Pompeii Life Of A Roman Town, By Mary Beard - 925 Words

Introduction†¨ One fateful day in 79 C.E, Mount Vesuvius erupted and covered the entire town of Pompeii in ash and lava.The bodies of the victims and the town remained untouched for years, until archaeologists dug out the site.Volcanic materials petrified everything and anything in their path and left Pompeii in the exact state it was in thousands of years ago. In Pompeii: Life of a Roman Town, Mary Beard raises questions that attempt to piece together what life was like in Pompeii not only during the chaos of Vesuvius’ eruption, but in a time prior to it. Research Design Mary Beard is a professor of Classical History at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. As a professor of Classical history and an author of books on Roman and Greek history, she has extensive knowledge about Pompeii. Finding information on the town’s early history is becoming a trend in the archaeology industry. Mary asks the questions: What was Pompeii like in 79 C.E? When did the city originate and how ? â€Å"Pompeii was even older than it’s visible remains suggest.In 79 C.E, there was no building in use— public or private— that was earlier than the the third century BCE† (31). While this town may not have been a highly populated originally, Pompeii was a big community by the sixth century BCE. Another question raised by Mary Beard is: Who were the early Pompeians? The evidence left behind suggests that the people of Pompeii were multicultural. For example, they had Grecian art, followed