Pompeii

by Harris, Robert

  ‘Except that it’s not my aqueduct. I didn’t build it – the Emperor did.’

  ‘True. And at a cost of two million a mile! “The late lamented Augustus” – was ever a man more justly proclaimed a deity? Give me the Divine Augustus over Jupiter any time. I say my prayers to him every day.’ He sniffed the air. ‘This wet paint makes my head ache. Let me show you my plans for the grounds.’

  He led them back the way they had come. The sun was shining fully now through the large open windows. The gods on the opposite walls seemed alive with colour. Yet there was something haunted about the empty rooms – the drowsy stillness, the dust floating in the shafts of light, the cooing of the pigeons in the builders’ yard. One bird must have flown into the laconium and become trapped. The sudden flapping of its wings against the dome made the engineer’s heart jump.

  Outside, the luminous air felt almost solid with the heat, like melted glass, but Ampliatus did not appear to feel it. He climbed the open staircase easily and stepped on to the small sun deck. From here he had a commanding view of his little kingdom. That would be the exercise yard, he said. He would plant plane trees around it for shade. He was experimenting with a method of heating the water in the outdoor pool. He patted the stone parapet. ‘This was the site of my first property. Seventeen years ago I bought it. If I told you how little I paid for it, you wouldn’t believe me. Mark you, there was not much left of it after the earthquake. No roof, just the walls. I was twenty-eight. Never been so happy, before or since. Repaired it, rented it out, bought another, rented that. Some of these big old houses from the time of the Republic were huge. I split them up and fitted ten families into them. I’ve gone on doing it ever since. Here’s a piece of advice for you, my friend: there’s no safer investment than property in Pompeii.’

  He swatted a fly on the back of his neck and inspected its pulpy corpse between his fingers. He flicked it away. Attilius could imagine him as a young man – brutal, energetic, remorseless. ‘You had been freed by the Popidii by then?’

  Ampliatus shot him a look. However hard he tries to be affable, thought Attilius, those eyes will always betray him.

  ‘If that was meant as an insult, aquarius, forget it. Everyone knows Numerius Popidius Ampliatus was born a slave and he’s not ashamed of it. Yes, I was free. I was manumitted in my master’s will when I was twenty. Lucius, his son – the one you just met – made me his household steward. Then I did some debt-collecting for an old money-lender called Jucundus, and he taught me a lot. But I never would have been rich if it hadn’t been for the earthquake.’ He looked fondly towards Vesuvius. His voice softened. ‘It came down from the mountain one morning in February like a wind beneath the earth. I watched it coming, the trees bowing as it passed, and by the time it had finished this town was rubble. It didn’t matter then who had been born a free man and who had been born a slave. The place was empty. You could walk the streets for an hour and meet no one except for the dead.’

  ‘Who was in charge of rebuilding the town?’

  ‘Nobody! That was the disgrace of it. All the richest families ran away to their country estates. They were all convinced there was going to be another earthquake.’

  ‘Including Popidius?’

  ‘Especially Popidius!’ He wrung his hands, and whined, ‘“Oh, Ampliatus, the gods have forsaken us! Oh, Ampliatus, the gods are punishing us!” The gods! I ask you! As if the gods could care less who or what we fuck or how we live. As if earthquakes aren’t as much a part of living in Campania as hot springs and summer droughts! They came creeping back, of course, once they saw it was safe, but by then things had started to change. Salve lucrum! “Hail profit!” That’s the motto of the new Pompeii. You’ll see it all over the town. Lucrum gaudium! “Profit is joy!” Not money, mark you – any fool can inherit money. Profit. That takes skill.’ He spat over the low wall into the street below. ‘Lucius Popidius! What skill does he have? He can drink in cold water and piss out hot, and that’s about the limit of it. Whereas you –’ and again Attilius felt himself being sized up ‘– you, I think, are a man of some ability. I see myself in you, when I was your age. I could use a fellow like you.’

  ‘Use me?’

  ‘Here, for a start. These baths could do with a man who understands water. In return for your advice, I could cut you in. A share of the profits.’

