The Last Days of Pompeii is a novel written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1834. The novel was inspired by the painting The Last Day of Pompeii by the Russian painter Karl Briullov, which Bulwer-Lytton had seen in Milan. The novel was a fictional account of the events surrounding the eruption of Vesuvius that buried the Roman city of Pompeii in AD 79. The novel uses its characters to contrast the decadent culture of 1st-century Rome with both older cultures and coming trends. The Last Days of Pompeii was one of the most popular English historical novels of the nineteenth century. It tells the story of the virtuous Greeks Glaucus and Ione, their escape from Pompeii amid the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, and their eventual conversion to Christianity, against a background of Roman decadence and corrupt Eastern religion.