Last Supper in Pompeii
Discovery Day
4 June 2026
Roman seafood mosaic c. 100 BC
Today's Discovery Day took us back in time to learn about the art, people and daily life in the amazing buried cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and celebrate the Roman love affair with food and wine.
We visited the fertile vine-filled slopes of Vesuvius, then, going into the bustling city, past shops and bars, we entered the home, with its grand reception rooms, and lovely garden filled with flowers and fountains. We encountered the rich in their dining rooms, with exotic food and fine wine, surrounded by Greek-style luxury; beautiful silver, mosaics and frescoes.
But we didn't linger in the kitchen - no fridge, no running water, no hygiene (and an open cess pit next to the cooker)!
Lastly we looked at how Roman ideas and customs on food caught on in Roman Britain. Along with Roman gods of fertility and wine came exotic imports like pepper, figs and finest fish sauce. We witnessed the birth of the British beer industry and even saw the British dead, feasting into the afterlife, like all good Romans. It was definitely a case of 'Carpe diem' - Seize the day!
Dr Paul Roberts OBE is former Research Keeper in the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford University. He has been a lecturer with the Arts Society for over twenty years, has travelled extensively to societies across the UK, and has also lectured on numerous cruises in and around the Mediterranean.
He studied Classics at the University of Cambridge, and Classical Archaeology at the Universities of Sheffield and Oxford. He then lived in Italy for several years, teaching and researching. He has travelled throughout the former lands of the Roman Empire, from Britain to Syria, and has excavated in Britain, Greece, Libya, Turkey and in particular Italy, where he is currently working on a Roman Villa in the Molise region of the Central Apennines.
His research focuses on the daily life of ordinary people in the Greek and Roman worlds, and he has written books and articles on Greek and Roman daily life, Pompeii and Herculaneum, Sicily, Roman Emperors, mummy portraits, and Greek and Roman ceramics and glass. His latest book, Ancient Rome in Fifty Monuments, was published in April 2024.
From 1994 to 2015 he was Senior Roman Curator in the Greek and Roman Department at the British Museum, where he curated the exhibition Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (2013). Arriving in the Ashmolean Museum Oxford in 2015, in 2019/20 he curated Last Supper in Pompeii, a tribute to the Roman love affair with food and wine.
In May 2022 Paul was appointed Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia (Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy) by the Italian Ambassador on behalf of the Italian State. In November 2023 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2025 New Year's Honours List for services to Archaeology and to Heritage.
Paul Roberts