In the popular novel by the famous 19th-century English writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the events of the first century AD are depicted—those that preceded the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which buried the flourishing ancient Roman city of Pompeii under ash.
At the center of the narrative is a love story between the Athenian Glaucus and the beautiful Jona, the treacherous schemes of the Egyptian Arback, and the tragic fate of the blind slave Nidia. An exciting adventure plot intertwines with historically accurate descriptions of everyday life in the Great Roman Empire. A secret conspiracy and passionate love, betrayal and boundless courage coexist with accounts of architecture and interior furnishings of houses, spectacles and the amphitheater, early Christian communities, and the eruption of Vesuvius.