In August of 2022 my husband Andrew Melby (everyone, including me, calls him Melby) and my 4 year old daughter, Beatrice went on a 16 day trip through Italy. It was a first visit for all of us and we had spectacular visits planned from Venice to Amalfi - but I had only one Can-Not-Miss on my list: Pompeii. The Ancient City destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. One of my all-time HILF’s - I was so fucking excited to see it.
On they day we got there, it was over 98 degrees but still packed - because, it turned out, it was the one day a month it is free to the public…
It had been over 100 degrees almost every day we had been in Italy - all of Europe was enduring an increasingly common record-setting summer. We had taken a train, then a taxi to get there, had checked our two-weeks-worth of luggage in a temporary locker - and tried to explain to our daughter that this was NOT just a hot dust field full of broken buildings… there were also dead people.
It was great. Hot, sad and surreal - and so great.
--- EPISODE BREAKDOWN---
00:03:32 - Melby may be familiar to HILF die-hard fans as he was a guest in Season one - EP:05 - Krampus. We discuss Melby's background an the tries to introduce himself despite "hating to do that stuff."
00:09:56 - My primary source of information was the book: The Complete Pompeii by Joanne Berry.
00:12:20 - The HILF-ing begins with 'what is Pompeii' and a quick and dirty on the what-where-and-when's of it all.
00:14:33 - Dawn gives a play-by-play of what happened on the day Vesuvius erupted - and how it may have looked and felt to those who experienced it. It's not all guess-work either; there were a couple of eye-witnesses whose accounts survived - including Pliney the Younger.
00:21:40 - After the destroyed towns and people were covered in many feet of ash and debris, history marched on above them - century after century until in 1709, a guy digs a well and brings up some ancient marble. The site sparks the curiosity and treasure-lust of people immediately - and the control of the site changed and was contested for decades.
00:23:37 - Eventually, an Italian named Giuseppe Fiorelli was put in charge of the site and not only did he organize and preserve the artifacts in a useful way (at last) but he also was the one who innovated the Plaster Casts. For years excavators had been discovering frequent hollow spaces that were believed to have once been encasing organic material - possibly human remains. When the hollow spaces were filled with plaster, not only were the figures of people revealed, but in jaw-dropping detail.
--- BREAK ---
00:31:00 - Dawn and Melby return from the break with a discussion of some of the choice smut on display in Pompeii, but more on that later...
00:34:40 - Dawn discusses just a few of her favorite Plaster Casts of the victims of Pompeii: The Garden of Fugitives, The Lovers, The Family and The Masterbator. [Great pictures of the figures can be found here.]
00:46:30 - "The Masterbator" serves is a great transition to the discussion of the frequent nudity and explicit sex that is on display in Pompeii - both in public and private.
00:50:45 - Another intriguing aspect of Pompeii is the evidence of several mysterious cults and lost spiritual temples. Among them The Villa of Mysteries which includes a dynamic mural that has been confounding and intriguing historians and artists alike since its discovery.
00:55:45 - Dawn and Melby end with a discussion of how their lives - all of our lives - might be seen differently if viewed through the lens of being an 'artifact.' What would your body and the place you're likely to e found say about you to an archeologist many centuries from now. What guesses might they have right? ...and what does this have to do with a copier?!?
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