From deep in the earth come clues to mystery nearly 2,000 years old. They died instantly, victims of a volcano's wrath. But only now are we beginning to piece together the mosaic that tells of their tragic final hours. Pulsing with an electric energy uniquely its own, southern Italy is also the intimate companion of destruction and death. Active for 17,000 years, Mount Vesuvius erupted most recently in 1944, devastating two towns. Only a few miles from Vesuvius another town lives with yet a different threat. Here, the sea appears to be boiling, the earth regularly grumbles and groans and sulfuric gases choke the air. Vesuvius slumbers, one scientist wrote, but his heart is still awake. A microcosm of our eternal battle with forces we cannot tame, this is life in the shadow of Vesuvius Washed by the placid waters of the Bay of Naples, the region of Campania has long attracted poets and travelers, emperors and kings. Two thousand years ago writers described Campania as the most blest land, "the fairest of all regions, not only in Italy but in all the world," "a place where the summers are cool and winters warm and where the sea dies away gently as it kisses the shore." The climate and extraordinarily rich soil enabled farmers then, as now, to grow grapes, olives, and up to four seed crops a year. But 2,000 years ago few understood that the richness of the soil was a gift from the mountain in their midst that the mountain was in fact a volcano.