Core: Cities of Vesuvius — Pompeii and Herculaneum

The Core study, Cities of Vesuvius – Pompeii and Herculaneum, is compulsory and makes up Section I (25 marks, about 45 minutes). There are three or four questions, all compulsory, based on sources in a separate source booklet. At least one question is worth 10–15 marks. You must analyse and interpret the sources and add your own knowledge.

The syllabus content falls into three parts:

• Survey — geographical context: the physical environment (setting, natural features, resources) and the plans and streetscapes of both cities.
• The nature of sources and evidence: the range of sources (ancient writers, inscriptions, graffiti, wall paintings, statues, mosaics, human and animal remains); their limitations and reliability; and what they reveal about the eruption, the economy, social structure, local political life, everyday life (leisure, food and dining, clothing, health, baths, water and sanitation), public and private buildings, Greek and Egyptian influences, and religion.
• Investigating, reconstructing and preserving the past: changing methods of archaeologists; changing interpretations, including the impact of new research and technologies; conservation and reconstruction (Italian and international responsibilities, tourism); ethical issues in the study and display of human remains.

Think of every topic as a question about evidence: what was found, what it shows, and what it can't show.

• Setting: both towns stood on the Bay of Naples in Campania, at the foot of Vesuvius, which the Romans did not recognise as an active volcano. The geographer Strabo described its slopes as fertile farmland, apart from a barren, ash-coloured summit with rocks that looked as if they had been burnt.
• Resources: fertile volcanic soil (vines, olives, fruit), the sea (fish, salt, garum) and trade routes by sea and along the River Sarno.
• Pompeii: a larger commercial town of perhaps 10,000–12,000 people (estimates vary widely), on a spur of old lava near the mouth of the Sarno. It had walls with seven or eight gates, an irregular old core around the Forum and a more regular grid in the later parts. Streets had raised pavements, stepping stones and deep cart ruts. Main streets include the Via dell'Abbondanza and the Via Stabiana.
• Herculaneum: a smaller, wealthier seaside town of about 4,000–5,000 people on a promontory between two streams, laid out in a neat grid of cardines (north–south streets) and decumani (east–west). Only part of it has been excavated; much lies under the modern town of Ercolano.

Pompeii became a Roman colony (Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum) in 80 BC, after the Social War; Herculaneum became a municipium.

• Earlier warning: a severe earthquake damaged the area in AD 62 (Tacitus) or 63 (Seneca's date). Repairs were still going on in 79.
• Phase 1 (Plinian): a column of gas, pumice and ash rose many kilometres. Winds carried pumice south-east; about 3 m fell on Pompeii over many hours, collapsing roofs.
• Phase 2 (pyroclastic): the column collapsed into pyroclastic surges and flows — fast, extremely hot clouds and avalanches of gas and ash. They reached Herculaneum first and later Pompeii, killing those who remained.
• Burial: Pompeii under about 4–6 m in all; Herculaneum under about 20 m of material that hardened, carbonising and preserving wood, food and papyrus.
• Date: the traditional date, 24 August, comes from manuscripts of Pliny's letter. Autumn evidence, especially a charcoal inscription dated to mid-October found in Regio V in 2018, has led many scholars to prefer about 24 October. Treat the date as debated.

Pliny the Younger (Letters 6.16 and 6.20) is the only eyewitness account. He watched from Misenum, across the bay, and wrote about 25 years later at the historian Tacitus' request. His uncle, Pliny the Elder, commander of the fleet, died at Stabiae while attempting a rescue. Pliny's description of the column is so accurate that this type of eruption is called ‘Plinian’, but he wrote with hindsight, to honour his uncle and with a literary audience in mind.

A key idea is the ‘Pompeii premise’: the false assumption that the city is a perfect snapshot frozen in time. Many people fled, survivors and looters tunnelled back after the eruption, buildings were mid-repair after the earthquake, early excavators removed objects without records, and bombing in 1943 damaged parts of the site.

