Dr. Jess Venner

speaker

222 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 20 Jul

Dr. Jess Venner’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Science Friday · How do you piece together what life was like in Pompeii? · 20 Jul 2026 podcast

Yes.

So the site of Pompeii are officially going with the 24th of August, which is the traditional date.

And this is the date that's been given to us by Pliny the Younger.

Pliny the Younger was the nephew of Pliny the Elder that I mentioned earlier.

And he wrote two letters to Tacitus, a historian, about 20 years after the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.

So it's been a while, but he had a very good memory because Roman males of that status were taught memory theory.

So they wouldn't really forget a traumatic experience like that, particularly as his uncle died during the event.

So he's not going to forget that.

So this seems like good evidence.

It seems like good evidence.

Exactly.

However, we only have his letters because they've been handed down to us through manuscript copying by monks.

And monks didn't always understand the Latin that Pliny was using.

They were also in grueling copying sessions that would go on for hours and hours and hours and hours.

And so sometimes they would make mistakes.

Roman dating in particular is really hard to wrap your head around.

So they do it in this funny way.

And so again, there's more instances of mistakes happening.

There are actually three months that are mentioned frequently in his manuscripts, August, October, and November.

I most often go with October 24th, and this is because I'm an archaeobotanist.

Showing 101–120 of 222 · page 6 of 12