Pompeii: Daily Life of the Ancient
Romans
This is an Italian video dubbed in English. Therefore, the crowd noises
in the background are going to be in Italian, and the words you hear won't
match the people's lips.
Before watching the video
(which lasts about 45 minutes), think about and write answers to the following
questions.
- What information would you give a tourist about your home town? Assume
this person has little or no familiarity with your town. What is important,
funny, shocking, annoying about it?
- Tell the story of an eventful day (good or bad) in your life. It began
like every other day, right? What happened? When did you realize that something
important was about to happen?
Now that you have watched
the video, answer the following questions.
- When and by whom was Pompeii founded? Where is it located? What peoples
lived there? When did it become a Roman colony? When was it destroyed?
- What was the house of a wealthy inhabitant of Pompeii like? The house
of a poor inhabitant?
- How did rich Pompeiians spend their day? And poor ones?
- What were some of the businesses in Pompeii?
- What were the streets like?
- What do the makers of this video suppose the inhabitants of Pompeii
to have been like? What kind of people were they? What interested them?
What was important to them?
- What kinds of entertainment were there in Pompeii?
- Describe a lavish Pompeiian dinner party.
- What interested / shocked / bored / pleased / disgusted you about this
video? Why?
