Victims of the eruption (C16)
Individual victims of Vesuvius are rarely mentioned. One exception, mentioned by Josephus, is Agrippa, the son of Antonius Felix and Drusilla. Felix was an imperial freedman, and extraordinarily the emperor Claudius’ procurator (governor) of Palestine (AD c.52—60). He made three exceptional marriages, all to royalty. Drusilla was a Jewish princess, daughter of Agrippa I. Josephus does not fulfil his promise to describe Agrippa’s death. For possibly a less direct allusion to death caused by the eruption, see C22.
C16 Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.7.2
How that young man was killed with his wife in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the times of Titus Caesar, I shall reveal after this.
DESTRUCTION OF POMPEII
Relief work by the emperor Titus (C17—18)
Titus had succeeded his father Vespasian as emperor only two months before the eruption occurred. The significance of Titus' action in allocating the property of those who died without heirs to relief work lies in the fact that such property would otherwise have entered the imperial coffers. A series of coins minted in the following year (H. Mattingly (1923) Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum I. Augustus to 'Vitellius (BMC) Titus 49—82) commemorates attempts to assuage the gods' wrath, which had been revealed by these natural disasters (compare C28). Inscriptions at Naples, Salerno and Sorrento show how Titus contributed to the rebuilding of towns damaged, though not destroyed, during the eruption, and one at Nuceria shows the emperor Domitian rebuilding the theatre there.
C17 Suetonius, Titus 8.3
In his reign, several dreadful disasters occurred — an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Campania, a fire at Rome which burned for three days and nights, and one of the worst ever outbreaks of the plague. In the face of all these disasters, he displayed not merely the concern of an emperor but also the deep love of a father, whether by offering messages of sympathy or by giving all the financial help he could. He selected by lot some senators of consular rank to regenerate Campania, and allocated the property of those who had died in the eruption and who had no surviving heirs to the renewal of the afflicted towns.
C18 Dio Cassius 66.24.1, 3—4 (continuation from C14)
In the following year, a fire on the ground spread over a very large part of Rome while Titus was away following the disaster in Campania. . . Titus therefore sent two ex-consuls to Campania to refound the settlements and gave money and the possessions of those who had died without heirs. Titus himself took no money from individuals or cities or kings although many kept giving and promising him large sums, but restored all the damage from his resources.
Salvaging on site (C19)
The extent of salvaging in the immediate aftermath of the eruption is much debated, but the following text (Latin, but written in Greek letters) was clearly scratched upon the right wall of the entrance way. It appears to be a statement that the house has been explored and salvaged. This is supported by holes in the walls and by the fact that hardly anything was found in the house, except for a bronze statue, which had been stored in a more out-of-the-way place. This suggests that the salvaging was the act not of the house's owner, nor of someone acquainted with the house, but perhaps took place some time after the eruption. Compare J32 for other possible indications of salvaging in antiquity.
C19 CIL IV 2311, House of N. Popidius Priscus (VH. ii.20)
House tunnelled through.
DESTRUCTION OF POMPEII The eruption’s impact, according to a local poet (C20—23)
Statius was particularly moved by the fate of his region of birth, not least since he knew individuals who were affected by the eruption. In C20, the poet may be alluding to towns other than Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae, such as Naples and Sorrento, which must have suffered in the eruption from fallout and earth tremors, but which soon recovered. Julius Menecrates (eulogized in C22), also from Naples, was the son-in-law of Pollio Felix, whose villa on the Sorrentine promontory is eulogized by Statius in another poem. Statius even reveals (C23) his father’s unfulfilled plans to write a poem about the eruption. Book 3 was published AD 93-4, Book 4 in AD 95, Book 5 posthumously, in AD?96.
C20 Statius, Silvae 3.5.72—5
Vesuvius’ peak and the dread mountain’s fiery storm have not depleted the terrified cities of their citizens so much: they stand and their populations thrive.
C21 Statius, Silvae 4.4.78—85
These things I am singing to you, Marcellus, on the Cumaean shores, where Vesuvius revived its curbed anger, billowing forth fires to rival Etna’s flames. Amazing truth! Will future generations believe, when crops and these now deserted places once more thrive again, that cities and peoples are buried below and that ancestral lands have disappeared, having shared in the same fate? Not yet does the mountain-top cease to threaten death.
