ABSTRACT
The eruption of Vesuvius on 24 August, AD 791 covered Pompeii with a layer of ash which, though destroying the living town, preserved its remains and made its excavation a relatively straightforward matter.2 Not all of it has been uncovered, but what has gives us a far more complete concept of a Classical town than anywhere else; nowhere else approaches it. The fact that it was destroyed by a single natural disaster which rendered it largely (though not totally) inaccessible to the survivors and to succeeding generations means that what we have has not been altered, by later demolition, by the construction of buildings for later generations, and that by uncovering it what has been discovered is a unity, fixed in time. We can see Pompeii as it was on that fateful day, whereas all the other cities in this book are only partial survivals, with buildings and other evidence often belonging to widely separate periods in their existence.
