Rob: Hello and welcome back to the Roman Mythology Podcasts where we discuss great stories from -you guessed it- Roman Mythology! I'm Rob!
Jamie: and I'm Jamie.
Rob: This week, we'll be discussing the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Jamie: I've heard of it, yes.
Rob: Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD during the Reign of Emperor Titus. It very famously covered Pompeii and Herculeum in a large layer of ash, preserving a snapshot of Roman life and killing thousands of people. Now, one of the most interesting things about Mount Vesuvius is the myth of Perseus Fillius Neptunus. The Historian Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, also known as Pliny the Younger writes about this.
Jamie: Another Gaius? It seems like a third of Rome is called Gaius.
Rob: Yeah, it does seem like Rome only had about ten total names for men and like two for woman. They really need to get more creative. Anyway, Pliny the Younger was actually near Mount Vesuvius when it erupted, so we have a first-person account.
Jamie: Great!
Rob: Unfortunately, for reasons that will become clear quite soon, modern historians strongly question the reliability of Pliny the Younger's account of Perseus Neptunus. Modern historians see this as an attempt to glorify his friend.
Jamie: Unreliable History. My favorite.
Rob: Pliny the younger writes about his account watching the volcano erupt. His uncle goes off with a fleet of ships to the coast near Pompeii. Unfortunately, his uncle dies of either of a heart attack or from inhaling poisonous volcano fumes while he's trying to rescue people.
Jamie: Note to self: do not walk toward an exploding volcano. Got it.
Rob: Pliny the younger goes on to account what it was like fleeing the volcano. It was raining ash, the sky was black, rocks falling from the sky and killing people. He thought the world was ending and was resigned to death. It's quite a chilling read.
Jamie: Fun.
Rob: Then the group of refugees he was traveling with find a young man half-buried in a clump of burning ash and lava.
Jamie: A very crispy man, I assume.
Rob: No, he was completely unburnt.
Jamie: Right. In lava, you said?
Rob: Yup. Pliny writes about how this was the birth of Perseus Filllius Neptunus, the son of Neptune! The Roman god of the seas and earthquakes! Several years before the explosion of Mount Vesuvius, there had been an earthquake that knocked down a few buildings in Pompeii. We know this because there is archeological evidence of the building being rebuilt and repaired. The myth says that this was when Neptune impregnates the volcano. Perseus was then born fully formed during the explosion of Mount Vesuvius several years later in order to teach the Roman people about ship building.
Jamie: What? He's the god of… shipbuilding? And he exploded from a volcano? Not the god of volcanos?
Rob: The shipbuilding part will make sense in a minute. Plinius the Younger writes to his friend the historian Tacitus. In the letters he writes about how Perseus can breathe underwater, control ships with his mind, calm the seas, control all nearby water, engulf people in the ocean without letting them drown, summon storms, have a godly understanding of shipbuilding and is also pretty good at catching crabs.
Jamie: I feel like one of those things is less impressive than the other things.
Rob: I don't know what you mean. "Pretty good at catching crabs" is clearly a power only demi-gods possess.
Jamie: Clearly.
Rob: Pliny the Younger describes how Perseus is immensely powerful but also clearly a newborn with very little understanding of the world. He doesn't understand how coins work and is terrible at social etiquette. He doesn't speak Latin but does speak Greek and "the language of the gods"- AKA gibberish. Perseus also doesn't know much about the mortal world, and cries when he's sad, a thing that adult Roman men were not supposed to do.
Jamie: Sounds like a Greek boy with a concussion.
Rob: Pliny assures us that Perseus is a demi-god.
Jamie: Right. Of course.
Rob: Anyway, in the time that Perseus walked among the Romans he creates blueprints for large ships that would be able to sail in harsh winds and stormy waves. A relevant note that I should mention here is that modern historians think that much of the Roman Navy would not have been able to get to the shores of Pompeii or Herculaneum because the volcano caused such strong winds and violent waves that the boats couldn't get close without crashing the into the harbor. Many people died at the harbors, waiting for the winds to get better so they could get on the ships.
Jamie: Sounds like strong motivation for someone to want to build better ships.
Rob: Perseus was a friend of Pliny the Younger. He stayed with Pliny the Younger's family in Rome for a while. Pliny was from an equestrian family so they were well off and had guest rooms. Perseus then spent half a year making detailed drawings and wooden ship models.
Jamie: Nice. Who doesn't love a good model ship hobby to get over the traumatizing loss of your entire family?
Rob: During this time, Emperor Titus finishing building the Colosseum and holds 100 days of games to celebrate. On the last week of the games, the colosseum is flooded.
Jamie: It's flooded? On purpose?
Rob: Yeah! Archeologists have actually found evidence of this. They would fill it from a nearby aqueduct and hold mock naval battles. But this is Rome so they did mock battles with actual small ships manned by prisoners and many people actually died.
Jamie: Good old Rome. Can't have a celebration without some public murder.
Rob: On this day, however, they don't do a mock naval battle or public murder and instead Perseus displays his model ships. They're good models- they float, turn and sail with the wind and everything. Then Perseus uses his godly powers to create harsh winds and high waves, showing how the models from the current Roman Naval ships are destroyed while Perseus' models don't sink and can withstand waves and storms much better. Tacitus writes how Perseus "summoned a violent storm directly above the colosseum for the purposes of this display, but the storm did not harm a single person inside the colosseum".
