Pompeii: The Buried City

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Speaker 1 Pompeii, the buried city, a place that is on many persons' life bucket list. A site that has captivated visitors for generations, home to some of the most striking remains surviving from ancient Rome.

Speaker 1 But it's also a site tinged in tragedy.

Speaker 1 Thanks to the devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, this Roman town was buried under meters of volcanic ash and rock along with hundreds of its inhabitants.

Speaker 1 The grim yet obvious benefit for us today is that this disaster allowed for the astonishing preservation of Roman remains that the site is renowned for.

Speaker 1 Slowly and carefully, expert teams continue to excavate more and more of Pompeii, unearthing more and more incredible discoveries. Statues, bathhouses, graffiti, wall paintings, you name it.

Speaker 1 Their newly found treasures are never too far away from news headlines, and the insights they have given into the lost lives of everyday Pompeians are some of the most precious in the world.

Speaker 1 It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host.

Speaker 1 Now, we've done episodes about Pompeii before, but this episode is rather different, and it's really quite special, because our guest is none other than Dr. Gabriel Zugtrigel.

Speaker 1 Gabriel is the director of Pompeii, the top job, one of the biggest jobs in archaeology.

Speaker 1 It was a real privilege to have the opportunity to interview him about some of the recent projects and discoveries that have happened at Pompeii under his watch.

Speaker 1 Over the next hour, we will cover everything from poignant Roman slave quarters recently discovered just outside Pompeii's walls in a villa, to evidence of early Christianity before the eruption, to stick men depictions of gladiators left by children on a wall, and so much more.

Speaker 1 The treasures being unearthed from Pompeii continue to fascinate and inspire people across the world, and I really hope that this interview with Gabriel kindles that flame even more.

Speaker 1 Enjoy.

Speaker 1 Gabriel, it is a pleasure, such an honor to have you on the podcast today.

Speaker 24 My pleasure.

Speaker 1 Now, you have what I'm sure many would argue is the greatest job in archaeology.

Speaker 1 Am I correct in saying that you are currently or have just completed overseeing the biggest project in Pompeii in a generation?

Speaker 24 Well, actually, we have been excavating a lot. We are still excavating a lot in Pompeii, which is something

Speaker 24 that may sound great. Maybe we can be proud of that, but it's quite ambiguous because excavating in Pompeii is always a huge responsibility.

Speaker 24 And so everything we excavate has to be preserved and looked after and monitoring.

Speaker 24 And we see actually looking into into the past of the excavations that enormous damage has been done to the houses and structures and frescoes, especially in the early years of the excavations.

Speaker 24 So we're still excavating, but now very carefully and we try to take the decision looking at all the consequences.

Speaker 1 So through this chat, Gabriel, I'd love to explore a number of discoveries and projects central to your time as director of Pompeii through this interview, and many of which do feature in your book.

Speaker 1 I first want to ask, though, when doing these excavations today, and as you've highlighted very, very carefully too, how much of an impetus is there now when finding and making these new discoveries to preserve them in situ, to not take them out where they've been discovered?

Speaker 24 Well, that's kind of the dream archaeologists had right from the beginning. When excavations started in Pompeii in 1748, people imagined, wow, that's great.

Speaker 24 Finally, we're not excavating just single monuments, but the entire city, so we can understand daily life and economy and how people spend their free time, everything.

Speaker 24 And so it would be great if you excavate in Pompeii. You really get this

Speaker 24 emotion. You find kind of the pot on the fire and the coins

Speaker 24 in the cash box. And so you think that would be so great for everybody to see.

Speaker 24 And you also see the destruction of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD that destroyed the city, but also preserved it for us.

Speaker 24 And so there's a great desire and temptation to make this all available.

Speaker 24 But it's always a question of techniques and how can you do it, right?

Speaker 24 And so in the beginning, when people started excavating Puppé, there was no archaeology, there was no restoration techniques and signs.

Speaker 24 So they cut out frescoes from the walls, which they deemed important. The rest remained in place and often was subject to a very rapid decay.
And today, maybe

Speaker 24 there's no trace anymore of entire walls and frescoes frescoes and so forth. This is also a story of loss and people tried new ways, new methods.
I think it's very important

Speaker 24 when people started in Pompeii, the end of the nineteenth century, to imagine the houses being rebuilt. with their roofs and everything.

Speaker 24 So somehow the house, the ancient building, becomes its own museum.

