The Last Day of Pompeii

One morning in the year 79, a baker named Gaius was working in his bakery in Pompeii. It was going to be a busy day. He was going to bake bread for the whole street, and his son Lucius was helping him. The shop smelled of warm flour and wood smoke.

In those days, the ground often shook a little, but nobody worried much. The mountain behind the city, Vesuvius, was green and quiet. People grew grapes on it. Nobody thought it was dangerous.

In the early afternoon, Gaius and Lucius were putting the round loaves into the big stone oven. Suddenly, people in the street started shouting. Gaius went outside. A huge cloud was rising from Vesuvius. It was tall and dark, and it was opening at the top like a pine tree.

Soon, small light stones were falling from the sky. They were like pieces of dry bread, but there were thousands of them. They were hitting the roofs and the streets. Lucius was holding his father's arm. "We're going to leave, aren't we?" he asked.

Gaius looked at the oven. The bread was almost ready. Many families were waiting for it. He was going to say, "Ten more minutes." Then a stone broke a tile on the roof, and grey dust fell into the shop. Gaius closed the oven door. "Leave the bread," he said. He took Lucius's hand, and they ran toward the city gate with hundreds of other people.

Gaius and Lucius are not real people, but bread like theirs is real. In 1862, many centuries later, archaeologists found a bakery in Pompeii. In its oven, there were eighty-one round loaves. They were black and hard, like stones. The lines on top, where the baker cut them before baking, are still there. Today, you can see bread from Pompeii in a museum in Naples.