I have a hard time figuring out why Pompeii & Herculaneum were ‘lost’ for so long.
If they were the popular resorts of their era, wouldn’t there be people outside of the destruction zone that would go and try and recover their properties? Real estate is valuable in any era......................
The Romans probably were a bit gun-shy after the volcano wiped out everything. There were salvage efforts carried out by surviving homeowners (or maybe thieves) who figured out where their homes were buried, and dug down into their former residences, presumably to recover their personal wealth, or maybe in hope of finding survivors.