When, in 73 B.C., Spartacus, with seventy of his comrades, broke the fetters of an insupportable slavery, he found a secure retreat in this natural stronghold, which could only be scaled by a single narrow and difficult path. By degrees 10,000 fugitive slaves gathered round his standard, and Rome began to tremble for her safety. The prætor Clodius led an army against the rebels, and surrounded the mountain; but Spartacus caused ropes to be made of the branches of wild vines, by means of which he, with the boldest of his followers, was let down from the rocks, where they were supposed to be totally inaccessible, and, falling unawares upon the prætor, put his troops to flight and took his camp. The declivities of the mountain, thus become historically renowned, were covered with the richest fields and vineyards, and at its foot, along the beautiful Bay of Naples, lay the flourishing towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii, the seats of luxury and refinement. Who could, then, have imagined that this charming scene was so soon to be disturbed in so terrible a manner, and that the time was nigh when the ancient volcanic channels, from which, in unknown ages, lava-streams and ashes had so frequently broken forth, were once more to be re-opened? The first sign which announced the awakening energies of the volcano was an earthquake, which, in 63 A.D. devastated the fertile regions of Campania. From that time to the crowning disaster of 79, slight tremors of the earth frequently occurred, until, finally, the dreadful eruption took place which Pliny the Younger so vividly describes in his celebrated letter to Tacitus. ‘My uncle,’ says the Roman, ‘was at Misenum, where he commanded the fleet. On the 23rd of August, about one o’clock in the afternoon, my mother informed him that a cloud of an uncommon size and form was seen to arise. He had sunned himself (according to the custom of the ancient Romans), and taken his usual cold bath, then dined, and studied. He asked for his sandals, and ascended an eminence, from which the wonderful phenomenon could be plainly seen. The spot from whence the cloud ascended, in a shape like that of an Italian pine-tree, could not be ascertained on account of the distance; its arising from Vesuvius only subsequently became known.