@Gizmodo @science-Gizmodo
@ai6yr

Why is this debate framed as "new"?? It's not new at all!

It might also have been helpful to tell readers where the August date comes from: It's from the famous letter of Pliny the Younger who witnessed the famous eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.

BUT, we don't have his original letter. His letter - like almost all written texts from antiquity - is preserved because it was copied later, especially in the Middle Ages (mostly by monks). And they made mistakes while copying. So one theory goes: What if a monk made a mistake (only several letters) and originally the letter mentioned a date in autumn?

But I guess we will get texts that claim "New developments! Was the 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius really in August?" for the next decades. Like we did in the last decades.

#Vesuvius #Pompeii #Pliny

@fmhilton

There's important context missing in this article. It wasn't Pliny the Younger himself who was "accused" of getting the date of Vesuvius' eruption wrong - after all, he was close and his uncle died.
However, we don't have his original letters. Like other texts from antiquity, it was preserved because it was copied over centuries.
And when people copy texts, they make mistakes. Often, editors of ancient texts have to work with several medieval manuscripts that differ in several ways and must then decide on a version they think is closest to the original text, which is then published.
In the case of this famous letter, the text edition said "nonum kal. septembres" (nine days before the Kalendae of September = August 24th) but when archaeological findings gave hints on a later date, classics researchers started to wonder whether someone in the Middle Ages had made a copying mistakes - after all, that mistake would only need 3-4 letters to be different (for instance, december instead of september). That's where this theory comes from. Researches have always assumed that Pliny himself knew the correct date, for obvious reasons.

#Pliny #Pompeii #Vesuvius