Speaker 1 Well, can you explain to me a phrase that I know you use and it also seems important in the setup to our chat today, which is the phrase the Pompeii effect and how this all relates to what we're talking about.

Speaker 24 Well, it's what everybody, I think, coming to Pompeii can feel.

Speaker 24 Sometimes you go into a room and it's so perfectly preserved that you have the feeling that the owner has just left. The people who lived there were here just five minutes ago.

Speaker 24 So this also scientific opportunity to find the things really where they were used in their original position.

Speaker 24 Normally we find things that were thrown away or rarely in their original primary position. And so this opens many, many new perspectives on ancient life in this city.

Speaker 24 And it's what we call the Pompeii effect. So you can see it in other sites sometimes, but every archaeologist tends to think of Pompeii.
Oh, this is like Pompeii.

Speaker 24 And actually, there are many Pompeii's.

Speaker 24 If you look, search on the internet, you'll find the Pompeii of prehistory and the Pompeii of the South American Pompeii and the Pompeii of the Alps and so forth.

Speaker 24 So this shows that the idea of Pompeii is the kind of the perfect dig, the perfect excavation, is really a global theme.

Speaker 1 I think you're right. The one that immediately came to my mind was either Aquateri or Deu Europos on the Euphrates, which have similarly been described as Pompeii's for their preservation.

Speaker 1 Gabriel, if we then move on then to one of the first key themes I'd like to ask about, which is the size of Pompeii, because this feels like recently there's been new evidence and new scientific developments that is making people re-evaluate just how many people lived in Pompeii.

Speaker 1 So what do archaeologists now think about the size of Pompeii? How many people lived there when the eruption of Vesuvius happened?

Speaker 24 Well, it's a highly debated question. And I think it also reflects much of us who are looking at the site and trying to populate it.

Speaker 24 You go into the site and you see the rooms and houses and immediately start to think, well, how would it be lived there, to live there?

Speaker 24 And often in doing so we imagine ourselves being you know the house owner and having a huge garden but obviously there were many poor people in pompeii too and there were also many slaves and enslaved workers we estimate that up to a third of the ancient population were property of someone else.

Speaker 24 This too is part of the history of the site. So now you can start playing around with numbers.

Speaker 24 And if you look into the history of the excavations, you can see that initially people were quite optimistic about the number of people who lived in Pompeii, 20,000, 30,000 maybe.

Speaker 24 And then later the numbers started to fall. And after World War II, archaeologists arrived at saying, well, 10,000 maybe, only 10,000 or even less, maybe 8,000.
And so you get these numbers.

Speaker 24 And then, boom, suddenly, and that's great in archaeology, you always get surprises. An inscription was found in 2017 outside Port Astabia on a tomb.
Now it doesn't give the number, okay?

Speaker 24 So that's a disclaimer. But it has some information.
because it talks about a very wealthy inhabitant of Pompeii and he celebrates what they called his toga virilis.

Speaker 24 So when he becomes a man, when he becomes of age, he organizes a huge party and he invites basically the whole male population. That's what what our impression is to this feast.

Speaker 24 And so this is more than six thousand

Speaker 24 people.

Speaker 24 If these were all male citizens, then you have to imagine a population of

Speaker 24 30,000, 40,000 people, women, children, unfree, so enslaved workers, people without citizenship, and so forth. So that's a huge number.

Speaker 24 You know, if you have more than 6,000 male citizens, 10,000 is not an option for the whole population of the city. But I have to say,

Speaker 24 you could also question this, of course,

Speaker 24 as often in archaeology and and history. Say, is it really only the male citizens, also women and children and so forth?

Speaker 24 So it's not really clear, but it's a very strong indicator that points toward a higher population.

Speaker 24 And if you go into the site, you know, we tend to walk through Pompeii like, oh, wow, the house of the Bechi and oh, the house of the Menander, beautiful frescoes, but there's much more to it.

Speaker 24 If you look to all the small apartments and the little shops and texture of the ancient city, you can really feel the density of population. That you have, it's true, you have enormous gardens.

Speaker 24 They just had so much space, 400 square meters only for the garden, 600 maybe. And then you have others who live, an entire family live on 12 square meters.

Speaker 24 and they have maybe two stories or like a small tower. You can see actually

Speaker 24 the traces of people trying to optimize the use of space and they would work there and sleep there and live there. And yeah, so I think it's also a story of social inequality in a way.

Speaker 1 Well, I think we're going to keep on that a bit longer now, Gabriel. And you mentioned the house of the Vetti in passing there and we will return to that.

