Tom Hiddleston was 17 years old, studying Latin at school, when he climbed Mount Vesuvius with two friends and then walked into Pompeii for the first time. Until that summer of 1998, ancient Rome had existed purely in books, in declensions and translations. Then, beneath the shadow of the volcano, something shifted. He called it time travel, and he has never stopped thinking about it. That feeling is now the engine behind a new Disney Plus show called Pompeii Out of Time, and it brought Hiddleston to the Greeking Out podcast as a special guest, standing in for the Oracle of Wi-Fi, who left mostly snake fresco diagrams in her notes.
A city preserved by the thing that destroyed it
The Bay of Naples in 79 CE was a thriving Roman world. When Mount Vesuvius erupted, it killed a great many people and buried Pompeii and the neighboring city of Herculaneum under volcanic ash and debris so quickly that nearly everything was left exactly where it had been abandoned. Furniture, frescos, mosaics, and even bread still baking in an oven in Herculaneum were all waiting when archaeologists began serious excavations in the 1700s. The ruins sat largely undisturbed from the time of the eruption until the 1500s CE, and a large portion of the city remains unexcavated to this day.
Over 11,000 pieces of graffiti have been found in Pompeii so far, ranging from restaurant reviews and declarations of love to a child’s drawing of gladiators seen in the arena. Latin phrases still in use today appeared on those walls, including ‘cave canem,’ meaning beware of the dog, and ‘amor vincit omnia,’ meaning love conquers all. The street food culture was equally vivid. More than 80 thermopolia, small counter stalls with large rounded bowls set into the surface to keep food warm, have been identified across the city. Most residents lived in wooden-framed apartments where cooking indoors was a fire risk, so they ate outside. The menu ran to baked cheese, lentils, salted fish, and garam, a fermented sauce made from layers of herbs, whole fish, fish guts, and salt left in the sun for anywhere from a few days to several weeks. Hiddleston noted, after a moment’s reflection, that he has had excellent Vietnamese fish sauce and could absolutely see the appeal, though ‘the open vat in the sun situation should probably be reconsidered.’
Archaeologists in Herculaneum also uncovered a portable sundial shaped like a ham. It is classified as a novelty clock, and Hiddleston, who had told himself he was not going to get emotional, found it genuinely moving. ‘People have always been capable of making novelty clocks,’ he said. ‘And I think that’s something we can all get behind.’
The ordinary people nobody expected history to remember
For Pompeii Out of Time, Hiddleston tracked three specific people through the archaeological record: a teenage boy who worked at a bronzesmith’s on the edge of town, a businesswoman named Julia Felix whose estate and bathhouse can still be visited, and a soldier stationed in Herculaneum. The evidence suggests all three made deliberate choices after the eruption. Graffiti inscriptions found outside the city, dated after the event, carry names that match those found inside Pompeii before it, scattered across different parts of the Bay of Naples. People found their loved ones and got out.
Hiddleston described the standard historical record as focused on senators, generals, and emperors. Pompeii offers something different: ordinary people living ordinary lives, caught mid-motion. Baby cradles found in Herculaneum look, he said, exactly like the cradles babies sleep in today.
The ham clock in the cabinet
The sundial shaped like a ham sits in a museum collection, a portable Roman object made for no reason except that someone found it funny. It is roughly the size of a hand. It is made of bronze. It tells the time.
The eruption that buried it also kept it. Two thousand years later, it is still here.
