aftermath of Pompeii thoughts for Lacroix

[brightknightie]

For those who like to ponder events in the existence of FK's Lacroix and Divia characters, I recently read an essay that might interest you: "How a Disaster Relief Program Changed the Roman Empire for the Better: Pompeii may symbolize catastrophe, but its aftermath provides a blueprint for rebuilding" by Annalee Newitz in The New York Times, March 6, 2021.

We naturally often focus on Pompeii for what existed before the Vesuvius eruption and what people suffered during the disaster. I, at least, had not thought to look into what happened after. According to this essay, many interesting things, including a relief and redistribution program about which Lacroix is sure to have had opinions. (I couldn't say whether Divia had opinions; she's an adolescent infused with terrible power and primordial evil; she probably didn't care much about economic and social structures.)

"Archaeologists now have evidence that a vast majority of Pompeiians... evacuated to nearby cities...

"After touring the smoking ruins of Pompeii, and nearby buried towns, Emperor Titus ordered that the wealth from rich patricians who perished in the eruption without heirs be transferred to the refugees... It was a rare act of generosity, and all the more so because we have ample material evidence that he kept his word. ...

"Titus’s decision was partly pragmatic. Helping displaced Pompeiians allowed the Roman economy to keep chugging along. ... Certainly Titus wanted to preserve this retail prosperity, but his relief program reflected a more fundamental social norm in Roman society. ... Titus’s relief efforts were in some sense an expansion of this ideal, in which the emperor became patron to all the liberti who had lost everything in the eruption. But this time the patronage was on a historic scale.

"While the government supplied Vesuvius’s victims with new homes and good jobs, it also inadvertently washed the stigma of slavery from generations of people in the Bay of Naples."