A Review: Pompeii by Roger C. Carrington

4/5 stars.
The next in my continuing series of books about Pompeii is the aptly named Pompeii by Roger Carrington. I got my copy from AbeBooks. The book was published in 1936 which places it squarely between the Nineteenth Century stuff I have read previously and the recent works I have yet to read. Unlike reading a digital copy, it was a constant joy to hold this eighty year old in my hands. The text is full of figures, mostly the plans of houses and temples, and there is a series of photographs at the end as well as a fold-out map of the extent of the excavations as Carrington knew them.

There was much to love in this short book. For the first time (among the books I've read) Carrington gives a full account of the re-discovery of the town. Actually, he starts with the rediscovery of Herculaneum, which was a working-class town around the bay from Pompeii, buried by the same 79 CE eruption. An attempt to sink a well in 1709 turned up sculpture instead. Workmen had tunneled down into the town's theater. For over 100 years, the theater and surrounding buildings were treated like a sculpture mine. I cannot help but think of the Pejite engine mine in Nausicaä. Excavations in Pompeii itself began in 1748, where the layers of ash and lava were thinner, but not until 1860 was systematic archaeological methodology begun.

The emergence of archeology as a science is what most informs Carrington's account. Gell gave a description of the ancient city itself. Bulwer-Lytton used it as a setting for a drama. Carrington takes a ground-up look at the life of the city. He uses facts like which buildings were in use when and how certain items were found stored to tract the changing culture of ancient Campania. Greek, Etruscan, Samnite and Roman influences are all tracked in turn through changing floor plans of country villas and the diverse materials used to build and rebuild city homes. Carrington discusses what can be known about politics in the city from the slogans found painted on Pompeii's walls and what can be known about religion from which temples were most recently renovated. I love archaeological accounts where the author says, “we know that because we found this.” Pompeii is full of that kind of information.

The weakness of Carrington's book is that his account is one largely of institutions. It is an account of merchant guilds, classes of workers, religious cults and political parties. There is little mention of individuals, despite many known names from the city. As I have mentioned before, I have long associated Pompeii with the plaster casts made from the impressions left by those caught up in the disaster. Carrington does mention these plaster casts, but only in passing in the appendix on visiting Pompeii. I suppose this is because the text focuses more on the life of the city than its death. Even so, it seems to me the actual remains of the actual people would be a great way to focus on the fact the city was full of people. Perhaps it was not “proper” in 1936 for a classicist to speak casually about the dead.

I enjoyed reading this book and I learned about the culture of the city. What more could I want?