Life After the Eruption

THE ERUPTION OF Vesuvius in A.D. 79 was the gravest natural disaster to strike Italy during the peak of the Roman Empire, killing more than a thousand people in nearby Pompeii and Herculaneum.

- By Steven L. Tuck

Pliny the Younger, the sole eyewitness to leave an account of the tragedy, likened the experience to being locked in a room in which the lamp had gone out. As the eruption column billowed into the sky, day turned to night.The 17-year-old Pliny was