This past weekend my little family took a road trip to the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois. Our primary objective was to see and learn from the temporary exhibit on Pompeii, one of the three Roman towns both destroyed, yet also preserved, by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius at noon on August 24, 79a.d.
About 20% of the population of Pompeii did not, or could not, flea when the eruption started. Those who tarried too long following the initial eruption, perhaps attempting to secure their homes against thieves or salvage their coins and jewelry, died. Many of the wealthy residents (and their conscripted servants and slaves) were found with their wealth literally in hand and house keys in their purses as they tried to outrun the pyroclastic flow of mud and gas, only to be buried alive.
As their bodies decomposed in place, under the mud and ash, over the centuries the mud and ash hardened and the bodies simply disappeared, leaving a hollow in the ground in the exact shape of the deceased person at the moment of their death. Archeologists poured in plaster to create castings of the person, or animal, just as they appeared at death. A small number of these were on display in Chicago.
Each dead person was trying to protect their face. Each one seemed to know this was their moment of death. One man merely sat on the ground against a wall, knees tucked up to his chin, his hands covering his face as if in despair. A mother hugged her teenaged daughter whose head was planted in her mother’s chest. A dog chained to his master’s house, sporting an elaborate collar, was found in the ultimate act of canine submission, on his back, legs up and throat exposed attempting to surrender to the volcanic victor; having survived a long time by continuously climbing on top of the falling debris and ash, but finally succumbing to the toxic atmosphere.
Entire bags and baskets of silver coins, fused by corrosion into unusable balls, were on display. These had been carried by their owners, cut down in mid-stride trying to flea the doomed city. One cannot help but think of Matthew 6:19-21. "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Also on display were large numbers of the household gods carried by the dead, or recovered from their houses, tiny and large. Apollo and Mercury seemed to be popular. These idols were made of precious (and not so precious) metals and stone, depicting many of the beliefs of the citizens of ancient Rome. “The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, so as not to worship demons, and the idols of gold and of silver and of brass and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk; and they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries nor of their immorality nor of their thefts.” (Revlation 9:20-21)
Pompeii was to some degree a corrupt town. At last count the archeologists have uncovered some 38 well advertised brothels in this town of 20,000. It applauded the blood sport of gladiatorial contests--some of the recovered helmets and armor were on display in Chicago. Its citizens worshiped idols and false gods. Yet, was it so different than any other city in modern America? Do we not wink at prostitution, even legalizing it in some states as they did in Pompeii? Are not our entertainment (movies and theatre) far more explicit and bloody than the combat of the gladiators? And is not our immense wealth a source of idolatry? “…greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience,” (Colossians 3:5b-6)
Life is short, like a vapor. Only what we do for Christ will last.
