Het jaar 79 AD (over de precieze datum bestaat de nodige onenigheid). Op het strand van Stabiae ziet iemand de pyroklastische stroom van Vesuvius op zich afkomen.
Men mistook measurement for understanding. And they always had to put themselves at the centre of everything. That was their greatest conceit.
The earth is becoming warmer - it must be our fault!
The mountain is destroying us - we have not propitiated the gods!
It rains too much, it rains too little - a comfort to think that these things are somehow connected to our behaviour, that if we only lived a little better, a little more frugally, our virtue would be rewarded.
But here was Nature, sweeping toward him - unknowable, all-conquering, indifferent - and he saw in Her fires the futility of human pretensions.
'Pompeii' - Robert Harris









