© Jeff
Matthews entry Feb. 2011
Mount Vesuvius:
the Good Old
Days
It has been a
while since I peeked out in the morning and saw
a Vesuvius that looks like this. It's a reconstruction
that shows the volcano before the eruption of 79 A.D.
(That event is now called the "first eruption," but
that should be understood in context: i.e. (1) before
that eruption, the volcano was generally called
something else [see this link
] and (2) it had merely been quiet for a long time.
Such a reconstruction is based on historical
descriptions that have survived from before that
famous "Pompeiian" eruption.
(The
print, above, and the texts of the historical
descriptions set off below are from a charming
book called Rambles
in Naples, An Archaeological and Historical
Guide by S. Russel Forbes, 4th edition
enlarged, London. T. Nelson and Sons,
Paternoster Row. 1893.)
If only
the Greek historian and geographer, Strabo (64 BC-24 AD), had lived a while longer he
might have seen that Vesuvius was not just an old dead
giant "extinguished for want of fuel." He wrote in his
Geography:
Above these places rises
Vesuvius, well cultivated and inhabited all
round, except its top, which is for the most
part level, and entirely barren, ashy to the
view, displaying cavernous hollows
incineritious rocks, which look as if they
had been eaten in the fire; so that we may
suppose this spot to have been a volcano
formerly, with burning craters, now
extinguished for want of fuel.
We can't
fault him for that. It looked like a hospitable
place. Before the first "big one," you could treat
it like any other mountain, which is, indeed, what
Spartacus and his minions did in 73 BC when they climbed out of the not quite
extinct crater on vines to escape a Roman ambush and
come up on the enemy from the rear. Quite clearly,
the Romans knew that Vesuvius had been eruptive at
some time or another. The Romans did know about
volcanoes. Pliny the Elder even wrote about them in
his Natural
History, but Vesuvius seemed so innocuous
that his list of Italian volcanoes didn't even
mention it —the
volcano that ultimately killed
him.
In any
event, later historians, such as Dion Cassius, (155 AD-c.230 AD) had the benefit of all that
hindsight and wrote in a bit more detail. In his Life of Titus (book
56), he has a description of the great eruption. He
writes from a "we now know" point of view and I
include it here because of the brief reference to what
Vesuvius was said to have been like before 79 AD.
During
the autumn a great fire broke out in Campania.
Vesuvius is a mountain on the coast near Naples,
which contains inexhaustible fountains of fire;
and formerly it was all of the same height, and
fire rose in the middle of it (for the only traces
of fire were in the middle), but the outer parts
remain unscathed to this day. Hence, these
continue, but the centre is dried up and reduced
to ashes. the encircling crags still retain their
ancient height, but the burnt part being consumed,
in lapse of time has settled down and become
hollow, so that, to compare small things to great,
the whole mountain now resembles an amphitheatre.
And the tops are clothed with trees and vines; but
the circular cavity is abandoned to fire, and by
day it sends up smoke, and by night flame, so that
one would think all sort of incense vessels were
burning there. This continues always with more or
less violence, and often, after any considerable
subsidence, it casts up ashes and stones, impelled
by violent blasts of wind, with a loud noise and
roaring, because its breathing-holes are not set
close together but are few and concealed.
Such is Vesuvius, and these things take place in
it almost every year. But all eruptions which have
happened since, though they may have appeared
unusually great to those even who have been
accustomed to such sights, would be trifling, even
if collected into one, when compared to what
occurred at the time of which we speak. Many huge
men surpassing human stature, such as the giants
are described to have been, appeared wandering in
the air and upon the earth, at one time
frequenting the mountain, at another the fields
and cities in its neighbourhood. Afterwards came
great droughts and violent earthquakes, so that
the whole plain boiled and bubbled, and the hills
leapt, and there were noises under ground like
thunder, and above ground like roaring; and the
sea made a noise, and the heavens sounded, and
then suddenly a mighty crash was heard, as if the
mountains were coming together; and first great
stones were thrown up to the very summits, then
mighty fires and immense smoke, so that the whole
air was overshadowed, and the sun entirely hidden,
as in an eclipse. Thus day was turned into night,
and light into darkness...
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