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[Illustration: Recent Excavations made at Pompeii under the Direction of
Inspector Fiorelli, in 1860.]

THE WONDERS OF POMPEII.

BY

MARC MONNIER.

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH.

NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO.,
654 BROADWAY.
1871.

=Illustrated Library of Wonders.=

PUBLISHED BY

Messrs. Charles Scribner & Co.,

654 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.

Each one volume 12mo,                        Price per volume $1.50

Titles of books.                               No. of Illustrations

  THUNDER AND LIGHTNING,                                89
  WONDERS OF OPTICS,                                    70
  WONDERS OF HEAT,                                      90
  INTELLIGENCE OF ANIMALS,                              54
  GREAT HUNTS,                                          22
  EGYPT 3,300 YEARS AGO,                                40
  WONDERS OF POMPEII,                                   22
  THE SUN, BY A. GUILLEMIN,                             58
  SUBLIME IN NATURE,                                    50
  WONDERS OF GLASS-MAKING,                              63
  WONDERS OF ITALIAN ART,                               28
  WONDERS OF THE HUMAN BODY,                            45
  WONDERS OF ARCHITECTURE,                              50
  LIGHTHOUSES AND LIGHTSHIPS,                           60
  BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN,                                  68
  WONDERS OF BODILY STRENGTH AND SKILL,                 70
  WONDERFUL BALLON ASCENTS,                             80
  ACOUSTICS,                                           114
  WONDERS OF THE HEAVENS,                               48
* THE MOON, BY A. GUILLEMIN,                            60
* WONDERS OF SCULPTURE,                                 61
  WONDERS OF ENGRAVING,                                 32
* WONDERS OF VEGETATION,                                45
* WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD,                       97
* CELEBRATED ESCAPES,                                   26
* WATER,                                                77
* HYDRAULICS,                                           40
* ELECTRICITY,                                          71
* SUBTERRANEAN WORLDS,                                  27

* In Press for early publication

_The above works sent to any address, post paid, upon receipt of the
price by the publishers._

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

                                                 Facing page

Recent Excavations Made at Pompeii in 1860, under
  the Direction of the Inspector, Signor Fiorelli         25

The Rubbish Trucks Going up Empty                         30

Clearing out a Narrow Street in Pompeii                   33

Plan of Vesuvius                                          39

The Forum                                                 42

Discovery of Loaves Baked 1800 Years Ago, in the
  oven of a Baker                                         84

Closed House, with a Balcony, Recently Discovered         87

The Nola Gate at Pompeii                                  96

The Herculaneum Gate Restored                             99

The Tepidarium, at the Thermæ                            126

The Atrium of the House of Pansa Restored                138

Candelabra, Trinkets, and Kitchen Utensils Found at
  Pompeii                                                148

Kitchen Utensils found at Pompeii                        150

Earthenware and Bronze Lamps Found at Pompeii            154

Collar, Ring, Bracelet, and Ear-rings Found at Pompeii   158

Peristyle of the House of Quæstor, at Pompeii            167

The House of Lucretius                                   169

The Exædra of the House of the Poet                      185

The Exædra of the House of the Poet--Second View         189

The Smaller Theatre at Pompeii                           206

The Amphitheatre at Pompeii                              220

Bodies of Pompeians Cast in the Ashes of the Eruption    239

CONTENTS.

I.

THE EXHUMED CITY.
                                                              Page
The Antique Landscape.--The History of Pompeii Before
   and After its Destruction.--How it was Buried and
   Exhumed.--Winkelmann as a Prophet.--The Excavations
   in the Reign of Charles III., of Murat, and of
   Ferdinand.--The Excavations as they now are.--Signor
   Fiorelli.--Appearance of the Ruins.--What is and What
   is not found there.                                          13

II.

THE FORUM.

Diomed's Inn.--The Niche of Minerva.--The Appearance
   and The Monuments of the Forum.--The Antique
   Temple.--The Pagan ex-Voto Offerings.--The Merchants'
   City Exchange and the Petty Exchange.--The Pantheon,
   or was it a Temple, a Slaughter-house, or a
   Tavern?--The Style of Cooking, and the Form of
   Religion.--The Temple of Venus.--The Basilica.--The
   Inscriptions of Passers-by upon the Walls.--The Forum
   Rebuilt.                                                     37

III.

THE STREET.

The Plan of Pompeii.--The Princely Names of the
   Houses.--Appearance of the Streets, Pavements, Sidewalks,
   etc.--The Shops and the Signs.--The Perfumer, the Surgeon,
   etc.--An Ancient Manufactory.--Bathing
   Establishments.--Wine-shops, Disreputable Resorts.--Hanging
   Balconies, Fountains.--Public Placards: Let us
   Nominate Battur! Commit no Nuisance!--Religion on
   the Street.                                                  67

IV.

THE SUBURBS.

The Custom House.--The Fortifications and the Gates,--The
   Roman Highways.--The Cemetery of Pompeii.--Funerals:
   the Procession, the funeral Pyre, the Day of
   the Dead.--The Tombs and their Inscriptions.--Perpetual
   Leases.--Burial of the Rich, of Animals, and of
   the Poor.--The Villas of Diomed and Cicero.                  93

V.

THE THERMÆ.

The Hot Baths at Rome.--The Thermæ of Stabiæ.--A
   Tilt at Sun Dials.--A Complete Bath, as the Ancients
   Considered It: the Apartments, the Slaves, the Unguents,
   the Strigillæ.--A Saying of the Emperor Hadrian.--The
   Baths for Women.--The Reading Room.--The
   Roman Newspaper.--The Heating-Apparatus.                    120

VI.

THE DWELLINGS.

Paratus and Pansa.--The Atrium and the Peristyle.--The
   Dwelling Refurnished and Repeopled.--The Slaves, the
   Kitchen, and the Table.--The Morning Occupations of
   a Pompeian.--The Toilet of a Pompeian Lady.--A Citizen
   Supper: the Courses, the Guests.--The Homes of
   the Poor, and the Palaces of Rome.                          135

VII.

ART IN POMPEII.

The Homes of the Wealthy.--The Triangular Forum and
   the Temples.--Pompeian Architecture: Its Merits and
   its Defects.--The Artists of the Little City.--The
   Paintings here.--Landscapes, Figures, Rope-dancers,
   Dancing-girls, Centaurs, Gods, Heroes, the Iliad
   Illustrated.--Mosaics.--Statues and
   Statuettes.--Jewelry.--Carved Glass.--Art and Life.         167

VIII.

