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The Eruption

Text Chapter 5, "The Eruption of Vesuvius"

pp. 48-60

Focus Questions:

What evidence is there for the date of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius?

What evidence is there for warning signs of the eruption?

What do modern and ancient sources show us about the stages of the eruption?

How did the eruption have a different impact on Pompeii and Herculaneum?

How many people escaped the eruption? Why did some people not escape?

Past HSC Question - 2013

With reference to Source E and other sources, explain how Pompeii and Herculaneum were affected differently by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius. (6 marks)

Source E: Extract from Domenico Camardo et al., ‘Raising The Roof’ in World Archaeology, 2010

The roof lay in a corner of the beach ... The team had to remove about a metre of volcanic deposits before the roof was exposed, still lying on the black sand of the beach.

Massive wooden beams up to 7 metres long, along with smaller timbers and rafters, were the first elements to be uncovered. These lay on top of the tiles that would originally have covered the roof, revealing that it had been flipped upside down by the brute force of the eruption ... Despite the monumental size and weight of the timbers, not one nail was used and only a few iron cramps were recovered.

Past HSC Question - 2012

Using Sources A and B and your own knowledge, explain what human remains reveal about the causes of death in the eruption of AD 79. (4 marks)

Source A: Plaster casts of bodies in the Garden of the Fugitives at Pompeii

Source B: Skeletal remains from the seashore at Herculaneum

Melbourne Museum's "A Day in Pompeii" eruption video

Using Source A and your own knowledge, outline what the evidence tells us about the nature of the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in AD 79.

Source A

The cloud was rising from a mountain - at such a distance we couldn't tell which, but afterwards learned that it was Vesuvius. I can best describe its shape by likening it to a pine tree. It rose into the sky on a very long "trunk" from which spread some “branches”. I imagine it had been raised by a sudden blast, which then weakened, leaving the cloud unsupported so that its own weight caused it to spread sideways. Some of the cloud was white, in other parts there were dark patches of dirt and ash.

Pliny the Younger, Letter to Tacitus, 6.16

The date previously assigned to the destruction of Pompeii may have been wrong according to recent discoveries. Look at this link. Assess the evidence.

The date of the Eruption

The eruption began on 24 August AD 79.

Warning signs

• What warnings signs are shown in works by Seneca, Tacitus and Suetonius?

Seneca described the earthquake in AD 62 (Naturales Questiones VI 1 1-2):

WE have just had news, my esteemed Lucilius, that Pompeii, the celebrated city in Campania, has been overwhelmed in an earthquake, which shook all the surrounding districts as well. The city, you know, lies on a beautiful bay, running far back from the open sea, and is surrounded by two converging shores, on the one side that of Surrentum and Stabiae, on the other that of Herculaneum. The disaster happened in winter, a period for which our forefathers used to claim immunity from such dangers. On the 5th of February, in the consulship of Regulus and Virginius, this shock occurred, involving widespread destruction over the whole province of Campania; the district had never been without risk of such a calamity, but had been hitherto exempt from it, having escaped time after time from groundless alarm.

The extent of the disaster may be gathered from a few details. Part of the town of Herculaneum fell; the buildings left standing are very insecure.

Seneca, Naturales Questiones VI 1 1-2

There is no record of another quake though some buildings in Pompeii that had been repaired after 62 seem to have suffered further damage.

Tacitus and Suetonius mention a quake in 64 which damaged the theatre in Naples:

There an incident occurred, which many thought unlucky, though to the emperor it seemed due to the providence of auspicious deities. The people who had been present, had quitted the theatre, and the empty building then fell in without harm to anyone.

Tacitus, Annals of Imperial Rome 15:34

And he made his début at Naples, where he did not cease singing until he had finished the number which he had begun, even though the theatre was shaken by a sudden earthquake shock.

Suetonius, Life of Nero 20.2

The eruption

Pliny the Younger’s letters (6.16 and 6.20) to Tacitus provide the only eye-witness account of the event. He also relied on accounts of others and the letters were written long after the event. However, they are a very accurate description of the first phase of a major eruption (now called the Plinian phase).

• What do the letters of Pliny the Younger (6.16 and 6.20) to Tacitus tell us about the sequence of events during the eruption?

• How has the work of vulcanologist, Haraldur Sigurdsson, helped us to understand the sequence of the eruption?

