VESTRIS, LUCIA ELIZABETH English actress, was born in London in Jan. I 797, the daughter of Gaetano Stefano Bartolozzi (1757-1821) and granddaughter of Francesco Bartolozzi, the engraver. In 1813 she married Auguste Armand Vestris, who deserted her four years later. Madame Vestris had made her first appearance in Italian opera in the title-role of Peter Winter's 11 ratto di Proserpina at the King's theatre in 1815. She had an immediate success in both London and Paris, where she played Camille to Talma's Horace in Horace. Her first hit in English was at Drury Lane in James Cobb's (1756 1818) Siege of Belgrade (1820). She was particularly a favourite in "breeches parts," like Cherubino in the Marriage of Figaro, and in Don Giovanni. In 1831 she became lessee of the Olympic theatre, and began the presentation of a series of burlesques and extravaganzas for which she made this house famous. She mar ried Charles James Mathews (q.v.) in 1838, accompanying him to America and aiding him in his subsequent managerial ventures. She died in London on Aug. 8, 1856.
See C. E. Pearce, Madame Vestris and her Times (1923). VESUVIUS, a volcano rising from the eastern margin of the Bay of Naples in Italy, about 7 m. E.S.E. of Naples. The height of the mountain varies from time to time within limits of several hundred feet, but averages about 4,000 ft. above sea level (in June 1900, 4,275 ft., but after the eruption of 1906 3,668 ft.). Vesuvius consists of two distinct portions. On the northern side a lofty semicircular cliff, reaching a height of ft., half encircles the present active cone, and descends in long slopes to the plains. This precipice, Monte Somma, forms the wall of a vastly greater prehistoric crater.
At the beginning of the Christian era, and for many previous centuries, no eruption had been known. Strabo, however, detected the probable volcanic origin of the cone and drew attention to its fire-eaten rocks. The sides of the mountain were richly cultivated, as they are still, the vineyards being of extraordinary fertility. Pompeian wine jars are frequently marked with the name Vesu vinum (vinum). (The wine is now known as Lacrima Christi.)
On the barren summit lay a wide flat depression, walled by rugged rock festooned with wild vines. The present crater-wall of Monte Somma is doubtless a relic of that time. It was in this lofty rock-girt hollow that the gladiator Spartacus was besieged by the praetor Claudius Pulcher (73 B.c.) : he escaped by twisting ropes of vine branches and descending through unguarded fissures in the crater-rim. A painting discovered when excavating in Pompeii in 1879 represents Vesuvius before the eruption (Notizie degli scavi, 188o, pl. vii.).
After centuries of quiescence the volcanic energy began again to manifest itself in a succession of earthquakes, which spread alarm through Campania. For some sixteen years after 63 these convulsions did much damage to the surrounding towns. On Aug. 24, 79, the earthquakes, which had been growing more violent, culminated in a tremendous explosion of Vesuvius. A contempo rary account of this event has been preserved in two letters of the younger Pliny (Epist. vi. 16, 20) to the historian Tacitus. He was staying at Misenum with his uncle, the elder Pliny, who was in command of the fleet. The latter set out on the afternoon of the 24th to attempt to rescue people at Herculaneum, but came too late, and went to Stabiae, where he spent the night, and died the following morning, suffocated by the poisonous fumes. Three towns are known to have been destroyed—Herculaneum at the western base of the volcano, Pompeii on the south-east side, and Stabiae, which was situated farther south on the site of the mod ern Castellamare.
For nearly fifteen hundred years after the catastrophe of 79 Vesuvius remained in a condition of less activity. Occasional eruptions are mentioned, in A.D. 202, 472, 512, 993, 1036, 1049, 1139. At length, of ter a series of earthquakes lasting for six months and gradually increasing in violence, the volcano burst into renewed paroxysmal activity on Dec. 16, 1631. Though the inhabitants had been warned by the earlier convulsions of the mountain, so swiftly did destruction come upon them that 18,000 are said to have lost their lives.