The Last Days of Pompeii
1834
The city is dying and doesn't know it. Pompeii in AD 79 lives its final days in golden light, unaware that Mount Vesuvius is building toward its cataclysm. Edward Bulwer-Lytton constructed an elaborate tragic machine: Glaucus, a young Athenian poet adrift in Roman decadence, finds himself torn between the mysterious Ione and the silent devotion of Nydia, a blind flower girl. Around them swirls the corrupt gambler Clodius, the enigmatic Egyptian sorcerer Arbaces, and Olinthus, a voice for the nascent Christian faith. The novel plays as both a vivid recreation of ancient life, the amphitheaters, the villas, the street noise, and a meditation on civilizations that cannot see their own ending. The volcanic eruption doesn't merely destroy; it reveals. What persists is the strange, tender figure of Nydia, whose blindness makes her the only one who truly sees, and whose fate has haunted readers since 1834. This is historical fiction as emotional catastrophe, written in prose so purple it practically glows.
Editions
X-Ray
“Oh, can these men love, my Clodius? Scarcely even with the senses. How rarely a Roman has a heart! He is but the mechanism of genius”
— Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron Lytton
“my Clodius, how little your countrymen know of the true versatility of a Pericles, of the true witcheries of an Aspasia!””
— Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron Lytton
Link to this book
Add a free, dofollow link to Lex on your blog, forum, syllabus, or reading list.
<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/the-last-days-of-pompeii-662f3e07-da04-4bd9-9dd5-3f456fa121e1"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron Lytton free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/the-last-days-of-pompeii-662f3e07-da04-4bd9-9dd5-3f456fa121e1)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/the-last-days-of-pompeii-662f3e07-da04-4bd9-9dd5-3f456fa121e1][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron Lytton free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/the-last-days-of-pompeii-662f3e07-da04-4bd9-9dd5-3f456fa121e1Cite this book
Reading this edition for a paper or guide? Copy a citation.
Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron Lytton. The Last Days of Pompeii. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-last-days-of-pompeii-662f3e07-da04-4bd9-9dd5-3f456fa121e1.Edward Bulwer Lytton, B. L. (1834). The Last Days of Pompeii. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-last-days-of-pompeii-662f3e07-da04-4bd9-9dd5-3f456fa121e1Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron Lytton. The Last Days of Pompeii. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-last-days-of-pompeii-662f3e07-da04-4bd9-9dd5-3f456fa121e1.
