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00:04I'm Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, and for the past 30 years I've had the immense good fortune
00:10to be able to study remains from two of the most famous and exciting archaeological areas
00:16in the world. The first is Pompeii. Pompeii is a magical site. It's captured everyone's
00:26imagination for two and a half centuries. The modern exploration of Pompeii started in 1748.
00:35Now, nearly two and a half million visitors come here every year. No wonder it boasts the
00:43oldest amphitheatre in the ancient world, an ancient brothel, and these world-famous casts.
00:56Yet, just ten miles down the road is a place destroyed by the same eruption that, for me,
01:04is if anything even more fascinating. It adds colour and close-up detail to what life was
01:11really like in a Roman town. This is the city of Hercules, Herculaneum.
01:24Here we have the main street. And here you can see the way the houses are built to two stories,
01:30the top story surviving, unlike Pompeii. And there are the wooden shutters. We've discovered
01:38their furniture. It's a sort of ancient Ikea. And even more important for a historian like me,
01:47wooden tablets containing the records of their legal disputes and squabbles. What they ate,
01:56and even how they ate it.
02:01And most important of all, Herculaneum holds the largest sample of skeletons of a living population
02:08from anywhere in the ancient world. Amongst them are the first new human remains to be
02:14found in this area for 30 years. They provide detailed scientific evidence of how people lived
02:22in the years leading up to the eruption. And put all this stuff together,
02:26and you can just stretch out and touch the lives of an ancient population.
03:00In 79 AD, this volcano erupted. It was a disaster that would resonate from the ancient to the modern world.
03:18Here, in the crater of Mount Vesuvius, I find it hard to imagine why anyone would want to live in
03:24such a dangerous
03:25and scary place. 2,000 years ago, Vesuvius looked very different. Even the summit was covered in green.
03:36And the inhabitants of the Roman towns below had no idea of the dangers they faced.
03:43The most famous of these is, of course, Pompeii.
03:49Pompeii has become world-renowned for its casts of the volcano's victims.
04:00It was a brilliant discovery in 1863 when the Italian archaeologists developed a technique of making casts of the dead
04:08bodies.
04:09Because of the way the ash set around the body before it rotted away,
04:15it was possible to inject plaster of Paris and capture the precise form of someone in their death throes,
04:22and even details of their clothing.
04:26This caused international sensation, and it's become something of a ghoulish spectacle.
04:33What's lost in this process is the skeleton itself.
04:36Because scientists can say so much from a skeleton about a person,
04:41it's frustrating we can no longer get at these people.
04:48The preservation of Pompeii's people as casts was made possible by the layer of ash and pumice
04:54ejected from Mount Vesuvius, which buried the town.
04:59In Pompeii, it fell three to five metres deep.
05:04By contrast, ten miles along the Bay of Naples at Herculaneum,
05:09the ashfall was much hotter and up to five times deeper.
05:15As it cooled, it formed rock which enveloped the town
05:19and proved an archaeological godsend.
05:26This terrifying precipice is the product of just 24 hours of volcanic eruption.
05:33Herculaneum is covered in as many as 25 metres of solid rock,
05:39and it's the enormous depth that means Herculaneum is exceptionally well preserved.
05:49Ancient Herculaneum was a port on the Bay of Naples,
05:54but the effect of the eruption has pushed the coast 400 metres out to sea.
06:02And there's something here that helps us get closer to the people of an ancient town
06:06more than any other place in the world.
06:10A vast sample of skeletons, found not in a graveyard, but cut off young and old at the same moment.
06:19They're just as poignant as the casts, but they also give us something more important.
06:26In their bones is the blueprint of what they ate, how they lived, and even the kind of work they
06:33did in the years leading up to the eruption.
06:40It was down here, by the ancient shore, that over 300 skeletons were found, some of them out on the
06:47shore,
06:47but the majority under these vaults clustered up to 40 in each vault.
06:53The question is, what were they doing down here?
06:59The vast majority found under the vaults were women and children,
07:05while those found on the ancient beach were largely men.
07:09It was a strange separation.
07:18Stacked high in boxes in the storeroom are 104 samples of the 340 skeletons recovered.
07:28Amongst them are the first new skeletal remains to be recovered from this area in 30 years.
07:37Leading the investigation are anthropologists Dr Luca Pondioli and Dr Luciano Fattori.
07:46The Herculaneum group, is it special? Is it normal among the groups you've worked with?
