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:30 | |
Exactly! Beautifully sealing the stuff on the floor. | 0:34:30 | 0:34:33 | |
-So you take out the volcanic material and get to the shit. -Yes. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:36 | |
It's all gone now! | 0:34:36 | 0:34:38 | |
It's all been removed. | 0:34:38 | 0:34:40 | |
It was up to our knees roughly. | 0:34:40 | 0:34:42 | |
It was really, really precious material. | 0:34:42 | 0:34:44 | |
In archaeological terms, this is gold. | 0:34:44 | 0:34:47 | |
It's precious because it literally was what had gone through these Roman lavatories. | 0:34:47 | 0:34:53 | |
Down here was the story of Roman diet, just waiting to be found. | 0:34:53 | 0:34:58 | |
This is the world's largest archaeological excavation of sewers. | 0:34:59 | 0:35:06 | |
Over 700 bags of human waste were collected from the sewer floor | 0:35:06 | 0:35:11 | |
and are being systematically analysed to tell us more about what Romans were eating. | 0:35:11 | 0:35:16 | |
What have you learnt? | 0:35:16 | 0:35:18 | |
In terms of diet, the amazing thing about the contents is the variety. | 0:35:18 | 0:35:24 | |
You've got bones of all sorts, a lot of fish bones. | 0:35:24 | 0:35:27 | |
We're right by the sea, they had a high fish diet but also chicken and eggs, we've got walnuts, | 0:35:27 | 0:35:34 | |
a good variety of nuts, so you have a complete mixture between local stuff | 0:35:34 | 0:35:39 | |
and imported stuff which is so typical of the Roman empire. | 0:35:39 | 0:35:42 | |
They certainly lived healthy on this. | 0:35:44 | 0:35:47 | |
What's important is to try and fix who the people were that were living | 0:35:47 | 0:35:53 | |
above this cesspit and sending their cess into the sewer. | 0:35:53 | 0:35:57 | |
Yes. There is a series of shops immediately above us, | 0:35:57 | 0:36:01 | |
so some of them are shopkeepers. definitely and, then above them, | 0:36:01 | 0:36:06 | |
are two more floors of flats. | 0:36:06 | 0:36:10 | |
It's terribly tempting to think because they're flats, these must be absolutely dirt poor. | 0:36:10 | 0:36:16 | |
They're neither dirt poor nor stinking rich, and this is the really hard thing. | 0:36:16 | 0:36:21 | |
People often think of the Roman world as being these really posh people | 0:36:21 | 0:36:26 | |
at the top and everyone else is ground down and miserable. No, sorry! | 0:36:26 | 0:36:31 | |
It's much more complicated than that, these are not really posh people, | 0:36:31 | 0:36:35 | |
they aren't rich enough to live a life of luxury, they're ordinary people. | 0:36:35 | 0:36:41 | |
The excavation in the sewers | 0:36:41 | 0:36:44 | |
supports what we found in the cellar, that rich and poor shared the same basic, healthy diet. | 0:36:44 | 0:36:50 | |
But let's not kid ourselves, the rich took every chance | 0:36:50 | 0:36:53 | |
to show off their wealth and where you ate was one way to do that. | 0:36:53 | 0:36:59 | |
This is a top of the range Roman dining room. | 0:37:00 | 0:37:05 | |
We might imagine that some of the richest of the skeletons in our cellar, | 0:37:05 | 0:37:11 | |
even if they didn't own something like this, might once or twice have eaten somewhere like this. | 0:37:11 | 0:37:18 | |
It's built around the idea of running, trickling, trinkling water. | 0:37:18 | 0:37:24 | |
Water would rush down from that little niche at the back. | 0:37:24 | 0:37:29 | |
It would then feed in to this pool here. | 0:37:29 | 0:37:33 | |
It would feed out over the marble | 0:37:33 | 0:37:36 | |
and it would end up in another pool with a fountain overlooking a garden beyond. | 0:37:36 | 0:37:43 | |
The other thing that is quite interesting | 0:37:44 | 0:37:48 | |
is that it reveals very sharply | 0:37:48 | 0:37:52 | |
how dependent the rich would be for their display eating on slaves. | 0:37:52 | 0:37:58 | |
You've got to get up there, to recline. How do you do it? And how would you do it in a toga? | 0:37:58 | 0:38:04 | |
The answer must be that you were helped by your slaves. | 0:38:04 | 0:38:09 | |
