Pliny Sails — Titus: A Cloud Like a Pine Tree

Back to the sea. The admiral’s name is Gaius Plinius Secundus; today we call him Pliny the Elder. He commands the fleet at Misenum (Letters 6.16). But all Rome knows him as a scholar. He wrote the “Natural History”: thirty-seven books about everything from the stars to stones. He dedicated it to Titus.

This fleet has a bad past. Twenty years ago its commander and sailors killed Agrippina, Nero’s mother, in the night. Now the same galleys sail to save people.

His nephew writes that what his uncle began out of a researcher’s curiosity he finished with the greatness of a hero. He sails where others flee, and dictates notes on everything he sees (Letters 6.16).

On the shore at Stabiae the admiral lies down on a sheet spread out for him and twice asks for cold water. When the flames and the smell of sulfur approach, his companions flee. The admiral rises with the help of two slaves — and dies. His nephew supposes that he ran out of air: his uncle always had a weak throat. He was found when light returned after two days (Letters 6.16).

At Misenum the night is just as terrible. The earth shakes so violently that everything topples. A friend of his uncle’s, who has just arrived from Hispania, sees the boy with a book beside his mother. He scolds them both for their calm. Pliny reads on. Years later he himself does not know whether it was courage or folly (Letters 6.20).

In the morning the light is pale and the houses sway. Mother and son leave the town in the crowd. The carts, though standing on level ground, roll back and forth; stones under the wheels do not help. The sea draws back from the shore and leaves sea creatures on the sand. From the mountain a black cloud sweeps in, cut through with lightning. His mother pleads, then commands: flee alone, you are young, and I am old and heavy. The son takes her by the hand and walks on with her.

There are screams of women, the wailing of children, the shouts of men. Some call on the gods. Others are sure there are no gods anymore and that the last, eternal night of the world has come. Pliny keeps getting up and shaking off the ash so that it does not crush him. He writes that he was comforted by a thought, “miserable, yet great”: he is perishing with everyone, and everything is perishing with him.

Then the darkness thins. The sun comes out, pale as in an eclipse. Everything is covered in ash like snow. Mother and son return to Misenum and wait for news of his uncle (Letters 6.20).

Pliny saw the cloud from afar. Under the cloud lay a city.