THE THEATRES.

The Arrangement of the Places of Amusement.--Entrance
   Tickets.--The Velarium, the Orchestra, the Stage.--The
   Odeon.--The Holconii.--The Side Scenes, the Masks.--The
   Atellan Farces.--The Mimes.--Jugglers, etc.--A
   Remark of Cicero on the Melodramas.--The Barrack
   of the Gladiators.--Scratched Inscriptions, Instruments
   of Torture.--The Pompeian Gladiators.--The Amphitheatre:
   Hunts, Combats, Butcheries, etc.                            199

IX.

THE ERUPTION.

The Deluge of Ashes.--The Deluge of Fire.--The Flight
   of the Pompeians.--The Preoccupations of the Pompeian
   Women.--The Victims: the Family of Diomed; the
   Sentinel; the Woman Walled up in a Tomb; the Priest
   of Isis; the Lovers clinging together, etc.--The
   Skeletons.--The Dead Bodies moulded by Vesuvius.            232

DIALOGUE.

(IN A BOOKSTORE AT NAPLES.)

A TRAVELLER (_entering_).--Have you any work on Pompeii?

THE SALESMAN.--Yes; we have several. Here, for instance, is
Bulwer's "Last Days of Pompeii."

TRAVELLER.--Too thoroughly romantic.

SALESMAN.--Well, here are the folios of Mazois.

TRAVELLER.--Too heavy.

SALESMAN.--Here's Dumas's "Corricolo."

TRAVELLER.--Too light.

SALESMAN.--How would Nicolini's magnificent work suit you?

TRAVELLER.--Oh! that's too dear.

SALESMAN.--Here's Commander Aloë's "Guide."

TRAVELLER.--That's too dry.

SALESMAN.--Neither dry, nor romantic, nor light, nor heavy!
What, then, would you have, sir?

TRAVELLER.--A small, portable work; accurate, conscientious,
and within everybody's reach.

SALESMAN.--Ah, sir, we have nothing of that kind; besides, it
is impossible to get up such a work.

THE AUTHOR (_aside_).--Who knows?

THE

WONDERS OF POMPEII.

I.

THE EXHUMED CITY.

     THE ANTIQUE LANDSCAPE--THE HISTORY OF POMPEII BEFORE AND AFTER
     ITS DESTRUCTION.--HOW IT WAS BURIED AND EXHUMED.--WINKELMANN AS A
     PROPHET.--THE EXCAVATIONS IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES III., OF MURAT,
     AND OF FERDINAND.--THE EXCAVATIONS AS THEY NOW ARE.--SIGNOR
     FIORELLI.--APPEARANCE OF THE RUINS.--WHAT IS AND WHAT IS NOT FOUND
     THERE.

A railroad runs from Naples to Pompeii. Are you alone? The trip occupies
one hour, and you have just time enough to read what follows, pausing
once in a while to glance at Vesuvius and the sea; the clear, bright
waters hemmed in by the gentle curve of the promontories; a bluish coast
that approaches and becomes green; a green coast that withdraws into the
distance and becomes blue; Castellamare looming up, and Naples receding.
All these lines and colors existed too at the time when Pompeii was
destroyed: the island of Prochyta, the cities of Baiæ, of Bauli, of
Neapolis, and of Surrentum bore the names that they retain. Portici was
called Herculaneum; Torre dell'Annunziata was called Oplontes;
Castellamare, Stabiæ; Misenum and Minerva designated the two extremities
of the gulf. However, Vesuvius was not what it has become; fertile and
wooded almost to the summit, covered with orchards and vines, it must
have resembled the picturesque heights of Monte San Angelo, toward which
we are rolling. The summit alone, honeycombed with caverns and covered
with black stones, betrayed to the learned a volcano "long extinct." It
was to blaze out again, however, in a terrible eruption; and, since
then, it has constantly flamed and smoked, menacing the ruins it has
made and the new cities that brave it, calmly reposing at its feet.

What do you expect to find at Pompeii? At a distance, its antiquity
seems enormous, and the word "ruins" awakens colossal conceptions in the
excited fancy of the traveller. But, be not self-deceived; that is the
first rule in knocking about over the world. Pompeii was a small city of
only thirty thousand souls; something like what Geneva was thirty years
ago. Like Geneva, too, it was marvellously situated--in the depth of a
picturesque valley between mountains shutting in the horizon on one
side, at a few steps from the sea and from a streamlet, once a river,
which plunges into it--and by its charming site attracted personages of
distinction, although it was peopled chiefly with merchants and others
in easy circumstances; shrewd, prudent folk, and probably honest and
clever enough, as well. The etymologists, after having exhausted, in
their lexicons, all the words that chime in sound with Pompeii, have, at
length, agreed in deriving the name from a Greek verb which signifies
_to send, to transport_, and hence they conclude that many of the
Pompeians were engaged in exportation, or perhaps, were emigrants sent
from a distance to form a colony. Yet these opinions are but
conjectures, and it is useless to dwell on them.

All that can be positively stated is that the city was the entrepôt of
the trade of Nola, Nocera, and Atella. Its port was large enough to
receive a naval armament, for it sheltered the fleet of P. Cornelius.
This port, mentioned by certain authors, has led many to believe that
the sea washed the walls of Pompeii, and some guides have even thought
they could discover the rings that once held the cables of the galleys.
Unfortunately for this idea, at the place which the imagination of some
of our contemporaries covered with salt water, there were one day
discovered the vestiges of old structures, and it is now conceded that
Pompeii, like many other seaside places, had its harbor at a distance.
Our little city made no great noise in history. Tacitus and Seneca speak
of it as celebrated, but the Italians of all periods have been fond of
superlatives. You will find some very old buildings in it, proclaiming
an ancient origin, and Oscan inscriptions recalling the antique language
of the country. When the Samnites invaded the whole of Campania, as
though to deliver it over more easily to Rome, they probably occupied
Pompeii, which figured in the second Samnite war, B.C. 310, and which,
revolting along with the entire valley of the Sarno from Nocera to
Stabiæ, repulsed an incursion of the Romans and drove them back to their
vessels. The third Samnite war was, as is well known, a bloody vengeance
for this, and Pompeii became Roman. Although the yoke of the conquerors
was not very heavy--the _municipii_, retaining their Senate, their
magistrates, their _comitiæ_ or councils, and paying a tribute of men
only in case of war--the Samnite populations, clinging frantically to
the idea of a separate and independent existence, rose twice again in
revolt; once just after the battle of Cannæ, when they threw themselves
into the arms of Hannibal, and then against Sylla, one hundred and
twenty-four years later--facts that prove the tenacity of their
resistance. On both occasions Pompeii was retaken, and the second time
partly dismantled and occupied by a detachment of soldiers, who did not
long remain there. And thus we have the whole history of this little
city. The Romans were fond of living there, and Cicero had a residence
in the place, to which he frequently refers in his letters. Augustus
sent thither a colony which founded the suburb of Augustus Felix,
administered by a mayor. The Emperor Claudius also had a villa at
Pompeii, and there lost one of his children, who perished by a singular
mishap. The imperial lad was amusing himself, as the Neapolitan boys do
to this day, by throwing pears up into the air and catching them in his
mouth as they fell. One of the fruits choked him by descending too far
into his throat. But the Neapolitan youngsters perform the feat with
figs, which render it infinitely less dangerous.

