In Campania remarkable and frightful occurrences took place. A great fire was suddenly created just at the end of autumn. It was this way. The mountain Vesuvius stands over against Naples near the sea and has unquenchable springs of fire. Once it was equally high at all points and the fire rose from the center of it. This is the only portion of it that is in a blaze, for the outside parts of the mountain remain even now unkindled. Consequently, as the latter are never burned, while the interior is constantly growing brittle and being reduced to ashes, the surrounding peaks retain their original height to this day, but the whole section that is on fire, as it is consumed in the course of time, has grown hollow from continual collapse. Thus the entire mountain, if we may compare great things to small, resembles a hunting-theatre. The outlying heights of it support both trees and vines,--many of them,--but the crater is given over to fire and sends up smoke by day, flame by night. It looks as if quantities of incense of all sorts were being burned in it. This goes on all the time, sometimes more, sometimes less. Often it throws up ashes, when there is a general settling in the interior, or again it sends up stones when the air forces them out. It echoes and bellows, too, because its vents are not all together but are narrow and hidden.
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Such is Vesuvius, and these phenomena regularly occur there at least once a year. But all the other happenings that took place in former time, though they may have seemed great and unusual to those who on each occasion observed them, nevertheless would be reckoned as but slight in comparison with what now occurred even though they should all be rolled into one. This was what befell. Numbers of huge men quite surpassing any human stature,--such creatures as giants are depicted to be,--appeared now on the mountain, now in the country surrounding it, and again in the cities, wandering over the earth day and night and also traversing the air. After this fearful droughts and earthquakes sudden and violent occurred, so that all the level ground in that region undulated and the heights gave a great leap. Reverberations were frequent, some subterranean resembling thunder and some on the surface like bellowings. The sea joined the roar and the sky resounded with it. Then suddenly a portentous crash was heard, as if the mountains were tumbling in ruins. And first there were belched forth stones of huge size that rose to the very summits before they fell; after them came a deal of fire and smoke in inexhaustible quantities so that the whole atmosphere was obscured and the whole sun was screened from view as if in an eclipse.
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Thus night succeeded day and darkness light. Some thought the giants were rising in revolt (for even at this time many of their forms could be discerned in the smoke and moreover a kind of sound of trumpets was heard), while others believed that the whole world was disappearing in chaos or fire. Therefore they fled, some from the houses into the streets, others from without into the house; in their confusion, indeed, they hastened from the sea to the land or from the land to the sea, deeming any place at a distance from where they were safer than what was near by. While this was going on an inconceivable amount of ashes was blown out and covered the land and the sea everywhere and filled all the air. It did harm of all sorts, as chance dictated, to men and places and cattle, and the fish and the birds it utterly destroyed. Moreover, it buried two whole cities, Herculaneum and Pompeii, while the populace was seated in the theatre. The entire amount of dust was so great that some of it reached Africa and Syria and Egypt, and it also entered Rome, where it occupied all the air over the city and cast the sun into shadow. There, too, no little fear was felt for several days, since the people did not know and could not conjecture what had happened. They like the rest thought that everything was being turned upside down, that the sun was disappearing in the earth and the earth was bounding up to the sky. This ashes for the time being did them no great harm: later it bred among them a terrible pestilence.
A.D. 80 (a.u. 833)
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