Jamie: So, it happened to rain that day.
Rob: Yeah, pretty much.
Jamie: Do you think he put holes in the ships he didn't like. "Behold the sinking ships! Those ships are just terrible, unlike MY ships!"
Rob: "What about the giant hole in the hull of that model there, sir?"
Jamie: "What giant hole in the hull? I don't see any."
Rob: "The giant hole right there, it looks like a square was sawed out of…"
Jamie: "Shut up before I use my godly powers of crab fishing to kill you and your children."
Rob: "Hahaha. Yes. Clearly your ships are superior."
Jamie: This is also not the first time you've told me about it raining and the Romans attributing that to the Gods.
Rob: It's happened more than once. Apparently, Romans were fairly superstitious about rain. The Roman people and Emperor Titus are so amazed by the model boats- and the rain, presumably – that they order the ships Perseus designed be built. Perseus is seen as a Demigod. Then he dies.
Jamie: Oh. That was sudden.
Rob: Yup! He dies almost exactly one year after the explosion on Mount Vesuvius. He was still only a teenager. His exact age is hard to verify. There are four theories about how he dies.
Jamie: I love multiple choice deaths.
Rob: Option 1: Perseus has completed his quest and willingly returns to his father's kingdom under the sea, taking his place among the gods. This is the option that the Romans believed.
Jamie: Hmm… Right.
Rob: Option 2: He drowns. He goes for a swim one day while he was overseeing the building of the ships and drowns.
Jamie: Maybe he was trying to catch crabs. I've been told he was pretty good at that.
Rob: Option 3: Emperor Titus murders him because Titus is afraid of how popular Perseus has gotten with the people. Titus has him quietly assassinated by the Praetorian Prefect, Tiberius Julius Alexander.
Jamie: Oh wow! Very dramatic, but I can see the logic behind that. Perseus is seen as a demi-god and that can be dangerous to Titus who doesn't want any threats to his rule.
Rob: There is evidence that Titus and Perseus both went back to Pompeii on the one-year anniversary of the explosion and that could have been the moment Titus had Perseus killed. It's relevant to note that Titus's father became emperor after a civil war, so Titus was not part of a long-established dynasty and was likely very sensitive to potential usurpers. Titus also dies only a few months after the death of Perseus so some contemporary Romans claim that was the god's way of getting revenge for the murder.
Option 4 is very similar, but just replace Titus with his brother Domitian. Titus was quite a popular emperor while Domitian was not well liked by the senate- and since the senate wrote the histories Domitian was seen quite negatively for a long time. Domitian was also rumored to have poisoned Titus, so Domitian may have been getting rid of any competition by killing Perseus first. It was rumored that Titus might have been planning to marry Perseus to his daughter and name the demigod as his heir. Domitian didn't want that, so he killed them both and became emperor.
However, other people point out that the ships Perseus was in charge of building weren't finished yet. If you were going to assassinate a genius ship builder, wouldn't you wait until after the ships were built? Which option do you think is most likely?
Jamie: The assassination one is very tempting- very dramatic. However, I think that the drowning one might be more realistic. History can sometimes be surprisingly mundane. You mentioned he went swimming a lot, right? Maybe he was out catching crabs and got caught in a riptide.
Rob: Maybe if his godly powers had been 'being very good at catching crabs' instead of just 'pretty good' at it, he wouldn't have died.
Jamie: It's really quite a sad story. A teenager who loses his family in a natural disaster because the ships couldn't sail in a violent volcano-induced storm designs ships that can sail in storms but drowns before seeing them fully built. Then his friend the historian writes about him as if he was a demi-god so people would remember him and worship him.
Rob: That is quite bittersweet. We do still have statues of Perseus Fillius Neptunus, also known as Perseus the ship-builder, so we know what he looked like. They built fountains of him in Rome and a statue of him in the central square of a small coastal city called Gaeta, which he apparently visited. We also know the ship designs he came up with made Rome a naval superpower and led directly to Rome's golden age in the second century. Without Perseus, Rome may never have been the Naval superpower that it became.
Jamie: It's a wonderfully dramatic story. I can imagine an event as devastating as the eruption of Mount Vesuvius leading to stories about the gods.
Rob: Here are some pictures of his statues. You can see him stepping out of a volcano holding a model ship with a feather in his hair.
Jamie: Oh, I think I've seen these before. Perseus looks so young!
Rob: He was only around 15, or a newborn demigod baby, depending on what you believe. So, final thoughts?
Jamie: I think it's a very cool myth. You can understand how something as epic as a volcanic explosion combined with the start of Rome's legendary navy and a tragic early death can merge to make a myth about a demigod being born from a volcano and granting Rome this great gift.
Rob: It's certainly a story worth discussing on a Roman History Podcast. Until Next week everybody!
Jamie: Remember everyone, if you know someone who is pretty good at catching crabs, they are definitely a demigod. Good bye!
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Author's Note:
This is a bit of a weird chapter. I'm trying a different format as a way of foreshadowing! Let me know if this works as or if it takes away from the story.
Percy will be in Rome for only one year, then he will disappear from history! What are your theories?
Also, if anyone if interested in a hilarious review of the history of the Roman Emperors, I would recommend listening to the podcast Totalus Rankium. It is absolutely ridiculous. I've been having a great time.