Pompeii: The New Dig

Narrator: Mount Vesuvius looms over the ruined city of Pompeii, an ever-present reminder of the disaster of A.D. 79.

[Bell tolling] Every year, Neapolitans still pray to their patron saint to keep them safe from the volcano.

But 2,000 years ago, it was a catastrophe nobody saw coming.

[Rumbling, cracking] Miko Flohr: For the people here, they didn't know probably that Vesuvius was a volcano.

They didn't know the danger.

They basically didn't know what was getting at them.

Narrator: For 18 hours, Vesuvius rained pumice and ash onto the city.

Chris Jackson: Decision-making during the eruption for the people of Pompeii was incredibly challenging.

There were still earthquakes.

People had been disorientated.

The mushroom of ash would have been spreading across the sky towards the city, starting to turn day into night.

Several hours of ashfall would have made these streets unrecognizable to the residents of Pompeii.

Ash would have built up high above the road, up along the walls, flanking this main thoroughfare out of the city.

Narrator: Hundreds perished as rooves and buildings collapsed.

But for any survivors, there seemed to be a glimmer of hope.

Jackson: At 1:00 in the morning, there was a pause in the eruption.

That ash stopped falling from the sky.

At that moment, people maybe thought that the eruption had finished and that it was safe to stay, but something worse was about to happen.

As the volcano's eruptive behavior started to change, another new deadly hazard started to arrive into the city of Pompeii.

[Rumbling] Narrator: Pompeii had entered its final hours.

Narrator: In Pompeii, the biggest dig in a generation is reaching its climax.

For over a year, an all-Italian team of archaeologists have been unearthing an entire city block known as Insula 10.

In a complex of buildings beneath the pumice, a large brick-built oven led to the discovery of a commercial bakery.

[Speaking Italian] Narrator: In a small room close by, the team found the crushed remains of two women and a child... [Valeria Amoretti speaking Italian] Narrator: probably enslaved workers.

Next door, an atrium or reception area, was under renovation at the time of the eruption.

[Gennaro Iovino speaking Italian] Narrator: Here, the team discovered expensive marble furniture and brightly colored frescoes, including one resembling a pizza, with a third building housing a high-end laundry.

The team believe the same man owned the entire complex, and they found his initials, ARV, on a bakery millstone.

[Iovino speaking Italian] Narrator: Now the excavation is expanding to a new area behind the bakery site-- a grand building with spacious rooms.

As the first wall paintings are revealed, it's clear this is an opulent home once owned by a very rich person.

Could this be the house of the mysterious ARV?

Gabriel Zuchtriegel: It's always fascinating seeing new things because it's like slowly emerging pieces of a great puzzle, and we want to understand how these people lived, how the house was organized.

It's really like a story coming to light.

Narrator: Underneath a large staircase, the team have found something unique-- the first of its kind in Pompeii.

[Speaking Italian] Kevin Dicus: Gladiators started out as slaves or captives in war.

These were lowly people.

They should not have been respected, but they were.

It was impossible not to fall in love with a gladiator who had beaten so many opponents in the ring.

And after a while, some of these gladiators became superstars.

They were the greatest sports heroes.

They were the Michael Jordan or the Maradona of the day.

And people fell in love with them.

They wrote about them in graffiti.

They drew their pictures on the wall.

They were at the forefront of many people's minds.

Narrator: But what makes these images so special is that the artist drew them in charcoal.

[Iovino speaking Italian] Narrator: What inspired the mystery artist to draw these images just before the eruption?

A stone's throw from the dig is Pompeii's amphitheater.

In A.D. 79, it regularly held gladiatorial contests.

[Sound of spectators cheering and applauding] Are the images a record of a fight that took place here?

[Cheering and applauding continues] Alexander Mariotti: We may not be in Rome, but we're still in an incredible amphitheater.

And even though it isn't the Colosseum, the great thing about Pompeii is that it's smaller, it's more intimate.

So wherever you are, even at the cheap seats, you're getting a fantastic view of the actual games themselves.

[Sound of spectators shouting and cheering] The amphitheater is the great equalizer.

It doesn't matter what your position is in society.

Here, we're all one.

Everybody's here, but their attention is on the infamous.

Here, it is the lowest of the low-- the gladiators--that command the attention of every echelon of Roman society.

[Sound of spectators cheering and chanting] And right here was our artist.

You can imagine he's walked up the same steps we have, come out here, probably with some friends.

