| Pompeii Erupts with Renewed Vigor; 2004 |
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| by MICHAEL BROWNING |
BOOK REVIEW
Once more into the crater, dear friends! Ever since Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "The Last Days of Pompeii," the catastrophic eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79 has been a magma-hot source for authors and filmmakers. Novelist Robert Harris' new book, "Pompeii," has given an old tale a fine new pumice-scraping. Its subject is one of the most famous disasters in history.
Famous because one of the greatest naturalists and observers of antiquity, Pliny the Elder, happened to be on hand, took part in a vain rescue attempt and died trying to save people from the blast. Such eruptions are still called "Plinian" by geologists, in his honor, and Pliny's son, Gaius Plinius Secundus, safely sat out the catastrophe back in Naples, because he allegedly had homework to do.
The younger Pliny wrote a long letter to the historian Tacitus describing the event in detail, and it is the fullest description of the disaster. It's also one of the most ingenious excuses ever invented by a schoolboy: "My homework ate the volcano," the young Pliny said, in effect.
Harris has drawn — and drawn on — both Plinys beautifully in a meticulously re-searched work, which combines disaster with human dishonesty, murder, thwarted love, astounding pyrotechnics and fascinating hydraulics. For a reader who knows the primary sources, it is a rich pleasure to see Roman antiquity so thoroughly and feelingly brought back to life. Harris is very modern, very pagan, even raunchy at times, just as the Romans must have been.
"Pompeii," briefly summarized, is the story of Marcus Attilius Primus, an honest "curator aquarum," a caretaker of waters, who shows up on the Bay of Naples a few days before Vesuvius blows its top and discovers the "Aqua Augusta," a miracuously engineered acqueduct, is leaking disastrously because of ominous rumblings underground. He also discovers a nest of intrigue, decadence and a heathen willingness to murder people very casually if they get in your way.
We see vile, nouveaux-riche freed slaves who feed their own slaves to the eels for punishment (fact; one instance of this is mentioned in Pliny the Younger's letters); gourmands who stuff themselves on bird's tongues and weird, rank sauces (fact; Pompeii's main export was a horrible fish sauce called "garum"; Harris has read his Apicius); and feasts that degenerate into orgies (situationally factual; Harris knows Petronius very well and has borrowed from the famous Cena Trimalchionis, the feast of Trimalchio, skillfully).
Harris has also mastered Vitruvius' 10 books of Roman architecture and Frontinus' essential treatise on the aqueducts of Rome, how they were built and managed, how they were often stolen from, siphoned from and subverted by sneaky developers and rich parasites. Romans, unlike modern Floridians, realized just how valuable water was.
He does villains extremely well, and there are several delicious ones in the book: the foul-mouthed Corax, the opportunistic Ampliatus and the swinish, weak Popidius, who is willing to barter his own daughter, Corelia, for gain, upon signing a marriage contract. Slaves mill about, on- and offstage, curiously appealing in their devalued nothingness.
His best character is not his hero, but instead Pliny the Elder. Seldom has an important classical author been brought back to life so vividly. Immensely fat, huffing and puffing, brave, curious and broad-minded, Pliny sets out on a rescue mission that will kill him and immortalize him, as Vesuvius erupts with the force of 100,000 atomic bombs.
We know the ending from the title onward, but that does nothing to lessen the event nor diminish the interest of the book. Thanks to copious research and diligent fact-checking by friendly classicists, Harris has written a vivid book that could profitably be read by students just awakening to the classics and even more profitably made into a movie. |
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| TwinCities.com; Jan. 28th, 2004 |
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