A cloud 'like an umbrella pine', described in two letters written 25 years later to a historian friend
Pliny the Younger, Epistles 6.16 and 6.20, addressed to Tacitus.
History · Ancient world
The Eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79
AD 79
Roman Campania buried
The volcano above the Bay of Naples erupted for some two days, burying the towns of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae and Oplontis under pumice and pyroclastic surges. The ash sealed a Roman provincial town almost intact, and the excavations that began in the eighteenth century have shaped the modern picture of Roman daily life more than any text.
How to spot them
- ▸Clue patterns: a pine-shaped cloud, a fleet commander who sailed towards it and died, plaster poured into voids
- ▸The eyewitness account survives in two letters written about 25 years later to Tacitus
- ▸A style of volcanic eruption is named after the man who died observing it
- ▸The traditional August date is now widely doubted
What happened
A fleet commander and encyclopaedist who sailed towards the disaster to rescue friends and died on the beach at Stabiae
Pliny the Elder, author of the Natural History, commanding the fleet at Misenum.
Plaster poured into cavities in the ash to recover the shapes of the dead
The technique devised by Giuseppe Fiorelli in 1863.
A town buried not in ash but in mud and superheated surge, which carbonised its wooden furniture and a library of scrolls
Herculaneum, and the Villa of the Papyri with its carbonised scrolls.
A mosaic in a doorway reading CAVE CANEM
'Beware of the dog', in the House of the Tragic Poet at Pompeii.
A charcoal graffito found in 2018 dated to mid-October, upsetting the traditional 24 August
Evidence for an autumn eruption also includes autumn fruit and braziers in use.
Rediscovered by well-diggers and tunnellers from 1709, with formal digging from 1748
Herculaneum from 1709, Pompeii from 1748, under the Bourbon kings of Naples.
Quick-fire facts
- •The eruption destroyed Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae and Oplontis on the Bay of Naples in AD 79.
- •Pliny the Younger described it in two letters to the historian Tacitus; his uncle Pliny the Elder, author of the Natural History, died in the attempt to help.
- •Pliny the Elder commanded the Roman fleet at Misenum and died at Stabiae, probably of a heart attack or asphyxiation.
- •Explosive eruptions with a tall column and widespread pumice fall are called 'Plinian' after him.
- •The traditional date of 24 August comes from manuscripts of Pliny's letter; archaeological and textual evidence, including a charcoal inscription found in 2018, points to October or November.
- •Giuseppe Fiorelli developed the plaster-cast technique in 1863 to record the voids left by bodies in the ash.
- •Herculaneum was buried by pyroclastic flows that carbonised organic material; the Villa of the Papyri preserved around 1,800 scrolls.
- •Vesuvius' last eruption was in March 1944, during the Allied occupation of Italy.
- •The Emperor Titus, who had come to the throne only weeks before, sent relief and visited the area.
- •Pompeii and Herculaneum are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed in 1997.
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Sources
- Pliny the Younger — Letters 6.16 and 6.20
- Mary Beard — Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Mount Vesuvius