Many ancient cities have been abandoned.
Many more have vanished beneath modern buildings and modern names.
But only a few have truly disappeared from human knowledge.
The most famous examples are Herculaneum and Pompeii, buried by Vesuvius during the eruption
of 79 AD.
Local farmers had been uncovering artifacts above the site of Pompeii for centuries, and
called the area around the half-buried amphitheater “La Civita” – the city.
But it was only in 1709, when workmen digging a well struck the marble seats of Herculaneum’s
theater, that the first excavations under Vesuvius began.
And it was only after years of clearing and tunnelling that inscriptions definitively
proving the identity of the two cities were discovered.
Other lost cities were hidden, at least from the perspective of European scholars, by their
remoteness.
A famous case is Petra, forgotten until 1812, when the intrepid Swiss explorer Johann Burckhardt
reached the place that the local Bedouin called Wadi Musa – “the Valley of Moses.”
Timgad, the so-called “African Pompeii,” had been abandoned for a millennium by the
time James Bruce, a wandering Scottish nobleman, stumbled upon its ruins in 1765.
His description of a well-preserved Roman city on the edge of the Sahara was disbelieved
until the late nineteenth century, when a new generation of explorers surveyed and photographed
the ruins.
Discoveries continued into the twentieth century.
In 1963, for example, a man in the Turkish town of Derinkuyu found a mysterious void
behind the wall of his cellar.
This proved to be an entrance to a vast subterranean town, constructed and enlarged during the
Roman and Byzantine periods.
Its 18 levels had room for some 20,000 inhabitants, and featured a wine press, stables, and several
churches.
Many ancient cities are known but unexcavated – either inaccessible beneath modern development,
too remote for ready access, or languishing from inadequate funding.
But even after decades of intensive surveys and aerial photography, there are a handful
of ancient cities that are still truly lost, as we’ll see after a brief word about this
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Returning to our topic.
Herculaneum and Pompeii, the most famous lost cities, are only partly excavated, and the
suburbs, villages, and villas that surrounded them are largely unexplored.
Over the past three centuries, chance discoveries have revealed dozens of elaborate Roman villas
in the districts of Boscoreale and Boscotrecase, just north of Pompeii.
One of these villas – excavated and then reburied in the late nineteenth century – produced
the Boscoreale Treasure, which contained some of the greatest masterpieces of Roman silverwork
ever discovered.
The villa of Publius Fannius Synistor was decorated with a series of spectacular frescoes,
now a highlight of the Greek and Roman collection in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In 1906, shortly after the frescoes had been detached, an eruption of Vesuvius buried the
remains of the villa beneath a fresh blanket of volcanic debris.
Many other villas in the vicinity await rediscovery.
So does the town of Murecine, a suburb of Pompeii.
A few mansions were discovered here in the eighteenth century, then reburied and lost.
In the years since, sporadic discoveries have produced such marvels as a sprawling villa
with a private bath and the Archive of the Sulpicii – the most detailed set of financial
records to survive from the Roman world.
We can only guess at what else is hidden under the ashes.
Across the Bay of Naples from Pompeii and Vesuvius are the smoking pits and fumaroles
of the Phlegraean Fields, another volcanic hot spot.
Here, beside a series of hot springs, the Romans built elaborate baths, domed and vaulted
with concrete.
These structures survived to be drawn by Renaissance architects.
But on the morning of September 29, 1538, a crack opened beside Tripergole, the town
that had grown up among the Roman baths.
Smoke rose from the fissure, then surging fountains of lava.
In less than a day, a volcano more than 400 feet high came into being, covering Tripergole
and the Roman baths.
Nobody knows where, or how deeply, the ruins are buried.
Equally dramatic disasters claimed other ancient settlements.
On a winter night in 373 BC, the Greek city of Helike was struck by a severe earthquake.
The ground liquified, tsunamis roared over the harbor, and the whole town – walls,
temples, and people – sank beneath the waves.
Not even the sailors aboard a Spartan fleet anchored offshore escaped.
Only ruins remained, ghostly under the sea, until even these were covered by mud and lost.
Not until 2001, after decades of searching, was the city finally rediscovered.
Other sunken cities are still lost.
According to the Greek geographer Pausanias, a city on the slopes of Mount Sipylus, in
what is now Turkey, disappeared into a vast chasm during an earthquake.
A lake formed in the basin, and the city’s ruins could long be seen at the bottom.
If this city ever existed, it has not been located.
Other lost cities were destroyed by human hands.
Tigranocerta, the capital of ancient Armenia’s greatest king, was captured by the Roman general
Lucullus in 69 BC.
It was looted so thoroughly that 8,000 talents – that is, more than 400,000 pounds – of
silver were taken from the ruins.
Then the city was burned, and its inhabitants dispersed.
Its site has never been conclusively located.
Remote outposts of the classical world often disappeared when the trade that sustained
them vanished.
Ptolemais Theron – an important Hellenistic trading center on the coast of the Red Sea
– has never been found.
Nor, probably, has Muziris, the rich settlement on the Malabar Coast that served as the center
of Rome’s trade with India.
Muziris may have been destroyed by a Medieval cyclone.
But most lost ancient cities vanished simply because their inhabitants did – driven or
drifting away, taking their traditions and memories with them.
Then, unless some record survives to be read by historians, only silence and the stones
remain.
My new book – Insane Emperors, Sunken Cities, and Earthquake Machines – is now available
as a paperback, e-book, and audiobook.
You can buy your copy through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local bookstore.
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