Pompeii is a city in southern Italian peninsula (south of Capua and Neapolis) that stood until 79 A.D. when Mt. Vesuvius erupted and covered the city of ash and soot, killing many of its inhabitants.
History[]
Pompeii was founded by the Italian tribe of the Oscans as early as the Seventh Century BC. It had been briefly occupied by the Etruscans sometime in the Sixth Century BC. And subsequently by the Greeks of Cumae between 525 to 474 BC. It was then brought under the dominion of the Samnite League between the Fifth to Fourth centuries BC, until after the Samnite Wars when it became a Socium (client/allied state) of the Roman Republic. It was one of the few Campanian towns to remain faithful to the Republic during the Second Punic War. Although, it was one of the rebel states in Italy to attempt to breakaway from Rome during the Samnite War (91-88 BC) until its seige and capture by Sulla in 89 BC, after which, Sulla settled his veterans in the formerly ethnic Oscan city of Pompeii and it officially known as Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum.