In the Shadow of Vesuvius

by Daisy Dunn

  17 Francis Bacon, Letter to the Earl of Arundel and Surrey, 7.550.

  18 On some of the eyewitness accounts of the eruption of 1631 see J. E. Everson, ‘The melting pot of science and belief: studying Vesuvius in seventeenth-century Naples’, Renaissance Studies, Vol. 26, No. 5, November 2012, pp. 691–727.

  19 Sir William Hamilton, Letter to the Right Honourable the Earl of Morton, President of the Royal Society, 29 December 1767, Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, and Other Volcanos: In a Series of Letters to the Royal Society, T. Cadell, London, 1773, Letter II, p. 25.

  20 Sir William Hamilton, Letter to the Right Honourable the Earl of Morton, 29 December 1767, Observations on Mount Vesuvius, 1773, Letter II, p. 27. There was a handsome display of pictures from Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei at the ‘Volcanoes’ exhibition at the Bodleian in Oxford in spring 2017.

  21 See D. Camardo, ‘Herculaneum from the AD 79 eruption to the medieval period: analysis of the documentary, iconographic and archaeological sources, with new data on the beginning of exploration at the ancient town’, Papers of the British School at Rome, Vol. 81, 2013, pp. 328–37.

  22 Sir William Hamilton, Letter to Mathew Maty, M. D. Secretary to the Royal Society, 4 October 1768, Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Letter III, pp. 48–9.

  23 E. Dwyer, Pompeii’s Living Statues, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2010, p. 26; S. L. Dyson, In Pursuit of Ancient Pasts, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2006, p. 49.

  24 For the range of dates given by the manuscripts see M. Borgongino and G. Stefani, ‘Intorno alla data dell’eruzione del 79 d.C.’, Rivista di Studi Pompeiani, Vol. 12/13, 2001–2, p. 178.

  25 Berry, Complete Pompeii, p. 20.

  26 Description based on the findings outlined by Borgongino and Stefani, ‘Intorno alla data dell’eruzione del 79 d.C.’, pp. 177–215.

  27 Though, as Roberts notes, it is strange that this warmer clothing was also found on bodies indoors (Roberts, Life and Death in Pompeii, p. 278).

  28 R. Abdy, ‘The Last Coin in Pompeii: A Re-evaluation of the Coin Hoard from the House of the Golden Bracelet’, Numismatic Chronicle, Vol. 173, 2013, pp. 79–83. Cf. G. Stefani and M. Borgongino, ‘Ancora sulla data dell’eruzione’, Rivista di Studi Pompeiani, Vol. 18, 2007, pp. 204–6.

  29 G. A. Rolandi, A. Paone, M. di Lascio, G. Stefani, ‘The 79 AD eruption of Somma: The relationship between the date of the eruption and the southeast tephra dispersion’, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, Vol. 169, 2007, pp. 87–98. In 2018, a charcoal graffito was discovered at Pompeii bearing the date of 17 October. Given that charcoal does not survive for long, the inscription has been taken as evidence that the eruption took place later that month. Like so much of the evidence, however, it fails to offer proof of when exactly in AD 79 Vesuvius erupted.

  30 See Dio Cassius Roman History 66.21, where it is said that the eruption took place in the waning of the year, or ‘late autumn’.

  31 PLY 5.8.8; 1.18.3.

  32 Tacitus Dialogus 38.

  33 On decrees and edicts and the development of Roman law see A. M. Riggsby, Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2010, especially pp. 25–39.

  34 PLY 6.12.2.

  35 See Tacitus Dialogus 20.

  36 PLY 9.26.4.

  37 As the years went by the court grew steadily noisier and less salubrious, or at least, Pliny became increasingly aware of its shortcomings. See PLY 2.14.