• What is the difference between the Plinian phase and the Pyroclastic phase?

• Which phases/s affected Pompeii and which affected Herculaneum? (see p.50ff and maps p.52 and 54)

• How were Pompeii and Herculaneum affected differently by the eruption?

• How did this affect the way people died and the way the sites were preserved?

View footage of the 1944 eruption of Mount Vesuvius

The evidence provided by the sources from Pompeii and Herculaneum

i. The Eruption

62 AD earthquake: killed 600 Sheep, only warning sign

79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius

Pliny the Younger’s Account of the Eruption and the Death of his Uncle

• At the time of the eruption, Pliny the Elder was with Pliny the Younger were at Misenum, however, Pliny the Elder commanded a fleet that sailed to Stabiae to assist with the damage

• Pliny the Younger recounts the early stage of the eruption, later known as the ‘Plinean stage’

• Pliny the Younger in his letters to Tacitus writes that the only warning signs were tremors in the days prior to the eruption, however this was seen “less alarming because frequent in Campania” (Pliny the Younger)

• The first sign was “a cloud of unusual size and form” Pliny the Younger

• Limitations of Pliny the Younger’s account include the fact that he wrote 25 years after the eruption in the form of two letters to his friend Tacitus. Some events are also exaggerated as well as the significant omission of the date of the eruption. However, Pliny the Younger acknowledges these limitations as he states “it is one thing to write a letter, another to write history” recognising that his work is “not worthy of serious history”. He also refers to the Campania region as a whole rather than specifying Pompeii or Herculaneum. Despite these limitations, Pliny the Younger was an eyewitness of the events and thus he can still be deemed a reliable source as his account provides a personal account which can be corroborated with Volcanologists.

• Pliny the Younger compared the cloud to an “umbrella pine” that reached great heights and spread into “various branches”

• Upon his route, Pliny the Elder’s boat was stuck at the Stabiae shore due to what Seutonius described as “adverse winds” which caused him to be “overcome by the force of dust and ashes” (Ibid), The reliability of Seutonius is however limited, as he was a gossip columnist who even speculated that Pliny the Elder was “killed by a slave”

• Pliny the Younger recounts the death of his uncle at Stabiae, commemorating and idolising his Uncle, stating that he was “pretending to be cheerful” in order to maintain composure among his troops.

• Pliny the Younger describes the eruption as a “terrifying black cloud, split by twisted blasts of fire shooting in different directions, gaped to reveal long fiery shapes, similar to flashes of lightening, only bigger”

The Events of the Eruption

• The eruption of 79 AD has been analysed and chronologically categorised through stratigraphic analysis of the layers or strata of volcanic ash.

• Pyroclastic surge: evidenced by thin black layers; a low density turbulent cloud of hot ash and rock that billows over terrain, barely touching the ground. A pyroclastic surge travels at incredibly high speeds of up to 300 km/h. The eruption at Vesuvius was unique as there was six layers in the strata indicating there were six pyroclastic surges.

• Pyroclastic flow: a much denser, hotter, dry avalanche of ground hugging molten rock, pumice and gasses. It moves a lot slower than a surge- only up to 50 km/h

• Sequence of events:

  1. Day one (midday): An initial explosion thrusts a “terrifying black cloud” that resembled an “umbrella pine” that reached 20 kilometers into the air and spread out into “various branches” (Pliny the Younger). Pumice is formed from hot magma that has cooled so quickly that it is still full of volcanic gasses and is like a hard foamy sponge.

  2. Day one (midday) – day two (4-6am): Pumice fallout all over Pompeii begins, ranging from pebble size called lapilli (about 1cm) to rock size (up to 20cm), according to [1] Cassius Dio “enourmous stones were thrown up to reach the height of the mountain-tops themselves”. The buildup causes roofs to collapse under the weight. Travel around Pompeii becomes difficult. Pumice fallout at Herculaneum is less.

