“While elsewhere it was day, there it was night, darker and denser than all other nights, although it was lit by flames and flashes”
The words of Pliny the Younger echo today like a distant sound, taking us back to that suspended moment in time when life collided with the relentless fury of Vesuvius. Herculaneum, the city founded by Hercules, with its mild climate and its view over the enchanting Gulf of Naples, suddenly became the stage of a tragedy that would have no happy ending. In the boat shelters, beneath the terraces overlooking the sea, more than three hundred people—women, the elderly, and children—found themselves in a final, desperate embrace in an attempt to find salvation that would never come.
THE FUGITIVES
The resin casts displayed here bring back the testimony of those dramatic moments: before us we see the embrace of two children and a teenager, along with two women who, in a final desperate gesture, attempt to protect a child by hiding him between the legs of one of them. A human tragedy that does not leave us indifferent, speaking to us in a direct, intimate, and poignant way. Yet this tragedy has proven to be a fortune for posterity.
The anthropological study of these skeletons has provided a wealth of information about diet, diseases, and the life of the city and its inhabitants in the 1st century AD. In Herculaneum, the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD produced a pyroclastic mudflow that, once solidified, sealed objects, human remains, and incredibly, even organic materials, including food, preventing oxidation and decomposition. Today, we can still admire carbonized bread, fruit, grains, and legumes, as if the city had suddenly stopped in time.
The presence of food associated with human biological remains allows researchers to establish links between the population’s health status and what they consumed.
DEATH THAT TELLS LIFE
Scientific analysis of skeletal and food remains revealed a varied diet that contributed to adequate physical development and, for the time, a remarkable life expectancy. The body size of the inhabitants of Herculaneum, measured through weight and height, averaged about 1.60 meters for males and 1.50 meters for females. Their teeth, marked by cavities, tell of a diet rich in simple sugars, which encouraged the proliferation of oral bacteria, along with visible abrasions.
These abrasions were linked to the presence of siliceous particles in the cereal flours, which were produced by grinding grains with lava stone mills—like the one displayed in the exhibition. Fluorosis was also widespread, due to the presence of fluoride in the drinking water.
Cases of brucellosis were also discovered, leaving marks on the bones. The bacteria were transmitted through cheese—fragments of which were found in Herculaneum—bearing traces of Brucella, the source of human infection.
A recent study conducted by the University of York, analyzing collagen from a group of skeletons, highlighted differentiated dietary patterns: a higher fish consumption among men, and more meat, eggs, and dairy products among women.
And thus, the transience of human life has given rise to new knowledge. Like the broom plant of Leopardi that “Here on the arid back / of the fearsome exterminator mountain Vesuvius” blooms, the tragedy of Herculaneum transforms into a symbol of hope.