The town of Hercules: A buried treasure-trove

(It was a sunny, cloudless August morning and the people of Herculaneum were going about their business. In various parts of the town, workmen plied their trades: cabinet-makers hammered and sawed, bakers baked their loaves, cloth-makers dyed and pressed their cloth. The streets were filled with people, and shopkeepers were busy selling snacks, both hot and cold, glassware, vegetables, pots, and jewellery. Inside most of the houses lunch was being prepared.Suddenly a violent, cracking sound filled the air. From a mountain top a vast mushroom cloud billowed into the sky. Within a short time the town of Hercules was lost to history-lost for hundreds of years.Like its sister-city Pompeii on the Bay of Naples, Herculaneum was buried by the great eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Unlike Pompeii, smothered in hot ashes, Herculaneum was submerged under a river of hot mud. The mud slowly cooled and hardened. Herculaneum was preserved as if in plastic - a treasure-trove for rediscovery many centuries later.In this book for young people Joseph Jay Deiss gives a fascinating and beautifully illustrated account of the rediscovery of this ancient city and reconstructs the daily life of the people who lived there)