OCR Text |
Show 332 ERUPTION OF VESUVIUS, A.D. 79. ''cities were consumed or buried>W-~'. Suetonius, although he alludes to the eruption incidentally, is silent as to the cities. They are mentioned by Martial, in an epigram, as immersed in cinders; but the first historian who alludes to them by name is Dian Cassiust, who flourished about a century and a half after Pliny. He appears to have derived his information from the traditions of the inhabitants, and to have recorded, without discrimination, all the facts and fables which be could collect. He tells us, " that during the eruption, a multitude of men of superhuman stature, resembling giants, appeared sometimes on the mountain and sometimes in the environs-that stones and smoke were thrown out, the sun was hidden, and then the giants seemed to rise again, while the sounds of trumpets were heard, &c., &c.; and finally two entire cities, Herculaneum and Pompeii, were buried under showers of ashes, while all the people were sitting in the theatre." That many of these circumstances were invented, would have been obvious, even without the aid of Pliny's Letters; and the examination of Herculaneum and Pompeii enables us to prove, that none of the people were destroyed in the theatres, and, indeed, that there were very few of the inhabitants who did not escape from both cities. Yet some lives were lost, and there was ample foundation for the tale in its most essential particulars. This case may often serve as a <'aution to the geologist, who has frequent occasion to weigh, in like manner, negative evidence derived from the silence of eminent writers, against the obscure but positive testimony of popular traditions. Some authors, for example, would have us call in question the reality of the Ogygian deluge, because Homer and Hesiod say nothing of it. But they were poets, not historians, and they lived many centuries after the latest date assiO'ned to the catastrophe. Had they even lived at the tim~ of that flood, we might still contend that their silence ought, no more than Pliny's, to avail against the authority of tradition, however much exaggeration we may impute to the latter. It does not appear that in the year 79 any lava fl~wed from Vesuvius; the ejected substances, perhaps, consisted • ll!lURtre aut obrutm urbcs. lli~t,, li~. 1 . t Ilist. Rom., lib. 66, . :ttRUPTION I • N ISCHIA, A,D, 1302. 333 entirely of lapilli sand .1 f M ' , anu raO't t f onte Nuovo was thrown u in o1~en so, older lava, as when ~ve have authentic accounts ~f th 38. . fh~ nrst era at which IS the year 1036, which is th e flowmg of a stream of lava f I fi e seventh · < ' o t le res of the volcano. A :t eruptiOn from the revival another eruption is ment' d ew years afterwards in ] 049 f . IOne , and a th . ' ' a ter whtch a great pause en d f no er m 1138 (or 1139) years. During this JonO' i:utee. o l onfe hundred and sixty-eio-h~ d d . o Iva o repos t . o opene at Istant points I tl e e, wo mmor vents 1 • n 1e urst 1 · · t 1at an eruption took place f I pace It Is on tradition 1198, during the reign of Fred:~~ !tile ;~lfatara in the year and .although no circumstantial detail.~f peror of Germany; us fiOm those dark ao-es w . the event has reached · · o ' e may receive th .!' • tation. *. Nothinoo- more , h owever can b e lact. without best' - el'Uptwn,.as Mr. Scrape observes tha e ~ttrtbutcd to this and scoriform trachytic lava f n the discharge of a light the strata of loose tufa whi '1 o recent aspect, resting upon trachyte -j-. The other occur~;n~o~ers the principal mass of eruption, in the year 130~ f leIS well authenticated,-the I ' 0 a ava-stream f on t le south-east side of the island of I . ' rom a new vent 1301, earthquakes had succeed d schia. During part of rapidity; and they terminated a: las~ne. ~nother. with fearful l~va-stream from a point named the wit the discharge of a from the town of Ischia 'Th' ] Campo del Arso, not .!'ar d . · Is ava ran · d 1 ' a Istance of about two miles. in qm~e own to the sea-grey to reddish black and . . coklour It varies from iron-h . . ' Is remar ab] {I h spa~s w Ich It contains. Its surface i e or t e glassy fel-rriOd of live centuries as if it h d 81 ~most as sterile, after a ew scantlings of wild 'th ad coo e down yesterday. A P Ia n t s, a1 o ne appear in tyhm" e., an .t wo or tl1 ree oth er dwarfish Vesuvian lava of 1767. 1 e Idntersbces of the scorire while tl t . IS a rea y cov d . h ' 1e atiOn, Pontanus wl ere Wit a luxuriant ve h 1 ' 1ose country h ge-w e med, describes the dreadf I- ouse was burnt and over-m. onths++ · M any h ouses were swaull scene as havinoo- Ja ste d two tiOn of the inhabitants followed. o~~· up, and. a partial emigra- . IS eruption produced no * The earliest nuthorit ~apaccio, quoted in the ~' says Mr. Forbes, given for this fact o. I., new series p 127 Jerlrn Tremnnte of Bonito. Edin J ' appears ~o be t Geol. Tr ' . .. ' u y, 1829. . ourn. of ScJ., &c. + L' ans., vol. ll., part 3 34 + lb, vi., de Bell N . ' p. 6, second series o enp.; m Gra!Vii Thesaur. • |