3839 AM · 79 CE · world history
The Eruption of Vesuvius and the Death of Pompeii
A volcano buries two cities in a day, and preserves them for us in perfect detail.
Vesuvius throws an ash column thirty kilometres up, then buries Pompeii and Herculaneum under metres of debris. Pliny the Younger, watching from across the bay, left the only eyewitness account. Excavation revealed cart ruts, shops, frescoes, election graffiti and the voids left by bodies, later filled with plaster.
Sources
Documents of the period
- inscriptions and coinage of the Roman Empire — the inscriptions and graffiti of Pompeii itself
Scholarship
- Roman authors: Tacitus, Suetonius, Livy — the letters of Pliny the Younger to Tacitus about the eruption
Basis: documents and evidence.