The next in my series of books about Pompeii is my first work of fiction on the subject, and possibly the first ever fictionalized account of Pompeii. The Last Days of Pompeii was published in 1835, and coming so close in time to Pompeiana, I expected it to pull liberally from Gell's descriptions. It did. In fact, Gell and the etchings from Pompeiana are explicitly mentioned. Bulwer-Lytton was clearly not bothered by inserting his authorial presence into his narrative nor by breaking into the ancient events with comparisons to the modern day. Asides such as “and you can see this same room when you visit the city today” or “they had a meal much like our own afternoon tea” stand out in sharp contract to the tale Bulwer-Lytton has crafted. He goes so far as to mention he can see the Bay of Naples he is describing from the desk where he writes the book! The mansion on the street of tombs just outside the city, the gladiators, the stalwart soldier whose skeleton was found still erect at his post and numerous other things mentioned by Gell are all folded right into the novel. Instead of being a real distraction from the novel I found I got used to Bulwer-Lytton's style and came to enjoy the specificity of his writing. “You can see the spot I'm describing. You know the type I'm talking about.”
I also enjoyed the actual story of the book. Not so much for the main story, which is what I would call a novel of manors, but for the numerous side stories which are woven together. The main action of the story is a tale of young love between Glaucus, a young Athenian nobleman, and Ione, an Italian-born woman of Greek heritage. Around these two are a constellation of other characters. Ione is the ward of the Egyptian priest Arbaces, who fancies Ione for himself. Ione's brother is Apaecides, who serves Isis with Arbaces but converts to Christianity. The blind slave girl Nydia sells flowers and fancies herself beloved of Glaucus. The rich and spoiled Julia also wants Glaucus for herself. Further from the center of action are the other Christians of the city, the gladiators, Glaucus' vapid friends and a Witch of Vesuvius, living in a cleft on the mountain. I don't generally care for stories where nothing “happens.” There is little which happens in this book. Most of the text is about the way people feel and how the scene looks and the history of Roman culture which explains why people are doing what they are doing. Taken all together, the story becomes more than the sum of its parts. Pompeii, as preserved in ashes in 79 C.E. is a crystallized moment in time and Bulwer-Lytton has taken pains to explore every facet of this chunk of Pompeiian amber from every angle. He has woven his tale into a vivid portrayal of the life of the city itself. I like the approach.
The novel explores many different point of view, but I found two perspectives particularly interesting. The first is the way the Egyptian and Greek characters feel about the Romans. Arbaces the Egyptian is an astrologer and rumored sorcerer. His contempt of everyone around him comes from his feeling of superiority as he views Egypt as the Mother Race and all these Mediterranean usurpers as mere children to do with as he pleases. His hates the Romans and mocks their accomplishments, yet he lives in a Roman city, enjoying the finer things. His views seem to mirror more the ideas of the Nineteenth Century than the facts of the First, but that isn't really a surprise. Through Glaucus, the feelings of the surpassed Greeks are also explored. He is also described as living a life a pleasure, always seeking to forget the fallen cities of Greece. From reading Mommsen, I have a general sense of how the Romans interacted with and treated both the Greeks and Egyptians so I find it fascinating to explore some of how those people may have felt in their day-to-day lives.
The other perspective Bulwer-Lytton explores at length is the nature of early Christianity. Apaecides, who rejects Isis for Jesus, is led in his conversion by Olinthus, who is presented as a passionate preacher and something of a zealot for his young faith. Olinthus is, perhaps too stereotypically, sentenced to face a lion in the arena after he is arrested as an atheist for denying the existence of the Roman pantheon. Other Christians are presented as a bit more calm and contemplative, but all of them conduct themselves with restless energy and powerful certainty. Bulwer-Lytton points out this fresh fire has been somewhat diminished in the present. He doesn't seem to be opposed to Christianity in principle, but he is critical of the methods of the early believers.
As the novel goes along the cast gets more and more intertwined. Their fates all march forward to an ending in ashes. Even if you didn't know about the Vesuvius eruption and the way the city was buried, the title The LAST Days of Pompeii should clue you in something is going to happen. Bulwer-Lytton has done a great job a working in hints of the coming destruction which the reader can hardly fail to miss but which the characters consistently mistake. They laugh off omens or produce talismans against the evil eye as if they can be saved. For instance, early on Arbaces reads in the stars he is in danger from a falling rock and he is indeed smote by a falling statue during a scuffle with Glaucus, but lives. He thinks all danger is past, but from then on I expected him to be killed by a falling chunk of rock from the volcano. It's these little touches which make this book more engaging than its conventional tale of young lovers would otherwise be. The threat of doom looms over the story and as a reader nearly 20 centuries later you know it doesn't end well. Early on, I hoped the book would come to an end before the story was told. I hoped the author would leave his story unfinished to mirror the sudden end to all the stories of the city.
I got fully wrapped up in the story. This was perhaps helped by not actually reading the book, but listening to it through LibraVox. It is nearly seventeen hours long. There is a wide range of volunteers who read the chapters and their diverse pronunciations of the Greek and Latin names can be a little bit distracting, but overall it is nice to lean back and let other people deliver the story to my ears.
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