ned from view as if in an eclipse. [Sidenote:--23--]
Thus night succeeded day and darkness light. Some thought the giants were
rising in revolt (for even at this time many of their forms could be
discerned in the smoke and moreover a kind of sound of trumpets was
heard), while others believed that the whole world was disappearing in
chaos or fire. Therefore they fled, some from the houses into the streets,
others from without into the house; in their confusion, indeed, they
hastened from the sea to the land or from the land to the sea, deeming any
place at a distance from where they were safer than what was near by.
While this was going on an inconceivable amount of ashes was blown out and
covered the land and the sea everywhere and filled all the air. It did
harm of all sorts, as chance dictated, to men and places and cattle, and
the fish and the birds it utterly destroyed. Moreover, it buried two whole
cities, Herculaneum and Pompeii, while the populace was seated in the
theatre. The entire amount of dust was so great that some of it reached
Africa and Syria and Egypt, and it also entered Rome, where it occupied
all the air over the city and cast the sun into shadow. There, too, no
little fear was felt for several days, since the people did not know and
could not conjecture what had happened. They like the rest thought that
everything was being turned upside down, that the sun was disappearing in
the earth and the earth was bounding up to the sky. This ashes for the
time being did them no great harm: later it bred among them a terrible
pestilence.

[Sidenote: A.D. 80 (a.u. 833)] [Sidenote:--24--] Another fire, above
ground, in the following year spread over a very large portion of Rome
while Titus was absent on business connected with the catastrophe that had
befallen in Campania. It consumed the temple of Serapis, the temple of
Isis, the Saepta, the temple of Neptune, the Baths of Agrippa, the
Pantheon, the Diribitorium, the theatre of Balbus, the stage-building of
Pompey's theatre, the Octavian buildings together with their books, and
the temple of Capitoline Jupiter with its surrounding temples. Hence the
disaster seemed to be not of human but of divine contrivance. Any one can
estimate from the list of buildings that I have given, how many more must
have been destroyed. Titus, accordingly, sent two exconsuls to the
Campanians to supervise the founding of settlements and bestowed upon the
inhabitants money that came