Written by Michel Gybels for Time Travel Rome Like Pompeii and Herculaneum, the Villa Oplontis was both destroyed and preserved by the eruption of the Vesuvius in AD79. Buried until its gradual discovery over the last four centuries, this huge and lavish palace has been associated on slender evidence with Poppaea Sabina, the unfortunate wife said to have been kicked to death by [...]
“Though my mind shrinks from remembering, I will begin.” Pliny the Younger quoting Virgil’s Aeneid Pliny the Younger and his mother, Plinia Marcella, watched with trepidation as the Roman navy sailed away from Misenum. Plinia was a widower. Her brother had taken her in and adopted his seventeen-year-old nephew as his son and heir. Now, the man of the household was heading into unknown [...]
Falling rock and blocked shallows had forced Pliny the Elder and his navy from the shore at Herculaneum. Skirting the edge of the rock fall, they made their way down the coast to Stabiae, which lay south even of Pompeii. An area of numerous ornate villas, both for leisure and farm estates, it lay at the base of the peninsula. The blast from [...]
Pompeii was one of the Roman cities that enjoyed the volcanic soils of Campania, the region surrounding Vesuvius. Pliny the Elder once called the area one of the loveliest places on earth. Vesuvius had not erupted since the Bronze Age, and the Romans believed that the volcano was dead. Although occasional earthquakes rocked the area, the most violent being in 62 or 63 A.D., [...]