[citation needed] In 2007, a film adaptation was planned, to be directed by Roman Polanski with a budget of US$150 million, but was cancelled due to the threat of a looming actors' strike.

Attilius's predecessor, Exomnius, has mysteriously vanished as the springs that flow through the aqueduct begin to fail, which reduces the supply of water available to the region's reservoir.

With aid from Pliny the Elder, whose fleet is docked at Misenum, Attilius assembles an expedition to travel to Pompeii, the closest town still being supplied with water, and then on to the blocked section of the Aqua Augusta.

Attilius begins to suspect Ampliatus of bribery, suspicions that are supported by what Pliny the Elder and his nephew later discover: thousands of Roman sesterces at the bottom of the reservoir that should have gone to Rome.

Corelia gets Attilius the proof that he needs from her father's written records when he is performing repairs to a collapsed section of tunnel in the region around Vesuvius.

A deranged Ampliatus refuses to evacuate, first holds his family and then Attilius captive and believes that he will become even richer and more powerful by rebuilding the city once more after it is destroyed.

The novel's motto combines two quotes, from Tom Wolfe's Hooking Up and from the Natural History of Pliny the Elder (who, as noted, is a central character in the book itself), with both writers speaking in nearly identical terms of the preeminence of, respectively, the present United States and the Roman Empire, over the rest of the world.

The theme of comparing ancient Rome to the contemporary United States is repeated throughout the book, for example in the deliberate use of typically American terminology,[1] as when Attilius regards Pompeii as "a hustling boomtown" while Ampliatus boasts that "I am the man who runs this town."