Pompeii
Mount Vesuvius, a volcano near the Bay
of Naples in Italy, is hundreds of thousands of years old and has erupted more
than 50 times. Its most famous eruption took place in the year 79 A.D., when
the volcano buried the ancient Roman city of Pompeii under a thick carpet of
volcanic ash. The dust “poured across the land” like a flood, one witness
wrote, and shrouded the city in “a darkness…like the black of closed and
unlighted rooms.” Two thousand people died, and the city was abandoned for
almost as many years. When a group of explorers rediscovered the site in 1748,
they were surprised to find that–underneath a thick layer of dust and
debris–Pompeii was mostly intact. The buildings, artifacts and skeletons left
behind in the buried city have taught us a great deal about everyday life in
the ancient world.
Life in Pompeii
Ever since the ancient Greeks settled
in the area in the 8th century B.C., the region around Mount Vesuvius and the
Bay of Naples attracted wealthy vacationers who wanted to soak up the sun and
the scenery. By the turn of the first century A.D., the town of Pompeii,
located about five miles from the mountain, was a flourishing resort for Rome’s
most distinguished citizens. Elegant houses and elaborate villas lined the
paved streets. Tourists, townspeople and slaves bustled in and out of small
factories and artisans’ shops, taverns and cafes, and brothels and bathhouses.
People gathered in the 20,000-seat arena and lounged in the open-air squares
and marketplaces. On the eve of that fateful eruption in 79 A.D., scholars
estimate that there were about 20,000 people living in Pompeii and the
surrounding region.
Mount Vesuvius
The Vesuvius volcano did not form
overnight, of course. In fact, scholars say that the mountain is hundreds of
thousands of years old and had been erupting for generations. In about 1780 B.C.,
for example, an unusually violent eruption (known today as the “Avellino
eruption”) shot millions of tons of superheated lava, ash and rocks about 22
miles into the sky. That prehistoric catastrophe destroyed almost every
village, house and farm within 15 miles of the mountain.
But it was easy to overlook the
mountain’s bad temper in such a pleasant, sunny spot. Even after a massive
earthquake struck the Campania region in 63 A.D.–a quake that, scientists now
understand, offered a warning rumble of the disaster to come–people still
flocked to the shores of the Bay of Naples. Pompeii grew more crowded every
year.
79 A.D.
Sixteen years after that telltale
earthquake, in August 79 A.D., Mount Vesuvius erupted again. The blast sent a
plume of ashes, pumice and other rocks, and scorching-hot volcanic gases so
high into the sky that people could see it for hundreds of miles around. (The
writer Pliny the Younger, who watched the eruption from across the bay,
compared this “cloud of unusual size and appearance” to a pine tree that “rose
to a great height on a sort of trunk and then split off into branches”; today,
geologists refer to this type of volcano as a “Plinean eruption.”)
As it cooled, this tower of debris
drifted to earth: first the fine-grained ash, then the lightweight chunks of
pumice and other rocks. It was terrifying–“I believed I was perishing with the
world,” Pliny wrote, “and the world with me”–but not yet lethal: Most
Pompeiians had plenty of time to flee.
For those who stayed behind, however,
conditions soon grew worse. As more and more ash fell, it clogged the air,
making it difficult to breathe. Buildings collapsed. Then, a “pyroclastic
surge”–a 100-miles-per-hour surge of superheated poison gas and pulverized
rock–poured down the side of the mountain and swallowed everything and everyone
in its path.
By the time the Vesuvius eruption
sputtered to an end the next day, Pompeii was buried under millions of tons of
volcanic ash. About 2,000 people were dead. Some people drifted back to town in
search of lost relatives or belongings, but there was not much left to find.
Pompeii, along with the smaller neighboring towns of Stabiae and Herculaneum,
was abandoned for centuries.
Rediscovering
Pompeii
Pompeii remained mostly untouched
until 1748, when a group of explorers looking for ancient artifacts arrived in
Campania and began to dig. They found that the ashes had acted as a marvelous
preservative: Underneath all that dust, Pompeii was almost exactly as it had
been 2,000 years before. Its buildings were intact. Skeletons were frozen right
where they’d fallen. Everyday objects and household goods littered the streets.
Later archaeologists even uncovered jars of preserved fruit and loaves of
bread!
Many scholars say that the excavation
of Pompeii played a major role in the neo-Classical revival of the 18th
century. Europe’s wealthiest and most fashionable families displayed art and
reproductions of objects from the ruins, and drawings of Pompeii’s buildings
helped shape the architectural trends of the era. For example, wealthy British
families often built “Etruscan rooms” that mimicked those in Pompeiian villas.
Today, the excavation of Pompeii has
been going on for almost three centuries, and scholars and tourists remain just
as fascinated by the city’s eerie ruins as they were in the 18th century.
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