C22 Statius, Silvae 4.8.3—5
Behold, now a third child increases the family of illustrious Menecrates. A noble crowd of princes grows for you and consoles you for the losses caused by mad Vesuvius.
C23 Statius, Silvae 5.3.205-8
It was your intention to lament the fires of Vesuvius in a poetic tribute and to spend your efforts lamenting the ruin of your country, when the Father uprooted the mountain from the earth, lifted it to heaven, and cast it down onto the pitiable cities all around.
The eruption’s impact on the landscape (C24—25)
C24 Martial, Epigram 4.44 (published December AD 88)
Here is Vesuvius, just now covered with green shady vines; here the noble grape had squeezed out drenching pools; these the ridges, which Bacchus loved more than the hills of Nysa; on this mountain the Satyrs recently
Performed their dances; this was the home of Venus, more pleasing to her than Lacedaemon; this place was famous for Hercules’ divine presence. Everything lies submerged in flames and sad ash: and the gods above would not wish they had such power.
C25 Tacitus, Annals 4.67
Capri used to look out over a very beautiful bay, before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius changed the region’s appearance.
The eruption as source of poetical inspiration (C26—27)
Both Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus were engaged in writing melodramatic epic poems around the time of Vesuvius’ eruption, which clearly made an impact upon their imagination. C26 is one of two striking similes in The Argonauts (written AD 70—80) in which the poet compares moments during battles with the erupting volcano (compare 3.208—10).
In his epic poem on the struggles between Rome and Carthage in the Punic Wars, Silius Italicus (AD c. 25—101) presents an eruption of Vesuvius as the culmination of a whole sequence of bad omens that predicted disaster for the Romans on the battlefield at Cannae (C27). This does not record a historical eruption of 216 BC, but reflects the impact of the eruption of AD 79 upon the imagination of contemporary onlookers.
C26 Valerius Flaccus, The Argonauts 4.507—9
As when perhaps the fatal peak of Hesperian Vesuvius thundered as it burst apart, only just has the fiery storm twisted the mountain, but already the ash has clothed eastern cities.
C27 Silius Italicus, Punic Wars 8.653—5
Vesuvius thundered as well, whirling Etna’s fires from its rocks, and the Phlegraean peak reached the trembling stars with the boulders hurled into the clouds.
The role of the gods in the eruption (C28—30)
A Jewish prediction of doom (C28)
The fourth Sibylline Oracle is a composite oracle, containing a Hellenistic political oracle and a later Jewish insertion of the AD 80s. The Sibyl predicts the rise and fall of a succession of kingdoms, culminating in the fall of the Roman Empire. This passage follows an account of the sack of Jerusalem (by Vespasian and Titus in AD 70).
C28 Sibylline Oracle 4.130—6
But when, some day, fire escapes from an underground fissure in the land of Italy and reaches the expanse of the heavens, it will destroy many towns and men with its flames, and much dense ash will fill the great sky, and drops will fall from heaven like red ochre, then know the wrath of the heavenly God, on those who destroyed the blameless race of the pious.
A Greek defence of prophecy (C29)
This passage is part of a defence of the accuracy of the Pythian Sibyl at Delphi, and claims to illustrate how her divinely inspired prophecy predicted Vesuvius' eruption. Later on, at Moralia 566E (The Divine Vengeance), Plutarch represents his visionary as actually hearing the Sibyl make this prophecy. Dikaiarcheia is the Greek name for Puteoli (modern Pozzuoli). For the Sibylline prophecy, see C28.
C29 Plutarch, Moralia 398E, The Oracles at Delphi
Time has delivered the recent and new misfortunes around Cumae and Dikaiarcheia not long ago commemorated and chanted through the Sibylline books, just as it ought, with the bursting out of the mountain’s fire and the sea’s seething, with burning rocks thrown up by the wind, and the destruction of so many great towns, so that their location is imperceptible and uncertain to anyone going there in broad daylight, now that the land has been turned topsy-turvy.
A Christian defence against pagans (C30)
Finally, in AD c.197, Tertullian, writing in defence of Christianity, argues that the wrath of the pagan gods against Christians neglecting their worship cannot be sufficient explanation for natural disasters, given that no Christians lived at Pompeii when Vesuvius erupted. He uses the same pair of examples at Ad nationes 1.9 7.
C30 Tertullian, Apology 40.8
But neither Etruria nor Campania had yet complained about Christians at that time, when fire flooded Vulsinii from the sky, and Pompeii from its own mountain.
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