﻿226 THE DEATH OF PLINY THE ELDER. 



" The ashes now began to fall upon us, though in no great quantity. I turned my 

 head, and obseiTed behind us a thick smoke, which came rolling after us like a torrent. 

 I proposed, while we had yet any light, to tunt out of the high road, lest [we] should 

 be pressed to death in the dark by the crowd that followed us. We had scarcely 

 stepped out of the path when the darkness overspread us, not like that of a cloudy 

 night, or when there is no moon, but of a room when it is shut up and all the lights 

 extinct. Nothing then was to be heard but the shrieks of women, the screams of 

 children, and the cries of men, some calling for their children, others for their parents, 

 others for their husbands, and only distinguishing each other by their voices, one 

 lamenting his own fate, another that of his family, some wishing to die from the very 



fear of dying At length a glimmering light appeared, then again we 



were immersed in thick darkness, and a heavy shower of ashes rained upon us, which 

 Ave were obliged every now and then to shake off, otherwise we should have been o^er- 



whelmed and buried in the heap At last this terrible darkness [caligo] was 



dissipated by degrees, like a cloud or smoke, the real day returned, and even the sun 

 appeared, though very faintly, as when an eclipse is coming on. Every object that 

 presented itself to our eyes seemed changed, being covered with Avhite ashes, as with 

 a deep snow." 



From these descriptions we are justified in believing that the "caligo" which per- 

 vaded the air during this eruption of Vesuvius was simply the darkness or dark haze 

 existing in an atmosphere rendered nearly opaque by falling ashes. These ashes 

 (cinis) appear to have consisted mainly of particles of solid substance, thrown out from 

 the crater, or sublimed in the volcano and condensed in the atmosphere, such as now 

 cover the ruins of Pompeii. As to the "odor sulfuris," mentioned in the first letter, 

 it is not spoken of as a thing in itself deleterious, but merely as the forerunner (pra?nun- 

 tius) of the flames. Had the air been highly charged with sulphurous or hydrosulphu- 

 ric acids, which are among the gaseous products of volcanoes, or even with the sublimed 

 chlorides more common among volcanic gases, it is hardly probable that Pliny would 

 have been the only sufferer on the occasion, or that eyewitnesses would have survived 

 to be narrators of a catastrophe in which they themselves had no share, or even that 

 the inhabitants of Herculaneum and Pompeii, which cities were buried in the same 

 eruption of VesuAius, would so generally have escaped as they appear to have done. 



The important facts which belong to the object of the present inquiry may be 

 summed up briefly as follows. Pliny the elder, a corpulent man, subject to laborious 

 breathing and to other infirmities which had excited the notice, if not the apprehen- 

 sions, of his friends, was on the day and night preceding his death exposed to unusual 