  38 PLY 6.33.8.

  39 PLY 1.2.2–4.

  40 PLY 1.20.22–3.

  41 PLY 1.20.3.

  42 Homer Iliad 3.221–2; PLY 1.20–2.

  43 Homer Odyssey 19.204–9.

  44 PLY 1.20.16.

  45 Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 11.3.

  46 PLY 1.20.17.

  47 PLY 1.20.14–15.

  48 Tacitus Histories 4.42; Pliny (PLY 2.20.13) says that Regulus rose from poverty to great wealth.

  49 Juvenal Satires 4.140–3 (assuming it is the same Montanus); Tacitus Histories 4.42. The unfortunate victim was Piso, who was nominated as successor to Galba, one of the ‘four emperors’ of AD 69. According to Pliny, the legacy-hunting Regulus also conned Piso’s widow Verania, the daughter of a former governor of Britain.

  50 PLY 1.5.14.

  51 PLY 2.20.7–8.

  52 PLY 4.7.4.

  53 PLY 1.5.13 expalluit notabiliter, ‘grew paler than usual’.

  54 PLY 2.19.

  55 PLY 6.2.2.

  56 PLY 2.20.14.

  57 PLY 4.2.5.

  58 Martial Epigrams 1.12.1–2; 1.82.1; PLY 6.2.4.

  THREE: To Be Alive is to Be Awake

  1 PLE 17.210.

  2 PLY 3.5.

  3 Suetonius Life of Vespasian 4.

  4 On the Jewish revolt against Rome see M. Goodman, The Ruling Class of Judaea, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987. The most remarkable document from this period is Claudius’ letter of AD 41 to the Alexandrians in which he promoted peace and reaffirmed Jewish rights.

  5 As B. Levick explains in Vespasian, Routledge, London and New York, 2016, pp. xiii–xiv, the capture of Jerusalem must have been ‘a prime objective’ of Vespasian’s campaign, but he needed first to pacify the surrounding territories.

  6 Josephus Jewish War 3.342–408. The book was translated into Greek and published at Rome.

  7 S. Schama observes in The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words (1000 BCE–1492 CE), Bodley Head, London, 2013, p. 299, that the collective suicide of the Jews at Masada and martyrdoms under Hadrian later inspired debates over whether suicide might ever be chosen over forced transgression. On the Jews’ arguments that suicide would be in keeping with established nomoi, see R. Gray, Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1993, pp. 48–50.

  8 Tacitus Histories 1.11.

  9 Suetonius Life of Titus 1. As B. W. Jones observes in The Emperor Domitian, Routledge, London and New York, 1992, p. 8, this honour was ordinarily reserved for sons of foreign princes but could also be conferred upon eminent Italians.

  10 Suetonius Life of Titus 7.

  11 Suetonius Life of Titus 3.

  12 On the trappings and their connection to Pliny the Elder see I. Jenkins, P. Craddock, and J. Lambert, ‘A Group of Silvered-Bronze Horse-Trappings from Xanten (“Castra Vetera”)’, Britannia, Vol. 16, 1985, pp. 141–64.

  13 Jenkins, Craddock, and Lambert, ‘A Group of Silvered-Bronze Horse-Trappings from Xanten (“Castra Vetera”)’, p. 157.

  14 PLE 5.73.

  15 PLE 12.111.

  16 Suetonius Life of Vespasian 21.

  17 Suetonius Life of Vespasian 16.

  18 From the lost biography of Pliny the Elder, attributed to Suetonius.

  19 Suetonius Life of Vespasian 23.

  20 PLE Preface 18.

  21 PLY 3.5.8.

  22 PLE 7.167.

  23 PLE Preface 18.

  24 Red Figure Calyx Krater by Euphronios, c.515 BC.

  25 PLE Preface 3.

  26 Dio Cassius Roman History 66.24; Suetonius Life of Titus 8.

  27 PLY 5.8.3 citing Virgil Georgics 3.9–10.

  28 Martial, quoted by Pliny in Letter 3.21.

  29 PLY 3.21.2.

  30 PLY 3.5.15.

  31 PLY 1.15. ‘Dancing girls’ from Cadiz were notorious (see Martial Epigrams 5.78); the satirist Juvenal knew just how much they aroused their audiences with their moves (see Juvenal Satires 11.162–6).

