What Happened The Day Pompeii was Destroyed?

Summary

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal

Episode: What Happened The Day Pompeii was Destroyed?
Date: December 8, 2025
Host(s): Anthony Delaney & Maddie Pelling
Guest: Dr. Jess Venner, Ancient Historian and author of The Lost Voices of Pompeii

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Episode Overview

This episode plunges listeners into the dramatic events and everyday life surrounding the infamous eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii in 79 CE. Hosts Maddie and Anthony are joined by ancient historian Dr. Jess Venner to reconstruct ordinary life in Pompeii, dissect the eruption’s timeline, reveal new archaeological insights (including debates over the eruption’s date), and address the lasting cultural fascination with this tragedy. Special attention is given to the voices of Pompeii’s diverse inhabitants—through graffiti, preserved artifacts, and the haunting casts of the eruption’s victims.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Life in Pompeii Before the Eruption

[06:04–07:40]

• Pompeii was an ordinary, bustling Roman town of about 20,000, teeming with merchants, shops, markets, workshops, and lively nightlife, but also tranquil areas like vineyards and gardens.
• Frequent earthquakes (including a serious one in 62 CE) meant much of Pompeii was under repair leading up to Vesuvius’s eruption.

“Pompeii was a particularly ordinary Roman town… what makes it extraordinary now is the way it was preserved.”
— Dr. Jess Venner [06:04]

Did Pompeiians Know the Danger?

[08:46–10:41]

• The population did not know Vesuvius was a volcano; it was just a mountain in their minds, despite some ancient suspicion among writers.
• Frescoes depicted Vesuvius as a lush, vined mountain—not the two-peaked volcano seen today.

Quote:

“They didn’t have a clue that Vesuvius was a volcano… no one actually specifically says it.”
— Dr. Jess Venner [08:46]

The City's Diverse Population & Cultural Life

[11:16–12:48]

• Pompeii’s history is a mosaic of Oscan, Samnite, Greek, Etruscan, and finally Roman influences (only under direct Roman rule since 80 BCE).
• It was a commercial hub, evidenced by inns, foreign objects (like an Indian goddess statuette), and Egyptian influences.

The Voices of the People: Graffiti & Inscriptions

[12:48–16:00]

• Pompeii’s graffiti offers rare, candid insight: from crude boasts to love quarrels, preserved on walls, in public and private spaces.

Example:

“Successus the weaver loves the barmaid of the inn called Iris, who doesn’t care for him… A rival wrote this farewell. Someone replies: ‘You’re jealous, don’t try to muscle in on someone who’s better looking and is a wicked and charming man!’”
— Dr. Jess Venner [14:04]

• Graffiti captures spontaneous, unfiltered emotions, making ancient residents feel immediate and real to us.

The Eruption: Day-By-Day Breakdown

[17:22–27:52]

• Likely occurred in late October, not August, based on the fruits found carbonized (pomegranates, figs)—debunking the traditional date.
• Eruption sequence:
  • Started as just another day; initial tremors did not alarm residents used to earthquakes.
  • Midday: A massive plume rose kilometers into the sky—locals compared it to an umbrella pine.
  • Ash and pumice began falling, first lightly then increasingly heavy—causing roofs to collapse and people to become trapped.
  • Many hid in robust buildings like bars and public baths; some tried to flee, others were immobilized by falling debris or blocked doorways.
  • 7 PM: First pyroclastic flow obliterated Herculaneum.
  • ~6:30 AM next morning: The final, fatal pyroclastic flow overwhelmed Pompeii, killing all remaining residents.

Quote:

“These flows—hundreds of miles per hour, hot gas and ash… Herculaneum was buried in 20 meters of volcanic material.”
— Dr. Jess Venner [26:28]

Preservation: How Did Pompeii & Herculaneum Survive?

[27:52–30:14]

• Herculaneum, being closer, was obliterated hours earlier—remarkably preserving wooden objects, food, furniture, even a cradle with a baby, thanks to unique carbonization.
• Pompeii’s preservation was due to deep layers of volcanic ash sealing the city, while Herculaneum’s ash and heat carbonized organic materials.

Dating the Eruption: The Agricultural Clues

“One of the big ones was the fact that the Vinalia Rustica, the wine harvest festival, is held on the 19th of August… You couldn’t harvest, press, and ferment in time for an August eruption. The fresh must in sealed containers points strongly to October.”
— Dr. Jess Venner [30:14]

Human Behavior in Crisis

[32:39–35:41]

• Panic led people to carry valuables, keys, and jewelry; many sought shelter with their families (and, heartbreakingly, left chained dogs or possibly slaves behind).
• At Herculaneum, skeletal evidence documents groups of men (soldiers) on the beach and women and children sheltered in boat sheds—poignantly waiting for rescue.

The Infamous “Frozen” Victims & Plaster Casts

[36:43–41:42]

• Plaster cast technique (not used anymore): plaster poured into the cavity left by decomposed bodies within solidified ash, preserving bodies’ final postures—sometimes horrifyingly detailed.
• Famous casts include the “Two Lovers” (now thought to be young men), and the “Mule Driver”—a working-class man, found seated with tools, possibly shielding his face from toxic ash.

Quote:

“He’s actually trying not to suffocate, or he’s just in disbelief, covering his nose and mouth—the ash was absolutely everywhere.”
— Dr. Jess Venner on the Mule Driver [40:14]

Written Records: Pliny the Younger’s Account

[43:09–45:43]

• Our best eyewitness record is from Pliny the Younger, then a teenager, writing decades later to historian Tacitus.
• Pliny’s uncle, Pliny the Elder, sought to observe/help, but died (probably of asthma) after sailing into the chaos.

“... All he can hear is people calling to the gods, but not knowing whether they’re listening. They create a chain to walk out—to try to get away. … That’s how pitch black it is. So absolutely petrifying.”
— Dr. Jess Venner [48:02]

Misconceptions & Popular Imagery

[50:05–51:20]

• Myth Busting: No lava buried Pompeii—the city was destroyed by ash, pumice, and deadly pyroclastic flows, not flowing lava.
• Pop-Culture Legacy: Our modern fascination is partly due to the detailed human record—the moment-by-moment preservation, the drama, the ordinariness of people’s last moments.

“It almost becomes more human the more you learn about it … you get away from Hollywood and start learning about these real people that lived there: businesswomen, brand dealers. … We can learn so much about ourselves.”
— Dr. Jess Venner [51:20]

What We Should Remember About Pompeii

[53:32–56:35]

• Misconception: Carved phalluses are not brothel signs; they’re good-luck charms to ward off evil.
• Pompeii is often misunderstood as a city merely “frozen in time”—but the real legacy is complex human stories unfolding over many hours, and it’s not the only city affected—Herculaneum, Oplontis, and more matter, too.
• It’s the stories of ordinary people—merchants, women like Julia Felix (landlord/entrepreneur), innkeepers with wine gardens, and Roman “brand” sellers—that truly bring Pompeii to life.

