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

54

CLASSICAL TOUR

Ch. II.

places scarce three feet in depth, so that it must
appear wonderful that the town had not been
discovered long· before the middle of the last
century; or rather that the ashes were not re-
moved, and the city restored immediately after
its catastrophe. We may therefore conclude,
that the far greater part of the inhabitants of
Pompeii had time to escape, and that those whose
skeletons remain were either decrepid slaves, or
criminals in a state of confinement. Of the latter,
indeed, some were found in chains; and as
for the former, when we consider the immense
number employed in Roman villas, we shall
wonder that so few have been hitherto discovered.
However it must he admitted, that during the
course of the eruption, and taking in the whole
range of its devastations, many persons perished,
and among them some of distinction, as may be
collected not only from Dio but from Suetonius *,
who relates that Titus then Emperor, devoted
the property of those who lost their lives on that
occasion and had no heirs, to the relief of the
survivors Though the catastrophe took place

* Suet. Titus, 8.
f The greatest number of sufferers was probably in the
villas, where the proprietors themselves might very naturally