Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/1308

 1284 VESUVIUS MONS. town with water. There are also remains of a Ro- man citadel. On a hill which commands Vesunna, and is separated from it by the river Ille, there are the remains of a Roman camp, which is called Camp de Cesar, though Caesar never was there ; but some of his successors may have been. There are several other Roman camps about Pcrigueux. Se- veral Roman roads have been traced leading to Peri- gueux. Vesunna seems to have been an important position in Aquitania during the imperial govern- ment of Rome. There is a French work on the antiquities of Vesone by M. Wlgrin de TaillefFer, 2 vols. 4to. 1821, Perigueux. [G. L.] VESUVIUS MONS (Oveaovios, or OveaovSm: Monte Vesuvid), sometimes also called by Latin ■writers Vesevus, and Vesvius or Vesbkis (BeV- 6los, Dion Cass.), a celebrated volcanic mountain of Campania, situated on the shore of the gulf called the Crater or Bay of Naples, from vchicli it rises directly in an isolated conical mass, separated on all sides from the ranges of the Apennines by a broad tract of intervening plain. It rises to the height of 4020 feet, and its base is nearly 30 miles in cir- cumference. Though now celebrated for the frequency as well as violence of its eruptions, Vesuvius had in ancient times been so long in a quiescent state that all tra- dition of its having ever been an active volcano was lost, and until after the Christian era it was noted chiefly for the great fertility of the tract that ex- tended around its base and up its sloping sides (Virg. Georg. ii. 227; Strab. v. p. 247), a fertility which was in great measure owing to the deposits of fine volcanic sand and ashes that had been thrown out from the mountain. There were not indeed wanting appearances that proved to the accurate observer the volcanic origin and nature of Vesuvius: hence Diodorus speaks of it as " bearing many signs of its having been a burning mountain in times long past " (Diod. iv. 21); but though he considers it as Laving on this account given name to the Phlegraean plains, he does not allude to any historical or tra- ditional evidence of its former activity. Strabo in like manner describes it as " surrounded by fields of the greatest fertility, with the exception of the summit, which was for the most part level, and wholly barren, covered with ashes, and containing clefts and hollows, formed among rocks of a burnt aspect, as if they had been eaten away by fire; so that a person would be led to the conclusion that the spot had formerly been in a state of con- flagration, and had craters from which fire had burst forth, but that these had been extinguished for want of fuel" (v. p. 247). He adds that the great fer- tility of the neighbourhood was very probably owing to this cause, as that of Catana was produced by Mount Aetna. In consequence of this fertility, as •well as of the beauty of the adjoining bay, the line of coast at the foot of Vesuvius was occupied by several flourishing towns, and by numbers of villas belong- ing to wealthy Roman nobles. The name of Vesuvius is twice mentioned in his- tory before the Christian era. In b. c. 340 it was at the foot of this mountain that was fought the great battle between the Romans and the Latins, in which P. Decius devoted himself to death for his country. (Liv. viii. 8.) The precise scene of the action is indeed uncertain, though it was probably in the plain on the N. side. Livy describes it as " baud procul radicibus Vesuvii mentis, qua via ad Veserim fercbat;" but the situation of the Veseris is VESUVIUS MONS. wholly uncertain. [Veseris.] Again, at a later period (b. C. 73) we are told that Spartacus, with the fugitive slaves and gladiators under his com- mand, took refuge on Mount Vesuvius as a strong- hold, and by a sudden sally from it defeated the Roman general Claudius Pulcher, who had been sent against him. (Flor. iii. 20. § 4; Plut. Crass. 9; Appian, B. C. i. 116; Veil. Pat. ii. 30; Oros. v. 24; Frontin. Strut, i. 5. § 21.) But it was the fearful eruption of the 24th of August, A. D. 79, that first gave to Vesuvius the j[ celebrity that it has ever since enjoyed. That great catastrophe is described in detail in a well-known let- ter of the younger Pliny to the historian Tacitus; and more briefly, but with the addition of some fabulous circumstances, by Dion Cassius. (Plin. Ep. vi. 16, 20; Dion Cass. Ixvi. 21—23; Vict. Epit. 10.) It is remarkable that in recording this, the earliest eruption of the mountain, Pliny particularly notices the form assumed by the cloud of ashes that, rising from the crater in a regular column to a considerable height, afterwards spread out laterally so as to form a head like that of a stone-pine: an appearance which has been observed in many subsequent erup- tions. The other phenomena described are very much the same as are common to all similar erup- tions: but the mass of ashes, sand, and pumice thrown out was so vast as not only to bury the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii at the foot of the vol- cano under an accumulation many feet in depth, but to overwhelm the more distant town of Stabiae, where the elder Pliny perished by suffocation, and to overspread the whole bay with a cloud of ashes such as to cause a darkness more profound than that of night even at Jlisenum, 15 miles distant from the foot of the mountain. (Plin. I. c.) On the other hand the outflow of lava was inconsiderable, and if any streams of that kind broke out at this time they probably did not descend to the inhabited regions: at least we hear nothing of them, and the popular notion that Herculaneum was overwhelmed by a current of lava is certainly a mistake. [Hercu- laneum.] So great and unexpected a calamity naturally excited the greatest sensation, and both the poets and the prose writers of Rome for more than a century after the event abound with allusions to it. Tacitus speaks of the Bay of Naples as " pulcer- rimus sinus, ante quam Vesuvius mons ardescens fii- ciem loci verteret." {Ann. iv. 67.) Martial, after descanting on the beauty of the scene when the mountain and its neighbourhood were covered with the green shade of vines, adds : — " Cuncta jacent flammis et tristi mersa favilla " (iv. 44); and Statius describes Vesuvius as " Aemula TriDaciiis volvens incendia flammis." (Silv. iv. 4. 80.) (See also Val. Flacc. iii. 208, iv. 507 ; Sil. Ital. svii. 594; Flor. i. 16. § 5.) A long interval again elapsed before any similar outbreak. It is probable indeed that the mountain continued for some time at least after this first erup- tion to give signs of activity by sending forth smoke and sulphurous vapours from its crater, to which Statius probably alludes when he speaks of its sum- mit still threatening destruction (" necdum lethale minari cessat apex," Silv. iv. 4. 85). But the next recorded eruption, and probably the next of any magnitude, occurred in A. D. 203, and is noticed by Dion Cassius (Isxvi. 2). This is pro-