Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town


Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town

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This programme contains some strong language.

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In 79AD, this volcano exploded.

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Down below, around the bay of Naples, there were farms, houses,

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luxurious villas, Roman towns.

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The best known is Pompeii.

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The eruption which wiped this ancient town off the Roman map

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is one of the world's most famous disasters,

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but the tragedy has given historians a priceless legacy.

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The inhabitants were overwhelmed by gas, lethal gas, volcanic debris

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and we found their bodies exactly where they died.

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Many have been cast in plaster, frozen in time.

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They've tantalised the world with their last horrific moments of death.

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But they tell us little about their lives.

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Now, in a cellar just two miles outside Pompeii,

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are 54 well-preserved skeletons lying exactly where they died.

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They were hiding from the full force of the volcano.

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2,000 years later, they're about to give up their secrets.

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I'm wondering whether they can tell us something

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about the most interesting question in Pompeii,

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which is not how the people died, we know how they died,

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it's about how the people in Pompeii actually lived.

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For the 25 years I've taught classics at Cambridge

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I've been fascinated by what life was really like day to day in ancient Pompeii.

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I am hoping these skeletons will help take this understanding

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one step further and put my theories to the test.

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I'll explore the opulent and the ordinary.

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Don't have to be rich to wear jewellery.

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In a city of the refined and the rude.

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It looks to me as if the woman is on top of him but sucking his toes.

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I'll see the hardship endured, and the pleasures savoured.

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These guys don't look too pissed yet.

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I can't find where I left my glass.

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I want to see if we can probe a bit deeper and get beneath the skin of this ancient town.

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-You don't get closer to real Rome than being in a cesspit, do you?

-No.

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I am hoping that the people in the cellar will help me discover

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what life was like before Vesuvius forced them to flee.

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Pompeii is the most important archaeological site in the Roman world.

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Nowhere else do we come face to face with antiquity

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up close in quite this personal way.

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These perfectly preserved ruins

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bring millions of us here each year to see a snapshot of Roman life.

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But that's all we see, a snapshot.

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Of a society where it appears the rich enjoyed a life of luxury

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and everyone else, the poor and the slaves, lived lives of drudgery.

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That's always seemed too simple to me.

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It's much more interesting than that.

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I want to bust a few myths about the rich and the poor in Pompeii.

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This was the stretch of coastline where rich Romans,

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I mean really, really rich Romans from the capital,

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used to come for their holidays.

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It was supposed to be particularly popular with the fast set,

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they came here to gamble, to have fun, to have sex.

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Sort of a cross between Las Vegas and Brighton.

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And that's what makes Pompeii so remarkable.

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It was a town where ordinary people lived cheek by jowl

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with the hedonistic rich.

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It had all the essentials of a Roman town, with a forum at one end,

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and at the other an amphitheatre and training ground for gladiators.

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A market, temples, baths, even a brothel.

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Perhaps 12,000 people packed into less than a square mile.

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Pompeii lies between the Mediterranean and Vesuvius.

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It's 17 miles along the coast from Naples, not far from Herculaneum,

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and it's in a suburb of Pompeii,

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Oplontis, where the cellar of skeletons was unearthed.

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It must have seemed a sensible place to come.

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It's partly underground and that would have seemed safe,

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but it's got good access from the road outside.

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It's very hard not to be...

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moved by this site.

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They might be 2,000 years old

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but they're still victims of a terrible human tragedy.

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On the other hand, I can't help wondering

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what these bones might tell us about the life of these people.

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The first thing we can tell from the cellar

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is that these people appear to be divided into two groups.

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On one side they were carrying money and jewels.

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These bodies have been catalogued and tidied away into boxes.

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The others, left where they fell, were found with nothing.

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So how can we explain this divide?

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You could come up with all kinds of theories as to why it might be.

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But for my money the most likely thing is that we're dealing with a distinction in wealth.

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These skeletons are important

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because many of the bones found at Pompeii have simply been jumbled up.

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And the plaster casts, they're very poignant, but are much less useful

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for forensic science because the bones inside get contaminated.

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Remains preserved like those in the cellar

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exactly where the people died are rare.

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For the first time,

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these are going to be analysed by a forensic team, led by Fabian Kanz.

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So far we have found at least 54 individuals here, at least,

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and this gives us a broad cross section of the society

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of the Romans at that time.

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The point is we have a great opportunity here because we have a snapshot of the society.

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We might have slaves, we might have upper class people,

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and we can find out if there have been big differences.

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One of the most complete skeletons is that of a man of about 55.

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Apart from some dental cavities he seems in pretty good nick.

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If you look at the other bones, I noticed this.

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I don't know much about skeletons but that looks to me like

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something that's got a real big muscle attachment.

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Yes, it's the right upper arm,

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and it's the muscle attachment for the brachialis,

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and as you can see on the left side, it's nearly the same.

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And he must be a really strong man.

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He's my age, he's got about as good teeth as me, but he's much stronger.

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These are the rest of his bones, but why are his bones green?

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Yes, you're right. On the whole left side he's green.

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And green comes from metal objects, which means he was wealthy.

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There was some bronze or copper

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or brass objects buried with him.

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He had a considerable amount of metal wealth with him.

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Yes, the acid in the soil is reacting with the metal object

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and that makes him green.

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Nearly all of the so-called rich sample, have been at least one or two bones green.

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So they all have been buried close to something metal.

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Whereas what we call the poor, do any of them have this green?

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No, not at all.

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Carrying no possessions at all, the bones of the people on one side are unmarked.

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But, on the other side of the cellar, the people with green bones

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were discovered with a dazzling array of objects.

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These are now kept in a guarded vault

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at the archaeological museum in Naples.

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For the very first time I've been allowed to get really

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close to this amazing stuff, and actually get my hands on it.

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Look, this is really exciting for me.

