The Fires of Vesuvius by Mary Beard

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, from the sixth century BCE to the present day. 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 ³ordinary² 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.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Harvard University Press
• classics
• ancient history
• Pompeii
• the Roman Triumph
• Mary Beard

[dekekyo]

...as if!!!!!

[264468]

Paraponon, I have had the pleasure of being taught by Prof. Beard, and I think you'll find that she is actually quite an extraordinary academic. It would be difficult, after all, to become a faculty chair at one of the foremost centres for classical study without having done "real academic research." I'm sorry you had a bad experience with her, but that's hardly reason to slander her on the internet.

[paraponon]

andyham, presumably you have never had the experience of actually being "taught" by Mary Beard. She is pretty horrific up close, which is why the media career she has spent so many years carefully cultivating (as opposed to doing any actual real academic research) will be limited to writing a blog, and not extend to TV or radio, which would earn her the greater exposure her ego desperately craves for.

[andyham200]

love mary beard!