  3. (Day two (4-6 am): The collapse of the column of hot gas and pumice in the quasi initial explosion, caused a series of pyroclastic surges and flows of ash and hot gases, which race to the south and west at an estimated speed of up to 100 kilometers an hour. The first surge covers Herculaneum in 3 m of hot ash while, in accordance with Cassius Dio, “all the while an inconceivable quantity of ash was being blown out; it covered both sea and land and filled all the air”

  4. Day two (5-7 am): A second surge deposits another 1.5 m of ash on Herculaneum

  5. Day 2 (around 6:30 am): a third surge in the direction of Pompeii stops at the Herculaneum gate.

  6. Day 2 (7:30-8 am): Three more successive surges, reaching temperatures between 100º and 400º bury Pompeii to a depth of up to 4 m, as corroborated by Eusebius in his Chronicle stating that the surges “consumed the surrounding countryside”. The final surge reaches Misenum.

• NOTE: 2 stages: The first or the Plinean Stage, that lasted eighteen to twenty hours and produced a rain of pumice southward of the cone that built up to depths of 4m at Pompeii, followed by a pyroclastic flow in the second, Peléan phase that reached as far as Misenum but was concentrated to the west and northwest.

• Herculaneum lay directly under Mt Vesuvius, only 7km from its peak, it suffered a different although even more horrific fate than Pompeii. The people of Herculaneum would certainly have been terrified by the initial explosion, shock waves and earth tremours in the Plinean stage of the eruption, as according to Cassius Dio “people fled, some from their houses into the streets, others from outside indoors”. In an article published in 2002 Sigurdsson and Casey elaborate on the stratigraphic evidence, asserting that as Herculaneum was upwind of the fallout, the pumice fall in the first few hours was moderately light. However, in the next and more destructive phase of the eruption, the Pelean phase, Herculaneum bore the full brunt of the succession of pyroclastic surges. The first, reaching temperatures of over 400º, would have killed the inhabitants, and subsequent surges and flows destroyed buildings and carbonised organic matter. In this final phase, the city was buried up to a depth of 20m compared with the 4m at Pompeii.

• Differences in the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum:

Pompeii

Herculaneum

• Further away from the peak

• More pumice fallout but less surges

• Buried under 4m of ash

• Closer to the peak (only 7km away) – suffered more damage

• Less pumice fallout but more surges, and before Pompeii received surges.

• Buried under 20m of ash

• Roman response: Modern Historian Diess, recounts in his work “Herculaneum, Italy’s Buried Treasure” that “news of the eruption was flashed to Rome by signal towers” where it was dealt with in the “most efficient Roman manner” and “the popular emperor Titus dispensed emergency aid with his own funds in addition to the funds of the state” corroborated by Suetonius who stated that Titus “displayed not merely the concern of an emperor but also the deep love of a father”. Moreover, Diess states that the senate decreed that “the assets of extinct families should be divided among all survivors yet no aid could compensate for such a loss” again congruent with Cassius Dio who stated Titus “restored all damage from his resources”.

• How people died:

Pompeii

Herculaneum

The initial reaction of the people to the eruption determined their fate. Those who immediately fled the city may have survived provided they reached a safe distance. Whereas those who chose to stay inside their homes or other buildings sealed their fate: Cassius Dio: “people fled, some from their houses into the streets, others from outside indoors” At least 600 people died when the roofs collapsed under the weight of the pumice and rock which rained down during the eruption. Those who abandoned the buildings and climbed out onto the roofs died of asphyxiation due to being caught in the pyroclastic surges that overcame the city. Archaeological evidence that corroborates death from the force of a pyroclastic surge coupled with asphyxiation includes that of a dog found in the private house of the Tragic Poet, as its convulsing position indicates such death. Scientific tests confirm that the ash people inhaled was spongy, porous and deadly, as evidenced by the lungs of the Ring lady, who died due to asphyxiation mid escape on the beaches at Herculaneum. As people breathed in, the very fine ash formed a sticky paste that clogged their lungs and made breathing impossible. The anguish of the victims as they struggled to breathe can be seen in the facial expressions and body language of the casts. A collective observation that can be made from the fact that all bodies were found with their mouths open suggests they suffocated by breathing in the dust or ash. They are all buried near the top of the layers of pumice and they all died much the same. Haraldur Sigurdsson believed that the most deadly surge “the fourth one” occurred at approximately 7:30 am on 25^th August 79 AD, killing all who remained in the city. He describes the lethal surge as a searing, burning wind which filled the lungs instantly choking and killing all in its path. Pliny describes similar features, He tells of the flames and the smell of sulphur and how the fumes made it difficult to breathe. His uncle seemed to have died in similar circumstances when the surge hit Stabiae.All wood in Pompeii was destroyed by the eruption.