It's a very nice day-to-day indication | 0:38:09 | 0:38:12 | |
of how the Roman elite relied on the servant class. | 0:38:12 | 0:38:17 | |
Let me try and get up. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:20 | |
It's not easy. | 0:38:20 | 0:38:22 | |
Whoops! | 0:38:23 | 0:38:25 | |
Now I suppose that what I do is recline like this | 0:38:26 | 0:38:32 | |
but I hope to goodness they had some cushions | 0:38:32 | 0:38:35 | |
because it really isn't very comfortable | 0:38:35 | 0:38:39 | |
and I'm a bit far from where my wine might be in here. | 0:38:39 | 0:38:43 | |
Certainly, it seems to me that this is ostentatious dining | 0:38:43 | 0:38:47 | |
coming at the price of comfort. | 0:38:47 | 0:38:50 | |
So unlike today when having money means you can eat out, | 0:38:51 | 0:38:56 | |
if you were rich in Pompeii, you were dining at home, surrounded by opulence. | 0:38:56 | 0:39:02 | |
But what about ordinary Pompeians who weren't living in luxury, where were they eating? | 0:39:02 | 0:39:08 | |
Fast food joints are one of the commonest features of the Pompeian street scene. | 0:39:08 | 0:39:14 | |
There's over 150 of them in the city, there's 20 of them in this section of street alone. | 0:39:14 | 0:39:21 | |
There's so many of them that they can't possibly have been | 0:39:21 | 0:39:26 | |
for the rich alone, they probably weren't for the rich at all! | 0:39:26 | 0:39:28 | |
They were for people who didn't have places to eat at home, for people coming in from the countryside, | 0:39:28 | 0:39:34 | |
or people coming in from the port who wanted to get a bite to eat. | 0:39:34 | 0:39:38 | |
You've got two choices if you're a customer at this bar. | 0:39:42 | 0:39:47 | |
Either you come to the street or to the counter, | 0:39:47 | 0:39:50 | |
see what they've got on offer on the dishes here, | 0:39:50 | 0:39:53 | |
choose what you want and take it away. | 0:39:53 | 0:39:57 | |
Fast food. If you've got more time, and I guess more money, | 0:39:57 | 0:40:01 | |
it was probably like modern Naples - | 0:40:01 | 0:40:04 | |
you got charged more if you want to sit down. | 0:40:04 | 0:40:07 | |
You go into the back room and spend time eating and drinking at a table. | 0:40:07 | 0:40:12 | |
I imagine it was pretty crowded, | 0:40:13 | 0:40:15 | |
perhaps six or eight tables with people sitting around and when you got down, at the table, | 0:40:15 | 0:40:21 | |
sitting on the chairs, at your eye level, are these lovely little scenes of life in the bar. | 0:40:21 | 0:40:28 | |
From the storerooms of the Naples museum, a fresco found in Pompeii has been brought out for me to see. | 0:40:32 | 0:40:40 | |
It once decorated the walls of another bar and gives us an idea of a typical Pompeian night out. | 0:40:42 | 0:40:48 | |
They're very clever, actually, | 0:40:48 | 0:40:51 | |
because the paintings have got the ancient equivalent of speech bubbles attached to them, | 0:40:51 | 0:40:57 | |
so a little dialogue, a little story develops. | 0:40:57 | 0:41:01 | |
And the story is not entirely unfamiliar. | 0:41:02 | 0:41:05 | |
After a good few drinks, two men get into an argument about a game of dice. | 0:41:05 | 0:41:11 | |
The upshot of this we see in the sadly bashed-up last scene, but happily the writing still survives. | 0:41:12 | 0:41:20 | |
One's saying, "You scumbag, I won!" | 0:41:20 | 0:41:24 | |
And the other is saying, quite literally, "No, you didn't, you cock sucker." | 0:41:24 | 0:41:30 | |
Just at the right-hand corner, | 0:41:30 | 0:41:32 | |
it must be the landlord because his speech bubble is saying, | 0:41:32 | 0:41:37 | |
"Look chaps, if you want to fight, get outside." | 0:41:37 | 0:41:40 | |
I think it's nice ending this little series of scenes with the landlord | 0:41:40 | 0:41:46 | |
because it reminds us that bars are not just places where people go and get drunk, gamble and flirt, | 0:41:46 | 0:41:53 | |
they're actually somebody's business. | 0:41:53 | 0:41:56 | |
So where rich and poor were eating and drinking was worlds apart, | 0:41:57 | 0:42:03 | |
