HAVING A GREAT TIME, Isabel typed on the TTT. WISH YOU WERE HERE.
On the wall of one building was a poster with a picture of two men fighting. Even though the Flashback Four couldn’t make out the words, it looked like an advertisement for an upcoming gladiator competition.
Below the poster, somebody had scribbled, in Latin: Celadus, glory of the girls, heartthrob of the girls!
“I can’t believe that people actually wasted time watching men intentionally hurt each other,” Isabel said. “That’s so barbaric.”
“Ever hear of professional boxing?” Luke asked her. “Or wrestling? Or mixed martial arts? We still have the same stuff.”
“Those things are barbaric too,” Isabel replied.
The timer counted down: 111 minutes.
One thing that surprised the kids was the number of restaurants in Pompeii. (Over a hundred fifty, according to historians.) Just about every other storefront was selling food. It was late morning, so some people were eating an early lunch—fish, cold meat, carrots, cucumbers, or other veggies. Others were just finishing up breakfast—bread or a wheat pancake with dates and honey. The poor ate simply, while rich people chowed down on luxuries we would consider exotic: boar, wild goat, ostriches, cranes, doves, roasted peacock, and stork tongue. And wine, of course. Lots of wine.
“Eat, drink, and be merry,” hollered a baker in front of his little shop, “for tomorrow you may die.”
“He doesn’t know how right he is,” David said.
“Nobody is selling pizza,” Luke noticed. “How could they not have pizza here?”
“I don’t think pizza has been invented yet,” guessed Isabel.
In fact, it would be more than nine hundred years before anything called “pizza” would be eaten anywhere in the world.
“This stuff looks good,” Luke said, pointing to some meat on a stick. “I’m getting hungry.”
“You’re always hungry,” noted Julia.
“Maybe we should ask them for some food,” suggested Isabel.
“Nah, let ’em enjoy it,” David told her. “This will be their last meal.”
The timer counted down: 109 minutes.
EVERYTHING GOING SMOOTHLY, Isabel typed on the TTT. LOOKING FOR PERFECT PHOTO LOCATION.
They turned a corner onto a little side street, only to be surprised by a disturbing sight. A man was whipping another man with a long stick. The guy getting whipped already had some dark lines on his back.
“Forty-five! Forty-six! Forty-seven!” shouted the man who was doing the whipping. “How many lashes will teach you to behave, slave?”
Slave?
When we think of slavery, we usually think of what happened in our own country before the Civil War. But slavery was an accepted part of life during the Roman Empire. More than a third of the people in Pompeii were slaves.
It was hard for the kids to watch a man getting beaten. Nobody was coming over to stop it. People on the street just walked by without seeming to notice anything unusual going on.
“Maybe we should help that guy,” Isabel said.
“No!” Luke told her. “That’s not what we’re here for, remember?”
The timer counted down: 107 minutes.
The kids continued wandering the streets, looking for the right spot to take their photo of Mount Vesuvius. There were a lot of dogs roaming around too, some with their owners and some without. There were no pooper scooper laws, obviously.
“Watch where you step,” Julia instructed the others. “Remember Gettysburg.”
Oh, yes. In Gettysburg the streets were filled with horses, which meant the streets were filled with horse manure. Julia had found this out the hard way.
Just to be on the safe side, she was staring down at the street in front of her, being careful to avoid stepping into anything unpleasant. That’s when a woman shouted from her second-story balcony above.
“Watch out below!”
David looked up quickly and saw that the woman overhead had tipped a bucket and was pouring something out onto the street. He gave Julia a hard shove to push her out of the way just before she would have been drenched with raw sewage.
“What the—did she just—?” Julia sputtered. “I can’t believe she—That is so gross and disgusting! Why would a human being do that?”
Isabel was grossed out too, but the boys—being boys—found it hysterical, especially when Julia almost stepped in dog poop right after avoiding the flying pee.
“I thought the Romans were famous for their indoor plumbing,” Isabel said.
“I guess everybody didn’t have indoor plumbing,” David told her.
“I don’t care that they don’t have it!” Julia exclaimed, unable to calm down. “You don’t throw the contents of your toilet out the window! It’s just not done!”
“Calm down,” Luke told her. “You didn’t get a drop on you. Look, we’ll be out of here in less than two hours. Then we can go home to our indoor plumbing while all these people will have to deal with a lot worse than flying pee.”
David checked the timer. 104 minutes.
Any concerns about flying pee or stepping in poop vanished when there was a sudden odd rumbling sound in the air. The street vibrated for a few seconds. The Flashback Four stopped.
“Is that it?” asked David nervously. “Is the volcano about to erupt?”
“What if Miss Z got the timing wrong?” Julia said, a frightened look on her face. “Maybe Vesuvius is going to blow early!”
“I don’t think so,” Isabel said. “In the days leading up to the eruption, there was a series of tremors and small earthquakes in Pompeii.”
“How do you know that?” Luke asked.
“I read it in a book,” Isabel told him. “You might want to get one sometime. You know, they’re these things with lots of pages and writing on them.”
“I’m still nervous,” David said. “We’d better find a good spot to take the photo. Then, as soon as the volcano erupts, we’ll get our shot and be ready to get out of here.”
“Good thinking,” Luke agreed.
Those words were barely out of Luke’s mouth when a voice from behind shouted, “Seize them!”
That’s when four thick, hairy arms reached around and grabbed the Flashback Four by the necks.
CHAPTER 10SHUT YOUR MOUTH!
THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE.
