Name _____________________________________________________ Date _____________________ Webquest: “The Dog of Pompeii” by Louis Untermeyer http://www.history.com/topics/ancient‐history/pompeii Watch the 2‐minute video. Pay special attention to where Pompeii is and where Vesuvius is on the map shown. 1. How hot did the video claim the ash and mud spewing from Mt. Vesuvius was? __________________ 2. In what direction was Pompeii from Mt. Vesuvius? ________________________________ 3. How much of Pompeii still lies buried today? ______________________ Click on http://www.harcourtschool.com/activity/pompeii/pmpErup.html What did the eruption look like? 4. What stage of a volcanic eruption is shown in the animation? _________________________________ 5. Who is this named after, and what did he do? _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ 6.. During this stage of an eruption, what flies high into the air? _________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ 7. How long does this stage last? __________________________________________________________ Historians tell us that Mt. Vesuvius’
eruption on August 24, 79 A.D. lasted
for 25 hours.
8. Does lava flow during this stage of a volcanic eruption? ________________ 9. During the first eight hours of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., how many feet fell on Pompeii during this stage of the volcanic eruption? _______________________________________ 10. The heaps of small rocks that landed on the houses caused many roofs to _____________________. 11. In the next stage of the eruption, a superhot cloud of _________________ and ________________ flowed down the side of Vesuvius and covered the town of Herculaneum. 12. It took only about __________ minutes for the boiling mud to flow from Vesuvius to Herculaneum, a distance of about four miles. Click on this link: http://www.ducksters.com/history/ancient_rome/pompeii.php The City 13. Pompeii was a popular ______________________________ for the Romans. 14. It is estimated that between __________________________ people lived in the city. Many wealthy Romans had summer homes in Pompeii and would live there during the hot summer months. A Great Archeologists Find 15. After Mt. Vesuvius erupted, Pompeii was buried and gone, and people eventually forgot about it. It wasn’t discovered again until the ___________________ when archaeologists began to uncover the city. 16. Much of the city was _______________________________ under the ashes. Buildings, paintings, houses, and workshops that would never have survived all these years remained intact. As a result, much of what we know about everyday life in the Roman Empire comes from Pompeii. Interesting Facts about the City of Pompeii. 17. The eruption occurred one day after the religious festival to _______________________________, the Roman god of ________________________. 18. The amount of _________________________ released by the eruption was roughly one hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. 19. The nearby city of _____________________________________________ also was destroyed. 20. Archaeologists found holes in the ashes that were once the _____________________ _____ _______________________ that were buried in the eruption. By pouring plaster into these holes, they have been able to make detailed casts of many of the citizens of Pompeii. Click on this link: http://carlos.emory.edu/ODYSSEY/ROME/daily.html Odyssey Online: Rome Click on the “Daily Life” link and read the paragraph. 21. One of the best glimpses of daily life in ancient Rome is the result of a _______________________ __________________________________. In 79 A.D., the city of Pompeii was buried by volcanic ash from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. The city was caught without warning. Click on the “Public Life” link. 22. Pompeii was a prosperous town located south of Rome on the Bay of _________________________. 23. Good agricultural land around the city produced ______________ and ____________. 24. The city had a ________________, which as an open square or marketplace. It had an open area with colonnades around the sides and was surrounded by public buildings, such as temples, markets, and government buildings. This is where the religious, commercial, and government activities took place. Remains of the Forum in Pompeii Click on the “Theaters” link. 25. Roman towns borrowed the _______________________ theater form, a half‐circle stage surrounded by stepped seating made of stone. 26. For larger spectacles and sporting events, the Romans invented their own building design, the _________________________________________________________, which was a large oval arena surrounded by tiered seats. This building design is very similar to a modern ____________________ ______________________________________. Use the back button to return to” Daily Life” page. Then click on the “Merchants’ Shops” link. 27. Archaeologists working at Pompeii have uncovered shops for _______________________________, _____________________________________, and ___________________ for grinding flour. Use the back button to return to the “Daily Life” page. Then click on the “Public Baths” link. 28. Because most Romans did not have baths in their homes, they went to large public _____________ _____________________________. 29. These places were a place to get _________________________ as well as a social center where Romans met friends to _____________________________ and _______________________. 30. Women and men went to __________________________ bath houses or each had their own hours. 31.The Roman bath houses had a series of rooms with progressively hotter water. The final step in a Roman bath was a plunge into a _____________________ bath or swimming pool. Click on the “Private Life” link. Where did they live? 32. Most people lived in _____________________ _______________________________________. Each apartment had maybe two or three rooms, which were in tall buildings with ________________________ on the ground level. 33. Apartments were often ___________________________________________ and were a fire hazard. 34. Wealthy Romans lived in __________________________ houses. The front door opened into a large hall, called an atrium, which had an opening in the ceiling to let in light and a pool in the floor to catch rainwater. Bedrooms, storerooms, opened off the atrium. There was also a room for entertaining guests and an open courtyard with a garden at the back of the house. 35. Brightly _____________________ walls and ______________________ floors decorated these homes. Click on the “painted walls” link. 36. Roman houses had few _____________________________ so there were large areas of solid walls to decorate. 37. Archaeologists have found many examples of Roman wall painting during their excavations of Pompeii. What god is shown on the painting on this page? ____________________________ Above: Wall paintings found in the excavation work from a house in Pompeii Right: Picture of a young couple painted on a wall in Pompeii Wall paintings found in Pompeii ruins: A young girl (left) and Narcissus (right) Pliny and his mother were living at his uncle’s villa in the town of Misenume when
Vesuvius erupted. He was 18 at the time. A few years after the eruption in 79 A.D.,
he wrote a friend, Cornelius Tacitus, describing what happened to him and his
mother during the second day of the disaster.
Ashes were already falling, not as yet very thickly. I looked
round: a dense black cloud was coming up behind us,
spreading over the earth like a flood. ‘Let us leave the road
while we can still see,’ I said, ‘or we shall be knocked down
and trampled underfoot in the dark by the crowd behind.’ We
had scarcely sat down to rest when darkness fell, not the
dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had
been put out in a closed room.
You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants,
and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents,
others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them
by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of
their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in
their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but
still more imagined there were no gods left, and that the
universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore.
Pliny the younger’s letters were discovered in the 16th century. His uncle died
during the eruption, but Pliny survived and grew up to be lawyer, author, and
magistrate in Ancient Rome.
Ruins of Ancient Pompeii with Mt. Vesuvius in the background