Due to its size and extensive body of scholarship, Pompeii is arguably the most complex archaeological site on the planet. Despite this, scholars have regularly sought to produce synthetic treatments of the ancient city and its excavated remains. B.'s volume represents the most recent attempt at this daunting task. While many previous works have advanced the theoretical agendas of their authors – see, for example, A. Maiuri's discussions of the post-earthquake period in Pompei (1927) – the great success of B.'s book is the balance with which it treats even the most controversial topics.
The text is divided into nine chapters that cover a range of subjects, from volcanology to erotic graffiti. B. spends considerable time ‘setting the stage’ before delving into the extant archaeology. After addressing the geological setting and Vesuvian eruption in the first chapter, she utilises Chapters 2 and 3 to provide an overview of Pompeii's excavation history and to discuss some of the debates associated with the site's pre-a.d. 79 past. Chapters 4 to 9 consider more conventional Pompeian themes: people, public architecture, houses and society, religion and religious buildings, and the city's economy. The book concludes with a summary of the years between the a.d. 62 earthquake and the a.d. 79 eruption.
The reader is thus presented with a comprehensive – if broadly-painted – picture of Pompeian studies as they stand at present. B. adds occasional flavour to an otherwise descriptive narrative by including short vignettes on particularly interesting topics: the bombing of Pompeii during World War II, the tablet archive of L. Caecilius Iucundus and so on. Throughout the book, B. also acknowledges recent debates surrounding scholarly perspectives once thought to be canonical, taking care to present contentious subjects such as the ‘Altstadt’ theory and the calendar date of the a.d. 79 eruption from multiple perspectives.
Though this paperback does not formally represent a new edition of the 2007 hardbound book, it is worth pointing out that the text has been corrected and/or augmented in certain places. Printing errors present on p. 40 (‘exciting finds made been made’) and p. 219 (‘such asa chisel’) of the hardback have been corrected, and the bibliography has been updated to include a number of important publications that appeared between 2007 and 2012. Certain problems remain, however, the most notable being the list of illustrations, which is not numbered and is catalogued by source rather than by page number (in some cases incorrectly). The book is beautifully illustrated and it is a shame that the publishers have made identifying images so difficult.
Overall, however, these are minor complaints about what is an otherwise excellent introduction to Pompeii and its history. For university students, it provides a nice mix of general discussion and detailed analysis. I have used this text on undergraduate modules for the last few years, and it is hard to imagine teaching a course on Pompeii without it.
