Dr. Jessica Venner

Oh, the pomegranates.

Yeah, the pomegranate problem.

Oh, yes.

These figures I came across time and time again, and I got to know them very well over the course of my doctoral research.

And I was very fond of them, but I very much felt like they weren't getting a voice.

And so I wrote The Lost Voices of Pompeii to give them that and a bit of their dignity back as well, because sometimes they're sort of just forgotten in the archaeological record.

And in the terms of the destruction of the city is given a lot of importance.

And so we have a slave.

He's a composite of slaves because obviously we can't know what he was getting up to every day because of the nature of his invisible work, right?

But Petronas...

who I've given him that name, did exist.

He's found in a loan between two women as collateral for a loan of money.

So he did exist in the city.

We've got a female businesswoman, Julia Felix.

She's quite famous now.

She's quite well known.

She's quite famous.

But I wanted to show her side of things of living in a man's world.

And we know about her from her incredible estate in Pompeii.

with baths and, you know, her own apartments, other apartments that people could have for themselves, shops, gardens.