Ancient Pompeians breathed an atmosphere with a surfeit of spirits. Numinous power radiated in every direction, manifest in all things, animate and inanimate. Everything had a genius, a guardian deity. Even a locale was thought to have its own genius loci, a spirit existing apart from the corporeal, responsible for the community's pervading character, ongoing through successive generations. The guardian spirits of some Pompeians allowed pyroclastic last breaths to be cast in plaster for posterity.