Diary of Dorkius Maximus – In Pompeii

Tim Collins's Diary of Dorkius Maximus - In Pompeii is a funny Roman diary for 9 year olds about a boy dragged to the worst town in the empire, who then works out it is about to explode.

What happens

Dorkius is leaving Rome, and he is not taking it well. Dad has been sent by Julius Caesar to make Pompeii pay more tax, and you don't argue with Caesar if you like having your head on your body.

Mum's sacred chickens get a place in the cart. Dorkius's gladiator figurines do not. (Guess which of those he minds about.)

Pompeii is a disappointment from the first evening. The whole place reeks of fish sauce and everyone pours it over everything. School is one lesson, the alphabet, over and over, and it goes on and on. The gladiators at the amphitheatre are wheezy, grey-haired and about ten years past it.

And every decision in town gets made by throwing grain at a chicken.

Then Dorkius has a snoop round the empty house of Numerius, the cleverest man in Pompeii, who left suddenly and told nobody why. Scratched into a shelf is a line that means nothing at all. Fortune looks over cold water.

It's a trail of clues, and it leads to a coded scroll, and to a girl called Decima who is a great deal braver than he is.

Reading it is like reading somebody's actual diary, which is the whole joke. Dorkius announces he is a true Roman hero roughly every other entry, then admits he ran away from a noise in a vineyard wearing saucepans for armour. Entries are short and dated in Roman numerals, so it moves fast and your reader can stop anywhere.

Be ready for the loo humour. A long stretch of one entry happens inside the sewer under the public toilets, and Dorkius describes what happens to him there as a fart thunderstorm. If that is your reader's sense of humour they will be very happy indeed. If it isn't, this one isn't for them.

The Roman detail is matter-of-fact rather than tidied up, so the household owns slaves and the town starts slaughtering animals at the temple the moment it gets frightened. Both are ordinary to Dorkius, and neither is dwelt on.

What to read next

If they want to know how he got quite this self-important, the first Dorkius Maximus diary is in the library too, with Dorkius still in Rome, still certain greatness is coming, and still falling over backwards in his brother's old armour.