Quote:

“We must pay more attention to these ordinary people because they’re what make this place feel alive, instead of remembering it as a place that was destroyed.”
— Dr. Jess Venner [56:35]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On what Pompeii can teach us:

  “It puts a lot of my life into perspective… they dealt with so many challenges in life—natural disaster, famine, war, child death—and then the eruption…”
  — Dr. Jess Venner [51:20]

• Rethinking disaster:

  “There’s a certain popular perception that this happens in one go… but actually what you’re describing is hours of preparation, panic, chaos, and there’s a build-up here.”
  — Anthony [47:18]

• A child’s fascination:

  “My nephew…had been looking up the dead of Pompeii…the black plague. Whether the rats were…”
  — Anthony [53:25]

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Key Timestamps (Content Only)

• 02:08 – Maddie’s vivid re-imagining of Pompeii’s last normal morning
• 06:04 – Everyday life in Pompeii: sounds, sights, smells
• 08:46 – Did anyone know Vesuvius could erupt?
• 12:48 – Graffiti as a unique voice of Pompeii’s people
• 17:56 – The timeline of the eruption: day turns to nightmare
• 27:52 – Herculaneum’s preservation, and carbonized organic finds
• 30:14 – How fruits and harvests reveal the eruption’s true date
• 32:39 – People’s last actions: what they carried, how they hid
• 36:43 – Plaster casts: the infamous Pompeii “statues” explained
• 41:42 – The “Mule Driver” and the power of reconstructing ordinary lives
• 43:09 – Pliny the Younger’s harrowing eyewitness record
• 48:02 – The finale: darkness, chaos, and the end of Pompeii
• 50:05 – There was no lava; pyroclastic flows did the deadly work
• 53:32 – Phalluses as good luck charms, not brothel markers
• 56:35 – Remembering Pompeii’s ordinary people

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Final Thoughts

This episode pulls Pompeii away from cliché and disaster-movie spectacle to re-center it as a human drama—a town like any other, full of daily routines, minor dramas, vibrant trade, and love affairs, which met extraordinary fate. The conversation with Dr. Jess Venner corrects common myths (no lava! phallus as protective symbol!), unpacks how archaeology continues to reshape our understanding, and asks listeners to remember the very real, ordinary people—businesswomen, merchants, innkeepers—whose stories quietly survive beneath the ash.

Dr. Jess Venner’s book, The Lost Voices of Pompeii, will be published April 23, 2027.

Transcript

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[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Beneath the rising sun, the streets of Pompeii come alive. People wander about as merchants shout over the clatter of carts. The smell of fresh bread and fish drift through the air. No one notices the faint tremor underfoot. No one sees the thin plume curling from the mountain. AB. Vesuvius, silent for generations, awakens with a colossal explosion.

What comes next is unimaginable. A wall of fire and ash rushes toward the city, unstoppable and merciless for us. In the modern day, Pompey's name has become synonymous with terrifying, apocalyptic Imagery and through the ruins and remains, the story of that fateful day can be relived again and again.

Almost 2,000 years ago, Pompeii was an ordinary Roman city, thriving and bustling with life, all in the shadow of a mountain they believed to be harmless. But on the infamous day that Vesuvius awakened, the town and its inhabitants were burned into the history books. Fore who were the people of Pompeii? What happened to them as the horror unfolded? And what legacy has it left for the rest of us?

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Hello, everybody. I'm Anthony.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

And I'm Maddie.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

And on After Dark today, we are talking about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, which destroyed the Roman town, of course, of Pompeii. It reduced the city to an ash heap. But ironically, it's this very disaster that's allowed archaeologists to uncover the stories of its victims. Hundreds of human remains have been preserved in the ash and have allowed us to piece together what life may have been like for them. To take us through this story, we're joined by ancient historian Dr. Jess Venner, whose book the Lost Voices of Pompeii, which is a great cover, by the way. Jess will be published in April 2026. Together, we are going to explore what life may have been like for Pompeii's inhabitants and outline the terrible events that brought the town's doom. Jess, welcome to After Dark.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. Big fan of your podcast, so I'm really glad to be here. Thank you.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

We are so happy to have you. Not least because you're dialing in to us from. Were just saying before we started, it's about to bucket it down here in London. It's cold, it's miserable, and I'm guessing it's slightly nicer in Rome.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

It's pretty nice, I'm sorry to say. I've just been for a really sunny, crisp autumn walk around the Borghese Gardens.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Right, that's it. We're done with.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

We're in East London eating dates on the side of the road. So somebody has it better. I'm not saying who.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Well, we are genuinely so excited to talk about this topic. We were saying as well, we can't believe we've not done Pompeii.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

I know.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Before on this. It's so weird. I'm so excited to do some Roman history. I feel like my GCSE in Latin and classics is going to come in real handy here. Yeah, it's absolutely going to get me through Jess, before we go to the main events that we all know and love when it comes to Pompeii, can you tell us something about what life was like in this place, in particular before the eruption, before this disaster takes place? What could you expect if you stepped out of a shop or a tavern or your own home in the town of Pompeii?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

So Pompeii was a particularly ordinary Roman town, and that's the main thing to understand about Pompeii. It's extraordinary now because of the way it was preserved. But if you were walking around the city almost 2,000 years ago, you would have been surrounded by probably about 20,000 other citizens in that. In the town, and lots of merchants and different people coming in and out. So it was a big, bustling melting pot in Pompeii. You'd have carts rattling over the stone paving, you would have shops spilling out onto the streets and the smell of stew and bread baking. And you'd hear workshops, like blacksmiths, all along the front streets. You'd also hear street sellers and market stalls. These were going on every single day in Pompeii. It was very much a very merchant town, but people liked to have a nice time as well. So as the day got on and moved on and it got darker, you would see people spilling out of shops, drunk and having had too much wine. But there was also quiet parts of Pompeii, as. So we've got vineyards and gardens in the city, particularly surrounding a huge amphitheater in the southeastern corner of the city. And, of course, there you would have birdsong and gardeners going in and out, pulling vegetables out of the ground. So there's lots of different parts to Pompeii. But in the last sort of 17 years of the city, there had been lots of earthquakes, but particularly bad 1 in 62. And so you would be seeing lots of people repairing buildings as well, which not a lot of people realise about Pompeii. But it was actually in quite a bit of disrepair.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

