Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus called Pliny the Elder was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia (Natural History), which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field.

Pliny, who had been appointed praefectus classis in the Roman navy by Vespasian, was stationed with the fleet at Misenum at the time of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. He organized and led a rescue mission upon receiving a message from his friend Rectina, who had been left stranded in Stabiae during the eruption. Pliny boarded one of several galleys that he dispatched across the Gulf of Naples to Stabiae.

As Pliny's vessel approached the shore near Herculaneum, cinders and pumice began to fall on it. The helmsman advised turning back, to which Pliny replied, "Fortune favours the bold; steer to where Pomponianus is." Upon reaching Stabiae, they found Senator Pomponianus, but the same winds that brought them there prevented them from leaving. The group waited for the wind to abate, but they decided to leave later that evening for fear their houses would collapse. The group fled when a plume of hot toxic gases engulfed them. Pliny, a corpulent man who suffered from a chronic respiratory condition, possibly asthma, died from asphyxiation caused by the toxic gases, and was left behind. Upon the group's return three days later after the plume had dispersed, Pliny's body was found, with no apparent external injuries.

Twenty-seven years later, upon a request from Tacitus, Pliny the Younger provided an account (obtained from the survivors from Stabiae) of his uncle's death.

Suetonius wrote that Pliny approached the shore only from scientific interest and then asked a slave to kill him to avoid heat from the volcano. In 1859, Jacob Bigelow, after summarizing the information about Pliny's death contained in Pliny the Younger's letter to Tacitus, concluded that Pliny had died from apoplexy (stroke) or heart disease.

In 1967, science historian Conway Zirkle similarly stated that "there is widespread and persisting misinformation" about Pliny's death. He suggested that despite his rescue attempt, Pliny never came within miles of Mount Vesuvius and no evidence has been found that shows he died from breathing in fumes, and like Bigelow, concluded that he died of a heart attack.