but what they ate was for the most part very similar. | 0:42:03 | 0:42:07 | |
Everybody shared the benefit of food grown in this marvellously fertile region | 0:42:07 | 0:42:11 | |
and sourced from the plentiful Mediterranean, which in those days was right on their doorstep. | 0:42:11 | 0:42:19 | |
It's easy to forget that in Roman times, Pompeii was absolutely on the seashore. | 0:42:23 | 0:42:28 | |
It's only the seismic activity that means it's now inland. | 0:42:28 | 0:42:32 | |
Pompeii itself had a port and there are other little harbours up and down this coastline. | 0:42:32 | 0:42:39 | |
Goods came in from abroad, and goods went out from this rich agricultural land. | 0:42:39 | 0:42:45 | |
It might have looked like a small provincial Italian town by the sea but there is plenty of evidence, | 0:42:48 | 0:42:55 | |
some of it from the skeletons in the cellar, of just how far Pompeii's international connections stretched. | 0:42:55 | 0:43:01 | |
What we've got here is a gorgeous, gorgeous necklace. | 0:43:03 | 0:43:09 | |
It was found near one of the skeletons, the likely candidate is a middle-aged woman. | 0:43:09 | 0:43:16 | |
It is stunningly modern in its feel. | 0:43:18 | 0:43:23 | |
It's quite a narrow neck it's going to go round, | 0:43:23 | 0:43:26 | |
I think it might just go around me, but it's too big to be a bracelet. | 0:43:26 | 0:43:31 | |
It must have been a choker, going tight around somebody's neck. | 0:43:31 | 0:43:37 | |
One of the puzzles about these things always | 0:43:37 | 0:43:40 | |
is where the raw material for them comes from. | 0:43:40 | 0:43:46 | |
Emeralds aren't found naturally near Pompeii. The likelihood is that they come from Egypt. | 0:43:46 | 0:43:51 | |
These roughly shaped emeralds belonging to one of the skeletons | 0:43:51 | 0:43:56 | |
aren't the only evidence we have of Rome's two-way global traffic. | 0:43:56 | 0:44:01 | |
This is one of the most extraordinary objects ever found in Pompeii. | 0:44:01 | 0:44:08 | |
What it is... | 0:44:08 | 0:44:11 | |
is an ivory statuette, and you only have to look at it | 0:44:11 | 0:44:16 | |
to see this looks Indian and it is Indian, | 0:44:16 | 0:44:19 | |
that's where it comes from. | 0:44:19 | 0:44:22 | |
It brings it home to you in an instant that Pompeii and Pompeian inhabitants | 0:44:22 | 0:44:28 | |
know about what happens in the outside world, | 0:44:28 | 0:44:32 | |
or they have an awareness of Egypt and Africa and Asia | 0:44:32 | 0:44:37 | |
and all the other places around the Mediterranean in a way that is quite different | 0:44:37 | 0:44:43 | |
from what one imagines the global view of an English village might be in the 18th or 19th century. | 0:44:43 | 0:44:49 | |
So Pompeii was a small town with a world view. | 0:44:53 | 0:44:56 | |
But how far do our skeletons in the cellar reflect that? | 0:44:56 | 0:45:00 | |
We know Pompeii is in some ways | 0:45:02 | 0:45:06 | |
a surprisingly multicultural little place. | 0:45:06 | 0:45:10 | |
There are foreign objects, foreign imports, it's got a port, it's looking towards the outside world. | 0:45:10 | 0:45:17 | |
What's always been trickier to pin down is just how far the population was multicultural. | 0:45:17 | 0:45:24 | |
Have we got any evidence from these skeletons about the make-up of Pompeian society? | 0:45:24 | 0:45:31 | |
I mean the ethnic or racial make-up? | 0:45:31 | 0:45:34 | |
We found two skeletons where we are quite sure they are of African ancestry. | 0:45:34 | 0:45:40 | |
This is from the so-called rich group | 0:45:40 | 0:45:42 | |
and there is another one, it's a female lying on her belly there, she is of African origin. | 0:45:42 | 0:45:48 | |
Tell me how you know it's of African origin. | 0:45:48 | 0:45:51 | |
It's just the shape of the face. | 0:45:51 | 0:45:54 | |
Are you talking about sub-Saharan African, not North African. | 0:45:54 | 0:45:58 | |
-Yes, black. -Black African. | 0:45:58 | 0:46:00 | |
What you're seeming to suggest, and I think it's a really important point, | 0:46:00 | 0:46:05 | |
