Plinivs - Vol. 3 Ch. 21 - Serinum

[MangaDex]

 

[bocchi]

This gets better with every chapter

 

[Kaiser92]

Is this pompei?

 

[Thelele]

Felix, Karl Pilkington's illustrious ancestor

Referring back to chapter 1 may answer some of your questions

 

[OmegaKaiser]

At least Felix was able to take his bath XD

 

[laiseran]

@Kaiser92 yes this is Pompeii, you can see Pliny look at Vesuvius after he speaks of volcanic rock.

 

[Kaiser92]

@laiseran Thanks for the spoiler 😀

 

[sylvacoer]

Okay, this is seriously following major plotlines of Richard Harris's Pompeii: https://infogalactic.com/info/Pompeii_(novel) Which I approve of, the novel is excellent, and the way the manga is going about the mystery is also very good, since Pliny and his orbit are the focus of the story.

Also, Felix is best boi. If Felix dies, I will be upset. 🤬

 

[marcopolonian]

I swear to God that's the Japanese lady from Thermae Romae

 

[norctune]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/62_Pompeii_earthquake
Seems like the chapter is referencing this. I get why poisonous gases would leak from the earth and why hot springs might shoot up prior to an earthquake but can someone explain why the aqueducts would stop delivering water?

 

[Knonderd]

Oh shit, even though I already knew this would happen, the story still kept me on my edge.

 

[laiseran]

@Kaiser92 I mean they also refer to it as Pompeii, and they that's where they were in the first chapter so

 

[Kaiser92]

@laiseran Oh sorry don't mind me I'm dumb

 

[Markgraf]

@norctune The city's water was supplied by the Aqua Augusta (AKA the Serino Aqueduct) which was the longest & most complex aqueduct in the Roman world until the 4th century. It was a branch network system rather than a single line running to a major city like almost all other Roman aqueducts. Another unusual feature of the Aqua Augusta was that most of it ran underground, making it difficult to maintain. Here's the link to the article I checked - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_Augusta_(Naples)

Here I'm just making some guesses because after the eruption, the branches that fed Pompeii, Herculaneum, & Stabiae weren't repaired because there were no cities left to supply. Any investigations into the disruption of the water supply would have been moot since no rebuilding was going to take place.

The aqueduct branches leading to cities near the coast ran through volcanic regions where ground movement was a known factor to the Romans (which is why this system was so costly & difficult to construct). We witness an earthquake in this chapter, & most volcanic eruptions are proceeded by earthquake swarms, most of them low intensity. Still, it's not difficult to envision a minor earthquake fracturing a section of the aqueduct, allowing the water to be diverted. Such ground fracturing not only allowed volcanic gasses to exit the earth, but could easily drain water & feed it into lower strata. Much of the steam vented during eruptions comes from groundwater getting drawn into & vaporized inside the magma reservoirs beneath the volcano.

If you accept the caveat that I'm not a volcanologist, this seems to be a plausible explanation for the sudden interruption of Pompeii's water service.

 

[norctune]

@Markgraf Thanks that makes sense, I was not aware that eruptions were preceded by low intensity seismic activity, always assumed they were detectable earthquakes.

 

[Thelele]

Quite an interesting discussion. Shit goes down in the next volume, so Mari seems to have deliberately padded out the dialogue in this one; everyone repeats every line two or three times, which is a script editor's nightmare.

 

[Ced1106]

Felix gets the best lines. 😄😄😄