  32 On Pliny’s balanced diet and balanced life see E. Gowers, The Loaded Table: Representations of Food in Roman Literature, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993, pp. 267–78.

  33 PLE 20.64. Lettuces could be sown at any time of year, but Pliny the Elder recommended doing so upon the winter solstice (PLE 19.130–1).

  34 PLY 7.3.2–5.

  35 PLE 19.55.

  36 M. de Montaigne, ‘Of Ancient Customs’, translated by Charles Cotton, p. 58 in Michel de Montaigne Selected Essays,
edited by W. C. Hazlitt, Dover Publications Ltd, New York, 2011. Montaigne’s reference to snow and wine is cited by H. N. Wethered, A Short History of Gardens, Methuen & Co., London, 1933, p. 85.

  37 S. Bakewell, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, Vintage Books, London, 2011, p. 29. Montaigne sourced his quotation from PLE 2.25.

  38 PLE 32.64.

  39 See A. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Pliny the Elder and Man’s Unnatural History’, Greece & Rome, Vol. 37, No. 1, April 1990, p. 87.

  40 PLE 9.105.

  41 PLE 32.63.

  42 PLE 9.107; 11.129.

  43 PLE 32.60.

  44 PLE 9.107–9.

  45 PLE 2.189.

  46 PLE 32.60.

  47 PLE 9.168–9.

  48 PLE 32.59.

  49 PLE 32.64–5.

  50 PLE 9.104.

  51 PLY 2.9.4. S. E. Hoffer suggests in The Anxieties of Pliny the Younger (Scholars Press, Atlanta, 1999, p. 26), that Septicius Clarus shared Pliny’s distaste for these extravagant suppers, but was obliged to dine elsewhere to court a patron, perhaps to develop support for his nephew.

  52 Scriptores Historiae Augustae Hadrian 11.3. This source dates to the fourth century AD.

  53 AE 1953.73.

  54 PLY 1.24; 3.8. On some of Pliny’s lacklustre friends see R. Syme, ‘Pliny’s Less Successful Friends’, Roman Papers, Vol. 2, edited by E. Badian, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991, pp. 477–95.

  55 Suetonius was probably sitting on the drafts of his De viris illustribus, which in the fourth century AD would inspire Jerome’s work of the same title. For the arguments for the work in question being the De viris illustribus see, for example, T. J. Power, ‘Pliny, Letters 5.10 and the Literary Career of Suetonius’, Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 100, 2010, p. 141ff. Suetonius also wrote a work on Nature, the so-called Prata, which is now fragmentary.

  56 PLY 5.10.2.

  57 PLY 5.9.2.

  58 Artemidorus of Ephesus On the Interpretation of Dreams 1.79.

  59 PLY 1.18.4. The words were originally spoken by Hector in Homer Iliad 12.243.

  60 Homer Odyssey 19.560–7.

  61 Virgil Aeneid 6.896.

  62 PLY 1.18.1; Homer Iliad 1.63.

  63 Homer Iliad 2.1–40.

  FOUR: Solitary as an Oyster

  1 Catullus Carmina 14.15.

  2 Martial Epigrams 14.1.

  3 Statius Silvae 1.6. Pliny the Elder criticised his contemporaries who travelled to Georgia and Numidia in search of fowl and suffered the heat of Ethiopia when there were perfectly good views from the windows at home – PLE 19.52.

  4 PLY 2.17.22.

  5 Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave I.

  6 PLY 2.17.2.

  7 The layers as found in the test trench are described by A. Claridge, ‘Report on excavations at the imperial vicus 1995–1998’, Laurentine Shore Project, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2010 (https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/laurentineshore), p. 9.