That, I suppose, is one of the most amazing things about Pompeii, is that we are able to reconstruct so much of it. And you painted such a beautiful picture there, Jess, of the soundscape, the smellscape, what this town would have felt like to be in. And so much of that is maintained in the archaeological record because of the disaster that's coming. We know that this is a town. On the one hand, as you say, it's very ordinary. It's very typical, certainly, for a town in Italy, and I guess in terms of its architectural setup, the way that it's designed, the activities that are going on there, I guess typical of towns across the Roman Empire. But, of course, one of the unusual things about it is its geography. And you mentioned the earthquakes that have happened in the run up to this disaster. Obviously, we've got Mount Vesuvius looming in the background. Now, I read somewhere, and I don't know where, so I don't know how accurate this is, but this is my opportunity to ask a specialist, is it true that the people of Pompeii and the surrounding areas didn't actually realize that Vesuvius could erupt, that it was understood just as a mountain, not as a volcano? Is that accurate?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Yes, that's exactly accurate, yes. They didn't have a clue that Vesuvius was a volcano. We have ancient writers talking about the possibilities of it, but nobody actually specifically says it. So we have, for example, an architect called Vitruvius who was living around this time, and he sort of talks about this sponge stone that can be found around the volcano, and he links that back to Etna, which they did know was a volcano. And he says, well, it's a bit weird, to be honest.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Suspicious.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then Strabo says the same thing. So he's a Greek geographer and a historian, and he starts saying the same things, and he's like, wait a minute, there's some rocks that look like they've been eaten by fire around Vesuvius. It's a bit suspicious. And then we've got other people saying the same things, but nobody, you know, particularly Seneca the Younger, who was a Stoic philosopher again around this same time. He died in 65 AD, and he was talking about volcanoes and fascinated with earthquakes. And he said that there were sort of underground chambers under the earth that caused wind to move through them and create these earthquakes. And he starts talking about Pompeii having been hit by a huge one on the 5th of February in AD62. And he starts talking about why this might happen and says, the people of Pompeii after the earthquake hit, didn't know what to do with themselves. They were sort of walking around completely deranged from this traumatic event and that 600 sheep died from it.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

So this is very specific.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Yeah, it's very specific. It is, yeah. And he was like, why is this? You know? So they're sort of piecing things together, but it's not certain. We also have a fresco from the town, this beautiful fresco of Vesuvius covered in vines and trellises. It was a very beautiful place and it looked very different because it didn't have two combs, it actually just had one. They were created in AD 79 you.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Mentioned there, Jess, the people of Pompeii. And actually they're surprisingly dominant when we talk about Pompeii, because to a certain extent they have, or the remains have survived because of this horrendous event that does take place. But when they were going about their. Their daily lives, who are. What is the population composed of? Are there people that have been born and bred there? I presume the answer is yes. Do people travel and stay there, or is it somewhere that people are passing through? Who are the inhabitants of Pompeii at this time?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Yeah, so it's a huge, huge mix of people. The history of Pompeii is not very Roman at all, actually. It was colonized quite a lot later. It was colonized in 80 BC, after its defeat in 89 BC by Sulla, and only then did it become a colony. And it became a colony because it had been going against the Roman state and Rebe, and so it was a little bit of a punishment. So we've got less than 200 years of Roman rule in Pompeii. So before this, we've got Oscans, Samnites, Greeks, Etruscans, and they're all bringing their own influences to the city, particularly the Greeks. The Oscans were sort of the native people to the area and are thought to have given Pompeii its name because they started five settlements, which is where Pompe comes from, Pompeii, or it was Hercules, we're not sure, had a triumph through Italy and went via Pompeii, and that was the same sort of word for it. But, yeah, we have such a melting pot. And then, of course, then the Romans came, and the amount of merchants coming through the city, particularly via the River Sarno, which is right next to Pompeii, we've got people coming in and out all of the time. There's so many inns in the city, which makes a lot of sense. You don't see so many of them at Herculaneum, for example, which is interesting because that's also on the harbour, but it's more of a posh town. But Pompeii, we have so many people coming in and out. We have different languages and inscriptions. We have things as diverse as an Indian statuette of a goddess Lakshmi, but she may also be a tree spirit. She was found in Pompeii And Egyptian influences were huge at this time in the first century A.D. as well, in Pompeii.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

That's given me an entirely different perspective immediately on what this town is like. Actually, Jess, one of the things it would be remiss of me, not to mention, and this is, you know, particularly famous, and it's something that I'm interested in, is the graffiti of the town. You know, that we have the voices of some of these inhabitants and graffiti that is written in domestic spaces, but also in public spaces, on street corners, in brothels. And there's a lot of. There's a lot of attention, I suppose, that's been paid to this, because some of this graffiti is particularly impolite. Let's say I have an example that is in my production notes that the producers have included, which just says, lucky guy, you f. Well.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Oh.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Which is, you know that. That's the tone. Right. So I was saying, GCSE Latin's gonna come in handy. I'm not sure how to translate that back into Latin. But what can the voices of the inhabitants, whether it's more informal graffiti or formal inscription in this place, what does that tell us about the people and their lives?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

The graffiti is the best, best part of Pompeii for me, because we're actually hearing from them, you know, from the horse's mouth. And it's an incredible bit of access into real life, unfiltered life as well, like you've just shown. That was an excellent choice, by the way. I have a particularly piece of graffiti. I can read you a bit of it, if you like.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Please do.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Yeah. Okay. So it starts by saying, Successus the weaver loves the barmaid of the inn called Iris, who doesn't care for him, but he asks and she feels sorry for him. A rival wrote this farewell. So he's sort of like he's outing this guy.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Wow.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Yeah. And it goes on. This is the best bit. So now we've got like a comment board where somebody replies and says, you're jealous. Don't try to muscle in on someone who's better looking and is a wicked and charming man. And then they reply again for the first guy. Successors replies and says, I've written and I've spoken. You love Iris, who doesn't care for you. Severus to successors perfection.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

That's what I love so much about graffiti. And, you know, I work on much later graffiti. But this idea that it's just a snapshot of a moment, it's an argument or a moment of passion or a moment of anger or, you know, moment of rebellion, whatever it is, is just caught. And that is, I suppose, in some ways, the graffiti is part of this entire moment that's frozen at Pompeii, whereas at other sites the graffiti is the moment. And we get, you know, everything else has been kind of changed over time or whatever, and the archaeological record or the architecture of the building on which the graffiti is made has been altered in some way or eroded over time. But it just seems to me that Pompeii is just the most fantastically frozen thing. Even though it's so famous, I do find it hard to get my head around that. And what is it like to study that as a historian coming to this? Is it sort of. Is it delicious to find this world as it was left in that moment, or does it kind of start to feel like a little bit of a fantasy, like a Disneyland, where you have to not take it with a pinch of salt? I suppose, because it is an accurate kind of capture of that moment. But are there difficulties in studying it? Is it just. Is it simply too exciting? I think I would just be. I would be giddy. I wouldn't be able to deal with it. I'd be no good.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