  Attilius shook his head, smiling. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Ampliatus smiled back. ‘Ah, you drive a hard bargain! I admire that in a man. Very well – a share of the ownership, too.’

  ‘No. Thank you. I’m flattered. But my family has worked the imperial aqueducts for a century. I was born to be an engineer on the matrices, and I shall die doing it.’

  ‘Why not do both?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Run the aqueduct, and advise me as well. No one need ever know.’

  Attilius looked at him closely, at his crafty, eager face. Beneath the money, the violence and the lust for power, he was really nothing bigger than a small-town crook. ‘No,’ he said coldly, ‘that would be impossible.’

  The contempt must have shown in his face because Ampliatus retreated at once. ‘You’re right,’ he said, nodding. ‘Forget I even mentioned it. I’m a rough fellow sometimes. I have these ideas without always thinking them through.’

  ‘Like executing a slave before finding out if he’s telling the truth?’

  Ampliatus grinned and pointed at Attilius. ‘Very good! That’s right. But how can you expect a man like me to know how to behave? You can have all the money in the Empire but it doesn’t make you a gentleman, right? You may think you’re copying the aristocracy, showing a bit of class, but then it turns out you’re a monster. Isn’t that what Corelia called me? A monster?’

  ‘And Exomnius?’ Attilius blurted out the question. ‘Did you have an arrangement with him that nobody ever knew about?’

  Ampliatus’s smile did not waver. From down in the street came a rumble of heavy wooden wheels on stone. ‘Listen – I think I can hear your wagons coming. We’d better go down and let them in.’

  The conversation might never have happened. Humming to himself again, Ampliatus dodged across the rubble-strewn yard. He swung open the heavy gates and as Polites led the first team of oxen into the site he made a formal bow. A man Attilius did not recognise was leading the second team; a couple more sat on the back of the empty cart, their legs dangling over the side. They jumped down immediately when they noticed Ampliatus and stood looking respectfully at the ground.

  ‘Well done, lads,’ said Ampliatus. ‘I’ll see you’re rewarded for working a holiday. But it’s an emergency and we’ve all got to rally round and help fix the aqueduct. For the common good – isn’t that right, aquarius?’ He pinched the cheek of the nearest man. ‘You’re under his command now. Serve him well. Aquarius: take as much as you want. It’s all in the yard. Torches are inside in the storeroom. Is there anything more I can do for you?’ He was obviously eager to go.

  ‘I shall make an inventory of what we use,’ said Attilius formally. ‘You will be compensated.’

  ‘There’s no need. But as you wish. I wouldn’t want to be accused of trying to corrupt you!’ He laughed, and pointed again. ‘I’d stay and help you load myself – nobody ever said that Numerius Popidius Ampliatus was afraid of getting his hands dirty! – but you know how it is. We’re dining early because of the festival and I mustn’t show my low birth by keeping all those fine gentlemen and their ladies waiting.’ He held out his hand. ‘So! I wish you luck, aquarius.’

  Attilius took it. The grip was dry and firm; the palm and fingers, like his own, callused by hard work. He nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  Ampliatus grunted and turned away. Outside in the quiet street his litter was waiting for him and this time he clambered straight into it. The slaves ran around to take up their positions, four men on either side. Ampliatus clicked his fingers and they hoisted the bronze-capped poles – first to waist height, and then, grimacing with t
he strain, up on to their shoulders. Their master settled himself back on his cushions, staring straight ahead – unseeing, brooding. He reached behind his shoulder, unfastened the curtain and let it fall. Attilius stood in the gateway and watched him go, the crimson canopy swaying as it moved off down the hill, the little crowd of weary petitioners trudging after it.

  He went back into the yard.

  It was all there, as Ampliatus had promised, and for a while Attilius was able to lose himself in the simple effort of physical work. It was comforting to handle the materials of his craft again – the weighty, sharp-edged bricks, just big enough to fit a man’s grasp, and their familiar brittle clink as they were stacked on the back of the cart; the baskets of powdery red puteolanum, always heavier and denser than you expected, sliding across the rough boards of the wagon; the feel of the timber, warm and smooth against his cheek as he carried it across the yard; and finally the quicklime, in its bulbous clay amphorae – difficult to grasp and heave up on to the cart.

