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PEUTINGER'S CHART Showing ancient road rounding the headland and terminating at "Templum Minervae." For the structure is therein marked not at the Punta Campanella but, approximately, at Ierate itself, facing south, with the road from Stabiae over Surrentum rounding the promontory and terminating at the temple's threshold.
Did the old road from Stabiae Athene temple go round the promontory and continue as far as Ierate along the southern slope of San Costanzo hill? No temple of this magnificence can have stood here, but only a Roman villa one of the many pleasure-houses which dotted these shores under the Empire. So much for myself.
"Here he stopped to consider whether he should return back again; to which the pilot advised him. 'Fortune, said he, 'favors the brave; carry me to Pomponianus. Pomponianus was then at Stabiae, separated by a gulf, which the sea, after several insensible windings, forms upon the shore. It was favorable, however, for carrying my uncle to Pomponianus, whom he found in the greatest consternation.
Though Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae lie buried beneath the mud and ashes belched out of the mouth of Vesuvius, the villages of Portici and Revina, Torre del Greco and Torre del Annunziata have taken their place, and a large population, cheerful and prosperous, flourishes around the disturbed mountain and over the district of which it is the somewhat untrustworthy safety-valve.
This extraordinary phenomenon excited my uncle’s philosophical curiosity to take a nearer view of it.” The nephew then proceeds to relate how his uncle sailed by way of Retina, the port of Herculaneum, to Stabiae, where he met with his second in command, one Pomponianus.
With the single exception of Nuceria, which adhered firmly to Rome, all Campania as far as Vesuvius was lost to the Romans; Salernum, Stabiae, Pompeii, Herculaneum declared for the insurgents; Mutilus was able to advance into the region to the north of Vesuvius, and to besiege Acerrae with his Samnito-Lucanian army.
The circumstances of his death are described by his nephew, Pliny the younger, in two letters to Tacitus. He was at Misenum, in command of the fleet, when, observing the first indications of the eruption, and wishing to investigate it more closely, he fitted out a light galley, and sailed towards the villa of a friend at Stabiae.
We are told by Seneca that thousands of sheep fed upon the rough mountains behind Stabiae, and the clothier's hall and numerous fulleries of Pompeii remind us that wool-growing was an important industry of that region. Vergil's excursion to Sorrento was doubtless not the only visit across the bay.
The ocean itself that serene and tideless sea lay scarce less hushed, save that from its deep bosom came, softened by the distance, a faint and regular murmur, like the breathing of its sleep; and curving far, as with outstretched arms, into the green and beautiful land, it seemed unconsciously to clasp to its breast the cities sloping to its margin Stabiae, and Herculaneum, and Pompeii those children and darlings of the deep.
They danced, they sung, they feasted; they married, and were altogether as merry a set of citizens as any in southern Italy. But the 24th of August A.D. 79 at length arrived. Then, woe to Stabiae! woe to Pompeii! woe to Herculaneum! Pliny the elder was that day in command of the Roman fleet at Misenum, which was not far off.
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