Pompeii and circumstance

"On the plus side, it'll help the paint dry quicker..."

Finger firmly on the pulse of what’s happening as always, here’s some important breaking news from 79 AD.

Historians, archaeologists and others of an all-things-ancient leaning have long believed that the Vesuvius eruption, which wiped out nearby Roman city Pompeii, took place on the 24th of August.

Being so specific about something that happened a very long time ago is impressive stuff – they weren’t using our current calendar system at that point, and probably didn’t even have pictures of cats above the months either.

The level of certainty was thanks to swanky lawyer and author Pliny the Younger, who penned (or, probably, quilled) the details in a letter to Roman historian and senator, Tacitus, covering the death his uncle, Pliny the Elder.

PtE bravely sailed towards the erupting volcano to rescue people in danger but never returned, whilst PtY watched the devastation from the safety of the other side of the bay.

It was 20 years before he sent the details, though. And we don’t have the originals, only translations and copies made in the almost-two-centuries since. So... scope for an error there, then.

There’s long been a doubt about the catastrophe in Italy taking place in August, as evidence of autumnal fruits and heating braziers found in the ruins suggested a later date. I never get my brazier out before late September, so that makes sense.

New excavations have now thrown up something rather remarkable. You know when you scrawl something on the wall in your house, on a floorboard, or the back of some plasterboard when doing DIY, then cover it up with your work? Someone did that in Pompeii... on the 17th of October 79 AD.

Clearly, they’d be mightily annoyed to know they only had 16 days before it got buried under tonnes of ash, but hopefully they got to enjoy their decorating during the brief calm before the firestorm.

It would seem that a charcoal scrawl by a workman on a wall has potentially discredited the mighty Pliny. I can sympathise – I recently sent flowers for a 90-year-old Aunt’s birthday, then got a polite phone call to say it was her 89th. I only had my poor grasp of maths and the year she was born to contend with. Pliny had to cope with changes in calendars, mistranslations and having ‘the Younger’ for a surname.

It does make you think though. What if Christmas is actually in February? When exactly is my birthday? And what happened in Hastings in 1067?

This post first appeared as my 'A wry look at the week' column, in The Mail, on Friday the 19th of October 2018. Both the print and the online version on their website re-titled it as "It's time to praise Pliny and his crew". Not sure how they came up with that, but that wasn't really the point of what I wrote!

Some weeks I really struggle to get fired up by anything enough to want to write about it. For some reason, I spotted this news story and an hour later it was written. Just occasionally, it is that easy.

(CD A-Z: Still in the compilations section, this time a tidy 3 CD set - Blank & Jones Present So80s. Bit of Ultravox at the moment. Splendid.)

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