is that there are people living here | 0:46:05 | 0:46:09 | |
who have an origin really on the other side of the Roman empire. | 0:46:09 | 0:46:14 | |
That's not the only thing interesting about the African skeleton. | 0:46:15 | 0:46:19 | |
His skull is green, stained by metal objects | 0:46:19 | 0:46:24 | |
and he's in the group found with treasure. | 0:46:24 | 0:46:26 | |
It's possible he was the slave of someone rich, but he might also have been rich himself. | 0:46:26 | 0:46:34 | |
We can't assume all Africans were slaves. | 0:46:34 | 0:46:38 | |
Brutal and degrading as Roman slavery could be, it wasn't as straightforward as that. | 0:46:38 | 0:46:43 | |
In one ancient cemetery outside Pompeii is a tomb that paints a much more complex picture of slavery. | 0:46:46 | 0:46:52 | |
What you've got here | 0:46:54 | 0:46:56 | |
is a tomb that holds the ashes of three people. | 0:46:56 | 0:47:00 | |
And they tell you who they are. | 0:47:00 | 0:47:02 | |
There is man called Publius Vesonius who is an ex-slave, he tells you he's an ex-slave. | 0:47:02 | 0:47:10 | |
There is a woman called Vesonia who had actually owned him | 0:47:10 | 0:47:13 | |
and then freed him, and my guess is they probably then got married. | 0:47:13 | 0:47:20 | |
And he's also putting it up for the guy on the right, a friend of his. | 0:47:20 | 0:47:25 | |
The first text says Vesonius put this up for this trio. | 0:47:25 | 0:47:32 | |
But the text underneath... | 0:47:32 | 0:47:34 | |
tells the sequel, which isn't so happy. | 0:47:34 | 0:47:38 | |
"Stop and read this," he says, | 0:47:38 | 0:47:40 | |
"because that guy on the right who I thought was my friend | 0:47:40 | 0:47:44 | |
"turned out to be false. In fact," says Vesonius, "he took me to court. We quarrelled | 0:47:44 | 0:47:51 | |
"and he took me to court, but luckily my innocence and the gods above saved me. | 0:47:51 | 0:47:57 | |
"But he was a complete bastard." | 0:47:57 | 0:47:59 | |
We don't know why this man didn't just remove his ex-friend's statue. | 0:47:59 | 0:48:04 | |
It's what I would have done. But luckily he didn't as this monument tells a fascinating story. | 0:48:04 | 0:48:10 | |
Here was an ex-slave rich enough to put up this big tomb for three | 0:48:10 | 0:48:15 | |
and then to go to court to settle a dispute with his former friend. | 0:48:15 | 0:48:19 | |
The point about Roman slavery is that it isn't always a lifetime sentence. | 0:48:19 | 0:48:26 | |
Slaves get freed by the people who owned them | 0:48:26 | 0:48:30 | |
and they sometimes go on to do very well. | 0:48:30 | 0:48:34 | |
In fact, my guess is the majority of the Pompeian population, | 0:48:34 | 0:48:39 | |
certainly some of the people in our cellar, would have had slaves somewhere in their ancestry. | 0:48:39 | 0:48:45 | |
It's been calculated that more than half the population of Herculaneum were descended from slaves. | 0:48:45 | 0:48:52 | |
Slaves certainly sometimes did what we think of as high status jobs. | 0:48:52 | 0:48:56 | |
There's evidence for that in a very surpising place. | 0:48:56 | 0:49:00 | |
Here you have the bog, probably one seat here and then ... | 0:49:00 | 0:49:06 | |
Yes, you can come and sit by me. | 0:49:06 | 0:49:08 | |
What's brilliant about this is that the last person to use this loo | 0:49:10 | 0:49:14 | |
before the eruption happened has left his name. | 0:49:14 | 0:49:19 | |
It starts with an A. | 0:49:19 | 0:49:21 | |
-That's right. -And what he's saying is it's his name... "Apollinaris... | 0:49:21 | 0:49:28 | |
"Medicus T...T.imp..." | 0:49:28 | 0:49:33 | |
So "Apollinaris, the doctor of the emperor Titus..." | 0:49:33 | 0:49:38 | |
Then you can't read this any longer because it's got too faded. | 0:49:39 | 0:49:43 | |
Hic bene cacavit. He had a good shit here! | 0:49:43 | 0:49:47 | |
This name Apollinaris - we can't be certain, but is very likely a slave name. | 0:49:47 | 0:49:53 | |
So the emperor's doctor is a slave. | 0:49:53 | 0:49:56 | |
