Early Work

The very first digging occurred shortly after the disaster that buried the city. Residents who had escaped returned and dug into their villas for precious items. Some profiteers also tunneled into the city, seeking articles to sell. However, the dangers put them off. Unstable tunnels often collapsed, and pockets of poisonous gas killed some unwary visitors. After an initial return, Romans forgot the city, and it passed into legend for centuries.

Architect Domenico Fontana stumbled on the city again between 1594 and 1600 A.D., when was digging a water route. He found two ancient inscriptions, and upon further search, several frescoes. He had little interest, however, and covered them back up. Then, in 1709, local monks digging a new well stumbled upon some relics. Prince d’Elbeuf, an eager collector of ancient items, bought the land, which proved to be the city of Herculaneum. Sadly, his workers dug at random, causing great damage and removing statues and artwork. 

Official excavations began in 1738 under the oversight of Spanish engineer Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre. The finding of Pompeii nearby shifted attention away from the seaside resort and back to the major city. Yet poor techniques in the 18^th and 19^th centuries caused damage and allowed large scale decline in coming years.

Rebuilding Begins

The first organized scientific work in Pompeii began in 1863 under the direction of Giuseppe Fiorelli. Rather than jumping from one promising location to the next, his crew dug layer by layer, street by street. He left most items in situ, an kept detailed notes. He also realized that cavities remained where the ash had buried its victims. Using plaster poured into the cavity, they were able to preserve the final moments of many people. The process still bears his name, though now uses a clear resin that causes less damage. The plaster casts are iconic symbols of Pompeii, capturing the horror of its final days and humanizing its victims. 

In the early 1900s, repair began in earnest as the site prepared to be a tourist attraction. The new director, Amedeo Maiuri, wanted to recreate the atmosphere of the Roman town. They cleared the main road, the Via dell’Abbondanza, and rebuilt almost every excavated building along its length.  The large palestra also received heavy work. They did not realize that the tools used, chiefly the alkaline in the cement mixture, worsened erosion and damage.  

In 1943, a new threat loomed over the city. Allied bombs falling during World War Two destroyed several houses on the main street. A few years later, and earthquake caused further damage. Work for the rest of the century focused on rebuilding those locations, using much safer supplies. Rebuilt sites included the large palestra, the House of Epidius Rufus, The House of Triptolemus, and the park museum.  Ironically, the House of Gladiators, which collapsed in 2010 creating much anger and dispute, was almost entirely a reconstruction. 

Modern Efforts

Later rebuilding, took place in the 1980s. Yet even so, by the time of the collapse that took place in 2010, Pompeii was in serious crisis. Only about ten buildings and 14 acres of the 110 visible were open to tourists. Luckily, experts were vocal about their concerns, and in 2012 received funds for emergency intervention and future efforts.  The current director, Massimo Osanna, feels excited about the city’s future. He and his team are continuing to work on the “Great Pompeii Project.” It’s an ambition plan, calling for meticulous, cross-disciplinary study as well as improved conservation and restoration. The goal is to revive Pompeii as a living picture of ancient Roman life. The first phase was completed in 2015, and opened another 12,500 m²  of area to the public.

With funding to protect the ruins, new work has begun in the 54 or more acres of untouched city. 2018 saw amazing new findings. The “street of balconies” contains very expensive villas, some whose second stories were preserved, rare in Pompeii. Team members also found a richly adorned shrine and a garden with preserved plants of intense value to botanists. Newly found remains include several human and a stable with a number of horses. Pompeii’s renaissance will continue to provide new  knowledge of history, while still sharing its immersive experience with visitors.

Sources:  Butterworth, Alex, Pompeii: The Living City; Mau, August, Pompeii, Its Life and Art; Current World Archaeology, Issue 90, “New Finds from Pompeii;” Frank Viviano, National Geographic, “Bringing the Ghostly City of Pompeii Back to Life.”

Photo: Face, sculpture, Pompeii by  jfleszar is licensed under  CC0

This article was written for Time Travel Rome by Marian Vermeulen.

Led by the general Publius Quinctilius Varus, whose incompetence was unfairly exaggerated in the aftermath of the battle an effort to provide a scapegoat, the Roman army had been marching in line deep though the heart of the German forest when it was ambushed on all sides by a confederation of Germanic tribes. For hours the Romans managed to keep their assailants at bay, no mean feat considering their line was stretched to between 15 and 20 kilometres and they were fighting in dense forest and heavy rain, and as darkness fell on the forest Varus’ men hastily erected a fortified camp, which they held through the night.

Sallying forth from the camp the next morning into the open country around the Wiehen Hills, the Roman army suffered heavy losses. They fought throughout the day, continuing their desperate march west, and struggled into the night, with torrential rain hampering the Romans’ already hopeless attempts at fending off the German tribesmen. But Arminius, the German general behind the attack, was himself a Roman citizen – an auxiliary officer of Germanic origin trained in the arts of Roman warfare. He had laid his trap, and the Romans were marching straight into it.

That night, Arminius ambushed Rome’s straggling soldiers, drawing them into a decisive battle at the foot of the Kalkriese Hill. It was a massacre. Funnelled into a narrow strip between forest and swampland, the legionaries were attacked from all sides, their German aggressors taking cover behind temporary earthworks. Varus and his commanding officers fell on their swords or were cut down as they fled. Any survivors were either killed, enslaved or ransomed (though, curiously, anyone ransomed lost their right to return to Italy).

Suetonius tells us that the ghost of Teutoburg would haunt Augustus for the rest of his life. In the immediate months following the disaster, the emperor, his hair matted and beard unkempt, would dash his head against the palace walls crying, “Quintili Vare, legiones redde!” – Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions! Outside the imperial palace the battle had broader ramifications – ushering in a prolonged period of public mourning, and seeing Rome’s rampant imperial expansionism give way to a more cautious policy of consolidation.

Is there anything to see on the battlefield now ?

Until the late 1980s, our only evidence for where the Battle of Teutoburg Forest took place came from a line in Tacitus where he mentioned the saltus Teutoburgiensis between the Lippe and Ems rivers. Then in 1987, Tony Clunn, an amateur archaeologist armed with nothing but a metal detector, discovered a scattered trail of coins, none of which post-dated the Age of Augustus, and some leaden Roman sling bolts in the Kalkriese-Niewedder Senke near Osnabrück

Visitors to Kalkriese should visit the Varusschlacht Museum und Park Kalkriese. It comprises a vast outdoor section, which recreates part of the battlefield and its earthworks, and a watchtower, which gives an overview of the battlefield more broadly. Also part of the museum is a collection of artefacts recovered from the 24-kilometre corridor archaeologists have so far managed to excavate. Among its exhibits are spearheads, the remains of studded legionary sandals, and even a Roman ceremonial facemask, believed to have belonged to an officer.

Another attraction, at Detmold, some 100 kilometres southeast from the site of the battle, is the Hermannsdenkmal or “statue of Hermann”, completed in 1875. Hermann was the post-reformation name for Arminius, the Cheruscan war chief and victor against the Romans, possibly coined by Martin Luther, and widely endorsed in German nationalistic propaganda to become “Hermann the German.”

Bibliography:
J. R. Abdale, Four Days in September: The Battle of Teutoburg (Bloomington, 2013)

P. S. Wells, The Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutoburg Forest (New York and London, 2003)

Featured photo: Steinbrüche bei Kalkriese by Curt Mühe is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

This article was written for Time Travel Rome by Alexander Meddings