Pompeia: O Dia-a-Dia Da Mítica Cidade Romana (2008) - Plot & Excerpts
This is this generation's best book on Pompeii; it's impossible to imagine visiting the site without having read it, and although it's not a guidebook, it does have a helpful appendix called "Making a Visit" that covers what to wear, how best to arrive, and which houses you'll probably be most interested in seeing. Mary Beard is a distinguished professor of classics at Cambridge, and she writes about Pompeii as though it were her life's work. What I appreciated most about the book were the complete lack of prudishness about the town's ubiquitous, licentious artwork—the frontispiece of my Folio Society edition is a detail of a mosaic showing a slave with genitals as big as his forearms—and the way Beard always takes pains, in a graceful way, to explain what we know, what we don't know, and the various ideas about what the truth might be. A lot of the stories the guidebooks tell you are probably wrong. She sets it straight.The book is written very casually, without footnotes or unnecessary scholarly trappings. Occasionally it has a dashed-off quality that comes from quick writing (the same word repeated too soon, and the like), but that's a quibble. This is like getting a verbal tour of the site from a very smart friend who's lived a few miles away from it for twenty years. However, it's not a tour of the buildings and monuments so much as a peek into what the people were like, what they did for work and fun and what they seemed to care about. If you've visited the site, as I did a long time ago, this will explain a lot about what you saw (did you know that the ruined state of some of the buildings is due not to age but to Allied bombing in World War II?) and if you haven't been there yet, this will certainly make you want to go. A masterful piece of work: informative, sceptical (but not overly so), and best of all, eminently readable. Really brings Pompeii and Pompeiians to life. I had the good fortune to read it just as we made a visit there, which greatly increaded my insight into what I saw. Only criticism at all is that the (cleverly) themed chapters cause slight chronology nausea. Note I read, "Pompeii, Life and Death of a Roman Town" - apparently the same book.
What do You think about Pompeia: O Dia-a-Dia Da Mítica Cidade Romana (2008)?
Excellent analysis of Pompeii and fabulously skeptical of firm conclusions made by others.
—Otonashi
Overall this was a very enjoyable read. I recommend for anyone interested in Pompeii.
—zohrab
Fascinating take by an Cambridge Don
—lacolochitarica
