P O M P E I I

[Bianca]

               








                                                    Sonic boom sets off Vesuvius scare


                               Naples eruption hotline jammed as jets break sound barrier






 (ANSA)
- Naples,
October 8 - 2008

Citizens of Naples rushed to the phones Wednesday after hearing a mighty bang over the city that
lies in the shadow of Vesuvius.

Switchboards were jammed at the city's eruption hotline until it said the sleeping giant had nothing
to do with the noise.

The bang, which was heard across the Naples area and out to sea, was caused by two Italian fighter jets racing to intercept an unidentified intruder.

The sonic boom came as the F16s broke the sound barrier to draw level with the plane and check its credentials.

As the city drew a huge breath of relief, the now-cleared Austrian plane continued its flight home from an aid mission in Chad. Naples occasionally goes through scares about its famous volcano.

The last major fright came in August 2007 after US magazine National Geographic claimed that current evacuation plans wouldn't get people out in time if ''the world's most dangerous volcano'' blew its stack like it did in 79 AD, burying Pompeii.

Entitled Vesuvius, Asleep for Now, the report claimed that evacuation plans were not sufficiently up-to-date.

The city's anxiety levels fell after Vesuvius watchers issued a comprehensive denial.

In recent years, Naples officials have repeatedly played down reports that Vesuvius might be set to blow.

Top vulcanologist Franco Barberi recently said that even in the worst-case scenario, Naples' evacuation plan would enable the threatened populace to be smoothly evacuated.

Italy has created simulations of all possible kinds of eruptions, Barberi said.

Recent eruption forecasts have varied, saying the dormant volcano could slumber on for decades or centuries.

Around a million people currently live and work around Vesuvius and at the current rate of expansion this could swell by a further 200,000 by 2016.

In 2003 authorities in Naples started offering people living on the volcano's slopes hefty cash incentives to move away.

So far there have been few takers.

Vesuvius has erupted about three dozen times since it buried the Ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, killing about 2,000 people.

The most serious blast killed some 4,000 people in 1631.

[Bianca]

                                           Pompeii now open for business to bidders



                     An emergency declaration unearths Pompeii's funding and restoration woes,

                                         writes Tribune correspondent Christine Spolar






By Christine Spolar
Tribune
October 8, 2008

POMPEII, Italy — When a state of emergency was declared this summer at the ancient grounds of Pompeii, the move by Italy's government touched off an eruption of media accounts about how the ruins near Mt. Vesuvius were, well, in ruins.

Now authorities responsible for a yearlong evaluation no longer want the lost city of Pompeii to be viewed as being in dire need of repair. Rather, the top administrator in this emergency year said the expansive trove of mosaics and villas is in search of a marketing makeover and moneymakers.

Pompeii, one of Italy's most visited tourist sites, is now open for business to bidders eager for lucra-
tive contracts inside the ruins. Tourism is in a state of emergency more than the ruins themselves,
said Renato Profili, the special administrator on the job since July.

The opening of Pompeii to private ventures comes as the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, pinched for cash, has slashed state funds for arts and archeological sites. Archeology restoration funds for Pompeii suffered a deep cut, reduced from $75 million last fiscal year to $15 million this fiscal year, the top archeologist there said.



But Profili said in an interview that the emergency declared in July by Italy's Culture Ministry was never meant to spotlight archeological decay at the UNESCO-designated site or promise repairs — although archeologists have long lamented the state of the ruins.

"It's never been about an archeological crisis here," Profili said of the emergency decision. "This is a service crisis."

Culture Minister Sandro Bondi announced, among other plans, that he wanted to improve tourism and appointed Profili, a longtime prefect and law enforcer from Naples, to consider "innovative management," he said.

Press reports about the ravages of age at Pompeii, where many villas stand locked and in disrepair, "were exaggerated," Profili said.

According to site officials and independent guides, Pompeii has seen a 20 percent drop in revenues
from visitors since the beginning of the year, when tourists snubbed nearby Naples, a usually alluring port city that was overwhelmed by mounds of uncollected trash last year.