As you sat down, the music's building up.

But the roar of the crowd, you really would have felt it in your bones.

[Sound of loud cheering] This is just etched into this artist's memory.

These are incredible snapshots of a moment lost in time until recently.

Without these, we would never have known of this incredible match that took place.

So you've got two very popular types of gladiators.

You've got the Thracian.

He's kind of like the middleweight.

He has a brimmed helmet with a nice crest and feathers.

We can see he's got a smaller shield, and he's got his signature weapon, the sica.

It's this little sword here, this little line.

Simple line, but it gives away exactly what it is-- one of the most dangerous weapons in the arena.

He's fighting against the murmillo-- the tank, the armored tank of the gladiators.

He's got the scutum.

You can see, big shield.

Now, the scutum is really a weapon of the Roman army.

And this is the opening moment.

[Spectators cheering and applauding] It's the moment that they've squared off in front of each other.

They're going to start sparring.

They're going to start sizing each other up.

[Cheering continues] [Weapon hits shield, gladiator grunts] But then the second part, what we have is the culmination, the end knockout, where he's hit the shield out of the opponent gladiator's hand, the clash of the swords, the winning moment, the triumph of one gladiator, and on the other side, the disappointment of the other.

I would say that this is his gladiator, this is his man.

And he, at the end of the day, has gone home, and he's just wanted to remember it.

And there he is, just with a little piece of charcoal, immortalizing this moment.

[Spectators cheering] The crazy thing is that unbeknownst to this artist and the spectators, their doom is behind them.

The Vesuvius is secretly looming, and it's going to end everything, and it's going to entomb them, and it's going to survive this moment for us to find 2,000 years later.

[Cheering continues] Narrator: 18 hours after the eruption started, it began to subside.

And as the huge mushroom cloud of rock and ash became unstable, it collapsed, creating deadly burning avalanches that swept down the mountainside.

[Rumbling] Known as pyroclastic flows, they are unstoppable and unsurvivable.

Jackson: The temperature can be a few hundred of degrees Celsius, and they can move several tens of miles per hour, much faster than we'd be able to run.

It was a horrendous way to die.

Not only is the flow hot, the gases within it are enough to poison you from the inside.

They suffocate you, and they damage your lungs and all of your respiratory system.

Breathing that air in was impossible.

But fortunately for the residents of Pompeii, it didn't enter their city.

It actually went along the coastline to the settlement of Herculaneum.

The residents of Pompeii were spared that first onslaught.

Narrator: At the dig, the team have discovered an unusually large relief.

It is an extraordinary and rare find, a 3-dimensional snake found in one of the last unexcavated rooms within the bakery complex.

Snakes were the guardian deities of the home, often decorating shrines and altars.

And this one is not alone.

[Speaking Italian] Narrator: To find a shrine with an altar would prove this room was used to make offerings to the gods, and would have been one of the most important places in the house.

Zuchtriegel: The private home, the house, the family is a special space in religious terms.

For the ancient mentality, everything was somehow sacred.

You had gods living on the mountains, nymphs living in the waters, in the rivers and in trees.

The planets were named after divinities-- Venus and so forth.

And the snake somehow connects the underground with humans.

And so it brings abundance, wealth.

It stands for the good spirit, and they are often depicted on the altar.

[Speaking Italian] Narrator: The discovery of two snakes in relief is another first for Pompeii, and just below, the team uncover what they were looking for-- a shrine and small altar with a third painted snake.

While images of snakes at these shrines is very usual, they're painted.

What we find in this house are enormous snakes-- one larger than the other-- in high relief.

They are stuccoed onto the wall and then beautifully painted.

These are 3-dimensional representations of snakes.

This is unheard of.

This has not been found in a domestic space before.

Narrator: Dr. Valentino Gasparini is an expert in Roman religion.

He's keen to understand why the house owner sought so much divine protection.

[Speaking Italian] Narrator: Previously, most of the offerings found in shrines in Pompeii contained just vegetable matter.

But in the lab, the team have discovered something unusual.

[Speaking Italian] Narrator: Was this shrine offering-- a never-before-seen mixture of fruit, meat, and fish-- a last desperate attempt to appease the gods amidst the eruption?

[Chiara Corbino speaking Italian] Dicus: You could appease the gods and keep evil at bay in many, many ways.

The most important thing was ritual-- performing rituals in the correct way to keep the gods happy.

But there were also amulets you would carry around or hang up on the wall, and this was meant to keep evil at bay.

Narrator: This one, presumably left behind by a fleeing Pompeiian, has multiple deities on a single talisman.

Valentino Gasparini: You can see here there is a serpent coiling around this tree.

There is a bird, probably an eagle.

There is a dog.

There is also this ring, which gives the possibility, while escaping from Pompeii, to bring with them some divine over powerful-- in this case, figurines.

Of course, we cannot not mention one bodily member, which is particularly effective in protection-- the male genitalia, the phallus in whatever size, shape.

We have bronze phalluses, bone phalluses, golden phalluses, winged phalluses.

And the basic function of these small objects was quite clear-- provide protection for the own life of the user of this object against the bad spirits.

And what we have here is a necklace, which has been found here in Pompeii with a set of 8 pieces.

And in this case, it's quite interesting to see how--every single bone piece of this necklace is shaped as a double phallus.

We have to imagine our Pompeiians trying to escape from a disaster, and quickly having to find some objects to bring with them, protecting their new life, and so probably hoping also in the favor of the gods in order to survive through the disaster.

Narrator: At the dig site, in a bedroom just off the atrium, the team have found more evidence that reveals the panic in Pompeii's final hours.

[Alessandro Russo speaking Italian] Narrator: It is extremely rare to find remains of Roman furniture because normally, wood decays quickly.

But here, the charred remains of this bed were preserved by the fire itself.

[Speaking Italian] [Metal clanking, fires hissing] Dicus: The ashy remains of this bed tells its own story about the panic and the confusion.

They're not thinking about immediate safety concerns, like where the lamp goes.

They are worried about surviving this eruption.

Narrator: Over the years, archaeologists in Pompeii have found dozens of different types of Roman oil lamps.

[Russo speaking Italian] [Fires hissing] [People shouting] [Wood objects thudding] Zuchtriegel: I think it was like hell on earth.

You imagine here a fire, roofs collapsing, people screaming, trying to escape, others hiding.

Some believed the world was going to end and others that the gods didn't exist anymore or had withdrawn from the world.

That's the new eternal darkness.

Narrator: Despite the widespread panic, the city escaped the first 3 deadly pyroclastic flows as they headed west, into the town of Herculaneum.

But, as dawn broke, Pompeii's luck ran out.

Jackson: The fourth pyroclastic flow headed southeastwards towards Pompeii.

The air would have been thick with the smell of sulfur dioxide, a very strong, eggy smell.

And if they thought the ash and pumice raining on their roofs was bad, this was something else entirely.

[Rumbling] Anybody who was still alive, had not been killed by a collapsing roof, would have seen a... almost like a cloud coming down the volcano towards them.

It'd have been almost imperceptible--it was so far away-- how fast-moving it was.

[Rumbling continues] Narrator: As the superheated avalanche crashed into the city, it killed and buried everything in its path.

Today, we can see evidence of the power and ferocity of these deadly pyroclastic flows.

Jackson: These rocks here do tell us an important part of the story of the eruption.

In the lower part of this exposure of rock, we're seeing these pumice-rich ash deposits from the volcano during the early phase of the eruption.

But here, we have quite a different rock type.

This rock here has these really obvious lines, these sub-horizontal lines within it, called lamination, and they form by fast-moving flows, so flows that are moving so fast that you can't build ripples or little dunes; you actually just flatten the sediments out, and these rocks were deposited by one of these pyroclastic flows.

And it's haunting to think that this seemingly inconsequential one-meter-thick package of rock caused such chaos and death, because even if you were able to climb out of this lower package of ash, I'd have been up to my chest and my head would have been sticking out of it.

If I was lucky and I was strong, I could have clambered up to the top of that layer, but then suddenly, the surge, the pyroclastic flow, would have just swept me off my feet, and that would have been the end of me.

[Rumbling] Narrator: In the 1960s, archaeologists found a group of individuals buried in the ash.

Discovered close to the southern gate, today we know them as the fugitives.

Dicus: What's really interesting about the fugitives is we know from where they were found that they had been hiding for hours and hours as the pumice and ash piled up, and, really, to escape, they most likely had to go to the second story of a house, crawl out of a window, perhaps during that very lull when they thought the eruption was ending.

Narrator: But the fugitives didn't make it, and today, we can only imagine their story.

Flohr: You have here an entire community, a small family, perhaps.

They're older people.

They're younger people.

There is somebody who was a little over a year old, would not have been able to walk, who would have been carried.

