Mary Beard has a Chair of Classics at Cambridge and is a Fellow of Newnham College. She is classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement and author of the blog “A Don’s Life.” She is also a winner of the 2008 Wolfson History Prize.
Engrossingly mischievous… Beard takes cheeky, undisguised delight
in puncturing the many fantasies and misconceptions that have grown
up around Pompeii—sown over the years by archaeologists and
classicists no less than Victorian novelists and makers of ‘sword
and sandal’ film extravaganzas. While many scholars build careers
through increasingly elaborate reconstructions of the ancient
world, Beard consistently stresses the limits of our knowledge, the
precariousness of our constructs and the ambiguity or contradiction
inherent in many of our sources. ‘There is hardly a shred of
evidence for any of it’ serves as her battle cry, and it’s a noble
one… This is a wonderful book, for the impressive depth of
information it comfortably embraces, for its easygoing erudition
and, not least, for its chatty, personable style.
*New York Times Book Review*
[The Fires of Vesuvius] offered me a wealth of riveting information
on the vanished city, written with clarity, wit and a detective’s
eye for solving conundrums.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Doing her level best to unpack the ‘Pompeii paradox’—how ‘we
simultaneously know a huge amount and very little about ancient
life’ in Rome’s foremost ruin, the seaside city wholly consumed by
a vomitous Vesuvius in 79 A.D.—Beard, the subversive and spiky
Cambridge classicist, leaves few forensic (or semiotic) stones
unturned. Alternately recreating daily life and picking, brick by
symbolic brick, at the abundant archaeological and psychological
detritus, she proceeds to exhume, analyze, and reconstitute the
time and place in a manner pleasing to traditionalists,
revisionists, and inevitabilists alike.
*The Atlantic*
As Mary Beard shows in The Fires of Vesuvius, her marvelous
excavation of Pompeii’s history, the city is rarely what it is
billed to be. A leading historian of Roman culture, a prolific
essayist and an irrepressible blogger, Beard punctures conventional
pieties about history and culture with formidable scholarly
authority, always paying keen attention to the layering effects of
the passage of time… With The Fires of Vesuvius, Beard has produced
a lusciously detailed, erudite account of life in ancient Pompeii…
The challenge of The Fires of Vesuvius rests in the way that its
portrait of Pompeii overturns longstanding conceptions about the
empire to which the city belonged. Most important is Beard’s
depiction of the chaotic diversity of Pompeian life—the sheer
variety of its religious experience, its linguistic multiplicity,
its class tensions—which raises far-reaching questions about the
nature of cultural and political identity in the imperial Roman
context… With its focus on labor, education and religion, The Fires
of Vesuvius is a testament to how much Roman studies has to offer
the contemporary political imagination. Well-informed in the latest
research in demography, the history of Roman politics,
architecture, ancient economics, feminist and post-colonial
studies, Beard probes the experience of men and women, free and
slave, rich and poor… The point that permeates Beard’s work, along
with much of the best of classical cultural and literary studies,
is that part of the job of studying the past is to examine the
assumptions of each storyteller and the effect each of their
stories has, ripple-like, on the rest. Beard’s depiction of Pompeii
manages to do justice to all its alien strangeness while prompting
us to reflect on the significance of felt resemblances between its
experience and our own—in the formation of cultural identity,
habits of consumption, political nepotism, religion, sexuality,
violent entertainments and much more.
*The Nation*
It is the long vanished life of Pompeii that Mary Beard evokes in
all its detail and complexity in her new book… She gives us Pompeii
itself, with its smells and swill, its sex and superstition, its
poverty and pathos. It is a wholly successful evocation, pieced
together from a deep knowledge of a frighteningly large
bibliography.
*New Republic*
[A] wry, recondite and colorful story of what is known and what is
conjectured about life in Pompeii before the fall… Like a canny
cook making a banquet from scant means, Beard creates a living
Pompeii for the reader from the hard evidence at her disposal.