Speaker 1 But I feel that this is a good time, actually, to go outside of the walls of Pompeii and a discovery that I know is very close to your heart.

Speaker 1 I mean, Gabriel, first of all, as the director of Pompeii and when telling the story of Pompeii, how important actually is it to explain that there was much more to this ancient town or city than what is within the walls, that you need to explore the archaeology beyond the site of Pompeii itself?

Speaker 24 Well, I think it's really essential because we have this idea, you know, archaeology started from people actually living in cities. And so what they did was looking at cities in the ancient world.

Speaker 24 And there's a huge tradition and a huge amount of knowledge produced every year on ancient cities, which is, of course, important.

Speaker 24 But we tend to forget that there's a countryside and you can't understand Pompeii without the countryside and without the wealth produced in the countryside, the agricultural production, especially wine, which was exported into the entire Mediterranean.

Speaker 24 So we find amphoras from Pompeii in Spain, in southern France, in Turkey, in northern Africa. So that was a huge business.
But it's also many of the problems

Speaker 24 of this society, you can trace them in the countryside. So people

Speaker 24 were investing into into the wine business. The wine from Pompeii supposedly wasn't the best, at least.
That's what someone wrote on a wall in Pompeii saying,

Speaker 24 eat the bread in Pompeii, but drink the wine of Nicheria, which is another ancient town, and they were kind of competitive at the time.

Speaker 24 So specializing on wine export,

Speaker 24 great business activities meant that at some point

Speaker 24 they couldn't produce the grain necessary to feed the local populations.

Speaker 24 So they had to import grain from other parts of the Mediterranean, which is something that to us seems normal today, but in antiquity this was potentially risky because of things that could happen and so suddenly you could be without the necessary provisions.

Speaker 24 It's one thing in Rome, which had a huge population, maybe up to a million at that time, but it's a different thing in a town like Pompeii.

Speaker 24 And actually, we see that the same inscription mentioning the possible number of male citizens talks about a famine in Pompeii.

Speaker 24 Four years there was a shortage of supply, and this wealthy man bought grain and bread and gave it it to the poor and so forth.

Speaker 24 But this means, you know, in this great network where you export wine and import grain and other things, you know, there's a small thing out of balance and you feel the problems around the whole Mediterranean.

Speaker 1 Because that is something I'd never thought about, Gabriel.

Speaker 1 I mean, the idea you get with like the fertile volcanic soils, like vineyards everywhere around Pompeii and all of this land and the Bay of Naples as well, that they would be able to have enough food.

Speaker 1 But as you're saying there, the importance of importing food and the fact that there were famines. I would have never thought there would have been famines in ancient Pompeii.

Speaker 1 That's something I guess you don't really see from the surviving archaeology, at least if you're visiting.

Speaker 24 Well, I think inscriptions are extremely important. And I actually think we are going toward a very critical direction in our disciplines, in our field.

Speaker 24 Archaeology of the classical world should never forget the texts, which is not only the great tradition of manuscripts and history writing and so, but it's also the thousands of inscriptions.

Speaker 24 You have to see this all together and then you get the picture. And you can see also the

Speaker 24 corruption and the problems this society had.

Speaker 24 it really makes you think about our own present because you you start to understand that it's not that people were simply

Speaker 24 not informed or you know they didn't know better

Speaker 24 but maybe some knew and others didn't want to hear it and that makes us maybe think of things like climate change right so what's really going on there's a discussion is it caused by humans or by

Speaker 24 in antiquity maybe the gods you know or whatever you start to understand the complexity and how humanity and human progress, if you want to call it like that, is often not so much about discoveries, genius, you know, the new insight, the new thing, but it's more about how can we find a way together, collectively, to deal with that new thing and with change and with climate change, which existed already in antiquity.

Speaker 24 It was much slower, but people had to adapt too.

Speaker 24 And so you understand it's much more about what we're doing now. We're trying to explain something.
And it's not only

Speaker 24 the great discovery. The steam engine basically had been invented in antiquity, but

Speaker 24 without any consequences.

Speaker 1 I always think of Architas's or Architas' steam-powered bird, which is one of my nerdy little favorite stories.

Speaker 1 But well, I'm hoping then, Gabriel, if if you wouldn't mind if we keep outside of the walls of pompeii a little longer if you wouldn't mind telling me the story of civita juliana i hope i've i've said that correctly or or near enough

Speaker 1 what this is and the amazing discovery we could say discoveries that were made there in 2021 because i know this is a story really close to your heart Well, and it still continues.

