The main characters of this novel, published in 1834 by the English politician and writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton, are the wealthy Greek Glaukus and his beloved Ione. Just before the devastating eruption of Vesuvius on August 24, 79, the couple finds themselves caught in the midst of various cults, conspiracies, and secret societies that were prevalent in the Roman Empire at the time, in Pompeii. The extensive novel impresses even today with its precise reconstruction of daily life in a prosperous provincial town at the height of the Roman Empire.