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Updated: June 18, 2025
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.
Of the three places overwhelmed, Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabiae, the last scarcely repays excavation in one sense, and the first in another; but to watch the diggers at Pompeii is fascinating, even when there is no reasonable expectation of a find.
This was doubtless an ancient crater; but nobody in those times knew anything of its history. So little was the volcanic nature of the mountain suspected, that the Roman towns of Stabiae, Pompeii, and Herculaneum had been erected at its base, and their inhabitants dwelt in fancied security.
Marius Egnatius came to its aid; but though he at first drove back Cosconius to Cannae, he or his successor was defeated and slain in another fight, and Cosconius became master of all Apulia and the Iapygian peninsula, which he laid waste with fire and sword. He recovered Stabiae in April, and his lieutenant, T. Didius, took Herculaneum in June. Didius, however, lost his life in the assault.
Here he stopped to consider whether he should turn back again; to which the pilot advising him, "Fortune," said he, "favours the brave; steer to where Pomponianus is." Pomponianus was then at Stabiae,94 separated by a bay, which the sea, after several insensible windings, forms with the shore.
Even then, in spite of all the perils which we had experienced, and which we still expected, we had not a thought of going away till we could hear news of my uncle.” As to the fate of the Elder Pliny, it seems that the old man had been obliged together with his friends and servants to fly from the villa at Stabiae where he was resting.
From the height on which the grove was placed, you saw through the intervals of the trees the broad and purple sea, rippling in the distance, the white villas of Stabiae in the curving shore, and the dim Lectiarian hills mingling with the delicious sky.
The narrow and curving, but not crooked streets, with the blazing sun of that Neapolitan November falling into them, or clouding their wheel-worn lava with the black, black shadows of the many-tinted walls; the houses, and the gay columns of white, yellow, and red; the delicate pavements of mosaic; the skeletons of dusty cisterns and dead fountains; inanimate garden spaces with pygmy statues suited to their littleness; suites of fairy bed-chambers, painted with exquisite frescos; dining-halls with joyous scenes of hunt and banquet on their walls; the ruinous sites of temples; the melancholy emptiness of booths and shops and jolly drinking-houses; the lonesome tragic theatre, with a modern Pompeian drawing water from a well there; the baths with their roofs perfect yet, and the stucco bass-reliefs all but unharmed; around the whole, the city wall crowned with slender poplars; outside the gates, the long avenue of tombs, and the Appian Way stretching on to Stabiae; and, in the distance, Vesuvius, brown and bare, with his fiery breath scarce visible against the cloudless heaven; these are the things that float before my fancy as I turn back to look at myself walking those enchanted streets, and to wonder if I could ever have been so blest.
Vast fragments came rolling down the mountain and gathered in heaps upon the shore. Then the sea began suddenly to retreat, so that landing at this point became impracticable. He therefore steered for Stabiae, where he landed, and took up his abode with Pomponianus an intimate friend.
He hesitated whether to return; but on the master strongly advising it, he cried, 'Fortune favours the brave: make for Pomponianus's house. This was at Stabiae, and was cut off from the coast near Vesuvius by an inlet, which had been gradually scooped out by encroachments of the sea. For this purpose he had embarked all his effects and was waiting for a change of wind.
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