They grouped.

They were not dead in an hour from the start of the eruption.

They survived until the next morning, so they had a lot of time to think about what was happening and how they could possibly respond to what was unfolding.

Maybe the most direct parallel that we have is what happened in the Twin Towers after the 9/11 attacks, because that also was a situation that was unknown to people.

People understood what had happened, to some extent, but they didn't know the buildings would collapse, and it's very hard to imagine how you respond then.

So some people immediately started to find their way to safety, maybe up to half, but the other half did not.

And there's at least a third of all people who waited more than 5 minutes, and we know of one group of about 16 people in one of the towers.

They got together in a conference room, had a conversation about the situation for about an hour, and then decided to leave the building.

[Rumbling] And think about what that might mean in a situation like in Pompeii, where you have very little time to decide.

There will have been panic.

There will have been fear, there will have been a lot of uncertainty: "What are we going to do now?

"How are we going to get out?

When is the right moment?"

But people stick together because you want to be with the people that you're most familiar with in the circumstances.

I think what this teaches us about us as human beings is that we are fundamentally social beings, and we are fundamentally beings who are rooted in familiarities.

So, come a moment where you have no reference framework, you're starting to count your familiarities.

You're going to go back to a place that you understand, but also, you're going to take care of the people you know.

So suppose I would be in a situation like that.

I would immediately run for my family and make sure they were safe, but, for these fugitives, it wasn't a straightforward decision process, it wasn't that you could make a right decision; you simply had to be lucky, and these people were unlucky.

They were trying to navigate the crisis, and it didn't work out.

Narrator: Back at the dig, the team are clearing a large room in the new wealthy house.

The brightly colored wall paintings suggest this was the home of a rich Pompeiian.

[Iovino speaking Italian] [Man speaking Italian] [Iovino speaking Italian] [Both speaking Italian] [Iovino speaking Italian] [Both speaking Italian] [Both chuckle and speak Italian] Narrator: The discovery of a mosaic and the highly decorated walls suggest the owner enjoyed displaying his wealth.

[Prisco speaking Italian] Narrator: But the vibrant, brightly colored walls of the living room are in stark contrast to the room next door.

Here, some truly astonishing decorations are emerging from the pumice.

Zuchtriegel: It's fascinating that the quality of the painting-- extraordinary.

And you see 3 figures... a dog, a hunting dog, which is also very--the detail is-- the--the eyes, everything.

And you see that, for example, her dress, it's-- it's almost transparent, and you see her--her expression and the hair.

It's all very, very beautiful.

Narrator: The scene is from Homer's "Iliad."

It shows Paris, the Prince of Troy, when he first meets Helen, the most beautiful woman of the Greek world.

Zuchtriegel: It's kind of unique as a composition, right, and so they are saying, "We are not using one of the typical mythological scenes," which are very, very common in Pompeii, but it's something, you know, a bit more special, and this shows, also, the education, the culture of the people who lived here, or pretend to have this culture.

Who knows, right?

What's also interesting, it's all painted in black.

This usually was 4 rooms which were being used in the winter, and so, in the evening, you would have to use lamps, and the smoke of the lamps tended to blacken the walls, and so Vitruvius the--the author suggested, "Well, the rooms you're using in the winter, where you have "to use lamps, paint them in black so you don't see the smoke on the walls."

Narrator: On another wall, the god Apollo, complete with his lyre, is trying to seduce his priestess, Cassandra.

Zuchtriegel: I think it often was, first of all, showing off one's education and, you know, culture, and so you'd say, you know, "I know Greek.

"I know Greek culture.

I paint my house with Greek images."

So you always have to imagine that this is being used during a practice, which is social practice.

People meet here, eat together, and often you have philosophical, political, cultural conversation.

Narrator: The level of sophistication on display implies the owner of this property was a man of means and culture.

And in the shrine room, more clues to his identity have emerged.

A red, painted inscription.

[Speaking Italian] [Trowel scraping] [Iovino speaking Italian] [Russo reading in Latin] Narrator: Who is ARV and why is he asking for votes?

The team has already found his initials on the bakery millstone, and now, a further inscription seems to finally reveal his identity.

Zuchtriegel: So here, we have "A" point, still abbreviated, "Aulum"?

"Aulus"?

"Aulum"?

And then we can read here "Rustium."

Uh... so this would be his kind of "family" name.

And then you have "Verum."

