The Backstory: Graffiti was Pompeii’s Instagram

The destruction of Pompeii in 79 AD by the volcanic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius was complete. But the people who lived there left behind personal stories. Graffiti was their social media.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's interesting Pompeii was nothing but ruins after the eruption
of Mount Vesuvius almost two thousand years ago. But there's
a lot more to the story. How did these people
living everyday lives wind up almost instantly locked in stone
when the volcano hit? What were their pre volcano lives
like and how did they use social media to leave

(00:21):
us their memoirs. I'm Patty Steele, gone in just a
few hours, but some of their stories survive, proving they
were just like us. That's next on the backstory. We're
back with the backstory. Imagine your life in sunny Italy
two thousand years ago. Maybe it's a life of luxury

(00:43):
or perhaps slavery. In seventy nine a d. Pompeii was
a rich and beautiful city of around twenty to thirty
thousand people. They all wanted the same things we do.
They wanted to be successful, They loved great food, art, leisure,
time and entertainment, and they loved one another. We know
all this because they left behind a rich recorded history.

(01:04):
Their Instagram, snapchats and posts were graffiti. A lot of
it survived the destruction of the city in the volcanic
eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Ancient graffiti was all over the
place in Pompeii, on the walls of temples, tombs, bars,
public spaces, even inside homes. Pretty much nothing was off
limits when it came to posting their thoughts. It's how

(01:27):
people communicated. We see graffiti that celebrates the birth of
a new baby or wishes a happy birthday to someone.
There's graffiti offering services and making political statements. There's an
elaborate description of a party throne for a very wealthy
young guy coming of age. It was a week long
party with a dinner for almost seven thousand of his

(01:48):
closest friends, a week filled with feasting, drinking, and gladiator battles.
That's a lot to describe in a bunch of graffiti, right,
But again, it was their social media. They were just
like Gus course, minus the gladiator petals. To spread their messages,
they used a piece of charcoal or more often a
stylus or nail, which was used to scratch the graffiti

(02:10):
into walls. People would leave messages inside someone's home when
they came to visit. Imagine that, and even messages of
love were left and answered on public walls, so that
everybody could see them. One of the message threads found
started with Prima sends many greetings to Secundas. Secundas was delighted.

(02:31):
He answers back. Secundas too, greets his Prima everywhere. I
ask Mistress that you love me. And then he writes
again twice, saying both times Secundis greets his Prima. Secundas
Secundis greets his Prima. He definitely had the hats for Prima.
But all of this and so much more was buried
by Vesuvius. So it's August twenty fourth, seventy nine AD.

(02:56):
You hear a rumbling in the distance, and you feel
the earth tremble, just little bit at first, but you
don't panic. You live just about thirteen miles from Mount Vesuvius,
the massive volcano south of Naples, Italy. You've seen the
smoke and felt the rumbles before, and all the teachers
and other big shots tell everybody there's nothing to worry about.

(03:17):
Maybe you're working in the marketplace, maybe you're a slave
in a rich person's house, or you're a sex worker
in one of the many brothels in town. Maybe you're
done with work and relaxing at a local tavern, or
in the public baths, or if you were rich, you
could be enjoying your garden or gossiping in the spectacular
private thermal baths built for the upper class. But pretty

(03:40):
soon the sky darkens even more. You look up you
see flocks of birds headed away from the mountain. Soon
a light coating of ash begins to fall. Now the
hot ash and small amounts of heated pumice start pouring
out of Vesuvius, and you realize this isn't going to
be good. It becomes incredibly dark. You can barely see

(04:03):
where you're going. People around you panic and begin to run.
Some head south, a deadly choice. Others head for the sea,
hoping to get picked up by a boat, and some
head north toward Naples, which turns out to be a
good decision, or simply luck at the draw, since the
path of destruction happened to head south. For some, whether

(04:23):
you're a slave or disabled, or just don't have the
wherewithal to run, you try to hide from the onslaught.
Within just a few hours, the falling ash has turned
into red hot falling rocks. Then there are the pyroclastic clouds,
kind of an avalanche of super hot, toxic gas and
debris that blows through on a cushion of air at

(04:46):
speeds of almost five hundred miles an hour with temperatures
as high as eighteen hundred degrees. It's hell on earth.
The city is completely buried in ash and rock within hours.
People that try to hide in their houses are buried
in the hot ash, many of them sitting with family
or coworkers, some lying down, some running Because of the

(05:08):
heat and the ash. Their bodies become frozen in their
death pose, only to be found thousands of years later
in the same pose. They're completely buried, their actual bodies
eventually disintegrate. They leave behind though, a kind of full
bodied death mask, which later on was filled with plaster
by those that dug through the rubble, recreating the moment

(05:31):
of death for the victims. What's amazing is of the
twenty to thirty thousand people living in Pompeii, only about
two thousand died, but the city was locked in time
because of how it was buried, and the survivors didn't
come back. Pompey offered a life of luxury for some
and poverty and hard work for others, not so very

(05:52):
different from our world right. The messages they left behind
give us tremendous insight into their lives and what made
them human, and into what we have in common with them.
Hope you're enjoying the Backstory with Patty Steele. Follow or
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(06:14):
also feel free to dm me if you have a
story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty
Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele.
The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis
Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser.
Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday

(06:37):
and Friday. Feel free to reach out to me with
comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty
Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening
to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history
you didn't know you needed to know.