  He worked steadily with the other men and had a sense at last that he was making progress. Ampliatus was undeniably cruel and ruthless and the gods alone knew what else besides, but his stuff was good and in honest hands it would serve a better purpose. He had asked for six amphorae of lime but when it came to it he decided to take a dozen and increased the amount of puteolanum in proportion, to twenty baskets. He did not want to come back to Ampliatus to ask for more; what he did not use he could return.

  He went into the bath-house to look for the torches and found them in the largest storeroom. Even these were of a superior sort – tightly wadded flax and resin impregnated with tar; good, solid wooden handles bound with rope. Next to them lay open wooden crates of oil lamps, mostly terracotta, but some of brass, and candles enough to light a temple. Quality, as Ampliatus said: you couldn’t beat it. Clearly, this was going to be a most luxurious establishment.

  ‘It will be the finest baths outside Rome . . .’

  He was suddenly curious and with his arms full of torches he looked into some of the other storerooms. Piles of towels in one, jars of scented massage-oil in another, lead exercise weights, coils of rope and leather balls in a third. Everything ready and waiting for use; everything here except chattering, sweating humanity to bring it all to life. And water, of course. He peered through the open door into the succession of rooms. It would use a lot of water, this place. Four or five pools, showers, flush-latrines, a steam-room . . . Only public facilities, such as the fountains, were connected to the aqueduct free of charge, as the gift of the Emperor. But private baths like these would cost a small fortune in water-taxes. And if Ampliatus had made his money by buying big properties, subdividing them, and renting them out, then his overall consumption of water must be huge. He wondered how much he was paying for it. Presumably he could find out once he returned to Misenum and tried to bring some order to the chaos in which Exomnius had left the Augusta’s records.

  Perhaps he wasn’t paying anything at all.

  He stood there in the sunlight, in the echoing bathhouse, listening to the cooing pigeons, turning the possibility over in his mind. The aqueducts had always been wide open to corruption. Farmers tapped into the main lines where they crossed their land. Citizens ran an extra pipe or two and paid the water inspectors to look the other way. Public work was awarded to private contractors and bills were paid for jobs that were never done. Materials went missing. Attilius suspected that the rottenness went right to the top – even Acilius Aviola, the Curator Aquarum himself, was rumoured to insist on a percentage of the take. The engineer had never had anything to do with it. But an honest man was a rare man in Rome; an honest man was a fool.

  The weight of the torches was making his arms ache. He went outside and stacked them on one of the wagons, then leaned against it, thinking. More of Ampliatus’s men had arrived. The loading had finished and they were sprawled in the shade, waiting for orders. The oxen stood placidly, flicking their tails, their heads in clouds of swarming flies.

  If the Augusta’s accounts, back at the Piscina Mirabilis, were in such a mess, might it be because they had been tampered with?

  He glanced up at the cloudless sky. The sun had passed its zenith. Becco and Corvinus should have reached Abellinum by now. The sluice-gates might already be closed, the Augusta starting to drain dry. He felt the pressure of time again. Nevertheless, he made up his mind and beckoned to Polites. ‘Go into the baths,’ he ordered, ‘and fetch another dozen torches, a dozen lamps and a jar of olive oil. And a coil of rope, while you’re at it. But no more, mind. Then, when you’ve finished here, take the wagons and the men up to the castellum aquae, next to the Vesuvius Gate, and wait for me. Corax should be coming back soon. And while you’re at it, see if you can buy some food for us.’ He gave the slave his bag. ‘There’s money in there. Look after it for me. I shan’t be long.’

  He brushed the residue of brick dust and puteolanum from the front of his tunic and walked out of the open gate.

  Hora Septa

  [14:10 hours]

  ‘If magma is ready to be tapped in a high-level reservoir, even a small change of regional stress, usually associated with an earthquake, can disturb the stability of the system and bring about an eruption.’

