A Report upon the Herculaneum Manuscripts

indeed, immediately preceded—or rather attended—that eruption. Some houses were thrown to the ground by the severe shaking. Their ruins are partly spread upon the original soil, and partly upon the pumice stones discharged from the mountain. Pliny, in his account addressed to Tacitus, says: “For many days before, there had been earth tremors, less alarming, as they are common in Campania and accustomed to shake not only villas, but even towns; but on that night, the tremors became so violent that it was believed not that everything was being moved, but that it was being overturned” original: "Præcesserat per multos dies tremor terræ minus formidilosus, qui Campaniæ non solum castella, verum etiam oppida vexare solitus: illâ vero nocte ità invaluit, ut non moveri omnia, sed everti crederentur.". In this letter, as well as in the 16th of the same book to the same friend, Pliny proved himself to have “truly followed everything” original: "Omnia verè prosecutum", although, with great modesty, he remarks: “It is one thing to write a letter, and another to write history” original: "Aliud est Epistolam, aliud Historiam scribere.".

Consistent with his faithful description, the excavated layer is not lava, as has been often claimed, but “pumice, stones scorched and fractured by fire” original: "Pumices nigrique et ambusti, et fracti igne lapides", to the depth of nearly