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Arya Ramachandran
The very first time that I heard about the city of Pompeii was at the ripe old age of seven. My parents had just bought the entire series of Magic Tree House books, and made me read a couple of chapters every day. In one book, the city of Pompeii was being destroyed by a volcano caused by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, and the lead characters—Jack and Annie—had to do something before everything was destroyed. Like most of the books in the series, the fictional story took place during actual historical events.
Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79AD, destroying the city of Pompeii in its entirety; however, in recent months there has been renewed interest in the city as excavators have unearthed different artifacts. They have discovered a large, four-wheel ceremonial chariot at a villa near Pompeii. They found the bronze and tin chariot almost fully intact, with wooden remains and the imprint of ropes.
Prior to that archaeologists had discovered the remains of two men scalded to death by the volcanic eruption. One of the men was probably a man of high status, aged between 30 and 40, who still bore traces of a woolen cloak under his neck. The second, probably aged 18 to 23, was dressed in a tunic and had a number of crushed vertebrae, indicating that he had been a slave who did heavy labor.
A couple of years before that, excavations in the Regio V area of the city unearthed a charcoal inscription on the wall of a room. This supports the theory the eruption occurred in the month of October and not August.
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So why are we finding more artifacts these days? It is because the recent excavations have been the largest in the past 50 years. Pompeii is one of the largest tourist attractions for visitors to Italy. While two-thirds of the lost city has been excavated there still remains large parts of the city that is still buried. There is also an ongoing debate on whether it is better to discover new ground or better preserving what has already been discovered.
The city of Pompeii is an important part of Latin history. The Roman Empire fell almost 300 years after the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius—the exact date is debated by historians. During that time, the language spoken was Latin. After the fall of the Roman empire, Latin evolved into a more colloquial form known as “Vulgar Latin”. The Italian language then evolved from Vulgar Latin over the course of several centuries.
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