  Volcanology (second edition)

  Ampliatus’s banquet was just entering its second hour, and of the twelve guests reclining around the table only one showed signs of truly enjoying it, and that was Ampliatus himself.

  It was stiflingly hot for a start, even with one wall of the dining room entirely open to the air, and with three slaves in their crimson livery stationed around the table waving fans of peacock feathers. A harpist beside the swimming pool plucked mournfully at some formless tune.

  And four diners to each couch! This was at least one too many, in the judgement of Lucius Popidius, who groaned to himself as each fresh course was set before them. He held to the rule of Varro, that the number of guests at a dinner party ought not to be less than that of the Graces (three), nor to exceed that of the Muses (nine). It meant that one was too close to one’s fellow diners. Popidius, for example, reclined between Ampliatus’s dreary wife, Celsia, and his own mother, Taedia Secunda – close enough to feel the heat of their bodies. Disgusting. And when he propped himself on his left elbow and reached out with his right hand to take some food from the table, the back of his head would brush Celsia’s shallow bosom and – worse – his ring occasionally become entangled with his mother’s blonde hairpiece, shorn from the head of some German slave girl and now disguising the elderly lady’s thin grey locks.

  And the food! Did Ampliatus not understand that hot weather called for simple, cold dishes, and that all these sauces, all this elaboration, had gone out of fashion back in Claudius’s time? The first of the hors d’oeuvres had not been too bad – oysters bred in Brundisium then shipped two hundred miles round the coast for fattening in the Lucrine Lake, so that the flavours of the two varieties could be tasted at once. Olives and sardines, and eggs seasoned with chopped anchovies – altogether acceptable. But then had come lobster, sea urchins and, finally, mice rolled in honey and poppy seeds. Popidius had felt obliged to swallow at least one mouse to please his host and the crunch of those tiny bones had made him break out in a sweat of nausea.

  Sow’s udder stuffed with kidneys, with the sow’s vulva served as a side dish, grinning up toothlessly at the diners. Roast wild boar filled with live thrushes that flapped helplessly across the table as the belly was carved open, shitting as they went. (Ampliatus had clapped his hands and roared with laughter at that.) Then the delicacies: the tongues of storks and flamingos (not too bad), but the tongue of a talking parrot had always looked to Popidius like nothing so much as a maggot and it had indeed tasted much as he imagined a maggot might taste if it had been doused in vinegar. Then a stew of nightingales’ livers . . .

  He glanced around at the flushed faces of his fellow guests. Even fat Brittius, who once boasted that he had eaten the entire tr
unk of an elephant, and whose motto was Seneca’s – ‘eat to vomit, vomit to eat’ – was starting to look green. He caught Popidius’s eye and mouthed something at him. Popidius could not quite make it out. He cupped his ear and Brittius repeated it, shielding his mouth from Ampliatus with his napkin and emphasising every syllable: ‘Tri-mal-chi-o.’

  Popidius almost burst out laughing. Trimalchio! Very good! The freed slave of monstrous wealth in the satire by Titus Petronius, who subjects his guests to exactly such a meal and cannot see how vulgar and ridiculous he is showing himself. Ha ha! Trimalchio! For a moment, Popidius slipped back twenty years to his time as a young aristocrat at Nero’s court, when Petronius, that arbiter of good taste, would keep the table amused for hours by his merciless lampooning of the nouveau riche.

  He felt suddenly maudlin. Poor old Petronius. Too funny and stylish for his own good. In the end, Nero, suspecting his own imperial majesty was being subtly mocked, had eyed him for one last time through his emerald monocle and had ordered him to kill himself. But Petronius had succeeded in turning even that into a joke – opening his veins at the start of a dinner in his house at Cumae, then binding them to eat and to gossip with his friends, then opening them again, then binding them, and so on, as he gradually ebbed away. His last conscious act had been to break a fluorspar wine-dipper, worth three hundred thousand sesterces, which the Emperor had been expecting to inherit. That was style. That was taste.

  And what would he have made of me, thought Popidius, bitterly. That I – a Popidius, who played and sang with the Master of the World – should have come to this, at the age of forty-five: the prisoner of Trimalchio!