Magic Minute Pompeiian Anguish and Agony
MAGIC MINUTE // “In 1977, wandering along the far end of a Roman road in Pompeii some friends and I got the shock of our lives!
We’d run out of ruins and were about to turn back when a rustic iron shed caught our eye, “I wonder what’s in there?” I thought.
Peering through the chicken wire of its gate we were stunned to see three long rows of plaster-cast Pompeiian bodies gripped in their anguish and agony.
Vesuvius’s pumice ash had perfectly preserved their tortured expressions and clothing details as if we’d just stumbled across them.
We could almost hear their anguished cries!
All this because of the ingenious thinking of the Director of Excavations, Giuseppe Fiorelli in 1863.
He simply filled in the hollow cavities where their bodies had been with plaster before this irreplaceable evidence could be destroyed.
Thus, the world was gifted an incredible array of actual Pompeiian folk in all their sad glory for us to wonder over.
A small bribe allowed us to wander among these luckless Pompeians for twenty heart-wrenching minutes.
A chance experience we’ll never forget.
I’m Laurie Smale… Till my next Magic Minute.🪄
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