Carol Mattusch, guest curator and professor, George Mason University. In the second century BC, Roman aristocrats began to build lavish seaside villas on the picturesque Bay of Naples-in the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius. In the first of this five-part Backstory podcast, produced on the occasion of the Gallery exhibition Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture around the Bay of Naples, Mattusch talks to Tempchin about the vacationing Roman elite who inhabited this region.