The "Fast Food Joints From The Past" Story

 It was an ordinary day.  Sitting in the Colosseum in Rome, watching a gladiatorial show, which is known as a munera.  It was back on Monday, October 22, 2007 that I actually had the chance to sit in the Colosseum and try to imagine what it must have been like to have lived in the city of Rome, Italy.  The Colosseum is an oval amphitheater that is in the center of the city of Rome, just east of the Roman Forum and is the largest ancient amphitheater ever built and is still the largest standing amphitheater in the world today, despite its age.  Besides gladiatorial shows, shows of a religious nature as well as demonstrations of power and family prestige were popular at the Colosseum.  

I'm standing in front of the Colosseum in Rome, Italy

Another popular show was the animal hunt, or venatic, which utilized a great variety of wild beasts such as rhinoceros, elephants, giraffes, panthers, leopards, bears and crocodiles to name a few.  I'm sorry to say that when I sat in the Colosseum, all I got to see were perhaps a few hundred other tourists sitting and trying to imagine what it must have been like years and years ago.  And then, after the show was over, we all headed to the Thermpolium!  I'm assuming you never heard of that word before.  But, perhaps you have...and you just don't know the place as the Thermpolium instead of the take-out restaurant.  The word Thermpolium literally means "a place where something hot is sold."  Like a McDonalds or a Burger King.  Take-out food isn't something we came up with 10, 15, or even 20 years ago.  They had take-out food around the corner from the Colosseum in Rome.  They also had take-out food in other cities such as Pompeii, Italy.  Today there are archaeological remains at Via della Abbondanza Street in Pompeii, Italy.  The city was an ancient Roman city that was destroyed by the volcano Vesuvius in 79 A.D.  

My wife and I stand in Pompeii.

One fateful day in August of that year, an eruption wiped out the entire city of Pompeii, leaving its citizens, and just about the entire social life of Pompeii, entombed in ash for centuries until excavations of the site began some 1,700 years later.  

An ancient thermopolia uncovered in Pompeii.

When they began their excavations they discovered fast-food joints which consisted of a small room with a stone counter at the front, in which several terra-cotta jars called Dolia were placed.  Pompeii has long been thought of as having a cheap café culture, with bars, taverns and thermopolia lining the streets, catching the passing trade much like the fast food places do today.  Over the years, archaeologists have discovered a number of thermpolia not just in Pompeii, but also in Herculaneum which was also destroyed, and therefore preserved, by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.  

One of many modern thermopolia, or fast-food restaurants that are
in operation today in Italy and perhaps all over Europe.

I would have loved to have had a chance to see one of the thermopolia while on our visit to Rome, but at the time we had no idea that they existed.  Today, Mount Vesuvius is the only active volcano on the European mainland.  Another eruption is expected in the near future, which could be devastating for the 700,000 people who live in the "death zones' around Vesuvius.  Cound the thermopolias be covered once again with ash from the volcano to be discovered one more time in a few hundred years?  Let's hope not...but...I guess it is possible.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.