About 1 a.m. on Aug. 24 in A.D. 79, tremors radiating from Mt. Vesuvius’ cone-shaped slopes began rattling the walls and rousing the occupants of houses, inns, barracks and brothels in little farm and fishing towns and cities along southern Italy’s Bay of Naples.
In the dark, a column of smoke and ash began to rise from the volcano, eventually reaching 20 miles into the atmosphere and blocking out the sun as the day went on. Residents of the city of Pompeii and the nearby towns of Heraculaneum, Oplontis, Boscoreale and Terzigno sought routes of escape by road or by sea.
The remains of a few of the thousands of people who did not make it go on display Saturday at the Field Museum in a major traveling exhibit, “Pompeii: Stories from an Eruption.” The exhibit includes casts of the dead whose contortions capture their agony and horror as they were crushed by volcanic ash and debris almost 2,000 years ago.
The exhibit, mounted in Italy, includes more than 450 artifacts excavated from communities that in two days were buried and nearly obliterated from memory. It is the first major Pompeii show to come through Chicago since an exhibit of 550 artifacts, heavily concentrated on artworks, appeared at the Art Institute in 1978.
Rediscovered in the early 18th Century, the ruins are so well preserved that the homes, shops, theaters and temples stayed almost perfectly intact, providing an intimate picture of life, art and culture in Roman times.
“We try to stick to the notion that these are human stories that we are telling in the exhibit,” said Francesca Madden, the project manager who directed the installation of exhibit artifacts last week. “It emphasizes the human tragedy. Some people died alone, others trying to protect loved ones.”
“In this house, seven men died,” she said, stopping at a display of a modest home that once stood in the town of Oplontis on Pompeii’s outskirts. “These were workmen, so they had very few personal effects with them of any value except for their keys.”
Whether they had been at the house to work or had ducked inside seeking refuge from the eruption is unclear.
“Having their keys with them has a certain poignancy for me,” said Madden, “as it suggests their identification with their homes and their expectations that day of having safely locked their doors so that they could return and find everything intact.”
Wealthy residents also perished, in some cases still clutching fortunes they carried as they tried to flee. Among the riches displayed in the exhibit are bags of gold and silver coins, perfectly preserved jewelry and small, valued objets d’art.
Using sections of excavated walls from buried buildings, the exhibit depicts everyday life in Roman society. The destruction was so swift that frescoes and mosaics depicting local scenes and mythical Roman gods and goddesses often retain their brilliant colors.
A look at everyday life
Reconstituted rooms feature furniture, lamps, sculpture and daily implements for living–tools, cookware, plates, cups, eating utensils, cosmetics.
The exhibit opens with one of its most magnificent objects, a life-sized sculpture of the Greek goddess Hera in a diaphanous gown. It was recovered from Heraculaneum, a port town 5 miles from Pompeii that was home to both the dwellings of simple fishermen and posh vacation villas.
The statue once stood in the Villa of the Papyri, one of the largest and most luxurious Roman dwellings ever excavated, possibly owned by Julius Caesar’s father-in-law.
Heraculaneum was the first place to be buried by Vesuvius.
More Top Picks Best Polyurethane Finishes
“It was hit much faster and in an even more deadly fashion than Pompeii was,” said Philip Janney, a Field geologist who studies the chemistry of volcanic rocks. “About 8 to 12 hours after the eruption, the side of the volcano crater broke, and gas and pyroclastic material heated to 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit came down the slope at 80 m.p.h. directly on Heraculaneum.”
Anyone caught in the so-called pyroclastic surge died instantly, their flesh burned from their bones. Within hours, the scenic little seaside town was entombed below 75 feet of volcanic material hardened to the consistency of concrete.
A historic discovery
In 1709, Heraculaneum was the first of the ruins from the eruption to be discovered–by well diggers boring through the rock in search of water. For more than 250 years excavators found no human remains in the town, but in 1980 archeologists excavating beachfront buildings where fishermen once stowed boats and gear encountered the remains of 300 people.
Casts of 13 of those skeletons are in the exhibit, all of them recoiling in the same direction, as though the people were attempting to escape the gas and hot ash about to engulf them. A box of surgeon’s tools suggests its owner was prepared, even as he tried to flee, to minister to the injured he might find on his way.
A second section of the exhibit is devoted to villas and farms in towns just outside the city of Pompeii and includes a walk-through volcano. The last, largest section of the exhibit is devoted to Pompeii itself.
When the first known human settlement was built on the site of Pompeii more than 600 years before its destruction, it was on lava rock, and Vesuvius already was active. The volcano is still active, with more than 30 eruptions since the year 79.
At its destruction, Pompeii was a fully fledged city at the height of the Roman empire, an important agricultural trade center with perhaps 5,000 people.
Largely spared until the afternoon of Aug. 24, Pompeiians bumped around in almost total darkness even at midday as the volcanic cloud blocked the sun.
`The wailing of infants’
“Darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room,” said Pliny the Younger, a surviving eyewitness who left a vivid written description of the event. “You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men.”
Because of the darkness, said Janney, “we find these small lamps everywhere, especially around remains of people trying to light their way to safety.”
Digging at Pompeii did not begin until the first ruins were discovered in 1748, and it continues to this day.
In the 1860s, archeologists began discovering hollowed-out spaces in the rock. Filling them in with plaster, they found that the voids were left by bodies that had been covered by debris and later rotted away.
The stories the exhibited casts tell often are wrenching. A father, mother and two small children tried to take refuge under a stairway. A chained watchdog kept climbing up fallen debris until it choked to death at the end of its leash.
Other artifacts in the exhibit suggest the varied lives of Pompeii’s citizens. An elaborate visored helmet, shin guards and shield, for example, were found in the gladiatorial barracks.
The Art Institute’s Pompeii show attracted 489,118 visitors during its four-month run in 1978. The Field, which will close its exhibit after five months on March 26, is projecting about 275,000 visitors.
Tickets, including the normal museum admission fee, will be $19 for adults, $14 for students and seniors and $9 for children 4 to 11 years old, with discounts offered to Chicago residents.
———-