VESUVIUS DURING THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES 559 



entering into the voluminous literature of the Plinian disaster, which 

 belongs in a separate category. Note, however, that some of the titles 

 included under it are luminous for an understanding of early Somma- 

 Vesuvius history, and the same may be said of Cassius Dio's account of 

 the second eruption (203 or 204), which also falls outside the period of 

 our inquiry. 



The whole history of Italy under the Goths is contained in Cassio- 

 dorus and Procopius, although the dry compendium of Marcellinus 

 Comes is not without value for the chronology of certain facts. These 

 three writers are our only informants 1 of the eruption that fell at the 

 beginning of the dark ages, in 472, and a word or two concerning them 

 may not be inapt. Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus, a great Roman noble 

 of wealth, learning and astute statesmanship, born in 480 and reputed 

 to have lived nearly a century, occupies a position throughout the reign 

 of Theodoric scarcely less prominent than that of the king himself, 

 whose chief counsellor he was. His writings, especially the ' Variae,' 

 or collection of state papers, are of incalculable value for Italian his- 

 tory under Gothic rule, and contain a wealth of curious detail concern- 

 ing political, social and moral conditions, and general life of the 

 period. In these official papers, the secretary frequently intersperses 

 comments, from an obviously personal point of view, upon any subject 

 that interests him, often displaying remarkable erudition. One of his 

 marked tendencies is a passion for natural history, which he touches 

 upon with naive ardor, yet displaying withal acute observation. Many 

 a random note occurs relating to birds, beasts or fishes, as witness for 

 example his excursus on the elephant, faintly suggestive of Ctesias, or 

 his description of the ' exormiston,' identified by Dr. Theodore Gill with 

 a Leptocephalus. Little wonder, is it, therefore, that we find in these 

 ' Varise ' (iv., 50) an interesting digression on Vesuvius, apropos of an 

 eruption commonly assigned to the year 512, but which, according to 

 Mommsen, 2 must have taken place from one to five years earlier. The 

 date of this event is accordingly best written 507/511. Allusion is also 

 made to the far more severe eruption of 472, remarkable for its heavy 

 discharge of ashes, carried to an enormous distance. For years after- 

 ward at Constantinople a solemn fast was held on the sixth of Novem- 

 ber in memory of that day when the heavens were darkened, and the 

 greater part of Asia Minor was rocking with frightful earthquake 

 shocks. In another letter (iii., 47) he refers to an eruption of one of 



1 Pious imagination of later days has added much fanciful embroidery to 

 the accounts of this and other early eruptions, coupled with the miraculous 

 intervention of Naples' patron saint. The curious will find entertaining read- 

 ing in the various lives of St. Januarius, as, for instance, that by Girolamo, 1733. 



2 ' Monumenta Germanise Historica, Auct. Antiq.,' Vol. XII. (1894), p. 137. 

 We shall refer hereinafter to the folio volumes of the ' Scriptores ' series under 

 the abbreviation M. G. H., SS. 