Speaker 24 We're still excavating there. In Pompeii, there's a unique thing which doesn't exist in any other site,

Speaker 24 not even in Herculaneum, which is another town destroyed by Vesuvius. The eruption had two phases.

Speaker 24 The first one was characterized by the fall of the Lapili, small pumice stones, and the second by the arrival of the pyroclastic flow, so very hot ash, kind of dust-like,

Speaker 24 that then became solid soil.

Speaker 24 And because it was so hot and so much, it basically killed everybody and all humans and animals who are still in Pompeii, covered them, bodies, human bodies dissolved and aren't there anymore.

Speaker 24 But the soil became solid. And so the organic material left an imprint and a negative, an empty space in the soil.
and you can fill it.

Speaker 24 If you excavate, you find actually a hole in the ground, and you can fill it with plaster, and then you can reconstruct the forms.

Speaker 24 And you can actually look into the faces of people who died in Pompeii. There are about a hundred of these plaster casts, which is really chilling in a way.

Speaker 24 Some people call them statues, of course, they're not statues, they are people, but they aren't there anymore.

Speaker 24 So it's a very special type of of archaeological discovery and with the same methodology you can reconstruct other things that were covered by ash and then dissolved like wood leather wooden baskets and so forth so what we found in chivita is incredibly well-preserved slave rooms.

Speaker 24 So we are excavating now in the slave quarter, which is the same size like the quarter where the owners lived. So a huge, many rooms.
I think at least 60 people could live there

Speaker 24 because they had so much land to work.

Speaker 24 And so what we start to see is the furniture, the small daily use objects, the blanket thrown on one of the beds. how the beds are made.
They're very primitive. There's no mattress.

Speaker 24 People are sleeping like on, you know, on a net of ropes, not very comfortable, you know, no floor, only stamped earth, basically, basically. We found also

Speaker 24 several remains of rats and mice.

Speaker 24 You can really imagine the precarious life situation of these people. And this is really important because we have this idea of the classical world as a cradle of democracy and philosophy and

Speaker 24 science and beautiful art and marble. That's all true.
That's part of it, but it's only one part.

Speaker 24 It's also a society where you had enslaved people, where you had this huge differences between the wealthy and the poor. Maybe only one wall, a wall separating the two parts of the building.

Speaker 24 That's why we had an exhibition here. We called it the Other Pompeii.

Speaker 24 It's, of course, the same city, but you can look at it from different perspectives. And I think if you walk through Pompeii, you can see the Other Pompeii everywhere, everywhere.

Speaker 24 You can see the traces of precarious lives and slavery and beautiful artworks and wealth.

Speaker 1 I mean, Gabriel, and just a bit more context, forgive my ignorance.

Speaker 1 So, the Civita Giuliana, this is a big villa just outside of Pompeii, but the discovery of the slave quarters almost feels like the greatest part of it, as you say, because it's not

Speaker 1 highlighting the wealth of the rich, it's giving an insight into those people who are usually missed in the ancient record.

Speaker 24 Well, yeah, but it depends on us.

Speaker 24 In Civita Giuliana, which was, I think one of the biggest villas in the countryside around Pompeii, known so far, it's very interesting because it's not the first villa, of course, that has been excavated in Pompeii and the countryside.

Speaker 24 There has been found a beautiful chariot with bronze and silver decorations.

Speaker 24 also very important.

Speaker 24 So you could present the whole complex as, you know, know, the villa of the chariot and try to create a narrative around that.

Speaker 24 Or you can try to say, well, this is so unique because of the slave rooms and the furniture and all that. It really depends on us.

Speaker 24 And what we try to do is to say, well, it's not that the chariot isn't important or that one aspect is more true or more important than the other.

Speaker 24 But I think for our visitors, it would be very important to know more about what was life like in ancient Pompeii. And if we focus only on the beautiful things, that's nice and maybe entertaining.

Speaker 24 But it doesn't maybe touch us in the way the stories of children and women and men living in very difficult situations sometimes do. And it makes us think about our own society and justice and

Speaker 24 inequality. And that's important.

Speaker 1 Gabriel, I remember when the story of the slave quarters broke to the media, I mean, to the public world, and there was that massive reaction to it, lots and lots of excitement around it.

Speaker 1 Did you expect that? I mean, were you expecting there to be such a massive reaction to the discovery of these slave quarters?

