POMPEII by Robert Harris

This article examines Robert Harris’s Pompeii (2003) as a techno-scientific disaster narrative that rereads the eruption of Vesuvius through the lens of infrastructure, risk management, and imperial vulnerability. Set in the four days preceding the catastrophe of 79 AD, the novel follows the aquarius Marcus Attilius as he investigates the failure of the Aqua Augusta, turning volcanic crisis into a historical-volcanological mystery. The article discusses how Harris shifts the Pompeii narrative from divine punishment to systemic fragility. The eruption exposes the limits of Roman engineering, political authority, scientific knowledge, and economic ambition, while also drawing a transhistorical parallel with modern technological societies and their ecological vulnerabilities. Through Attilius, Harris foregrounds the ethical role of the engineer as a figure capable of reading environmental warning signs, connecting technical expertise with public responsibility. The article analyses the novel’s scientific epigraphs, its treatment of risk communication, and its critique of corruption through the figure of Ampliatus, who subordinates public safety to private profit. Vesuvius emerges not as a moral avenger, but as an unpredictable geological force that reveals the arrogance of civilisations mistaking measurement for mastery. Ultimately, Pompeii presents catastrophe as a crisis of knowledge, governance, and imagination, showing how advanced societies collapse when they ignore the fragile interdependence between infrastructure, environment, and collective survival.