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This is the first time I have even touched any jewellery from Pompeii.

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I am going got be very naughty, and put the bracelet on.

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However cynical you are, however much a boring old academic you are,

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it's still exciting to wear the bracelet worn 2,000 years ago.

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Nothing will ever stop me thinking that's exciting.

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I think this is very attractive, actually.

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You pick it up, you can feel instantly it's heavy. This is a solid bangle.

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But what strikes you about it, instantly, is that it's so big.

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It's not only women that wear bracelets,

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this could be man's jewellery, a big hunky man.

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This is really is a very, very delicate piece of jewellery.

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They told specifically that I'm not allowed to try this one on.

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The links are really tiny.

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It's very high-quality workmanship, very nicely done.

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It must've been, it would be very pricey now,

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it must have been pricey then, too.

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There was a vast treasure horde in the cellar.

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Close to the skeleton of the man with green bones,

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was a woman in her early twenties.

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She had with her

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one of the very, very biggest amounts of money found with anybody,

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anywhere in Pompeii.

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In Roman currency, it was 10,000 sesterces.

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What that means is it's about the equivalent

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of 10 year's pay for a legionary Roman soldier.

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These are some of the coins.

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Some were in silver, but a lot were in gold.

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And she had them with her in two separate containers.

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Instantly you can see

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the silver ones are very worn.

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These actually have been

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money in circulation. These are for actually buying things in the Pompeian market place.

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But the gold ones are in absolutely beautiful condition.

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I think what this tells us is these really have been somebody's savings.

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You can imagine very easily what must have happened, that the people were fleeing,

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they wanted to take their valuables with them, they get the purse,

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they stuff what's most important to them, these things.

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They stuff it inside the purse, put it in their pocket and off they go.

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This is what the people in the cellar chose to take with them

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as they tried to escape.

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They sought refuge from the eruption in what was probably an underground storeroom.

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They never made it further than this cellar in Oplontis.

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The building above the cellar appears, at first,

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like a two-storey, residential home.

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But, if you explore a little further,

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you see that much more was going on.

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There's a large building with two floors of storerooms,

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piles of big containers and wheel ruts made by hundreds of carts.

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This was clearly more than somebody's house.

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This is an agricultural depot.

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It's ghostly now.

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In Roman times, it must have been an absolute hub of activity with people

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packing things up, carting things, wheeling them off,

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getting them ready for despatch.

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Whoever owned this place must have been pretty wealthy.

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But he wasn't anything like as wealthy as one of his neighbours,

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because just over there, few yards form this place,

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is one of the most luxurious villas

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ever found in all of the Roman world.

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The cellar is only a stone's throw from this stunning Roman mansion.

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100 rooms, decorated with sumptuous frescos, painted with pigments from

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the farthest corners of the Roman empire.

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And to top it all, an Olympic-size 200-foot-long swimming pool,

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where the guests could let their hair down.

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So, while the rich frolicked at their pool parties,

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what was life like on the streets of Pompeii?

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What I used to...

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Mattia Buondonno's family has lived in Pompeii for generations

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and he's one of the site's most experienced guides.

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He's got a local sense of how this place might once have been.

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What's your sense of what the ancient town was like, the basics, what was life like here?

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Smell!

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Smell of the people, smell of the activities of

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commerciality that was here, smell on everywhere,

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smelling on money.

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And the smell of the animals too, presumably.

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-Yes!

-And just think of the smell of the shit.

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-Yes!

-Awful!

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For them was normal life.

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To get an idea of Pompeii

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as the people in the cellar would have seen it, I've come to Naples.

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Though it's a modern city,

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there are some striking similarities with the ancient town nearby.

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-So, you could feel yourself in Pompeii.

-Here?

-Yes.

-Why?

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Because more or less, the atmosphere, the first floor,

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and the busy town...

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It's easy to forget that Pompeii was a two-storey town.

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People lived above their shops and bars and stairs opened

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right onto the streets, just as they do in Naples today.

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I think people often wonder where all the stuff was in a Pompeian shop or a bar.

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What this tells you is that you can actually hang it from the ceiling...

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Like they did 2,000 years ago, as this painting shows us.

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All around modern Naples are echoes of Pompeii's past.

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From the doors, just like the ones you see in Pompeian frescos.

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-There are things like this in Pompeii, are they?

-Oh yes, they had! They had!

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-Careful, because we don't want the owner to come.

-OK, we can get out.

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To the images they left on their walls.

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I think the graffiti is pretty Pompeian.

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The Pompeian graffiti were better than this.

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Yes, they were wittier. Wittier, I think.

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Ah! That's very Pompeian, is it?

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No, Pompeii was cleaner.

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-Pompeii was cleaner than that?

-Yeah.

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You really think so?

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Mattia, you don't, do you?

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So we can find all kinds of clues

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as to how ancient Pompeians lived in modern Naples.

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But what can the bones from the cellar

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add to the picture of their lives?

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This looks quite ordinary to me. This is the leg bone?

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This is the lower part of the leg bone and if you compare it to

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this bone, it's swollen and you can see all these little holes.

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-And what is that?

-This is an infection of the skin and the bone.

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A possible reason for this might be a cut, is one explanation for it.

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So, you get a cut, you haven't got any antiseptic...

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..you maybe you don't even know exactly what the relationship

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is between dirt and infection,

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so the cut never properly heals and is a kind of

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lifetime infection really.

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Painful or not painful?

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Very painful, very painful.

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So where could this infection have come from?

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After all, we tend to think of Romans as a rather clean lot,

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regularly visiting the baths.

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It's true that bathing was an important part of life,

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as we can see at the baths near the forum in Pompeii.

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They give us a better picture than anywhere else in the world of how Roman bathing actually worked.

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This is where you took your clothes off.

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I think it must have been quite stunning to come in from the hot

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sweaty outside, through the narrow corridor

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into this beautifully decorated room.

