VERY SKIMMED PIECES OF WEEK #3 READING 1/2 UP

NOTE: THIS IS PURELY FROM

  Rabun Taylor* Roman Neapolis and the Landscape of Disaster   NONE OF THESE ARE MINE!!!!   All credit goes to the author. Also, there is huge gap of information missing. I pulled out what was prominent to me. Please do your readings.    Thank you for taking time to access these notes. I hope they will help you! :)

Coastal Campania between 62 CE and the early 80s. During this time, towns extending from Neapolis east and south to Salernum suffered damage from several earthquakes. The quakes seriously affected Neapolis and its territory, yet the city survived and prospered In the aftermath of 79 this city may have undergone a mild form of colonization, selling the emperor agricultural land for future veteran settlement in areas where recovery could be expected and establishing a permanent suburban neighborhood, perhaps more than one, for refugees. Keywords: Naples, Vesuvius, Earthquake, Eruption, Roman  

The effects of seismic and volcanic activity on two mid-sized towns in ancient Campania: Pompeii and Herculaneum have left an imprint in history. Earthquakes continue to wreak unspeakable tragedy, but probably no volcanic eruption since 79 has taken so dramatic a toll on so unsuspecting a population.

Between the constant threat of earthquakes and the long shadow of Mt. Vesuvius, the people of Naples and the surrounding littoral have long lived in fear of natural calamity. Accustomed to tremors, which had long been a local fact of life, the residents had nonetheless managed to avoid serious damage or loss of life. Vesuvius too was concluding a long period of inactivity; it must have seemed less threatening than the steaming landscape of collapsed craters and fumaroles just a day's travel to the west.  

Then, in either 62 or 63 CE, an earthquake of deadly and destructive force struck Campania. The physical effects of this event, or subsequent ones, on Pompeii and Herculaneum are reasonably well understood from the archaeological record. However, its consequences to the bigger cities in Campania, including Neapolis, are obscure. This event prompted Seneca to devote book six of his Naturales quaestiones to the phenomenon of earthquakes and their moral implications.

Lucilius, my good friend, I have heard that Pompeii, the well-known city in Campania, ... has succumbed to an earthquake — in the winter, no less, a season that our predecessors habitually assured us was devoid of such dangers. This quake was on the Nones of February, in the consulship of Regulus and Verginius. With great destruction it ravaged Campania, which, although never safe from this evil, had gone unscathed every time, and every time swallowed its fear. Part of Herculaneum too was destroyed, and even what remains hangs in the balance. The colony of Nuceria, though without damage, is not without complaints. Neapolis, only lightly grazed by this mighty calamity, lost much private property, but nothing public. However, villas were overthrown; here and there, some shook without damage. To these reports others may be added: a flock of six hundred sheep was wiped out; statues split apart; after the incident, some lost their minds and wandered about aimlessly.

...likewise, there is a remedy for the same thing [i.e., earthquakes], such as densely crowded caves provide; for they exhale confined breath. This is observed in entire towns. They are shaken less, being hollowed with many channels for drainage; and in those same [towns], far safer are those parts that rest over them — as is observed at Neapolis, where the part that is more solid is more prone to such collapses. Much of ancient Neapolis was built upon a thick, sloping shelf of tuff that has been honeycombed since antiquity by man-made tunnels, cisterns, shafts, and drains.

The specific reference to Neapolis has provoked little analysis. If Seneca's report is accurate, we are left wondering whether the divergent fates of the public and private buildings had more to do with distinct modes of construction or with relative geographic position. However, Pliny clearly had in mind tunnels for the evacuation of water, not its delivery (crebris ad eluviem cuniculis); and because surface waves in earthquakes tend to cause more damage than body waves, it appears that shallow voids can mitigate damage more than deeper ones.

In the early summer of 64, while Nero was in Neapolis to give his debut performance of epic poetry, the city experienced a serious shock. Tacitus and Suetonius both record the episode:   Suetonis There, something happened that seemed sinister to many, but to Nero himself seemed foreordained, even divinely auspicious; for after the audience had left, the empty theater collapsed without harm to anyone. So with specially composed songs he sang of his thanks to the gods and the fortunate outcome of the recent incident... (Tac. Ann. 15.34).   Tactius He debuted at Neapolis; and although the theater was actually struck suddenly by an earth- quake, he did not quit singing until he finished the melody he had begun (Suet.Ner.20).   These two sources are not contradictory, but their differences of emphasis are striking. Suetonius says nothing of a collapse, focusing instead on Nero's composure during his performance. But for Tacitus, the collapse was the central message of the event.

Bradyseism—the uplift or descent of the earth’s surface in the vicinity of volcanic calderas. What was not known before the subway project at Naples, however, is that this city too suffered bradyseismic deformations in antiquity.

A growing body of evidence suggests that the great eruption of Vesuvius probably took place deep in the autumn of 79 CE—not August 24, the date transmitted by the favored manuscripts of Pliny the Younger’s letters, or even  “the very end of the summer,” as Dio Cassius claims (66.21.1).