The 79 AD Vesuvius Eruption Killed Tens of Thousands – and Contributed to Our Knowledge of Roman History
The Vesuvius eruption of August 24th, 79 AD, was one of antiquity’s most famous volcanic eruptions, and one of Europe’s most powerful volcanic explosions. Vesuvius went off with a force 100,000 times greater than that of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs. The eruption tossed deadly debris, mixed with a cloud of poisonous gasses, over 20 miles up into the sky. As it spewed gasses into the air, lava and hot pumice poured out of the volcano’s mouth at a rate of 1.5 million tons per second. The glowing hot material raced down Vesuvius’ side to devastate the surrounding region. Nearby towns were destroyed, of which Pompeii and Herculaneum are the best known.
Pliny the Younger, a Roman author and magistrate, was 15 miles away at Cape Misenum. He was visiting his uncle, Pliny the Elder – a Roman admiral who would lose his life during rescue efforts after the eruption. History is deeply indebted to Pliny’s detailed description of the events he saw, and those told him by first hand witnesses. His work is the best written and most thorough narrative of the disaster.
Vesuvius had been giving off tremors for days, but they were not unusual. Then, around noon on August 24th, a cloud appeared atop the volcano. About an hour later, Vesuvius erupted, and ash began to fall on Pompeii, 6 miles away. By 2PM, pumice started falling with the ash, and by 5PM sunlight had been completely blocked. Around that time, roofs in Pompeii began collapsing under the accumulating weight of ash and pumice. Panicked townspeople rushed to the harbor, seeking any ship that would take them away.
By midnight, Vesuvius was spewing a hot deadly column over 20 miles up into the air. Simultaneously, lava flowed down its side in six major surges, as the volcano vomited molten rock in a rapid flow that incinerated all that it encountered. The lava did not reach Pompeii or Herculaneum, but it sent heat waves of more than 550 degrees Fahrenheit into those towns. That turned them into ovens, and killed any who had not yet escaped or had not yet already suffocated from the fine ash. When Pompeii and Herculaneum were unearthed centuries later, about 1500 bodies were found in them. Those 1500 bodies were recovered from just one small area of the region impacted by the volcano’s eruption. Extrapolating to the surrounding regions, total casualties are estimated to have been in the tens of thousands.
Pompeii and Herculaneum, whose populations at the time numbered about 20,000, were buried under up to 20 feet of volcanic ash and pumice. While tragic and terrifying, the ash did a remarkably great job of preserving those towns. As a result, future historians got an unrivaled snapshot of 1st century AD Roman architecture, city planning, urban infrastructure, and town life in general.