Pompeii was published by Hutchinson in 2003. Marcus Attilius Primus, a young Roman water engineer, is dispatched to the Bay of Naples to investigate failures in the Aqua Augusta, the great aqueduct that supplies water to the cities around the bay. As he traces the blockages and contaminations, he realizes that they are symptoms of something far larger: the volcanic system beneath Vesuvius is building toward the catastrophic eruption that will bury Pompeii and Herculaneum on August 24, AD 79.
Harris made Roman hydraulic engineering fascinating — the Aqua Augusta was a real structure, one of the masterpieces of Roman infrastructure, and its function and vulnerability provided a perfect framework for a thriller in which technical competence becomes a matter of life and death.
Roman Engineering
Harris’s research into the Aqua Augusta and Roman hydraulic engineering gives the novel its distinctive quality. The technical details — gradients, cisterns, settling tanks, the physics of water flow — become genuinely dramatic when failure means catastrophe. Harris demonstrated that infrastructure could be as thrilling a subject as espionage.
Collecting Pompeii
First edition (Hutchinson, London, 2003): Boards with dust jacket.
Approximate market values:
- UK first edition, fine in jacket: $30–$75
- US first edition (Random House): $15–$30
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation.
Frequently Asked Questions
How accurate is the eruption sequence? Harris worked closely with volcanologists and the archaeological record. The sequence of events — the initial tremors, the pumice fall, the pyroclastic surges — follows the scientific reconstruction of the AD 79 eruption based on Pliny the Younger’s famous letters and modern geological analysis.