Episode notes
For centuries Pompeii's destruction was dated to August of 79 AD, based on accepted translations of Pliny the Younger's letter. Then in 2018 archaeologists found a charcoal inscription in a house under renovation, dated the 16th day before the Kalends of November, or October 17. Heavy wool cloaks on victims, chestnuts, figs, and walnuts, sealed wine jars, and a silver coin bearing a title Titus received in September all pointed the same way, and a 2022 study put the eruption at October 24 or 25. The city began as five Oscan villages on a lava plateau near the Sarno River, then passed to Greeks, Etruscans, and Samnites before the Roman general Sulla besieged it in 89 BC, leaving artillery scars still visible at the Porta Ercolano.
After an earthquake on February 5, 62 AD, Pompeii did not decline but rebuilt with heated baths and glass windows. It had at least 31 bakeries, street food counters, and fulleries that cleaned wool with urine collected in jars on street corners. The eruption rained pumice for about 18 hours, letting most of the 10,000 to 20,000 residents flee, and about 1,150 bodies have been found. A 2010 study showed the pyroclastic flows reached 250 degrees Celsius and killed instantly. Looters tunneled back in, Domenico Fontana dug an aqueduct through the ruins in 1592 and kept quiet, and Giuseppe Fiorelli began making plaster casts of victims in 1863.
- The thermopolium excavated in 2020, with pots holding traces of duck, goat, pig, fish, and snails
- King Francis of Naples locking erotic art in a secret cabinet in 1819, not fully opened to the public until 2000
- Ancient graffiti left by a Roman looter that reads roughly house dug
- Recent finds including a bronze and silver ceremonial chariot and a 2024 dining hall painted black with scenes of Helen of Troy
- World War II bombing, the 2010 collapse of the House of the Gladiators, and a 2024 cap of 20,000 visitors a day