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You have to imagine the baths as being a place where someone,

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who's life could be a little bit drab, could come to bright colours,

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twinkling lights, water splashing, everybody with their clothes off.

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The baths were the people's palace.

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Bathing was a great leveller.

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Almost everyone in ancient Rome, rich and poor, men and women

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would have gone to the baths,

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including the people from our cellar.

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These feats of engineering had under-floor heating,

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a series of hot and cold rooms and in Rome itself, they could even have a library attached.

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You get all sorts of things when you come into Roman Baths.

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You get hot and cool, you get rest, but it's also crucial to remember,

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you get wonderful things to look at, too,

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and the ceiling still has some traces of the kinds of

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over-the-top decoration that you expect in a really good Roman bath

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and everybody shares those things.

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We tend to think of these luxurious baths as pristine marble palaces,

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where people came to get clean.

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But is that really the case?

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Here is where I guess you'd have spend your time,

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in this lovely marble pool.

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It's a bit like a Jacuzzi, think California

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or perhaps think rugby club.

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You sit down, the warm water is around your feet,

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this is a great time to relax,

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to talk to your friends, in this lovely setting.

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There is however a nasty surprise in store.

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We can see ever so clearly where the water comes into this pool,

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there is a nice little spout here to bring the water in

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but you can look all around and there isn't a single place where it can go out.

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All this means is there's absolutely no circulation of water

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at all in this pool.

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All people who piss in here, their sweat,

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it all comes into a steaming hot, watery mess.

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Just how healthy is that?

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It's not at all healthy,

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even some Roman doctors realised it wasn't healthy.

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The great Roman doctor called Celsus, who says,

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"Make sure you don't go to the baths if you've got an open wound,

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"because you're likely to die of gangrene if you do."

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Whether the people in the cellar made that connection we don't know.

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But the bones offer an extraordinary revelation about another area

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of the population's health.

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-So these are two different people, are they?

-Yes, two different people.

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10 to 12-year-old children.

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They're both the same age and they both have the same abnormalities on their teeth.

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We think, most probably, they have been twins.

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Same age, same teeth.

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Yes and they had a problem.

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On closer examination of the twin's teeth,

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Fabian's colleague, Maciej Henneberg,

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discovered evidence of a horrible and unexpected disease.

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They must have had a massive illness.

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One possible explanation for it is

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congenital syphilis.

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I am not joking, but...

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I thought syphilis didn't come to Europe until much later than this.

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If this were the case,

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this would be our first Roman case of congenital syphilis.

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-Yes, of course.

-Well, that would be something to find in this cellar, wouldn't it?

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If this is true, it would overturn the idea

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that the disease first arrived in Europe with Columbus' sailors.

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This would be the first recorded case of syphilis by more than 1,400 years.

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But the twins in the cellar

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also tells us about another aspect of ancient Roman life.

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This must have been a really bad and serious illness.

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Somebody had to take care of them,

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very, a lot of care, a lot of healthcare,

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a lot of effort that they made it.

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What strikes me is that they were found in the so-called poor sample,

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but still must have received years of medical care.

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It is interesting because it's going from

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a really nice scientific observation, just to a glimpse of

0:23:140:23:18

a family support network, parents looking after them,

0:23:180:23:23

the very base of their survival is about human care.

0:23:230:23:26

The possibility of a sexually transmitted disease

0:23:300:23:34

might at first sight reinforce a view many people have

0:23:340:23:39

of ancient Rome as a society of debauchery and sexual excess.

0:23:390:23:43

There's willies, big willies everywhere.

0:23:430:23:46

When one object was first first found in a Pompeian bar,

0:23:460:23:50

it was deemed too shocking to be put on public display.

0:23:500:23:54

It's a bronze lamp and all kinds of things dangle off it,

0:23:560:24:01

bells and stuff, a kind of wind chimes for us,

0:24:010:24:04

the Romans would've called it a "Tintinnabulum".

0:24:040:24:08

But the centre of attention was to be this chap here,

0:24:080:24:12

a bronze hunchback pygmy

0:24:120:24:17

with a huge willy, which he is in the process of cutting off.

0:24:170:24:23

I like to think that this shows greater anxiety

0:24:240:24:27

on the part of the Romans about their masculinity, but who knows?

0:24:270:24:31

Maybe it's a strange form of erotica,

0:24:310:24:34

maybe it's a joke on the guys who came to drink in the bar,

0:24:340:24:39

or is it in the end, just a lamp?

0:24:390:24:42

Whatever its function, you only need to stroll around town

0:24:420:24:45

to see the same phallic theme again and again.

0:24:450:24:49

What do they mean?

0:24:490:24:50

What were they for?

0:24:500:24:52

Everybody's had a theory and there have been some pretty mad ones.

0:24:520:24:56

Do they, for example, point to the nearest brothel?

0:24:560:25:00

I'm afraid, not a hope!

0:25:000:25:01

If this were the case, Pompeii would be littered with brothels.

0:25:010:25:07

Some people think it is, but I'm not so sure, if you look carefully

0:25:070:25:12

at this upmarket bath house,

0:25:120:25:15

you see that displays of sex can be interpreted differently.

0:25:150:25:19

The painting on the room you come into,

0:25:190:25:22

features all kinds of sexual positions,

0:25:220:25:27

from back, from the front, with the tongue, you name it, it's here.

0:25:270:25:32

Not just that, each one is given a number.

0:25:320:25:37

This has launched the theory that this bath establishment

0:25:370:25:42

is not just a bath establishment but has, perhaps on the upper floor,

0:25:420:25:48

a brothel attached.

0:25:480:25:50

It's a kind of massage parlour with fringe activities.

0:25:500:25:55

I am afraid the truth about these paintings is a bit more mundane.

