A Roman naval commander watches a strange cloud rise over Mount Vesuvius and sails directly towards it. He never returns.
Pliny the Elder had spent thirty years cataloguing the natural world in 37 volumes, creating the largest encyclopaedic work of its kind in the ancient world. When Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, burying Pompeii and Herculaneum, he ordered the imperial fleet to sail into falling ash and pumice to rescue people trapped along the Bay of Naples.
That night, in a house slowly being buried around him, he calmly bathed, dined and slept so those sheltering with him would remain calm. He died on a beach the following morning.
We know almost exactly how, hour by hour, because his seventeen-year-old nephew, Pliny the Younger, watched the eruption from across the bay and recorded it in a series of letters written twenty-five years later. His account was so detailed that volcanologists still use Pliny’s name for this type of volcanic eruption today: a Plinian eruption. History named one of nature’s most powerful volcanic eruptions after him.
This is the story of Pliny the Elder’s final day.
Want to learn more? Read the Pompeii Guide
REMARKABLE PLACE.
Visiting Pompeii: The City In Ash
Explore Pompeii’s history, archaeology and remarkably preserved streets. Walk through homes, temples and public buildings frozen in time, discover how ordinary Romans once lived beneath the shadow of Vesuvius, and plan your visit to one of the world’s most extraordinary archaeological sites. Combining history with practical visitor information, our guide reveals not only what happened here, but why Pompeii continues to captivate millions of visitors every year.
