Sat Dec 14th: Herculaneum

A fairly long but routine journey of 600 plus miles, with an overnight stop, saw us arrive at Pompeii on Thursday evening. On Friday we caught up with jobs like shopping and washing, and on Saturday we visited Herculaneum. 

Herculaneum is 10 miles from Pompeii. Both were destroyed by the same eruption of volcano Vesuvius in 79 AD. Herculaneum is much closer to Vesuvius, so suffered an even more cataclysmic impact. It was buried in volcanic ash 60 feet thick; however, this ensured a better state of preservation, even down to loaves of bread. 

This is the cone of Vesuvius looming over the ancient ruins and also the modern town on the higher level. It’s still active, and overdue another eruption according to the experts. “Don’t panic!”, as Mr Jones of Dad’s Army would have said.

 

The town lay undiscovered until the 18^th century when a well digger uncovered fragments of the theatre, and today still only 25% of it has been excavated.  

It was a prosperous residential town of 4,000 inhabitants, and this street could be almost anywhere from any era. It has stone or brick houses, proper paved roads, pavements and a gutter.

 

Like in these days, there were many eating establishments where you could sit in or take away. The photo below shows a countertop with jars inset that contained the hot food. This was Roman fast food, their equivalent of  a ‘big Mac’, or ‘Maximus Mac’ as they might have called it

 

Public facilities were also top class in the town. The ladies bathhouse is particularly well preserved as can be seen from this changing room with its geometric mosaic floor and individual partitions on the shelves for clothes. A sophisticated touch: the roof is fluted so that condensation runs down the walls instead of dripping onto the bathers’ heads. We can’t have drips pestering the lady bathers.  

This public hall in the next photo was very grand and gives an idea of the ornate decoration applied to some of the plastered walls in other buildings. This edifice was used as a shrine to perform rites in honour of the emperor Augustus and may also have been a place for meetings of town dignitaries.

Nearly all of the internal artefacts and decorative panels in the town were carted off by the early excavators for use in their own premises. Some have found their way back to the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, and a few still remain in situ to give us an idea of the artistic excellence achieved in those early times. This wall panel, for example, is the Roman equivalent of the three ducks on the wall (who remembers them?):

It was thought until the 1980’s that most residents would have had enough warning to escape. However, in that decade further excavations along the old shoreline revealed over 300 bodies in boat houses presumably waiting to be rescued by sea. Analysis has revealed that a cloud of super-heated gas from the eruption killed them instantly. Somewhat gruesomely, these skeletons have been left in place, as the photo shows.

Herculaneum was a fascination window into life 2,000 years ago, with many similarities to our modern society particularly if you take our electronic gadgetry out of the comparison.