At the west end of the Roman Forum stood a weathered and damaged statue of a legendary Roman hero: Horatius Cocles, who strode bravely to defend the Sublician bridge against the Etruscan army of Lars Porsena at the end of the sixth c. BC—even as most of his men panicked and fled. After waiting for the bridge to be destroyed behind him to safeguard the city, Horatius leapt into the Tiber River, offering himself as a kind of sacrifice to the river god, according to the historian Livy. His statue was later struck by lightning while it was in the Comitium, the open-air assembly of the people of Rome, and in expiation, it was moved upslope to the Volcanal, the shrine of the forger of thunderbolts and god of fire, Vulcan, where Gaius Plinius Secundus, “Pliny the Elder,” described it.
Each year on 23 August, Vulcan’s festival, the Volcanalia, was celebrated. The driest and hottest part of the year was beginning to turn, and the grain harvest, nurtured by spring rain and summer sun, had been gathered in. Now its protection from fire and moisture was essential for the community to survive over winter. On that feast day, Varro tells us, live sacrifices were made: people tossed animals, perhaps even fish, into the flames—as substitutes for themselves. Seeking to discharge unfulfilled vows in the wake of the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64 (and another in AD 80), the Emperor Domitian dedicated, perhaps in AD 88, a marble-clad altar on the Quirinal Hill, where the Volcanalia would be honored annually with the sacrifice of a red calf and a red hog.1
At that time, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, “Pliny the Younger,” was recently returned from military service abroad and aiming to enter the Senate as quaestor. Since the emperor selected two persons each year for that office, he might have felt it prudent to attend the ceremony. If so, perhaps he shivered to think of another Volcanalia nearly a decade before at the port of Misenum, when his uncle rose before dawn, lit a lamp, and began to read, even as tremors rippled beneath his feet.
* * *
After dusk on the evening of 28 March, 1766, Mt. Vesuvius, a towering cone on the east side of the Bay of Naples, exploded in black smoke, incandescent stones, and a river of lava. Watching the bright red stream was a tall, slim, impeccably dressed British aristocrat of 35 years who had been studying the mountain for some 18 months. He had been waiting for just this moment. William Hamilton gathered his friends, and instead of fleeing the heat, they immediately set upslope. “I approached the mouth of the Volcano as near as I could with prudence” he wrote; “the lava had the appearance of a river of red hot and liquid metal, such as we see in the glass-houses, on which were large floating cinders, half lighted, and rolling one over another with great precipitation down the side of the mountain, forming a most beautiful and uncommon cascade.”2
Hamilton spent several nights on Vesuvius, despite injuries to three compatriots. He would eventually share his understanding of this violent natural phenomenon with the English-speaking world in a visually stunning publication: Campi Phlegraei (1776), and its Supplement (1779). His work built on the developing science of volcanology which Italian, Spanish, and German investigators had kindled since eruptions recommenced in 1631.3 His fascination was also inspired by an ancient exemplar: the Elder Pliny, who perished pursuing similar enlightenment. The Elder Pliny was a scientist, philosopher, and admiral of the imperial fleet. Curiosity about an eruption on the afternoon of 24 August AD 79 prompted him to sail across the Bay of Naples. Investigation soon turned into a rescue mission for stranded friends, but ended in disaster the next morning at Stabiae, when he was overtaken by the fingers of a pyroclastic density current that wiped out the towns and farms of the most fertile shore in the Roman Empire.
