Eustace, John Cretwode: A classical tour through Italy An. MDCCCII (Vol. 3): 3. ed., rev. and enl (London: J. Mawman, 1815)

28

CLASSICAL TOUR

Ch. L

the crater and almost filled its cavity. The fire
raging in the gulph below having thus lost its
vent, burst through the flank of the mountain,
and poured out a torrent of lava that, as it rolled
down the declivity, swept all before it, and in its
way to the sea destroyed the greater part of
Torre del Greco.
It is not my intention to describe the pheno-
mena of Vesuvius, or to relate the details of
its eruptions, which have been very numerous
since the first recorded in history in the reign of
Titus, so well described by Pliny the younger*
in two well known epistles to Tacitus the histo-
rian. 1 shall only observe that although this
eruption be the first of which we have an ac-
count, yet Vesuvius had all the features of a vol-
cano, and particularly the traces of a crater from
time immemorial. Sirabo speaks of it as being
hollowed out into caverns, and having the ap-
pear nces of being preyed upon by internal fires ;
and Florus relates a stratagem employed by a Ro-
man oficer, who, he says, conducted a body of
men through the cavities and subterraneous pas-
sages of that mountain^. These vestiges how-

* Pliny vi. 16, 20.
t Silins Italicus, who probably witnessed the grand erup-