'Much of what you think you know about Pompeii may turn out on reading this eye-opening book
to be wrong. The town was not full of brothels (Beard counts only one) its water engineering
pace the novelist Robert Harris was pretty substandard (there may have been aqueducts but
there were no sewers) and the site didn't lie undisturbed until the eighteenth century (many
townspeople for instance came back soon afterwards to dig up their valuables). Beard a
professor of classics at Cambridge always wears her learning lightly and in this outstanding
book she has excelled herself puncturing preconceptions and exposing a whole layer of myth
about the world's best-preserved ancient town. The result is an often gripping piece of
detective work that also offers a tantalising window into the reality of daily Roman life.' The
Sunday Times History books of the year Andrew Holgate
