Throwback Thursday - Pompeii

Excerpts from The Notebooks will continue next week. I wanted to take a moment to remember 24. August 79 CE, the day Mt. Vesuvius erupted and the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed.

Pliny the Younger (a statesman in the early days of the Roman empire) was an eyewitness to the event. At 18 years old, he was staying at the home of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, at Miseunum. (The Elder died while trying to rescue people from the disaster.) Young Pliny wrote two letters detailing what happened. This description is from his second letter: 

Being at a convenient distance from the houses, we stood still, in the midst of a most dangerous and dreadful scene. The chariots, which we had ordered to be drawn out, were so agitated backwards and forwards, though upon the most level ground, that we could not keep them steady, even by supporting them with large stones. The sea seemed to roll back upon itself, and to be driven from its banks by the convulsive motion of the earth; it is certain at least the shore was considerably enlarged, and several sea animals were left upon it. On the other side, a black and dreadful cloud, broken with rapid, zigzag flashes, revealed behind it variously shaped masses of flame: these last were like sheet-lightning, but much larger.

Pompeii was near the city of Naples in the Campania region of Italy. This is the region where my family is from in the province of Avellino. Though Torre le Nocelle, the town my father's family is from, Grottaminarda where his mother's family is from, and Ariano di Puglia where my mother's parents are from, are inland, I wonder what things must have been like there in the afternoon of that day. Could they feel the eruption? Hear it? Did the sky cloud over with ash and blot the sun? I wonder if they thought it was the end of the world and how long news of the disaster took to reach them.