Vesuvius buried Pompeii and Herculaneum under twenty feet of pumice and ash. The traditional date for the eruption was 24 August, but recent archaeology has revised it. What year, at least?
79 AD has stuck since antiquity. The August date came from a corrupt manuscript reading of Pliny the Younger's letters and has been steadily eroded by archaeology: woollen cloaks on victim bodies, autumn-harvest material in shops, and most decisively a charcoal inscription dated 17 October found in House V.6 in 2018. An October eruption — about 24 October — is now consensus. Pliny the Elder died on the second day of the eruption while trying to mount a naval rescue from Misenum.
Read the full facts →Pompeii was a Roman provincial town of approximately 11,000 to 12,000 people on the Bay of Naples in southern Italy. It was buried under approximately 20 feet of volcanic pumice and ash during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in late October 79 AD. The site has been continuously excavated since 1748 and is the most thoroughly documented archaeological site of Roman urban life.
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