Speaker 24 Yes and no. We were working behind the scenes.
So we tried to launch it and to give it importance. So we were happy to see that the story was taken up by many news outlets.

Speaker 24 Sometimes I think maybe outside archaeology, there's maybe even more openness towards certain themes.

Speaker 24 We have to do more in this direction. But also, how do you open Pompeii?

Speaker 24 There are highlights and that's also important, but even the highlights, the House of the Vetti, which is one of the most famous houses of Pompeii, you can look at it and say it's basically in all of the manuals of ancient art and painting and so.

Speaker 24 But there's also a slave quarter inside the house. And you can ask where did these people get their wealth from? And then

Speaker 24 probably the wine business, right? And so you can connect it to the countryside and to other facilities, the harbor. And so

Speaker 24 even the great art is part of this economic, cultural, and social history, which is, I think, very exciting for some.

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Speaker 1 I mean, so exciting.

Speaker 1 And Gabriel, we will go on and talk about the legacies of children in Pompeii as well, and also projects around young men and women today in Pompeii that I know is also very close to your heart.

Speaker 1 But I will ask now about the beauty, about the more kind of elite part of Pompeii briefly now, if you don't mind, and to kind of go to the house of the Vetti that you mentioned, because near the start of your book, you do highlight very early on this presence, I mean, this striking presence of Greek art and scenes from Greek mythology that you regularly when new announcements are made to the press, you know, the discoveries normally feature images from Greek culture in these very rich houses.

Speaker 1 I I mean, Gabriel, first of all, why is that? Why is there such a presence of scenes of Greek mythology and Greek culture in Roman Pompeii?

Speaker 24 Well, we tend to think about Pompeii as a Roman city. Actually, we could look at it as a Greek and Roman city because it's so full of Greek culture.

Speaker 24 The Romans looked at Greece, they were superior in terms of military and political force.

Speaker 24 They conquered Greece at a certain point,

Speaker 24 but they felt themselves somehow inferior culturally.

Speaker 24 And so

Speaker 24 they learned Greek. All the great politicians and writers had to know Greek.
We can see in Pompeii people writing in Greek.

Speaker 24 Some make mistakes, but there were also many people from the eastern Mediterranean. Greek was the main language, not only in Greece, but also in Palestine and Egypt and Syria and so forth.

Speaker 24 So this is one reason. Then the Greeks had such a sophisticated literature and culture and

Speaker 24 they had, you know, paintings and statues and

Speaker 24 even such things like erotic manuals and things you know the Romans, very pragmatic, had also difficulties to accept.

Speaker 24 And so there was a discussion inside the Roman society,

Speaker 24 isn't this corrupting?

Speaker 24 Isn't this something that will, in the long run, make us weak? All this Greek culture and drinking and feasting. At the end, they couldn't resist.

Speaker 24 there was always this kind of ambivalent relation to Greek culture And then, of course, the Romans made something new of it. And that's what we often maybe don't see.
But

Speaker 24 the great authors of Latin literature, Virgil, Ovid, and so forth, they all had Greek models. But they did something new.
They weren't just translations or imitations of Greek. literature.

Speaker 24 And that's what you see in Pompeii. You see the traditional Roman houses with the

Speaker 24 round plan, which is strictly linked to the social function of the house.

Speaker 24 So you have the atrium with the opening in the roof and the tablinum, where the house owner every morning for the salutatio would receive his clients, right?

Speaker 24 Which were the people who asked for favors and who then would vote for him when he would run for an office the in the town. But these very traditional houses are full of Greek paintings.

Speaker 24 So it's as if they were trying to live two lives, two cultural codes.

Speaker 24 Maybe in the morning you're the traditional Roman house owner and you do your social and political business and then in the afternoon and in the evening you become a bit more Greek and you drink some Greek wine and meet with friends and Greek poems are performed and you look at the paintings and they become really

Speaker 24 stories to reflect on the lives of the people who were there. So they often we know this from texts.

Speaker 24 They would say well you know Penelope the wife of Odysseus had to wait ten twenty years until he came back, ten

Speaker 24 siege of Troy and then ten years to come back.

Speaker 1 and then from there you start talking about you know marriage problems or whatever because it does seem like isn't it with those wall paintings those frescoes those scenes of greek mythology that in those great houses gabriel could you almost say kind of conversation starters if they're adorning the walls and or maybe just you know just thoughts as you say if you're in the afternoon you're feeling a bit more greek i mean i mean things to ponder over almost it's an interesting insight into how they thought and how they lived right And you have to understand that people didn't have all these books.

