Misenumancient ok hb 6/8/07ancient port of Campania, Italy,
located about 3 miles (5 km) south of Baiae at the west end of
the Gulf of Puteoli (Pozzuoli). Virgil in the Aeneid says the
town was named after Aeneas’s trumpeter, Misenus, who was buried
there. Until the end of the Roman Republic it was a favourite
villa resort dependent on Cumae. Agrippa made the fine natural
harbour into the main naval station of the Mediterranean fleet
(31 BC). Pliny the Younger was stationed in Misenum, from which
he witnessed (and wrote about) the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in
AD 79. In 890 it Elder commanded the fleet there in AD 79 and
died trying to rescue those fleeing the eruption of the nearby
volcano Vesuvius. His nephew and adopted son, Pliny the Younger,
described the event in two letters to the historian Tacitus. In
890 Misenum was destroyed by the Saracens.