Though she is a skeptic, never pretending to ingredients she
doesn’t have in her larder, she knows how to take the gaudy
razzmatazz of a building’s facade or the messy amalgam of workaday
shops jumbled with mansions, and make them do a little singing for
the reader… This is a lively piece of work, with an easy
familiarity and obvious pleasure in the subject, wearing its
knowledge lightly, and not above some mischievous poking at
Pompeii’s many controversies.
*San Francisco Chronicle*
In this lively survey, Beard, a classicist at Cambridge, tempers
erudition with a skepticism toward interpretive overreach. ‘To be
honest, this is all completely baffling,’ she remarks about a
painting dense with iconography. Archeological reasoning is often
ingeniously indirect—ragged drips suggest a bucket knocked from a
platform by painters fleeing the volcano—and Beard’s caution makes
her an excellent guide for nonspecialists, as she explains both
what we know and how we know it with equal clarity.
*New Yorker*
In a survey that encompasses Pompeians’ religion, diet, and even
traffic patterns, Beard sets out to correct many of the
misimpressions that countless guidebooks—and guides—have foisted on
tourists… More than two centuries of tourism and excavation have
left a legacy of assumptions that cloud our understanding of the
site—and, since Pompeii contains some of the best evidence about
daily life in the Roman world, about Rome itself. The Fires of
Vesuvius lays out decades of specialist debate in clear,
reader-friendly prose.
*Wilson Quarterly*
In The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found Mary Beard
cheerfully dismantles as many assumptions about what we are looking
at in the city’s remains as she constructs hypotheses. She shows
conclusively that the city was not entirely taken unawares by the
eruption.
*Boston Globe*
In The Fires of Vesuvius, Cambridge University classics professor
Mary Beard restores Pompeii in all its bustling everydayness… But
as vivid and detailed a depiction as Beard is able to provide, what
is equally fascinating about Pompeii is how much we do not know…
Beard calls this the ‘Pompeii paradox,’ the fact that ‘we
simultaneously know a huge amount and very little about life
there.’ That’s also what makes this learned but lively account a
rather haunting read. Oddly familiar images of daily life two
millenniums distant are juxtaposed with a sense of impenetrable
mystery. ‘A visit to Pompeii almost never disappoints,’ Beard
insists. To read this book is to agree.
*Christian Science Monitor*
In the The Fires of Vesuvius, [Beard] gives us a wonderfully
comprehensive picture of the city that has long fascinated
historians, archaeologists and classicists… For a historian such as
Beard, drawing on the latest archaeological findings, it is
possible to write with authority how people of the first century
ate their meals and lighted their homes, earned a living, governed
themselves and attended to their bodily needs. For her—as she shows
in this book—Pompeii is not a dead but a living city.
*Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel*
Pompeii may still confuse and challenge, but Beard’s informative
reappraisal vividly evokes the way it was. And travelers will
welcome her practical advice on making a visit.
*Richmond Times-Dispatch*
Whether she’s poring over graffiti about gladiatorial machismo in
Pompeii or writing about a ‘wistful nostalgia for the erotic
dimension of classical pedagogy,’ Britain’s most outspoken
classicist is hilarious, staggeringly knowledgeable and utterly
brilliant.
*Vogue UK*
In a grand synthesis, one of our most distinguished classicists
relates all that we know—and don’t know—about ancient Pompeii,
devastated by a flood of lava and volcanic ash from Mt. Vesuvius in
A.D. 79. Beard splendidly recreates the life and times of Pompeii
in a work that is part archeology and part history. She examines
the full scope of life, from houses, occupations, government, food
and wine to sex, and the baths, recreation and religion… Beard’s
tour de force takes the study of ancient history to a new
level.
