Did anyone survive Pompeii?

It’s arguably the most famous volcano eruption in history: Mount Vesuvius buried the city of Pompeii under an avalanche of volcanic debris in A.D. 79. Though historians still argue over the exact date of the eruption, it has been traditionally identified as August 24.

Much has been made of Vesuvius’s victims, whose final death throes were preserved first in ash, and then in plaster casts created in the 19th century.

But even though Pompeii is remembered as a city frozen in time, not everyone died in the disaster. In fact, scholars have found evidence that survivors made it out of Pompeii––and rebuilt their lives in neighboring communities.

A city on the eve of destruction

Pompeii may not have been the center of the ancient Roman world, but it was nonetheless an important hub in Campania, a region bordering the Bay of Naples. Pompeii’s population was somewhere between 6,400 and 30,000 people. It also attracted ancient elites, who bought up property in the surrounding area.

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Earthquakes were a part of life in Campania. In fact, in A.D. 79, Pompeii was still rebuilding from a powerful earthquake that had rocked the city 17 years earlier, damaging or destroying many buildings.

So when the ground rumbled with a string of quakes in late August, it was not an immediate cause for alarm for most people.

On August 24, however, it became clear Vesuvius was stirring.

Escaping the disaster

Pliny the Younger, whose writings are windows into life in the ancient Roman world, was around 18 at the time of the disaster. He was with his mother at his uncle’s villa in Misenum, a town across the bay from Pompeii and 18 miles west of Mount Vesuvius.

When the eruption began on August 24, Pliny recalled seeing a cloud of gas and debris spewing from Vesuvius. He likened the curious plume to “a pine-tree.”

People in Pompeii, six miles from the volcano, would have seen the same strange, unsettling cloud. If they had largely dismissed the tremors in the previous days, they could not ignore the plume. The ones who immediately fled Pompeii at this point still had a chance of survival; the ones who hesitated or remained behind didn’t.

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By the afternoon, pumice stones began raining down on Pompeii. They destroyed buildings and battered anyone trying to make a last-minute escape. Ash, toxic gas, and debris buried Pompeii early the next day.

Pliny and his mother were among those around the Bay of Naples who ran. He recalled that, as darkness and ash settled on the survivors, chaos reigned.

“You might hear the shrieks of women, the screams of children, and the shouts of men; calling for their children, others for their parents, others for their husbands, seeking to recognize each other by the voices that replied.”

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The scene was likely similar to what people racing from Pompeii experienced.

After the volcano finally quieted, Pliny and his mother returned to Misenum. They were lucky. For Pompeii’s survivors, there would be no home to which they could return.

Following the trail of survivors

An estimated 2,000 people in Pompeii died during the eruption. That means thousands more may have survived. Where did they go?

The obvious destination for Pompeii’s survivors included towns and cities around Campania, where friends and family may have offered shelter.

Neapolis, or modern-day Naples, was likely one of them. One piece of evidence for that is an ancient memorial altar in modern-day Romania that honors fallen soldiers. It includes a military officer, whose name has been lost, and identifies him as having lived in Pompeii and Neapolis, suggesting that he moved to the city after the disaster.

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In recent years, classics scholar Steven L. Tuck discovered that at least five families from Pompeii relocated to Neapolis after the eruption. He painstakingly traced the migration of likely survivors through their family names, which were unique to Pompeii. He located these names on tomb inscriptions in places around Campania after A.D. 79. Other communities that became home to Pompeii’s survivors included Cumae and Puteoli.

Tuck also found evidence that otherwise unrelated families from Pompeii intermarried after the eruption. The Licinii and Lucretii families, for instance, seem to have joined in marriage in Cumae, suggesting that they may have been part of a Pompeian community there.

Disaster relief

The Roman government also seems to have stepped in to provide support for Pompeii’s survivors.

Titus, emperor from A.D. 79 to 81, sprang into action after news of Vesuvius’s eruption reached Rome. According to ancient biographer Suetonius, Titus “displayed not merely the concern of an emperor but also the deep love of a father, whether by offering messages of sympathy or by giving all the financial help he could.”

Tuck also argued that Titus supported building projects to accommodate the influx of Pompeii’s survivors throughout Campania. Among the projects: the construction of temples devoted to the gods that many in Pompeii preferred to worship, like Vulcan and Isis.

The fire of Vesuvius may have ended the life they knew, but Pompeii’s survivors found ways to rebuild in the wake of disaster.

(This Explorer employs modern tech to answer ancient questions at Pompeii.)