Explores the social, political, cultural, and religious life in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, destroyed in a volcanic eruption in 79 A.D. and not rediscovered until the late seventeenth century.

Destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, the ruins of Pompeii offer the best evidence we have of life in the Roman Empire. But the eruptions are only part of the story. In The Fires of Vesuvius, acclaimed historian Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. She explores what kind of town it was -- more like Calcutta or the Costa del Sol? -- and what it can tell us about "ordinary" life there. --from publisher description

Shows how the destruction of Pompeii inspired artists, authors and composers for centuries afterward.

Through a twist of fate, the eruption that destroyed Pompeii in 79 CE also, preserved a wealth of evidence about the town, buried for centuries in volcanic ash. Since the town's excavations in the eighteenth century, archaeologists have disputed the evidence that might attest the presence of Christians in Pompeii before the eruption. Now, Bruce W. Longenecker, reviews that evidence, in comparison with other possible evidence of first-century Christian...

This beautifully designed, full-color textbook introduces the Roman background of the New Testament by immersing students in the life and culture of the thriving first-century towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which act as showpieces of the world into which the early Christian movement was spreading. Bruce Longenecker, a leading scholar of the ancient world of the New Testament, discusses first-century artifacts in relation to the life stories of...