150 Introduction. 



about the same date, mentions 1 a vague tradition of ancient eruption, 

 but there is no authentic record of any such event. 2 



This long period of repose came to a sudden end the 24th of August 

 of the year 79 A. D. Early in the morning of that day the apparently 

 extinct volcano, after several premonitory shocks of earthquake, sent 

 up an immense cloud, like an umbrella-pine in form, which overshadowed 

 the surrounding country and drove the terrified inhabitants to flight. 3 

 Only those who left the vicinity immediately were saved, for in the 

 afternoon and the following night and during part of the succeeding day 

 there fell from the cloud a dense shower of pumice-stones (lapilli) and 

 fine volcanic ashes which covered the entire plain of the Sarnus, includ- 

 ing Pompeii and Stabiae, to a depth of from 10 to 40 feet. At the same 

 time Herculaneum, a small but wealthy seaside resort on the west side 

 of the mountain, was buried beneath torrents of ashes and mud, which 

 subsequently hardened into a solid mass from 70 to 100 feet in thickness. 



The ruin which this visitation brought upon these cities was com- 

 plete and irremediable. Though Pompeii and Stabiae were not so 

 deeply buried as to preclude quite extensive excavation on the part of 

 contemporaries for objects of value, they could not again be inhabited, 

 while the sites more immediately adjacent to the mountain lay so far 

 beneath the newly formed surface of the ground that they were left 

 undisturbed throughout antiquity. They accordingly have preserved 

 for us even more completely than Pompeii the appurtenances of their 

 civilization and the exact conditions in which the catastrophe found 

 them. 



The exploration of these buried cities and the recovery of the culture 

 which they represented have been pursued intermittently since the year 

 171 1, and now, after the lapse of nearly two centuries, may be said to 

 be about half completed. A large part of the enormous collections in 

 the museum at Naples, including nearly all of the wall-paintings and 

 bronzes, came from these sites, and though for a long time the excava- 

 tions have been conducted on a rather small scale, new finds of impor- 

 tance are frequently made. 



The most interesting discoveries of recent years have been made 

 near the above mentioned village of Boscoreale, about one and a half 

 miles north of Pompeii. Here a number of sumptuous farm-dwellings 

 (villa rustic&y were brought to light. 



i II, vi 2. 



* Cf. the unrecorded eruption of the Alban Mountain, probably subsequent to the first part of the 

 Iron Age {circa iooo B. C), M. S. De Rossi, Bull, dell' Inst. 1883, pp. 4 ft., Bull, di Paletnologia Ital. 

 I (1875), PP- 186 ff., ix (1883), pp. 79 fl. 



8 For an account of this first recorded eruption we are indebted to two letters of the younger Pliny 

 (VI., xvi, xx), who viewed it from the promontory of Misenum, about fifteen miles distant. 



* On the type cf. Rostowzew, Jahrbuch d. kais. deutschen archiolog.. Inst, xix (1904), p. 124, n. 50. 



