Furthermore, nature had been more than generous with her warning signs. Clearly, disaster was imminent. A great earthquake had rattled the area seventeen years before. Houses and temples collapsed. Statues toppled from their pedestals.
People lay buried beneath the rubble.
The damage was so great that the Emperor Nero wondered out loud if Pompeiians should just abandon the place and be done with it. But the people of Pompeii were stubborn and proud. But it was a long process. Damage from the AD 62 was still visible when Vesuvius blew its top seventeen years later. And there were other, more recent and telling signs of the coming disaster.