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multae variaque lumina solvebant. Placuit egredi in litus, et ex proximo adspicere, ecquid iam mare admitteret; quod adhuc vastum et adversum permanebat. Ibi super abiectum linteum recubans semel atque iterum frigidam aquam poposcit hausitque. Deinde flammae flammarumque praenuntius odor sulpuris alios in fugam vertunt, excitant illum. Innitens servolis duobus adsurrexit et statim concidit, ut ego colligo, crassiore caligine spiritu obstructo, clausoque stomacho qui illi natura invalidus et angustus et frequenter aestuans erat. Ubi dies redditus (is ab eo quem novissime viderat tertius), corpus inventum integrum inlaesum opertumque ut fuerat indutus: habitus corporis quiescenti quam defuncto similior.
3. Interim Miseni ego et matersed nihil ad historiam, nec tu aliud quam de exitu eius scire voluisti. Finem ergo faciam. Unam adiciam, omnia me quibus interfueram quaeque statim, cum maxime vera memorantur, audieram, persecutum. Tu potissima excerpes; aliud est enim epistulam aliud historiam, aliud amico aliud omnibus scribere. Vale.
Elsewhere there was daylight by this time, but they were still in darkness, blacker and denser than any night that ever was, which they relieved by lighting torches and various kinds of lamp. My uncle decided to go down to the shore and investigate on the spot the possibility of any escape by sea, but he found the waves still wild and dangerous. A sheet was spread on the ground for him to lie down, and he repeatedly asked for cold water to drink. Then the flames and smell of sulphur, which gave warning of the approaching fire, drove the others to take flight and roused him to stand up. He stood leaning on two slaves and then suddenly collapsed, I imagine because the dense fumes choked his breathing by blocking his windpipe which was constitutionally weak and narrow and often inflamed. When daylight returned on the 26thtwo days after the last day he had seenhis body was found intact and uninjured, still fully clothed and looking more like sleep than death.
3. Meanwhile, my mother and I were at Misenum, but this is not of any historic interest, and you only wanted to hear about my uncle's death. I will say no more, except to add that I have described in detail every incident which I either witnessed myself or heard about immediately after the event, when reports were most likely to be accurate. It is for you to select what best suits your purpose, for there is a great difference between a letter to a friend and history written for all to read.

The first impression one receives in reading this letter is that the Elder was indeed a hero of science who lost his life sailing courageously to the source of the eruption because of his sense of duty and of his erudite curiosity. The acknowledgment of such an effect is not only a matter of intuition. Unfortunately, we do not know how Tacitus, as an empirical reader, reacted to the letter, since his Historiae stops at 70 A.D. and its second part is lost. But we know how other readers reacted, since our encyclopedia records the fate of the Elder as a paramount example of scientific holocaust.
Nevertheless, if one puts the underlying fabula into a sequence of propositions, the crude facts are the following: the Elder moves toward the eruption before knowing that it is an eruption (moreover, at that time nobody considered Vesuvius an active volcano and the same Pliny the Elder, in his Naturalis historia 3.62, describes Vesuvius as a pleasant and harmless component of the Neapolitan land-

 
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