We are, then, going to visit a small city subordinate to Rome, much less
than Marseilles is to Paris, and a little more so than Geneva is to
Berne. Pompeii had almost nothing to do with the Senate or the Emperor.
The old tongue--the Oscan--had ceased to be official, and the
authorities issued their orders in Latin. The residents of the place
were Roman citizens, Rome being recognized as the capital and
fatherland. The local legislation was made secondary to Roman
legislation. But, excepting these reservations, Pompeii formed a little
world, apart, independent, and complete in itself. She had a miniature
Senate, composed of decurions; an aristocracy in epitome, represented by
the _Augustales_, answering to knights; and then came her _plebs_ or
common people. She chose her own pontiffs, convoked the comitiæ,
promulged municipal laws, regulated military levies, collected taxes; in
fine selected her own immediate rulers--her consuls (the duumvirs
dispensing justice), her ediles, her quæstors, etc. Hence, it is not a
provincial city that we are to survey, but a petty State which had
preserved its autonomy within the unity of the Empire, and was, as has
been cleverly said, a miniature of Rome.

Another circumstance imparts a peculiar interest to Pompeii. That city,
which seemed to have no good luck, had been violently shaken by
earthquake in the year B.C. 63. Several temples had toppled down along
with the colonnade of the Forum, the great Basilica, and the theatres,
without counting the tombs and houses. Nearly every family fled from the
place, taking with them their furniture and their statuary; and the
Senate hesitated a long time before they allowed the city to be rebuilt
and the deserted district to be re-peopled. The Pompeians at last
returned; but the decurions wished to make the restoration of the place
a complete rejuvenation. The columns of the Forum speedily reappeared,
but with capitals in the fashion of the day; the Corinthian-Roman order,
adopted almost everywhere, changed the style of the monuments; the old
shafts covered with stucco were patched up for the new topwork they were
to receive, and the Oscan inscriptions disappeared. From all this there
sprang great blunders in an artistic point of view, but a uniformity
and consistency that please those who are fond of monuments and cities
of one continuous derivation. Taste loses, but harmony gains thereby,
and you pass in review a collective totality of edifices that bear their
age upon their fronts, and give a very exact and vivid idea of what a
_municeps_ a Roman colony must have been in the time of Vespasian.

They went to work, then, to rebuild the city, and the undertaking was
pushed on quite vigorously, thanks to the contributions of the
Pompeians, especially of the functionaries. The temples of Jupiter and
of Venus--we adopt the consecrated names--and those of Isis and of
Fortune, were already up; the theatres were rising again; the handsome
columns of the Forum were ranging themselves under their porticoes; the
residences were gay with brilliant paintings; work and pleasure had both
resumed their activity; life hurried to and fro through the streets, and
crowds thronged the amphitheatre, when, all at once, burst forth the
terrible eruption of 79. I will describe it further on; but here simply
recall the fact that it buried Pompeii under a deluge of stones and
ashes. This re-awakening of the volcano destroyed three cities, without
counting the villages, and depopulated the country in the twinkling of
an eye.

After the catastrophe, however, the inhabitants returned, and made the
first excavations in order to recover their valuables; and robbers,
too--we shall surprise them in the very act--crept into the subterranean
city. It is a fact that the Emperor Titus for a moment entertained the
idea of clearing and restoring it, and with that view sent two Senators
to the spot, intrusted with the mission of making the first study of the
ground; but it would appear that the magnitude of the work appalled
those dignitaries, and that the restoration in question never got beyond
the condition of a mere project. Rome soon had more serious cares to
occupy her than the fate of a petty city that ere long disappeared
beneath vineyards, orchards, and gardens, and under a thick growth of
woodland--remark this latter circumstance--until, at length, centuries
accumulated, and with them the forgetfulness that buries all things.
Pompeii was then, so to speak, lost, and the few learned men who knew it
by name could not point out its site. When, at the close of the
sixteenth century, the architect Fontana was constructing a subterranean
canal to convey the waters of the Sarno to Torre dell' Annunziata, the
conduit passed through Pompeii, from one end to the other, piercing the
walls, following the old streets, and coming upon sub structures and
inscriptions; but no one bethought him that they had discovered the
place of the buried city. However, the amphitheatre, which, roofed in by
a layer of the soil, formed a regular excavation, indicated an ancient
edifice, and the neighboring peasantry, with better information than the
learned, designated by the half-Latin name of _Civita_, which dim
tradition had handed down, the soil and debris that had accumulated
above Pompeii.

It was only in 1748, under the reign of Charles III, when the discovery
of Herculaneum had attracted the attention of the world to the
antiquities thus buried, that, some vine-dressers having struck upon
some old walls with their picks and spades, and in so doing unearthed
statues, a colonel of engineers named Don Rocco Alcubierra asked
permission of the king to make excavations in the vicinity. The king
consented and placed a dozen of galley-slaves at the colonel's
disposition. Thus it was that by a lucky chance a military engineer
discovered the city that we are about to visit. Still, eight years more
had to roll away before any one suspected that it was Pompeii which they
were thus exhuming. Learned folks thought they were dealing with Stabiæ.

Shall I relate the history of these underground researches, "badly
conducted, frequently abandoned, and resumed in obedience to the same
capriciousness that had led to their suspension," as they were? Such are
the words of the opinion Barthelemy expressed when writing, in 1755, to
the Count de Caylus. Winkelmann, who was present at these excavations a
few years later, sharply criticised the tardiness of the galley-slaves
to whom the work had been confided. "At this rate," he wrote, "our
descendants of the fourth generation will still have digging to do among
these ruins." The illustrious German hardly suspected that he was making
so accurate a prediction as it has turned out to be. The descendants of
the fourth generation are our contemporaries, and the third part of
Pompeii is not yet unearthed.

