Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town

Product Information

Our need for ritual is primordial, and embracing its logic can help us connect, find meaning and discover who we are. The human remains of Pompeii (and by extension, Herculaneum) have been ignored or treated like some kind of circus attraction for centuries. Attilius is efficient, incorruptible and stoic, but he risks his life to save a woman he has unexpectedly fallen in love with. Constructing the history of the town seems therefore like a jigsaw with most of the pieces missing; there is much speculation and controversy over even some of the most basic 'facts'. The first adventure in the Folio Society editions of ‘The Magic Faraway Tree’ series, Enid Blyton’s The Enchanted Wood features Jonathan Burton’s enchanting illustrations and a new introduction by Michael Morpurgo.

If you want to know what really happened in the last days of the petrified city, Beard's meticulous reconstruction will fill you in, scraping away many of your preconceptions as it goes, while her evocative writing will transport you back. The path leading to the top is wide and steep, but it is not a difficult climb (except, perhaps, on a very hot day); occasional benches are provided for weary hikers. Here, acclaimed historian Mary Beard makes sense of the remains, painting an exhaustive portrait of an ancient town. Two of the others (Angkor and Pompeii) are cities I had only a superficial knowledge of, but now feel much better informed about.The eruption of Italy’s Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 buried a city and its people, their treasures and secrets. An Italian Feast is a gastronomy about Italian culinary history and consciousness, about how Italians cook, eat, and how their food is an intimate part of their culture. Another recommended book, for younger readers, is my own Bodies from the Ash: Life and Death in Ancient Pompeii. Pompeii is a Roman town frozen in time, thanks to a devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. It’s also the first in any language to provide a complete survey of the tombs of Pompeii and the first to situate Pompeian differences within a wider Roman burial context.

The photographs of Luigi Spina take readers on a journey through the classical architecture of the nine districts of Pompeii – including through areas off-limits to tourists.The last sentence of the novel reports a local legend that a man and woman had emerged from the aqueduct after the eruption, which implies that Attilius and Corelia likely survived the trip up the aqueduct.

Much else can only strike the modern viewer as bizarre — something out of Petronius or Apuleius rather than Cicero or Horace — like a fresco of the Judgment of Solomon story enacted by pygmies. The beast under the mountain Vesuvius, high above the city, wakes up angry sometimes -- and always goes back to sleep. Beard, a professor of classics at Cambridge, always wears her learning lightly, and in this outstanding book she has excelled herself, puncturing preconceptions and exposing a whole layer of myth about the world's best-preserved ancient town. The groundbreaking debut novel of Hugo Award-winning author Becky Chambers, one of the most imaginative voices in contemporary science fiction, is a truly galactic limited edition.Pompeii is the most famous archaeological site in the world, visited by more than two million people each year. This edition also includes a biography of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, theme discussions and study questions, which can be used both in the classroom and at home to further engage the reader in the story. Featuring extraordinary illustrations by Clive Hicks-Jenkins and an exclusive introduction by Janina Ramirez, each of the 750 numbered copies has been signed by both contributors. Beard therefore manages to give an impression of the historiography of the city, drawing on changing ideas from archaeology and forensics, and circumstantial evidence from the (also fragmentary) contemporary literature.

With its peristyle garden, luxurious furnishings, nimble attendants and anatrium filled with paintings that “would scarcely disgrace a Raphael,”Glaucus’ Campanian bachelor pad might serve as “a model at this day for the house of ‘a single man in Mayfair,’ ” Bulwer-­Lytton wrote. Because Herculaneum is much smaller than Pompeii, it is relatively easy to see in half a day (note that there is no food service within the Herculaneum archaeological site itself). Though readers learn about the disaster that engulfed the famed Roman town in 79 AD, the compelling book has more to offer than lessons on history and ancient technology. Smoke and ash darkening the air; rivers of lava pouring onto a town; a terrified populace fleeing with hastily gathered possessions. While exploring Vesuvius on his own, Attilius discovers Exomnius's corpse in a pit of earth choked by noxious fumes, which also kills Corax, who has come to assassinate Attilius.

This takes you in detail through a Roman house and street, with masses of gorgeous photos and explanations to guide you. Mary Beard is a professor of classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and the classics editor of the TLS. More often than not, people forget that the Vesuvian sites are, as gruesome as it sounds, large mass burials – not just of the cities themselves, but of people. Robert Harris is the author of fifteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2 and Act of Oblivion.