0:25:560:26:02

What we have really come into is the changing room.

0:26:020:26:06

You can see along the walls,

0:26:080:26:10

the place where the shelf to hold your clothes would have been put.

0:26:100:26:15

What this paintings are, they are not

0:26:150:26:19

adverts for the sex that might have been going on upstairs, "Please can I have three hours of number four,"

0:26:190:26:24

I think they are a clever way

0:26:240:26:27

of helping you remember where you left your tunic or your toga.

0:26:270:26:33

In fact, if you look rather carefully,

0:26:330:26:35

at what the numbers are written on, they're written on wicker baskets, which I think is what we imagine,

0:26:350:26:43

would be on the shelf below where you left your belongings.

0:26:430:26:47

So the idea would be,

0:26:470:26:50

"I left my toga near the fellatio."

0:26:500:26:53

It's a kind of joke!

0:26:530:26:56

But if you head across town there is one building

0:26:560:26:59

where there is no debate about its intended function.

0:26:590:27:03

As far as I'm concerned this is the town's one and only known brothel.

0:27:030:27:09

This is where you can see that the whole wall

0:27:140:27:18

is covered with the graffiti of the customers.

0:27:180:27:22

They're an interesting multicultural bunch, there's a couple in Greek.

0:27:220:27:26

They're very hard to read, Latin handwriting is absolutely dreadful,

0:27:280:27:32

but this one here is clear and pretty typical.

0:27:320:27:37

"I came along here and I had a good fuck"

0:27:370:27:40

which is about as clear as you can get.

0:27:400:27:42

It's a pretty gloomy place and my heart goes to the prostitutes

0:27:420:27:48

who had to work here.

0:27:480:27:51

The sex here still sells 2,000 years later

0:27:510:27:54

because this is the most popular visitor attraction on the entire site.

0:27:540:28:00

This place is always packed with people because we still have

0:28:030:28:06

a glamorous view of Roman sex and Roman brothels.

0:28:060:28:10

We are also get told a lot of rubbish about it.

0:28:100:28:13

If you listen to what the tour guides are saying here,

0:28:130:28:16

they look at these paintings up above the cubicles and they say

0:28:160:28:21

these are the menu at the brothel,

0:28:210:28:24

you might not be able to speak Latin very well

0:28:240:28:27

but you could always ask like in a bar,

0:28:270:28:30

"Can I have some of that one above that door."

0:28:300:28:33

It's rubbish! It doesn't add up to me.

0:28:330:28:36

I think they are fantasy images about sex.

0:28:360:28:41

This place is bad enough.

0:28:410:28:43

It's dark, it's dingy, the girls are working in prison cells effectively,

0:28:430:28:50

and you don't have to make it worse by pretending you chose sex

0:28:500:28:54

like the way you choose a hamburger.

0:28:540:28:56

Between the frescoes, the phalluses and the brothel,

0:28:560:29:00

you can see how we ended up with the image of Pompeii as a society obsessed with sex.

0:29:000:29:05

But we need to think again about this ancient myth.

0:29:050:29:09

My idea is pretty simple, honestly.

0:29:090:29:13

I don't think that the Romans were more interested in sex than we are.

0:29:130:29:18

I think it's much more to do with male power.

0:29:180:29:21

It's to say, "This is a very masculine culture."

0:29:210:29:27

Roman power is about male power,

0:29:270:29:29

the phallus tells you that Roman power is built on its masculinity.

0:29:290:29:36

We've been too keen to see sex in every corner of Pompeii

0:29:380:29:42

and that may go for another image of Roman life too.

0:29:420:29:45

We picture the rich gorging themselves in gluttonous feasts,

0:29:450:29:50

whilst the poor and the slaves, who serve them, go hungry.

0:29:500:29:54

I wonder if the skeletons in the cellar can give us a different view on that, too.

0:29:540:30:01

Fabian, is there anything that you've been able to discover so far

0:30:010:30:04

which might tell us about the diet of these people?

0:30:040:30:08

From what we can see with the naked eye, we didn't find any signs of malnutrition or lack of minerals.

0:30:080:30:15

There is no significant difference between the two groups.

0:30:150:30:19

-So everybody here was getting enough of what they needed to keep alive and pretty healthy?

-Yes.

0:30:190:30:26

This is remarkable.

0:30:260:30:29

We might expect to see big differences between rich and poor,

0:30:290:30:33

the poor perhaps smaller and showing signs of nutritional deficiency, but not here.

0:30:330:30:39

So can we find out more about what these people had actually been eating?

0:30:390:30:45

Fabian, I noticed when I was looking at some of the teeth, that they seem very worn,

0:30:450:30:51

much more worn down than modern teeth.

0:30:510:30:53

Because mainly the process of milling the grain is completely different

0:30:530:31:00

and in this time there was a lot of stones in the flour.

0:31:000:31:06

So when our Pompeians eat their nice Pompeian bread, they're also eating bits of the millstone and

0:31:060:31:14

-it abrades the teeth.

-Yes.

0:31:140:31:15

Bread was such a staple food that in Pompeii alone there are 30 bakeries.

0:31:190:31:24

One of the biggest is on the town's high street and it gives us

0:31:240:31:28

a vivid picture of how Pompeians baked their daily bread.

0:31:280:31:31

One thing that we can be certain about all the people who ended up in our cellar, rich and poor alike,

0:31:350:31:42

is that they would have eaten bread from the same sort of bakery, maybe even the same bakery.

0:31:420:31:48

Now this is a really typical baking establishment of Pompeii.

0:31:480:31:53

I'm standing now in the area where the corn was ground, mules would have driven these rotating mills,

0:31:530:32:01

the main entrance to the bakery from the street was there

0:32:010:32:05

and this is where the dough was prepared, probably by slaves.

