UC expert helps museum's 'Pompeii' come to life

“Pompeii: The Exhibition” opens at the museum on Feb. 16. It features 150 priceless artifacts from the ancient city.

“Pompeii is a remarkable story that exists as both ancient legend and archaeological treasure, providing a timeless snapshot of daily life in the Roman Empire,” said Elizabeth Pierce, president and CEO of Cincinnati Museum Center.

“We’re incredibly fortunate to be able to call upon Dr. Ellis and share his perspective and expertise,” museum spokesman Cody Hefner said.

“At Cincinnati Museum Center we pride ourselves on being able to bring the world to Cincinnati through exhibitions like 'Pompeii.' Having a partner in the University of Cincinnati and Dr. Ellis gives us opportunities to reveal the ancient city of Pompeii in fascinating depth and charismatic detail.”

UC Classics’ project aimed to uncover the livelihoods of ordinary residents who lived in Pompeii, not just at the moment the city was destroyed but in the generations leading up to the cataclysm as the city was built and rebuilt.

“We were able to look at this really interesting texture of a Roma neighborhood that existed in A.D. 79 but then to go down underneath it,” he said. “We excavated through all the layers of urban development. Pompeii is the product of hundreds of years of urbanization.”

The neighborhood Ellis uncovered was a retail district consisting of nearly a dozen properties across two multilevel structures just inside one of Pompeii’s seven main entrance gates. The buildings contained retail shops and entertainment spaces where generations before stood the workshops of skilled trades workers. There they made pottery and tanned hides and salted fish for distribution.

“Originally, it was a neighborhood that was built upon production, upon labor and the manufacturing of goods,” he said. “It’s very much retail-oriented.”

Ellis and his research collaborators tried to learn more about the social and structural makeup of the city and put it in context of the Roman Mediterranean.

“While it wasn’t Rome or Constantinople, one of the megacities of the ancient world, Pompeii is regionally important,” Ellis said.

The site has provided archaeologists with a bonanza of information about this ancient civilization because it preserved hundreds of thousands of artifacts across more than 1,000 city properties.

“Pompeii has attracted more intensive academic research across more languages and over a longer period than any other,” Ellis wrote in his 2023 book.

Excavations also uncovered more than 1,000 coins. Most were found in shops where you might assume they were collected as payment for goods or services. But Ellis found that the vast majority of the coins had been lost by chance or accident in loose fill that occupants used to build up foundations for new construction over generations.

Coins appeared more often in the shops than residences because the shops were subject to frequent remodeling necessitating more fill with each new construction project.

The excavations at Pompeii join a storied list of UC Classics scholarship in the ancient world, from the lost city of Troy to ancient Greece. Since 2005, UC has been leading excavations at Pompeii as part of an international project.

“Cincinnati has a really rich history in the study of Pompeii. UC has been at the forefront of what we now understand about the city, how it developed over time, what kinds of people they were, what kinds of houses they lived in and the kinds of shops they ran,” said Ellis.

“It’s a really privileged opportunity for Cincinnati to conduct this scholarship.”

The city’s history ended abruptly with the explosive eruption, which rained fiery rock and ash down upon the city.

“People are screaming. They’re running into the hills or trying to make their evacuation by sea,” he said. “Some are huddled in small rooms of their homes, trying to wait it out.”

Survivors witness a cataclysm on a scale never previously recorded, Ellis said.

Violent earthquakes in the days before the eruption prompted many residents to flee the city. A teenager named Pliny the Younger and his family fled their home outside the city. His letters to historian Tacitus described “a black and dreadful cloud, broken with rapid, zigzag flashes, revealed behind it variously shaped masses of flame” that rose above the volcano. The uncle who raised him, Pliny the Elder, died while rescuing villagers by boat who were trapped at the base of the volcano.

Ash blackened the sky and rained down on him and his mother as they fled high into the surrounding hills. When the sun returned, still obscured in haze, they saw everything “covered deep with ashes as if with snow.”

The pyroclastic clouds that covered the city engulfed victims who likely asphyxiated from the toxic fumes. People, pets and livestock were incinerated, leaving voids in the ash bed that archaeologists later filled with plaster to reveal how they met their last moments.

“There’s the immediacy of Pompeii that really captivates us. What’s especially poignant is that we sadly see not just the city destroyed but the people themselves. And it’s a quite touching experience to see those last horrific moments captured,” Ellis said.

Featured image at top: An illustration created with AI depicts the eruption of Mount Vesuvius at Pompeii. Illustration/Visilli