I am mostly giddy most of the time. Yes. But, yes, there are. There are definitely two sides to it. You can, there's, there's. You're never going to stop learning about Pompeii. You know, I get asked so often, how can there still be things to find out? There are. We're still learning about how they lived. It's still telling us they're either abnormal or, you know, or ordinary. But there is so much to learn. But you do have to be very careful about, particularly about the idea of it being frozen in time, because we'll talk about the eruption, I'm sure, but it happened over an extended period of time, so we have different parts of the eruption. Being frozen is probably the best way to put it, but it is. The only troubles we have, particularly for reconstructing material remains, is to consider the fact that these things were often left in panic. So sometimes context isn't always useful. But things that, you know, architecture can't be changed, gardens can't be changed. You know, there are certain elements to it that we can glean so much about Roman life just from this one town that was. Happened to be perfectly preserved because of the way the wind was blowing, the conditions of the eruption. You know, there's so many different things that came into it that caused it to be preserved in the way that it is. But, yes, as historians, we always need to be careful about how we're interpreting things or putting our own ideas onto them.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Let's talk about the eruption, then. Let's kind of get to the meat of this part of the conversation. Of course, there's a lot more to talk about in Pompeii than the eruption, but for us, we're interested in. Take us through those beats, Jess, of when it starts to erupt, what that looks like. Do we have any idea of what they think is happening? You know, they didn't know this was coming. They probably, I would imagine, thought it was just another earthqu based on what they had experienced previously, generations before. But what does that beginning of the eruption look like?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

The beginning of the eruption? Well, it was as we've described. It was an incredibly normal day. They had been dealing with earthquakes for many years by this point. And Seneca, he mentioned earlier, said the people of Campania were totally used to earthquakes, so it was just a part of daily life. They weren't thinking something was going to happen. There were quakes on the day, but then. So obviously we need to mention the date as well. So I'm in the camp that thinks it's in October, the end of October, potentially very early November. It's traditionally been said that it was the 24th of August, that this was happening, but we have lots of evidence to say otherwise. I'm thinking it might be the 24th of October, so it's pretty normal. And then we have about midday or so, an eruption column goes up into the sky. Pliny the Younger talks about this being like a stone pine, which is an umbrella pine. So it's sort of. If you go to Italy, they're absolutely everywhere. They literally look like an umbrella. So the column goes up into the sky really straight, and then it goes out sort of like as a ceiling, basically. That must have been terrifying because that was honestly miles and miles and miles high. I think it's like multiple Burj Khalifas, the height at which this reached. So it's absolutely ridiculous. Yeah. And he's saying that the branches of it are spreading out. And initially people would have been watching and thinking, oh, my God, what is going on? Of course, they were very religious people, so they were probably questioning whether this was the wrath of the gods. Some people said that they could see giants in the smoke because they used to think giants would live under the volcanoes and cause these things to happen. So people were starting to see things and really freak out, and then it escalates over the first few hours we have pumice falling from the sky so it's really light at first and quite white and then it gets bigger and hotter and heavier and this is starting to really layer on top of it.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

And is this essentially ash or an ash type substance, Jess, or have I gotten that completely wrong?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

So yeah, there would have been ash as well raining down, but the pumice is like very spongy, airy stone that's very, very light.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Used to be able to buy it in like the body shop and stuff, right? As like to exfoliate like a pumice stone. Like to shave your feet with.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

I've never had to shave my feet. I'm very lucky.

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[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

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[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Tell me this, though, Jess. At this moment, are people already thinking about leaving the town? Because it's easy, with our hindsight and our knowledge of what's coming next, to think this is the moment where you would presumably be like, right, I'm packing up the dogs. I've packed some pants and pyjamas, my toothbrush, I'm leaving. But people don't necessarily run en masse at this point, do they?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

No, they're completely confused. It's not dark at this point either. So they're like, okay, well, they're probably not carrying on their everyday business. I'd like to think there's. So a lot of them are starting to hide. They were starting to hide in places that made sense from past experience of earthquakes that would be sturdy. So, for example, the bars, public bars, which are quite sturdy structures, these are the sort of places they would start hiding. They're starting to gather their items from their house, like you said. Unfortunately, not dogs, because usually they were guard dogs. So we found a lot of dogs in the city chained up. Yeah. Which is quite sad. Or trapped in gardens. But it's getting more and more difficult, not only because the pumice is rising to meters deep, but because. But also they're collapsing the roofs. So people are starting to get trapped inside rooms. So very recently, they found a couple of people trapped in a room in the recent excavations because the pumice had got to such a height that they couldn't open the door anymore. So they were just trapped in there. So that's the sort of thing we're dealing with at this level. And the tremors are intensifying as well. Objects are falling, walls are cracking. So, yeah, so they're all trying to hide, but some are heading out as well.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

And you mentioned that everyone heads to the bath because. Do you. Do you literally mean like a. Like a bar where you drink at? Right, like, oh, baths. That's probably why I ask. I'm with bars.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

I mean, I would do that in my last moments, probably, yeah, I was.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Thinking I would absolutely go to the pub. Okay, sorry. The baths. The baths. That makes more sense. But in terms of, you know, talking about people being trapped in rooms here and not leaving at this early stage until it's very quickly, it's too late for people to leave. Is there anywhere for them to go? Like, if you were to time travel back to Pompeii, knowing what you know, where would be the best place to go? What's the best strategy at this moment? Or is it just a case of you're already there, you can't outrun it, this is your fate?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Well, so it's interesting because somebody did a study on wind direction and the apparent. I'm not a volcanologist, but apparently wind changes according to the seasons. When this happened, the ash and the pumice was blown in a southeasterly direction, so that is towards Pompeii. And so they're getting everything on them. But if it had been another time of year, it would have been going the other way. So I would say, you know, if this happens, maybe have a look at the wind, God forbid. And that's what I would weather up. Yeah. And just walk as far as possible.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Very, very basic question. I just realised I don't know the answer to this. How far are they from Vesuvius?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Yeah. So it's honestly like a few miles. I think Pompeii is about six miles away and Herculaneum isn't much. So Herculaneum is very close. I might be getting that the wrong way around. So I think herculaneum is about 6 miles and Pompeii is about 10. It's really not far. When you're standing in the city, it's like Vesuvius is big. Yeah. Looming.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

