It's interesting Pompeii was nothing but ruins after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius almost two thousand years ago. But there's a lot more to the story. How did these people living everyday lives wind up almost instantly locked in stone when the volcano hit? What were their pre volcano lives like and how did they use social media to leave us their memoirs. I'm Patty Steele, gone in just a few hours, but some of their stories survive, proving they were just like us. That's next on the backstory. We're back with the backstory. Imagine your life in sunny Italy two thousand years ago. Maybe it's a life of luxury or perhaps slavery. In seventy nine a d. Pompeii was a rich and beautiful city of around twenty to thirty thousand people. They all wanted the same things we do. They wanted to be successful, They loved great food, art, leisure, time and entertainment, and they loved one another. We know all this because they left behind a rich recorded history. Their Instagram, snapchats and posts were graffiti. A lot of it survived the destruction of the city in the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Ancient graffiti was all over the place in Pompeii, on the walls of temples, tombs, bars, public spaces, even inside homes. Pretty much nothing was off limits when it came to posting their thoughts. It's how people communicated. We see graffiti that celebrates the birth of a new baby or wishes a happy birthday to someone. There's graffiti offering services and making political statements. There's an elaborate description of a party throne for a very wealthy young guy coming of age. It was a week long party with a dinner for almost seven thousand of his closest friends, a week filled with feasting, drinking, and gladiator battles. That's a lot to describe in a bunch of graffiti, right, But again, it was their social media. They were just like Gus course, minus the gladiator petals. To spread their messages, they used a piece of charcoal or more often a stylus or nail, which was used to scratch the graffiti into walls. People would leave messages inside someone's home when they came to visit. Imagine that, and even messages of love were left and answered on public walls, so that everybody could see them. One of the message threads found started with Prima sends many greetings to Secundas. Secundas was delighted. He answers back. Secundas too, greets his Prima everywhere. I ask Mistress that you love me. And then he writes again twice, saying both times Secundis greets his Prima. Secundas Secundis greets his Prima. He definitely had the hats for Prima. But all of this and so much more was buried by Vesuvius. So it's August twenty fourth, seventy nine AD. You hear a rumbling in the distance, and you feel the earth tremble, just little bit at first, but you don't panic. You live just about thirteen miles from Mount Vesuvius, the massive volcano south of Naples, Italy. You've seen the smoke and felt the rumbles before, and all the teachers and other big shots tell everybody there's nothing to worry about. Maybe you're working in the marketplace, maybe you're a slave in a rich person's house, or you're a sex worker in one of the many brothels in town. Maybe you're done with work and relaxing at a local tavern, or in the public baths, or if you were rich, you could be enjoying your garden or gossiping in the spectacular private thermal baths built for the upper class. But pretty soon the sky darkens even more. You look up you see flocks of birds headed away from the mountain. Soon a light coating of ash begins to fall. Now the hot ash and small amounts of heated pumice start pouring out of Vesuvius, and you realize this isn't going to be good. It becomes incredibly dark. You can barely see where you're going. People around you panic and begin to run. Some head south, a deadly choice. Others head for the sea, hoping to get picked up by a boat, and some head north toward Naples, which turns out to be a good decision, or simply luck at the draw, since the path of destruction happened to head south. For some, whether you're a slave or disabled, or just don't have the wherewithal to run, you try to hide from the onslaught. Within just a few hours, the falling ash has turned into red hot falling rocks. Then there are the pyroclastic clouds, kind of an avalanche of super hot, toxic gas and debris that blows through on a cushion of air at speeds of almost five hundred miles an hour with temperatures as high as eighteen hundred degrees. It's hell on earth. The city is completely buried in ash and rock within hours. People that try to hide in their houses are buried in the hot ash, many of them sitting with family or coworkers, some lying down, some running Because of the heat and the ash. Their bodies become frozen in their death pose, only to be found thousands of years later in the same pose. They're completely buried, their actual bodies eventually disintegrate. They leave behind though, a kind of full bodied death mask, which later on was filled with plaster by those that dug through the rubble, recreating the moment of death for the victims. What's amazing is of the twenty to thirty thousand people living in Pompeii, only about two thousand died, but the city was locked in time because of how it was buried, and the survivors didn't come back. Pompey offered a life of luxury for some and poverty and hard work for others, not so very different from our world right. The messages they left behind give us tremendous insight into their lives and what made them human, and into what we have in common with them. Hope you're enjoying the Backstory with Patty Steele. Follow or subscribe for free to get new episodes delivered automatically, and also feel free to dm me if you have a story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out to me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.

