The Sage from Vesuvius?

I love obscure allusions, and I'm not too bad at identifying them, but Kathleen Parker today has me stumped.

But when [Barney] Frank is tossed into the ring with a Hitler-wielding instigator, he looks the sage from Vesuvius, and his opponents escapees from the asylum.

Vesuvius, of course, is one of the world's best-known volcanoes (livecam here). Like all volcanoes in the classical world, it's associated with hot springs and gaseous emanations that oracles sometimes sniffed to get high and give pronouncements. I simply don't recall a sage from Vesuvius, however, which implies wisdom more than oracularity.

So I googled "sage from Vesuvius." (Is there another place named Vesuvius? It's hard to imagine someone living in the volcano.) The most seemingly relevant thing I could come up with was this.

Thou hast had shelter under my roof, and warmth at my hearth; thou hast returned evil for good; thou hast smitten and slain the thing that loved me and was mine; now hear thy punishment. I curse thee! and thou art cursed! May thy love be blasted - may thy name be blackened - may the infernals mark thee - may thy heart wither and scorch - may thy last hour recall to thee the prophet voice of the sage from Vesuvius.

That's from The Last Days of Pompeii, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

Parker was writing about the oratorical inadequacy of those who revert rapidly to comparisons to Hitler, and Barney Frank's masterful response to one of his constituents who had a poster in that vein, available here. I don't quite see how the sage from Vesuvius fits that, if this is the quote she's using, but I guess it sounded good at the time.