*Publishers Weekly (starred review)*
In a grand synthesis, one of our most distinguished classicists relates all that we know--and don't know--about ancient Pompeii, devastated by a flood of lava and volcanic ash from Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Beard splendidly recreates the life and times of Pompeii in a work that is part archeology and part history. She examines the full scope of life, from houses, occupations, government, food and wine to sex, and the baths, recreation and religion. In this bustling seaside town, makers of garum, a concoction of rotten seafood and salt, did a modest business, but Umbricius Scaurus marketed his product as "premium" garum and became one of Pompeii's nouveaux riches. Focusing on the restored houses, Beard refutes the common notion that most Romans ate their meals while reclining on a triclinium. Rather, they ate wherever they could within the home. Finally, Beard reminds us that everybody except the very poorest went to the baths, which served as a great social leveler. Beard's tour de force takes the study of ancient history to a new level. 23 color and 113 b&w illus. (Dec.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
Engrossingly mischievous... Beard takes cheeky, undisguised delight
in puncturing the many fantasies and misconceptions that have grown
up around Pompeii-sown over the years by archaeologists and
classicists no less than Victorian novelists and makers of 'sword
and sandal' film extravaganzas. While many scholars build careers
through increasingly elaborate reconstructions of the ancient
world, Beard consistently stresses the limits of our knowledge, the
precariousness of our constructs and the ambiguity or contradiction
inherent in many of our sources. 'There is hardly a shred of
evidence for any of it' serves as her battle cry, and it's a noble
one... This is a wonderful book, for the impressive depth of
information it comfortably embraces, for its easygoing erudition
and, not least, for its chatty, personable style. -- Steve Coates *
New York Times Book Review *
[The Fires of Vesuvius] offered me a wealth of riveting
information on the vanished city, written with clarity, wit and a
detective's eye for solving conundrums. -- Alberto Manguel * Times
Literary Supplement *
Doing her level best to unpack the 'Pompeii paradox'-how 'we
simultaneously know a huge amount and very little about ancient
life' in Rome's foremost ruin, the seaside city wholly consumed by
a vomitous Vesuvius in 79 A.D.-Beard, the subversive and spiky
Cambridge classicist, leaves few forensic (or semiotic) stones
unturned. Alternately recreating daily life and picking, brick by
symbolic brick, at the abundant archaeological and psychological
detritus, she proceeds to exhume, analyze, and reconstitute the
time and place in a manner pleasing to traditionalists,
revisionists, and inevitabilists alike. * The Atlantic *
As Mary Beard shows in The Fires of Vesuvius, her marvelous
excavation of Pompeii's history, the city is rarely what it is
billed to be. A leading historian of Roman culture, a prolific
essayist and an irrepressible blogger, Beard punctures conventional
pieties about history and culture with formidable scholarly
authority, always paying keen attention to the layering effects of
the passage of time... With The Fires of Vesuvius, Beard has
produced a lusciously detailed, erudite account of life in ancient
Pompeii... The challenge of The Fires of Vesuvius rests in
the way that its portrait of Pompeii overturns longstanding
conceptions about the empire to which the city belonged. Most
important is Beard's depiction of the chaotic diversity of Pompeian
life-the sheer variety of its religious experience, its linguistic
multiplicity, its class tensions-which raises far-reaching
questions about the nature of cultural and political identity in
the imperial Roman context... With its focus on labor, education
and religion, The Fires of Vesuvius is a testament to how
much Roman studies has to offer the contemporary political
imagination. Well-informed in the latest research in demography,
the history of Roman politics, architecture, ancient economics,
feminist and post-colonial studies, Beard probes the experience of
men and women, free and slave, rich and poor... The point that
permeates Beard's work, along with much of the best of classical
cultural and literary studies, is that part of the job of studying
the past is to examine the assumptions of each storyteller and the
effect each of their stories has, ripple-like, on the rest. Beard's
depiction of Pompeii manages to do justice to all its alien
strangeness while prompting us to reflect on the significance of
felt resemblances between its experience and our own-in the
formation of cultural identity, habits of consumption, political
nepotism, religion, sexuality, violent entertainments and much
more. -- Joy Connolly * The Nation *
It is the long vanished life of Pompeii that Mary Beard evokes in
all its detail and complexity in her new book... She gives us
Pompeii itself, with its smells and swill, its sex and
superstition, its poverty and pathos. It is a wholly successful
evocation, pieced together from a deep knowledge of a frighteningly
large bibliography. -- G. W. Bowersock * New Republic *
[A] wry, recondite and colorful story of what is known and what is
conjectured about life in Pompeii before the fall... Like a canny
cook making a banquet from scant means, Beard creates a living
Pompeii for the reader from the hard evidence at her disposal.
