Description
Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. burying Pompeii and Herculaneum in volcanic ash and rock. It would be hundreds of years before any systematic uncovering of the cities would commence. Frescoes, statues and other museum artifacts would begin to give us some sense of what Roman life was like there. Then, in 1834, Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote a novel, The Last Days of Pompeii, that became a Victorian best-seller. Characters from the book were immortalized in art, particularly Nydia, a blind flower girl.