07:51It's unique. It's not special. It's unique.
07:53There is no other collection all over the world that is so important and so unique,
07:58because it's not people coming from a graveyard or a necropolis.
08:02Those were alive people who died from a disaster.
08:07And this is unique.
08:09So you have a fantastic snapshot, a frozen moment of a real population.
08:15Exactly. To correspond, not perfectly, but as a good sample,
08:18because we estimate that this is close to 10% of the population that was in Herculaneum.
08:28Most remarkable of all is this find.
08:32Three exceptionally well-preserved skeletons,
08:34discovered in a niche at the back of one of the vaults by Dr Fattori.
08:43Luciano, this group of skeletons is a new repertoire?
08:48Let's say, these are the last skeletons emerged from Herculaneum.
08:55This small group comprises two women, probably in their 40s, and a small child.
09:03Because these particular skeletons were hidden and so well-preserved,
09:07we can tell exactly what possessions they had with them.
09:12Incredibly, grape seeds were found in this child's ribcage,
09:16the remains of a last meal.
09:18And these tiny silver earrings were lying encrusted with ash
09:24on either side of her skull.
09:34The skeletons were a hugely important find.
09:40Using them, and all Herculaneum's other exceptionally well-preserved remains,
09:45I'm going to take you on a special tour of this extraordinary town.
09:55I'll show you how it adds even more to what we know from Pompeii.
10:00First, let's see where they end, where they shopped, and where they lived.
10:07Not just the people in swanky mansions, but in ordinary flats and bedsits, too.
10:15Let's take this house, the House of the Wooden Screen,
10:17as an example of what you can see in Herculaneum, which you don't see in Pompeii.
10:23In the middle here, the impluvium, where the rainwater comes in from the hole in the ceiling.
10:30There's a nice marble table on the axis, which draws people's eyes in,
10:36to the most important reception room in the house, the tablinum.
10:42But as we come up here, here, here's the difference.
10:46This is what you don't find in Pompeii.
10:48This is a wooden screen, found in position, it's preserved now in glass to protect it,
10:55a screen which could be drawn across to cut off this main reception room.
11:01And if you come in, you can see how it changes it.
11:06Open it up, and here I am, every visitor to the house can see me,
11:11it's easy for me to welcome visitors.
11:14I close it up, and then it's become a private dining room.
11:20So that wooden screen is all about privacy in the Roman house,
11:24something you can see here because the wood survives.
11:32Suppose we were in Pompeii. Here's a room which you would guess was a bedroom.
11:38You would guess it, but you wouldn't know for certain.
11:41But when you actually find the bed in it, ha, then you know it's a bedroom.
11:47It may look a bit worse for wear,
11:50but in Herculaneum, they've found enough wooden furniture
11:54to fill an entire showroom.
12:06The man in charge of all this is Luigi Sirano.
12:13This place is a real treasure trove.
12:16There's something of everything you want for your house.
12:19It's a sort of ancient IKEA.
12:23Do you fancy a bed?
12:24Here is an entire ancient bed.
12:28You can see the frame, but also this very beautiful woodwork of the sides of the bed.
12:38What else do we have here?
12:39We have benches, linen chests,
12:43and here's a really famous object, the cradle.
12:47found in a house with the baby lying in the cradle.
12:52And a really big question for the Roman family was,
12:56what gods do you worship and where do you put them?
12:59Oh, yes, over here we have a household shrine.
13:09These doors are like the doors into a temple,
13:12and inside you keep your household gods.
13:15And that's a lovely insight into religion in the Roman household.
13:25I think I'd better put some gloves on here.
13:28Since I'm going to be handling household gods, I'd better treat them with respect.
13:33Now, what we've got here is just a selection of the sort of gods you'd find in one of these
13:38shrines.
13:39Here is the must-have god.
13:41This is Allah, the dancing spirit of the hearth and household.
13:46You can see a little drinking horn that it's holding up.
13:53Many people, because we're in Herculaneum, wanted a Hercules.
13:58And there's Hercules, you see his lion skin hanging from his hand,
14:02and his beautiful six-pack and fine muscular body.
14:10And, of course, going with Hercules, Venus,
14:13and there is the naked Venus washing her hair.
14:21You need more than strength and sex, you need money.
14:25And Mercury is the great god of how to make a profit.
14:29And there he is with a bag of money.
14:31He has little wings on his helmet.
14:33With any luck, he has wings on his heels, too.
