The Last Days of Pompeii

The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer-lytton

Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "The Last Days of Pompeii" opens in the doomed city itself, where the wealthy young Athenian Glaucus, admired for his beauty, wit, and generosity, moves through a world of banquets, dice, baths, and gossip alongside his friends Clodius, Sallust, Lepidus, and the freedman's son Diomed. At a public gathering Glaucus greets a blind Thessalian flower girl named Nydia, a slave to the brutal tavern-keeper Burbo and his wife Stratonice, and shows her unusual tenderness. Glaucus also renews acquaintance with the dark, commanding Egyptian Arbaces, a man of vast wealth and reputed sorcery, feared for his "evil eye" and rumored occult mysteries connected to the temple of Isis. At a supper in his own elegant house, Glaucus and his guests discuss gladiatorial games, poetry, and the beautiful, gifted Ione, a Neapolitan Greek celebrated for her genius, beauty, and independence, who has captivated Pompeii without taking a lover. Glaucus realizes with astonishment that Ione is the same woman he once met and lost track of at the Temple of Minerva in Neapolis. They are reunited at a gathering in her home, and their mutual love quickly deepens through shared memories of Greece and long conversations and excursions together. Ione's brother, Apaecides, has become a priest of Isis under Arbaces' influence, but he is tormented by disillusionment after discovering that the temple's oracles and "miracles" are mere priestly trickery performed by corrupt colleagues like the coarse priest Calenus. Arbaces, revealed as Ione and Apaecides' guardian since their parents' death, privately confesses to Calenus his true design: he intends to make Ione his own, having deliberately encouraged her worldly, dissipated society in hopes of eventually winning her through her passions and imagination. Arbaces also schemes to keep Apaecides bound to him and to the priesthood by revealing to him a philosophy of "sacred" delusion — that priests knowingly deceive the masses for humanity's benefit, and that the wise, like Arbaces himself, are exempt from ordinary moral and religious restraint. Apaecides is also drawn toward the new Christian sect through Olinthus, a fervent believer who urges him to abandon pagan superstition for the one true God and the moral example of Christ, but the young priest flees this encounter, unresolved, into the arms of Arbaces' seductive rhetoric. That night Arbaces lures Apaecides to his mysterious house, where after a philosophical justification of pleasure and delusion, he unveils a dazzling secret banquet of music, wine, dancers, and sensual indulgence beneath a memento-mori skeleton, deliberately intoxicating and corrupting the priest's senses and resolve. Meanwhile, Glaucus rescues Nydia from a savage beating by Stratonice and purchases her from Burbo to give her a place in Ione's household, delighting the girl, who is secretly, achingly in love with Glaucus herself. At Burbo's tavern, gladiators including Lydon, Niger, Sporus, and Tetraides discuss their coming bouts for the amphitheatre games, wagered on by young patrons like Clodius and Lepidus, while Calenus and Burbo conspire over payments tied to Nydia's exploitation at Arbaces' secret feasts. Arbaces, having secured influence over Apaecides, now turns his full calculating attention to Ione herself. Visiting her under a guise of exalted, quasi-philosophical "friendship," he subtly disparages Glaucus while probing her feelings, unaware that Ione is already deeply, though guardedly, in love with the Athenian. Ione, still smarting from Arbaces' earlier slander accusing Glaucus of mocking her affection publicly, has shut herself away from Glaucus's visits, though she cannot help being moved nightly by his garlands and serenades beneath her window. She questions Arbaces about her brother's troubled state, and the Egyptian reassures her evasively, concealing the full extent of his manipulation of Apaecides' faith and conscience.

By Edward Bulwer-lytton · First published 1834 · Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance, Adventure · 56 chapters · 214,221 words

First lines

'HO, Diomed, well met! Do you sup with Glaucus to-night? ' said a young / man of small stature, who wore his tunic in those loose and effeminate / folds which proved him to be a gentleman and a coxcomb.

'Alas, no! dear Clodius; he has not invited me,' replied Diomed, a man / of portly frame and of middle age. 'By Pollux, a scurvy trick! for they / say his suppers are the best in Pompeii'.

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Historical Fiction · Ancient Rome · Pompeii · Volcanic Eruption · Tragedy · Drama · Romance · Adventure · Classics · 19th Century Literature · British Literature · Epic

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