That would be the last name, so we know that he--his name was actually Aulus Rustius Verus.

And then we have, again, "Aed--Aedilum."

"Aediles" is kind of the second-highest office-- the town, and then this... strange...form of 3 letters, all merged into one: "Oro vos faciatis"-- "I ask you to vote to make him aediles of the town."

So we now know, thanks to this inscription, that his full name was Aulus Rustius Verus.

Fantastic.

Narrator: So, was Aulus Rustius Verus the owner of all these buildings: the laundry, the bakery, and the luxurious property with the imposing black room?

He was a well-known public figure running for political office, and owning a bakery would have given him an edge.

Zuchtriegel: The thing is that, in antiquity, they weren't so concerned about anti-corruption, and so they officially accepted that you could bribe voters, so you could somehow "buy" votes.

You can imagine that you could tell people this bakery is supported by this great guy, Aulus Rustius Verus, "and the bread you're buying," you know, "is so cheap thanks to him, also.

"So when you eat your daily bread, "think of how wonderful a person he is and consider giving him your vote."

Dicus: What the excavation is bringing us is the psychology of a man we don't even know.

You can see a man who is fully planning to rise even further in the ranks of Pompeiian society.

He was continuing to build onto his house.

He was going to spare no expenses on these refurbishments.

He was going to enter the political life of Pompeii, and all of this suddenly ended.

[Rumbling] This tragedy was very democratic.

It did not spare rich or poor alike.

As soon as these pyroclastic flows were strong enough to reach Pompeii and sweep over the city, anybody who remained within these walls was dead.

Narrator: 1,700 years later, in the 1740s, archaeologists accidentally rediscovered the ancient city, and as its buildings, artifacts, and people slowly reemerged from the pumice and ash, they began to write the story of Pompeii.

This dig is a new chapter in that story.

A year into the excavation of Insula 10, Gennaro, Alessandro, and the rest of the team are beginning to understand this extraordinary set of buildings and the people who lived here.

Zuchtriegel: Pompeii, you know, it's always a fragmented history, but sometimes you can put together a little story, and it can get very close.

You can see the dining rooms and bedrooms and even the bathrooms, and we can see how these people lived.

For me, there's nowhere more exciting to dig than Pompeii, and it really is because of the potential to find something, and it feels like magic.

You dig, and then suddenly something wonderful is there, and it tells a brand-new story, and this is what it's all about, to add to the story of these inhabitants who suffered so greatly.

Narrator: And what the team have found now adds to the story of this complex of buildings.

The final phase of excavation has revealed the full brutality of life for some of Pompeii's poorest.

Zuchtriegel: Now it all falls into place, where both humans and animals become mere elements in some kind of factory mechanism.

So, evidently, we have to imagine they lived in these two rooms... and there's only one way out.

And you take it, if you have to deliver the bread, and it's this door... Narrator: The only exit from the bakery leads to the atrium, where the bakery manager would receive guests.

Zuchtriegel: So, remember, the door is closed.

You would not see the bakery, but there's one other opening, as far as we know, between the bakery and this room.

And so you had this window here, but it was closed with iron bars.

The house owner evidently wanted to avoid people crossing from inside the bakery to this part, because from here, you had many ways to escape.

Narrator: The enslaved workers may have been literally imprisoned inside the bakery.

Zuchtriegel: There's little light, probably little space.

We have to imagine that the dust of the flour here filling the air and this very heavy, monotonous work all day long, and so it was one of the most terrible fates, of destinies of slaves in antiquity, to work in these bread bakeries.

[Flames crackling] [Indistinct chatter] Narrator: Could it be that the victims-- the two women and a child-- weren't seeking shelter but had no choice and were trapped, unable to escape?

Woman: Oh!

[Child crying] Zuchtriegel: We see in the dark side of ancient slavery, where there is no--no trust, no promises of liberation.

There's only the brute violence of forced labor.

Narrator: 2,000 years after the eruption of A.D. 79, Vesuvius is still a dangerously active volcano, an ever-present threat, which every year unites the residents of Naples in prayer to keep them and their city safe.

[Congregation singing] [Organ playing] [Iovino speaking Italian] [Applause] Narrator: Despite the threat of another eruption, people are determined to stay here, resilient in their love for their land.

[Festive music playing] [Iovino speaking Italian] [Iovino speaking Italian] To order "Pompeii: The New Dig" on DVD, Visit ShopPBS, or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS This program is also available with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video