Inspiring Text: (Chapter 3, page 78) The spring festivities had begun in the ancient sanctuary of the fertility gods, beyond the Nuceria cemetery, where the Sarno broadened out towards the sea. Crowds from the city and countryside had come to offer sacrifices in the name of Ceres, the earth mother who brought rebirth after winter. Fannius Synistor and a handful of other landowners who were only occasional visitors to the region stood mingled with the local elite, but humble tenant farmers were there too, and peasants clad in little more than animal skins. All were eager to propitiate the goddess for a successful growing season, and the priestess Alleia, daughter of the esteemed decurion Alleius Nigidius Maius, was present to act as their intermediary. Synistor watched as the first stage of the ceremony concluded and the statue of the goddess was raised and carried off in procession, up towards the city and the theatre, where the rites would continue. The sacrificial meat was left sizzling on a fire, the appetising smell a reminder to those who would later return to dine. When Synistor and his companions reached the corridor that formed the lower entrance to the theatre, several of the highly favoured freedmen from the Augustales association were there already. Together they awaited the moment when they could enter to claim their seats in the front rows. From inside and above, the excited chatter of the humbler spectators echoed against the narrow walls as unseen women, freedmen and slaves hurried round the perimeter of the theatre complex, clambering up to the rim of the semi-circular auditorium from which they could swarm down to claim their seats in the appointed areas. Expectations were high. Synistor knew all about the actor Paris from his exploits in Rome, but his presence here was something of a novelty. The man beside him volunteered that talk in the bars and at dinner parties had been of nothing else for weeks. Even now, when the performance was about to begin, the touts were still asking astronomical prices for the tiles shaped like rings and plucked chickens that granted admission. With Paris on the stage, and Poppaea, Nero’s mistress, in the audience, for one short day it felt almost as though Pompeii were the centre of the world.

Inspiring Text: (Chapter 4, page 85 ) Thoughts of the morning’s ceremonies weighed heavy on his mind. When the senior magistrate Albucius Iustus had gazed up at the flight of birds up above and seen in them signs of a calm and steady year ahead, instead of nodding his agreement as he usually did, the augur who stood beside him in purple robes had whispered in his ear. Iustus had again turned his face skywards. The skittering flight of the starlings presaged hard months ahead, he now warned. And the augur concurred. Valens knew how these things worked. Skilled though they might be at reading signs of the gods’ intentions, the augurs were not immune to the mood of unease that was carried in with the news from Rome. There, the monstrous birth of a serpent from a woman’s womb and the many bolts of lightning that had struck targets across the city, including a married couple who were felled as they embraced, gave credence to the rumours of discord in the imperial family. The sun itself had been briefly extinguished. If there were clouds on the horizon, then the augurs of Pompeii were not going to risk their reputations merely to oblige a local magistrate who wanted his term of office to end on an optimistic note. Since becoming flamen of Nero, Valens had basked in the reflected glory of the dynamic young Emperor. There was no doubting the popularity of an emperor who trailed the good times in his wake. Stories of his nocturnal shenanigans in the back streets of Rome had been easily laughed off as high spirits. But Valens knew how fast the public mood might turn if Nero became tainted with bad luck. Already he had heard that there were those in Rome questioning the direction that the Emperor’s reign was taking, and before long those murmurings of dissent might be heard in Pompeii too.

Inspiring Text: (Chapter 4, page 89) Maius drained a cup of water by way of breakfast, then headed out into the colonnade that surrounded his garden. Ahead of him he could see the throng as they jostled in the atrium, waiting for admittance to the room where he would shortly hold his audience. Taking a seat beside his money chest, he watched the nomenclator scan the assembled crowd of petitioners as they settled down to respectful silence, mentally sorting them by precedence. Some came to request his support in a trade dispute, or a word in the right ear about a loan, but most attended simply to claim their sportula – the financial handout that he so generously provided. Maius knew them all well, and how to manipulate their individual vanities and weaknesses: when to shame them with a slighting comment, and when to put them at their ease with friendly greetings; how to make it seem as if the coins slipped into their hand as they left were a mere token of esteem.

Inspiring Text: (Chapter 4, page 89) Same as previous.

Inspiring Text: (Chapter 4, page 101) It was the third measure, though, that would have the greatest impact on the lives of the inhabitants of Campania: the foundation – or in Pompeii’s case the retrenchment – of a series of colonies to serve as settlements for army veterans. A steady stream of old soldiers were always in need of homes and a living on their retirement, and in the second half of the AD 50s there is likely to have been a particularly large influx of demobilised legionaries.

Inspiring Text: (Chapter 4, page 101) Same as previous.

Inspiring Text:(Chapter 4, page 101) Same as previous.

Inspiring Text: (Chapter 5, page 104) The first Pompeii market in July was always particularly busy. On the nineteenth, the year’s second great Parade of Knights would take place in Rome, when up to five thousand of Italy’s richest men rode through the capital on horses provided by the state, garlanded as though victors in battle, in commemoration of the help given to the Romans by the twin gods Castor and Pollux in an ancient battle. The culmination of the event was the Festival of Apollo, but it was preceded by five days of markets. Pompeian traders might well have been tempted to pack in two weeks’ worth of business in Campania at the beginning of the month and then haul their goods north to Rome for the festival. Local knights such as the young flamen of Nero, Decimus Satrius Lucretius Valens, would also have been eager to join the flow of visitors to the capital once Pompeii’s own major festivities were over.