The Emperor Joseph II. visited the excavations on the 6th of April,
1796, and complained bitterly to King Ferdinand IV. of the slight degree
of zeal and the small amount of money employed. The king promised to do
better, but did not keep his word. He had neither intelligence nor
activity in prosecuting this immense task, excepting while the French
occupation lasted. At that time, however, the government carried out the
idea of Francesco La Vega, a man of sense and capacity, and purchased
all the ground that covered Pompeii. Queen Caroline, the sister of
Bonaparte and wife of Murat, took a fancy to these excavations and
pushed them vigorously, often going all the way from Naples through six
leagues of dust to visit them. In 1813 there were exactly four hundred
and seventy-six laborers employed at Pompeii. The Bourbons returned and
commenced by re-selling the ground that had been purchased under Murat;
then, little by little, the work continued, at first with some activity,
then fell off and slackened more and more until, from being neglected,
they were altogether abandoned, and were resumed only once in a while in
the presence of crowned heads. On these occasions they were got up like
New Year's surprise games: everything that happened to be at hand was
scattered about on layers of ashes and of pumice-stone and carefully
covered over. Then, upon the arrival of such-and-such a majesty, or this
or that highness, the magic wand of the superintendent or inspector of
the works, caused all these treasures to spring out of the ground. I
could name, one after the other, the august personages who were deceived
in this manner, beginning with the Kings of the Two Sicilies and of
Jerusalem.

But that is not all. Not only was nothing more discovered at Pompeii,
but even the monuments that had been found were not preserved. King
Ferdinand soon discovered that the 25,000 francs applied to the
excavations were badly employed; he reduced the sum to 10,000, and that
amount was worn down on the way by passing through so many hands.
Pompeii fell back, gradually presenting nothing but ruins upon ruins.

Happily, the Italian Government established by the revolution of 1860,
came into power to set all these acts of negligence and roguery to
rights. Signor Fiorelli, who is all intelligence and activity, not to
mention his erudition, which numerous writings prove, was appointed
inspector of the excavations. Under his administration, the works which
had been vigorously resumed were pushed on by as many as seven hundred
laborers at a time, and they dug out in the lapse of three years more
treasures than had been brought to light in the thirty that preceded
them. Everything has been reformed, nay, _moralised_, as it were, in the
dead city; the visitor pays two francs at the gate and no longer has to
contend with the horde of guides, doorkeepers, rapscallions, and beggars
who formerly plundered him. A small museum, recently established,
furnishes the active inquirer the opportunity of examining upon the spot
the curiosities that have already been discovered; a library containing
the fine works of Mazois, of Raoul Rochette, of Gell, of Zahn, of
Overbeck, of Breton, etc., on Pompeii, enables the student to consult
them in Pompeii itself; workshops lately opened are continually busy in
restoring cracked walls, marbles, and bronzes, and one may there
surprise the artist Bramante, the most ingenious hand at repairing
antiquities in the world, as likewise my friend, Padiglione, who, with
admirable patience and minute fidelity, is cutting a small model in cork
of the ruins that have been cleared, which is scrupulously exact. In
fine--and this is the main point--the excavations are no longer carried
on occasionally only, and in the presence of a few privileged persons,
but before the first comer and every day, unless funds have run short.

"I have frequently been present," wrote a half-Pompeian, a year or two
ago, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_--"I have frequently been present for
hours together, seated on a sand-bank which itself, perhaps, concealed
wonders, and witnessed this rude yet interesting toil, from which I
could not withdraw my gaze. I therefore have it in my power to write
understandingly. I do not relate what I read, but what I saw. Three
systems, to my knowledge, have been employed in these excavations. The
first, inaugurated under Charles III., was the simplest. It consisted in
hollowing out the soil, in extricating the precious objects found, and
then in re-filling the orifice--an excellent method of forming a museum
by destroying Pompeii. This method was abandoned so soon as it was
discovered that a whole city was involved. The second system, which was
gradually brought to perfection in the last century, was earnestly
pursued under Murat. The work was started in many places at once, and
the laborers, advancing one after the other, penetrating and cutting the
hill, followed the line of the streets, which they cleared little by
little before them. In following the streets on the ground-level, the
declivity of ashes and pumice-stone which obstructed them was attacked
below, and thence resulted many regrettable accidents. The whole upper
part of the houses, commencing with the roofs, fell in among the
rubbish, along with a thousand fragile articles, which were broken and
lost without there being any means of determining the point from which
they had been hurled down. In order to obviate this inconvenience,
Signor Fiorelli has started a third system. He does not follow the
streets by the ground-level, but he marks them out over the hillocks,
and thus traces among the trees and cultivated grounds wide squares
indicating the subterranean, islets. No one is ignorant of the fact that
these islets--_isole, insulæ_ in the modern as well as in the ancient
language of Italy--indicate blocks of buildings. The islet traced,
Signor Fiorelli repurchases the land which had been sold by King
Ferdinand I. and gives up the trees found upon it.[A]

"The ground, then, being bought and the vegetation removed, work begins.
The earth at the summit of the hill is taken off and carried away on a
railroad, which descends from the middle of Pompeii by a slope that
saves all expense of machinery and fuel, to a considerable distance
beyond the amphitheatre and the city. In this way, the most serious
question of all, to wit, that of clearing away the dirt, is solved.
Formerly, the ruins were covered in with it, and subsequently it was
heaped up in a huge hillock, but now it helps to construct the very
railroad that carries it away, and will, one day, tip it into the sea.

