On a perfectly normal August 24 in the year 79 A.D., Mount Vesuvius suddenly erupted.
Too busy dying, terrified residents weren't doing much writing… except for one man.
Does his account line up with what archeologists discovered centuries later?
Keep watching to find out.
While it's definitely interesting to really dig into Pliny the Younger and
his account of the destruction wrought by Mount Vesuvius, it's also worth noting that
he was only 18 at the time.
In short, he's done more than write one thing, even if it is a work with immense historical
significance.
So, what were those things, in a nutshell?
He was the nephew of the rather esteemed Pliny the Elder, a military man and naturalist best
known for his "Natural History" – a massive compilation of his observations of everything
from bee hygiene to the general beauty of nature.
Pliny the Younger was poised to leave his own mark on the world as a wealthy Roman academic.
He worked as a lawyer and rose through the administrative ranks to some of the highest
positions in Rome.
From there, he worked closely with a bunch of different emperors over the years, and
with that experience under his belt, he made the move toward writing.
His books were ultimately a compilation of his letters, but they ran the gamut when it
came to topics: literature, philosophy, science, business, but especially politics, leaving
behind descriptions of just about every important Roman official he came into contact with.
"Well, then, who would you have us fight?"
"Poseidon!"
To really get a sense of how exactly this story works, it does help to get a bit of
context out of the way.
Because while Pompeii – the city frozen in time, buried in ashes – is certainly
the most famous city affected by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, it wasn't the only one.
After all, a volcano isn't picky about where it affects.
Another major city hit by the destruction was the city of Herculaneum.
Reportedly a rather decadent city filled with art and brothels, Herculaneum was initially
spared from the destruction by a fortuitous gust of wind, only for toxic gasses and ashes
to later cover the city.
The people tried to seek shelter in covered vaults, though it's possible that only made
their deaths worse; rather than extreme heat, they were probably killed slowly by asphyxiation.
Then there are the cities that Pliny the Younger actually made mention of in his own account.
Stabiae [STAH-bee-ah] was a small, quiet port town that was blanketed in toxic gas; it would
also be the last place Pliny's uncle would see.
And Pliny himself might have survived the eruption by riding it out near the city of
Misenum — which, granted, did see its own fair share of terror.
In the wake of a volcanic eruption, you'd probably think that the most natural reaction
would be some sort of panic, right?
After all, you're faced with the very real possibility of death; that seems like the
sort of time where you freak out just a little before maybe coming to terms with what's happening.
Point being: you probably wouldn't act like it's a normal day.
Unless you're Pliny the Younger and his family.
According to Pliny's account, he and his mother, Plinia [PLY-nee-uh], were staying with his
uncle, Pliny the Elder, at the time of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
The whole affair sounds really casual at the start.
Pliny explains that his uncle had been going about his day perfectly normally, taking some
time to lie out in the sun and then catching up on some reading.
He didn't even take notice of the eruption immediately.
It was Pliny's mother who pointed out the cloud of ash rising from Mount Vesuvius out
in the distance.
But his uncle didn't seem to be scared or concerned at all by this occurrence.
On the contrary, he was apparently fascinated by it.
Pliny wrote,
"This phenomenon seemed to a man of such learning and research as my uncle extraordinary and
worth further looking into."
So he put together a ship and crew to go get a closer look at the erupting volcano.
He even extended an invitation for Pliny to join him – an invitation that Pliny decided
to decline.
Not so that he could get away from the volcano, but rather so he could have some time to get
a little more work done.
The beginning of Pliny's account of the destruction wrought by Mount Vesuvius makes his uncle
out to be the renowned scholar.
And while Pliny the Elder's intellectual curiosity upon first seeing the cloud of toxic ash does
support that initial image, his motives for heading out to the volcano pretty quickly
changed.
Shortly after the eruptions began, Pliny the Elder got word from a friend whose wife was
trapped in a villa at the base of Mount Vesuvius.
He ordered even more ships to head into the middle of the disaster, his entire voyage
changing from an intellectual pursuit to a philanthropic one.
He intended to rescue as many people as he could from the chaos, and even in the face
of black volcanic rock tumbling down into the ocean, he was said to have acted with,
quote, "calmness and presence of mind."
Even as others began to panic around him, he seemed to try to calm their fears by acting
as if nothing was wrong.
He even called for a bath and dinner, going about it with, quote, "cheerfulness, or at
least [...] with every appearance of it."
Even upon seeing the fires of the volcano light up the night, he assured those around
him that it was just the glow from abandoned, burning villages.
That power of positive thinking couldn't save him, though, and having just barely started
the rescue mission in earnest, Pliny the Elder was killed.
Once the worst of the disaster rolled around, the scene in Pompeii and the surrounding cities
was nothing short of something you'd see out of a disaster movie.
And that's really not an exaggeration.
Pliny explained in his account that his uncle likely saw all of it while sailing to rescue
people stranded in their towns.
Cinders were falling from the sky along with the ash, and pieces of blackened, burning
pumice were even beginning to fall into the ships themselves.
And things only got worse from there.
Homes began to fill with ash and stone – to the extent that people couldn't get out of
the buildings.