Profili has special powers to bypass normal bureaucratic demands in his one-year appointment. Profili, who said he has no experience with archeological sites, said his tactics during his first days on the job were widely misinterpreted.

Most prominent was the closing of a for-profit restaurant that had operated on the grounds for years. Some press accounts reported the restaurant was ousted to preserve the ruins. But Profili said the restaurant was shuttered for not paying rent.

Indeed, Profili said he plans to open two new restaurants in the vast ruins. One will be in the same villa of the former eatery. Another will be built from scratch in "one of the finest and nicest ancient villas, Casina dell'Aquila, in the center of the ruins with a beautiful view," Profili said. "And the food will be Pompeiian."

"There is no problem having a restaurant inside Pompeii," he added. "We're looking for bids."

[Bianca]

UNESCO officials, when asked about Pompeii, said designation as a World Heritage site does not rule out for-profit enterprises there.

"It's an interesting question: How far do you want to pursue the marketing potential of a site? You increase accessibility and you increase stress on the site," said spokesman Roni Amelan. "It's a question of balance."

Pompeii was buried 2,000 years ago when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in a gassy, fiery rage. The ruins were discovered in the 18th Century. More than 2.6 million tourists visit the site annually, according to UNESCO figures.

The Culture Ministry's announcement about Pompeii's emergency caught many observers by surprise — including Pompeii's archeological superintendent, Pietro Giovanni Guzzo. For years Guzzo has outlined the growing needs of Pompeii's antiquities, with limited effect.

Guzzo said that only 14 percent of the city's 109 acres was open for public viewing when he took the job in 1995. Today, 35 percent of the ruins are accessible. Guzzo long has argued that the grounds—an incomparable open-air museum—deserved more funds and repairs for upkeep.

Pompeii is "so fragile and complex at the same time," Guzzo said, with tourist traffic erosion and the passing of time all part of its particular burden. Guzzo said he at first was unable to explain why—now—the Culture Ministry found Pompeii in sudden distress. Then he realized the attention was not on the ruins themselves.

The emergency was declared days before the Berlusconi government took aim at another financial woe — the nation's sagging economy.

All arts and restoration funds were frozen, and more than $1.3 billion was slashed from Italy's culture budget for the next three years. Guzzo and others surmised at first that the emergency was an appeal to induce private sponsors to help Pompeii. The state has long been the guardian of art and archeology, and private philanthropy — in a country that allows few tax incentives for art lovers—is minimal.

"It was never clear to me what kind of emergency we were talking about," Guzzo said. "In the official document, only the term emergency is stated. I cannot recall any kind of adjective attached to it.

"They declared an emergency, but it didn't mean more money for us. I mean, they took away money this year."



cspolar@tribune.com

[Bianca]

               








The Sunday TimesSeptember 21, 2008




                                 Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town - by Mary Beard






The Sunday Times review
by James McConnachie

The trouble with digging up the ancient past is that only the best and the biggest stuff tends to get left behind. Not so in Pompeii. In this brilliant portrait of the “life of a Roman town”, Mary Beard uses
the relics buried by the eruption of AD79 (the fish-weighing scales and flour mills, the gladiators'
helmets and grafitti) to bring everyday Roman culture alive.

Beard covers the big public issues - economy and government, gods, games - and animates them superbly by tying them to the biographies of real Pompeiians: the heart-throb gladiator Celadus, the well-connected local worthy Marcus Holconius Priscus, and the warty banker Lucius Caecilius Jucundus. She is most interested, however, in the domestic and the intimate. In the excellent chapter on painting and decorating, she doesn't just analyse Pompeiian style, she opens up cupboards to count the paint pots and turn over the spoons and spatulas. She doesn't only describe the grander rooms with their fantastical frescoes and deep tones of “Pompeiian red”, she explores the corridors and service quarters, revealing the ferocious zebra-stripe colour scheme “which would not have looked wholly out of place in the 1960s”.

