On the afternoon of August 24, 79 AD, Pliny the Elder was working at his villa in Misenum, across the Bay of Naples. He was fifty-five years old, commander of the Roman imperial fleet, and the author of Naturalis Historia — an encyclopedia of the entire natural world in thirty-seven volumes. His sister called him to the terrace. A strange cloud was rising from across the bay, shaped like a stone pine tree: a tall trunk of smoke shooting upward, then spreading flat at the top. No one knew yet that Mount Vesuvius, silent for centuries, was about to destroy everything in its path.
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Crowns & Conquests·2/3·1′
The place
Pompeii
Pliny the Elder's Last Day
The admiral who sailed toward the eruption and gave volcanology its name
Roman Imperial Period (August 24-25, 79 AD)Pompeii
Moral of the Story
“The noblest form of courage is sailing toward danger not for glory but for knowledge and the lives of others. A single eyewitness account can make one death illuminate an entire civilization.”
Characters
P
Pliny the Elder (Admiral and Scholar)P
Pliny the Younger (Nephew and Eyewitness)R
Rectina (Friend at the foot of Vesuvius)P
Pomponianus (Host at Stabiae)T
Tacitus (Historian and recipient of the account)Source
Pliny the Younger, Epistulae VI.16 and VI.20 to Tacitus; Suetonius; Beard, Mary. The Fires of Vesuvius, 2008