14:39And here we have the king of the gods, Jupiter himself,
14:44with his thunderbolt.
14:46That's a thunderbolt.
14:48And I love the way his eyes seem to blaze at you.
14:52He's a scary god.
14:57And take good note, the king of the gods does not have a big prick.
15:01Because, in antiquity, they did not think a big prick was a good thing.
15:05It's a sign of a barbarian.
15:07And he has an absolutely weird link with the modern world.
15:13A Madonna and child.
15:15This splendid figure of a goddess giving suckle to a baby.
15:20Of course, it's not the Madonna.
15:22This is not the Christ child.
15:24This is just an ancient scene.
15:27And that's a splendid, large copy.
15:32And here's another little copy,
15:33which we found when we were excavating down in the sewers.
15:43And here, at the Sanctuary of the Madonna in Pompeii,
15:47we can see it's an image that's passed effortlessly,
15:50from the ancient world to the modern.
15:56What's been missing in ancient Pompeii is this bright colour.
16:00We tend to see so much in black and white.
16:04Herculaneum, then, offers a whole new palette.
16:08Here's a find I'm particularly proud of,
16:11because we made it in the course of our conservation project.
16:14And it's very important. Do you see this? Isn't she fantastic?
16:19And what's so fabulous about her is the colour.
16:22The moment the conservators realised that the head was there,
16:27still completely caked in ash,
16:29they said, please, no-one else touch it.
16:32There may be traces of colour.
16:34And, my golly, there were traces of colour.
16:36They were so careful about removing the ash.
16:46Look round the eye.
16:47The eyebrow, her eyelashes, and the iris and the pupil.
16:57It's extraordinary how a few touches of colour
17:01just bring this piece of marble to life.
17:05There's been a lot of talk about,
17:07did they really colour ancient statues?
17:10Because people think marble looks beautiful just as it is.
17:14And this shows you that just with a few delicate strokes
17:19can make all the difference
17:20between a dead white marble statue
17:25and this living image.
17:30And it wasn't just on marble that the colour survived.
17:34The contents of these containers are so delicate
17:38they're kept constantly alarmed and refrigerated.
17:43They contain the timber from the only surviving wooden roof
17:47from the Roman world,
17:49found here in Herculaneum.
17:51When they were unearthed,
17:53the paint still survived.
17:55Remnants of those bright colours still exist.
17:58You can see traces of the blue and turquoise pigment.
18:10They tell of brightly coloured and intricately patterned wooden ceilings.
18:17Chemical analysis has enabled us to reconstruct them in all their glory.
18:44Nowhere is this world of colour and detail preserved better
18:48than in the house of Neptune and Amphitrite.
18:56Sylvia and her team have spent eight months conserving this mosaic.
19:02The ancient artists who made the piece and the modern restorers
19:07here share a painstaking attention to detail.
19:10As Sylvia brushed delicately away at the yellow pigment,
19:15she was astonished at what she found.
19:17The most important details were picked out with real gold.
19:23Yet we know this house was pretty modest by Herculaneum standards.
19:34In the front of the house, there's a shop, a sort of ancient off-licence.
19:40And here it is.
19:42The remains of dozens of shops survive from antiquity,
19:45but Herculaneum offers a level of preservation
19:49you just don't see anywhere else, even in Pompeii.
19:53Particularly, it's preserved wood.
19:57Look at what we've got here.
19:58We've got a screen that cuts off a little back room for the shop.
20:02Up here, there's a little balcony
20:05with Amphire wine containers stored up on it.
20:09And then round here, here's this wonderful thing, a sort of wine rack.
20:14So you can put your wine Amphire there
20:16and you can probably tip them over
20:18and pour out a smaller container for sale to the customer.
20:23Not only that, but you've got an upper floor, a flat above the shop.
20:29Do you see over there? There's a rather nice, decorated wall.
20:33And in the corner, there's a bed. You can see its bronze leg.
20:41Years of studying Herculaneum, with its humble shops backed up against opulent houses,
20:47taught me that this place was the best surviving example of how a Roman town really worked.
20:56A place, not of black and white contrasts between rich and poor, but a complex tapestry,
21:03where people of different wealth and backgrounds were woven into an intricate mix.
21:13And it's Herculaneum's latrines, from ancient shops, apartments and small businesses,
21:19that have given the most tantalising window onto the lives of its people.
21:26And the contents are all down below, so to speak.