Hamilton had a day job: he was ambassador of the United Kingdom to the Kingdom of Naples and the Two Sicilies for 36 years. But pursuits of culture and nature were dearer to his heart and more interesting to his mind. Hamilton would ascend Vesuvius 68 times, and observe three eruptions, taking measurements, making drawings, and gathering varied volcanological details. And while he collected cabinets full of geological specimens and ancient artifacts, it was his detailed letters, drawings, and books for the Royal Society—sharing scholarship at a time when news from the excavations of ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum was still restricted—that sparked new scientific approaches to studying the ancient catastrophe. In a letter to the naturalist Joseph Banks, Hamilton admitted that fellow volcano-lovers had begun calling him a “modern Pliny.”4
* * *
It was Christmas 1927, and heavy snow was piling like white ash atop shops and houses in the village of Kemble, Gloucestershire, making for a very merry holiday near the headwaters of the Thames. By New Year’s, however, the snow was nearly gone, melted under a sudden thaw and torrential rain. One week later, the collected force of that water carried from the Cotswolds broke across London in the worst flood the city had ever seen. Thousands lost homes, and fourteen drowned. The Manchester Guardian reported: “Several hundreds of men, women, and children made their way into York Road. Some of the men were wearing overcoats over their pyjamas, and a number of girls and children were in their night attire, with bare feet.”5
Southwest of those refugees at Lambeth Bridge, the embankment wall of the Thames collapsed, and filthy riverwater cascaded into the basement galleries of the Tate Museum of Art. Soaked, churned, and torn by the deluge was an eight-foot canvas shown in 1822 by John Martin, entitled The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum. With small fleeing figures desperate to escape the white-hot eruptive power of the massive volcano behind them, the work was deliciously overwrought; Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, author of the best-selling Last Days of Pompeii (1834), thought Martin was a genius who “penetrated the remotest caverns of the past.”6 Other contemporary critics were less kind. The landscape painter John Constable, in a March–April 1821 letter, said: “The Bishop and Mrs. Fisher attacked me about ***’s pantomime, again, yesterday; but I spoke my mind, as the shortest way. I could not sacrifice myself to such gross ignorance.”7 “***” was polite code for Martin, and by “pantomime,” Constable meant that Martin’s work was embarrassingly melodramatic. Nevertheless, Martin had just won the £200 prize “in compliment for merit” from the British Institution in London for his 80 x 121 cm Belshazzar’s Feast (1820).8
A century later, Martin’s artistic reputation had indeed turned to mud (Constable became a star), and his igneous oil painting was stowed underground to await its watery fate. Interestingly, Martin himself had presented embankment plans for better managing sewage contamination into the Thames and had made various arguments from 1827 to 1849 toward providing clean water to the population (his suggestions were, of course, ignored).9 Presumed lost, The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum was discovered by accident inside another rolled-up painting in 1974. Cleaned and restored, it was reborn to gallery light on 21 September 2011, surrounded by other Martin paintings of fiery apocalypse (Figure 4.8).10
* * *
At 2:08 pm Central European Time, 22 August 2012, @Elder_Pliny enjoyed resuscitation on Twitter, and for the next three days rebroadcast the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Tweet by Tweet. Revived by the Denver Museum of Nature and Science for the exhibition “A Day in Pompeii: The Last XXIV Hours,” @Elder_Pliny gained thousands of followers, who, like the audience at a Christmas panto, screeched at him through their own Tweets to turn back and find safety from the inevitable final blast that would tear the oxygen from his lungs and leave him dead on a Stabian beach.
* * *
The Younger Pliny was a middle-aged government official. Like Hamilton, he held an important foreign office post. Like Martin, he was involved in regulating a flood-prone river: the channel, banks, and sewers of the Tiber in Rome. Like (indeed because of) the Elder Pliny, he was a skilled and incessant writer. Sometime around AD 105–06 he received a letter from a friend: the historian Cornelius Tacitus. Tacitus had a simple request—to know the circumstances of Elder Pliny’s death so he could recount it accurately in his own Histories. Younger Pliny knew the answer, for he had witnessed the disaster as a lad of seventeen. In a singular decision that may have saved his life, Younger had declined Elder’s offer to join the fateful voyage to inspect the eruption. Instead, he chose the homework his uncle had assigned him. Such diligence would come in handy afterwards as he researched and recorded what had happened. It was to those archives that he referred when replying to Tacitus decades later.
The two letters (Ep. 6.16, 6.20) containing his account are two of the longest letters Pliny wrote. They have been present in practically every treatment of the eruption (and the sites they buried) ever since. This book examines the nature and content of those letters for what they tell us about the eruption, and traces their evidentiary journey from the ancient event to the present day. Everyone knows how the story ends, but we can’t stop watching it happen over and over again—in novels, art, poems, and film. The letters have come to constitute a parable for the End of the World, and through them, we accompany the Younger Pliny to face a daunting question: whether we would go mad if we saw the curtain falling down on all of history, or whether we would face the impassive and overwhelming face of nature with futile, noble, and perhaps absurd courage.
