Pompeii: An Ancient Roman City

L​ast night, the city of Pompeii was ruined after an active volcano, ​Mount Vesuvius, blow up slaying two ​thousand human beings. ​

Pompeii was a City in Italy which overall has a great significance in Roman culture. Pompeii was not famous for its rise or its rule but its destruction. Pompeii was a picture perfect world full of culture and rich history, It was destroyed in AD 79 by a Volcanic eruption from Mount Vesuvius. It was a symbol of Roman culture and has a great influence on the future even though it existed so long ago.

Pompeii was located about five miles from Mount Vesuvius. When the magma fell it had clogged the air with ashes, making it hard for others to breathe. Some buildings collapsed. Pulverized - rock and poisoning gas, came down the mountain and took everyone, and everything in its path. There weare about 2,000 people that were killed. Others drifted back there to find lost relatives, and belongings and other things. It was hard though because there wasn’t much left of Pompeii. There was smaller towns by Pompeii that were destroyed as well. The towns, as well as Pompeii were abandoned for

Over 2,000 years ago, Mount Vesuvius chose the city of Pompeii to be its next victim. August 79 A.D was the fateful day that would destroy thousands of lives, and their beloved homes. When Mount Vesuvius erupted it sent ashes, rocks, and volcanic gases to rain over Pompeii and cause complete chaos. After Mount Vesuvius’ first attack on Pompeii, a tower of debris drifted to earth. Buildings collapsed and ash clogged the air. Then a surge of poison gas and rock poured down the side of the mountain, destroying everything that laid in its path. Pompeii was done for.

Nobody has lived in Pompeii for almost 2,000 years and now you know why. Pompeii was a great city with bad luck. Would you have wanted to live in

Instead of leaving Pompeii to dissolve into history, educational researchers such as National Geographic have continued conducting studies about the fall of Pompeii, because forgetting about the historical event would be detrimental to further knowledge on Roman culture in Italy. Life under Mount Vesuvius was full of promise and prosperity for the newly settled Greeks in the 8th century B.C. The vast area around the towering volcano attracted lots of people seeking a paradise-like land for their vacation needs. Along with Pompeii’s paradise attraction, the rich volcanic soil gave way to agricultural growth for the Greek settlers. Mount Vesuvius's overhang gave the settlers a sense of protection and security. Once early settlement gave way and the very basic foundations of civilization began to grow, Greek colonies soon established themselves in Campania along with the Etruscans.

The common roman people were placed on the lower level apartments called Insulae, and the rich Roman people of Pompeii was placed in large and luxurious complexes called Domus. Many other rich Romans lived in villas. The rich families lived in a single story home that was built around central hall known as the atrium. The atriums were open up to the weather to let the rainwater which the Roman citizen used the water to bathe in and also to drink and cooked with. The atrium was an opening to the courtyard as the peristylum this area included a garden and the garden purpose was for meetings the rooms was decorated nicely. The main rooms were decorated with color plastered on the walls the floor was also decorated and the decoration showed your wealth.

The lost city of Pompeii, is a city in Italy that was under or I should say to the side of a huge volcano. The life in this city was quiet, and attracted rich vacationers who moved there and start forming the city. The city was located over 5 miles from the volcano and populated over 20,000 people. In 79 A.D after the telltale earthquake, the volcano Mount Vesuvius erupted on to the city of Pompeii cause the city to be covered in a thick layer of ashes. This explosion of ashes and volcanic lava killed over 200 hundred people and caused the city to be abandoned for almost the same amount of years as the people who were lost. People left the town because it was covered in the ashes and tremendous damage had taken over the city. Although the

A recorded account but an individual by the name of Rajah provides insight into what happened the day of the explosion. According to Rajah:

Pompeii, if you didn’t know, is the ancient ruins of an amazing city. In 1748, a surveying engineer discovered these buried ashes. Pompeii was an ancient city buried within this. Why ash? How, you ask? Well, Pompeii is located next to the famous volcano, Mt. Vesuvius in what is now Italy. In 79 AD Vesuvius let out an horrendous eruption and buried Pompeii. Since then, Mt. Vesuvius has erupted over 50 times. When the volcano erupted, there were about 20,000 people living in or around the area. That area was pretty unlucky living at the base of the volcano, they had suffered through a massive earthquake years back and was still recovering from the damage.

Mary Beard, an enthusiastic Classicist and scholar, had roamed the streets of Pompeii with a passionate yet easy going state of mind and when asked about what she thought about the Ancient town, she provided open-minded and insightful thoughts and opinions about her experience. “The eruption which wiped the Ancient town off the Roman map is one of the world’s most famous disasters, but the tragedy has given historians a priceless legacy. I wanted to see if I could probe a bit deeper and get beneath the skin of this Ancient town.”

According to the article by Mary Bagley, the destruction of Pompeii. So what happened during the eruption?

On August 24 AD 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted. Mount Vesuvius is on the west coast of Italy. It is the only active volcano on mainland Europe. Apparently, no one was aware that Vesuvius was an active volcano, even after an earthquake in February of the year 63 (history.com). Vesuvius had erupted many times before, roughly a 20-year eruption cycle, but the last eruption, in 1944, was the most serious one. First, it ejected a large cloud of debris 12 miles high, which is more than double the size of Everest. Mount Vesuvius is approximately 6,500 feet high. Then followed pumice and ash as hot as 1300oF that rolled down the mountain at 70 miles an hour, destroying everything in its path. Pompeii, Stabiae, and Herculaneum were covered under ash; Pompeii under 10’ of ash and Herculaneum under 75’ of ash. Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae remained buried and undiscovered for almost 1700 years. After the eruption, both the ports and river were gone, and Vesuvius turned into a crater. Pliny the Younger, an 18-year-old boy, witnessed the devastation. His letter was the only primary source of the disaster:

     Pompeii, a Roman city with a population of about 20,000, was annihilated by Mount Vesuvius on August 26, 79 AD. It wasn’t until 1595, when artifacts from Pompeii were excavated. Centuries of raiding and looting then followed. In the mid-nineteenth century, archaeological excavations began, revealing to the modern world the way the people lived (and died) in 79 A.D. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius was, in fact, the downfall of the ancient city, Pompeii, but people today still wonder how it all happened, and how it all began.

My response about the archaeological remains from Pompeii is people who have lived there were creative and correlated society. I found the people of Pompeii were capable of being builders because they are able to create their own water supply with stone, brick, and concrete. The evidence can be found in Penelope J.E Davies's Janson's History of Art, "In the Augustan period, an aqueduct brought fresh water to the public fountains that flowed continuously throughout the city." (Davies et al. 216). The text exemplifies how much intelligent this civilization had where they had created the technology to benefit everyone and solved the problem of having clean water which makes them the first society to have the answer. Another thing I found interesting