"Nothing can present a livelier scene than the excavation of these
ruins. Men diligently dig away at the earth, and bevies of young girls
run to and fro without cessation, with baskets in their hands. These
are sprightly peasant damsels collected from the adjacent villages most
of them accustomed to working in factories that have closed or curtailed
operations owing to the invasion of English tissues and the rise of
cotton. No one would have dreamed that free trade and the war in America
would have supplied female hands to work at the ruins of Pompeii. But
all things are linked together now in this great world of ours, vast as
it is. These girls then run backward and forward, filling their baskets
with soil, ashes, and _lapillo_, hoisting them on their heads, by the
help of the men, with a single quick, sharp motion, and thereupon
setting off again, in groups that incessantly replace each other, toward
the railway, passing and repassing their returning companions. Very
picturesque in their ragged gowns of brilliant colors, they walk swiftly
with lengthy strides, their long skirts defining the movements of their
naked limbs and fluttering in the wind behind them, while their arms,
with gestures like those of classic urn-bearers, sustain the heavy load
that rests upon their heads without making them even stoop. All this is
not out of keeping with the monuments that gradually appear above the
surface as the rubbish is removed. Did not the sight of foreign
visitors here and there disturb the harmony of the scene, one might
readily ask himself, in the midst of this Virgilian landscape, amid
these festooning vines, in full view of the smoking Vesuvius, and
beneath that antique sky, whether all those young girls who come and go
are not the slaves of Pansa, the ædile, or of the duumvir Holconius."

[Illustration: The Rubbish Trucks Going up Empty.]

We have just glanced over the history of Pompeii before and after its
destruction. Let us now enter the city. But a word of caution before we
start. Do not expect to find houses or monuments still erect and roofed
in like the Pantheon at Rome and the square building at Nismes, or you
will be sadly disappointed. Rather picture to yourself a small city of
low buildings and narrow streets that had been completely burned down in
a single night. You have come to look at it on the day after the
conflagration. The upper stories have disappeared, and the ceilings have
fallen in. Everything that was of wood, planks, and beams, is in ashes;
all is uncovered, and no roofs are to be seen. In these structures,
which in other days were either private dwellings or public edifices,
you now can everywhere walk under the open sky. Were a shower to come
on, you would not know where to seek shelter. It is as though you were
in a city in progress of building, with only the first stories as yet
completed, but without the flooring for the second. Here is a house:
nothing remains of it but the lower walls, with nothing resting on them.
At a distance you would suppose it to be a collection of screens set up
for parlor theatricals. Here is a public square: you will now see in it
only bottom platforms, supports that hold up nothing, shafts of columns
without galleries, pedestals without statues, mute blocks of stone,
space and emptiness. I will lead you into more than one temple. You will
see there only an eminence of masonry, side and end walls, but no front,
no portico. Where is art? Where is the presiding deity of the place? The
ruins of your stable would not be more naked a thousand years hence.
Stones on all sides, tufa, bricks, lava, here and there some slabs of
marble and travertine, then traces of destruction--paintings defaced,
pavements disjointed and full of gaps and cracks--and then marks of
spoliation, for all the precious objects found were carried off to the
museum at Naples, and I can show you now nothing but the places where
once stood the Faun, the statue of Narcissus, the mosaic of Arbelles and
the famous blue vase. Such is the Pompeii that awaits the traveller who
comes thither expecting to find another Paris, or, at least, ruins
arranged in the Parisian style, like the tower of St. Jacques, for
instance.

[Illustration: Clearing out a Narrow Street in Pompeii.]

You will say, perhaps, good reader, that I disenchant you; on the
contrary, I prevent your disenchantment. Do not prepare the way for your
own disappointment by unreasonable expectations or by ill-founded
notions; this is all that I ask of your judgment. Do not come hither to
look for the relics of Roman grandeur. Other impressions await you at
Pompeii. What you are about to see is an entire city, or at all events
the third of an ancient city, remote, detached from every modern town,
and forming in itself something isolated and complete which you will
find nowhere else. Here is no Capitol rebuilt; no Pantheon consecrated
now to the God of Christianity; no Acropolis surmounting a Danish or
Bavarian city; no Maison Carrée (as at Nismes) transformed to a gallery
of paintings and forming one of the adornments of a modern Boulevard.
At Pompeii everything is antique and eighteen centuries old; first the
sky, then the landscape, the seashore, and then the work of man,
devastated undoubtedly, but not transformed, by time. The streets are
not repaired; the high sidewalks that border them have not been lowered
for the pedestrians of our time, and we promenade upon the same stones
that were formerly trodden by the feet of Sericus the merchant and
Epaphras the slave. As we enter these narrow streets we quit, perforce,
the year in which we are living and the quarter that we inhabit. Behold
us in a moment transported to another age and into another world.
Antiquity invades and absorbs us and, were it but for an hour, we are
Romans. That, however, is not all. I have already repeatedly said that
Vesuvius did not destroy Pompeii--it has preserved it.

The structures that have been exhumed crumble away in the air in a few
months--more than they had done beneath the ashes in eighteen centuries.
When first disinterred the painted walls reappear fresh and glowing as
though their coloring were but of yesterday. Each wall thus becomes, as
it were, a page of illustrated archeology, unveiling to us some point
hitherto unknown of the manners, customs, private habits, creeds and
traditions; or, to sum all up in a word, of the life of the ancients.

The furniture one finds, the objects of art or the household utensils,
reveal to us the mansion; there is not a single panel which, when
closely examined, does not tell us something. Such and such a pillar has
retained the inscription scratched upon it with the point of his knife
by a Pompeian who had nothing else to do; such a piece of wall on the
street set apart for posters, presents in huge letters the announcement
of a public spectacle, or proclaims the candidature of some citizen for
a contested office of the state.

I say nothing of the skeletons, whose attitudes relate, in a most
striking manner, the horrors of the catastrophe and the frantic
struggles of the last moment. In fine, for any one who has the faculty
of observation, every step is a surprise, a discovery, a confession won
concerning the public and private life of the ancients. Although at
first sight mute, these blocks of stone, when interrogated, soon speak
and confide their secrets to science or to the imagination that catches
a meaning with half a word; they tell, little by little, all that they
know, and all the strange, mysterious things that took place on these
same pavements, under this same sky, in those miraculous times, the most
interesting in history, viz.: the eighth century of Rome and the first
of the Christian era.

[Footnote A: The money accruing from this sale is applied to the
Pompeian library mentioned elsewhere.]

II.

THE FORUM.

     DIOMED'S INN.--THE NICHE OF MINERVA.--THE APPEARANCE AND THE
     MONUMENTS OF THE FORUM.--THE ANTIQUE TEMPLE.--THE PAGAN EX-VOTO
     OFFERINGS.--THE MERCHANTS' CITY EXCHANGE AND THE PETTY
     EXCHANGE.--THE PANTHEON, OR WAS IT A TEMPLE, A SLAUGHTER-HOUSE, OR
     A TAVERN?--THE STYLE OF COOKING AND THE FORM OF RELIGION.--THE
     TEMPLE OF VENUS.--- THE BASILICA.--THE INSCRIPTIONS OF PASSERS-BY
     UPON THE WALLS.--THE FORUM REBUILT.