  8 R. A. Lanciani, Wanderings in the Roman Campagna, Constable & Co., London, 1909, pp. 307–11, citing Varro De re rustica 3.13.2–3 and an inscription (CIL VI 8583) that lists Tiberius’ freedman Tiberius Claudius Speculator as procurator Laurento ad elephantos; collegio saltuariorum – AE 1920 no. 122. Lanciani’s book is cited by and available in extract via the Royal Holloway Laurentine Shore Project. It was a role of aediles to stage such spectacles.

  9 PLE 8.1.

  10 PLE 8.44.

  11 PLE 8.5–7.

  12 Lanciani, Wanderings in the Roman Campagna, pp. 306, 311. The estates of Castelfusano, Castelporziano, and Capocotta were based here.

  13 My description is based on both PLY 2.17 and the findings of the Laurentine Shore Project at Royal Holloway, University of London, on the archaeology of the Vicus, as outlined in their online resource and illustrations at https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/laurentineshore

  14 PLY 4.6.2.

  15 PLY 1.9.6.

  16 Virgil Aeneid 7.59–63. On the ancient origins of Laurentum and the Aeneid see N. Purcell, ‘Discovering a Roman Resort-Coast: The Litus Laurentinum and the Archaeology of Otium’ via https://intranet.royalholloway.ac.uk/classics/research/laurentine-shore-project/documents/pdf/litus-laurentinum-english-version.pdf, 1998, especially p. 10.

  17 T. C. A. de Haas, Fields, Farms and Colonists, Vol. 1, Barkhuis and Groningen University Library, Groningen, 2011, p. 206.

  18 PLY 2.17.7.

  19 At the top of one tower was a dining room with a wide view over the water. There have been many attempts to find Pliny’s house at Laurentum; some have ‘found’ it at Grotte di Piastra (S. P. Ricotti, ‘La Villa Laurentina di Plinio il Giovane: un ennesima ricostruzione’, Lunario Romano, 1983, pp. 229–51); others in the area of the so-called Villa di Plinio, ‘La Palombara’ – see Lanciani, Wanderings in the Roman Campagna, on Sachetti (1713); others at Tor Paterno in Castelporziano. Cardinal Barberini drew the ruins he found at Tor Paterno – see I. Campbell, Ancient Roman Topography and Architecture, Vol. 2 of The Paper Museum of Cassiano Del Pozzo (20 Parts in 3 Series, Royal Collection Trust, 1996–), the Royal Collection and Warburg Institute in association with Harvey Miller Publishers, London, 2004, p. 669.

  20 Varro said that the solstice, solstitium, was so-named because it was the time the sun, sol, came to a halt, sistere (de Lingua 6.8).

  21 PLY 8.7.1.

  22 PLY 7.20.3.

  23 Hoffer, Anxieties of Pliny the Younger, p. 29 n.1. Pliny was legally permitted to free a fifth of his slaves up to total of one hundred. See also Duncan-Jones, ‘The Finances of a Senator’, p. 97 n.56 with earlier bibliography on this point.

  24 PLY 1.21.2; 8.16.

  25 PLY 2.17.24.

  26 PLY 7.21.1–2.

  27 PLY 7.21; P. R. du Prey, The Villas of Pliny: From Antiquity to Posterity, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1994, p. 283.

  28 Lanciani, Wanderings in the Roman Campagna, p. 318 notes the discovery of clay weights.

  29 PLE 30.19.

  30 PLE 11.145, and Cicero Ars Oratoria 138; PLE 11.139.

  31 For a discussion of the phrase in Latin poetry see J. Glenn, ‘The Blinded Cyclops: Lumen Ademptum (Aen. 3.658)’, Classical Philology, Vol. 69, No. 1, January 1974, pp. 37–8.