Pompeii's smells must have been no less vibrant than its colours. The 20,000-seater amphitheatre had no lavatory. Huge local fortunes were built on a kind of fermented (rotted, some say) fish sauce. As for the Roman baths, they were apparently “a seething mass of bacteria”, which weren't regarded as safe to enter with an open wound. Cleanliness aside, they sound closer in spirit to a 1970s San Francisco bathhouse than, say, today's sleek spas.

Rome's famed hygienic fastidiousness is not the only classical myth that Beard delights in busting. Togas, when they were worn at all, came in fierce colours, not just white. Losing gladiators were much more likely to survive than be killed. And if the cramped dining rooms and minuscule kitchens of Pompeii are any guide, the decadent banquet of the celluloid imagination was probably a rare affair. The notorious dormice dipped in honey really were a Pompeiian treat - the jars found with internal, premoulded dormouse exercise runs prove it - but the wealthy largely made do with a “finger buffet” of bread, olives and cheese, perhaps with sausages and black pudding. The poor, it seems, dined out at simple cafes.

[Bianca]

Most shockingly, the Romans were not quite as morbidly hypersexual as we like to imagine. The Stabian Baths were indeed brightened up by athletic-erotic scenes - including depictions of both a trio and a foursome. Carved phalluses and boa****lly obscene graffiti really are found everywhere. But much of what has been called erotic, Beard protests, is more “a familiar and slightly edgy mixture of sex, drink and play” than evidence of “terrible moral turpitude”.

Beard is interested in Roman sex. She spends a good deal of time untangling what she wryly calls the “Pompeiian Brothel Problem” - the problem being how many there actually were.

Some archeologists see brothels wherever a phallus is carved or painted, an erotic painting displayed, or a randy graffito scrawled.

Some reckon that, on this basis, there were 35 brothels in the city, or one for every 75 free adult males.

More cautious scholars insist that the only sure test for a brothel is for a building to have a masonry bed near the street, explicitly sexual paintings and graffiti clusters “of the ‘I f***ed here' type”.

By that test, the city chalks up one solitary brothel. The brothel gap - 35 or just one? - is a classic example of the quarrels that enliven Pompeiian archeology. The city is exciting partly because it's a vast forensic puzzle.

Beard is a classicist, however, not an archeologist, and rather than advancing eye-catching new theories she prefers judicious evaluation. Her sensible answer to the brothel conundrum is to warn that searching for physical evidence of commercial sex is a category mistake.

Would we know a brothel today by its layout, or by its contents?

[Bianca]

This is a meticulous, vivid study of Pompeiian life, and it rightly and resolutely focuses on the living city. Occasionally, we get alluring glimpses of the book that Beard might have written: on the discovery of Pompeii and its cultural afterlife. We learn that Mozart visited in 1769, picking up ideas for The Magic Flute. We discover that Edward Bulwer-Lytton's romance, The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), was one of the bestselling novels of the 19th century, and that Second Empire aristocrats in Paris played at Romans in what must have been the original “toga party”.

“Pompeii” the archeological miracle has surely had as great an impact on the world as Pompeii the provincial Roman city, and these asides leave us wanting more. This is no more a tourist guidebook than it is a cultural study, but Beard does throw in a few practical tips at the end. “Go in to any house you find open,” she advises.

This isn't as obvious as it sounds. Today, only a third of the site is officially accessible - and that is when there isn't a wildcat strike in action. Travellers tell tales of endless barriers and signs protesting that an area is in restauro - without any apparent signs of work going on.

Beard doesn't discuss why it is so difficult to see much of the site, other than to observe that the administration is underfunded, but there's surely more to it than this. In July 2008, the Italian government declared a Pompeiian “state of emergency”, citing the terrible damage being done by erosion, theft, vandalism - and, of course, mass tourism.

Beard claims that a visit “almost never disappoints”, but the gulf between the vibrant city she evokes and the decaying, barred-off ruin described in the newspapers suggests that, after reading this wonderful book, a trip to the Bay of Naples may be too painful to bear.




