How could this go wrong?
Episode 79: In which a British tourist decides to carve up an ancient wall, and the Roman gods consider carving up the tourist.
This episode of Real Housewives of Mt. Olympus brought to you by the latest archaeological news on CNN.com – and by CLAS-B 312 Plague, Disasters and Death in the Ancient World.
This post was originally published on the Classical Studies Program website, so if you want you can hop through this time portal to read it there.
MINERVA, ROMAN GODDESS OF STRATEGY: Ok everyone, I’ve reconvened our committee on STTS: Stoping Tourists from Trashing Sites. Apparently a British tourist was just caught carving his family’s initials into a wall in Pompeii. Any thoughts on our response?
VENUS, GODDESS OF SEXUAL DESIRE AND REALLY RELUCTANT WIFE OF VULCAN: Pompeii? That’s my city! How dare that tourist! I say we burn the city to the ground.
MINERVA: Wait, burn Pompeii to the ground?
VENUS: That would take care of the tourists and the carvings. Problem solved.
MINERVA: Ok, you can’t burn the city down, you already did that. Also, you are a terrible patron goddess.
Hard to believe this goddess would be less than vigilante.
JUNO, GODDESS OF MARRIAGE AND JUPITER’S SISTER-WIFE-QUEEN (you read that right): I, for one, am all for burning down cities under my special patronage. You just have to get something valuable in return. During the Trojan war, I traded a couple of my cities to Jupiter in exchange for his city of Troy. All the cities got burned down, everyone wins.
MARS, ROMAN GOD OF WAR: Didn’t you then come steal my city of Rome? After all that work I put into it?
JUNO: Work? Please. You knocked boots with some human princess and then pulled your resulting children out of a river. I helped the princess give birth. That’s the real work. And earlier I chased Aeneas all the way from Troy to Italy trying to kill him, which is why he got here to establish Rome in the first place. I earned this city.
VENUS: That’s right, you burnt Troy down while I was trying to protect it, and then you chased my son across the Mediterranean. If I hadn’t just gotten my nails done, I’d say we take this outside.
MINERVA: No one’s going outside. We’re here to solve the tourist problem, not to bicker and argue about who burned down whose city several millennia ago.
VENUS: I don’t even remember burning Pompeii, come to think of it.
VULCAN, GOD OF METALWORKING AND HUSBAND OF VENUS: That’s because you didn’t burn Pompeii, I did. We were having a fight, I lost my temper, my workshop in Vesuvius exploded, next thing you know, everything’s covered in ash. Speaking of, why don’t we just keep ancient sites buried? Then the tourists couldn’t carve things in them.
MARS: You want to rebury Pompeii in an eruption? Sounds good to me.
If this is what happened when tourists defaced ancient sites, you’d probably get less defacement. Just saying.
MINERVA: Wait, no. Everyone has to promise me that you will not burn or rebury Pompeii in ash.
VULCAN: Actually, I can’t make that promise. Mount Vesuvius is still there, and my wife is still cheating on me, so…
VENUS: Don’t make me laugh. Like you could ever do anything that passionate twice. Unlike some people I know (winks at MARS).
VULCAN: I’m right here!
MINERVA: Actually, the mortals have already tried keeping things buried in Pompeii to protect them. That’s the best way to preserve archaeological sites: don’t dig them up in the first place. The question is what to do with the sites that have already been excavated.
MARS: If you don’t want to hurt the ancient sites, we could kill all the mortals.
JUNO: Or we could punish them by waiting 20 years and then reveal to them their mother is their sister, or something along those lines. That’s a classic for a reason.
VULCAN: What are the mortals doing to punish the offender?
MINERVA: I believe they are going to take the offender to court. A few months ago there was another incident where someone carved their initials into a Pompeiian house, and the courts are threatening to make them pay for the repairs.
VENUS: A different person? How often does this happen?
All these people are just wandering around, looking for a place to carve their initials.
BACCHUS, ROMAN GOD OF BREAKING SOCIAL BOUNDARIES: (swaying) I have an idea.
MINERVA: (jumping) Crikey! When did you get here?
BACCHUS: (slurring) What about security cameras? You could take the money you would spend on repairs, and use it to install cameras everywhere.
MINERVA: How do you know about security cameras?
BACCHUS: (trying and failing to wink) I like to watch people without them knowing it.
JUNO: And to think my husband gave me a hard time for wanting to keep this creep out of Olympus.
MINERVA: Ok, we’ll try to encourage the mortals to use security cameras more, and we’ll also try to keep Bacchus from doing the same. And if that doesn’t work, I don’t know, Juno can smite everyone eventually.
JUNO: Challenge accepted.
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To learn more about the ethical dilemmas of smashing tourists and archaeology together, enroll in our 1-credit “appetizer” course CLAS-B 312 Plague, Disasters and Death in the Ancient World, coming in the first-third of Fall 2024 with no pre-reqs! Or to hear about how the Olympian gods were never, ever helpful, check out CLAS-C 205 Classical Mythology, also coming up Fall 2024, and earn GEC credits while you’re at it! While you’re waiting, make sure to check back for more dysfunctional family adventures of Minerva, Mars, Venus, Vulcan, and Juno. Can’t get enough of Ancient Greece and Rome? Earn a Classics Minor in just 15 credits!