Pompeii (34 page)
“ ‘The Stoic philosophy’!” mocked Ampliatus. “And what would old Exomnius have been doing with ‘the Stoic philosophy’?”
“Again,” repeated Popidius, with mounting exasperation, “isn’t it obvious?” He laid the two documents side by side. “Exomnius believed there was a link, you see?” He gestured from one to the other. “Etna and Vesuvius. The fertility of the land around Caetana and the land around
Pompeii
. The terrible omens of seventeen years ago—the poisoning of the sheep—and the omens all around us this summer. He was from
Nobody spoke for a while. The effigies around the pool tinkled in the breeze.
Brittius said, “I think these documents ought to be considered by a full meeting of the Ordo. As soon as possible.”
“No,” said Ampliatus.
“But the Ordo is the ruling council of the town! They have a right to be informed!”
“No!” Ampliatus was emphatic. “How many citizens are members of the Ordo?”
“Eighty-five,” said Holconius.
“There you are. It will be all over town within an hour. Do you want to start a panic, just as we’re starting to get back on our feet? When we’ve got the prophecy of the sibyl to give them, to keep them sweet? Remember who voted for you, your honors—the traders. They won’t thank you for scaring their business away. You saw what happened this morning, simply because the fountains stopped for a few hours. Besides, what does this add up to? So Exomnius was worried about earth tremors? So
Romulus
.” He could see his words were striking home. “Besides, this isn’t the real problem.”
Holconius said, “And what is the real problem?”
“The other documents—the ones that show how much Exomnius was paid to give this town cheap water.”
Holconius said quickly, “Have a care, Ampliatus. Your little arrangements are no concern of ours.”
“
My
little arrangements!” Ampliatus laughed. “That’s a good one!” He set down his glass and lifted the decanter to pour himself another drink. Again, the heavy crystal rattled. He was becoming light-headed but he didn’t care. “Come now, your honors, don’t pretend you didn’t know! How do you think this town revived so quickly after the earthquake? I’ve saved you a fortune by my ‘little arrangements.’ Yes, and helped make myself one into the bargain—I don’t deny it. But you wouldn’t be here without me! Your precious baths, Popidius, where Brittius here likes to be wanked off by his little boys—how much do you pay for them? Nothing! And you, Cuspius, with your fountains. And you, Holconius, with your pool. And all the private baths and the watered gardens and the big public pool in the palaestra and the pipes in the new apartments! This town has been kept afloat for more than a decade by my little arrangement with Exomnius. And now some nosy bastard of an aquarius from
Rome
has got to hear about it.
That’s
the real problem.”
“An outrage!” said Brittius, his voice quivering. “An outrage—to be spoken to in such a way by this upstart slave.”
“Upstart, am I? I wasn’t such an upstart when I paid for the games that secured your election, Brittius. ‘Cold steel, no quarter, and the slaughterhouse right in the middle where all the stands can see it’—that’s what you asked for, and that was what I gave.”
Holconius raised his hands. “All right, gentlemen. Let’s keep calm.”
Cuspius said, “But surely we can just cut a deal with this new aquarius, like the one you had with the other fellow?”
“It seems not. I dropped a hint yesterday but all he did was look at me as if I’d just put my hand on his cock. I felt insulted for my generosity. No, I’m afraid I recognize his type. He’ll take this up in
Rome
, they’ll check the accounts, and we’ll have an imperial commission down here before year’s end.”
“Then what are we to do?” said Popidius. “If this comes out, it will look bad for all of us.”
Ampliatus smiled at him over the rim of his glass. “Don’t worry. I’ve sorted it out.”
“How?”
“Popidius!” cautioned Holconius quickly. “Take care.”
Ampliatus paused. They didn’t want to know. They were the magistrates of the town, after all. The innocence of ignorance—that was what they craved. But why should they have peace of mind? He would dip their hands in the blood along with his own.
“He’ll go to meet his ancestors.” He looked around. “Before he gets back to Misenum. An accident out in the countryside. Does anyone disagree? Speak up if you do. Popidius? Holconius? Brittius? Cuspius?” He waited. It was all a charade. The aquarius would be dead by now, whatever they said: Corax had been itching to slit his throat. “I’ll take that as agreement. Shall we drink to it?”
He reached for the decanter but stopped, his hand poised in midair. The heavy crystal glass was not merely shaking now: it was moving sideways along the polished wooden surface. He frowned at it stupidly. That couldn’t be right. Even so, it reached the end of the sideboard and crashed to the floor. He glanced at the tiles. There was a vibration beneath his feet. It gradually built in strength and then a gust of hot air passed through the house, powerful enough to bang the shutters. An instant later, far away—but very distinctly, unlike anything that he, or anyone else, had ever heard—came the sound of a double boom.
HORA SEXTA
[
hours]
The surface of the volcano ruptured shortly after
allowing explosive decompression of the main magma body. . . . The exit velocity of the magma was approximately 1,440 km per hour (Mach 1). Convection carried incandescent gas and pumice clasts to a height of 28 km.