Economy

• Agriculture and food production: wine (vineyards inside Pompeii; amphorae exported to Gaul and elsewhere), olive oil, fruit; garum (fish sauce), shown by the house of Aulus Umbricius Scaurus and his labelled jars.
• Manufacturing and services: over 30 bakeries with lava mills and ovens; fulleries (cleaning and finishing cloth) such as the Fullonica of Stephanus; workshops; thermopolia (food and drink counters); inns.
• Commerce and finance: the wax tablets of the banker Lucius Caecilius Iucundus record auction payments; shop signs and rental notices (such as Julia Felix's advertisement of shops and apartments).

Social structure

• Elite: magistrates and councillors from leading families; patrons such as Marcus Nonius Balbus at Herculaneum.
• Freedmen (ex-slaves): could be very wealthy (the Vettii brothers; Numerius Popidius Ampliatus, who rebuilt the Temple of Isis in his six-year-old son's name) but could not become councillors. Many served as Augustales in the imperial cult.
• Women: no vote or office, but some held priesthoods and great wealth (Eumachia, Mamia, Julia Felix).
• Slaves: domestic and industrial labour; known mainly indirectly (service quarters, legal tablets, shackles).

Local political life

Each year citizens elected two duoviri (senior magistrates) and two aediles (junior, responsible for streets, markets and public buildings). The ordo decurionum (town council of about 80–100) controlled public money and honours. Hundreds of painted programmata urge voters to support candidates, often sponsored by neighbours or trade groups. In AD 59 a riot in the amphitheatre between Pompeians and Nucerians led the Senate to ban games at Pompeii for ten years (Tacitus, Annals 14.17).

Everyday life

• Leisure: the amphitheatre (about 70 BC, seating about 20,000), gladiator barracks and graffiti; the Large Theatre and the Odeon; the Large Palaestra; gaming and dining.
• Baths: the Stabian, Forum and Central (unfinished) Baths at Pompeii; the Suburban Baths at Herculaneum. Rooms: apodyterium (changing), frigidarium (cold), tepidarium (warm), caldarium (hot), heated by a hypocaust.
• Food and dining: bread, fish, garum, fruit, wine; triclinia for dinner parties; thermopolia for people without kitchens. Analysis of a sewer under Herculaneum's Cardo V revealed what people actually ate.
• Water and sanitation: an aqueduct fed the castellum aquae at the highest point of Pompeii; water towers and lead pipes supplied fountains, baths and wealthy houses; rainwater was collected in cisterns; streets doubled as drains.
• Health and clothing: skeletons show dental problems, injuries and heavy work; surgical instruments have been found; paintings show tunics, togas and the stola.

Public and private buildings

• Public: the Forum, Basilica, temples, Building of Eumachia, theatres, amphitheatre, palaestrae, baths; at Herculaneum, the College of the Augustales.
• Private: the atrium house (fauces, atrium with compluvium and impluvium, tablinum, peristyle, triclinium, cubicula, lararium), e.g. the House of the Vettii and House of the Faun at Pompeii, and the House of the Deer and House of the Wooden Partition at Herculaneum. Herculaneum also has multi-storey apartments. Villas include the Villa of the Mysteries and the Villa of the Papyri.

Greek and Egyptian influences

• Greek: the Doric Temple in the Triangular Forum (6th century BC), the Alexander Mosaic in the House of the Faun, peristyles, palaestrae, Greek myths in wall paintings, the Epicurean library of the Villa of the Papyri.
• Egyptian: the Temple of Isis, Nile scenes in paintings and mosaics, statuettes of Egyptian gods.

Religion

• State cults: Temple of Jupiter (Capitolium), Temple of Apollo, Venus as Pompeii's patron goddess.
• Household religion: lararia with the Lares, the genius of the head of the household and serpents.
• Foreign and mystery cults: Isis; the Dionysiac frieze in the Villa of the Mysteries.
• Imperial cult: the Augustales; temples linked to the emperor.
• Tombs: lining the roads outside the gates (e.g. outside the Herculaneum and Nuceria Gates), such as the tombs of Mamia and Eumachia.