Speaker 24 They had books, but they were scrolls, right? And they copied by hand and so forth. They didn't have, of course, television and newspapers and all that.
So there was no public school.

Speaker 24 There's no place where you could go and someone would tell you the story of our country and how did everything become like it is.

Speaker 24 So these images had a great importance for the whole society to imagine who are we,

Speaker 24 where do we come from? They didn't make a big difference between myth and history. So the boundary was somehow fluent.

Speaker 24 How do we look into the future is really dependent on what's our imaginary history, you know, all these stories. That's literally where people live their lives.

Speaker 24 And when Mount Vesuvius erupted, people didn't know really what was going on. They had no geology and volcanology and so forth.
So some saw giants in the smoke and in the ash over Mount Vesuvius.

Speaker 24 And Pliny writes, many prayed to the gods. Many others thought there weren't any gods anymore in the world and a new age of eternal darkness had begun.

Speaker 24 So this is what they take from this world of images and stories and myth. And then you live with that and you approach the catastrophes of life with that baggage.

Speaker 1 And Pliny the Younger that you mentioned there, who was an eyewitness of the eruption and his letters, two letters on it, have survived.

Speaker 1 And Gabriel, and just mentioning the house of the Vetti, because as you've highlighted earlier, one of the most striking houses in Pompeii with all of those scenes, various scenes from Greek mythology.

Speaker 1 And I guess the other thing to highlight is: if you have a guest coming over, for them to be able to recognize just from the painting that you have, they have to identify what myth that is.

Speaker 1 And I guess that's also another marker, isn't it? You might have two figures from Greek mythology on a wall, but maybe you're almost testing the guest who's coming along.

Speaker 1 Can you tell us who that is and the myth that they're from?

Speaker 24 And who was very wealthy, but maybe didn't have such a profound education, paid or had a slave standing nearby during the dinner parties and he would whisper

Speaker 24 the stories and the poems,

Speaker 24 the beginnings, so he could at least pretend to be one of the cultural elite. That was very important.

Speaker 1 And do we sometimes see with these beautiful frescoes, these wall paintings, my last question on this before we move on.

Speaker 1 Do you also see beneath the beauty and beneath them being symbols of, well, elements for conversation starters and high status, a religious origin to them, like a religious background to these beautiful paintings?

Speaker 24 Absolutely. But I think what we see in Pompeii is how this is getting lost because it's so omnipresent that the images started to lose their magic.

Speaker 24 We tend to look at antiquity and say, well, how was it here? How did people live? But actually, it's more than a thousand years. And so there's a huge development.

Speaker 24 In the early centuries of Rome and Athens and Greece and also Pompeii, images were magic objects. So you had them basically in the sanctuaries, in the temples, and in the tombs.

Speaker 24 weren't just representations.

Speaker 24 They had the function of making the presence of the divinity manifest. The deities would be present through the image.

Speaker 24 And then if you have this huge production of images not only in holy places, in sacred spaces, but also in private houses, suddenly something changes. And so you can still see the religious origin,

Speaker 24 but evidently it had become more like some kind of cultural code and almost some kind of decoration. And I think you can also see some kind of nostalgic memory.

Speaker 24 And in Pompeii, there are many of these small landscape pictures, images, where you often see temples and shrines and statues of divinities.

Speaker 24 But it's all a bit run down, and you have trees growing through the columns of the small temple. What I see there is kind of the memory.

Speaker 24 Once there was this unity of nature, landscape, gods, the landscape was inhabited by gods and humans who lived in the landscape. But now it's separated because we are in the city

Speaker 24 and we are looking at these paintings, but we are not part anymore of the natural landscape because who's working the fields? Enslaved workers.

Speaker 24 Who goes into the woods hunting and cutting wood? Not the people who had villas in Pompeii.

Speaker 1 Is this what makes, I mean, arguably the most famous wall painting ever found at Pompeii, the Mysteries Freeze, and this new discovery or recent discovery Gabriel announced the press, the one that the House of Theasis, so interesting if it reveals more kind of clearly,

Speaker 1 please correct me if I'm getting my words wrong here, but almost kind of an outright religious event being shown or ritual event being shown in a wall painting?

Speaker 24 Well, yes and no, because it has always been a question.

