When a small inscription tells the story. A graffiti found on a wall of Pompeii, one of the most visited tourist sites in Italy, seems to confirm that the roman city was buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in October 79 and not in August, reported on Tuesday the Italian media.
According to the director of the excavations at Pompeii, Massimo Osanna, the inscription traced by a worker in a villa includes the date “16th day before the kalends of November, corresponding to the 17 October”. The date known so far, August 24, 79, was from a text of Pliny the Younger, in which he recounts the disaster to the historian Tacitus, explains The World. Several items found on site grew, however, to the question.
autumn fruits found
“in The 19th century, the discovery of traces of branches containing fruits of autumn, and pomegranates and braziers” would suggest to a eruption occurred not in the summer, but the fall, said Massimo Osanna. Being questioned by The World, the director of research emeritus at CNRS Alix Barbet abounds and evokes, among these autumn fruits, “nuts, figs, chestnuts, prunes, pomegranates and even sorbed harvest is not yet ripe between September and October”.
“today, with great humility, maybe we let’s rewrite the history books because we date the eruption to the second half of October,” commented the Italian minister of Culture, Alberto Bonisoli, on-site visit Tuesday. Italian Site the most visited after the Colosseum in Rome, Pompeii has hosted a record 3.4 million tourists in 2017 and nearly 3 million only for the first eight months of 2018.