0:32:050:32:10

Flour was brought from this area, round to here, they formed it into loaves as yet unbaked,

0:32:100:32:18

they put those loaves on the shelf here and they whooshed through

0:32:180:32:25

to be picked up and put in the oven here.

0:32:250:32:29

And we know exactly what it looked like.

0:32:310:32:34

A painting from Pompeii shows us round loaves of bread, divided into eight portions.

0:32:340:32:41

In fact, 81 carbonised loaves cooked and ready to be sold

0:32:410:32:46

have been found perfectly preserved in one of the town's many ovens.

0:32:460:32:52

That's not all.

0:32:520:32:54

Archaeologists have found pomegranates, walnuts,

0:32:540:33:00

even eggs preserved for 2,000 years.

0:33:000:33:03

And now, an extraordinary piece of new research

0:33:080:33:12

means we can prove that it wasn't just rich Romans who ate well.

0:33:120:33:17

In Herculaneum, nine miles from Oplontis,

0:33:170:33:20

historian Andrew Wallace-Hadrill is leading the excavation project.

0:33:200:33:24

Herculaneum was buried under more than 50 feet of ash and volcanic debris during the eruption of 79.

0:33:240:33:32

Above this street was an apartment block inhabited,

0:33:320:33:36

not by Rome's super-rich, but by the ordinary people of the town.

0:33:360:33:39

What went into their mouths came out, 15 feet below.

0:33:390:33:44

Let's come down here, Mary, it's not so scary as it looks.

0:33:450:33:48

Down here, the evidence of Roman diet has been perfectly preserved for two millennia.

0:33:480:33:53

I am not great on ladders actually.

0:33:530:33:55

You appear to be disappearing into the bowels of the Earth.

0:33:550:34:00

You can see some very good down pipes here.

0:34:000:34:04

This whole sewer is fed from above, the stuff coming down,

0:34:040:34:08

smears down the wall, generations of stuff, leaves a trail

0:34:080:34:12

and it's still brown - you can see very clearly how brown it is -

0:34:120:34:17

it just leaves this trail of shit.

0:34:170:34:19

It feels real! You don't get closer to real Rome than being in a cesspit, do you?

0:34:190:34:23

-No!

-So, you've got a layer of shit on the floor and then volcanic material covering it.

0:34:230:34:30

Exactly! Beautifully sealing the stuff on the floor.

0:34:300:34:33

-So you take out the volcanic material and get to the shit.

-Yes.

0:34:330:34:36

It's all gone now!

0:34:360:34:38

It's all been removed.

0:34:380:34:40

It was up to our knees roughly.

0:34:400:34:42

It was really, really precious material.

0:34:420:34:44

In archaeological terms, this is gold.

0:34:440:34:47

It's precious because it literally was what had gone through these Roman lavatories.

0:34:470:34:53

Down here was the story of Roman diet, just waiting to be found.

0:34:530:34:58

This is the world's largest archaeological excavation of sewers.

0:34:590:35:06

Over 700 bags of human waste were collected from the sewer floor

0:35:060:35:11

and are being systematically analysed to tell us more about what Romans were eating.

0:35:110:35:16

What have you learnt?

0:35:160:35:18

In terms of diet, the amazing thing about the contents is the variety.

0:35:180:35:24

You've got bones of all sorts, a lot of fish bones.

0:35:240:35:27

We're right by the sea, they had a high fish diet but also chicken and eggs, we've got walnuts,

0:35:270:35:34

a good variety of nuts, so you have a complete mixture between local stuff

0:35:340:35:39

and imported stuff which is so typical of the Roman empire.

0:35:390:35:42

They certainly lived healthy on this.

0:35:440:35:47

What's important is to try and fix who the people were that were living

0:35:470:35:53

above this cesspit and sending their cess into the sewer.

0:35:530:35:57

Yes. There is a series of shops immediately above us,

0:35:570:36:01

so some of them are shopkeepers. definitely and, then above them,

0:36:010:36:06

are two more floors of flats.

0:36:060:36:10

It's terribly tempting to think because they're flats, these must be absolutely dirt poor.

0:36:100:36:16

They're neither dirt poor nor stinking rich, and this is the really hard thing.

0:36:160:36:21

People often think of the Roman world as being these really posh people

0:36:210:36:26

at the top and everyone else is ground down and miserable. No, sorry!

0:36:260:36:31

It's much more complicated than that, these are not really posh people,

0:36:310:36:35

they aren't rich enough to live a life of luxury, they're ordinary people.

0:36:350:36:41

The excavation in the sewers

0:36:410:36:44

supports what we found in the cellar, that rich and poor shared the same basic, healthy diet.

0:36:440:36:50

But let's not kid ourselves, the rich took every chance

0:36:500:36:53

to show off their wealth and where you ate was one way to do that.

0:36:530:36:59

This is a top of the range Roman dining room.

0:37:000:37:05

We might imagine that some of the richest of the skeletons in our cellar,

0:37:050:37:11

even if they didn't own something like this, might once or twice have eaten somewhere like this.

0:37:110:37:18

It's built around the idea of running, trickling, trinkling water.

0:37:180:37:24

Water would rush down from that little niche at the back.

0:37:240:37:29

It would then feed in to this pool here.

0:37:290:37:33

It would feed out over the marble

0:37:330:37:36

and it would end up in another pool with a fountain overlooking a garden beyond.

0:37:360:37:43

The other thing that is quite interesting

0:37:440:37:48

is that it reveals very sharply

0:37:480:37:52

how dependent the rich would be for their display eating on slaves.

0:37:520:37:58

You've got to get up there, to recline. How do you do it? And how would you do it in a toga?

0:37:580:38:04

The answer must be that you were helped by your slaves.

0:38:040:38:09

It's a very nice day-to-day indication

0:38:090:38:12

of how the Roman elite relied on the servant class.

0:38:120:38:17

Let me try and get up.

