The Treasures of Ancient Rome TV - Margaret Mountford TV - Andrew Wallace-Hadrill TV - Pompeii: The Last Day TV - The Gardens of Pompeii TV - Rome Revealed TV - The Roman Empire: Grandeur & Decadence TV - Mary Beard TV - Empires: The Roman Empire in the First Century TV - Pompeii’s Final Hours: New Evidence TV - The Pompeii Prophecy: Countdown to Devastation TV - In Search of … TV - Gangs of Pompeii TV - Pompeii: The Discovery with Dan Snow TV - Bettany Hughes TV -
What makes Pompeii so special is that exquisite and fragile works of art have been preserved in almost perfect condition. The Treasures of Ancient Rome I: Warts n All, BBC 2012
These are the remains of people frozen in last few second of their lives ... They are unique. Margaret Mountford, Pompeii: The Mystery of the People Frozen in Time, BBC 2013
On the morning of August 24th 79 A.D. just before midday a powerful earthquake rocked the quiet countryside around the mountain. ibid.
What did kill them and fixed their bodies in these strange positions? ibid.
Ten miles down the road is a place destroyed by the same eruption but for me is if anything more exciting ... Herculaneum. Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, The Other Pompeii: Life and Death in Herculaneum, BBC 2013
A series of shops and perfectly ordinary flats. ibid.
Running water, public fountains ... Private houses have running water too ... Eighty public latrines. ibid.
Casts of victims buried in the ash preserve their dying moments. Precious objects tell intimate details of their lives. And the writing of a young man who watched it happen expose the full horror of what killed them. Pompeii: The Last Day, BBC 2003
Pompeii lies in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. This volcano has been quiet for fifteen hundred years. The people don’t even know it’s a volcano ... Minor earth tremors plague the city. They are one of the signs that Vesuvius is stirring. ibid.
Around 1 p.m. on 24th August A.D. 79 Vesuvius roars back to life ... As the cloud of ash obscures the sun, day turns to night. ibid.
Thousands take to the streets and flee ... Pumice continues to bombard the city. ibid.
From surviving records we know that Admiral Pliny’s rescue mission was underway around 5 p.m. ibid.
Now heavier with denser rock part of the column collapsed and cascaded down the mountain in a great wave. Superheated ash and molten rock churn down the volcano in a racing burning avalanche. It’s now known as a pyroclastic surge. ibid.
The final surge kills thousands who have fled into the countryside. ibid.
The villas and the gardens that lay below Vesuvius were frozen in time. The Gardens of Pompeii, Sky Arts 2016
‘Gardens help you think’, wrote Cicero ... Fountains of beautiful water displays, statues and nyphaeums, the Romans cultivated their souls and intellect by walking, reading and meditating in the gardens of otium. ibid.
This is the story of a disaster like no other. When Mount Vesuvius erupted it rained seven a half million tons of debris on to Pompeii. It sealed the fate of more than a thousand people. But it also sealed the city in. Preserved it. Protected it. Like nowhere else on Earth the rediscovered Pompeii gives us access to the ancient world. And now with new findings and new insights we can tell the story of the ordinary people caught up in this disaster. Rome Revealed s1e3: Doomsday Pompeii, National Geographic 2013
The People of Pompeii do the opposite: they try to appease their gods by re-making the temples of the fallen. Clad in white marble on the eve of the eruption it must have appeared indestructible. ibid.
Slaves: this building suggests a part of the Roman world that’s been largely invisible. Slaves are everywhere in the ancient Rome. Households, businesses, even government. They make up 30% of Italy’s population. And yet because the Romans treat them like a commodity rather than people we have very little written record of their lives. ibid.
It’s the summer of 79 A.D. Several earth tremors have already rocked the town of Pompeii and the surrounding area ... At noon on August 24th a pillar of molten rock seventeen kilometres high rises into the sky. The Roman Empire: Grandeur and Decadence
At 9 p.m. Pompeii has almost been buried under four metres of ash. ibid.
Until the discovery of Pompeii no antique frescoes had been so well preserved. ibid.
Pompeiians would write anywhere. ibid.
In 79 A.D. this volcano exploded ... Pompeii: the eruption which wiped this ancient town off the Roman map is one of the world’s most famous disasters. Professor Mary Beard, Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town, BBC 2012
Pompeii is the most important archaeological site in the Roman world. ibid.
In Pompeii alone there are thirty bakeries. ibid.
Herculaneum was buried under more than fifty feet of volcanic debris during the eruption of 79. ibid.
Fast food joints are one of the commonest features of the Pompeii street scene. ibid.
More than half the population of Herculaneum were descended from slaves. ibid.
A major new forensic study and at the centre are famous castes of human victims of volcanic eruption of A.D. 79. Mary Beard, Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed
Pompeii’s amphitheatre is one of the best preserved in the whole Roman world. ibid.
Education was brutal, expensive and only for boys who could afford it. ibid.
In the twilight of the first century the Roman empire shook to its foundations ... Mount Vesuvius. Empires: The Roman Empire in the First Century IV: The Years of Eruption, PBS 2007
Welcome to Pompeii: In mid-October 79 A.D. thousands of ordinary people were going about their everyday lives in this ancient Roman city in southern Italy not knowing that absolute devastation loomed on the horizon. Because within just a few days this entire city and everyone in it would be buried. Pompeii’s Final Hours: New Evidence, Channel 5 2018
Vesuvius, a volcano that’s lain dormant for 700 years, is waking up. At midday the mountain explodes with the energy of a nuclear bomb. Within 24 hours the town of Pompeii will be obliterated, not a single person left alive. ibid.
Earthquakes shook the town in those final days. ibid.
A complete Roman town trapped in time. ibid.
I visit a brand-new excavation that’s making fresh discoveries. Pompeii’s Final Hours: New Evidence II
Within forty-eight hours Pompeii will be wiped from the map buried under five metres of volcanic debris. No-one in the city will survive. ibid.
How the city met its tragic end has preserved so much for us to discover today. Pompeii’s Final Hours: New Evidence III
Pliney could see a giant plume of smoke going right up into the sky raining down this debris with thunderbolts flashing across the sky. ibid.
The sheer weight of the pumice made most of the roofs collapse – now some of the people were hiding inside their houses and we know that about a third of the victims died in that way. ibid.
The surge incinerates everything in its path, wiping out the small town of Herculaneum which was ever closer to Vesuvius than Pompeii. ibid.