[Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, “Variae”, lib. IV, ep. 50, 537-540 AD.]
Written by Cassiodorus in the name of King Theodoric to the Praetorian Prefect Faustus.
The Campanians complain that their fields have been devastated by an eruption of Vesuvius, and ask in consequence for a remission of tribute.
Let your Greatness send men of proved integrity to the territories of Napoli and Nola, who may examine the ravaged lands for themselves, and proportion the relief granted, to the amount of damage done in each case.
That Province is visited at intervals by this terrible calamity, as if to mar its otherwise perfect happiness. There is one favourable feature in the visitation. It does not come wholly unawares. For some time before, the mountain groans with the strife of Nature going on inside it, and it seems as if an angry spirit within would terrify all the neighbourhood by his mighty roar. Then the air is darkened by its foul exhalations; hot ashes scudding along the sea, a shower of drops of dust upon the land, tell to all Italy, to the transmarine Provinces, to the world, from what calamity Campania is suffering.
Go nearer: you will see as it were rivers of dust flowing, and glowing streams of barren sand moving over the country. You see and wonder: the furrows of the fields are suddenly lifted to a level with the tops of the trees; the country, which but now was dressed in a robe of gladsome greenness, is laid waste by sudden and mournful heat. And yet, even those sandy tracts of pumice-stone which the mountain vomits forth, dry and burnt up as they appear, have their promise of fertility. There are germs within them which will one day spring to life, and re-clothe the mountain side which they have wasted.
How strange that one mountain alone should thus terrify the whole world! Other mountains may be seen with silently glowing summits; this alone announces itself to distant lands by darkened skies and changed air. So it still goes on, shedding its dusty dews over the land; ever parting with its substance, yet a mountain still undiminished in height and amplitude. Who that sees those mighty blocks in the plain would believe that they had boiled over from the depths of that distant hill, that they had been tossed like straws upon the wind by the angry spirit of the mountain?
Therefore let your Prudence so manage the enquiry that those who have really suffered damage shall be relieved, while no room is left for fraud.
