‘What an extraordinary tour de force! At last, a book that brings Herculaneum vividly back to life through the fabric of the city, its ancient inhabitants, and of course, its Gods. Adrian Murdoch’s fresh approach surges life back into Herculaneum with the same force as the pyroclastic flows that removed it in AD 79. Painstakingly researched, Murdoch’s lucid text delves deep into the history of Herculaenum and unravels the palimpsest we see today.Murdoch cleverly weaves together the fragments of evidence in Herculaneum and repopulates it both with moving portraits of those anonymous inhabitants who tragically died on the town’s shorefront and incisive biographies of those we do know the names of and where they lived and worked. It is an essential guide to Herculaneum, whether on site or from an armchair, but it is so much more than that as the stories, myths, and facts about the ancient city are brought together and contextualised.A thoroughly engaging account that will cast Herculaneum from the shadow of Pompeii. It sought to put Herculaneum back on the map and this book has done just that with gusto.’