Pompeii

by Mary Beard

[Bianca]

 












                                                          The Amphitheater at Pompeii






"About this time [AD 59] there was a serious fight between the inhabitants of two Roman settlements, Nuceria and Pompeii. It arose out of a trifling incident at a gladiatorial show....During an exchange of taunts--characteristic of these disorderly country towns--abuse led to stone-throwing, and then swords were drawn. The people of Pompeii, where the show was held, came off best. Many wounded and mutilated Nucerians were taken to the capital. Many bereavements, too, were suffered by parents and children. The emperor instructed the senate to investigate the affair. The senate passed it to the consuls. When they reported back, the senate debarred Pompeii from holding any similar gathering for ten years. Illegal associations in the town were dissolved; and the sponsor of the show and his fellow-instigators of the disorders were exiled."



Tacitus, Annals (XIV.17)

[Bianca]

                                   










It is unlikely that the riot was provoked simply by the games that day. During the Social War (91-88 BC), a century and a half earlier, Rome's Italian allies had fought to acquire the benefits of citizenship. Pompeii joined the revolt but fell to Sulla, who settled a colony of legionary veterans there. The amphitheater, itself, was constructed about 70 BC for the benefit of these new colonists, both because of its association with the Roman military and as a monumental reminder of their dominance over the local Samnite population. Nuceria had not rebelled and subsequently was awarded territory confiscated from a neighboring town that had been destroyed during the fighting. Less than two years before the riot, Nero settled a veteran colony at Nuceria (Annals, XIII.31), which no doubt inflamed old resentments, especially if assigned lands were disputed by the Pompeians.

Nor is it likely that the amphitheater was closed the entire ten years. Beast hunts (venationes) and athletic competitions seem to have continued. Poppaea, the second wife of Nero, whose mother's family lived in Pompeii, may have interceded. A local magistrate, whose name, together with that of Nero, is acclaimed in the fresco, also may have pleaded that the spectacula be reopened. In AD 62, a devastating earthquake struck Pompeii (Annals, XV.22), a precursor to the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, and, once the amphitheater had been repaired, it may have been opened as a gesture of consolation to the populace.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


This detail is from a larger fresco found in the house of Actius Anicetus, who, given the scene (which originally was flanked by two smaller paintings of gladiatorial pairs), may have been a freed gladiator. The amphitheater was located in the eastern part of town, positioned against the embankment that filled this corner of the city wall, the towers of which can be seen in the background. A section of the awnings (velarium) that protected against the sun also is visible, the masts of which were fitted through stone corbels attached to the rear wall of the summa cavea. Private boxes (cathedrae) were reserved there for the aristocratic women of Pompeii, who were restricted by the social legislation of Augustus to these uppermost seats.

Suetonius relates that, sometimes, when the sun was hottest, Caligula would have the awnings of the Colosseum drawn back and give orders that no-one be allowed to leave (XXVI.5). And Lucretius speaks of the canvas awning stretched over a theater tearing and flapping wildly between the poles, sounding like paper being torn or the crack of thunder (De Rerum Natura, VI.110).

Curiously, the number of arches beneath the double staircase leading up to the terrace of the amphitheater is incorrect. That there are six, not eleven, is a reminder that even the most seemingly obvious archaeological evidence must be treated with caution.







References:



Tacitus: The Annals of Imperial Rome (1959) translated by Michael Grant (Penguin Classics);

The Story of the Roman Amphitheatre (2000) by D. L. Bomgardner;

The Colosseum (2000) edited by Ada Gabucci;

Gladiators at Pompeii (2003) by Luciana Jacobelli.




http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/gladiators/pompeii.html

[Bianca]

             





                                             THE AMPHITHEATER - EXTERIOR





                               

[Bianca]

             





                         

                          GLADIATOR BARRACKS



http://wings.buffalo.edu/AandL/Maecenas/italy_except_rome_and_sicily/pompeii/ac880525.html

[Bianca]

                       

[Bianca]

           

[Bianca]

[Bianca]

[Bianca]