{"id":7323,"date":"2015-07-07T06:06:14","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T12:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7323"},"modified":"2015-07-05T19:08:13","modified_gmt":"2015-07-06T01:08:13","slug":"is-everything-you-knew-about-pompeii-and-herculaneum-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7323","title":{"rendered":"Is Everything You Knew about Pompeii and Herculaneum Wrong?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At <em>Wonders and Marvels<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wondersandmarvels.com\/2015\/07\/pompeii-myth-buster-2.html\">a whole list of guide- and guidebook &#8220;truths&#8221; that may not be so. <\/a><\/p>\n<p>It starts with this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Myth #1<\/strong> <strong>\u2013 Vesuvius Did Not Erupt on 24 August AD 79.<\/strong> Everybody confidently quotes this as the date of the eruption, but everybody is probably wrong! At the turn of the 20th century, everybody claimed the eruption occurred in November. But Wallace-Hadrill thinks late September or early October is a likelier date. His clue is a lot of ripe pomegranates found near a buried villa at a place called Oplontis between Pompeii and Herculaneum. (This villa is known as the Villa Poppea or Villa Poppaea because it was owned by Nero\u2019s wife Poppaea.) In Italy, pomegranates ripen in late September\/early October. The problem is not with Pliny the Younger, whose famous letters tell us the date of the disaster, but with the monks who interpreted his dates as they copied his manuscripts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At Wonders and Marvels, a whole list of guide- and guidebook &#8220;truths&#8221; that may not be so. It starts with this: Myth #1 \u2013 Vesuvius Did Not Erupt on 24 August AD 79. Everybody confidently quotes this as the date of the eruption, but everybody is probably wrong! At the turn of the 20th century, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,56],"class_list":["post-7323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archaeology","tag-rome"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1U7","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1472,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1472","url_meta":{"origin":7323,"position":0},"title":"800 Bags of Roman &#8216;Shit&#8217;","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Noted Classics professor Mary Beard visits the sewers and cesspits of Herculaneum, it being one of the two Roman towns buried by the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. A lot of the sieved organic remains are now being studied in Oxford, and they certainly show that the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":365,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=365","url_meta":{"origin":7323,"position":1},"title":"The lost library of Rome\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 26, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The lost library of Rome Classical scholars are calling for more excavation at the Villa of the Papyri in Ercolano (Herculaneum) because even more ancient books may be buried there. Once the villa had been stripped, 200 years ago, the tunnels were sealed. But last week a group of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13209,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13209","url_meta":{"origin":7323,"position":2},"title":"Lakshmi or Yakshi? The Story of a Hindu Idol in Ancient Pompeii","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 17, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"The 1938 excavation of a house in Pompeii produced a statuette that first was believed to be Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of prosperity and fertility. Newer reseach says no, but she still is Hindu. Where did she come from? A podcast interview with art historian Laura Weinstein examines the statuette's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"Trade routes from Roman Empire to India","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/India-trade-routes-300x164.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":176,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=176","url_meta":{"origin":7323,"position":3},"title":"Explosive Fruit Checking my blog\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 29, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Explosive Fruit Checking my blog visitor log the other day, I saw that someone had used Google's translation service to read it in French. The phrase \"originally published in The Pomegranate\" had been translated as \"? l'origine ?dit?es dans la grenade.\" \"La grenade\" . . . of course! The Engish\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1342,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1342","url_meta":{"origin":7323,"position":4},"title":"Explosive Fruit Checking my blog\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 29, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Explosive Fruit Checking my blog visitor log the other day, I saw that someone had used Google's translation service to read it in French. The phrase \"originally published in The Pomegranate\" had been translated as \"? l'origine ?dit?es dans la grenade.\" \"La grenade\" . . . of course! The Engish\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1357,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1357","url_meta":{"origin":7323,"position":5},"title":"Explosive Fruit Checking my blog\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 29, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Explosive Fruit Checking my blog visitor log the other day, I saw that someone had used Google's translation service to read it in French. The phrase \"originally published in The Pomegranate\" had been translated as \"? l'origine ?dit?es dans la grenade.\" \"La grenade\" . . . of course! The Engish\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7324,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7323\/revisions\/7324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}