Contemporary news reports about natural disasters always focus on the survivors. They typically include interviews and photos of lives uprooted by the earthquake, volcano, or storm. In contrast, ancient Roman disaster narratives almost never mention survivors. As a result, even the survivors of the greatest natural disasters of antiquity are missing from the historical record, and basic questions about survivors aren’t typically discussed. The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and the subsequent destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 C.E. is no exception. Despite the firsthand accounts of the eruption by Pliny the Younger to Tacitus (Letters 6.16 and 6.20), […]
