DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61277#0049
HERCULANEUM AND POMPEII.
27
Magna Graecia, was always celebrated for the
studious and successful cultivation of the arts and
sciences. The two cities of Herculaneum and
Pompeii ranked next to Naples in every respect,
as places of considerable note; they had their
public theatres, with every other attendant of
great population, splendour, opulence, and gene-
ral prosperity; and became, in common with all
the rest of Campania, the elegant and favourite
resort of the Romans, for the different purposes
of health, retirement, luxury, and literary ease.
In the ninth year of Nero’s reign, they expe-
rienced a most formidable shock from an earth-
quake, which is not the unfrequent forerunner of
any violent volcanic eruption. Nor had they
altogether recovered from the effects of this cala-
mity, by their own exertions and the aid of im-
perial munificence, when a second catastrophe, of
a different nature, but equally unexpected, and
still more awful in its effects, consigned them
both to the most complete oblivion.
This catastrophe was the great eruption of
Mount Vesuvius, which happened on the 24th of
August, A. D. 79, in the second year of the reign
of that excellent Emperor, Titus Vespasian.
Herculaneum was almost instantaneously buried
under a mass of lava and volcanic matter, to the
d 2
27
Magna Graecia, was always celebrated for the
studious and successful cultivation of the arts and
sciences. The two cities of Herculaneum and
Pompeii ranked next to Naples in every respect,
as places of considerable note; they had their
public theatres, with every other attendant of
great population, splendour, opulence, and gene-
ral prosperity; and became, in common with all
the rest of Campania, the elegant and favourite
resort of the Romans, for the different purposes
of health, retirement, luxury, and literary ease.
In the ninth year of Nero’s reign, they expe-
rienced a most formidable shock from an earth-
quake, which is not the unfrequent forerunner of
any violent volcanic eruption. Nor had they
altogether recovered from the effects of this cala-
mity, by their own exertions and the aid of im-
perial munificence, when a second catastrophe, of
a different nature, but equally unexpected, and
still more awful in its effects, consigned them
both to the most complete oblivion.
This catastrophe was the great eruption of
Mount Vesuvius, which happened on the 24th of
August, A. D. 79, in the second year of the reign
of that excellent Emperor, Titus Vespasian.
Herculaneum was almost instantaneously buried
under a mass of lava and volcanic matter, to the
d 2