Pompeii

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 bath-house, 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