Why Pompeii's tragedy still captivates us today

Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Today we've got the fourth and final part of our Sunday series in which Kev Lochan is joined by Jess Venner to explore the last days of ancient Pompeii. And if you've enjoyed this series, join us next Sunday when we'll be delving into the creation of and legacy of Magna Carta. But for now, it's over to Jess and Kev. Once a thriving Roman city, life in Pompeii stopped suddenly in AD seventy nine when the nearby volcano Vesuvius erupted, burying the city and its inhabitants under meters of ash.

I'm Kevlochan and I'm joined today by Dr. Jess Venner, a Roman historian and an expert in Pompeii. Jess, welcome back. Great to have you. Thank you.

Yes, it's good to be back. This time we're going to be talking about the artifacts and the arts that have been discovered at Pompeii. But first we're going to begin with a slightly more ghoulish line, which is as well as those pieces of art and inanimate artifacts, we've also got quite a lot of human remains and brilliant casts of them. How have we been able to study those in such detail? Yeah, so one of the first excavators that was really, really important in Pompeii was Giuseppe Fiorelli.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (42 minutes, 7,979 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 5 episodes for $3.49, and monthly plans are cheaper still.