When Mount Vesuvius erupted in the year 79, Herculaneum and all but the highest points of Pompeii were completely buried under tons of ash and other volcanic matter. In the aftermath of the eruption, Greek historian and biographer Plutarch wrote: “Those who went there by daylight felt ignorance and uncertainty as to where Pompeii and Herculaneum had been situated.” Cities located farther from Vesuvius were largely unaffected, although many towns and villas in close proximity to the mountain were abandoned and mostly forgotten until their rediscovery in the eighteenth century. Twenty-five years later, in 104, Roman magistrate and author Pliny the Younger wrote two letters to his friend Tacitus, a Roman historian, describing the eruption of.
