To understand the story of the Mountain, therefore, it is necessary for us to travel back in retrospect to ancient Roman days. In the first place, however, one word as to its present name that we use to-day, for all are familiar with Vesuvius, but comparatively few, until they visit Naples, have heard mention made of Monte Somma. The name of Vesuvius, then, though strictly applicable only to the volcanic and modern portion of the Mountain, is not a recent appellation; on the contrary, it is probably of far more ancient origin than _Mons Summanus_ by which the whole was known to the Romans. The point is by no means unimportant, for etymologists derive Vesuvius from the Syriac “Vo Seevev, the abode of flame,” thereby proving to us that whatever opinions may have been held as to the nature of the Mountain in the century preceding the Christian era, its volcanic nature must have been perfectly well understood by those who gave it this suggestive title in a more remote age. But the secret locked up in Mons Summanus was not altogether unsuspected by the Roman scientists. Strabo, the geographer, writing about thirty years before the birth of Christ, made a careful examination of the crest of Mons Summanus, then a saucer-shaped hollow surrounded by a steep rocky edge and occupied by a flat plain covered with cinders and void of grass, although the flanks of the Mountain were extraordinarily fertile. From what he saw during his visit, Strabo conjectured the Mountain to be an extinct volcano, in which surmise he was destined to be proved partly in the right and partly in the wrong; whilst Vitruvius, the famous architect of the Emperor Augustus, “who found Rome of brick and left it of marble,” as well as Tacitus the historian, shared the same opinion. About a century and a half before the first recorded eruption in 79, Mons Summanus figures prominently in Roman history as the scene of a curious incident during the Servile War, so that in the pages of the old chronicler Florus we obtain an interesting description—especially interesting because it was not given for scientific purposes—of the condition of the mountain top at that period. The brave gladiator Spartacus and his intrepid band of revolted slaves, seeking a place of safety from the pursuing Roman legions, not very wisely selected the top of this isolated peak, which, although affording a good position of defence and possessing a wide outlook over the Campanian plain, had only one narrow passage in its rocky rim to serve as entrance or outlet. Followed hither by the Roman forces and caught like rats in a trap, Spartacus and his men were doomed either to be reduced by starvation, or else to run the gauntlet of the sole narrow exit, which the Senate’s commander, Clodius Glabrus, was already guarding. The story of Spartacus’ escape from his terrible dilemma is told in the history of Florus, and repeated with further details by Plutarch in his Life of Crassus.