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| May 14, 1771 eruption of Mount Vesuvius from Voyage Pittoresque Ou Description Des Royaumes De Naples Et De Sicile (Paris, 1781). |
In our previous post on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, we left Pliny the Elder on the shores of Stabiae, having succumbed to the wrath of the volcano. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, had remained in Misenum when his uncle sailed off to observe the eruption from a closer distance and to try to save his friends. Again, thanks to a letter the younger Pliny wrote to the Roman historian Tacitus, we can know all these centuries later what happened in the port during the eruption.
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| Detal of a map of the Bay of Naples (Golfo di Napoli) from Naples and the Campagna Felice (London, 1815). The ancient seaside resort of Stabiae, where Pliny the Elder died, was near the modern town of Castellammare di Stabia (Castelamare on the map). Misenum, a naval base for the Roman fleet, was at the western end of the Gulf of Pozzuoli. |
To the studious Pliny the Younger, the events in Misenum on August 24 and 25 reminded him of the destruction of Troy as imagined in Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid. In the beginning of his letter, he quotes line 12 from Book 2: "Though my shock'd soul recoils, my tongue shall tell." For several days there had been tremors in Misenum that were not particularly alarming because, as Pliny writes, they often occurred in Campania; however, on the night of August 24 they became so violent that it seemed as if the world was being overturned. Although no ash had fallen at Misenum, the column from the volcano had risen into the stratosphere and spread over a vast area to the east of the naval base, obscuring the sun so that at dawn on August 25 the light was dim and faint. The earth began to quake so violently that Pliny and his mother decided to leave the town. Then, around 8 a.m., the sixth and greatest pyroclastic flow erupted from Mount Vesuvius.
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| Excerpt from Pliny the Younger's letter to Tacitus in which he describes what was probably the first stage of a tsunami and then the pyroclastic flow from Mount Vesuvius. From The Letters of Pliny the Consul: with Occasional Remarks by William Melmoth, Esq. (London, 1777). |
The "black and dreadful cloud" soon sank to the ground and covered the sea, concealing the promontory of Misenum. Those who had fled the port were probably congregated on Monte di Pròcida, overlooking the town. It must have seemed as if the world was ending. Pliny took his mother's hand and hurried away from the thick black cloud that was spreading over the earth behind them like a flood. Concerned that they might be knocked down and trampled to death in the dark by the crowd following them, Pliny and his mother left the road and sat down to rest. "We had scarce stepped out of the path, when darkness overspread us, not like that of a cloudy night, or when there is no moon, but of a room when it is shut up, and all the lights extinct."
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| Pliny's description of the terrors of August 25, 79. |
Eventually the eruption waned and the sun appeared, but "we were terrified to see everything changed, buried deep in ashes like snowdrifts." They returned to Misenum where they spent "an anxious night alternating between hope and fear." Pliny the Younger and his mother resolved to stay until they learned what had happened to Pliny the Elder. His body was found on August 26, "still fully clothed and looking more like sleep than death."
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| An epigram of the poet Martial, written in AD 88, from William Melmoth's 1777 edition of the The Letters of Pliny the Consul. |
Vesuvius has erupted numerous times since the catastrophic event that Pliny the Younger recorded in his letters. The most recent eruption was in 1944. The question is not if Vesuvius will awaken from its slumber, but when.
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Detail from the illustrated tile page of Naples and the Campagna Felice (London, 1815)
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Sources:
Scarth, Alwyn. Vesuvius: A Biography. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009. QE523.V5 S23 2009
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