and which included production and processing of agricultural products with wine and olive presses, threshing floors and storehouses, making the owners wealthy, considering the villas' thermal baths and frescoed rooms. Stabiae established itself as a luxury residential centre, so much so that Cicero wrote in a letter to his friend Marcus Marius Gratidianus: "For I doubt not that in that study of yours, from which you have opened a window into the Stabian waters of the bay, and obtained a view of Misenum, you have spent the morning hours of those days in light reading" The phenomenon of the construction of the luxury villas along the entire coast of the Gulf of Naples in this period was such that Strabo also wrote: "The whole gulf is quilted by cities, buildings, plantations, so united to each other, that they seem to be a single metropolis." Stabiae was also well known for the quality of its spring water according to Columella, which was believed to have medicinal properties. Fontibus et Stabiae celebres (Stabiae is also famous for its springs). The Eruption of 79 AD In 62 the city was hit by a violent earthquake that affected the whole region and caused considerable damage to the buildings and needed restoration work which was never finished. According to the account written by his nephew, Pliny the Elder was at the other side of the bay in Misenum when the eruption of 79 AD started. He sailed by galley across the bay, partly to observe the eruption more closely, and partly to rescue people from the coast near the volcano. Pliny died at Stabiae the following day, probably during the arrival of the sixth and largest pyroclastic surge of the eruption caused by the collapse of the eruption plume. The very diluted outer edge of this surge reached Stabiae and left two centimetres of fine ash on top of the immensely thick aerially-deposited tephra which further protected the underlying remains. Post-eruption However, unlike Pompeii, the eruption did not end human activity as about 40 years later the road to Nuceria was rebuilt as its 11th milestone recovered from the cathedral site shows. Also Publius Papinius Statius () asked in a poem for his wife to join him in what he called "Stabias renatas" (Stabiae reborn). It continued to be an important centre for trade as the surrounding agricultural area needed a port and that of