Rotary learns about Pompeii

 Rotary Learns about Pompeii 

A Working Town

The guest last Tuesday night was our old friend Peter Jones MBE who came to talk about the economy and workings of the ancient town of Pompeii in Italy.
It was a fascinating tale interspersed with amusing anecdotes featuring Liz and Ken as two Pompeian citizens of dubious social standing!!

So, we all know about the destruction caused by a huge earthquake and volcanic eruption in the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in around 74 AD. It is thought that the eruption was bigger than that of Hiroshima in 1945,
and that the population of around 10,000 people were destroyed in approximately 25 hours. A devastation which wiped out an important port and trading post for the Roman Empire. And now on our reflection, the inhabitants did not understand what was happening or about to happen?

Pompeii with its harbour and economic activity in the region had numerous businesses, vineyards, shops, etc, and apparently eighty bars!!
People travelled to the town which enabled the inhabitants and the surrounding district to prosper. Having built aqueducts for baths, steam rooms and irrigation, it was said that that the crops and vineyards in the region produced over four times what could be consumed locally. Much of which was subsequently exported to Germany, and Spain etc, making ‘little Pompeii’ appear bigger than it seemed.

And as Mercury was ‘The God of Trade’ in Roman times, it was appropriate to discover in the early 19 Century, a street sign which read – ‘Welcome Profit, Profit is Joy!!!’.

A Pompeian reflection during / after the devastation: "An earthquake demolished the populous Campanian town of Pompeii. This tremor was on the 5th February, in the consulship of Regulus and Verginius, and it inflicted great devastation…sheep died and statues split. Some people have lost their minds and wander about in madness.
The cloud could be best described as more like an umbrella pine than any other tree, because it rose up in a kind of trunk. The ash began to fall again, this time in more and more heavy showers. We had to get up in time to shake it off or we would have been crushed and buried under its weight…”

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