21:32What makes this block of houses so fascinating
21:35is not just the enormous amount of sewage found down in the sewer,
21:39which allows us to analyse in detail their diet,
21:42but that it's found in a social context.
21:46You can see it's a series of shops and perfectly ordinary flats.
21:52We're looking at the diet not of people at the top of the social spectrum, but way down.
21:59The contents of the sewer are being analysed,
22:02and what Herculaneum is giving us is a completely new insight
22:07into what less well-off Romans ate.
22:11It was once thought they survived on a simple diet of bread and olives,
22:16but just like everything else in Herculaneum,
22:18the reality is turning out to be much more rich and surprising
22:22than anyone could have expected.
22:29I've been working on the organic material from the Herculaneum sewer for almost ten years.
22:35It evolved right from the beginning.
22:40I was fortunate enough not to have to excavate it.
22:42It's pretty cool because it's exactly what people were eating.
22:46It's probably as close as you can get.
22:48There's just a huge range in terms of shellfish, fish, also fruits and vegetables.
22:54We've already found over 110 different food items in the sewer.
22:59Everything from bones to seeds to eggshells has been preserved.
23:04Some of it chucked down the drain into the sewer below.
23:08But no sewer would be complete without some of these.
23:13Here is a human coprolite looking, I suppose, somewhat like a modern turd, a modern motion.
23:22And this is a broken section through one of the coprolites and the darker brown material now, the fish bones.
23:35What I'm doing here is carefully scraping away at the coprolite, trying to reveal a fish vertebra.
23:47See the bone there and then the general mineralized material of the coprolite itself.
23:58We know the people who lived around the Bay of Naples loved their fish.
24:03They recorded the different species in this stunning mosaic.
24:12Modern Ercolano is still a fishing port with a thriving market.
24:16And I thought I'd see whether there's anything they ate before the eruption that's still popular today.
24:26Fish merchant Signora Lucia has graciously offered to help.
24:31Thank you, thank you.
24:37There are 46 different species of fish in the sewer.
24:40We found many different types of sea breams.
24:44For example, orate.
24:46Orate? Eccole qua.
24:47These are orate.
24:51Anchovies, sardines.
24:53A lovely wrinkly eel.
24:57Three different types of eels.
25:00There's also a little bit of evidence for sea bass.
25:02As well as, I guess, what we would think is more unusual species such as sharks and rays.
25:11It's clear that from the harvest of the Mediterranean, the poorer people of Herculaneum were not only enjoying a diet
25:18rich in protein,
25:19but one more varied than that of the inhabitants today.
25:25Back at the lab, they've even managed to uncover how these people ate their fish,
25:29from a rarely surviving part of its anatomy, the otolith.
25:35Otoliths are located in the ear of the fish, so in the head.
25:40A lot of the otoliths show signs of digestion, so smoothing around the edges,
25:44which means that they were probably consumed, passed through the human digestive tract intact.
25:49But since they're in the head of the fish, this means that people eat their fish whole a lot of
25:54the times.
25:55The Romans like the fish crunchy.
26:00This tradition must surely have died out with the eruption.
26:05What?
26:06What are the fish?
26:10Okay!
26:14Angela tasted it.
26:15What's it?
26:20When you look at fish,
26:22there's very little difference between what was there in the Mediterranean Antiquity
26:26and what you find in a fish stall now.
