Steven Ostrow

Meetings: Thursday's 2:10-3:35, Feb. 26, March 5, 12, 19, 26  

sostrow@mit.edu

tel. 857-229-8475

The remains of Roman Pompeii, destroyed in 79 C.E. by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, are familiar across the globe.  (Hard to count Japan's Pompeii exhibitions!) Along with its smaller neighbor Herculaneum, in the 18th century  Pompeii became  the world's earliest archaeological laboratory.  These towns along Naples Bay have brought us close to the lives of the Greco-Roman forebears of western civilization.  What were the realities of daily life and death? of political wheeling-and-dealing? of literacy, water resources, and a highly diversified economy (from farming to commerce, from laundering to prostitution)?  The Vesuvian sites pose these questions with a vividness sharper than anywhere else.  Yet despite their familiarity, Pompeii and its neighbors have continued to offer spectacularly unsuspected new discoveries: unique tin-&-bronze-encrusted chariot; brightly frescoed fast food shop; skeletal remains of hundreds of victims huddled together at the coastline.  These towns hold long unsolved puzzles and provoke our curiosity with new ones.  The very humanity of these ancient "Neapolitans" reminds us just how close cousins of theirs we still are, two millennia later, even as we are struck by how profoundly different a world we inhabit.  Chiefly through SGL illustrated lectures (class participation warmly encouraged); guided by Mary Beard's  iconoclastic book, Fires of Vesuvius; and with an optional weekend visit to the MFA's Greco-Roman collection (date TBD), our aims will be to recognize the complexity of this quasi-alien culture; develop a critical eye for distinguishing surface realities from deeper ones; and gauge how far we have "progressed" from Roman times. 

COURSE WEBSITE (= SYLLABUS, week by week):

https://sites.google.com/view/bollipompeii/home

Our "textbook": Mary Beard, The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found.  The book is available in print as a paperback, and just in recent months there is also a Kindle edition.

PAPERBACK:

Mary Beard, The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found (Harvard U. Press, 2008: list price around $25; try on-line dealers like Abe, Amazon for wide variety of new & used versions)

KINDLE ($14.75)  https://www.amazon.com/Fires-Vesuvius-Mary-Beard-ebook/dp/B0CP3RN86N/ref=monarch_sidesheet?asin=B0CP3RN86N&revisionId=bbc5afad&format=1&depth=1

"Extras" at Course Website: Many optional readings and videos are suggested week-by-week, and also under the heading "Recommended Extras: videos, etc." 

https://sites.google.com/view/bollipompeii/recommended-extras-videos-articles-ancient-texts?authuser=0

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