Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum at the British Museum

Without Mount Vesuvius, we would know far less about life in the Roman world than we do. What is good fortune for today’s archeologists, historians and scholars, though, was rather less lucky for the citizens of the two towns that lay at the base of the mountain.

It is a point that is made clearly at the British Museum’s major spring exhibition: Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum. 

The erruption of AD79 that brought with it disaster served also to preserve an intimate snapshot of Roman life, from election posters, to portraits, to a carbonised loaf of bread complete with the name of the slave who made it.

Xanten: heart of Roman Germania

For someone who died 2,000 years ago, we know rather a lot about Marcus Caelius.

He was born in Bologna in 44BC and rose through the ranks of the Roman army to the rank of senior centurion in the 18th Legion.

In 9AD he was based at Castra Vetera, near the modern-day German town of Xanten – which is around 12 miles from the airport of Weeze/Niederrhein and near the border with Holland.

Castra Vetera was a extensive military and administrative base, close to the river Rhine, and second only to Cologne in importance for the Roman Empire in the region.