Alwyn Scarth - Vesuvius: A Biography

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A biography

Alwyn Scarth

Copyright Alwyn Scarth 2009

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press

All Rights reserved

Published in 2009 in the United States, Canada, and the Philippine Islands by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

Originating publisher: Terra Publishing. Published by Terra Publishing in the UK and the Republic of Ireland

ISBN: 978-0-691-14390-3

Library of Congress Control Number 2009925151

press.princeton.edu

Vesuvius is the most famous and one of the most violent volcanoes in the world, and Naples and the province of Campania around it have the reputation of housing the most impassioned population in Europe. This biography of Vesuvius evokes the intimate relationship between the volcano and people, which has been recorded in unrivalled detail for more than two thousand years. The Campanians have never been able to remember with serenity, nor to forget with impunity, that they live in a volcanic land that has witnessed some of Europes most powerful and lethal eruptions.

The story of Vesuvius fascinates by its rich geological or geographical history, which has been told by Earth scientists who have often been among the worlds greatest experts on volcanic behaviour. But the Earth sciences are only part of the story. The other side of the narrative recounts the changing social, religious, and intellectual impact that the volcano has always had upon the population. Many vivid and fascinating eye-witness accounts have followed Pliny the Youngers description of the eruption in ad 79 and, ever since, religious beliefs, prejudice, education and fear have stimulated a whole range of human reactions to every volcanic crisis and the devastation and mourning that ensued. This study is based on the latest academic research, but also on a prudent appraisal of contemporary accounts and, wherever possible, I have based the story on eye-witness descriptions by the participants. But they have also to be examined with critical care to discover the grains of truth among the chaff of fantasy and inaccuracies that have distorted many older versions of the Vesuvian story.

Until very recently, volcanic eruptions came as bolts from the blue. Now, however, scientific experts are fast developing techniques for predicting the behaviour of volcanoes. Vesuvius is well worth the closest scrutiny, because it may be approaching its most violent outburst since 1631. Yet, one of the major current environmental and social problems in Campania is to convince the population that the next eruption really will put them in the gravest danger. Indeed, Vesuvius is not the only volcanic threat in the district. In the Campi Flegrei, west of Naples, two periods of earthquakes have caused panic and damage within the past 50 years, although the feared eruption did not take place.

Many sources among the vast range of Vesuvian studies have been assembled in the extensive bibliography. In order to present the narrative with the vitality that the subject deserves, direct references have not been included in the text, although the most important authorities have been noted at the end of each chapter. Similarly too, the few wholly unavoidable technical terms have been explained in the glossary.

This biography draws together strands of enquiry from archaeology, the classics, the Earth sciences, history, literature, planning, politics and religion. I wrote it for all those who would welcome a thorough study of the changing relationships between Europes most violent volcano and the people living around it.

Alwyn Scarth, Paris, August 2008

The author and publishers would like to thank the following for granting permission to use material in this book: Michael Sheridan and the us National Academy of Sciences for the photographs of some results of the Avellino eruption; and to the uk Government Art Collection for the engraving of Sir William Hamilton.

I am extremely grateful to Harry Hine, Christian Morea, and Shirley and Knud Larsen for their invaluable assistance with translations from Latin, Italian and Danish; to Derek Hopper and Tom Scotland, then of 614 Pathfinder Squadron raf , for their photographs of the eruption in 1944; to David Alexander for criticisms of an earlier draft of this manuscript; to Rosalba and Lucia Lepore for offering me much enlightenment about the Neapolitans; and to Roger Jones for all his help and encouragement during this project.

Finally, I should like to thank Catherine Lagoutte, Pat Michie, Anthony Newton, Morag Niven, Brian Storey and David Wallace for their invaluable help, and especially Jean-Louis Renaud for improving and clarifying this manuscript.

Alas, any errors are my own.

Place the most violent volcano in Europe in the midst of one of the most volatile populations on the continent and sparks are bound to fly.

Vesuvius is the most dangerous volcano in Europe when it erupts, and the crowning glory of Campania even when it is dormant. The volcano mirrors the fascinating, effervescent, vibrant and sometimes disturbing city of Naples that faces it across a bay of legendary beauty. It is as if this splendid and paramount couple have nourished each other for centuries. Vesuvius holds the stage: a talisman for the Campanians; a manifest threat to their livelihoods and to their very lives; it destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum, and preserved them for posterity; and it is the spirit presiding over all the contradictions in the region and its inhabitants. The volcano is all the more dangerous because it rises in the midst of a populous area that has owed its rural wealth to fertile soils weathered from the ash and lavas of previous destructive eruptions. Vesuvius plays a dual role: provider and exterminator; preserver and destroyer; guardian and enemy; tourist attraction and killer; it is a volcano often to be admired, but always obeyed; and it is a volcano with a benign and beautiful appearance that masks a ferocious temper, giving substance to the ambiguity in the famous dictum See Naples and die.