A carbonized cradle, frescos of goddesses and animals, body casts of people who met their ends about 2000 years ago.

The British Museum launched an exhibition to explore the Roman family life in the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and their destruction by a volcanic explosion on Thursday.

The two cities on the west of Italy were destroyed by an eruption of neighboring Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, and the terrible circumstances of their destruction have fascinated the public since the rediscovery and excavation of the cities in the 18th century.

Paul Roberts is the head of the Roman collections at the museum, and curator of the exhibition "Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum." He told Xinhua, "The main theme behind the exhibition is 'ordinary people'; us, in Roman times."

"It doesn't deal with the gladiators and the emperors. They were wonderful but they were only one percent of the population," he said. But this exhibition, running until Sept. 29 and set in a typical Roman household, aims to tell visitors "how similar the Romans were with us."

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

According to Roberts, this is the first exhibition called "Pompeii and Herculaneum." "Herculaneum is a little sister of Pompeii, but less known," he said.

Talking about Herculaneum, Roberts has a personal story.

"In 1976 I went on a family holiday with my mum and my sister and we visited Pompeii and Herculaneum and the effect was electrifying. I loved both cities, but when I saw Herculaneum I just thought this is incredible and that has always stayed with me and I have always wanted to cover the two of them in an exhibition together," he said.

Pompeii was a larger city, about 15,000 people on the eve of its destruction, while Herculaneum was a coastal city of about 5,000 people. Both were sited at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, which was thought to be dormant.

The eruption, over just two days, wiped out both cities and left them buried beneath meters of volcanic debris -- 4 to 5 meters in Pompeii's case and 24 meters in Herculaneum, which was closer to the volcano.

The different distances from the volcano meant that the cities felt the effects of the explosion in different ways.

In Herculaneum the wave of hot air, called a pyroclastic wave, was hotter still at 400 centigrade and when it hit the city it instantly killed everything, almost always frying away all flesh and carbonizing all wooden items and many fruits.

In Pompeii, the city was deluged with fine stone chippings at the rate of about 15 cm an hour, until a great wave of 300 centigrade air swept down and through the town finally killing off any survivors.

However, with lower temperature, the falling ash "didn't burn the bodies," Roberts explained. "The bodies were like 'cooked' and then the ashes form around the body. When the bodies finally disintegrated, the shapes were left in the ash," he added.

So, in Pompeii, which has been more widely excavated than Herculaneum, many more bodies were discovered in the debris -- about 1150 in Pompeii against 350 in Herculaneum.

But in Herculaneum, wooden items have been retrieved from beneath 24 meters of volcanic debris, because they were preserved as carbonized items. The most poignant of these is a simple child's cradle, one of Roberts' favorite items.

Although it had become charcoal, it still could rock, telling the sad story of the little baby inside, who lost its life when it just started.

"Herculaneum could only be reached by tunnels because it was buried so deep, but there were items like the cradle, wonderful sculptures, and even papyri. But it was difficult to excavate and to visit, whereas at Pompeii you could shovel away the small stones four or five meters deep and under that were houses and streets. So, Pompeii stole the limelight from Herculaneum," said Roberts.

ROMAN LIFE IN A GLIMPSE

Roman society was different from many modern societies in some ways, and Roberts highlighted slavery and sexual matters as two areas which stand out.

He said, "They had different attitudes; one of the so-called 'erotic' paintings we have found in Pompeii was found in a garden, not in a bedroom. But on the whole with the Romans the similarities outweigh the differences."

The two cities had substantial slave populations, and there were many freemen who had previously been slaves.

Roberts said that organizing the exhibition had revealed to him the omnipresence of slaves and former slaves in Roman society.

"They were in many of the frescoes, and when you look at the list of freemen from Herculaneum, half of them had slave origins. That was a shock, I was not expecting that," said Roberts.

The status of slaves was very different from the brutalized image many might have, he added, with some slaves holding high status in families as tutors and many of them being integral parts of the family. Slaves did many of the tasks we would link with low pay and menial tasks now.

"We have a sculpture of a banker, and the interesting thing is he started his life as a slave," Roberts said. "He earned a lot of money from his master, his master gave him freedom, and then the slave bought slaves and he freed them."

Roberts also highlighted the status of women in Roman society, where they were prominent and held public roles.

"The ancient writers said women were second-class citizens, but actually women dedicated a big building in the center of Pompeii with her own money and uses her own name," he said.

One of his favorite pieces in the exhibition is a fresco painting of a baker and his wife, which was an example that women were playing important roles at that time.

"The baker is well dressed, carrying a scroll," he said. "But his wife was carrying a wax tablet they used to write accounts. So she was really running the business... That underlines how modern Roman society was."

The items were displayed in a "house," with living rooms, bedrooms, kitchen and a garden. There are cooking utensils, garden ornaments, items of bronze and wooden furniture as well as jewelry and decorations.

"Romans had a delight in beautiful things, no matter what their status. Roman society was a consumer society. Rich people had the gorgeous frescoes we have on display here, and the slaves when freed, they wanted these things too," Roberts said.

LAST MOMENTS

If the first several rooms could make people marvel at the luxurious life of the Romans, the last room would bring tears to visitors' eyes.

Items were displayed to show their decision as what to take at the critical moment of their lives. One could find coins, valuable objects, a key to the door and a lamp used for escape.

When the body of a woman, in her 40s, was unearthed, she was wearing golden snake armlets, golden rings, a pair of pearl earrings and a purse containing coins. A dead man lying on his stomach, presumably to be a soldier, carried a long sword, a stabbing dagger and a bag of tools.

The most shocking exhibits were remains of a family, who had been running from the disaster. At their last moments, the father and the mother fell backwards in suffocation. A toddler struggled to support herself against the wall on her mother's lap, while the other child lay beside them, fists clenching and head thrown back.

At the exit of the exhibition, lines from Roman poet Statius were written on the wall, "In a future generation, when crops spring up again, when this wasteland regains its green, will men believe that cities and peoples lie beneath?"