August Mau (1840 - 1909) was a prominent German art historian and archaeologist who worked with the Deutsches Archaologisches Institut while studying and classifying the Roman paintings at Pompeii, which was destroyed with the town of Herculaneum by volcanic eruption in 79 AD. The paintings were in remarkably good condition due to the preservation by the volcanic ash that covered the city. Mau first divided these paintings into the four Pompeian Styles still used as a classification. Mau was born in Kiel, where he read Classical Philology at the University of Kiel, and then at the University o...