Monthly Archives: February 2014

The Power of Song and Music at Pompeii

Clearly some houses at Pompeii are more prone to disaster than others. Not only was dwelling III 5.1, the shop and house of Pascius Hermes, destroyed and covered by volcanic matter just like everything else at Pompeii: it was damaged … Continue reading

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Grand Theft Pompeii

Just off Pompeii’s principal street, the so-called Via dell’Abbondanza (‘Street of Abundance’), painted onto a pilaster between two doorways, the following (somewhat fragmentary) inscription was discovered (CIL IV 64): Vrna aenia pereit de taberna. Sei quis rettulerit dabuntur HS LXV, … Continue reading

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When it rains, it pours (Or: Don’t just do something, stand there!)

The Roman historian Tacitus, in his work Agricola in the context a passage that comments on the British isles’ multus umor terrarum caelique (‘the excessive moisture of the soil and of the atmosphere’) famously writes (Tac. Agr. 12): Caelum crebris … Continue reading

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Lecture: ‘Aufidius was here. (Really? And where exactly?)’

Today I had the great pleasure to open the ‘Pompeii: The Present and Future of Vesuvian Research‘ seminar series at the University of Leeds, organised by Dr Virginia Campbell and Dr Rick Jones. A video of my lecture is now … Continue reading

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An Olympic Shitstorm

Poking fun at Russia and its organisation of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi has become a new pastime. Among the more recent entertaining news feature stories of loos that lack dividing walls between individual toilets – a gaffe that … Continue reading

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