Customer Reviews

Pompeii - the Doomed City (Lost Treasures of the Ancient World)

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Like many people around the globe, I just loved the film "Titanic." It gave me an opportunity to find out what happened without being there. I could learn the facts and live to speak about it. This work answers, "Why didn't the townspeople see the eruption coming?" and "Why didn't' they try to flee?" The documentary said that many bodies were found above the ash which suggests that they died after the ash and burning rocks already fell. The work speculates on how that happened. Unlike Titanic on which the majority of passengers died, this documentary said only 1/4 of Pompeii residents passed away.

This documentary series prides itself on its 3-D graphics. Usually I don't care about that stuff. However, here it was incredibly helpful. The demonstration of a volcanic explosion was like the chubby, bearded man who showed the elder Ruth DeWitt-Bucater a display on how the Titanic sank. You can't flee if burning rocks fall everywhere and ash blocked out the sun. This work said author Pliny the Elder died trying to save Pompeii residents; this reminds me of the valiant firefighters and other selfless people who died during 9-11.

In the middle of the work, the narrator describes life in Ancient Rome. Yawn! I could watch other documentaries for that. I was more interested in discussions specifically related to the eruption and its aftermath. Later they speak of an Italian man who seems to be to Pompeii what Howard Carter was to Egyptology; that was informative. Like Titanic, modern tourists are "loving Pompeii to death," the visits are having a ruinous effect on the ruins. The documentary may cause some to weep because it can get you to thinking about Hurricane Katrina or the Asian tsunami and its victims. It suggests modern Naples could come to the same fate.

One interviewee is a British woman with bad teeth that may cause Americans to chuckle or gasp rather than listen. She belonged in the "Book of British Smiles" shown on "The Simpsons."