The Fires of Vesuvius is divided into nine chapters.

This unusual level of preservation in Pompeii fascinates Beard, allowing her to immerse herself fully in the life and soul of the city. Beard notes that the city of Pompeii and its inhabitants are so well preserved that archaeologists can make out details ranging from their final movements to their facial expressions.

Once the lava hardens, everyone and everything caught in its path are preserved underneath the hardened rock. The lava is so hot that it turns everyone to stone as it spreads through the city. During this time, Mount Vesuvius erupts and takes the city with it. The Fires of Vesuvius covers what happens to Pompeii in August 79 AD. She is one of the UK’s best-known classicists and the author of numerous nonfiction books.

Beard is the Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and she is a Newnham College fellow. The book won the 2009 Wolfson History Prize, and critics praise it for its comprehensive insight into this lost city. First published in 2008, the book delves into Pompeii’s forgotten past to explore what the city was truly like before Mount Vesuvius destroyed it in 79 AD. This book shows us how much more and less there is to Pompeii than a city frozen in time as it went about its business on 24 August 79.The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found is a work of historical nonfiction by Winifred Mary Beard. But Pompeii still does not give up its secrets quite as easily as it may seem. Recently, Pompeii has been a focus of pleasure and loss: from Pink Floyd’s memorable rock concert to Primo Levi’s elegy on the victims. At the Suburban Baths we go from communal bathing to hygiene to erotica. She resurrects the Temple of Isis as a testament to ancient multiculturalism. 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 explores what kind of town it was-more like Calcutta or the Costa del Sol?-and what it can tell us about “ordinary” life there. In The Fires of Vesuvius, acclaimed historian Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. But the eruptions are only part of the story. 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.ĭestroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, the ruins of Pompeii offer the best evidence we have of life in the Roman Empire. Pompeii is the most famous archaeological site in the world, visited by more than two million people each year.

The fires of vesuvius by mary beard