14. A Calamity for Contemporaries, a Blessing for Historians
About 1500 bodies were found in Pompeii and Herculaneum when they were unearthed centuries later. They were recovered from but a small area that was impacted by the volcano’s eruption, and extrapolating to the surrounding regions, total casualties are estimated to have been in the tens of thousands.
The towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, whose populations at the time numbered about 20,000, were buried beneath up to 20 feet of volcanic ash and pumice. Tragic and terrifying as that was, the ash deposits did a remarkably effective job of preserving those towns nearly entire. That afforded future historians and scholars an unrivaled snapshot of 1st century AD Roman architecture, city planning, urban infrastructure, and town life in general.
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