by Daisy Dunn
Now ash began to fall on the ships, hotter and thicker the nearer they got; now pumice and even black stones, burned and broken by fire; now, suddenly, in the shallows, the waste the mountain had ejected was blocking the way to the shore. Having hesitated briefly as to whether to turn back, my uncle said to the helmsman who favoured this course: “Fortune favours the brave: make for Pomponianus”.
He was cut off at Stabiae by the curve of the bay (for a gently rounded shore surrounds it and is filled by the sea); although the danger was not yet approaching there, it was nonetheless clear that it would get nearer as it intensified in size. Pomponianus had stowed his baggage aboard a ship, set on flight if the opposing wind settled.
My uncle, conveyed by this favourable breeze, embraced his trembling friend, consoled him, jollied him along and, so as to relieve his fear through his own confidence, asked to be taken to the baths. After washing he lay down and dined; either he was content, or he showed a semblance of contentment, which was just as great-hearted. Meanwhile flames shot out all over from Mount Vesuvius and glowed bright and lit up the night sky, their blazing brightness illuminated by the shadows of darkness. To soothe their fears my uncle kept telling them that these were merely the bonfires of peasants, abandoned through terror, and empty houses on fire. Then he went to rest and fell into a deep sleep. For the motion of his breath, which was rather heavy and noisy on account of the portliness of his body, could be heard by those who were keeping watch outside his doorway. And the terrace which led out from his room was now filled with ash mixed with pumice so the ground level was raised; if he had lingered in his bedchamber any longer he would not have been able to escape.
Awakened, he made his way out and reconvened with Pomponianus and the others who had stayed up. They deliberated together over whether to stay inside or venture out into the open. For the buildings were shaking due to frequent and violent earthquakes and seemed almost to be moving from their foundations, shunted this way and then that. On the other hand, there was the fear of the pumice fall, even though it was light and porous; they opted for this as the lesser of the dangers. For my uncle, reason prevailed, but for the others, fear. They put pillows on their heads and tied them in place with pieces of cloth: this was their protection against the falling debris.
Now, elsewhere, it was daylight, but here it was still night but blacker and denser than all the nights there have ever been. But they tried to overcome it with a number of torches and various lamps. My uncle decided to go down to the shore to see close-up whether they might now escape by sea; the swell was still against them. Lying down there on a cloth, he asked again and again for cold water and drank. Then flames and the smell of sulphur that suggested there were more flames to come put the others to flight but roused him. Leaning on two slaves for support he stood up but at once fell, I imagine because his breathing was impeded by the thick smog and his windpipe – which was habitually weak and narrowed and often inflamed – was blocked. When daylight returned (this was on the third day from the last one he’d seen) his body was found – intact and unharmed and clothed as he had been: he looked more asleep than dead.
My mother and I, meanwhile, were at Misenum – but that is of no historical consequence and you didn’t want to know about anything other than my uncle’s death. And so I end here. I add only that I have included everything that I witnessed for myself and heard straight after the event, when the truth is most remembered. You can excerpt the highlights; for a letter one writes to a friend is one thing, but the history one writes for everyone, quite another. All best.
ON LAMPSTANDS, THE DISCOVERY OF GLASS, ON THE DOLPHIN
Natural History
Pliny the Elder
Translated by Daisy Dunn, 2018
On Lampstands
Pliny the Elder (AD 23/4–79), who died in the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, was the author of a remarkable thirty-seven-volume encyclopaedia. The earliest encyclopaedia to survive from the Graeco-Roman world, the Natural History contains observations on animals and plants, accounts of art and monuments, and cures and remedies for a huge range of ailments. In this passage, taken from the thirty-fourth book, Pliny the Elder offers a delightfully esoteric tale of the origins of lampstands.
Aegina specialised in finely crafting the tops of candelabra and Tarentum their stems. Recognition for their manufacture is therefore shared between them. People are unashamed of paying a military tribune’s salary for these candelabra, even though, as the name suggests, they merely hold lights. At the sale of one such candelabrum Clesippus, a clothes-washer with a hunched back and ugly countenance besides, was added to the lot at the instruction of the public crier Theon. The two were bought by a certain Gegania for 50,000 sesterces. She showed off what she had purchased at a party, with Clesippus displayed nude to make everyone laugh. After taking him into her bed in an outpouring of shameless lust, however, she added him to her will, and in his newfound wealth he took to cultivating the candelabrum as if it were a god. This story became associated with Corinthian lampstands. Morality was only recovered when a proper tomb was erected for Gegania with the result that the memory of her misconduct lived on forever and became only more notorious across the world.
The Discovery of Glass
Pliny the Elder believed that ‘no book is so bad that there is nothing to be taken from it’. He drew on a vast range of sources when compiling his encyclopaedia and cited a great many of them. But not everything he recorded was strictly accurate. His Natural History is all the more colourful for the errors and eccentricities it contains. This story may not tell of the very earliest creation of glass, but it does capture in some detail a discovery of glass. The fact that it is described as a chance discovery on sand gives the story a ring of truth.
