A surviving historical account of the eruption, for those interested:
> This is an English translation of the two letters written by Pliny the Younger to the Roman historian Tacitus. The first letter describes the journey of his uncle Pliny the Elder during which he perished. The second one describes his own observations in a town across the bay.
I visited Pompeii and Herculanium last year. The thing you don't get by reading books about Pompeii is just how absolutely massive it was. It is HUGE. You are talking a small city. I believe we were also told that something like 1/3 of it is still buried - if not 1/3, a large percentage. Herculanium is less impressive, but it is still a reasonable sized place.
Two things I took away from visiting Pompeii that I did not know from reading books and watch History Channel videos. Like you said, Pompeii was pretty large and it was covered with a lot of pumice and ash. There are a couple of places where the pumice and ash is 30 - 40 feet above the houses and all of that fell within a couple of days.
Wait, how did Rectina send the message that said she was trapped at the foot of the mountain, if she was… trapped at the foot of the mountain in her house? Why didn’t she escape with the messenger?
Although the sentence says "... except by boat". Why she sent a messenger (presumably by boat) to ask Pliny the Elder to pick her up, instead of using that boat itself, is, curious.
The boat might not have been big enough to carry her family, attendants, and material wealth. All of which can be more important to people than immediate escape. Pliny writes that the cloud had not reached Stabiae. Its likely she was anxious and wanted to evacuate but was not under noticeable threat and did not understand the severity of her situation.
Its possible the only means of practical escape for her were by sea, and she did not know how to swim - but only someone from her entourage did (perhaps the slave that delivered the message).
(The original poster wrote «records that exist that can be used to tell this story»: of all the documentation that can be lost, that produced during the first imperial Rome is probably some of the most secured. We still lost a lot: for example, the culmination of that period is probably under Trajan, and he wrote the Commentarii de bellis Dacicis - lost, contrary to its model, Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico...)
"Dame Winifred Mary Beard, DBE, FSA, FBA, FRSL (born 1 January 1955)[1] is an English classicist specialising in Ancient Rome. She is a trustee of the British Museum and formerly held a personal professorship of classics at the University of Cambridge.[2] She is a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, and Royal Academy of Arts Professor of Ancient Literature."
I'm a bit upset that, toward the end, the author puts politics in an article about history and archaeology, and does it poorly to boot.
For their analogy of "How were the survivors treated today," they cite Border Patrol migrant camps and NYC tent cities.
However, that's not really a good comparison. In both of those examples, the displaced people are foreigners fleeing political / economic disasters (or just seeking a better life).
A closer comparison might be Hurricane Katrina, where the displaced people were (mostly) legal residents or citizens, fleeing a natural disaster.
Yes. These were local people who could already function in the same kind of society and probably still had their wealth, business skills, social connections, etc. Even today, those types of refugees don't need to live in tents.
Political and economic disasters are still disasters, disasters which many people flee out of desperation and not necessarily because they were responsible. And while the parallels between political/economic disasters and natural disasters may be weak, we have a more recent example of people fleeing to the Americas because either because of the political turmoil or eventual ruin of their homelands. (I am thinking specifically of WWII.)
> In both of those examples, the displaced people are foreigners fleeing political / economic disasters (or just seeking a better life).
It didn't even seem to occur to the author that foreign people in circumstances like these examples would very likely have been enslaved in those times. I am not sure there was even any other possibility for them!?
Not all foreigners in Rome were slaves. Far from it. However, path to becoming a citizen was not easy, and even if you were a citizen your rights were dependent on wealth, sex and reputation.
Not that there were no rights for other people. But it was very different from what we've come to expect.
Right, but imagine a bunch of foreigners arriving without any possession. Do you really think they would've been welcomed into society? I think that's just not believable,they would start from the "bottom" which in those times was slavery, if they didn't get killed right away (as it could be quite threatening to see a large number of people coming towards your village, that could be easily mistaken by an invasion).
"Rome was still an empire of immigrants in those years. Many immigrants advanced their families’ reputations and their own careers by settling inside the Roman Empire’s borders: Franks, Armenians, Vandals, Moors, Ethiopians, and more. Unless conquered and enslaved in war, every man and woman who lived inside the empire’s territorial border held the status of a free person...
