It is affirmed that the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius
A. D. 79, did not entirely destroy the cities of Herculaneum
and Pompeii, and that they emerged from their
ruins in the reign of the Emperor Titus. They are
also mentioned as inhabited cities in the chart of
Peutinger, which is of the date of Constantine.

The next eruption, A. D. 471, was probably the most
frightful on record if we exclude the volcanic eruption
of Mt. Pelee, which occurred in Martinique, West
Indies, in 1902, destroying thirty thousand human
beings in fifteen minutes and devastating nearly the
entire island. From Marcellinus we learn that the
ashes of the Vesuvius volcano were vomited over a
great portion of Europe, reaching to Constantinople,
where a festival was instituted in commemoration of
the strange phenomenon. After this, we hear no
more of these cities, but the portion of the inhabitants
who escaped built or occupied suburbs at Nola in
Campania and at Naples. In the latter city, the Regio
Herculanensium, or Quarter of the Herculaneans, an
inscription marked on several lapidary monuments,
indicates the part devoted to the population driven
from the doomed city.

The ancient inkstand found at Herculaneum, said
to contain a substance resembling a thick oil or paint
characteristic of a material which it is alleged, "some
of the manuscripts have been written in a sort of