Product Description

The headings of Mary Beard's notes give a taste of this astonishing book: Bad Breath, Intestinal Parasites, Performing Monkeys, One-way Streets, Kosher Food, Water Shortages. The Temple of Isis serves to bring in multiculturalism. The House of the Menander tells how a house worked. At the Suburban Baths we go from communal bathing to hygiene to erotica. 154 writing tablets from the House of Caecilius Jucundus detail the accounts of its owner. A fast-food joint on the Via dell' Abbondanza introduces food and drink and diets and street life. These are just a few of the strands that make up an extraordinary and involving portrait of an ancient town, its life and its continuing re-discovery, by Britain's leading classicist.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #212555 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 360 pages

Review
A brilliant portrait of "the life of a Roman town" ... [a] wonderful book. --James McConnachie, Sunday Times

Review
Beard's cheerful scepticism makes her Pompeii more intriguing, more believable, than any version I have read.

Review
A vivid demonstration that sceptical scholarship can provide as gripping a read as sensationalism ... a learned and fascinating book.