So we have the pumice falling meters deep now people's roofs are collapsing. People are getting trapped, presumably, as well, if you're out in the street, if you are still trying to wade through the pumice, presumably at this point, the stones that are actually falling from the sky, so they're getting bigger and hotter. I suppose those are essentially sort of flying missiles that could kill you or injure you as well. What is the next stage of this, then, for the people who are not yet killed in this disaster?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

So obviously we mentioned Herculaneum being much closer. So the next stage, of course, this column that's gone up is gonna get so, so heavy over time that it's gonna eventually collapse on itself. This is what we call PYROCLASTIC flows. This type of eruption has now been named a Plinian eruption because Pliny described it. So at about 7pm, Herculaneum was overtaken by a pyroclastic flow. And a pyroclastic flow is an incredibly fast, hundreds of miles per hour flow of hot ash and pumice and gas that comes down, collapses down the column and rushes down the side of volcano. Herculaneum was buried in 20 meters of volcanic material at this time, so it was completely, completely gone. And then it was later on that Pompeii was destroyed. Pompeii was actually destroyed at about 6:30 the next morning. So, yes. So all this was going on at first, actually, the first pyroclastic flow hit the northern wall of the city of Pompeii, but it didn't quite make it over. So I like to imagine the fact that people were actually seeing this coming. And it's very, very dark, by the way, pitch black, that you would have heard something and see it go over the wall a little bit. And then about half an hour later, another one fell and this one was even more forceful and it took out and killed everybody that was left.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Yikes. Can I. Again, another silly question. I'm realizing how little were chatting to you, Jess. So you talked about Herculaneum first. I mean, obviously I've heard of it, but I haven't heard of it in the same terms as Pompeii. In terms of this, is there preservation there too? Or was that destroyed in a different way? Or is this just something that when people talk about Pompeii, they're also talking about Herculaneum? What's the. What's the lay of the land there?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Yes. So Herculaneum's fascinating because it's so much smaller. I mean, we've got over 60 hectares of Pompeii, about 66. And Herculaneum is about a quarter of the size. It's not all been excavated. A lot of it's under people's houses still. But it was a posh city, really. It was sort of a resort, a harbour town. People loved to eat seafood there. They had very fancy houses that looked out over the sea. It was very much a place to be seen. You know, they had all of the same things, you know, bakeries and palaestra and, you know, so and so on and so forth. But even from the streets you can see that it's much nicer. But because of the way that it was preserved. So it was preserved so quickly, this sort of pyroclastic flow in certain places, if it's hot enough, causes the oxygen to be taken out of organic materials really quickly, and this causes the process of carbonization. And so at Herculaneum, what we don't have at Pompeii is, like, wood, organic materials that have been preserved, including things like fruit and vegetables and things like that. In a nearby villa, the villa of Aplontis, which was supposed to be the Emperor Nero's wife's house, which is very cool and you can go and visit it. But next door was a working villa, and they have found hundreds of pomegranates, carbonized pomegranates, just perfect. So we're finding things like that in Herculaneum. Carbonized wood. We've got sort of shelves for wine. We've got staircases. We even have a baby's cot with a baby inside. God.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Oh, my God.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

That's so macabre, isn't it, Jess? Just thinking about that organic material. Is that one of the ways that we can date the event itself? Thinking about. You know, you mentioned at the beginning there's a kind of debate around whether this took place in August or, I think you said October going into November. Is the organic material relevant to that? I'm thinking in particular of, you know, sort of flowers and fruit and that sort of thing.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

So relevant. So my speciality is archaeobotany, which is archaeology with botany. So, yeah, for a long time, I thought that there were too many. Too many vegetables and fruits that were coming up in the carbonized material that wouldn't necessarily be around if the eruption had been in August. One of them is pomegranates. They are usually harvested around between September and November in the area. We've also got figs, which are September to October, got chestnuts. Again, it's also an autumnal sort of winter nut, walnuts, grapes. So one of the. One of the big ones was the fact that the Vinalia Rustica, which is the wine harvest festival, is held on the 19th of August. And we actually have containers, so dahlia, which are large terracotta jars that you ferment wine in in the Roman period, they are filled with fresh must, which is how you make wine. And they've been sealed, the lids are on. So for you to be able to harvest the grapes, press them and put them in there within a week, it's. It's pretty much impossible.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Yeah, I'm completely sold.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Me too. I didn't even know. There was a debate, but now there is no Debate.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

