Complete Works of Pliny the Younger by Pliny the Younger

The eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 started in the morning of an autumnal day although it was only around 1.00 pm that the so-called “Plinian” phase began during which a eruption column formed - dozens of kilometres high - from which fell a shower of pumice. They provide increasingly clear evidence that, during the eruption, it was not just the collapse of structures associated with the accumulation of pumice or the impact of pyroclastic flows that represented the only dangers to the lives of the inhabitants of ancient Pompeii, as the excavations carried out over the last decades have revealed. They were the victims of an earthquake that accompanied the eruption, discovered beneath a wall that had collapsed between the final phase of the deposition of pumice and prior to the arrival of the pyroclastic flows that buried Pompeii for good. This was the inferno of the eruption of AD 79, the living hell in which the inhabitants of the ancient city of Pompeii found themselves, including the two victims whose skeletons were recently discovered during the excavation of the insula of the House of the Chaste Lovers.

Turmoil, confusion, attempted escapes and, in the meantime, an earthquake, showers of pumice, volcanic ash and hot gases. It was not just the eruption that led to the death of the inhabitants of Pompeii but also the simultaneous earthquake TWO SKELETONS FOUND BENEATH A COLLAPSED WALL

New victims from Pompeii emerge from the excavation of the House of the Chaste Lovers

Complete Works of Pliny the Younger by Pliny the Younger