Pompeii is a novel written by Robert Harris that tells the story of a Roman engineer named Marcus Attilius Primus who is tasked with repairing the Aqua Augusta, a critical aqueduct that supplies water to the city of Pompeii and its surrounding area. The novel is set in the year 79 AD, just before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that would ultimately destroy Pompeii.
As Marcus works to repair the aqueduct, he becomes embroiled in a web of political intrigue and corruption. The city is ruled by the wealthy and powerful, who will stop at nothing to maintain their positions of power and wealth. Marcus finds himself caught between these powerful factions, as he tries to navigate the dangerous political landscape and complete his work on the aqueduct.
Despite the challenges he faces, Marcus remains determined to do his job to the best of his ability. He is a skilled engineer, and he is deeply committed to the people of Pompeii and their need for clean, reliable water. As he works on the aqueduct, Marcus also becomes involved in the personal lives of those around him, including his slave, Ariana, and her son, who are both treated cruelly by their owner.
As the novel progresses, the threat of the impending eruption of Mount Vesuvius looms over the city, adding an additional layer of tension to the already-dramatic events unfolding in Pompeii. Despite the danger, Marcus is determined to complete his work and save as many people as possible from the impending disaster.
Overall, Pompeii is a captivating and well-written novel that brings the ancient city of Pompeii to life in vivid detail. The characters are well-developed and the plot is engaging and fast-paced, making it a thrilling and enjoyable read. With its mix of historical fiction and political intrigue, Pompeii is sure to appeal to a wide range of readers.
Pompeii: A Novel by Robert Harris (9780679428893)
We learn a lot about Roman culture: meals, daily life, transportation technology, ships, soldiers, relations between men and women, political and financial corruption, and the unique role of the baths in Roman culture. But they are too late to save the wretched slave. There is no clear answer, except the indolence of the modern reader, who dares not pick up such a tome as this, nor any of his books for the matter. There may be one or two surprises out there, after all, does every single person die or does one or two manage to escape? I was absorbed by the story, and had trouble putting it down near the end. Still, it's enjoyable and a fast read, and not even too fluffy. To the credit of the author who wrote this book in the 19th century, we now know now a lot more about this period, so he did with the docs he had, I guess.
In my case I would like to differ. Highly recommended, for this is a superb standalone novel about the Roman history about and around the eruption of Vesuvius, and that's why I like to call this book: "A Wonderful Eruption Of Vesuvius Tale"! The point of view of the young Aquarius literally in charge of the aquaducts bringing adequate safe water to the main cities of the Italian peninsula. For example, I visited the Coliseum in Rome last year. That such a tale is wrecked in the telling! I still liked it. And maybe a small tutorial in primitive plumbing. .
Retrieved 13 June 2018. I've been to Pompeii twice, once in 1992, and again in 2017. Robert Harris brings the eruption of Vesuvius to life in this account which starts 3 days beforehand when the signs were there for anyone with sufficient knowledge to recognise. Ampliatus is the bad guy here, but the fact he was a former slave takes away the edge of him being the bad guy, at least for me. And then he gets on the wrong side of one of the richest men around, a cruel former slave, the behind-the-scenes political boss of Pompeii. A rude person might suggest that he had lifted much from his guide book and pasted it directly into his novel.
It was a story of a man - an Aquarius - and was melded with a intriguing blend of geology, volcanology and precise Roman history. Settlement, Urbanization, and Population. Retrieved 31 August 2021. Before the eruption, before the horror, there is a problem with the flow of the water. Lytton then takes us into the world of the gladiators, the Pompeian baths which he juxtaposes with the Grecian and Roman ones laying out the class system including, slaves, freedmen, gladiators often fighting for their freedom, the priests of Isis, the wealthy and the Nazarenes.
It then took half a minute or less for those who had survived the rock showers to be choked by a cloud of gas and ash that came rolling off the mountain which is why their bodies were entombed in positions of flight and fear. Pompeii could well fall flat on its face, but instead it is a remarkable triumph. Harris more than makes up for identifying his character so closely with Petronius by giving him a darker and more ruthless side. Harris does a great job of setting the scene but once Vesuvius erupts he somehow manages to make it boring. Edward Bulwer-Lytton hasn't aged well; in his day he was apparently more popular than Dickens or Austin but he's largely unknown today.
OK, I admit that I am grossly trivialising a tremendous story, which is really about Marcus Attilius Primus, the aquarius, or chief water engineer, who is sent to the Bay of Naples to manage the water supply to all of the towns in the area. This scene, featuring crumbling columns, massive clouds of ash, and desperate crowds fleeing in chaos is analogous to the disaster scenes of the modern action movie so beloved of Hollywood. Retrieved 13 June 2018. Olinthus is the chief representative of the nascent Christian religion, which is presented favourably but not uncritically. Arbaces has framed Glaucus for a murder he himself committed.
It might have been my own fault for walking into this book so cold, but there nothing here that warmed me up to it. Then, one by one, the towns around the bay begin to loose their water supply. Now one of the things we get to do is to figure out if they are about to feed the right guy to the lion or do they have the wrong guy? That Lytton does not depreciate the pagans or the Christians but takes the middle road, seeking to understand both sides, through descriptions of the fervid and the moderate, speaks to his willingness to see a greater notion of spirituality which is devoid of sect or fervency, and which is wholly limned in love. I think that Harris' depiction of the eruption was some of the best descriptive reading that I've had the pleasure to read for a while: the refugees, Pliny's vainly rushing out of port to try to save the library and refugees, the ash falling, the panic. The book that made him famous was Pelham which I've never read and I'm supposed to be talking about "The Last Days of Pompeii" so I will.
Pompeii : a novel : Harris, Robert : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Berbix reeled and fell. With his trademark elegance and intelligence, Robert Harris, bestselling author of Archangel and Fatherland, re-creates a world on the brink of disaster. . This day I am forced to place a one star review on Goodreads! And also of the tragedy of the volcanic explosion and destruction of Pompeii. Pompeii and Herculaneum: The Living Cities of the Dead.
Retrieved 4 March 2021. New York: The Oplontis Project. Each chapter is prefaced with an excerpt from a technical work on volcanology that provides the reader with an idea of the activity going on inside Mount Vesuvius. Retrieved 31 August 2021. I started to read this novel after I visited Pompeii. None of these rates as great literature. The city became an important passage for goods that arrived by sea and had to be sent toward Rome or Under In AD 59, there was a serious riot and bloodshed in the amphitheatre between Pompeians and AD 62—79 The inhabitants of Pompeii had long been used to minor earthquakes indeed, the writer On that day in Pompeii, there were to be two sacrifices, as it was the anniversary of Between 62 AD and the eruption in 79 AD, most rebuilding was done in the private sector and older, damaged frescoes were often covered with newer ones, for example.
He is sliced so that blood is flowing and thrown in another tank where he's eaten by eels. But Pompeii proves to be a corrupt and violent town, and Attilius soon discovers that there are powerful forces at work—both natural and man-made—threatening to destroy him. I was impressed by the ruins of the city and its tragic history and I am a bit of a Volcanos enthusiast so I thought reading this will both help me find out more about life in that period and about the eruption. To me that world was more full of fantasy than history. I learned a lot about gladiators, and that's different from what Mr. That's because his son went on to become the leader of India under Queen Victoria, and oversaw a famine there which killed somewhere between 6 and 10 million Indians. We know the catastrophe that is about to happen and look on as the trembling of the earth raises the curiosity of Pliny and the rumblings of the volcano remind people of thunder and giants.
