Life and death: Pompeii and Herculaneum

The events of 79 AD are well known—Vesuvius, the volcano on the flanks of which is constructed the modern city of Naples, erupted, engulfing the ancient city of Pompeii and its smaller neighbour Herculaneum. The eruption was witnessed by Pliny the Younger who wrote in detail of the hideous darkness that descended, the screams of men and the cries of mothers and their children.

The British Museum has brought together a collection of artefacts, excavated from the twin sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum and the result is a stunning array of objects, ranging from minuscule items of jewellery to large, wall-mounted frescoes, all of them retain a remarkable freshness from the ash, which fell quickly over the cities, engulfing, killing and yet also preserving.

The level of preservation is extraordinary. Bedroom walls, which were decorated with the most intimate scenes of Roman private life, combine vivid colour with a remarkable frankness of expression. The ancients were not averse to showing large amounts of flesh, a discovery that may well have shocked the late 19th-century archaeologists who first set about removing the tens of metres of ash to get to the buried cities.

More arresting than the artifacts and frescoes, many of which survive at other ancient sites albeit in less vivid colours, is the furniture. The heat of the pyroclastic cloud was so fierce that wooden furniture was instantly carbonised and in this desiccated state it was able to survive burial in a way that wooden pieces were not. The result is that Herculaneum and Pompeii yielded a unique cache of preserved Roman furniture, in one case a large chest inside which was found a collection or Roman linen clothing. One of the most powerful objects in the entire exhibition is a wooden cradle, perfectly preserved at Herculaneum, identical to many similar modern cradles, with a bowed base to allow rocking. The incinerated remains of a baby were found still inside, wrapped in a woolen blanket.

The body of the infant is not displayed, but others are. As they dug, archaeologists kept encountering what they termed “voids” in the ash and these they filled with plaster. When the moulds were excavated, the shapes of bodies were revealed, housed in the ash and rubble, the victims long-decayed, leaving only the space their remains had occupied. These casts form the final part of the exhibition, and are sheltered from the other artifacts in cornered alcoves. Unlike the statues dug from the ash, which depict the wealthy and powerful in poses befitting their status, the casts taken of the “voids,” exude the opposite attributes. Impotence. Fear. Children scramble at the air, their parents fall backwards and are caught mid-fall, as the ash piled up suddenly about them. One figure (see above) is huddled in a foetal position, a crouch of despair and outright terror. The Italian archaeologist Amedeo Maiuri described the figure, found at Pompeii as like “a tragic figure from one of Dante’s circles of hell.”

The power of this exhibition is in its capturing the entire life of these two cities. Everyone was caught in the ash, be they rich or poor. Their most valuable belongings, the images they created of themselves, their homes and even their pets were preserved—so too was their moment of death. There are other surviving sites from the ancient world, such as the Menoan remains at Akrotiri on the Greek island of Thira, to compare with Pompeii and Herculaneum, but in that case the inhabitants took note of earlier tremors and wisely left Thira in time to escape the ensuing disaster. The inhabitants are therefore not preserved along with their belongings—it is this complete capture by natural disaster of the lives lived at Pompeii and Herculaneum that gives the exhibition its potency.

But with this completeness comes a pitfall. It is tempting to project too much onto the silent remains unearthed on the Bay of Naples, and at several points, the exhibition falls into this trap. For example, a number of portraits were preserved of inhabitants of the two cities, many of women. This, the exhibition contends, goes a long way to “demonstrating their wealth and status.” But though it would be heartening to feel that these societies were worthy of our empathy, attempts like this to find modern feminist mores among the ancients feels somewhat crass. Such attempts are surely undone by the exhibition itself, which points out that the female citizens of Herculaneum and Pompeii were not entitled to vote. Some degree of interpretation is always of use, but conjecture like this is unhelpful.

There is also good reason to be concerned for the future of the sites themselves. Herculaneum especially is now very close to the modern city of Naples, a town in which building and planning are not tightly controlled and have traditionally been subject to strong influence from the Camorra. Two-thirds of ancient Herculaneum still lies underground and one third of Pompeii. What is above ground is fully open to the public and is part site of global historical interest, part climbing frame. This wonderful and illuminating exhibition should be a strong reminder that Italy, a struggling nation, contains within it the seeds of western civilisation and whatever its economic travails, its sites of historic significance must be preserved and may contain more of the riches presently on show at the British Museum.

The exhibition is sponsored by Goldman Sachs. It runs from Thursday until 29th September