Someone has annoyed God :-)

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But this does seems to have a big impact: If we can trust the accounts of Tactius and Suetonius Rome was never more morally corrupt than under the reign of Tiberius, Gaius (Caligula) and Nero, but it was also the time when Rome was on the high of its power. You may say that Rome's Empire ended, but it ended not as a pagan empire, but as a Christian one. When the last Emperor, Romulus Augustus, of West-Rome was forced to resign in 476, Rome was since more than 140 years Christian.

And our human time scale is very short: The few 1000s years of written history do not give a picture about the activities of the earth - how quickly a "dead volcano" can become a "deadly volcano" can be seen in Pompeii.

I KNEW you wouldn't let that one go.

More pedantry, quick!

Vesuvius last erupted during WW2. This eruption was nowhere as disastrous as the Biggy of 79 A.D. The next Big One will probably kill several hundred thousand people. Naples cannot be evacuated at short notice. My take is there is no such thing a a truly "extinct' volcano. As long as there is a path for magma from below the mantle a volcano can blow or belch.

ruveyn

I just like have look into the facts. Suetonius describes in his account about Julius Caesar that Caesar had a "libertine" idea about sexual relations: "Every woman's man and every man's woman" (Lib. I, LII, but more in detail Lib. I: II, XLIX-LIII) -something which would be in line some of the political poems of Catulus; and that Caesar stole from public accounts and took bribes.

This is something, which may call "Depravity", but he was also the man how stabilized Rome after more than century of class wars and enabled Rome to govern an Empire.

You see: Thinks are not always that simple.

You cannot possibly be serious, if you were writing this in the time of the biblical plagues I could understand your superstition, but now!! !, has the last 2500 years meant nothing, are you really disregarding all that knowledge and reverting to 'ooops we made the gods angry best sacrifice 5 cows and a goat'

With effort and creativity, things can always be made more complicated.

Some regions are in danger, even they are regarded since millennia as "safe". Recent research showed that the Eifel-region in very west of Germany is still active volcanic region with acute melting processes, filling the magma chamber below again. The most recent eruption is 8'000 years ago. The consequences of an eruption near a highly populated area like the Rhine region are hard to image.

It is difficult to decide who is sillier in this discussion. The believers in facts and validated phenomena are thoroughly convinced that forces exist such as gravity and electromagnetic forces and sub-atomic forces and their continuous interaction determines the course of events. Those of faith are secure in their belief that there exists at least one superior being that has merely to twitch an eyebrow to reconfigure the relationships of atmospheric highs and lows, to shift in any way imaginable tectonic plates to cause geysers or earthquakes or tsunamis whenever a misguided little boy is masturbating in an isolated field or a group of drunks goes a bit wild or a married man becomes so enchanted by some interesting woman not his wife that they indulge in reproductive procedures. Selected humans can walk on water or produce fishes without fishing or loaves of bread without baking. It is a world of mystery and magic and they are delighted with it and cannot be argued out of it by people who believe in what they think is reality.In other situations these gullible individuals go to fortune tellers or astrologists or politicians who promise them to make the world a better place merely by the force of will. They believe that magicians really can read minds and pull various livestock from their clothing. You cannot convince them they are being scammed because they delight in being scammed. Why bother?