The scene near Misenum was only marginally better.
Pliny explained that he and his mother had to constantly stay vigilant, brushing off
the, quote, "heavy shower of ashes" that rained down onto them, lest they be completely covered
by the stuff.
By the time the more immediate danger had passed, the entire city looked like it had
been blanketed, Pliny described, "as if with snow."
Imagine being in the midst of a natural disaster.
Imagine fearing for your life, not knowing exactly how or when things might end.
It's pretty bleak.
But now add to that the constant sound of people shrieking and oppressive, pitch-black
darkness.
And that's basically the state of Misenum in Pliny's account.
All of the ash kicked up into the air by the eruption began to literally block out the
sunlight, leading to darkness even more complete than the night.
Pliny described it as he sat with his mother in an alley as the kind of dark that was darker
than a cloudy day or moonless night.
He described it by saying,
"Night came upon us, [...] that of a room when it is shut up, and all the lights put
out."
This wasn't a quiet night, by any means.
No, it was the stuff of horror, filled with, quote, "the shrieks of women, the screams
of children, and the shouts of men."
Some called out for family; some called for a quick death.
The pious begged the gods to show mercy, but a fair few began to doubt that the gods even
existed at all.
This nightmarish cacophony raged through Pliny's "endless night" before the dust finally settled,
letting the sun shine again.
While there's definitely a level of morbid fascination with the horror and the terror
described in an account of a natural disaster, there's also the more human aspect to think
about.
It's something that's present in Pliny the Younger's account of the eruption.
After all, he and his mother stayed behind while his uncle left on a ship to go investigate.
Slowly becoming more aware of the true gravity of the situation, the two of them anxiously
waited, uncomfortable with the idea of leaving the city while the fate of Pliny's uncle was
still unknown.
Eventually, both of them did finally make an attempt to leave, though Plinia
begged him to leave her behind and go on alone.
She was old and would just slow down his escape, she said — instead, she'd be happy enough
to know that he managed to flee to safety.
Of course, he refused to actually do that, instead doing what he could to keep them both
safe – from both the volcanic eruption and the panicking crowds.
In the end, both of them managed to survive the destruction and waited for news regarding
his uncle, only to get confirmation a few days later that his body had been found on
a beach.
Pliny the Younger managed to avoid the very worst effects of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius,
and in doing so, he's the only person known to have left behind a record of the chaos
wrought.
But, at the same time, it means that he didn't quite know the worst of what happened.
In that case, just what fate did he narrowly avoid?
As it turns out, a pretty horrific one.
And one that involved a lot of heat.
The ash from the eruption preserved the position that people died in, basically making a mold
that could be filled with plaster.
Some victims received this exact treatment, showing exactly what they looked like in the
moment of their death: hands and feet clenched in pain, bodies appearing to be in the midst
of writhing.
"Oh my gosh, look at these two individuals.
You can actually see that they're in the throes of death."
Which is in line with their exact cause of death – thermal shock.
Or, in plain terms, a sudden increase in temperature that caused their internal organs to completely
shut down.
But that's not all.
National Geographic explains that it got even worse.
That sudden upward shot in temperature was likely enough to vaporize soft tissue and
cause liquid in the brain to boil, with potentially explosive results.
And if that wasn't enough, researchers found shards of what appeared to be glass left in
the skull.
Glass that was actually made of brain matter: The heat might have liquified brains, which
quickly cooled to create a pseudo-glass substance.
Pliny was definitely lucky to have gotten out alive.
Pliny's account of Pompeii's destruction isn't quite as mythical as some ancient tales, but
it's still cool to see when and how those archeological finds do line up with the written
records.
One of those points of interest has to do with his uncle.
Pliny reported that his uncle left his home, sailing directly into the heart of the disaster
where he was shortly killed by the toxic fumes spewed out by the volcano.
But given that, it must mean that his remains were left somewhere, right?
In the early 1900s, a group of skeletons were found in the ruins of a city a few kilometers
away from Pompeii – consistent with Pliny the Younger's accounts of his uncle's expedition.
One was decked out in fancy jewelry, and speculation arose that it might be the remains of Pliny
the Elder.
However, analysis on the jawbone of the recovered skull seemed to point in a very different
direction.
The owner of the jawbone was too young, and it was determined that he likely wasn't Italian.
But strangely, the rest of the skull seemed to paint a different story, coming from someone
of Roman descent who died sometime in their mid-50s – exactly Pliny the Elder's age
at death.
So, where does that leave the theories?
It's possible that the two fragments came from different people: Pliny and a man who
was either a slave or a sailor.
It's even been argued that Pliny asked his slave to kill him: The pain of being caught
in the volcano's fallout had become just too much to bear.
But…
there's a "but."
Recent deep-dives into the writings of Pliny the Younger have found hints that his uncle
suffered from what the modern medical world recognizes as signs of a respiratory or asthmatic
condition.
There's a theory that suggests Pliny actually had a massive cardiac episode, brought on
by his own ill health and the circumstances around him.
Regardless of how he really died, we do know this: It was dark, it was terrifying, and
it was a horrible time and place to spend your last moments.
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