As you alight at the station, in the first place breakfast at the
_popina_ of Diomed. It is a tavern of our own day, which has assumed an
antique title to please travellers. You may there drink Falernian wine
manufactured by Scala, the Neapolitan chemist, and, should you ask for
some _jentaculum_ in the Roman style--_aliquid scitamentorum_,
_glandionidum suillam taridum_, _pernonidem_, _sinciput aut omenta
porcina_, _aut aliquid ad eum modum_--they will serve you a beefsteak
and potatoes. Your strength refreshed, you will scale the sloping
hillock of ashes and rubbish that conceals the ruins from your view; you
will pay your two francs at the office and you will pass the
gate-keeper's turnstile, astonished, as it is, to find itself in such a
place. These formalities once concluded you have nothing more that is
modern to go through unless it be the companionship of a guide in
military uniform who escorts you, in reality to _watch_, you (especially
if you belong to the country of Lord Elgin), but not to mulct you in the
least. Placards in all the known languages forbid you to offer him so
much as an _obolus_. You make your _entrée_, in a word, into the antique
life, and you are as free as a Pompeian.

The first thing one sees is an arcade and such a niche as might serve
for an image of the Madonna; but be reassured, for the niche contains a
Minerva. It is no longer the superstition of our own time that strikes
our gaze. Under the arcade open extensive store-houses that probably
served as a place of deposit for merchandise. You then enter an
ascending paved street, pass by the temple of Venus and the Basilica,
and arrive at the Forum. There, one should pause.

At first glance, the observer distinguishes nothing but a long square
space closed at the further extremity by a regular-shaped mound rising
between two arcades; lateral alleys extend lengthwise on the right and
the left between shafts of columns and dilapidated architectural
work. Here and there some compound masses of stone-work indicate altars
or the pedestals of statues no longer seen. Vesuvius, still threatening,
smokes away at the extremity of the picture.

[Illustration: Plan of Vesuvius.]

Look more closely and you will perceive that the fluted columns are of
Caserta stone, of tufa, or of brick, coated with stucco and raised two
steps above the level of the square. Under the lower step runs the
kennel. These columns sustained a gallery upon which one mounted by
narrow and abrupt steps that time has spared. This upper gallery must
have been covered. The women walked in it. A second story of columns,
most likely interrupted in front of the monuments, rested upon the other
one. Mazois has reconstructed this colonnade in two superior
orders--Doric below and Ionic above--with exquisite elegance. The
pavement of the square, on which you may still walk, was of travertine.
Thus we see the Forum rising again, as it were, in our presence.

Let us glance at the ruins that surround it. That mound at the other end
was the foundation of a temple, the diminutive size of which strikes the
newcomer at first sight. Every one is not aware that the temple, far
from being a place of assemblage for devout multitudes, was, with the
ancients, in reality, but a larger niche inclosing the statue of the
deity to be worshipped. The consecrated building received only a small
number of the elect after they had been befittingly purified, and the
crowd remained outside. It was not the palace, but the mere cell of the
god. This cell (_cella_) was, at first, the whole temple, and was just
large enough to hold the statue and the altar. By degrees it came to be
ornamented with a front portico, then with a rear portico, and then with
side colonnades, thus attaining by embellishment after embellishment the
rich elegance of the Madeleine at Paris. But the proportions of our
cathedrals were never adopted by the ancients. Thus, Christianity rarely
appropriates the Greek or Roman temples for its worship. It has
preferred the vast basilicas, the royal name of which assumes a
religious meaning.

The Romans built their temples in this wise: The augur--that is to say,
the priest who read the future in the flight of birds--traced in the sky
with his short staff a spacious square, which he then marked on the
soil. Stakes were at once fixed along the four lines, and draperies were
hung between the stakes. In the midst of this space, the area or
inclosure of the temple, the augur marked out a cross--the augural
cross, indicating the four cardinal points; the transverse lines fixed
the limits of the _cella_; the point where the two branches met was the
place for the door, and the first stone was deposited on the threshold.
Numerous lighted lamps illuminated these ceremonies, after which the
chief priest, the _pontifex maximus_, consecrated the area, and from
that moment it became settled and immovable. If it crumbled, it must be
rebuilt on the same spot, and the least change made, even should it be
to enlarge it, would be regarded as a profanation. Thus had the dwelling
of the god that rises before us at the extremity of the Forum been
consecrated.

Like most of the Roman temples, this edifice is elevated on a foundation
(the _podium_), and turned toward the north. One ascends to it by a
flight of steps that cuts in the centre a platform where, perhaps, the
altar stood. Upon the _podium_ there remain some vestiges of the twelve
columns that formed the front portico or _pronaos_. Twelve columns, did
I say?--three on each side, six in front; always an even number at the
facades, so that a central column may not mask the doorway and that the
temple may be freely entered by the intercolumnar middle space.

To the right and the left of the steps were pedestals that formerly
sustained statues probably colossal. Behind the _pronaos_ could be
recognized the place where the _cella_ used to be. Nothing remains of it
now but the mosaic pavement and the walls. Traces of columns enable us
to reconstruct this sanctuary richly. We can there raise--and it has
been done on paper--two colonnades--the first one of the Ionic order,
supporting a gallery; the second of the Corinthian order, sustaining the
light wooden platform of painted wood which no longer exists. The walls,
covered with stucco, still retain pretty decorative paintings. Three
small subterranean chambers, of very solid construction, perhaps
contained the treasury and archives of the State, or something else
entirely different--why not those of the temple? In those times the
Church was rich; the Saviour had not ordained poverty as its portion.

[Illustration: THE FORUM.]

What deity's house is it that we are visiting now? Jupiter's, says
common opinion, upon the strength of a colossal statue of which
fragments have been found that might well have fitted the King of the
Gods. Others think it the temple of Venus, the _Venus Physica_ (the
beautiful in nature, say æsthetic philosophers) being the patroness of
Pompeii. We shall frequently, hereafter, meet with the name of this
goddess. Several detached limbs in stone and in bronze, which are not
broken at the extremity as though they belonged to a statue, but are
polished on all sides and cut in such a manner as to admit of being
suspended, were found among the ruins; they were votive offerings.
Italy, in becoming Catholic, has retained these Pagan customs. Besides
her supreme God, she worships a host of demi-gods, to whom she dedicates
her towns and consecrates her temples, where garlands of ex-voto
offerings testify to the intercession of the priests and the gratitude
of the true believers.

