"Pompei" by Robert Harris

Above: "Pompeii." Robert Harris - 274 pages. I completed reading this novel today.

There are ghosts in Pompeii.  Robert Harris's "Pompeii" brings them to life.

The Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, 79 AD.

"Of the many eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, a major stratovolcano in Southern Italy, the best-known is its eruption in 79 AD,[2][3] which was one of the deadliest in history.[4]
Mount Vesuvius violently spewed forth a cloud of super-heated tephra and gases to a height of 33 km (21 mi), ejecting molten rock, pulverized pumice and hot ash at 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing 100,000 times the thermal energy of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[5][6] The event gives its name to the Vesuvian type of volcanic eruption, characterized by columns of hot gases and ash reaching the stratosphere, although the event also included pyroclastic flows associated with Pelean eruptions.

The event destroyed several Roman towns and settlements in the area. Pompeii and Herculaneum, obliterated and buried underneath massive pyroclastic surges and ashfall deposits, are the most famous examples.[4][5] Archaeological excavations have revealed much of the towns and the lives of the inhabitants leading to the area becoming the Vesuvius National Park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The total population of both cities was over 20,000.[7][8] The remains of over 1,500 people have been found at Pompeii and Herculaneum. The total death toll from the eruption remains unknown."  Wikipedia

Visiting Vesuvius and Pompeii in 2018.

Six years ago, I was on a Disney cruise from Civitavecchia to Barcelona with TIMDT, our children, their spouses and our five grandchildren. One memorable stop was Naples where we spent the day on a tour of Mt. Vesuvius and Pompeii. We walked up to the summit of the, for now, benign volcano and toured Pompeii in the sections where meters of pyroclastic flow caused volcanic ash and pumice had been excavated. It is always hard to realize when walking through ruins that real people lived there, living real lives, having real experiences, and experiencing real dramas... Rather, what one sees, is, well, a stark, empty setting where there are ghosts, but which ghosts are difficult to discern.

SDT Commentary on "Pompeii."

Harris's novel chronicles a fictional human drama set in the communities of The Bay of Neapolis just two days before the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius on 24 August 79 AD and continuing to the eruption itself. "Pompeii" draws from historical sources (Pliny the Younger's account). Harris's novel puts life... plausible life... into the ghosts that haunted Pompeii during my 2015 visit. Plus, reading the novel, I learned a lot about volcanos and Roman daily life one hundred years after the end of the Roman Republic.

The plot: Three days before the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD, a young, capable and honest water engineer, Marcus Atilius Primus (Atilius) is sent by Roman aqueduct authorities from Rome to Misenum, on the Bay of Neapolis, terminus point of the sixty plus mile long aqueduct named Aqua Augusta. The aqueduct brings water from the Apennine Mountains to cities on the Bay of Neapolis. The Augusta's Aquarius (water engineer in charge of the aqueduct), Exomnius, who had been in the job for over thirty years, had been missing for two weeks. Rome wasn't particularly worried about its missing Aquarius, but there had been a long draught in the Naples region and Atilius was sent to Misenum as an abundance of caution.

On arrival in Misenum, Atilius meets up with the missing Exomnius's employees, including the nasty foreman Corax, who dismiss Exomnius's absence as a non-problem and who undermine Atilius's attempts to get a handle on his new job. Shortly after Atilius's arrival, a comely, upper-class young woman, Corilia, rushes to Aquarius headquarters, finds Atilius and tells him that an old slave woman, property of her father, has frantically asked her to search him out. The old woman is mother of a slave being insouciantly fed to Moray eels by the girl's aristocrat father Ampliatus as punishment for putative killing off of his population of rare, valuable red mullet fish. The old slave woman, mother of the accused, was told by her beleaguered son that the Aquarius could absolve him from blame for killing Ampliatus's red mullet fish.

Atilius reluctantly follows Corelia to the site of the slave's punishment, seaside pools at the Augusta terminus where Ampliatus raises fish. Atilius smells a bad odor at the Augusta terminus and works his way into the aqueduct innards. It was bad water, infused with sulfur, coming from the aqueduct that killed off the fish, not the slave. And, thus, the first clue that something is wrong upstream, in the direction of Mt. Vesuvius, leads Atilius to uncover both the imminence of a volcanic eruption and the corruption surrounding water theft, by Ampliatus, foreman Corax and the missing Aquarius, Exomnius. Well into the narrative as Atilius uncovers Ampliatus water fraud, Ampliatus, after trying unsuccessfully to off Atilius, tries to enlist Atilius into his scheme with the promise of significant compensation. The honest Atilius refuses this offer. "Pompeii" is also a love story which begins with Corilia assisting Atilius in uncovering the misdeeds of her scheming father and ends with the pair escaping the devastating pyroclastic effect of Vesuvius's eruption as they escape through an underground section of the Augusta.

The plot is well crafted. The narrative reads smoothly and quickly. Descriptions of Roman social life and street life are fascinating and informative. We meet Pliny the Elder, Roman Admiral and noted Roman historian, in Surrentum where he oversees the Roman fleet. Pliny the Elder is accompanied by his nephew, Pliny the Younger (both Plinys are historical Roman figures present at the eruption of Vesuvius), who is the only source we have today to describe the actual eruption of Vesuvius. In the novel, Pliny the Elder expertly records descriptions of the eruption, but the corpulent, elderly man dies during a rescue attempt by his ship and crew at the home of a friend in Herculanium. XXXX We are led to presume that Pliny the Younger, who accompanied his uncle and survived the eruption, saved his uncle's writings and passed them along to posterity.

Each chapter of "Pompeii" begins with a time before eruption notation and a relevant quote from modern scientific literature on volcanic eruptions.

This book reads quickly. If one likes fast paced books where good unambiguously overcomes evil, you'll like the capable Atilius and beautiful Corilia as characters while despising venal Ampliatus, nasty Corax and posthumously, the scheming Exomnius. Exomnius body is discovered by Atilius at the summit of Vesuvius just prior to its eruption. Exomnius know something was wrong with the aqueduct flow and had reached Vesuvius's summit in his quest to flesh out the problem. Exomnius's role in Ampliatis's water theft scheme is confirmed when an urn full of silver coins, booty for Exomnius's abetting Ampliatus's water theft, is found at the bottom of an underground cistern in Misenum. There are ghosts in Pompeii. Robert Harris's "Pompeii" effectively brings them to life.

Recommend!

Above: Getty Villa, Malibu, CA. 26 August 2024.

TIMDT and Mwah (sic) visited the Getty Villa in Malibu, CA on 26 August 2024 coincident with my completing reading of "Pompeii." The villa design was inspired by the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum a city on the Bay of Naples, like Pompeii, covered with pyroclastic volcanic ash flow during Vesuvius's eruption in 79 AD.