0:38:170:38:20

It's not easy.

0:38:200:38:22

Whoops!

0:38:230:38:25

Now I suppose that what I do is recline like this

0:38:260:38:32

but I hope to goodness they had some cushions

0:38:320:38:35

because it really isn't very comfortable

0:38:350:38:39

and I'm a bit far from where my wine might be in here.

0:38:390:38:43

Certainly, it seems to me that this is ostentatious dining

0:38:430:38:47

coming at the price of comfort.

0:38:470:38:50

So unlike today when having money means you can eat out,

0:38:510:38:56

if you were rich in Pompeii, you were dining at home, surrounded by opulence.

0:38:560:39:02

But what about ordinary Pompeians who weren't living in luxury, where were they eating?

0:39:020:39:08

Fast food joints are one of the commonest features of the Pompeian street scene.

0:39:080:39:14

There's over 150 of them in the city, there's 20 of them in this section of street alone.

0:39:140:39:21

There's so many of them that they can't possibly have been

0:39:210:39:26

for the rich alone, they probably weren't for the rich at all!

0:39:260:39:28

They were for people who didn't have places to eat at home, for people coming in from the countryside,

0:39:280:39:34

or people coming in from the port who wanted to get a bite to eat.

0:39:340:39:38

You've got two choices if you're a customer at this bar.

0:39:420:39:47

Either you come to the street or to the counter,

0:39:470:39:50

see what they've got on offer on the dishes here,

0:39:500:39:53

choose what you want and take it away.

0:39:530:39:57

Fast food. If you've got more time, and I guess more money,

0:39:570:40:01

it was probably like modern Naples -

0:40:010:40:04

you got charged more if you want to sit down.

0:40:040:40:07

You go into the back room and spend time eating and drinking at a table.

0:40:070:40:12

I imagine it was pretty crowded,

0:40:130:40:15

perhaps six or eight tables with people sitting around and when you got down, at the table,

0:40:150:40:21

sitting on the chairs, at your eye level, are these lovely little scenes of life in the bar.

0:40:210:40:28

From the storerooms of the Naples museum, a fresco found in Pompeii has been brought out for me to see.

0:40:320:40:40

It once decorated the walls of another bar and gives us an idea of a typical Pompeian night out.

0:40:420:40:48

They're very clever, actually,

0:40:480:40:51

because the paintings have got the ancient equivalent of speech bubbles attached to them,

0:40:510:40:57

so a little dialogue, a little story develops.

0:40:570:41:01

And the story is not entirely unfamiliar.

0:41:020:41:05

After a good few drinks, two men get into an argument about a game of dice.

0:41:050:41:11

The upshot of this we see in the sadly bashed-up last scene, but happily the writing still survives.

0:41:120:41:20

One's saying, "You scumbag, I won!"

0:41:200:41:24

And the other is saying, quite literally, "No, you didn't, you cock sucker."

0:41:240:41:30

Just at the right-hand corner,

0:41:300:41:32

it must be the landlord because his speech bubble is saying,

0:41:320:41:37

"Look chaps, if you want to fight, get outside."

0:41:370:41:40

I think it's nice ending this little series of scenes with the landlord

0:41:400:41:46

because it reminds us that bars are not just places where people go and get drunk, gamble and flirt,

0:41:460:41:53

they're actually somebody's business.

0:41:530:41:56

So where rich and poor were eating and drinking was worlds apart,

0:41:570:42:03

but what they ate was for the most part very similar.

0:42:030:42:07

Everybody shared the benefit of food grown in this marvellously fertile region

0:42:070:42:11

and sourced from the plentiful Mediterranean, which in those days was right on their doorstep.

0:42:110:42:19

It's easy to forget that in Roman times, Pompeii was absolutely on the seashore.

0:42:230:42:28

It's only the seismic activity that means it's now inland.

0:42:280:42:32

Pompeii itself had a port and there are other little harbours up and down this coastline.

0:42:320:42:39

Goods came in from abroad, and goods went out from this rich agricultural land.

0:42:390:42:45

It might have looked like a small provincial Italian town by the sea but there is plenty of evidence,

0:42:480:42:55

some of it from the skeletons in the cellar, of just how far Pompeii's international connections stretched.

0:42:550:43:01

What we've got here is a gorgeous, gorgeous necklace.

0:43:030:43:09

It was found near one of the skeletons, the likely candidate is a middle-aged woman.

0:43:090:43:16

It is stunningly modern in its feel.

0:43:180:43:23

It's quite a narrow neck it's going to go round,

0:43:230:43:26

I think it might just go around me, but it's too big to be a bracelet.

0:43:260:43:31

It must have been a choker, going tight around somebody's neck.

0:43:310:43:37

One of the puzzles about these things always

0:43:370:43:40

is where the raw material for them comes from.

0:43:400:43:46

Emeralds aren't found naturally near Pompeii. The likelihood is that they come from Egypt.

0:43:460:43:51

These roughly shaped emeralds belonging to one of the skeletons

0:43:510:43:56

aren't the only evidence we have of Rome's two-way global traffic.

0:43:560:44:01

This is one of the most extraordinary objects ever found in Pompeii.

0:44:010:44:08

What it is...

0:44:080:44:11

is an ivory statuette, and you only have to look at it

0:44:110:44:16

to see this looks Indian and it is Indian,

0:44:160:44:19

that's where it comes from.

0:44:190:44:22

It brings it home to you in an instant that Pompeii and Pompeian inhabitants

0:44:220:44:28

know about what happens in the outside world,

0:44:280:44:32

or they have an awareness of Egypt and Africa and Asia

0:44:320:44:37

and all the other places around the Mediterranean in a way that is quite different

0:44:370:44:43

from what one imagines the global view of an English village might be in the 18th or 19th century.

0:44:430:44:49

So Pompeii was a small town with a world view.