On the two sides of the temple of Jupiter--such is the
generally-accepted name--rise arcades, as I have already remarked. The
one on the left is a vaulted entrance, which, being too low and standing
too far forward, does not correspond with the other and deranges, one
cannot exactly make out why, the symmetry of this part of the Forum. The
other arcade is evidently a triumphal portal. Nothing remains of it now
but the body of the work in brick, some niches and traces of pilasters;
but it is easy to replace the marbles and the statues which must have
adorned this monument in rather poor taste. Such was the extremity of
the Forum.

Four considerable edifices follow each other on the eastern side of this
public square. These are, going from south to north, the palace of
Eumachia, the temple of Mercury, the Senate Chamber, and the Pantheon.

What is the Eumachia palace? An inscription found at that place reads:
"Eumachia, in her name and in the name of her son, has erected to
Concord and to august Piety, a Chalcidicum, a crypt and porticoes."

What is a Chalcidicum? Long and grave have been the discussions on this
subject among the savans. They have agreed, however, on one point, that
it should be a species of structure invented at Chalcis, a city of
Eubea.

However that may be, this much-despoiled palace presents a vast open
gallery, which was, certainly, the portico mentioned above. Around the
portico ran a closed gallery along three sides, and that must have been
the crypt. Upon the fourth side--that is to say, before the entry that
fronts the Forum--stood forth a sort of porch, a large exterior
vestibule: that was probably the Chalcidicum.

The edifice is curious. Behind the vestibule are two walls, not
parallel, one of which follows the alignment of the Forum, and the other
that of the interior portico. The space between this double wall is
utilized and some shops hide themselves in its recesses. Thus the
irregularity of the plan is not merely corrected--it is turned to useful
account. The ancients were shrewd fellows. This portico rested on
fifty-eight columns, surrounding a court-yard. In the court-yard, a
large movable stone, in good preservation, with the ring that served to
lift it, covered a cistern. At the extremity of the portico, in a
hemicycle, stood a headless statue--perhaps the Piety or Concord to
which the entire edifice was dedicated. Behind the hemicycle a sort of
square niche buried itself in the wall between two doors, one of which,
painted on the wall for the sake of symmetry, is a useful and curious
document. It is separated into three long and narrow panels and is
provided with a ring that should have served to move it. Doors are
nowhere to be seen now in Pompeii, because they were of wood, and
consequently were consumed by the fire; hence, this painted
representation has filled the savants with delight; they now know that
the ancients shut themselves in at home by processes exactly like our
own.

Between, the two doors, in the square niche, the statue of Eumachia, or,
at least, a moulded model of that statue, is still erect upon its
pedestal. It is of a female of tall stature, who looks sad and ill. An
inscription informs us that the statue was erected in her honor by the
fullers. These artisans formed quite a respectable corporation at
Pompeii, and we shall presently visit the manufactory where they
worked. Everything is now explained: the edifice of Eumachia must have
been the Palace of Industry of that city and period. This is the
Pompeian Merchants' Exchange, where transactions took place in the
portico, and in winter, in the crypt. The tribunal of commerce sat in
the hemicycle, at the foot of the statue of Concord, raised there to
appease quarrels between the merchants. In the court-yard, the huge
blocks of stone still standing were the tables on which their goods were
spread. The cistern and the large vats yielded the conveniences to wash
them. In fine, the Chalcidicum was the smaller Exchange, and the niches
still seen there must have been the stands of the auctioneers. But what
was there in common between this market, this fullers' counter, and the
melancholy priestess?

Religion at that period entered into everything, even into trade and
industry. A secret door put the edifice of Eumachia in communication
with the adjacent temple. That temple, which was dedicated to
Mercury--why to Mercury?--or to Quirinus--why _not_ to Mercury?--at this
day forms a small museum of precious relics. The entrance to it is
closed with a grating through which a sufficient view may be had of the
bas-relief on the altar, representing a sacrifice. A personage whose
head is half-veiled presides at the ceremony; behind that person a child
carries the consecrated water in a vase, and the _victimarius_, bearing
an axe, leads the bull that is to be offered up. Behind the sacrificial
party are some flute-players. On the two sides of the altar other
bas-reliefs represent the instruments that were used at the sacrifices;
the _lituus_, or curved staff of the augur; the _acerra_, or perfuming
censer; the _mantile_, or consecrated cloth that--let us simply say, the
napkin,--and, finally, the vases peculiar to these ceremonies, the
_patere_, the _simpulum_, and the _prefericulum_.

That altar is the only curiosity in the temple. The remainder is not
worth the trouble of being studied or reconstructed. The mural paintings
form an adornment of questionable taste. A rear door puts the temple in
communication with the _Senaculum_, or Senate-house, as the neighboring
structure was called; but the Pompeian Senators being no more than
decurions, it is an ambitious title. A vestibule that comes forward as
far as the colonnade of the Forum; then a spacious saloon or hall; an
arch at the end, with a broad foundation where the seats of the
decemviri possibly stood; then, walls built of rough stones arranged in
net-work (_opus reticulatum_), some niches without statues--such is all
that remains. But with a ceiling of wood painted in bright colors (the
walls could not have held up a vaulted roof), and completely paved,
completely sheathed with marble, as some flags and other remnants
indicate, this hall could not have been without some richness of effect.
Those who sat there were but the magistrates of a small city; but behind
them loomed up Rome, whose vast shadow embraced and magnified
everything.

