DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61617#0050
20
POMPEII
of Herculaneum. He came too late; it was no longer possible
to effect a landing. So he directed his course to Stabiae, where
he spent the night; and there on the following morning he died,
suffocated by the fumes that were exhaled from the earth.
The second letter gives an account of the writer’s own ex-
periences at Misenum.
To this testimony little is added by the narrative of Dion
Cassius, which was written a century and a half later and is
known to us only in abstract; Dion dwells at greater length on
the powerful impression which the terrible convulsion of nature
left upon those who were living at that time. With the help
of the letters of Pliny, in connection with the facts established
by the excavations, it is possible to picture to ourselves the
progress of the eruption with a fair degree of clearness.
The subterranean fires of Vesuvius pressed upward to find
an outlet. The accumulations of volcanic ash and pumice
stone that had been heaped up on the mountain by former
eruptions were again hurled to a great height, and came down
upon the surrounding country. On the west side of Vesuvius
they mingled with torrents of rain, and flowed as a vast stream
of mud down over Herculaneum. On the south side, driven
by a northwest wind as they descended from the upper air,
they spread out into a thick cloud, which covered Pompeii and
the plain of the Sarno. Out of this cloud first broken frag-
ments of pumice stone — the average size not larger than a
walnut — rained down to the depth of eight to ten feet; then
followed volcanic ash, wet as it fell by a downpour of water, to
the depth of six or seven feet. With the storm of ashes came
successive shocks of earthquake.
Such was, in outline, the course of the eruption. It must
have begun early in the morning of the twenty-fourth, and the
stream of mud must have commenced immediately to move in
the direction of Herculaneum ; for shortly after one o’clock on
that day the admiral Pliny at Misenum received letters from
the region threatened, saying that the danger was imminent, and
that escape was possible only by sea. Even then the Younger
Pliny saw, high above Vesuvius, the cloud, shaped like an um-
brella pine, which was to rain down destruction on Pompeii.
POMPEII
of Herculaneum. He came too late; it was no longer possible
to effect a landing. So he directed his course to Stabiae, where
he spent the night; and there on the following morning he died,
suffocated by the fumes that were exhaled from the earth.
The second letter gives an account of the writer’s own ex-
periences at Misenum.
To this testimony little is added by the narrative of Dion
Cassius, which was written a century and a half later and is
known to us only in abstract; Dion dwells at greater length on
the powerful impression which the terrible convulsion of nature
left upon those who were living at that time. With the help
of the letters of Pliny, in connection with the facts established
by the excavations, it is possible to picture to ourselves the
progress of the eruption with a fair degree of clearness.
The subterranean fires of Vesuvius pressed upward to find
an outlet. The accumulations of volcanic ash and pumice
stone that had been heaped up on the mountain by former
eruptions were again hurled to a great height, and came down
upon the surrounding country. On the west side of Vesuvius
they mingled with torrents of rain, and flowed as a vast stream
of mud down over Herculaneum. On the south side, driven
by a northwest wind as they descended from the upper air,
they spread out into a thick cloud, which covered Pompeii and
the plain of the Sarno. Out of this cloud first broken frag-
ments of pumice stone — the average size not larger than a
walnut — rained down to the depth of eight to ten feet; then
followed volcanic ash, wet as it fell by a downpour of water, to
the depth of six or seven feet. With the storm of ashes came
successive shocks of earthquake.
Such was, in outline, the course of the eruption. It must
have begun early in the morning of the twenty-fourth, and the
stream of mud must have commenced immediately to move in
the direction of Herculaneum ; for shortly after one o’clock on
that day the admiral Pliny at Misenum received letters from
the region threatened, saying that the danger was imminent, and
that escape was possible only by sea. Even then the Younger
Pliny saw, high above Vesuvius, the cloud, shaped like an um-
brella pine, which was to rain down destruction on Pompeii.