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But what was going on in the meantime? Under clouds of ashes, cinders, mud, lava, three of those happy cities were buried at once Herculaneum, Pompeii, Stabiae.
It is but a short quarter of an hour by train from Torre Annunziata to Castellamare di Stabia, the ill-fated Stabiae of the Romans, which shared the evil lot of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Three days later his body was found lying not far from Stabiae by his grief-stricken nephew, who describes his uncle’s corpse as looking “more like that of a sleeping than of a dead man.”
But the hot ashes fell faster and faster; the sea ebbed out suddenly, and left them nearly dry, and Pliny turned away to a place called Stabiae, to the house of his friend Pomponianus, who was just going to escape in a boat. Brave Pliny told him not to be afraid, ordered his bath like a true Roman gentleman, and then went into dinner with a cheerful face.
As I lingered alone in these environs sacred to Isis, some time after my companions had quitted them, I fell into one of those reveries which my imagination is so fond of indulging; and transporting myself seventeen hundred years back, fancied I was sailing with the elder Pliny, on the first day's eruption, from Misenum, towards Retina and Herculaneum; and afterwards towards the villa of his friend Pomponianus at Stabiae.
But it seems likely that the author's memory, or rather the information communicated to him regarding the closing scene of Pliny's life, was defective. Flames and sulphurous vapors could hardly be actually present at Stabiae, ten miles from the centre of the eruption.
It is judged to be about an Italian mile long, and three and a half in circuit. We entered the city at the little gate which lies towards Stabiae. The first object upon entering is a colonnade round a square court, which seems to have formed a place of arms. Behind the colonnade is a series of little rooms, destined for the soldiers' barracks.
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