Speaker 24 We know that from

Speaker 24 186 BC, the Dionysian mysteries were forbidden by the Roman Senate in Rome, in Italy, because there had been a big scandal and sex and money and murder. And so no mysteries anymore.

Speaker 24 But then you see these images in the villa of the mysteries so people initially thought maybe they secretly continue to celebrate these mysteries here.

Speaker 24 And the same holds true for the recently found frieze which is very similar but also with important differences. And in a way it's true.
The ancient Sinatus Consultum,

Speaker 24 which forbid the mysteries, was never abolished officially, as far as we know. So, yeah, what's happening? Probably

Speaker 24 people were playing with this, right? I mean, it's not really, it's only on the wall, it's only a painting.

Speaker 24 And as long as we're not engaging again in sex orgies and murder and stealing money from others and so forth, there's nothing wrong about it. There shouldn't be.

Speaker 24 On the other hand, I think there's a longing for meaning and the mystery is so exciting and so fascinating because there's something hidden there.

Speaker 24 The famous psychologist Carl Gustav Jung said only something that's incomprehensible can make sense.

Speaker 24 Because we try to find a sense. If if everything is clear, then it's it's also boring in a way.
I think people were working on that.

Speaker 24 They were trying to figure it out.

Speaker 24 And they had this feeling that there must be something, but it was fading away.

Speaker 24 And so I think this is also an explanation why new religious movements like Christianity

Speaker 24 were so appealing. in a society that had nothing to do with the ancient Jewish religion.

Speaker 24 And that was all seen as very awkward and strange, and not being part of the Roman tradition and culture, but still it had such an

Speaker 24 success at the end, right?

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Speaker 1 Because you mentioned it there, I must ask, because 79 AD doesn't feel very long after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 But is there potentially any evidence of Christianity at Pompeii, very early Christianity?

Speaker 24 People always imagined, and this was fascinating, because theoretically, yes, there could be.

Speaker 24 And the early Christian texts were already circulating, like the Gospel of Mark, which is dated around 70 and even old around many of the letters of Paul.

Speaker 24 You have novels and movies

Speaker 24 with this idea that there was a small community of Christians in Pompeii. Actually, we don't have any evidence, but there's basically two

Speaker 24 very strange and interesting graffiti.

Speaker 24 So, not official inscriptions carved in marble, but things people were writing on the walls, like today, maybe in the bathroom of the local school, you can see many of these. So, people

Speaker 24 wrote, one says just two words:

Speaker 24 Sodom Gomorrah

Speaker 24 from the Old Testament, which were destroyed because they were so sinful. And so the Lord let fire and brimstone.
And this is so similar to Pompeii. And people noticed that already in the past.

Speaker 24 And then suddenly, in the 19th century, this inscription is discovered. And it seemed really incredible.

Speaker 24 So people even wondered if someone had come back, you know, and excavated in Pompeii and made this inscription. I don't believe that.

Speaker 24 I think it's probably someone who saw Pompeii from a distance and saw

Speaker 24 the sensuality and the sexual exploitation also,

Speaker 24 prostitution and so forth, and said, well, that's what we were experiencing. And then there's another inscription, a charcoal inscription, which is not preserved, unfortunately, but we know drawings.

Speaker 24 And it's not really clear what it said but clearly it mentioned the name of the Christiani the Christians and it probably was some kind of deformation so it said

Speaker 24 look at this guy here he is part of this crazy movement so we don't know if it's true or not but evidently people had heard of this That's very interesting.

Speaker 1 It's also interesting, I must admit, that that has become one of my favorite facts, that there is evidence of Sodom and Gomorrah, a mention of it in Pompeii before the eruption.

Speaker 1 I mean, Gabriel, that is extraordinary. But if we quickly move on to children at Pompeii, I mean, it seems there's been some really interesting discoveries there.

Speaker 1 I mean, another group of people usually hidden from the archaeological record, but at Pompeii, I saw some images recently, almost look like ancient Roman stickmen done by children. Is that true?

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 24 And they are very interesting because they are gladiators and animal hunts. So things you could usually see in the amphitheater.

Speaker 24 And they are drawn in a typical children-like way. So we called some psychologists from the university at Naples to help us, help us to understand how old were these kids who made the drawings.

Speaker 24 And based on the drawings,

Speaker 24 you have the legs and arms coming directly out of the head,

Speaker 24 which is a way still today children until the age of five or six draw the human figure. So it seems very constant in the history of mankind.

Speaker 24 But we didn't really know if this was the case 2,000 years ago.

