Vesuvius

Before AD 79 its slopes were covered with vineyards. Strabo noticed that the burned-out summit showed the mountain’s earlier fires, but in Campania no one remembered an eruption. Tremors were common here; in AD 62/63 an earthquake destroyed a large part of Pompeii.

The eruption was described by an eyewitness, Pliny the Younger: a pine-shaped cloud, a rain of pumice, darkness by day. The day is disputed: the manuscripts of the letter give August 24, while archaeology points rather to October 24.