We tend to think the slave jobs as being very drudge manual labour, | 0:49:56 | 0:50:02 | |
some certainly were, but slaves also did, in our terms, | 0:50:02 | 0:50:08 | |
high-status professional jobs like being doctors. | 0:50:08 | 0:50:13 | |
That's another reason why slavery is more complicated. | 0:50:13 | 0:50:16 | |
Also, to be a slave of the Emperor is to be someone quite important. | 0:50:16 | 0:50:21 | |
In some ways it's better to be the slave of an emperor | 0:50:21 | 0:50:25 | |
than an ordinary freeborn person with a tiny little shop in Herculaneum. | 0:50:25 | 0:50:29 | |
I'd much rather be the Emperor Titus's slave doctor | 0:50:29 | 0:50:32 | |
-than a flower seller in the streets of Pompeii. -He was on the way up. | 0:50:32 | 0:50:35 | |
So slavery was a fact of life in Pompeii. | 0:50:37 | 0:50:40 | |
Almost certainly some of the people in our cellar were slaves, | 0:50:43 | 0:50:47 | |
they died right next to their masters, as they would have lived. | 0:50:47 | 0:50:51 | |
At the house of a baker on the main street of Pompeii, | 0:50:51 | 0:50:55 | |
we find a nice illustration of that closeness in a painting on the dining room wall. | 0:50:55 | 0:51:00 | |
These guys don't look too pissed yet, although we can imagine what might have happened next, | 0:51:00 | 0:51:07 | |
but the give-away scene is in the background where that lady is clearly about to keel over | 0:51:07 | 0:51:13 | |
and she is being propped up by the slave behind her. | 0:51:13 | 0:51:17 | |
I guess the slaves came pretty handy for this kind of job. | 0:51:17 | 0:51:20 | |
But it wasn't just slaves and masters living on top of each other. | 0:51:22 | 0:51:26 | |
Here in the baker's house, right next to the smart dining room, | 0:51:26 | 0:51:29 | |
there's a stable, and in it, the bones of the animals, | 0:51:29 | 0:51:34 | |
the ones he used to turn the mills which ground the grain, and no doubt delivered the bread around town too. | 0:51:34 | 0:51:42 | |
Here we've got the finest room in the baker's residential quarters | 0:51:42 | 0:51:46 | |
right up next to where the mules lived. | 0:51:46 | 0:51:51 | |
Just a few yards away is the back end of a really rich house in Pompeii | 0:51:51 | 0:51:56 | |
that was being given a complete make over at the time of the eruption. | 0:51:56 | 0:52:02 | |
So the rich are living right next door, right up against the working bakery. | 0:52:02 | 0:52:09 | |
The baker has his poshest room right next door to his animals. | 0:52:09 | 0:52:15 | |
That's how Pompeians lived - cheek by jowl. | 0:52:15 | 0:52:18 | |
And that's how we find the people in the cellar - | 0:52:18 | 0:52:22 | |
rich and poor, male and female, old and young, | 0:52:22 | 0:52:26 | |
lying close to each other in death as they would have been in life. | 0:52:26 | 0:52:30 | |
But in 79AD, that life came to an end. | 0:52:35 | 0:52:38 | |
Neither they, nor the others in this town, had any idea they lived in the shadow of a volcano. | 0:52:39 | 0:52:44 | |
The last major eruption had been 1,500 years before. | 0:52:44 | 0:52:49 | |
Nothing could prepare the population for what happened when Vesuvius exploded. | 0:52:58 | 0:53:04 | |
The people in the cellar had one choice - to try and escape, or stay and find shelter. | 0:53:14 | 0:53:20 | |
From out at sea, you get a very good impression | 0:53:24 | 0:53:28 | |
of how Vesuvius really lours over the whole area. | 0:53:28 | 0:53:33 | |
But also, you get this slightly uncomfortable sense | 0:53:33 | 0:53:37 | |
of how very close the volcano is. It makes you realise how difficult it would have been to escape from it. | 0:53:37 | 0:53:44 | |
Especially if you left it a little bit too late. | 0:53:44 | 0:53:48 | |
While friends and neighbours fled, our 54 people looked for cover, | 0:53:51 | 0:53:55 | |
and many took their most precious belongings with them. | 0:53:55 | 0:53:58 | |
Why most of them stayed put, we can only guess, but in one case, there's a strong clue. | 0:54:03 | 0:54:11 | |
