When people think of Pompeii, they usually picture tragedy frozen in time — bodies preserved in ash, homes swallowed up […] ...

Seventeen-year-old Pliny the Younger was visiting the town of Misenum, across the Bay of Naples from the eruption, with his family at the time. His letters detailing the exploits of his uncle have ...

Seventeen-year-old Pliny the Younger was visiting the town of Misenum, across the Bay of Naples from the eruption, with his family at the time. His letters detailing the exploits of his uncle have ...

If you would like to listen to it, you can do so that on Spotify. The music is also set to the letters of Pliny the Younger from 79 AD to the historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus.

For his 2022 book, “Pliny and the Eruption of Vesuvius,” Dr. Foss examined 79 early hand-copied manuscripts of the letters and mapped out how textual errors had been compounded.

The most famous eye-witness account of the eruption comes from a Roman administrator called Pliny the Younger. Pliny, who was just 17, wrote a series of letter describing what he saw in vivid detail.

Pliny the Younger was an eyewitness to the disaster. A lot of what we know about the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius comes from two letters written by Pliny the Younger to the Roman historian Tacitus.

Pliny the Younger wrote two letters about the eruption the Roman historian Tacitus between 107 C.E. and 108 C.E.. Today, these constitute the earliest eyewitness account detailing the tragedy.

The traditionally accepted date for the tragedy, August 24th, 79 AD, comes from the correspondence of Pliny the Younger, the only contemporary witness to document the catastrophe in his letters.