Inspiring Text:(Chapter 5, page 116) …they would not have been exempt from strict municipal laws such as that which insisted: ‘No one is to take part in an illegal gathering within the city’s jurisdiction or hold a meeting of a society or collegium for that purpose or conspire that it be held or act in any way to encourage the above.’ Roman law was more ferocious still, going so far as to consider the creation of an unregistered collegium to be the equivalent of occupying a public building with armed men, and punishable accordingly, while even those legal clubs who admitted a slave without the knowledge of his owner were liable to a fine of ten thousand sesterces. If the chance to become a local official was the carrot, this was unquestionably a stick and perhaps hints at the somewhat oppressive experience of living under the imperial regime.

Inspiring Text: (Chapter 1, page 23) For the sleepy neighbour, stretching outside his front door, forgetful of the day’s significance, the first appearance of the funeral party from the entrance of the house would have caused a sudden jolt into wakefulness. Foremost among the wax masks worn by the actors was that of Decimus himself, to all appearances alive again and accompanying his corpse on its last journey. Behind the actors, the household would have lined up, the newly manumitted slaves appearing for the first time as free citizens to advertise Decimus’s generosity with their expressions of grief-stricken gratitude. And then at last, the appearance of Decimus’s corpse, and the procession could begin its slow passage west down the long decumanus major towards the forum. Custom dictated that the body of Decimus be exposed to view for the duration of the procession, formally dressed and arranged by the undertaker’s craft in an elegant and lifelike pose. Perhaps it was made to recline on one elbow as though for dining – as is sometimes depicted on tomb carvings – or else was propped in a seated position ready to receive the encomiums that would be declaimed in front of the assembled mourners when the cortège finally reached the forum. The funeral of such a distinguished man was sure to have drawn crowds – those attracted by the spectacle as well as the many clients who owed a debt of gratitude to Valens for the generosity he had shown them during his life. Responsibility for them would now fall to his heir.

Inspiring Text:(Chapter 2, page 41) The tugboats that had towed the Europa towards the mooring posts that marked the shallower water were unhitching their lines and pulling away; already flat-bottomed lighters had punted alongside to begin the unloading. Umbricius Scaurus watched with satisfaction from the balcony of his villa as the boatmen in the lighters raised their poles high into the air and plunged them into the water to find purchase on the sandy bottom below. It was still almost three months before the grain ships from Alexandria would arrive at Puteoli. Pompeii had seized the initiative, and Scaurus would see a healthy return on his share of the Europa’s cargo.

Inspiring Text: (Chapter 2, page 41) Same as previous.

Inspiring Text: (Chapter 2, page 51) Distant music drifted down from the Temple of Isis, where the festivities were beginning. Lured by the sound towards the sacred precinct, Cyrus pushed his way through crowds of worshippers, some true devotees, others drawn by the spectacle and the promise of generous feasting and merriment that would follow. The atmosphere was thick with the East, as the smoke of incense and other spices mingled in the evening air with the voices of the male and female choirs, lined up on either side of the temple steps. Shaven-headed priests dressed in white gowns that bared their torsos to just below the nipple tinkled their sistrums in knowing syncopation.

Inspiring Text:(Chapter 3, page 61) It was still dark when Simulus woke, stretched, and pulled a goatskin around his shoulders against the chill air of the hovel. Last night’s fire was nearly dead in the hearth and his first task – today, as every day – was to tempt some small flame out of it. After what seemed an age, the wood started to kindle: he would soon need to gather more from the forest over towards Herculaneum. For a brief moment he allowed his muscles to warm. Next door, his slave was stirring on her creaky pallet: when she heard him start to turn the millstone she would emerge to sieve the flour and prepare the bread that would see them through the day. The rats and weevils were as hungry as either of them, and it made no sense to grind the wheat down before it was needed, only to see it squandered on vermin. Still, the local stone offered a good rough surface on which to break the grain, and the cracked husk and lighter powder soon formed thick piles. When Simulus stepped out of his hut into the crisp dawn, the morning sun was rising over the mountains behind Vesuvius. To the south, he could see the walls of Pompeii through the low mist, with the temples of the forum standing proud above them: in between, the landscape was crowded with farms, villas and plantations of all sizes. Simulus tore bunches of parsley, rue and coriander from the herb garden beside his house, and carried them in for Scyphale to grind in a pestle with garlic, hard cheese, oil and vinegar – the ingredients for a relish that would add flavour to their coarse bread. Hunger was a constant fear. But there were others who lived on far less than he: the slaves who worked on the imperial estate nearby, or on the far side of the boundary stone that marked the end of his own property. The land beyond belonged to the rich man Fannius Synistor and was well tended and fruitful. But Simulus would not have wished to change places with Receptus, a tall, pale slave from the north who had been made overseer by Synistor and now faced the daily loathing of the other slaves he managed. Simulus might be poor, but he was a free man with his own small piece of land: a fifteen iugera plot that had been in the family for half a dozen generations. There weren’t too many of them left now, smallholders like him, descendants of Sulla’s veterans not even of the native farming stock. Many had sold up and moved out, their land swallowed by the big estates. Those who remained, tiny islands in an ocean of grand villas, looked out for one another; no one could afford a wine press for themselves alone and an ox was beyond their means, but by pulling together most things were possible. He even ate meat once in a while, a bit of mutton stew when a sheep was slaughtered for sale, a water-fowl trapped in the Sarno marshes.