26:28fruit and veg is a very different thing some is just the same as in antiquity apples now that's
26:35a good ancient roman apple so to speak pears also the rums very fond of pears but what about oranges
26:43oranges come probably from the arab world in the middle ages so oranges and lemons lemons the joy
26:53of the bay of naples don't exist in antiquity there's one fruit however that sustained its
27:02popularity in herculano for nearly 2 000 years oh signora i'm so pleased with what i've just found
27:16here this is herculaneum figs herculaneum and antiquity famous for figs and here we have
27:22the real figs of modern herculaneum beautifully cooked
27:43the food uncovered in the sewer can still be found in today's market in herculano
27:50it tells us about the surprising range of nutrition in this ancient town
27:57and now our skeletons are providing even more evidence
28:01a scientific method called collagen testing which determines the origin of protein in the bones
28:08is being used for the first time to tell us who at what here
28:13the traditional view is that only the rich could afford meat and fish in the ancient world
28:19so we might expect a small minority of our skeletons who've enjoyed this diet while the rest had only
28:26vegetable matter rather than this division what luca found was more surprising
28:34in herculaneum in herculaneum we have found a uniform distribution through all the possible kind of diets
28:42from vegetarians to meat here we have one adult male here we have a young lady should be around 20
28:51years old
28:52she was almost vegetarian she ate almost no meat while this adult male ate we can estimate close to 60
29:03percent of his protein intake from seafood
29:08so does that mean we've got really two different groups of the population the the the the the lucky
29:13ones who are having plenty of fish and the unlucky ones who just have a vegetarian diet no no no
29:19he could
29:19have been the cook of the master and maybe look he was the person who bought the food in the
29:25market
29:26so we don't know and she maybe she was the daughter of the master and for some religious or
29:32or any other kind of things she preferred not to eat meat so it's difficult they were very complex
29:39it wasn't a complex society back in the lab it's not just the food that erica and mark have uncovered
29:47but even the way it was prepared until recently some assumed poor people didn't prepare their own food at
29:55home here however microscopic analysis has now revealed nine different undigested herbs and spices
30:04including celery seeds coriander and fennel
30:10it seems that like their modern italian counterparts even the poorer people of herculaneum practiced a
30:16sophisticated level of cookery and what's more their tastes stretched far beyond the slopes of mount
30:24vesuvius the black pepper is by far the most exotic food item as it would have come all the way
30:32from
30:33india and i actually found two peppercorns at different locations in the sewer which means that
30:38two different sets of people living in different apartments would have been able to buy black pepper
30:44it would be another one and a half millennia before the poor in britain could afford the same taste
30:51they clearly also cared a lot about food and flavor and what they were eating
30:57because the people in herculaneum were definitely living to eat not just eating to live
31:04the analysis of the material from the sewer tells us the diet of herculaneum's people was rich and varied
31:13the fact that a sewer was built here at all tells us something else about this place
31:27some people imagine that a roman town was a filthy unhealthy place rather like a medieval city or even
31:34victorian london but the romans had an obsession with hygiene their doctor said you need to bathe
31:41regularly and a town like herculaneum has an abundant provision of public baths
31:48here we're in the suburban baths this is the cold dip and you can see that the water would come
31:56right up
31:57here and you can get what a dozen even more people here at the same time and if you're worried
32:04that the
32:04water's going to get a bit dirty with all those people never fear here's the plug hole to let it
32:10out they can change the water regularly we can't be sure if the entire population of herculaneum was
32:17allowed to use the baths but what we do know is that everyone had access to a clean water supply
32:26were roman towns filthy unhealthy places as some people seem to think
32:34look around you and you see the romans really care about hygiene their town is provided with running
32:42water public fountains look at this one it's even got this lovely figure of venus and what's she
32:49doing she's washing her hair beautiful she cares about the body keeping clean and it's not just a
32:57public fountain private houses have running water too here we've got part of the water distribution
33:03system of the town up on the top there was a cistern you've got lead pipes running up and that
33:08gives the pressure so that the water can go into individual houses and there are pipes running
33:14right down the pavement you can see three pipes running there feeding off into individual houses
33:22it's estimated that the population of herculaneum was around 4 000 small even by roman standards
33:29and no greater than some british villages today
33:33and yet even in the quarter of the town excavated they had three public baths a primary and secondary
33:42sewer system and over 80 latrines they enjoyed a level of public amenities not matched until modern times
33:53not only do they provide all these facilities but the magistrates are really keen to keep the place
33:59clean and here they've written up here's the name of marcus rufelius robbia and aulus tetius
