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Pompeii, Mt Vesuvius and Herculaneum

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You probably all know the story of Pompeii: a thriving Roman town is buried in it’s tracks by ash and rock after a big volcanic eruption from nearby Mt Vesuvius. That’s the short version, but the longer version has a lot more to be learned. Buckle up, kids. It’s time for homeschool.

Pompeii

Wandering around the ruins of Pompeii, you realize the ruins are only a little bit about the day the volcano erupted, but a lot about how Romans built amazingly modern cities. In fact, at the time the volcano erupted in 79 AD, Pompeii was already 600 years old and was a busy Roman trading city. It had quite a thriving metropolis with running water, bath houses, brothels, fast food snack bars, theaters, streets that were logically laid out and even crosswalks to keep your sandals clean from water on the streets and animal poop from the carriages.

We headed to Pompeii after a day wandering around Naples. We were well fed and we were prepared for heat, dust and getting lost. We loaded ourselves down with comfortable shoes, water, sunglasses, a guide book, a map, an audio guide from Rick Steves and a splitter for 2 headphones. It was challenging to get 4 hard-headed family members to agree on one system of learning the stuff from all these various educational resources, so we split up. Haley and I hung out with goofy Rick Steves and Zoe and Daniel worked on the book and map. We stayed in the same general area and would meet back up again and swap facts. Honestly, learning all this stuff is hard work! But our system worked pretty well. I’m not too embarrassed to admit that Haley is a better auditory learner than I am, so it helped me to discuss what we heard with her, and then we would both relate it to Dan and Zoe and vice versa. Lots of layering needed for us to get it all.

When Rick Steves started his guide, he warned us that it was easy to get lost and he was not wrong. Pompeii is really confusing, there are few discernible landmarks, most streets look the same, it’s easy to lose your bearings and it’s just… BIG. It’s even bigger when you are deep in some remote part and your youngest child has to go to the bathroom after all that water. I half-jokingly suggested she go into one of the old Pompeii homes but she was not doing it. “I’m not peeing in Pompeii, Mom!” Geez, sorry. Just trying to solve a problem!

Despite being hot and lost and somewhat overwhelmed with info, we had a great time. It was not crowded, which was just awesome. Every once in awhile we’d run into someone looking at the same stuff, or the map, or looking lost. But most of the time we were pretty much on our own. That was really nice.  And so, we enjoyed it immensely. I won’t repeat all of Rick’s audio guide (believe me, I’m tempted) but I will share some stuff with you via pictures.

Wandering down a street. The raised stones were the sidewalk on this street. The circle in the middle is the crosswalk. It’s also the width of the cart (they had standard widths) and this means this was a one-way street.
Different street. This one had better sidewalks.
Here we are demonstrating Roman crosswalks. This is a 2-lane road.
This was a “snack bar” across from the bath house. The girls were getting into the moment and Haley was serving Zoe some ancient Roman chicken nuggets.
This is Dan re-enacting a hot and tired Roman seeking shade. No, that isn’t a cigarette in Dan’s hand. It’s a straw. Dan HATES smoking!
This was in the bathhouse, in a steam room. This was where they stretched before going into the baths. So Haley stretched. Notice the little man-pillars decorating the sides. So cute. I tried to get Dan to stand just like that next to them but he said no. I can only push the fam so far with cheesy photos.
This is a fresco in Pompeii’s best preserved home. It’s not pornography, however. The penis and the sack of money balance each other on the goldsmith scale above a fine bowl of fruit. The translation: Only with a balance of fertility (the erection) and money (the gold), can you enjoy true abundance (the fruit).
These were little flecks of marble in the street or sidewalk. In the moonlight they would reflect the light so the pedestrian could see the path at night. Nightlights, Roman style! They were called “cat eyes”.
This is a mill in a bakery. They would put boards in the square hole and slaves or animals would walk in circles to grind the flour for bread. Little pieces of rock would end up in the bread, enhancing the flavor. That’s what I say about egg shells in my scrambled eggs too.
One of the plaster casts that they created from the spaces left by entombed bodies in the ash. Her bones are contained within the plaster cast. So you can see the exact position they died in. This one was holding her nose, it appears. So sad.
Another one, clearly trying to avoid all the hot ash and rocks falling from the sky. The ash shot up 20 km into the air for 18 straight hours.
This one is hard to see because of the reflection but it’s a dog, on it’s back, as if he was scratching his back in the pumice that was falling.
The Forum – the central square – is on our right. Mt Vesuvius is straight ahead. The yellow part is the area that was there before the eruption. But now it’s just kind of bowl-shaped.