Fabian, tell me about the remains of this person laid out here. | 0:54:12 | 0:54:17 | |
This is maybe one of the most dramatic and tragic persons | 0:54:17 | 0:54:23 | |
we found in this whole sample, | 0:54:23 | 0:54:27 | |
because these are the bones of a young female and we found with the skeleton this small bone. | 0:54:27 | 0:54:34 | |
The pelvic bone of a foetus. | 0:54:34 | 0:54:37 | |
She must have been pregnant. | 0:54:39 | 0:54:41 | |
If you measure it, you can determine | 0:54:42 | 0:54:45 | |
it was in the last month of pregnancy and it's quite traumatic. | 0:54:45 | 0:54:51 | |
The thought of being 8.5 months pregnant and trying to flee for your life from the erupting volcano, | 0:54:51 | 0:54:58 | |
it's just dreadful. | 0:54:58 | 0:55:01 | |
Amazingly, an eyewitness account of the eruption survives. | 0:55:10 | 0:55:15 | |
It describes how on that fateful day you could hear the shrieks of women, the squalling of infants | 0:55:15 | 0:55:21 | |
and the shouting of men, some calling out for their parents, | 0:55:21 | 0:55:26 | |
others for their children or wives. | 0:55:26 | 0:55:28 | |
It was so dark, they could only recognise them by their voices. | 0:55:28 | 0:55:32 | |
Many pleaded for the help of the gods, | 0:55:32 | 0:55:35 | |
but more thought that the gods had disappeared, and that the world had been plunged into eternal darkness. | 0:55:35 | 0:55:42 | |
It must have been pitch black when the volcanic debris started to fall and our people tried to escape. | 0:55:49 | 0:55:55 | |
Several of them certainly had brought lamps with them. | 0:55:55 | 0:55:59 | |
This one is quite nice because the centre, just where the oil goes in, | 0:55:59 | 0:56:04 | |
has got a lovely picture here of the goddess of Rome herself. | 0:56:04 | 0:56:09 | |
She is sadly broken in half but she is quite recognisable with her helmet on. | 0:56:09 | 0:56:15 | |
The people in the cellar were sheltering there | 0:56:17 | 0:56:20 | |
as the eruption intensified outside, plunging them further into darkness. | 0:56:20 | 0:56:25 | |
Heaven knows how you could have found your way through the streets at night using just one of these. | 0:56:28 | 0:56:35 | |
It makes me realise how vulnerable the people in this cellar must have felt. | 0:56:35 | 0:56:41 | |
They fled through the darkness, all trace of the sun has been obliterated by the volcanic debris, | 0:56:41 | 0:56:48 | |
they've come in here, they're huddled together for shelter and support | 0:56:48 | 0:56:54 | |
and the only protection against the dark they've got is half a dozen little lamps like this. | 0:56:54 | 0:56:58 | |
Of course, in the end these people couldn't protect themselves from the same fate as the others in Pompeii. | 0:57:01 | 0:57:08 | |
But the Romans in the cellar didn't just leave us with evidence of their tragic death | 0:57:08 | 0:57:14 | |
but of the lives they lived too. | 0:57:14 | 0:57:16 | |
It may have been a male-dominated world where the rich dined in luxury and exploited the poor, | 0:57:16 | 0:57:22 | |
but Pompeii was also a place where slaves could earn their freedom, where women could own wealth, | 0:57:22 | 0:57:28 | |
and the ordinary Roman could eat and drink well. | 0:57:28 | 0:57:32 | |
It was a place where even the poorest knew something of the world outside. | 0:57:32 | 0:57:38 | |
The people who died in this cellar helped us to understand that Roman society | 0:57:45 | 0:57:50 | |
wasn't quite as black and white as we often imagine it to be. | 0:57:50 | 0:57:55 | |
Sure, these people would had vastly different lifestyles, | 0:57:55 | 0:58:00 | |
but they lived cheek by jowl and they shared a lot too. | 0:58:00 | 0:58:04 | |
The smells, the dark, and the dirt. | 0:58:04 | 0:58:07 | |
Not to mention the wine, the sex, the food and the fun. | 0:58:07 | 0:58:12 | |
And in the end, of course, they shared the same fate, in the same cellar 2,000 years ago. | 0:58:12 | 0:58:19 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:30 | 0:58:33 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:58:33 | 0:58:36 |