34:07and they're giving a pretty strict warning here no dumping rubbish by the public fountain
34:14and they then specify the punishment if you're a free man you get fined and if you're slave you get
34:23flogged and suddenly there opens up in front of us that vast gulf between the world of the free and
34:31the slave the slave is punished by flogging and the flogging is a terrible thing not just very painful
34:37but it leaves a scar a mark on you for life you can never become a citizen if you've been
34:44flogged
34:47and it's on this most infamous institution of the ancient world slavery that herculaneum offers the
34:55most surprising insight of all this was a town of slaves and their owners the most famous of those
35:03slave owners is commemorated right here marcus nonius balbus here was herculaneum's biggest benefactor
35:17he must have made a pile as a governor of a roman province and then he spent some of his
35:22money on
35:23his town and the walls up above us were rebuilt by marcus nonius balbus
35:30another sign of his enormous wealth was a sheer number of his slaves when a roman gave freedom
35:36to a slave the slave took his name and there are over 50 people in herculaneum who carried the name
35:43of marcus nonius it's a name that continued long after him as this boundary marker between two
35:52homeowning ex-slaves shows on this side is julia and it's her wall private in perpetuity and on this
36:03side is marcus nonius damma freedman of marcus his wall private in perpetuity and we can tell where he
36:12comes from because that name damma is distinctive of syria as in damascus so he's come from the other side
36:20of the mediterranean world a tiny town like herculaneum was attracting immigrants from syria and beyond
36:30often they came as slaves but what this place and the roman empire offered them
36:35was the chance to buy into something unique in the ancient world
36:42what makes roman slavery so different from any other slave society we know about
36:46that is the way that a slave could be not just freed but given full citizenship
36:53it's this dynamic flow from slavery to citizenship that makes roman society
37:00quite unique and there's nowhere better than herculaneum to see that
37:12these marble tablets from herculaneum are the only surviving documents like this from the roman world
37:18they list the freedmen and full citizens of the town
37:22what they suggest is that up to 80 percent of the town's male citizens were ex-slaves pointing to a
37:31huge degree of social mobility even in the smallest of roman towns
37:39with over 300 skeletons surely our anthropologists must have the evidence to work out the social makeup of
37:47our group this female seems to bear all the hallmarks of a slave
37:55which shows some changes to some parts of the osso
38:03in this case this is a point of attack for the bicipite muscle
38:12and we see it very developed compared to what it would normally be
38:16and it is an indice of an activity a charge of the articulation of the gomiton
38:21particularly prolonged and evident
38:26we are talking about schiave
38:29we are talking about schiave
38:30in herculaneum but in gran part of the Roman world
38:33the schiave is open and out
38:36so maybe he will have done a certain type of activity
38:39during his life but at a certain point he will have been so brave
38:44to gain freedom and to become rich
38:46he is not a slave but he continues to have on the screen the signs of slavery
38:51so
38:53to say
38:54poor, rich, free, slave in Herculaneum is a bit of a mistake
39:01but there are other unique evidence that can shed light on the social makeup of the town
39:08what's special about herculaneum is that the records survive
39:12that show that this was an upwardly mobile society
39:16where full citizenship was the prize and slaves were battling to secure it
39:22this system had a dual purpose
39:24to encourage slaves to work hard
39:27and then buy into the empire by granting them citizenship
39:40here in the storerooms of the naples museum
39:43are kept one of the most valuable insights into the roman world
39:49they are the wooden tablets on which people recorded their legal affairs
39:57originally these tablets had a top layer of wax
40:00on which the legal wranglings of the people of herculaneum were painstakingly transcribed
40:06the heat of the eruption melted the wax
40:08but we can still read the minute scratch marks made on the carbonized wood below
40:14so fortunately when it came to legal matters the romans didn't do things by halves
40:22luckily the romans were really nervous about forgery
40:27so they wouldn't just have one copy of a document they had three copies
40:33you can see here some little holes which is the string which ties together the three copies
40:40and by looking at these different versions you can puzzle together a fascinating story
40:48a wonderful example of these documents comes from the house of the bicentenary
41:03and there was found a dossier of dozens of documents recording a big legal battle
41:10the argument was whether a girl called petronia justa was free or a slave
41:17and that depended on whether at the time of her birth her mother was free or a slave
41:24to resolve the problem they call in members of the household neighbors who all give witness
41:30and all have contradictory versions we don't know who won but what it tells us is that in this case
41:39it was possible for a slave girl to challenge her status in court
41:46another really important bundle of documents came from the house just two doors down from petronia justa
41:55it's really difficult just from looking at a roman house to tell what the status of the owner was
42:00the house look at this house grand lovely garden this is very much a desres they're very nice bedrooms
