Tom Hiddelston: Are there any firsthand accounts of experiencing the eruption column?
Steven Tuck: Well, there is one in the database, one firsthand account from that day- Oh ... in AD 79. Come with me.
Hiddelston: Yeah.
On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
Tuck: Take a look.
Brianne Kane: So I wanted to ask you today, in the docuseries, you talk about how you went to Pompeii for the first time at 17 years old.
Hiddelston: Yeah.
Kane: And it was a really life-changing experience for you.
Hiddelston: Yes. 100 percent.
Kane: Can you tell me about that experience and how it inspired your interest in the ancient world?
Hiddelston: So, yeah, absolutely true. 1998, I had two mates doing history of art and ancient history, and I was doing Latin and Greek. I'd always just loved the ancient world.
I loved how far away it was and how close it seemed at the same time. The stories, the people, the history, the philosophy, the architecture, it's the cornerstone of everything we think of in the Western world, in Western democracy. Our politics, our architecture, our art, our theater, our language. To be in Pompeii, it's vast, and it's perfectly preserved.
And I was 17, and it was my first trip away, and it felt like those 2,000 years just compressed. As if the volcano erupted last week, as if it happened yesterday. And I realized the past is a living, breathing thing. You know, Pompeii I think is, is almost the most famous physical emblem of our connection to the ancient world, and it's a thriller because there's a volcano.
A terrifying pitch black cloud split open by quivering blasts of fire, shooting out in all directions, revealing longer, fiery shapes.
Kane: You say in the documentary that Pompeii is, it's a complicated place to visit.
Hiddelston: Mm.
Kane: It is a story of mass death.
Hiddelston: Yeah.
Kane: And I wanted to ask you about your experience seeing the plaster casts for the first time.
Hiddelston: Yeah.
Kane: These are humans, as you're saying, who were cast in ash and died in a lot of pain.
Hiddelston: Yeah.
Kane: And some of them were with family members, but some of them weren't able to reach them, as, as you discuss in the documentary.
Hiddelston: Yeah.
Kane: I wanted to ask what your experience was seeing those plaster casts for the first time.
Hiddelston: There's one I still remember. You can see it's an adult and a child who are locked in an embrace, and the adult, perhaps one presumes a parent or a family member or a caregiver, is wrapping their arms around the child as to protect him or her. And this very intimate image of protection and enveloping I found intensely moving.
Next to one of them was this family dog...
Kane: yeah ...
Hiddelston: ...that, and we had a dog, you know, at, when I was 17. I thought, "Oh, these are families just like, just like us, just like me." It's very powerful because the plaster casts, they're the shapes of human beings. They're real human lives. Something that's always remained with me is that Pompeii is not just an archeological site of historical interest.
It's, it's a place where there was this extraordinary loss of human life. And in the show what I really wanted to communicate was that these were real people, real human beings, ordinary people just like us living in an extraordinary moment. During the making of the show, the more I got to know the details of these individual lives, the more I genuinely felt my own, the depth of my own empathy for them.
I felt like I got to know them like I would get to know friends, and I feel less alone in the world when I study the classics because actually the human condition and the experience of being alive as a human being hasn't changed. Sure, our technologies have changed, the way we communicate, the way we live, the way we cook, the way we, you know.
They didn't fly airplanes then or have, you know, smartphones then, but they had families, and they lived and they loved, and they looked after each other, and they cooked and they slept, and they had pets, and they had jobs and communities and playgrounds. and teachers and pupils and, and so their hopes and fears and, and the essential essence of human beings was exactly the same.
And when you go around Pompeii and you see these hand prints by young kids or bread that was baking in the oven, which they found in Herculaneum, which is just over the hill from Pompeii, because the pyroclastic surge, which is just the wave after wave of, I'm sure you know, of, of ash and pumice and molten rock, preserved this place so perfectly that you can see and almost sense who they were.
Why does she stay?
Caitie Barrett: Well, one possible reason could be right here in front of us.
Hiddelston: What, Isis?
Barrett: Isis was a cosmic creator. She could embody all of the gods in one, and she was also a mother figure. So she's a protector. She could keep people safe. She's certainly a god you might wanna have on your side during a natural disaster.
Kane: Well, thank you so much for your time today. I wanted to give you the latest issue of Scientific American. Thank you so much. We have a feature on ancient Roman roads. And it's about,
Hiddelston: and it's about the, and you got quantum stuff in here.
Kane: Oh, that's our favorite word.
Hiddelston: Quantum. Now, I mean, uh, this show's about time, right?
So-
Kane: Exactly ...
Hiddelston: I've opened it on a m- on a, on a map of the ancient network.
Kane: I thought you'd find this issue particularly interesting.
Hiddelston: Athens, byzen- Byzantium, Thessalonica, Antioch. We haven't even started on Alexander the Great. See, wind me up and I just get going.
Kane: There's a lot of ancient history to cover.
