Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum
By Paula James
I rather rashly promised a piece on the Pompeii exhibition from the different perspectives of a virtual experience (‘screening the first night’ went out in cinemas on June 18th) and doing the conventional thing of visiting the British Museum in person (which I managed to do over a month later on July 22nd). The latter was actually cheaper as we opted for the reduced price Monday afternoon (as senior citizens.) Cinema tickets were £9 (outrageous) with no concessions! Still we did have the expense of travelling to London for the real thing and it was one of the most continentally steamy days of that month. I had a sudden rather poignant memory of being baked in heat while visiting Pompeii in 1979 when our two small daughters were far more intrigued by the lizards than by anything else and we were all pretty fractious after a few hours. We found Herculaneum (relatively little uncovered 35 years ago) shadier and much more atmospheric. But first things first – our local cinema in East Grinstead attracted a good audience for the film tour around the exhibition. I suppose the real advantage was seeing artefacts in close up and not having to fight for a view. On the other hand you are at the mercy of the experts’ choices
‘Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum’ explores the Roman home and the people who lived in the ill-fated cities buried by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
as we were in the esteemed company of Mary Beard, Andrew Wallace Hadrill, Bettany Hughes and Niall McGregor, all knowledgeable, eloquent and enthusiastic of course – but we could have done with less of the talking heads and more of the exhibition. John James (my other half) commented that there was too little history and rather a lot of the ‘wow’ factor by which I think he meant everyone more or less said ‘wow’ (a lot! if in an intellectually periphrastic way). The most famous and infamous artefacts were discussed, for instance, the sculpture of Pan doing unspeakable things to a goat, a good party piece for Mary Beard and an opportunity to raise Roman attitudes to sexuality – which at least took us into more complex sociological territory; otherwise there is a tendency when
A sculpture of Pan doing unspeakable things to a goat.
‘meeting the Romans’ to overdo the ‘people just like us’ approach. The skill and delicacy of mosaics and wall paintings certainly seemed to impress the cinema audience (the age range was wide). The body casts will always be poignant and especially so in the case of the family (two adults and two children in their death throes) who were presumably the well off owners of the house of the golden bracelet. The garden frescos restored from this house are simply stunning (wow, one might say!) The real plus of being there at the exhibition in July was standing in such reconstructed spaces as these, choosing where to pause and reflect and following at your own pace the carefully constructed themes of ‘everyday life’ in Pompeii – simplistic in some ways but a very effective strategy for giving everyone a flavour of urban life and death during the Roman Empire. Of course students of A151 (Making Sense of Things) would be quite savvy about the ideological as well as the aesthetic choices driving the layout of museums in general
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