force of which decreased as it advanced upwards, or
the cloud itself being pressed back again by its own weight, expanded in
this manner; it appeared sometimes bright, and sometimes dark and spotted,
as it was more or less impregnated with earth and cinders. This
extraordinary phenomenon excited my uncle's philosophical curiosity to
take a nearer view of it." The nephew then proceeds to relate how his
uncle sailed by way of Retina, the port of Herculaneum, to Stabiae, where
he met with his second in command, one Pomponianus. Meanwhile the Younger
Pliny, who had declined to accompany his uncle's expedition on the plea of
having to pursue the studies with which as a hard-working youth of
seventeen he was evidently engrossed, became alarmed during the night for
the Elder Pliny's safety. His own and his mother's terrible experiences
are vividly portrayed in the second letter, which, at the historian's
special request, the Younger Pliny wrote to Tacitus in later years.

"When my uncle had started, I spent such time as was left on my studies--it
was on their account, indeed, that I had stopped behind. Then followed the
bath, dinner and sleep, this last disturbed and brief. There had been
noticed for many days before a trembling of the earth, which had caused,
however, but little fear, because it is not unusual in Campania. But that
night it was so violent, that one thought everything was being not merely
moved, but absolutely overturned. My mother rushed into my chamber; I was
in the act of rising, with the same intention of awaking her, should she
have been asleep. We sat down in the open court of the house, which
occupied a small space between the buildings and the sea. And now--I do not
know whether to call it courage or folly, for I was but in my eighteenth
year--I called for a volume of Livy, read it as if I were perfectly at
leisure, and even continued to make some extracts which I had begun. Just
then arrived a friend of my uncle, who had lately come to him from Spain;
when he saw that we were sitting down--that I was even reading--he rebuked
my mother for her patience, and me for my blindness to the danger. Still I
bent myself as industriously as ever over my book. It was now seven
o'clock in the morning, but the daylight was still faint and doubtful. The
surrounding buildings were now so shattered, that in the place where we
were, which though open was small, the danger that they might fall on us
was imminent and unmi