0:44:530:44:56

But how far do our skeletons in the cellar reflect that?

0:44:560:45:00

We know Pompeii is in some ways

0:45:020:45:06

a surprisingly multicultural little place.

0:45:060:45:10

There are foreign objects, foreign imports, it's got a port, it's looking towards the outside world.

0:45:100:45:17

What's always been trickier to pin down is just how far the population was multicultural.

0:45:170:45:24

Have we got any evidence from these skeletons about the make-up of Pompeian society?

0:45:240:45:31

I mean the ethnic or racial make-up?

0:45:310:45:34

We found two skeletons where we are quite sure they are of African ancestry.

0:45:340:45:40

This is from the so-called rich group

0:45:400:45:42

and there is another one, it's a female lying on her belly there, she is of African origin.

0:45:420:45:48

Tell me how you know it's of African origin.

0:45:480:45:51

It's just the shape of the face.

0:45:510:45:54

Are you talking about sub-Saharan African, not North African.

0:45:540:45:58

-Yes, black.

-Black African.

0:45:580:46:00

What you're seeming to suggest, and I think it's a really important point,

0:46:000:46:05

is that there are people living here

0:46:050:46:09

who have an origin really on the other side of the Roman empire.

0:46:090:46:14

That's not the only thing interesting about the African skeleton.

0:46:150:46:19

His skull is green, stained by metal objects

0:46:190:46:24

and he's in the group found with treasure.

0:46:240:46:26

It's possible he was the slave of someone rich, but he might also have been rich himself.

0:46:260:46:34

We can't assume all Africans were slaves.

0:46:340:46:38

Brutal and degrading as Roman slavery could be, it wasn't as straightforward as that.

0:46:380:46:43

In one ancient cemetery outside Pompeii is a tomb that paints a much more complex picture of slavery.

0:46:460:46:52

What you've got here

0:46:540:46:56

is a tomb that holds the ashes of three people.

0:46:560:47:00

And they tell you who they are.

0:47:000:47:02

There is man called Publius Vesonius who is an ex-slave, he tells you he's an ex-slave.

0:47:020:47:10

There is a woman called Vesonia who had actually owned him

0:47:100:47:13

and then freed him, and my guess is they probably then got married.

0:47:130:47:20

And he's also putting it up for the guy on the right, a friend of his.

0:47:200:47:25

The first text says Vesonius put this up for this trio.

0:47:250:47:32

But the text underneath...

0:47:320:47:34

tells the sequel, which isn't so happy.

0:47:340:47:38

"Stop and read this," he says,

0:47:380:47:40

"because that guy on the right who I thought was my friend

0:47:400:47:44

"turned out to be false. In fact," says Vesonius, "he took me to court. We quarrelled

0:47:440:47:51

"and he took me to court, but luckily my innocence and the gods above saved me.

0:47:510:47:57

"But he was a complete bastard."

0:47:570:47:59

We don't know why this man didn't just remove his ex-friend's statue.

0:47:590:48:04

It's what I would have done. But luckily he didn't as this monument tells a fascinating story.

0:48:040:48:10

Here was an ex-slave rich enough to put up this big tomb for three

0:48:100:48:15

and then to go to court to settle a dispute with his former friend.

0:48:150:48:19

The point about Roman slavery is that it isn't always a lifetime sentence.

0:48:190:48:26

Slaves get freed by the people who owned them

0:48:260:48:30

and they sometimes go on to do very well.

0:48:300:48:34

In fact, my guess is the majority of the Pompeian population,

0:48:340:48:39

certainly some of the people in our cellar, would have had slaves somewhere in their ancestry.

0:48:390:48:45

It's been calculated that more than half the population of Herculaneum were descended from slaves.

0:48:450:48:52

Slaves certainly sometimes did what we think of as high status jobs.

0:48:520:48:56

There's evidence for that in a very surpising place.

0:48:560:49:00

Here you have the bog, probably one seat here and then ...

0:49:000:49:06

Yes, you can come and sit by me.

0:49:060:49:08

What's brilliant about this is that the last person to use this loo

0:49:100:49:14

before the eruption happened has left his name.

0:49:140:49:19

It starts with an A.

0:49:190:49:21

-That's right.

-And what he's saying is it's his name... "Apollinaris...

0:49:210:49:28

"Medicus T...T.imp..."

0:49:280:49:33

So "Apollinaris, the doctor of the emperor Titus..."

0:49:330:49:38

Then you can't read this any longer because it's got too faded.

0:49:390:49:43

Hic bene cacavit. He had a good shit here!

0:49:430:49:47

This name Apollinaris - we can't be certain, but is very likely a slave name.

0:49:470:49:53

So the emperor's doctor is a slave.

0:49:530:49:56

We tend to think the slave jobs as being very drudge manual labour,

0:49:560:50:02

some certainly were, but slaves also did, in our terms,

0:50:020:50:08

high-status professional jobs like being doctors.

0:50:080:50:13

That's another reason why slavery is more complicated.

0:50:130:50:16

Also, to be a slave of the Emperor is to be someone quite important.

0:50:160:50:21

In some ways it's better to be the slave of an emperor

0:50:210:50:25

than an ordinary freeborn person with a tiny little shop in Herculaneum.

0:50:250:50:29

I'd much rather be the Emperor Titus's slave doctor

0:50:290:50:32

-than a flower seller in the streets of Pompeii.

-He was on the way up.

0:50:320:50:35

So slavery was a fact of life in Pompeii.

0:50:370:50:40

Almost certainly some of the people in our cellar were slaves,

0:50:430:50:47

they died right next to their masters, as they would have lived.

0:50:470:50:51

At the house of a baker on the main street of Pompeii,

0:50:510:50:55

we find a nice illustration of that closeness in a painting on the dining room wall.

