Classical Corner

017

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), the question of survivors has been an open one. Some scholars have assumed that many of the cities’ inhabitants must have escaped, while others conclude—based on the thousand skeletons discovered in the excavations—that everyone perished. However, these discussions took place without much evidence.

It turns out that the evidence was there all along; it just needed to be collected and interpreted. My recent (and mind-numbingly tedious) research project has attempted to answer whether anyone escaped Pompeii and Herculaneum. If so, where did they resettle, and did the Roman government matter in the aftermath of the disaster? The project compiled databases of family names using inscriptions from the origin cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and the prospective “refuge cities” of Capua, Cumae, Naples, Nola, Ostia, Paestum, Puteoli, Salerno, Surrentum, Ulubrae, and Velia.

I then examined the data to see if the onomastic profiles (lists of proper names recorded in a city’s archives) of the refuge cities changed post-79 C.E. to determine if new populations settled there. Evidence of new infrastructure and intermarriage between two or more survivor families bolstered the evidence of the names.

This conservative process allows us to trace only the survivors who move to018 communities where their family names were not previously recorded. It does not record the probably larger number of those who moved where their families already lived. In modern terms, if a disaster forced you to move back into your parents’ basement in your hometown, the onomastic profile of the community wouldn’t change, and that movement would be invisible to later researchers.

This project revealed that people did, in fact, survive the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius—and, surprisingly, not just the rich. Families fled Pompeii and Herculaneum together and resettled fairly close by, largely in the communities of Cumae, Puteoli (Pozzuoli), and Neapolis (Naples) on the north side of the Bay of Naples. Altogether this research has traced 19 extended families from Pompeii and Herculaneum to the new cities where they settled, intermarried, and eventually died, leaving behind family tombs with inscriptions.

A few specific examples give a sense of the pattern:

At Cumae, a quiet community on the Tyrrhenian coast about 31 miles north of Pompeii, we discovered seven Pompeian families, including members of the Sulpicius family, known to be Pompeian bankers from their financial records, which were discovered outside the city. Some members are recorded on an inscription from a family tomb in the territory of Cumae. In addition, Cumae saw an explosion of infrastructure in the period after the eruption. Domitian ordered the building of a major road connecting the city with the Roman road network in Italy, an aqueduct, a larger amphitheater, and other public buildings.

At Neapolis (Naples), we can trace survivors from both Pompeii and Herculaneum. Among these were Caninius Botrio, whose name appears on the list of citizens of Herculaneum after the devastating earthquake of 62 C.E. He and his family relocated to Naples, where their names appear on an epitaph from the family tomb in the period after 80 C.E. At Naples we also see Pompeian families, including the Vettii, Calidii, and Tullii, all well-known from the later years at Pompeii, moving to Naples and intermarrying—a regular pattern among refugee communities. The epitaph of Vettia Sabina, set up by her husband, M. Tullius Dionysius, contained the Oscan word have (meaning “greetings,” the Oscan equivalent of aloha), the only use of it found at Naples, though it is recorded repeatedly at Pompeii. It demonstrates that the survivors carried their native culture with them to their new communities.

At Naples, too, we can see the response of the Roman government. A “foremost, resplendent” district of the Herculaneans was established. Titus, the emperor at the time of the eruption, responded immediately by restoring buildings that were damaged by the event. His successor and younger brother, Domitian, continued his work with new public buildings in the city.

Not all survivors stayed in the communities where they originally relocated. One of the farthest survivors we can trace was Cornelius Fuscus, who died in Dacia (modern Romania) in c. 87 C.E. His epitaph records his origins in Pompeii, later residence in Naples, and eventual military rank of praetorian prefect before he died in Domitian’s war in Dacia.

Not only can we find survivors, but in some cases, we can even see how well they integrated into their new communities. At Puteoli (Pozzuoli), about 25 miles northwest of Pompeii, we find at least seven members of the Gavius family who intermarried with another family from Pompeii, the Fabius family. In the first generation, that of survivors, we find a Gavia Donata as well as Gavia Fabia Rufina and Gavius Fabius Iustus. In the next generation M. Gavius Puteolanus was born, the son of survivors and the first generation born in the city.

Two members of the decurio—the local Senate of Puteoli—in the second century C.E. were descended from survivors: M. Caecilius Publiolus Fabianus and M. Fabius Firmus. Puteoli, like Cumae and Naples, benefited from the attention of the imperial government in the post-eruption period with an expansion of its territory and new infrastructure, including an amphitheater that was modeled directly on Rome’s Colosseum.

Studies like these are important because they provide new insights into survival rates from natural disasters in the Roman world and inform us about the role of the imperial government in the aftermath of such major events.

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), […]