There is a part of Syria which is known as Phoenicia, bordering Judaea, which contains, between the slopes of Mount Carmel, a swamp called Candebia. This is believed to be the source of the River Belus, which covers a distance of five miles before emptying into the sea beside the colony of Ptolemais. This river is slow in it course, unclean to drink, but sacred for religious purposes, muddy, deep, and reveals its sands only when the tide is out, for they glisten once the motion of the waves has removed their dull impurities. It is thought that the sand is cleansed by the bite of the seawater and only then, and not a moment sooner, becomes useful.
The coast isn’t more than half a mile in extent but was nonetheless the only place for producing glass for many centuries. The story goes that a ship that traded in soda put in here and its men spread out along the shore and began to prepare a meal. Finding they had no way of propping up their cauldrons for lack of rocks, they placed lumps of soda from their ship under them instead, and when these were kindled and began to merge with the sand of the beach, streams of a novel kind of translucent liquid began to flow, and this was the origin of glass.
Soon, as is usual where creative genius is concerned, man was not satisfied with mixing in soda alone; loadstone started to be added, since it was predicted that it might attract liquid glass in the same way as it does iron. In much the same way, a variety of shiny pebbles began to be used, then shells and sand. Writers say that in India it is made of broken crystal, on account of which nothing compares with Indian glass.
On the Dolphin
In his encyclopaedia, Pliny the Elder described the dolphin as ‘the very fastest of animals, not only of sea creatures, faster than a bird’. It has a wide short tongue which, he wrote, was ‘not unlike a pig’s’. Dolphin stories were popular in antiquity. One of the most famous featured a musician named Arion, who was said to have plunged into the sea to escape some evil sailors who were pursuing him, only to be saved by a dolphin. The first story in this passage from the Natural History is set in the Bay of Naples, where Pliny the Elder served as admiral of the imperial fleet. The second story also appears in a letter written by his nephew, Pliny the Younger, decades later.
The dolphin is an animal that is well-disposed not only to man b
ut to the art of music as well. He is soothed by harmonious song and especially by the sound of the water-organ. He is not frightened of man as of a stranger, but comes to greet ships, enjoys playfully leaping about them, and indeed races them even when they’re in full sail.
In the rule of Divine Emperor Augustus, a dolphin was swept into the Lucrine Lake and developed the most marvellous affection for a poor man’s son, who used to travel from Baiae to Puteoli to go to school. The boy would linger there in the middle of the day and call the dolphin by the name of Simo, coaxing him with pieces of bread, which he carried expressly for the purpose. I’d be ashamed to relate this story had it not been entrusted to me in the letters of Maecenas and Fabianus and Flavius Alfius and many others. Whatever the time of day the dolphin was called by the boy, regardless of whether it was hidden far beneath the surface, it would spring from the depths, feed from his hand, and offer its back for him to mount, concealing the sharper bits of his fins in their sheath, so to speak. And having taken him up he would carry him over a vast expanse of sea to the school at Puteoli and carry him back again in the same way over several years, until the boy suddenly died of an illness. And yet the dolphin would return to the usual place, mournful and full of sorrow, until he too died – of heartache – a fact that no one could doubt.
Within the same period another dolphin, this one at Hippo Diarrhytus on the coast of Africa, used in much the same way to be hand-fed and offer himself up to be stroked. It would play among the swimmers and carry them on his back. It was smothered in perfume by Flavianus, the proconsul of Africa, and was lulled to sleep, or so it seemed, by the novelty of the fragrance, after which it floated as if it were dead. For several months the dolphin avoided contact with humans as if it had suffered at their hands. Soon, however, it returned to its old habits to the same wondrous display. Eventually, however, the ill effects that resulted from tourists coming to see this sight drove the people of Hippo to put the dolphin to death.
THE MADNESS OF HERCULES
Hercules Furens
Seneca the Younger
Translated by Jasper Heywood, 1559–1561
We tend to think of Hercules as a hero. In this tragedy by Seneca the Younger (4 BC–AD 65) we see him in a very different light, as victim of the vengeance of Juno, queen of the gods, who had always hated him because he was the product of an affair her husband Jupiter had with the mortal Alcmene. First Hercules had to complete twelve fiendishly difficult ‘Labours’ or challenges (see Story 33). Now, upon his return from the last of his labours, which required him to lead to the upper world Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to the Underworld, Hercules succumbs to the madness Juno incites in him. As this passage begins, Hercules has just defeated Lycus, king of Thebes. He is reunited with his friend Theseus, his ‘father’ Amphitryon, his wife Megara, and their children. This passage comes from the lyrical translation of a sixteenth-century Jesuit priest named Jasper Heywood.