Though she is a skeptic, never pretending to ingredients she
doesn't have in her larder, she knows how to take the gaudy
razzmatazz of a building's facade or the messy amalgam of workaday
shops jumbled with mansions, and make them do a little singing for
the reader... This is a lively piece of work, with an easy
familiarity and obvious pleasure in the subject, wearing its
knowledge lightly, and not above some mischievous poking at
Pompeii's many controversies. -- Peter Lewis * San Francisco
Chronicle *
In this lively survey, Beard, a classicist at Cambridge, tempers
erudition with a skepticism toward interpretive overreach. 'To be
honest, this is all completely baffling,' she remarks about a
painting dense with iconography. Archeological reasoning is often
ingeniously indirect-ragged drips suggest a bucket knocked from a
platform by painters fleeing the volcano-and Beard's caution makes
her an excellent guide for nonspecialists, as she explains both
what we know and how we know it with equal clarity. * New Yorker
*
In a survey that encompasses Pompeians' religion, diet, and even
traffic patterns, Beard sets out to correct many of the
misimpressions that countless guidebooks-and guides-have foisted on
tourists... More than two centuries of tourism and excavation have
left a legacy of assumptions that cloud our understanding of the
site-and, since Pompeii contains some of the best evidence about
daily life in the Roman world, about Rome itself. The Fires of
Vesuvius lays out decades of specialist debate in clear,
reader-friendly prose. -- Andrew Curry * Wilson Quarterly *
In The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found Mary Beard
cheerfully dismantles as many assumptions about what we are looking
at in the city's remains as she constructs hypotheses. She shows
conclusively that the city was not entirely taken unawares by the
eruption. -- Katherine A. Powers * Boston Globe *
In The Fires of Vesuvius, Cambridge University classics
professor Mary Beard restores Pompeii in all its bustling
everydayness... But as vivid and detailed a depiction as Beard is
able to provide, what is equally fascinating about Pompeii is how
much we do not know... Beard calls this the 'Pompeii paradox,' the
fact that 'we simultaneously know a huge amount and very little
about life there.' That's also what makes this learned but lively
account a rather haunting read. Oddly familiar images of daily life
two millenniums distant are juxtaposed with a sense of impenetrable
mystery. 'A visit to Pompeii almost never disappoints,' Beard
insists. To read this book is to agree. -- Marjorie Kehe *
Christian Science Monitor *
In the The Fires of Vesuvius, [Beard] gives us a wonderfully
comprehensive picture of the city that has long fascinated
historians, archaeologists and classicists... For a historian such
as Beard, drawing on the latest archaeological findings, it is
possible to write with authority how people of the first century
ate their meals and lighted their homes, earned a living, governed
themselves and attended to their bodily needs. For her-as she shows
in this book-Pompeii is not a dead but a living city. -- David
Walton * Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel *
Pompeii may still confuse and challenge, but Beard's informative
reappraisal vividly evokes the way it was. And travelers will
welcome her practical advice on making a visit. -- Judith Chettle *
Richmond Times-Dispatch *
Whether she's poring over graffiti about gladiatorial machismo in
Pompeii or writing about a 'wistful nostalgia for the erotic
dimension of classical pedagogy,' Britain's most outspoken
classicist is hilarious, staggeringly knowledgeable and utterly
brilliant. * Vogue UK *
In a grand synthesis, one of our most distinguished classicists
relates all that we know-and don't know-about ancient Pompeii,
devastated by a flood of lava and volcanic ash from Mt. Vesuvius in
A.D. 79. Beard splendidly recreates the life and times of Pompeii
in a work that is part archeology and part history. She examines
the full scope of life, from houses, occupations, government, food
and wine to sex, and the baths, recreation and religion... Beard's
tour de force takes the study of ancient history to a new level. *
Publishers Weekly (starred review) *
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