I have very strong feelings about the debate now.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Exactly. Heated debates, yes, absolutely.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Just talking about sort of the freezing in time of everything, or rather than the absolute boiling of everything in time. I suppose, thinking about this lava that's coming, obviously you have these amazing moments where these gardens are saved. You mentioned as well, the cradle with the baby. And I mean, that's just horrifying to think about. I suppose one of the things that a moment like this can tell us is what people. Not only how they were trying to escape and where they were trying to get to the kinds of places they're hidden. And we can talk a little bit about that, but about the sort of behaviours of people in a moment of crisis like this, because we have people frozen. You there's the famous two lovers, supposedly of Pompeii, and, you know, we can all picture the plaster casts of the people who have been sort of archaeologically preserved. I suppose maybe you can tell us a little bit about what that process looked like, because it's been going on for a long time. But I'm thinking about how people gathered together in the city, but also what they were taking with them, because we have objects as well as bodies, don't we, of people taking things like jewels with them or treasures of some kind. To what extent can we learn about this culture and people's values in this moment of crisis in their lives? Their last few minutes?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Such a lovely question, because it's so human to consider how you would react. It sort of like makes you question that yourself. So, yes. So of course everybody was in panic, but also didn't realize that they wouldn't be able to go back. So a lot of people are carrying pouches around their waist or on their person that was common anyway, pouches that would contain coins. But a lot of them seem to have a lot more than they. You would expect. Most people have keys on them. A lot of people have almost too much jewelry on them. So there's a family that was found on this main shopping street, which is we've called the Via della Bondanza, and they're hiding inside a house. So they've been there, as we've established, almost a day during this eruption, and they're still in this house. We don't know that it's their house. They've probably run in there. But they're all wearing, like immense amounts of jewelry. So it just stands out as a bit weird, really. People were also trying to move stuff. So we find statues in really bizarre places. So either they were like Renovating and putting stuff away. Or they were trying to hide them from the erection material, the volcanic material, which is most likely and I suppose.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Also hiding them from potential robbers in this moment as well. If there's an idea that you're, you know, leaving, you're home in a rush. You mentioned that people left their dogs as guard dogs in gardens and chained up in the house and things. So I guess there's a sense of, you know, whatever we can't carry with us to escape, hide it in the house somewhere just in case we can't get back in time and someone steals it, I guess.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Exactly, yeah. And sadly, I mean, knowing the Romans, they probably did leave slaves there as well to protect, because that was often a role of a slave was to protect property, so being property themselves. So, yeah, definitely. But you can also see the way that humans moved as well from the remains. So if we go back to Herculaneum, there are, as we mentioned, it's on the beach. It's on. It's a harbour town and we've got loads of boat sheds along the front. These are these cavernous sort of semicircular entryways where you'd store boats. In 1982, archaeologists were excavating the beach of Herculaneum and found over 300 skeletons inside those boat sheds. But there's a particularly heart wrenching reconstruction of where these skeletons were found. You can literally see them all spilling out or in onto the beach. So we've got sort of a soldier who has fallen on his front and he's got the. He's got his sword around his waist, he's got like tools to, you know, make things. Cause that's what soldiers would do on the move. He's got coins and things and he's right next to a boat which is actually preserved. It's a wooden boat that's been preserved. There was a horse on the beach as well. And mostly the people found on the beach were men and soldiers. And mostly the people found in the boat sheds were women, children and the elderly. So they were clearly waiting to be rescued but didn't have enough time. So that gives us some idea of how much time they thought they had.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Gives me the shivers. It gives such an impression of how this disaster was being managed. The way that people work together or try to and try and organise things in that moment. You know, you can just imagine that soldier sort of ushering the boat up the beach or, you know, or indeed trying to escape on it. And the patience and the fight for calm. I Suppose that you'd be trying to have. If you were one of the people inside the boathouse is waiting for your boat to come and that, you know, trying to comfort people there. Everyone trying to remain as sort of still and. Yeah. And quiet as possible. Obviously, there are a lot of hundreds, if not thousands, I suppose, of bodies that are preserved or remains that are preserved across Herculaneum and Pompeii. Tell us a little bit about how that is done and if that is still the practice with remains that are found today. Because it's something that I think has been going since the 19th century. Is that right? It has a long history that people have been working out to preserve what are really delicate remains.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

So we don't do it anymore. Some people think that it's a bit of an uncomfortable practice, which it probably is, particularly because of the graphic detail that you're able to preserve when you create a plaster cast. So the way that it works is a person is hit by a pyroclastic flow. They fall where they were or they are frozen in the last moments. So you have some people leaning up on their elbows and lying down, but leaning up and looking over. You have other people that are lying on their front because they've been hit from behind and fallen forwards. The force of it. But you have other people with their hands up in a box. Suppose, and this is because of the heat, it's contracted to their muscles so quickly that their muscles have contracted into this typical boxer pose that you see. So. And this obviously happened for animals as well. But in 1860, Giuseppe Fiorelli was creating. He was the first sort of strategic archaeologist that really changed how we execute excavated Pompeii. And. And we've got a lot to thank him for because he gave us the grid system and addresses and things in Pompeii. So he's. He's a really cool guy and he developed this plaster cast method. So when the body's there, it's decayed, and it's obviously still got the skeleton inside, but the volcanic material around it solidifies quite quickly. And it's like cement. It's really, really hard. So the body decays, it leaves a cavity. And when archaeologists find a cavity, they would fill it with plaster of Paris, wait for that to dry, then they would take the material around it away and they'd be left with a plaster cast. So a lot of the plaster cast that we have have been replicated. So when there's traveling exhibitions and stuff, you may not be looking at the original one. You can usually tell because you can see a skeleton poking through in some way or another, which is really horrific. But we have about a hundred plaster casts. Some, I think, were damaged in bombing during the World War II. But most. In the most case, we have most of them, but there's about 100 of them.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Do you know, that's. Again, it's one of those things. I often had that question, what is inside that material in terms of the original material, not the plaster cast. I wasn't sure exactly the extent of preservation of the human remains that were in there. And then where are these casts coming from? I didn't know if something had been put on over the material or as you say, now, gone into it. I have some images of some of those examples in front of me. So I have what were, you know, known as the two lovers of Pompeii, which is really interesting because it says something about our need to storytell on top of history. Right. In terms of what's here. So initially, these are two people who were found embracing. They were embracing. They were once thought to be two women or two maidens, now believed to be two young men. They're curled next to each other intimately, my notes say, and they could be lovers. Now, I, as a historian of gender and sexuality, I'm looking at this and I'm kind of going, okay. I mean, the world is ending as far as they know.

Regardless of their sex and gender. I'm gonna find as much comfort and, you know, masking or shelter is the word I'm looking for as I possibly can in this situation. But it's just very interesting that we need to tell ourselves actually they were doomed lovers and they just wanted to be together in that final moment. And it's something about narrativizing tragedy and bringing history to life, but possibly a life that it never had. So inventing this other life. I also have an image here of a mule driver. I haven't seen this one myself. Found by a mule. It says, a man found praying on his knees. Are you familiar with the mule driver one, Jess, can you tell us a little bit about him?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

I can. I'm very familiar with him because he is someone that I've adopted as a character in my book which you mentioned at the beginning. It's called the Lost Voices of Pompeii. And I have been so interested in this character because he's a working class person. We know that because of his. The context in which he was found. So he was found sitting down, his back against a wall in the Large palaestra, which is where you would exercise. It's right near the amphitheater. And he was found near his mule, which would have been attached to a cart. He has all these objects of daily life around him, so, like cookers and pots and pans and even a trident from a gladiator. He's sitting there with his knees up. He's got his hands over his face. It does kind of look like he's praying, but he's. He's actually trying not to suffocate, probably, or he's just in disbelief and complete and utter fear. And he's covering his nose and mouth because it was so suffocating. This ash was absolutely everywhere. And you can just imagine what he was hearing before his last moments. The noise of this pyroclastic flow coming down. He can't see anything. There's, you know, fire in the sky and lightning, and it's so noisy. So I've been fascinated by him for very many years, and now I've tried to recreate his story and many other people's in the city from, you know, composites of what we know from the archeological records about how they would have lived their last 24 hours. So we can do what we're doing now and vividly reimagine what they might have been doing or thinking or feeling like we might.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