Mt Vesuvius

We refer to our system of education as “layering”. We like to “layer” on information, like frosting a cake. You have to put the layers on one at a time, and wait for a bit before the next one goes on.  So a few days after Pompeii we decided to climb up Mt Vesuvius, the volcano that caused the demise of the busy Roman trading towns below.

It was more of a hike than we had expected but the less-than-fit Shermans knocked it out of the park and got all the way up and back down with no issue. Well, there was one. At the beginning there was a guy with some oranges and I thought that might taste good so I asked for one. He picked up two, cut them in half, then made orange juice. Oh! OK! He wasn’t selling oranges, he was selling orange juice. I like orange juice so that’s all fine. The cost was 2.50 Euro and Dan gave him 3, but refused to take the 50 cent coin in return. Anyone who knows Dan knows his intense aversion to anything sticky. Well, this OJ-making guy had VERY sticky hands and Dan was having none of it. So the OJ guy got a nice tip. He was all smiles. I’m not sure he knew that Dan would have given him a 100 Euro tip if it meant not receiving change back from a sticky-handed Italian guy.

It was a lot of climbing. And sun. And rocks. But very cool.
This is looking down into the crater of Mt Vesuvius.
Panoramic of the crater.
Family selfie at the crater.
It’s a big hole.
The girls and their unintentional color coordination.

Herculaneum

The last layer on our Pompeii Homeschool Cake was Herculaneum. These are some ruins in another part of the area, but were affected by the same volcano. The day that the eruption happened, Pompeii was buried in ash. The folks in the neighboring vacation village of Herculaneum probably saw it all happen and went “Wow. So glad that was not us.” Well, little did they know that the initial eruption created fissures along the flanks of the volcano, which quickly filled with water over the next day or so.  When the water reached the magma… BOOM, an explosion occurred out the sides of the volcano. This then started a pyroclastic flow of clay and mud directly toward… you guessed it… Herculaneum. This clay can travel up to 100 MPH so they probably didn’t have a lot of time to flee.

The ruins are underneath the current city of Ercolano. The ancient city is only 1/10th excavated, but there are no plans to excavate any further, because it’s just not worth it. They would have to move all the residents and their homes after generations of people living there. Also, with modern science they know that building new stuff within the “red zone” of future eruptions of the 10th most dangerous volcano in the world, isn’t the wisest thing to do.

But we got to explore a little piece that has been excavated. Herculaneum was much wealthier than Pompeii and filled with really big, lavish houses, stores, baths and what was once beautiful views of the ocean. This was a great vacation town. It was fascinating to walk through it, see how people lived, the ingenious way the Romans captured, moved and saved water and how they spent their leisure time. We had a guide this time and enjoyed our tour immensely. Because the clay came on ground level and filled all the houses, it preserved them better and maintained much of the height of the original structures. But it also meant it was much harder to excavate.

The streets of Herculaneum. They did not worry about drainage nor did they need the crosswalk stones, as they had pipes and a sewer system under all the streets and homes to manage all the run off.
You could see a lot more of the decorations, and many buildings still had their original 2 and 3 stories.
A lot of skeletons were found in the boat houses, where the people felt they might be safer. One boat was found. This was a seaside town so archaeologists think that many other residents were able to escape by boat.
You can see the lead pipe in the wall, used to transport and drain water. Remember this is 79 AD.
Looking down into the site of the ruins. You can see the current town on the top, and Mt Vesuvius in the background. The ocean is to my back as I take this picture.
The old town you see below was at the ocean’s edge at the time or the eruption. The mud flow pushed the shoreline several hundred feet in back of me. And I’m standing on the ancient mud flow, taking this picture.

And so, that’s a wrap on the Pompeii homeschool lesson. The layering is complete and the sprinkles are on the cake.

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2 Comments

  1. Cyndy Alexander

    Pompeii is something that has always fascinated me. What an amazing experience your family is having! Thank you for sharing your explorations with us!

    • Allison Sherman

      Thanks for your comment, Cyndy. I have always been interested in it too. But the addition of Herculaneum and the volcano climb really rounded out the experience. I’m so glad we did all 3. Hope all is well for you at Chaparral.

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