A Report upon the Herculaneum Manuscripts

seventy feet in many places. All the wood in Herculaneum was reduced to charcoal, and everything combustible was not only injured by the extreme heat but, as was the case with the manuscripts, was violently compressed and contracted by the heavy pressure of the volcanic materials. In one of his best poetic efforts, Statius Roman poet, 1st century AD. justly says:

original: "Pater exemtum terris ad sidera montem / Sustulit, et latè miseras dejecit in urbes."

Upon this layer of stones, first liquefied and then hardened and incorporated into prodigious masses, a second layer was raised, accumulated by the volcanic debris of 1631. The celebrated Mazzochi Alessio Simmaco Mazzocchi, an Italian scholar and antiquarian. objects to the date of the eruption recorded in Pliny and changes it from August 24th to November 23rd, in order to make it consistent with the remains of dried fruits—such as chestnuts, figs, and raisins—found in the excavation and preserved in the Royal Museum