It's so amazing to have a record like that, the plaster cast of someone in those moments. And I suppose it's a really hard thing for anyone to look at, but particularly, Jess, as a historian, you know, to spend a lot of time with and to really. This is one snapshot of someone's life, and I applaud and excited by your desire to kind of build backwards from that horrific moment and to give him back something of his life and dignity, I suppose, but. But also, the amazing thing about Pompeii is that we have the archaeological record, including the human remains, or at least the plasticasts of some of those. And we have this wealth of information. This is an incredibly rich archive, much of it still in the ground or in situ. But we also do have written records as well. I'm thinking particularly about Pliny, and this does take me back to my GCSE Latin, because I remember having to sit and translate some of his account of Pompeii. Am I right in thinking that he is encouraged by his uncle, Pliny the Elder, to be there? He gets on a boat or something and he watches a lot of this from the sea, Is that right? So if I Am Correct. How useful is his account? I think, is he a teenager at the time? He's about 17 or something, isn't he? And, like, why is he the main chronicler we have of this? And how useful is he compared to the archaeological record? Is he worth looking at at all?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Yeah, it's such a good question. Cause, yeah, he's our main, you know, firsthand account. It's worth remembering that he wrote what he did about 20 years later in a letter to Tacitus, the historian. So, you know, doubly unreliable. Yeah, I mean, I don't remember what I did last week, so I'm not sure how much I would remember 20 years later. Although it is a traumatic experience. So to be fair to him, and that was their job, their jobs as elite Romans was to remember things. They could remember whole speeches that could go on for ages. So, you know, to some extent this is understandable, but. Yes. So we've got Pliny the Younger and we've got Pliny the Elder. Pliny the Elder wrote the Natural Histories, which is an encyclopedia about the natural world. It's extensive. There are very many books of it. And it's an incredibly important source for people like myself who are trying to reconstruct what the Romans understood about their world. So he was also a leader of the ship fleet at Misenum, which used to protect the south of Italy. So Pliny the Elder receives. He's got a villa on the side of. Of the Bay of Naples. He's looking across from Misenum, and he's looking and seeing this volcanic eruption happening. And he's fascinated. He's like, I must go and look at this. But he also receives a letter, a plea for help from Rechtena, who's the wife of someone that he knows. And they say that, you know, you need to go and rescue these people. This is getting out of hand. So he sails straight towards the volcano, straight towards the danger. And bear in mind, there's all these quakes happening again, so we've got little mini tsunamis and it's just chaos. There's falling debris as well, and the sea keeps receding as it does in these situations, so it's just complete chaos. So he diverts to Stabii, and he has a friend there, and his friend's trapped and he's waiting for the wind to change so that he can escape. So they've got all these, like, very deep understanding of nature, but they're also just completely baffled by what's going on. Even someone that's written a whole encyclopedia on later is like, I don't know what to do here.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

This is new, guys.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Didn't see this coming.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

So he gets there, he reassures his friend, he tries to keep everyone calm and composed. So Pliny the Younger, his nephew, is trying to present Pliny the Elder as this very stoic, important Roman that wouldn't ever get flustered in such a situation. How ridiculous would that be? So he tells us that Pliny the Elder has a little nap.

He sort of chills for the afternoon and then he gets up and he's like, oh, it's pretty bad actually. I should probably go and do something. So he ends up on a beach and he ends up, we think, having an asthma attack and passing away.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Oh, wow.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Yeah. So the next morning, supposedly people went back to see what was going on and when it had calmed down a bit and they found his body just lying there as if he was asleep.

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[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

What is remarkable about this is that there's a certain maybe popular perception that this happens in one go. That there is almost a lava spill that comes down over this town and that suddenly it's gone. They barely knew that it was coming. But actually what you're describing is hours of preparation, panic, chaos. And you know, there's a build up here. Do we know though, Jess, if there is a moment or a series of cataclysmic moments? They're all cataclysmic. But like Is there a crescendo to this? Is there something that goes, right, that's taken it out now, what is that point, if it exists? And is that really the end of PompeiIIa's? They knew it.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

So people like Pliny were experiencing the eruption from a distance and seeing apart from the fact that it's so incredibly dark when the columns start collapsing, that would definitely have been one of those moments. And we've seen situations like that in modern life where you just absolutely do not know what to do. You know, your mind cannot process the trauma of this. So Pliny the Younger is with his family in the bay, still watching this, as his uncle is over there now. And eventually he starts to describe what it's like being there. And it's horrific. He's saying it's like, you know, it suddenly goes dark and it's like being in a room where all the lights are put out and the doors are shut. And he's saying that all he can hear is people calling to the gods, but not knowing whether they're listening. They're trying to find one another in the dark. And he sort of. They create this chain to walk out, you know, to try and get away, because they were initially thinking, okay, we'll go by boat. And then they realize, oh, no, we're seeing all these sea creatures on the beach because the sea's gone back again, so we can't go there. So now we're gonna have to go by the road. So he and his family are putting pillows on their head and tying them round their necks. And to stop all the pumice coming on their heads, this is all they can do. And they're leaving together and they're chaining so they don't lose each other. And that's how pitch black it is. So absolutely petrifying.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

It is unthinkable, isn't it? It's hard to imagine being in that scenario. And then, of course, I suppose the end point, is it fair to say, Jess, is the lava itself destroying Pompeii and parts of Herculaneum. And I suppose once that's happened, what does the immediate aftermath look like? Because Pompeii is never, luckily for us, it's never rebuilt. It's sort of left as this strange monument frozen in time. What are people's reactions in the hours, days afterwards, and why do they never return to that site again?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

So the main thing is that there's no lava actually in this house.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Yeah. I was like, oh, I nearly died.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Hold on.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

So What?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

I was like, oh, no, not the show. Die.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

There is no lava, is there? And my 6 year old nephew Danny is going to be absolutely distraught by this because he is always about the lava when he talks about Pompeii, and he talks about Pompeii a lot.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

So hold on. So let me get this right then. So when people are sort of frozen, what is causing that? Is that just heat?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Yeah. So when they're frozen, it's the pyroclastic flow, so the volcanic material that's solidified around them.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Okay, so it's not fallen. Okay, so it's not lava. It's. It's something else entirely.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Oh my God. They're literally. They're their own ovens.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Yes, that's exactly it.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

They become their own ovens.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

They do.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

I don't love it.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Danny's gonna actually like that even more if. Sorry. But Maddie had asked an actual interesting question, which was about the legacy, you know, why are the Danys of this world so fascinated by this? Why does this continue to hold the imagination? I mean, there's so many reasons, but I'd just be interested to hear what you have to say about that. Just in terms of somebody who lives with this on a more in depth way than most people would.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