Speaker 24 They had no, you know, drawing books and kindergarten and all that so maybe they were drawing like that even at an older age but then we had another fantastic discovery because these children did another thing which is very typical still today

Speaker 24 they put their hands their small hands on the walls and with a piece of charcoal made a drawing around and so we could compare the size of the hand with the drawing style.

Speaker 24 And it's, yeah, we're there, five, six years. These very young children evidently had seen something in the local amphitheater

Speaker 24 of these bloody, brutal games.

Speaker 24 Today we talk a lot about violence in social media and videos. And so

Speaker 24 this was real life.

Speaker 24 violence. People died there.

Speaker 24 Actually, sometimes it was part of the performance in the amphitheatre, you know, to punish, to crucify, to throw people to the beasts. And so you could see blood and you could see people die.

Speaker 24 And it was entertainment. And you have to imagine that very young children were exposed to that kind of violence.
And that's what we take from these drawings.

Speaker 1 It's that idea, isn't it? You have to be 18 or over to attend the amphitheatre. As as you say, if those young people could go.
Gabriel, it's such an amazing insight.

Speaker 1 And I remember also going to a corridor very close to both of the theatres and just next to the gladiator barracks, where I think you see some more etchings of gladiators potentially at a child's height.

Speaker 1 So, once again, it's so interesting how that type of figure is so ingrained in a child's mind.

Speaker 1 Lastly, I mentioned the theatre there, and I feel that brings us nicely on to the last project I want us to talk about, which I know is very close to your heart and slightly different to what we've been talking about, but no less important, which is the Sognio di Volare project.

Speaker 1 Now, Gabriel, can you tell us a bit about this and why it's so important?

Speaker 24 In archaeology and museum studies, we talk a lot about

Speaker 24 communities and heritage. And so we thought in Prope, how can we bridge the gap? Because we have visitors from all over the world and millions of people come here.
And that's great, of course.

Speaker 24 But we felt there's less involvement with the local community, and so we started working with young people, teenagers, basically children, who are doing theatre workshops during the school year.

Speaker 24 And then at the end of the year, they stage a classical play, Aristophanes. These are comedies, so it's a lot to love in the ancient theatre of Pompeii.

Speaker 24 So, the idea is that they take possession of their

Speaker 24 collective heritage. The site Pompeii is theirs too.
And so they become actors in every sense. And it's amazing if you see people who usually don't come to Pompeii.

Speaker 24 Or if they come, they come because

Speaker 24 they are forced to come with a school excursion or whatever.

Speaker 24 And if you start explaining them, well, you know, Pompeii, the wall paintings, and it's very easy to lose them in a in a second view because they have no emotional connection they don't feel it no interest whereas if you have them as part of the project they're actually on stage

Speaker 24 then after that it's it's really a game they come and they want to see the new exhibitions they want to see the the excavations and so by creating this kind of involvement and emotional connections, then you can really start bringing the content and the historical and art historical knowledge to them.

Speaker 24 And it suddenly becomes automatic. And that's really fantastic.

Speaker 1 I can imagine, well, I can also hear it in your voice, Gabriel, how rewarding a project it is for you and how important it is as well. So I'm very glad we could mention that before we wrap up.

Speaker 1 Gabriel, it has been a privilege to have some of your time to talk about all of these projects and the work at Pompeii. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 Last but certainly not least, you are, of course, promoting your new book and it is called...

Speaker 24 It's called The Buried City, Unearthing the Real Pompeii, the other Pompeii, the everyday life Pompeii, but also the great art. And it's published in May.
I hope you enjoy it.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. I hope everyone enjoys it.
Who reads it? And I'm sure they will. Gabriel, it just goes to me to say one more time, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.

Speaker 24 Thank you.

Speaker 1 Well, there you go. There was the director of Pompeii, Dr.

Speaker 1 Gabriel Zuktrigel, giving us an hour of his time to explain and explore some of the most recent discoveries and projects that are happening at Pompeii under his watch. I hope you enjoyed the episode.

Speaker 1 That really was quite a special interview for us to get and we are really excited to now have shared it with you. Thank you once again for listening to this episode of the Ancients.

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Speaker 2 Dashing through the store, Dave's looking for a gift. One you can't ignore, but not the socks he picks.
I know, I'm putting them back. Hey, Dave, here's a tip: put scratchers on your list.

Speaker 3 Oh, scratchers, good idea.

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Thanks, random singing people. So be like Dave this holiday and give the gift of play.
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