Overall, the thermal energy liberated during the course of the entire eruption may be calculated using the following formula:
Eth
=
V * d * T * K
where Eth is in joules, V is the volume in cubic km, d is specific
gravity (1.0), T is the temperature of the ejecta (500 degrees centigrade), and K is a constant including the specific heat of the magma and the mechanical equivalent of heat (8.37 x 10
14
).
Thus the thermal energy released during the
A.D
. 79
eruption
would have been roughly 2 x 10
18
joules—or about
100,000 times that of the
Hiroshima
atomic bomb.
—
DYNAMICS OF VOLCANISM
Afterward, whenever they compared their stories, the survivors would always wonder at how different the moment had sounded to each of them. A hundred twenty miles away in
Rome
it was heard as a thud, as if a heavy statue or a tree had toppled. Those who escaped from
Pompeii
, which was five miles downwind, always swore they had heard two sharp bangs, whereas in
Capua
, some twenty miles distant, the noise from the start was a continuous, tearing crack of thunder. But in Misenum, which was closer than
Capua
, there was no sound at all, only the sudden appearance of a narrow column of brown debris fountaining silently into the cloudless sky.
For Attilius, it was like a great, dry wave that came crashing over his head. He was roughly two miles clear of the summit, following another old hunting trail through the forest, descending fast on horseback along the mountain’s western flank. The effects of the poisoning had shrunk to a small fist of pain hammering behind his eyes and in place of the drowsiness everything seemed oddly sharpened and heightened. He had no doubt of what was coming. His plan was to pick up the coastal road at
Herculaneum
and ride directly to Misenum to warn the admiral. He reckoned he would be there by midafternoon. The bay sparkled in the sunlight between the trees, close enough for him to be able to make out individual lines of surf. He was noticing the glistening pattern of spiderwebs hanging loosely in the foliage and a particular cloud of midges, swirling beneath a branch ahead of him, when suddenly they disappeared.
The shock of the blast struck him from behind and knocked him forward. Hot air, like the opening of a furnace door. Then something seemed to pop in his ears and the world became a soundless place of bending trees and whirling leaves. His horse stumbled and almost fell and he clung to its neck as they plunged down the path, both of them riding the crest of the scalding wave and then abruptly it was gone. The trees sprang upright, the debris settled, the air became breathable again. He tried to talk to the horse but he had no voice and when he looked back toward the top of the mountain he saw that it had vanished and in its place a boiling stem of rock and earth was shooting upward.
From Pompeii it looked as if a sturdy brown arm had punched through the peak and was aiming to smash a hole in the roof of the sky—
bang, bang:
that double crack—and then a hard-edged rumble, unlike any other sound in nature, that came rolling across the plain. Ampliatus ran outside with the magistrates. From the bakery next door and all the way up the street people were emerging to stare at Vesuvius, shielding their eyes, their faces turned toward this new dark sun rising in the north on its thundering plinth of rock. There were a couple of screams but no general panic. It was still too early, the thing was too awesome—too strange and remote—for it to be perceived as an immediate threat.
It will stop at any moment,
Ampliatus thought. He willed it to do so.
Let it subside now, and the situation will still be controllable.
He had the nerve, the force of character; it was all a question of presentation. He could handle even this: “The gods have given us a sign, citizens! Let us heed their instruction! Let us build a great column, in imitation of this celestial inspiration! We live in a favored spot!” But the thing did not stop. Up and up it went. A thousand heads tilted backward as one to follow its trajectory and gradually the isolated screams became more widespread. The pillar, narrow at its base, was broadening as it rose, its apex flattening out across the sky.
Someone shouted that the wind was carrying it their way.
That was the moment at which he knew he would lose them. The mob had a few simple instincts—greed, lust, cruelty—and he could play them like the strings of a harp because he was of the mob and the mob was him. But shrill fear drowned out every other note. Still, he tried. He stepped into the center of the street and held his arms out wide. “Wait!” he shouted. “Cuspius, Brittius—all of you—link hands with me! Set them an example!”
The cowards didn’t even look at him. Holconius broke first, jamming his bony elbows into the press of bodies to force his way down the hill. Brittius followed, and then Cuspius. Popidius turned tail and darted back inside the house. Up ahead, the crowd had become a solid mass as people streamed from the side streets to join it. Its back was to the mountain now, its face was to the sea, its only instinct: flight. Ampliatus had a final glimpse of his wife’s white face in the doorway and then he was engulfed by the stampeding crowd, spun like one of the revolving wooden models they used for practice in the gladiatorial school. He was thrown sideways, winded, and would have disappeared beneath their feet if Massavo had not seen him fall and scooped him up to safety on the step. He saw a mother drop her baby and heard its screams as it was trampled, saw an elderly matron slammed headfirst against the opposite wall then slip, unconscious, out of sight, as the mob swept on regardless. Some screamed. Some sobbed. Most were tight-mouthed, intent on saving their strength for the battle at the bottom of the hill, where they would have to fight their way through the Stabian Gate.