Changing methods

New research and technologies

• Skeletal studies: about 300 skeletons from Herculaneum's boat sheds (found from 1980) reveal age, sex, health, injuries and diet. Estelle Lazer's study of Pompeian bones showed the dead were a broad cross-section of the population.
• CT scanning and DNA: scans of the plaster casts (from 2015) and a DNA study published in 2024 showed that some traditional stories about the casts (for example a ‘mother and child’) were wrong.
• Isotope analysis: shows diet, for example plenty of seafood at Herculaneum.
• Imaging and machine learning: since 2023, X-ray scans and AI have begun to read Greek text inside unopened carbonised scrolls from the Villa of the Papyri.
• Remote sensing and digital recording: laser scanning, drones, GIS mapping.

Conservation, reconstruction and tourism

• Threats: weather, plants, earlier poor restorations (heavy concrete roofs), collapses (the Schola Armaturarum, 2010), theft and vandalism, the 1943 bombing and the pressure of about 4 million visitors a year (2023–2024 figures).
• Responses: the Great Pompeii Project (2012, about €105 million mainly from the EU); the Herculaneum Conservation Project, a partnership between the Italian authorities, the Packard Humanities Institute and the British School at Rome; UNESCO World Heritage listing (1997); visitor limits at Pompeii (a cap of 20,000 a day with named, timed tickets, introduced in November 2024).
• Debates: how much to reconstruct (helpful to visitors, but can mislead); whether to excavate more or protect what is already uncovered; who pays and who decides — Italy, the EU, international partners.

Ethics of human remains

The victims cannot consent. Key issues: respectful storage and display; touring exhibitions of casts; destructive sampling for DNA; presenting victims as people rather than spectacles. Good answers balance the value of research against respect for the dead.

• Read the provenance first: who made it, when, why, for whom. A Roman senator writing in Rome a century later (Tacitus) and a painted electoral notice are very different kinds of evidence.
• Use the source, then add knowledge: quote or paraphrase a short phrase, explain what it shows, then add a specific fact the source doesn't give.
• Usefulness and reliability are different questions. A biased source can be very useful for what its creator believed. Ask ‘useful for what?’
• Compare sources: look for agreement, contradiction and gaps.
• In 10–15 mark answers, write a thesis that answers the question, organise paragraphs by idea (not by source), integrate the sources with your own knowledge and finish with a judgement.

• Saying lava buried the towns. It was pumice, ash and pyroclastic surges and flows.
• Treating Pompeii as frozen in time (the ‘Pompeii premise’).
• Mixing up Fiorelli (1860s, casts and regions) and Maiuri (1924–1961, open-air Herculaneum).
• Confusing Pompeii and Herculaneum evidence. Be clear which town an example comes from.
• Describing sources without saying what they reveal, or ignoring the sources in a source-based question.
• Writing ‘biased, so useless’. Explain what the source is useful for and what it can't show.

• Command verbs: describe (features), explain (how or why, with cause and effect), assess or evaluate (judge value or extent), to what extent (judgement weighed throughout).
• Marks guide length: a 3–4 mark question needs a solid paragraph with specific evidence; a 10–15 mark question needs a structured response of several paragraphs.
• Specific evidence wins marks: named houses, inscriptions, people, dates and numbers.
• Historians' interpretations (for example Mary Beard, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Estelle Lazer) are credited when they support your argument, but you are not required to name them.

• The Augustan Age: the imperial cult, the Augustales and buildings such as Eumachia's, dedicated to Augustan values, show how Augustan ideas reached Italian towns.
• Agrippina the Younger: the riot of AD 59 and its punishment happened in the same year as her death, under Nero, and Tacitus is a key source for both.
• Historical skills across the course: evaluating provenance, usefulness and reliability, and using archaeological evidence, apply equally to Sparta, Agrippina and Augustus.