  32 On the lamps discovered at the site, many of which date to the first century AD, see G. G. Fernández, ‘Le Lucerne’, pp. 149–53, in P. Braconi, and J. Uroz Sáez (eds), La Villa Di Plinio il Giovane a San Giustino, Quattroemme, Perugia, 1999.

  33 The seven stars of the Pleiades were imagined to be the daughters of Atlas. Their names were Halcyone, Merope, Celaeno, Electra, Sterope, Taygete, and Maia. But as the writer Aratus said, while ‘certainly no star has perished from the sky unobserved’, only six were usually visible to the human eye (Aratus Phaenomena 259).

  34 PLE 2.41.

  35 PLE 7.190.

  36 PLE 7.188.

  37 PLE 7.131.

  38 PLE 2.14.

  39 Lucretius De Rerum Natura 4, especially 4.30–43; 55–64; 724–67. Pliny quotes from the poem in letter 4.18.

  40 PLE 2.28; 2.98.

  41 PLE 2.108–9; Cicero On Divination 2.14. Garlands of pennyroyal could be hung in bedrooms to relieve headaches, according to Varro, PLE 20.152.

  42 PLY 7.27.1. Pliny the Elder had also heard stories of ghosts, PLE 7.179.

  43 PLY 7.27.5.

  44 D. Felton also compares Pliny’s ghost story to Dickens’s description of Marley’s ghost. See Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1998, pp. 91–2.

  45 A. Lang, The Works of Charles Dickens in Thirty-four Volumes (Gadshill Edition), with Introductions, General Essay, And Notes Vol. XVIII: Christmas Books, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1898, pp. vi–vii. Lang’s words are cited by Felton, Haunted Greece and Rome, p. 91.

  46 W. C. Dendy, The Philosophy of Mystery, Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans, London, 1841, listed in J. H. Stonehouse (ed.), Catalogue of t
he Library of Charles Dickens from Gadshill, Piccadilly Fountain Press, London, 1935, p. 27.

  FIVE: The Gift of Poison

  1 PLY 2.11.

  2 Justinian Digest 48.11 on the Julian law on Extortion (Macer Public Prosecution Book I).

  3 PLY 4.16.2.

  4 Brevitas could mean as few as two water clocks – see Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, p. 132 and PLY 6.2.4–5. Tacitus Dialogus 38 (cited in Letters of Pliny, p. 134) refers to a limit placed on the length of speeches. Even fellow lawyers were now complaining about long speeches: ‘Who has the patience for those hefty volumes?’ – Tacitus Dialogus 20.

  5 Juvenal Satires 1.49–50.

  6 PLY 2.12.

  7 PLY 2.11.23.

  8 PLE 13.9.

  9 PLE 33.148 with Livy Ab urbe condita 37.59.

  10 PLE 14.2.

  11 Pliny the Elder was discussing Eastern medicines and their popularity over the natural kitchen garden remedies he preferred (PLE 24.5).

  12 Tacitus Annals 1.11.

  13 See especially A. Goldsworthy, Pax Romana, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2016, pp. 174–84.

  14 Suetonius Life of Domitian 2.

  15 Dio Cassius Roman History 66.26.2–3; Philostratus Life of Apollonius of Tyana 6.32.2. There was also a Jewish legend that Titus died after a gnat entered his brain. Contrary to Dio’s account, Suetonius (Life of Domitian 2.3) says that it was when Vespasian died that Domitian hesitated over whether or not to bestow a double bounty upon the army.

  16 PLE 29.10.

  17 PLE 32.58–9.

  18 Suetonius Life of Titus 11.

  19 Suetonius Life of Domitian 3; Pliny Panegyricus 48.3–5. Hutchinson compares the Ciceronian language of the beast with the image of blood-licking from Polybius 7.13.6 on the tyrant Philip V – G. O. Hutchinson, ‘Politics and the Sublime in the Panegyricus’, p. 129 in P. Roche (ed.), Pliny’s Praise: The Panegyricus in the Roman World, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2011.