It's interesting Pompeii was nothing but ruins after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius almost two thousand years ago. But there's a lot more to the story. How did these people living everyday lives wind up almost instantly locked in stone when the volcano hit? What were their pre volcano lives like and how did they use social media to leave us their memoirs. I'm Patty Steele, gone in just a few hours, but some of their stories survive, proving they were just like us. That's next on the backstory. We're back with the backstory. Imagine your life in sunny Italy two thousand years ago. Maybe it's a life of luxury or perhaps slavery. In seventy nine a d. Pompeii was a rich and beautiful city of around twenty to thirty thousand people. They all wanted the same things we do. They wanted to be successful, They loved great food, art, leisure, time and entertainment, and they loved one another. We know all this because they left behind a rich recorded history. Their Instagram, snapchats and posts were graffiti. A lot of it survived the destruction of the city in the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Ancient graffiti was all over the place in Pompeii, on the walls of temples, tombs, bars, public spaces, even inside homes. Pretty much nothing was off limits when it came to posting their thoughts. It's how people communicated. We see graffiti that celebrates the birth of a new baby or wishes a happy birthday to someone. There's graffiti offering services and making political statements. There's an elaborate description of a party throne for a very wealthy young guy coming of age. It was a week long party with a dinner for almost seven thousand of his closest friends, a week filled with feasting, drinking, and gladiator battles. That's a lot to describe in a bunch of graffiti, right, But again, it was their social media. They were just like Gus course, minus the gladiator petals. To spread their messages, they used a piece of charcoal or more often a stylus or nail, which was used to scratch the graffiti into walls. People would leave messages inside someone's home when they came to visit. Imagine that, and even messages of love were left and answered on public walls, so that everybody could see them. One of the message threads found started with Prima sends many greetings to Secundas. Secundas was delighted. He answers back. Secundas too, greets his Prima everywhere. I ask Mistress that you love me. And then he writes again twice, saying both times Secundis greets his Prima. Secundas Secundis greets his Prima. He definitely had the hats for Prima. But all of this and so much more was buried by Vesuvius. So it's August twenty fourth, seventy nine AD. You hear a rumbling in the distance, and you feel the earth tremble, just little bit at first, but you don't panic. You live just about thirteen miles from Mount Vesuvius, the massive volcano south of Naples, Italy. You've seen the smoke and felt the rumbles before, and all the teachers and other big shots tell everybody there's nothing to worry about. Maybe you're working in the marketplace, maybe you're a slave in a rich person's house, or you're a sex worker in one of the many brothels in town. Maybe you're done with work and relaxing at a local tavern, or in the public baths, or if you were rich, you could be enjoying your garden or gossiping in the spectacular private thermal baths built for the upper class. But pretty soon the sky darkens even more. You look up you see flocks of birds headed away from the mountain. Soon a light coating of ash begins to fall. Now the hot ash and small amounts of heated pumice start pouring out of Vesuvius, and you realize this isn't going to be good. It becomes incredibly dark. You can barely see where you're going. People around you panic and begin to run. Some head south, a deadly choice. Others head for the sea, hoping to get picked up by a boat, and some head north toward Naples, which turns out to be a good decision, or simply luck at the draw, since the path of destruction happened to head south. For some, whether you're a slave or disabled, or just don't have the wherewithal to run, you try to hide from the onslaught. Within just a few hours, the falling ash has turned into red hot falling rocks. Then there are the pyroclastic clouds, kind of an avalanche of super hot, toxic gas and debris that blows through on a cushion of air at speeds of almost five hundred miles an hour with temperatures as high as eighteen hundred degrees. It's hell on earth. The city is completely buried in ash and rock within hours. People that try to hide in their houses are buried in the hot ash, many of them sitting with family or coworkers, some lying down, some running Because of the heat and the ash. Their bodies become frozen in their death pose, only to be found thousands of years later in the same pose. They're completely buried, their actual bodies eventually disintegrate. They leave behind though, a kind of full bodied death mask, which later on was filled with plaster by those that dug through the rubble, recreating the moment of death for the victims. What's amazing is of the twenty to thirty thousand people living in Pompeii, only about two thousand died, but the city was locked in time because of how it was buried, and the survivors didn't come back. Pompey offered a life of luxury for some and poverty and hard work for others, not so very different from our world right. The messages they left behind give us tremendous insight into their lives and what made them human, and into what we have in common with them. Hope you're enjoying the Backstory with Patty Steele. Follow or subscribe for free to get new episodes delivered automatically, and also feel free to dm me if you have a story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out to me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.