Letter from Pompeii

Dear Tacitus, You ask me to write you about the death of my uncle Pliny the Elder so that you may leave an accurate account for posterity. I am grateful for the opportunity, though the memory is painful. On August 24th, my mother drew my uncle's attention to a cloud of unusual size and appearance. A cloud was rising whose appearance I cannot give you a more exact description of than by comparing it to a pine tree, for it shot up to a great height in the form of a trunk, which extended itself at the top into branches. My uncle, being a man of learning and curiosity, ordered a light vessel to be prepared. He offered to take me with him if I wished to accompany him, but I replied that I preferred to study. As he was leaving the house, he received a message from Rectina, whose villa lay at the foot of Vesuvius. She was terrified by the danger and begged him to rescue her. He changed his plans and what he had begun as a philosophical inquiry, he completed as a hero. He steered directly toward the danger while others fled. Ashes were falling, hotter and thicker as he approached. Then came pumice stones and burned and broken rocks. The helmsman advised turning back, but my uncle refused, saying 'Fortune favors the brave.' He reached Pompeii and tried to reassure his friends, but the buildings shook with earthquakes, and flames and sulfur filled the air. When morning came - or what should have been morning, for the sun was obscured - they found my uncle's body on the beach, apparently suffocated by the fumes. Thus perished a man who sought knowledge until the very end. I have set down these facts so that you may judge for yourself whether he was foolhardy or heroic. I believe he was both. Yours, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus