560 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the Lipari Islands, the date of which is said to have coincided with 

 Hannibal's death, 183 B. C. 



So far Cassiodorus. In Procopius (fl. 495-565) we are confronted 

 with a very different sort of personage, yet one recognized as chief 

 authority for the events of the reign of Justinian. His position in 

 literature is defined by Hodgkin, in his ' Italy and her Invaders,' in 

 following terms : 



After so many generations of decline, here, at length, the intellect of Hellas 

 produces a historian, who, though not equal doubtless to her greatest names, 

 would certainly have been greeted by Herodotus and Thucydides as a true 

 brother of their craft. Procopius has a very clear idea of how history ought 

 to be written. Each of his books, on the Persian, the Vandal, and the Gothic 

 wars, is a work of art, symmetrical, well proportioned, and with a distinct 

 unity of subject. His style is dignified but not pompous, his narrative vivid, 

 his language pure. ... He exhibits a considerable amount of learning, but 

 without pedantry: and resembles Herodotus in his eager, almost child-like 

 interest in the strange customs and uncouth religions of barbarian nations. 



Such appears to be a conservative estimate of Procopius the Cesar- 

 ean. He has transmitted to us a vivid pen picture of Vesuvius as 

 observed by him during a four months' sojourn at Naples in 537, at 

 which time an eruption was threatened, though none actually occurred 

 until nearly a century and a half thereafter. Thus it happens that the 

 value of Procopius lies in his excellent topographic description (de 

 Bello Gothico, ii., 4), together with hearsay accounts of the two pre- 

 ceding disturbances {ibid., hi., 35). One of the features of the last 

 which we gather from him is that ashes were carried as far as Tripoli. 

 Lava flows are distinctly mentioned both by him and by Cassiodorus as 

 an accompaniment of these eruptions, a fact often overlooked by modern 

 geologists. The Byzantine historian will have further claim to our 

 attention later on. 



Following close upon the fall of the Gothic kingdom came the Lom- 

 bard invasion, which marks the most ill-starred period of Italian his- 

 tory. But little direct and contemporary testimony to historical facts 

 has come down to us from the Lombards, but as their rule approached 

 its end, a native historian arose who preserves the memory of foreign 

 mastery, and ranks as the most distinguished writer of this early part 

 of the middle ages in Italy. This historian is Paul the Deacon 

 (720-c. 787), to whom we are chiefly indebted for a history of the 

 Lombards and a revision of Eutropius. Both of these writings contain 

 mention of Vesuvian eruptions, and it is interesting to note that we 

 find in them the earliest suggestion that the original Somma crater 

 had been shattered by the Plinian catastrophe. 3 Paulus Diaconus, in 

 his ' Historia Langobardorum,' and the Roman ' Liber Pontificalis,' a 

 compilation due to many hands and extending over a number of cen- 



3 ' Hist. Lang.,' edited by Muratori, R. I. S., Vol. V., p. 59. 



