e streets, "Vesuvius is on fire!"

On the instant, the Pompeians, terrified, bewildered, rush from the
amphitheatre, happy in finding so many places of exit through which they
can pour forth without crushing each other, and the open gates of the
city only a short distance beyond. However, after the first explosion,
after the deluge of ashes, comes the deluge of fire, or light stones,
all ablaze, driven by the wind--one might call it a burning
snow--descending slowly, inexorably, fatally, without cessation or
intermission, with pitiless persistence. This solid flame blocks up the
streets, piles itself in heaps on the roofs and breaks through into the
houses with the crashing tiles and the blazing rafters. The fire thus
tumbles in from story to story, upon the pavement of the courts, where,
accumulating like earth thrown in to fill a trench, it receives fresh
fuel from the red and fiery flakes that slowly, fatally, keep showering
down, falling, falling, without respite.

The inhabitants flee in every direction; the strong, the youthful, those
who care only for their lives, escape. The amphitheatre is emptied in
the twinkling of an eye and none remain in it but the dead gladiators.
But woe to those who have sought shelter in the shops, under the arcades
of the theatre, or in underground retreats. The ashes surround and
stifle them! Woe, above all, to those whom avarice or cupidity hold
back; to the wife of Proculus, to the favorite of Sallust, to the
daughters of the house of the Poet who have tarried to gather up their
jewels! They will fall suffocated among these trinkets, which, scattered
around them, will reveal their vanity and the last trivial cares that
then beset them, to after ages. A woman in the atrium attached to the
house of the Faun ran wildly as chance directed, laden with jewelry;
unable any longer to get breath, she had sought refuge in the tablinum,
and there strove in vain to hold up, with her outstretched arms, the
ceiling crumbling in upon her. She was crushed to death, and her head
was missing when they found her.

In the Street of the Tombs, a dense crowd must have jostled each other,
some rushing in from, the country to seek safety in the city, and others
flying from the burning houses in quest of deliverance under the open
sky. One of them fell forward with his feet turned toward the
Herculaneum gate; another on his back, with his arms uplifted. He bore
in his hands one hundred and twenty-seven s