[…] HERCULES. I wyll
the prayers make, for mee
And Jove full meete. yn his due place
Lette stande the haughty skye,
And lande, and ayre, and lette the starres
dryue foorthe eternallye
Their course unstayde: let restfull peace
keepe nations quietlye,
Let labour of the hurtlesse lande
all yron nowe occupye,
And swoordes lye hydde: let tempest none
full vyolent and dyre
Disturbe the sea: let from the skyes
no flashe of lyghtnyng fyre
Fall downe whyle Jove full angry is:
nor yet with wynter snowe
Encreased floode the grownde upturnde
and fieldes quight overthrowe.
Let poysons cease: and from hensfoorth
let up from grownde aryse
No greevous herbe with hurtfull sappe:
nor fierce and fell lykewyse
Let tyrantes raygne: but yf to syght
some other mischiefe bryng
The grownde yet shall, let it make haste:
and any monstrous thyng
If it prepare, let yt bee myne.
but what meanes this? myd daye
The darknes have encloasde abowt,
lo Phoebus gothe his waye
With face obscure withowt a clowde.
who dryues the daye to flyght,
And turnes to east? from whence doth now
his dusky hed the nyght
Unknown bryng forth? whēce fyl the poale
so many rownde about
Of daytyme starres? lo here beholde
my labour fyrst full stoute
Not in the lowest parte of heaven
the lyon shyneth bryght,
And fervently dothe rage with yre,
And byttes prepares to fyght.
Even now loe he some starre wyl take:
with mouthe full wyde to see
He thretnyng stands, and fyres out blowes
and mane up rustleth he
Shaking with necke. the harvest sadde
of shape, what ever thyng,
And what soever wynter collde
in frosen tyme doothe bryng,
He with one rage wyll overpasse,
of spryng tyme bull he wyll
Bothe seeke, and breake the neckes at once.
AMPHITRYON. What is this sodayne yll?
Thy cruell cowntnance whether sonne
Doste thou caste here and there?
And seeste with troubled daselde syght
false shape of heaven appere?
HER. The land is taemde, the swellyng seas
theyr surges dyd asswage,
The kyngdomes lowe of hell lykewyse
have felte and knowne my rage,
Yet heaven is free, a labour meete
for Hercules to prove.
To spaces hygh I wyll bee borne
of hawghtye skyes abdue:
Let th’ayre be skaelde, my father dooth
me promyse starrs t’obtayne.
What yf he it denyde? all th’earthe
can Hercles not contayne,
And geeves at length to godds. me calls
of owne accorde beholde
The whole assembly of the godds,
and dooth theyr gates unfolde,
Whyle one forbydds. receyuste thou me,
and openest thou the skye,
Or els the gate of stubborne heaven
drawe after me doo I?
Do I yet doubte? I even the bondes
from Saturne wyll undoe,
And even agaynst the kyngdome prowde
of wycked father loe,
My grandsyre loase. let Titans nowe
prepare agayne theyr fyght
With me theyr captayne ragyng: stones
with woodes I wyll downe smyght,
And hye hylles topps with Centaures full
in ryght hande wyll I take.
With double mountayne nowe I wyll
a stayre to godds up make.
Let Chiron under Ossa see
his Pelion mowntayne grette:
Olympus up to heaven above
in thyrde degree then sette
Shall come it selfe, or ells bee caste.
AM. Put farre awaye from thee
The thowghts that owght not to be spoake:
of mynde unsownde to see,
But yet full great, the furyows rage
asswage and laye awaye.
HER. What meaneth this? the gyantes doe
pestiferous armes assaye,
And Tityus from the sprights is fledde,
and bearyng torne to see
And empty bosome, lo howe neere
to heaven it selfe stoode hee?
Cythaeron falles, the mountayne hye
Pallene shakes for feare,
And torne are Tempe. he the toppes
of Pindus cawght hathe here,
And Oethen he, some dredfull thyng
Erinnys bryngyng flames: with strypes
she soundes nowe shaken out,
And burned brandes in funeralls,
loe yet more neare and neare
Throwes in my face: fearce Tisyphone
with head and ugly heare
With serpents sette, nowe after dogge
fet owt with Hercles hande,
That emptye gate she hathe shette up,
with bolte of fyry brande.
But loe the stocke of enmiows kyng
doothe hydden yet remayne,
The wycked Lycus seede: but to
your hatefull father slayne
Even nowe this ryght hande shall you sende
let nowe his arrowes lyght
My bowe owt shoote: it seemes the shaftes
to goe with suche a flyght
Of Hercles. AM. Whether doothe the rage
and fury blynde yet goe?
His myghty bowe he drewe with hornes
togyther dryven loe,
And quyver loaste: great noyese makes
with vyolence sente owt
The shafte, and quyght the weapon flewe
his myddle necke throwghowt,
The wownd yet left. HER. His other broode
I overthrowe wyll quyght,
And corners all. What stay I yet?
to me a greater fyght
Remaynes then all Mycenes loe,
that rockye stones shoulde all
Of Cyclops beeyng ouertnrnde
with hande of myne, downe fall.
Let shake bothe here: and there the house,
with all staves overthrowne,
Let breake the poasts: and quight let shrinke
the shaken pyller downe:
Let all the palayce fall at once.