“The bittersweet memory of that day, eighteen years ago, had never left him. It was the second time he had been sold in his short lifetime, reduced to nothing more than a name and number scratched on a wax tablet, and still no one came to save him. He sometimes saw Poppaea in the streets. He always made sure to avoid her eye.”

This moment is from The Lost Voices of Pompeii , a new book that follows seven historical figures in the hours leading up to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Contrary to what its novelistic style suggests, it is a work of history, not historical fiction.…