ABSTRACT
On August 24, 79 C.E. Mount Vesuvius volcano, near Naples, Italy, exploded. “Broad sheets of fire and leaping flames blazed at several points, their bright glare emphasized by the darkness of night.” Black clouds of ash, fumes, and pumice flew miles into the air for two days, raining down on the ancient city of Pompeii and burying it in debris. Pliny the Younger who at the age of eighteen survived the eruption wrote of its terror. His uncle Pliny the Elder perished. A few years later, the younger Pliny who had thrown off mounds of ash in his struggle for life summoned the courage to write about his uncle’s experience:
They debated whether to stay indoors or take their chance in the open, for the buildings were now shaking with violent shocks, and seemed to be swaying to and fro as if they were torn from their foundations. Outside, on the other hand, there was the danger of failing pumice stones, even though these were light and porous; . . .
Elsewhere there was daylight by this time, but they were still in darkness, blacker and denser than any ordinary night, which they relieved by lighting torches and various kinds of lamp. My uncle decided to go down to the shore and investigate on the spot the possibility of any escape by sea, but he found the waves still wild and dangerous. A sheet was spread on the ground for him to lie down, and he repeatedly asked for cold water to drink.
Then the flames and smell of sulphur which gave warning of the approaching fire drove the others to take flight and roused him to stand up. He stood leaning on two slaves and then suddenly collapsed, I imagine because the dense, fumes choked his breathing by blocking his windpipe which was constitutionally weak and narrow and often inflamed. When daylight returned on the 26th—two days after the last day he had been seen—his body was found intact and uninjured, still fully clothed and looking more like sleep than death. 1