42:07in the background here and then over here we've got a magnificent great reception room you can hear it
42:14echoing echoing wonderful and this lovely mosaic on the floor and everything makes you think this must be
42:22really smart one of the elite of the town as it happens we know exactly who lived here because
42:30in a bedroom right up here was a bundle of documents and it's this character vanidius enicus
42:37and he's an ex-slave he's obviously a very much a favored slave and he's given his freedom and that
42:45was quite common but he's given his freedom underage terrific now i'm a free man
42:50but that wasn't enough for him because he wanted to be a full roman citizen too
42:57and it was really worth it a citizen gets the vote but he can also inherit property
43:04now normally you have to be 30 to become a full roman citizen if you start as a slave but
43:10there's a
43:10special legal loophole and venidius enicus uses it if you get legally married and then have a child
43:19declare the child before the local magistrates they can give you a certificate that says you now merit roman
43:27citizenship here we have an example of a bit written in ink and though black ink is a little hard
43:35to make
43:35out against charcoal if i get the light right i can see l venidius enicus there's his name
43:45and here we can see he's declaring the birth of a daughter before the magistrates
44:02that a daughter was born to him by his wife livia acte
44:09we know he achieved his ambition and made it to full citizenship because we can find his name in
44:14the list of citizens inscribed publicly in marble but it was very important to him to keep the legal
44:23proof just like his birth certificate or other personal documents locked away in his house
44:32living here at the foot of a peaceful mount vesuvius
44:35venidius enicus and petronia justa had no idea their world was about to end
44:51and the possessions found with the skeletons are a poignant reminder of what the people of herculaneum
44:58chose to leave and what to take with them when the catastrophe came
45:06a dazzling array of coins gold and jewelry craftsmanship as intricate as the society to which they belonged
45:26a surgeon's instruments perhaps for a doctor to attend to the wounded who this medic was remains a mystery
45:39this skeleton was a mother found clutching her child
45:47and given the choice of what to take with him this two-year-old was discovered with neither treasure
45:53nor toys he was found embracing a pet dog
46:00and then the last skeletons to be found the group of two women and the small child with the silver
46:07earrings
46:08and sicuramente questi orecchini indicano qualcosa sullo status della bambina penso proprio di sì anche per
46:18il materiale perché comunque erano orecchini d'argento quindi semplici per erano d'argento quindi
46:23presumibilmente non si tratta di di uno schiavo almeno la bambina non era schiava in ogni caso si
46:33tratta di una scena proprio commovente tutti sei trovato commosso da questo queste persone erano
46:42chiaramente coinvolte abbracciate in qualcosa di affettivo ti rendi un attimo partecipe del loro dolore
46:49del loro spavento del loro terrore
46:5897 percent of the bodies found in herculaneum were discovered here at the ancient shoreline
47:05unlike pompeii where they were spread across the site
47:09there must have been a reason they came here
47:13and one that might perhaps tell us how they faced up to disaster
47:18look at the construction of this space
47:21solid roman concrete with the strongest kind of vaulted roof
47:27this sort of space would be ideal for taking refuge in an earthquake
47:33and what our research has shown
47:35is that in the years running up to the eruption there were constant earthquakes they must have
47:41learned to use these spaces as a place of refuge a sort of bomb shelter
47:47then as now italy is prone to devastating earthquakes one shook pompeii and herculaneum in 63 ad
47:57it's impact was such that it's recorded in a marble relief
48:02you can see the temple of jupiter tipping lopsided as it shakes under the force of the ground beneath
48:09in the run-up to the eruption of mount vesuvius this seismic activity increased
48:16and its effects are starkly apparent on the buildings along herculaneum's ancient shoreline
48:24the people of herculaneum were used to earthquake activity almost continuously for decades before
48:30the eruption not just the big earthquake but a process by which the crust of the earth bobbed up and
48:38down over here we can see dramatic evidence of this we have the suburban baths and up there we can
48:46see
48:46how the windows of the baths are half blocked in right up there because the sea is crashing
48:52against the wall and down here the sand is piling against the bottom of the building
48:59the seismic activity caused the sea level to rise and fall by as much as five meters that's 16 feet
49:07over a 20-year period here i'm standing on top of a massive wall built to keep out the sea
49:14originally
49:15the sea was way out there and as it advanced and rose and came in it came smashing against this
49:22house this is the house of the telephus relief and you can see here they've had to block in
49:27a whole series of arches and down below we discovered there is an entire level of the house
49:35that they have had to abandon entirely because of the rising sea
49:41they chose to adapt to a perilous environment rather than abandoning their town why the roman
49:49writer seneca advising on the response to the disaster of 63 gives us one reason he said there
49:57was no point fleeing this particular earthquake earthquakes could happen anywhere tragically for the
