The House of the Tragic Poet (also called The Homeric HouseorThe Iliadic House) is a Roman house in Pompeii, Italy dating to the 2nd century BCE. The house is famous for its elaborate mosaic floors and frescoes depicting scenes from Greek mythology.
Discovered in November 1824 by the archaeologist Antonio Bonucci, the House of the Tragic Poet has interested scholars and writers for generations. Although the size of the house itself is in no way remarkable, its interior decorations are not only numerous but of the highest quality among other frescoes and mosaics from ancient Pompeii.
Because of the mismatch between the size of the house and the quality of its decoration, much has been wondered about the lives of the homeowners. Unfortunately, little is known about the family members, who were likely killed by the eruption of mount Vesuvius in 79AD.
Cave Canem, House of the Tragic Poet, Pompeii, Italy,
The eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 is without a doubt one of the most famous, if not iconic, volcanic events in history. The first rumblings were felt on 23 August - which was the feast day of Vulcan, no less - and then, on 24 August, the volcano erupted.
The event was witnessed by a 17 year-old Pliny the Younger, who wrote some vivid, first person accounts in his letters. It’s because of his descriptions that particularly violent volcanic eruptions are still referred to as Plinian.
Herculaneum was one of the Roman towns which were buried under tens of metres of pumice and ash during the eruption. One house in Herculaneum contained a library filled with papyrus scrolls which were turned into charcoal by the heat of the volcanic ash.
These charcoal scrolls were discovered by excavators in the 1750s. Four of them were presented to the Bodleian Library in 1810 by George, Prince of Wales.
What an adventurous last few days… From exploring the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum to climbing Vesuvius then hopping on a train to tour the enteral city of Rome. More pictures to come…
Vesuvius and the Eruption of AD79: Part II of the Vesuvius Edit
After noon on the 24th of August AD79 began an eighteen–hour eruption that would obliterate Pompeii, city of Ancient Rome, as well as Herculaneum, a port–side town some 13km away. Vesuvius had awoken: the precursory tremors that had shaken the land for days prior had gone unheeded, for such tremors were common in this region of Italy — and given the long period of inactivity that preceded this eruption, the people of these Roman settlements did not know Vesuvius to be a volcano, nor did they know that these tremors were quite literally portents of doom, signifying magma movement into shallow crustal reservoirs (as volcanic swarms are common precursors of eruptions).
The AD79 eruption of Vesuvius was bipartite, having first a Plinian phase, and then a Pelean phase. During the first phase, Vesuvius produced a column over 30km high that spread out into an umbrella cloud, raining pumice and ash down over the surrounding regions. Pompeii received the brunt of this airfall due to the prevailing wind direction, which dispersed volcanic material to the south–east of the volcano and buried the city. This stage lasted some seven hours, and many of Pompeii’s inhabitants were able to flee, carried to the safety of Misenum by boat. Still, an estimated 2000 of 20,000 people died; those who chose not to leave, were unable to leave, or were buried by collapsing buildings, which caved under the weight of the volcanic ejecta. The calcification of ash preserved the hollows in which their bodies once lay, and these hollows were infilled with plaster by archeologists to extract the impressions of these forms.
The second part of the AD79 eruption was Pelean in style, where instabilities in the convecting plume led to its collapse. In this stage, high density pyroclastic flows surged down the flanks of Vesuvius, covering Pompeii, though now the brunt of these pyroclastic density currents were partitioned towards Herculaneum. It was subsequently in this second phase that Herculaneum was destroyed, Herculaneum which had escaped burial via the pumice airfall of the first stage. For a long time, it was thought that the people of Herculaneum had escaped, given sufficient warning from the airfall phase, but a host of skeletons were discovered in the boathouses beneath the town: people who had tried to take shelter from the burning cloud, and who were instantly incinerated.
