The Fires of Vesuvius, Mary Beard
The Fires of Vesuvius, Mary Beard
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The Fires of Vesuvius
Pompeii Lost and Found

Author: Mary Beard

Narrator: Phyllida Nash

Unabridged: 12 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/18/2019


Synopsis

Pompeii is the most famous archaeological site in the world, visited by more than two million people each year. Yet it is also one of the most puzzling, with an intriguing and sometimes violent history.

Destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, the ruins of Pompeii offer the best evidence we have of life in the Roman Empire. But the eruptions are only part of the story. In The Fires of Vesuvius, acclaimed historian Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. She explores what kind of town it was—more like Calcutta or the Costa del Sol?—and what it can tell us about "ordinary" life there. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, Beard offers us the big picture even as she takes us close enough to the past to smell the bad breath and see the intestinal tapeworms of the inhabitants of the lost city. She resurrects the Temple of Isis as a testament to ancient multiculturalism. At the Suburban Baths we go from communal bathing to hygiene to erotica.

Recently, Pompeii has been a focus of pleasure and loss: from Pink Floyd's memorable rock concert to Primo Levi's elegy on the victims. But Pompeii still does not give up its secrets quite as easily as it may seem. This book shows us how much more and less there is to Pompeii than a city frozen in time as it went about its business on 24 August 79.

About Mary Beard

Mary Beard is a professor of classics at Cambridge University and the author of the bestselling SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, Women & Power: A Manifesto, and the National Book Critics Circle Award-nominated Confronting the Classics. A popular blogger and television personality, Beard is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kavita on March 07, 2019

When people were running away from destruction in 79 AD, after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, they had no idea that 2000 years later they would be famous and the subject of fascination and speculation to many. If you are one of these many, then you need to read this book. Right away! This book is no......more

Goodreads review by Roy on February 04, 2021

I read this book too late for my visit to Pompeii—about two years too late, sadly. But I am still glad I did. Mary Beard, in her customary way, has written an intelligent and accessible book about this iconic Roman site, which is enlightening regardless of whether or not its reading coincides with y......more