Being forced to leave one’s home is an ordeal no one should be forced to endure, Plutarch began. Geographical dislocation causes undeniable suffering. Everyone admires how the ancient bards channeled that emotion into their soulful poetry and music, he acknowledged. But, he went on, fortunately hardships are never immutable, and one’s circumstances can often improve...
Ambitious foreigners, both men and women, sensed the possibilities. Despite the limitations of not being a citizen, an immigrant to the fourth-century empire could legally go anywhere, work any craft, and be anything."
> Right, but imagine a bunch of foreigners arriving without any possession. Do you really think they would've been welcomed into society
that is literally how they were integrated, especially during the empire era. We have records of a bunch of barbarians showing up and the emperor sending them to farm in various areas of the empire. They were not citizens (unless they went in the army) but they were not slaves.
My understanding is that the emperor only allowed other peoples to come into the Empire in large numbers when they made deals with them, usually because they wanted protection against a more ruthless enemy, while the Romans needed more men in their armies, so it was a win-win for both. I had never heard that people could just migrate into the Empire without hassle before, and the would be really surprising to me as it seems to contradict everything I've read about the time.
Also pretty much all of the claims in the last few paragraphs are entirely unfounded, we simply don’t have even remotely enough information to make any of them…
I don't understand why we're supposed to have more empathy and compassion for people who happened to be born inside some arbitrary line someone drawn hundreds of years ago.
Especially when some of the people born inside our borders had a hand in creating these non-natural disasters that cause so many to flee their homes.
Because it's not arbitrary. It's what physically defines our countries, which are made up of people and culture and history and values within those boundaries. Those borders are what better men than you fought and died for. If you don't see the point, it's because you've never wanted for anything, like most leftists.
I think the point is that you don't decide where you are born. So you should not value people based on where they are born. On this site there are people from all over the world, it's seems silly for me to need to know what country you are from, before I know if I should reply to your comment.
> the author puts politics in an article about history and archaeology
That's a very "end of history" level of understanding of history and archaelogy. History is inherently political because it's shaped by our own politics as much as it is a study of the politics of the past. Even if we don't do it explicitly, we look at history through the lens of our present with all the baggage that means. And it can help reflect on similar situations in the present to learn both how humans handled those situations in the past and how that worked out.
> and does it poorly to boot
That I'm willing to agree on. It does seem apropos of nothing and very hamfisted even if I may agree with the author's general message. I think the problem is actually greater than you say: even the concept of "foreigners" vs "citizens" doesn't translate well as Rome distinguished between foreigners, residents and citizens differently than we do today and "race" didn't exist as a meaningful distinction in the same way. Even the nuances of the differences between different foreign "nations" worked differently so the concept of refugees doesn't really translate all that well to begin with.
Did you read my comment? Or the article you linked? I'm genuinely asking because I literally stated the opposite of presentism:
> I think the problem is actually greater than you say: even the concept of "foreigners" vs "citizens" doesn't translate well as Rome distinguished between foreigners, residents and citizens differently than we do today and "race" didn't exist as a meaningful distinction in the same way. Even the nuances of the differences between different foreign "nations" worked differently so the concept of refugees doesn't really translate all that well to begin with.
Where you seem to disagree is that history is inherently political, which isn't "a fallacy and called presentism" but is literally calling attention to presentism. Presentism has been widespread in historical analysis throughout much of history. This is obvious in hindsight. What is less obvious is that we still engage in it today even when we think we don't.
The mere notion that presentism is even a thing is a relatively recent development (relative to the field of history as a whole) and that it should be avoided is in itself a political decision (i.e. the decision to try to avoid political bias is in itself informed by politics).
> Survivors were not isolated into camps, nor were they forced to live indefinitely in tent cities. There’s no evidence that they encountered discrimination in their new communities.
I watched that documentary. There's no evidence for or against any of those theories.
Nothing changes. A buddy always says nothing has actually changed in 20,000 years... Based on the description and other accounts of the bodies, sometimes found to be attached to the buildings... that the wealthy survived while abandoning anyone else not "worth it".
