Dr. Jessica Venner

It was very commercially driven.

There were a lot of shops and workshops creating things.

Whereas then you've got lots of villas around Pompeii.

Pompeii and the other towns and smaller towns and bigger towns.

Puteoli was another one right on the coast on the Bay of Naples.

That was a very important harbour town, the most important until it was moved to Ostia, I think.

And so there were all these different characteristics of these towns.

They all had their role to play, but in their own right, they were ordinary towns.

Pompeii was famous for a few things that might surprise.

Pompeii was famous for fish sauce.

Pompeii was famous for cherries and Pompeii was famous for cabbages.

Yeah, Pliny's really like enthusiastic about this, you know, the importance of Pompeian cherries and fish sauce and things, which is fantastic because, you know, I'm sure we'll talk about it, but we know who was making the fish sauce.

So it's even more mind blowing.

But it was also famous, the region for, actually Pliny mentions Pompeian wine and says, you know, don't drink it unless you want a headache in the morning.

Yeah, so it's because it's really strong and quickly made.

It's not, you know, for your fancy people, which would be made out in the villas, for example.

So there were mutterings.

For example, we've got Vitruvius, who was an architect at the time, and he wrote about, obviously architecture, but other materials and things that would come into that process.

And he reflected on the sponge stone of the area and said, oh, it's a bit weird because that's kind of like the ones around Mount Etna.

And then we have people like Strabo saying similar things, you know, saying there's fire pits.