50:05people here seneca understood neither the geology of earthquakes nor the connection between what
50:11was going on under the ground and the volcanic potential of mount vesuvius and there's another clue
50:19as to why people didn't leave here in the naples museum they're busy packing stuff up to go on
50:26exhibition we're just in time to capture this one which is a bit of a favorite favorite because
50:32it's a picture of vesuvius it's over on its side but you can just about make out here is the
50:39volcano
50:41and by the volcano is a figure of a god the god of wine bacchus and he's completely clad in
50:48grapes
50:49and that points to the enormous fertility of the slopes of vesuvius here you can even see vines growing in
50:59rows and there's another interesting thing about this vesuvius has got a cone on top it hasn't yet
51:07blown its top off and that tells us two things for the romans vesuvius is a safe place
51:15no eruptions and it's an enormously fertile place why would anyone want to leave it
51:24the people were then and are now deeply attached to their landscape
51:34signor ambrosio runs a vineyard on the ash-rich slopes of vesuvius and is very proud of his wine
51:42color of the color of lava the wine is called lacryma christi literally the tears of christ
51:52and its production was thought to date back to the 18th century till signor ambrosio uncovered some
52:00extraordinary new evidence in his vineyard oh you've made me a happy man a roman dolium that's what i like
52:10to see this is a trace this is amazing this is ancient roman wine on the lip here this is
52:29the must
52:30and actually if i run my finger there it's rough and here it's smooth and slightly sticky
52:38they've conducted dna analysis of the must here and it emerges that it is the same as the modern wine
52:49and with his wine vineyard and land at stake sino ambrosio has too much to lose by leaving mount
52:55vesuvius just like his roman forefathers
53:03back in 79 a.d no one in herculaneum had any idea that it might erupt let alone the scale
53:11of the
53:12catastrophe that was about to unfold
53:24the disaster took many hours to play out probably more than 12 hours before the final lethal surge that
53:33killed people arrived in the meantime the population must have agonized about how to save themselves
53:41perhaps thinking of what they did in earthquakes in the past many of them came down here to the ancient
53:48shore some were out on the beach some inside these arches
53:54the vast majority found in the arches were women or children whilst those on the beach were nearly all
54:01male perhaps the time scale can explain this strange separation and how these people organized
54:08themselves before disaster struck the humans tend to react to crisis differently if the uh crisis is
54:21sudden or very short time or the crisis is long and when the crisis is sudden they the stronger they
54:30survive the males adult males young when the crisis is much longer so there is more
54:38possibility to organize there is a protection for the weakest so children and women it depends how
54:45much time you have if this is collapsing now we rush away if they tell us in 15 minutes this
54:52ceiling will
54:53collapse we organize for instance it happened on the titanic where they had hours uh so at the end more
55:01women and children that survived than males with herculaneum you have even more hours and are we seeing
55:09special treatment are we seeing different treatment of women and children from males they put the family
55:17inside the chamber and the males were looking around what we do what's going on but it's rather nice
55:22because you've got the romans being real gentlemen oh yes they're saying women and children please
55:27take take refuge from this disaster and we will we'll be brave we'll stay outside
55:36the fact that there were so many men out on the beach suggests an act of self-sacrifice
55:43but by the final phase of the eruption escape was impossible
55:47the ash was now falling at a rate of over a meter an hour and would envelop our skeletons capturing
55:54their
55:55last moments of life
56:03a mother embracing her baby a boy clasping his pet dog
56:11and two women cradling a girl with silver earrings
56:19the arches offered protection from earthquakes not from the wrath of mount vesuvius
56:26nothing could have prepared these people for what happened here
56:31but these skeletons are more than a grisly reminder of death and disaster
56:37like so much else in herculaneum they give us a vivid and sharply focused picture of people's lives
56:47and it's a surprising picture from their homes to what they ate
56:53to how they ate it and the values they held dear it's tempting to talk about the ordinary roman
57:02but it's difficult to pigeonhole venidius enicus petronia justa or the skeletons from the arches in this way
57:15we tend to think of the roman world as one of brutal contrasts between rich and poor master and slave
57:22herculaneum shows us a more complex and a more fluid society
57:27it gives us back the people in the middle and far from being what we think of as ordinary they
57:35are quite extraordinary
57:39this was a place where slaves could be flogged
57:43but also a town where they could be freed earn citizenship own property and gain dignity
57:53where immigrants from across the empire and beyond could strive in a land of opportunity to enjoy a
58:01quality of life unparalleled for antiquity and as full citizens make themselves at home in this new roman
58:11world a world that would continue to flourish for another three centuries after the destruction of herculaneum
58:32of the nation
58:36what has monkeys earwax to do with einstein james may's things you need to know tomorrow at 10 here on
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