East Baton Rouge Parish Library

Pompeii's living statues, ancient Roman lives stolen from death, Eugene Dwyer

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 145-153) and index

contains biographical information

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

platesillustrations

index present

non fiction

Pompeii's living statues

bibliography

466344616

Eugene Dwyer

ancient Roman lives stolen from death

In AD 79, Mt. Vesuvius erupted in two stages. While the first stage was incredibly destructive, it was the second stage, a so-called pyroclastic flow, that inundated Pompeii with a combination of superheated gases, pumice, and rocks, killing thousands of people and animals and burying them in ash and mud. During excavations of the town in 1863, Giuseppe Fiorelli, the director of the dig, poured plaster of paris into a cavity under the soil revealed by a workman's pick. When the plaster set and the mound was uncovered, all were amazed to see the secret that the ground had held for 1,800 years: a detailed cast of an ancient Pompeian such as no one had seen before, frozen in the instant of dying and complete in every respect, including outlines of the clothes he was wearing at the time of the destruction. The bodies, photographed and exhibited in the specially built Pompeii Museum, completely changed the world's ideas of life in ancient Italy. Pompeii's Living Statues is a narrative account, supported by contemporary documents, of the remarkable discovery of those ancient victims preserved in the volcanic mud of Vesuvius