The eruption of Vesuvius, in the year 79, remains one of the great apocalypse stories in history. In just two days, the thriving Roman city of Pompeii was engulfed in a shower of ash and thick pyroclastic flows. It is estimated that 20,000 to 30,000 inhabitants fled in the first hours, while nearly 1,300 unfortunate people perished in a furnace of burning gas and volcanic projections.
Tradition has long presented Pompeii as a destroyed city, frozen in the moment of disaster, however, new archaeological excavations have shaken up this romantic, but erroneous, vision. According to the team led by Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park, the city did not simply die out; she survived as best she could in a hostile environment. The traces of occupation unearthed in the southern district show that between the charred ruins, a population of survivors and newcomers transformed the rubble into makeshift housing, details an article in the New York Times.
Over the centuries following the eruption, certain houses whose floors emerged from the ash deposits were reinvested. The survivors tinkered with kitchens and workshops in what had become cellars, built ovens and fireplaces, reused bricks and tiles to improvise a new architecture. Coins, Christian oil lamps and even an oven confirm that Pompeii was inhabited until the 5th centurye century.
Life was precarious in this ghostly, post-apocalyptic Pompeii. Deprived of aqueducts, cut off from the now diverted Sarno river, the city no longer offered the modern layout of a Roman city. No water networks, no administration, no real security: only resourcefulness and the instinct for survival. “A world of those left behind”notes Gabriel Zuchtriegel, in which the inhabitants shared a territory abandoned to anarchy and pillaging.
A short-lived resurrection
Other research makes it possible to trace the fate of the thousands of refugees who fled the deadly eruption. A team led by historian Steven Tuck found traces of 172 survivors thanks in particular to the careful study of inscriptions found in other cities, on frescoes, tombs, etc. In Pozzuoli, for example, the family of the merchant Aulus Umbricius recreated their trade in “garum”, the fish sauce very popular with the Romans – even going so far as to name their firstborn after the name of their adopted city.
This patient census work reveals that the choices of survivors were dictated less by family attachment than by economic and social opportunity. In towns neighboring Naples, refugees recreated community networks, often intermarrying among exiles from Pompeii, reconstituting a common identity far from their ancient buried city.
The earth, too, came back to life more quickly than one might think. As the volcanic soils were particularly fertile, vegetation covered the ashes in just a few decades, once again attracting farmers and builders. This ecological renewal strengthened resettlement attempts. Not enough, however, for the great seaside city that Pompeii had once been to be reborn.
Even resurrected in fragments, the city has regained neither its former splendor nor its power. Inhabited by barely a few thousand souls at best, the site sank definitively in the Ve century, probably after a new eruption of Vesuvius in 472.
