Stabiae

A town on the southern shore of the Bay of Naples, today Castellammare di Stabia. In AD 79 the admiral’s friend Pomponianus lived here. Pliny the Elder sailed to him from Misenum on a wind that kept Pomponianus from putting to sea. To calm his terrified friend, he bathed, had dinner and fell calmly asleep, and he called the flames on the slopes of Vesuvius burning villages. During the night the courtyard filled with ash and the houses shook, so everyone went out into the fields with pillows tied to their heads. In the morning the admiral died on the shore. Like Pompeii, the town was buried in ash (Pliny the Younger, Letters 6.16). The place appears in the Titus episode, in the chapter “Pliny Sails”.