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Brothels, fast food and flash chariots — the real Pompeii
Elodie Harper guides us through the frozen-in-time Roman town, the inspiration for her Wolf Den trilogy
A fresco from a Pompeii brothel
ALAMY
The Times
For most of us, our image of the Roman town of Pompeii, destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79, is shaped by the plaster casts of the victims. Men and women frozen in time. The casts were created in the 1860s, when archaeologists realised that there were cavities in the hardened volcanic ash that had destroyed and preserved Pompeii. When these holes were filled with plaster, surprising shapes emerged, recreating the buried objects that had long since decayed. Some — like wooden furniture — tell us about the town’s life, while others reveal the anguish of its death. None more so than the bodies of Pompeii’s desperate inhabitants.
Although they continue to elicit a horrified fascination, the plaster casts are not the most
