Herculaneum
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Herculaneum. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
her-ku-la-ne-um, an ancient Roman city. It was situated six miles southeast of Naples at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. In the day of its prosperity it was a fortified city of wealth and influence. In 63 A. D. it suffered from an earthquake shock. In the terrific eruption of 79 A. D. cinders and lava covered it to a depth of from 75 to 120 feet. In an hour, one might say, the city disappeared from view. Though excellent descriptions remained the volcanic outflow covered so extensive a territory that no one knew just where to look for Herculaneum. The city lay undisturbed for seventeen centuries. Modern villages and vineyards were above it. In 1709 a villager sinking his well brought to light sculptures and marble facings. In 1738 the well was dug deeper, when it was discovered that it had penetrated the ancient theater. Though little was done immediately, public interest was aroused. Victor Emmanuel caused extensive excavations to be made with astonishing results. The accounts of the former magnificence of the city have been fully sustained. The theater mentioned was found to be a magnificent edifice of solid marble, with eighteen rows of seats, capable of seating 8,000 people. The galleries were run into the ancient streets, and doors that had been closed for eighteen centuries were reopened. Coins, jewelry, statues, paintings, libraries of old papyrus, beautiful mosaics, articles of furniture, vases, glass, and terra cotta ware were brought out in a wonderfully perfect state of preservation and deposited in the neighboring museum of Naples. A number of noted statues were recovered, as well as busts of Plato, Demosthenes, Seneca, Augustus, and Scipio Africanus. Among the villas of wealthy owners was one in which a provision room contained dried figs, almonds, dates, chestnuts, walnuts, prunes, corn, olive oil, peas, hams, and even pies, that had been sealed up here under volcanic ash for nearly 1,800 years. Very few skeletons have been found either in the streets or houses, from which it is thought that the inhabitants must have had sufficient warning to escape. Two skeletons were found near the door of a rich villa. Whether they were the owners, or servants, or robbers, can never be known. One held a key in one hand and a bag of coins and jewelry in the other. Silver and bronze vessels lay in a heap at their feet. The rolls of papyrus mentioned are, for the most part, too brittle to be unrolled without falling into powder, but many of them have been softened, spread out and deciphered. A number of fragments of Latin classics, supposed to be lost, have been recovered in this way to the great joy of students. See Pompeii ; Vesuvius ; Volcano ; Sicily; Etna
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
an ancient city about 5 miles from Naples, completely buried with Pompeii by lava and ashes during an eruption of Vesuvius in the reign of Titus, A. D. 79.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 account reports that "very few skeletons have been found," concluding the townspeople had "sufficient warning to escape." That belief collapsed from 1980, when excavation of the arched boat chambers on the buried ancient shoreline began turning up the huddled remains of some three hundred people who had fled to the shore and died there; the material that killed them is now understood not as the slow "cinders and lava" of the old entry but as pyroclastic surges of gas and ash hot enough to kill in moments. The carbonised papyri that Aiton says were "too brittle to be unrolled" are now being read without unrolling at all, by X-ray scanning and computer analysis of the Villa of the Papyri scrolls, which produced its first legible passages of Greek text in 2023. The site was named a UNESCO World Heritage property, together with Pompeii and Torre Annunziata, in 1997, and much of the town, including the suspected library of the Villa of the Papyri, remains unexcavated beneath the modern town of Ercolano.
Written for this edition, 2026.