Not all the survivors of the eruption were wealthy or went on to find success in their new communities
The guy lists 2 semi-wealthy survivors, then says the above. He also says:
I took Roman names unique to Pompeii or Herculaneum – such as Numerius Popidius and Aulus Umbricius – and searched for people with those names who lived in surrounding communities in the period after the eruption. and found 200 survivors in 12 cities
So he's only searching on unique names, which is an (understandable) bias, and only found 200 out of thousands of people, while saying there are way too few bodies.
There's literally zero evidence to support the fact that the rich bugged out, and only the poor died. In fact, there's evidence to the contrary, with multiple poor people found, and lots of those that didn't do well, their wealth unknown prior to te event.
Frankly how would the rich even do that? Lots of houses, rich and poor, left with belongings. How would the rich prevent escape?
That's a slave, not a poor person. Slaves were not cheap, in fact they were often expensive. They could also carry things, very helpful when trying to save your other valuables.
Leaving a slave behind would be very strange I think.
"In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods."
I may be wrong, but I think what's happened is that everyone likes saying "methodology", so they do, and so everyone uses it. It's just that it's wrong - but it's normal.
Sociology -> study of societies.
Psychology -> study of the mind and behaviour.
Archaeology -> study of historical human activity (by a particular means).
"ology" -> a branch of learning.
We are not creating new branches of learning, when we are in fact creating a method to investigate a problem.
Also, if we were to say methodology differs to all other uses of -ology, and in fact is a, or a few, methods used to investigate a problem, what word do we then use to describe the study of methods?
"Methodology" is not overlappable to "Sociology", "Psychology", "Archaeology":
a "methodology" can be a logic behind a method. It is a theoretical framework that is supposed to validate the methods you will use.
To create a symmetry, you could pose a problem relevant to (say) Psychology, than develop a "psychology" as a theoretical framework valid in Psychology that justifies your further analysis.
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Specifically to the text, the researcher says he checked occurrences of typical names in inscriptions (etc.) and evidence of re-scaled infrastructure - that is the method. The methodology would be expressed in an accompanying study that justifies that method as valid.
You missed that the opening of your quotation is «In its most common sense». So there is the other sense, "a theoretical framework for a method". (And you do not easily find around expressions such as "having proposed a sociology (etc.)" - a theoretical framework for a "what"? You do not have a term for a sociological, psychological, archeological practice.)
And you will surely find people that will propose that the other sense is more common than the one the Wikipedia editor identified as occasionally preeminent.
> This model for post-disaster recovery can be a lesson for today. The costs of funding the recovery never seems to have been debated. Survivors were not isolated into camps, nor were they forced to live indefinitely in tent cities. There’s no evidence that they encountered discrimination in their new communities.
That's a very different situation than what we see today, and is a completely inappropriate analogy. The survivors of Pompeii moved to adjacent communities about a day's journey from Pompeii. They were not migrants. The best analogy is how we (in the US) have FEMA to handle disasters within American boarders; and how American residents regularly move to different towns / states.
If we had to flag submissions for occasional faults...
For that matter, signs of grave intellectual deficiency are at the beginning already, at
> shooting ... debris up to 20 miles (32.1 kilometers) in the air
Where you are told that volcanic debris has 100 meters precision, starting from a figure that has 16 kilometers fault of precision (use of "precision" here imprecise). These people should not be allowed to leave the house, they fail verification of intellectual competence at the basics (use of "verification" here imprecise). Yet... Yet sometimes their effort does not lead to complete disaster. Be very wary as they are wearing flashing warning lights, but do not throw away the good if it miraculously is there.
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Edit: and it contains a chunk, «In episodes of the TV series “Doctor Who” and “Loki”». By coincidence, the next the eyes met came to be the shout of TheConversation: «Academic rigour, journalistic flair». What do we do, we throw away all of it? Probably not. It is a very imperfect world.
> This is an English translation of the two letters written by Pliny the Younger to the Roman historian Tacitus. The first letter describes the journey of his uncle Pliny the Elder during which he perished. The second one describes his own observations in a town across the bay.
https://igppweb.ucsd.edu/~gabi/sio15/lectures/volcanoes/plin...