* * *
Chapter 1, “Two Plinys,” establishes context and characters. Compact biographies of the Elder and Younger Pliny explore the circumstances that led the Elder to take command of the fleet in AD 79 at Misenum, and the Younger to write his accounts to Tacitus. Other named or speaking members of the cast also get treatments: Plinia (Younger’s mother and Elder’s sister), Rectina (a friend requesting rescue), Pomponianus (another friend, who hosts the Elder for his final night at Stabiae), a Friend from Spain, who urges escape, and Tacitus, the Roman historian and addressee. The chapter ends with the Problem of the Two Plinys, as only a few generations after their deaths, and for centuries thereafter, the two men were confused and conflated.
“Two Letters,” Chapter 2, unravels the manuscript tradition of Pliny’s Epistulae in general—and the Vesuvian letters specifically—by recording, sorting, analyzing, and ordering all known and accessible versions of the text. The purpose of this intricate and exhaustive exercise is to understand (as best as possible) what Pliny actually wrote and to understand how and when the variations in his texts emerged and spread. The methodology and results of this work form the armature for all other arguments in the book.
The third chapter, “Two Days,” treats the geography of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples and steps through the AD 79 eruption sequence, synthesizing the latest volcanological research. It fully enters the debate about the precise day and month of the eruption and proceeds through the history of argumentation and evidence, explaining how particular errors in the history of scholarship have resulted in (mistaken) revisions for the date in Pliny’s letter.
Chapters 4 and 5, using the text established by Ch. 2, proceed through each section of the two letters, presenting the Latin, a new translation, key textual variants, and commentary on Pliny’s syntax, style, and strategies, as well as practical matters. Scholarship on these letters is vast—it would be impossible to include every angle and reference—but I have tried to be comprehensive. My intention is to make it possible for both novices and experts to explore the text with interest and utility.
Throughout, I endeavor to provide as many primary sources as possible, in both Latin or Greek and in translation, with detailed footnotes that permit tracing of the evidence and arguments. To read both letters through, download the continuous Latin text and translation from the Online Resources, https://www.routledge.com/9780415705462, which also contain the collation spreadsheets inventorying the readings of all available manuscripts and printed editions, a “fingerprints” collation of key readings, collations of Ep. 1.8, 12, 23–24 and Book 8 letters (key to deciphering the manuscript tradition), a collation encoding key, high-resolution key diagrams (Figures 2.2a–e, 3.4a–c), and GIS files for the pre-AD 79 Bay of Naples. Omnia speratura persequanda.
Notes
· 1 Horatius at the bridge: Livy, 2.10; his statue: Aulus Gellius, 4.5.1–4; Varro, L 6.20: eo die populus pro se in ignem animalia mittit; seen by Pliny: HN 34.22. On the Volcanal and Volcanalia: Dumézil, Archaic, 320–21; Boin, Ostia, 210–12; Richardson, Jr., “Approach,” 53–55; Sautereau, “Vulcain,” 26–43; Closs, “Neronianis.”
· 2 Hamilton, Observations, 6–7.
· 3 Cocco, Watching Vesuvius (pp. 206–25 for Hamilton); Darley, Vesuvius, 64–95; Dunn, Shadow, 39–41.
· 4 William Hamilton to Sir Joseph Banks, 23 April 1782, Forty-One Original Letters, f. 15, as cited in Jenkins and Sloan, Vases & Volcanoes, 68.
· 5 “Whole Country Swept by Gale,” The Guardian, January 7, 1928. http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/1928/jan/07/fromthearchive.
· 6 Bulwer-Lytton, England, 260–61. See also Alexander, “Burning Clime,” 292–93.
· 7 Leslie, Memoirs, 86.
· 8 Kokkonen, “John Martin’s Plan,” 1584; Smith, Recollections, 80.
· 9 Kokkonen, “John Martin’s Plan,” 1585–87.
· 10 Myrone and Austen, John Martin, 109–15.