Outside the walls, where the ancient city gave way to tombs and roads towards the coast, someone still tried to move. The scene, two thousand years later, arrives without the need for special effects: a man huddled in the volcanic deposit, a terracotta mortar raised above his head, a lamp near his hand, ten coins perhaps collected in a small container that has disappeared. Money, light, shelter. Three simple, almost poor things, chosen at a time when Pompeii was becoming unrecognizable.
The new investigation in the necropolis of Porta Stabiajust outside ancient Pompeii, has brought to light the remains of two men who tried to escape during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. They were a short distance from each other, about one and a half meters, yet the stratigraphy tells of two different times of the same catastrophe: two bodies close together, two deaths separated by hours, two autonomous attempts to leave the city while everything changed shape.
Two bodies near the necropolis, two escapes broken at different times
The first man identified by archaeologists was younger, between 18 and 20 years old according to the first anthropological analyses. He had a good muscular structure and a height estimated at around 166 centimetres. The nails found near the feet, the so-called clavi caligariiindicate the presence of studded shoes, a small and very concrete detail: he was walking, or at least trying to, on a layer of lapilli in an advanced phase of the eruption.
The conditions of the deposit suggest that it had survived the Plinian phase, perhaps because it had found shelter in a place capable of resisting the weight of the pumice. Then, in a brief pause in the eruptive sequence, he attempted to escape. The city was shaken by earthquakes, buildings collapsed, the air was filled with ash and fragments. That temporary gap must have seemed long enough for him to get out of. It lasted too short. A very energetic pyroclastic current overwhelmed him in an open space, without a useful shelter to protect him.
The other man was older, around 35 years old according to dental wear, with skeletal signs compatible with good physical activity. He is the figure that remains with him: the body contracted on the right side, the arms flexed, the right upper limb raised to support a large terracotta mortar above the head. Stamps imprinted with the legend were read on the edge of the object CN(aei) DOMITI / SALUTARIS. A common kitchen utensil, transformed into protection in the space of a few seconds. A practical, instinctive, almost domestic choice in the midst of collapse.
The scene closely recalls the story of Pliny the Younger, when he describes people fleeing with pillows tied over their heads to defend themselves from the material falling from the volcano. Here the pillow becomes a mortar, harder, heavier, more desperate. The artefact shows signs of fracture, and this fact makes it even clearer how dangerous that rain was. Along with the pumice, denser and heavier lava fragments also fell, some several centimeters large. One shot might have been enough.
A was found next to the man’s left hand ceramic lampprobably used to orient oneself in poor visibility. On his left little finger he wore a simple iron ring, without settings. Near the basin there were ten bronze coins, distributed in a manner compatible with a container made of perishable material, perhaps a small bag or bag that time has erased. They are objects that hurt more than many solemn reconstructions: they tell of a hastily thought out escape, with what seemed necessary to overcome darkness, ash, fear.
The mortar, the lamp and those ten coins
The man with the mortar died towards the end of the Plinian phase, when the remains were covered by a layer of pumice less than 20 centimeters thick. Considering the average sedimentation rate indicated by scholars, death could have occurred between 5 and 6 am on the second day of the eruption, about two hours before the other man. The proximity of the two bodies, therefore, deceives the gaze: they seem to be part of the same scene, and instead belong to a broken sequence.
The excavation area helps to understand the movement. The area was outside the urban perimeter, near the Porta Stabia and the necropolis, near the San Paolino complex. The investigation is connected to the completion of the study on the tomb at schola di Numerius Agrestinus Equitius Pulchera funerary monument from the Augustan age that emerged in 2024. In those hours of panic, the tombs, the consolidated routes and the city gate could function as points of reference. Even when the city lost orientation, certain landscape shapes remained recognizable enough to guide those seeking the coast.
This detail also weighs on the overall estimate of victims. The people found inside Pompeii are a part of history. Many inhabitants may have died outside the walls, along the escape routes, in an attempt to reach the beach or areas considered safer. Scholars point out that the overall victims are estimated at around 2,000, including the parts still to be excavated, compared to a population of at least 20,000 people. The necropolis, in this sense, becomes a threshold: a place of the already buried dead and of the living who attempted to pass beyond.
The most contemporary element of the discovery is also grafted onto this scene: the use ofartificial intelligence to propose a graphic reconstruction of the man with the mortar. The work was conducted in collaboration with the Digital Cultural Heritage Laboratory of the University of Padua and combines AI tools, photo editing and scientific supervision. The result is presented as an experimental, improvable prototype, useful above all for making data visible that would otherwise remain readable almost only to specialists.
The Minister of Culture Alessandro Giuli underlined that Pompeii remains one of the most prestigious places in the world for archaeological research and that excavations of this type show how innovative methodologies, used rigorously, can open up new historical perspectives. Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Park, insisted on a delicate passage: the amount of archaeological data is now enormous and AI can help protect and enhance it, as long as archaeologists guide its use. Jacopo Bonetto, from the University of Padua, talks about interpretative models and communication tools, always within a controlled framework based on the work of specialists.
AI can make a scene more immediate, more accessible, closer to the viewer, but human control, in similar cases, remains the least visible and most important part. The image that remains, however, precedes any software. A man takes a mortar, a lamp, a few coins. He goes out, or tries to go out. He searches for light in a city that has become dark, holds something above his head, carries with him the bare minimum. Pompeii, every now and then, stops looking like an archaeological site and goes back to being a place full of people who were afraid. Here that fear still has an object in its hand.
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