0:50:550:51:00

These guys don't look too pissed yet, although we can imagine what might have happened next,

0:51:000:51:07

but the give-away scene is in the background where that lady is clearly about to keel over

0:51:070:51:13

and she is being propped up by the slave behind her.

0:51:130:51:17

I guess the slaves came pretty handy for this kind of job.

0:51:170:51:20

But it wasn't just slaves and masters living on top of each other.

0:51:220:51:26

Here in the baker's house, right next to the smart dining room,

0:51:260:51:29

there's a stable, and in it, the bones of the animals,

0:51:290:51:34

the ones he used to turn the mills which ground the grain, and no doubt delivered the bread around town too.

0:51:340:51:42

Here we've got the finest room in the baker's residential quarters

0:51:420:51:46

right up next to where the mules lived.

0:51:460:51:51

Just a few yards away is the back end of a really rich house in Pompeii

0:51:510:51:56

that was being given a complete make over at the time of the eruption.

0:51:560:52:02

So the rich are living right next door, right up against the working bakery.

0:52:020:52:09

The baker has his poshest room right next door to his animals.

0:52:090:52:15

That's how Pompeians lived - cheek by jowl.

0:52:150:52:18

And that's how we find the people in the cellar -

0:52:180:52:22

rich and poor, male and female, old and young,

0:52:220:52:26

lying close to each other in death as they would have been in life.

0:52:260:52:30

But in 79AD, that life came to an end.

0:52:350:52:38

Neither they, nor the others in this town, had any idea they lived in the shadow of a volcano.

0:52:390:52:44

The last major eruption had been 1,500 years before.

0:52:440:52:49

Nothing could prepare the population for what happened when Vesuvius exploded.

0:52:580:53:04

The people in the cellar had one choice - to try and escape, or stay and find shelter.

0:53:140:53:20

From out at sea, you get a very good impression

0:53:240:53:28

of how Vesuvius really lours over the whole area.

0:53:280:53:33

But also, you get this slightly uncomfortable sense

0:53:330:53:37

of how very close the volcano is. It makes you realise how difficult it would have been to escape from it.

0:53:370:53:44

Especially if you left it a little bit too late.

0:53:440:53:48

While friends and neighbours fled, our 54 people looked for cover,

0:53:510:53:55

and many took their most precious belongings with them.

0:53:550:53:58

Why most of them stayed put, we can only guess, but in one case, there's a strong clue.

0:54:030:54:11

Fabian, tell me about the remains of this person laid out here.

0:54:120:54:17

This is maybe one of the most dramatic and tragic persons

0:54:170:54:23

we found in this whole sample,

0:54:230:54:27

because these are the bones of a young female and we found with the skeleton this small bone.

0:54:270:54:34

The pelvic bone of a foetus.

0:54:340:54:37

She must have been pregnant.

0:54:390:54:41

If you measure it, you can determine

0:54:420:54:45

it was in the last month of pregnancy and it's quite traumatic.

0:54:450:54:51

The thought of being 8.5 months pregnant and trying to flee for your life from the erupting volcano,

0:54:510:54:58

it's just dreadful.

0:54:580:55:01

Amazingly, an eyewitness account of the eruption survives.

0:55:100:55:15

It describes how on that fateful day you could hear the shrieks of women, the squalling of infants

0:55:150:55:21

and the shouting of men, some calling out for their parents,

0:55:210:55:26

others for their children or wives.

0:55:260:55:28

It was so dark, they could only recognise them by their voices.

0:55:280:55:32

Many pleaded for the help of the gods,

0:55:320:55:35

but more thought that the gods had disappeared, and that the world had been plunged into eternal darkness.

0:55:350:55:42

It must have been pitch black when the volcanic debris started to fall and our people tried to escape.

0:55:490:55:55

Several of them certainly had brought lamps with them.

0:55:550:55:59

This one is quite nice because the centre, just where the oil goes in,

0:55:590:56:04

has got a lovely picture here of the goddess of Rome herself.

0:56:040:56:09

She is sadly broken in half but she is quite recognisable with her helmet on.

0:56:090:56:15

The people in the cellar were sheltering there

0:56:170:56:20

as the eruption intensified outside, plunging them further into darkness.

0:56:200:56:25

Heaven knows how you could have found your way through the streets at night using just one of these.

0:56:280:56:35

It makes me realise how vulnerable the people in this cellar must have felt.

0:56:350:56:41

They fled through the darkness, all trace of the sun has been obliterated by the volcanic debris,

0:56:410:56:48

they've come in here, they're huddled together for shelter and support

0:56:480:56:54

and the only protection against the dark they've got is half a dozen little lamps like this.

0:56:540:56:58

Of course, in the end these people couldn't protect themselves from the same fate as the others in Pompeii.

0:57:010:57:08

But the Romans in the cellar didn't just leave us with evidence of their tragic death

0:57:080:57:14

but of the lives they lived too.

0:57:140:57:16

It may have been a male-dominated world where the rich dined in luxury and exploited the poor,

0:57:160:57:22

but Pompeii was also a place where slaves could earn their freedom, where women could own wealth,

0:57:220:57:28

and the ordinary Roman could eat and drink well.

0:57:280:57:32

It was a place where even the poorest knew something of the world outside.

0:57:320:57:38

The people who died in this cellar helped us to understand that Roman society

0:57:450:57:50

wasn't quite as black and white as we often imagine it to be.

0:57:500:57:55

Sure, these people would had vastly different lifestyles,

0:57:550:58:00

but they lived cheek by jowl and they shared a lot too.

0:58:000:58:04

The smells, the dark, and the dirt.

0:58:040:58:07

Not to mention the wine, the sex, the food and the fun.

0:58:070:58:12

And in the end, of course, they shared the same fate, in the same cellar 2,000 years ago.

0:58:120:58:19

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:58:300:58:33

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