Winifred Mary Beard Essay

Winifred Mary Beard, The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found. Cambridge. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. 360 pages. Maps, photographs, illustrations, bibliography, index. Born in England 1955, Winifred Mary Beard, after finishing an all-girls high school, attained both a Bachelors and Doctorate from King’s College, in Cambridge. She married historian Robin Cormack, with whom she had two children. Her many accolades include; Professor of Classics at Cambridge University, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Board of Trustees for Royal Academy of Arts, and in 2013 was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Beard has written a three part documentary for British Broadcasting Channel called; Meet the Romans with Mary Beard. In addition to many co-authored works, her books include The
Candidates used defamatory caricatures of their opponents and book covers some both humorous and disturbing. Only the wealthy seemed to hold offices and took no shame in using gravestones to advertise their candidacies. Pompeii was a city full of riches, poverty and varied cultures. Many different temples were found constructed in Pompeii. Each of the Roman Gods represented and icons in the temples fully explained. Beard also adds fascinating tidbits such as, the actuality of realism in animal sacrifices, in comparison to the wall reliefs that documented them. She uses excavator’s evidence of the sacrifices to contradict that these animal offerings were then eaten. This is what makes the book so interesting; most of the archeological items are somehow used by this author to give opinions or fresh ideas. The event of Vesuvius erupting itself was a biblical story of God punishing the pagans; a detail that Beard suggests is