I think we've seen it in this podcast actually, and it's like the biggest joy that I get because there's so many misconceptions about porn Pompeii, and when you go and see it or you talk about it, you realize that there's so many more layers to it and actually it almost becomes more human the more you learn about it. The more you get away from Hollywood and start learning about these real people that lived there, you know, the business women and you know, these brand dealers that were, you know, operating in the city. It's a fascinating place and we can learn so much about ourselves. I think for me, particularly as a historian, it puts a lot of my life in. Into perspective. You know, our everyday anxieties and worries sort of don't seem as big anymore because they dealt with so many challenges in life anyway. Natural disaster, you know, famine, war, and then. And also child death as well. And then we've got this natural disaster and all these people that were just completely displaced during the eruption, they did try and operate relief efforts afterwards, the emprotitis, but. But they pretty much went and he sent some senators and they said, there's nothing we can do. You can't. You can tunnel down or try and get some material. And they did, but people started living on top of it a little bit. But really, it was sort of like this cement layer over the city. You could sort of see. It's like a graveyard. You could see different pieces of the city poking out. You could kind of work out where the amphitheater was, kind of work out where the forum was. But for everyone else that had escaped and come back, they've lost their whole life. They've lost people that they loved and knew, They've lost their whole community, they've lost their occupation. So for me, yes, it sort of puts things into perspective and I think that's why it captures our imagination so much.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Can I ask one thing? Well, first of all, one thing I have to tell you, Maddie and I forgot to tell you this earlier. So My nephew is 6, he's in primary school and they have their own independent research learning time online where they look up certain topics and the teacher calls. Well, the teacher was talking to my sister about it and everyone else in the class was like, oh, I'm looking up rainbow pencils, I'm looking up whatever else.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

And Danny's looking at the dead of Pompeii.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

So Dani. Dani had been looking up the dead of Pompeii. The black plague. Whether the rats were.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

That's so your nephew.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

I was like, what? And Michelle was like, he doesn't even listen to your podcast. But it's literally all this dark history and I'm just like, okay, good, genetically linked. But I just. For the Danys out there, and for the Anthony's as well, actually, because I have learned a lot in this episode. What is one thing that you would like people to stop saying about Pompeii? And what is one thing that you wish people knew more clearly? If you could push this information, it's.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Going to be the Pomegranates, isn't it?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Maybe I'll try and come up with something else.

Because that's like my thing. Okay, here's a little whimsical one. The penises in Pompeii don't necessarily point to the brothels. That's one that I'm always like, we.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Should maybe explain this for. So, Jess, is this the idea that there are penises carved or drawn on various parts of the town and the idea was that these would literally signposting where the brothels were. So that's not true?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Oh, no, no. I can't find any correlation.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

I'm sorry, but there are penises.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

You don't need to apologize, Jess.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

There are penises right they do fast. Yeah, there are.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Yeah. They were very obsessed with the phallus in the way that it was a protective symbol that would keep away the evil eye. And so they would put it, particularly on crossroads. They would have wind chimes of them. They would wear them on their rings and necklaces and. Yeah, I know, it's really good. Go and look up the wind chimes. I love those.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

I don't know if I should.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Mini ones as well. Yeah, it's really cool.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Okay, that's so.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

That's one.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

So that didn't happen.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I would say the frozen in time thing we were talking about is understanding that these so many different events happened over this 24 hours of the eruption and it was continuing after this. You know, the last pyroclastic flow hit, it didn't stop there. Other towns were destroyed as well. And it's not just Pompeii. Yeah. So there's so much. So much going on in the other areas. And I think particularly when people come to Pompeii to visit, they forget that there's all these other places to go and see that are beautiful and eye opening, like Apprentice that we've spoken about earlier. But I would also say to try and appreciate the ordinary people more. So people like Julia Felix, who was a. A female businesswoman who owned a whole estate and hired out apartments and shops and baths and put an advert on her house about that. People like that are great innkeepers. Like, there's a Calpona, which is an inn of Yusinus, and he had a vineyard in his back garden. He basically had a pub garden, so he had a bar and then you could go through and go and eat and drink in the vineyards. And he sort of developed all of this in response to the earthquake as well. So he was like, oh, okay, how can we make some money out of this? So basically it's people like that. And there's a garum seller, so fish sauce, which is like the ketchup of the Roman world. And he was the first. He's the first evidence this Aulus and Bricius Scaurus, who has branded a product in the ancient world that we can find. So these characters I talk about in my book, but the point I'm making is that we must pay more attention to these ordinary people because they're what make this place feel alive instead of remembering it as a place that was. Was destroyed.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Jess, you've completely changed my perspective on this. I will absolutely be reading your book. This episode, if people want to go and purchase that. Where can they find it?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Yep. So it is on all of the normal bookshops that you would find it. So Waterstones, Amazon. So yes, and I will be going around and meeting lots of people when it comes out so hopefully I get to meet some people.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

And when is it out by the way?

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

So we're out on the April 23rd.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Of 2027 so you can pre order it now. Pre orders are very important. We know this. Go and pre order Jess's book. I mean I am definitely. This is. Oh, I'm gonna get it for Danny as well. Stop talking about Danny.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Jesus, Danny's favorite star.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Get a hobby. Stop talking about your nephew.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

100% do that. Yes.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Jess, thank you so so much. If you have enjoyed listening to this podcast, then let us know what other ancient Pompeian related history. To be honest, I feel like we now need to visit this the other townships and like look at the distinctions between those things. But anyway, let us know in the comments either on YouTube or on Spotify or wherever you're listening to your podcasts. What else you'd like us to cover related to this topic? Leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcasts. And one thing that we always try and remind you, if you have an idea for a topic, Maddie, what should they not do?

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

They should not DM us on social media because we don't see it. We don't necessarily.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

I've taken off my DMs now you can't DM me anymore.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Oh, I can DM me still.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Yeah. Because. Well, yes, not everyone can DM me.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Yes.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

So it's just like. Yes. It's too much.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

It's too. Yeah, we just.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

We love you too much.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

We don't get a chance to write them down and we don't pass them to the producers enough. So you can get in touch with our producers [e-mail].

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[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

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[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

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[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Conditions apply. Call is from a correctional facility and.

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Is subject to monitoring and recording.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

In 2022, I started talking to the men and women inside America's toughest prisons.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

I got life in 104.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

Hearing stories of guilt, innocence and everything in between, he said, you're the youngest.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

Kid in my prison. Ever been in one of my prisons?

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

He said, I want you to fight.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

From death row cells to wrongful convictions.

[Dr. Jess Venner (Ancient Historian)]

These are the voices you've never heard. What was your first thing that you were planning on doing? Escaping.

[Anthony (After Dark Podcast Host)]

That was the first thing.

[Maddie (After Dark Podcast Host)]

1 min remaining stories from the inmates. Wherever you get your podcast.