Transcription: The eruption surprised Pompeii on a warm August day, AD 79. The people of the town were not unaware that Vesuvius was a volcano, but it had been quiescent from time immemorial, and its slopes were covered with villas and vineyards. Although sections of the city still lay in ruins from a local earthquake that had shaken the region 17 years before, no one had taken that disturbance as a warning of the disaster to come. The awakening of the volcano was sudden and unbelievably violent. Its crater abruptly collapsed, and a great black column shot into the sky. Pliny the Younger, whose uncle Pliny t ...
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