At length we have before us the Pantheon, the strangest and the least
easy to name of the edifices of Pompeii. It is not parallel to the
Forum, but its obliquity was adroitly masked by shops in which many
pieces of coin have been found. Hence the conclusion that these were
_tabernæ argentariæ_, the money-changers' offices, and I cannot prove
the contrary. The two entrance doors are separated by two Corinthian
columns, between which is hollowed out a niche without a statue. The
capitals of these columns bear Cæsarean eagles. Could this Pantheon have
been the temple of Augustus? Having passed the doors, one reaches an
area, in which extended, to the right and to the left, a spacious
portico surrounding a court, in the midst of which remain twelve
pedestals that, ranged in circular order, once, perhaps, sustained the
pillars of a circular temple or the statues of twelve gods. This, then,
was the Pantheon. However, at the extremity of the edifice, and directly
opposite to the entrance, three apartments open. The middle one formed a
chapel; three statues were found there representing Drusus and Livia,
the wife of Augustus, along with an arm holding a globe, and belonging,
no doubt, to the consecrated statue which must have stood upon the
pedestal at the end, a statue of the Emperor. Then this was the temple
of Augustus. The apartment to the left shows a niche and an altar, and
served, perhaps, for sacrifices; the room to the right offers a stone
bench arranged in the shape of a horse-shoe. It could not be one of
those triple beds (_triclinia_) which we shall find in the eating
saloons of the private houses; for the slope of these benches would have
forced the reclining guests to have their heads turned toward the wall
or their feet higher than their heads. Moreover, in the interior of this
bench runs a conduit evidently intended to afford passage to certain
liquids, perhaps to the blood of animals slaughtered in the place. This,
therefore, was neither a Pantheon nor a temple of Augustus, but a
slaughter-house (_macellum_.) In that case, the eleven apartments
abutting to the right on the long wall of the edifice would be the
stalls. But these rooms, in which the regular orifices made in the wall
were to hold the beams that sustained the second story, were adorned
with paintings which still exist, and which must have been quite
luxurious for those poor oxen. Let us interrogate these paintings and
those of all these walls; they will instruct us, perhaps, with reference
to the destination of the building. There are mythological and epic
pieces reproducing certain sacred subjects, of which we shall speak
further on. Others show us winged infants, little Cupids weaving
garlands, of which the ancients were so fond; some of the bacchanalian
divinities, celebrating the festival of the mills, are crowning with
flowers the patient ass who is turning the wheel. Flowers on all
sides--that was the fantasy of antique times. Flowers at their wild
banquets, at their august ceremonies, at their sacrifices, and at their
festivals; flowers on the necks of their victims and their guests, and
on the brows of their women and their gods. But the greatest number of
these paintings appear destined for banquetting-halls; dead nature
predominates in them; you see nothing but pullets, geese, ducks,
partridges, fowls, and game of all kinds, fruits, and eggs, amphoræ,
loaves of bread and cakes, hams, and I know not what all else. In the
shops attached to this palace belong all sorts of precious
articles--vases, lamps, statuettes, jewels, a handsome alabaster cup;
besides, there have been found five hundred and fifty small bottles,
without counting the goblets, and, in vases of glass, raisins, figs,
chestnuts, lentils, and near them scales and bakers' and pastry-cooks'
moulds. Could the Pantheon, then, have been a tavern, a free inn
(_hospitium_) where strangers were received under the protection of the
gods? In that case the supposed butcher-shop must have been a sort of
office, and the _triclinium_ a dormitory. However that may be, the
table and the altar, the kitchen and religion, elbow each other in this
strange palace. Our austerity revolts and our frivolity is amused at the
circumstance; but Catholics of the south are not at all surprised at it.
Their mode of worship has retained something of the antique gaiety. For
the common people of Naples, Christmas is a festival of eels, Easter a
revel of _casatelli_; they eat _zeppole_ to honor Saint Joseph; and the
greatest proof of affliction that can be given to the dying Saviour is
not to eat meat. Beneath the sky of Italy dogmas may change, but the
religion will always be the same--sensual and vivid, impassioned and
prone to excess, essentially and eternally Pagan, above all adoring
woman, Venus or Mary, and the _bambino_, that mystic Cupid whom the
poets called the first love. Catholicism and Paganism, theories and
mysteries; if there be two religions, they are that of the south and
that of the north.

You have just explored the whole eastern part of the Forum. Pass now in
front of the temple of Jupiter and reach the western part. In descending
from north to south, the first monument that strikes your attention is a
rather long portico, turned on the east toward the Forum. Different
observers have fancied that they discovered in it a _poecile_, a museum,
a divan, a club, a granary for corn; and all these opinions are equally
good.

Behind the poecile open small chambers, of which some are vaulted.
Skeletons were found in them, and the inference was that they were
prisons. Lower down extends along the Forum the lateral wall of the
temple of Venus. In this wall is hollowed a small square niche in which
there rose, at about a yard in height from the soil, a sort of table of
tufa, indented with regular cavities, which are ranged in the order of
their capacity; these were the public measures. An inscription gives us
the names of the duumvirs who had gauged them by order of the decurions.
As M. Breton has well remarked, they were the standards of measurement.
Of these five cavities, the two smallest were destined for liquids, and
we still see the holes through which those liquids flowed off when they
had been measured. The table of tufa has been taken to the museum, and
in its place has been substituted a rough imitation, which gives a
sufficient idea of this curious monument.

The temple of Venus is entered from the neighboring street which we have
already traversed. The ruin is a fine one--the finest, perhaps, in
Pompeii; a spacious inclosure, or peribolus, framing a portico of
forty-eight columns, of which many are still standing, and the portico
itself surrounding the podium, where rose the temple--properly speaking,
the house of the goddess. In front of the entrance, at the foot of the
steps that ascend to the podium, rises the altar, poorly calculated for
living sacrifices and seemingly destined for simple offerings of fruit,
cakes, and incense, which were consecrated to Venus. Besides the form of
the altar, an inscription found there and a statue of the goddess, whose
modest attitude recalls the masterpiece of Florence, sufficiently
authorize the name, in the absence of more exact information, that has
been given to this edifice. Others, however, have attributed it to the
worship of Bacchus; others again to that of Diana, and the question has
not yet been settled by the savans; but Venus being the patroness of
Pompeii, deserved the handsomest temple in the little city.

The columns of the peribolus or inclosure bear the traces of some
bungling repairs made between the earthquake of 63 and the eruption of
79. They were Doric, but the attempt was to render them Corinthian, and,
to this end, they were covered with stucco and topped with capitals that
are not becoming to them. Against one of these columns still leans a
statue in the form of a Hermes. Around the court is cut a small kennel
to carry off the rain water, which was then caught in reservoirs. The
wall along the Forum was gaily decorated with handsome paintings; one of
these, probably on wood, was burned in the eruption, and the vacant
place where it belonged is visible. Behind the temple open rooms
formerly intended for the priests; handsome paintings were found there,
also--- among them a Bacchus, resting his elbow on the shoulder of old
Silenus, who is playing the lyre. Absorbed in this music, he forgets the
wine in his goblet, and lets it fall out upon a panther crouching at his
feet.

We now have only to visit the temple itself, the house of the goddess.
The steps that scaled the basement story were thirteen--an odd
number--so that in ascending the first step with the right foot, the
level of the sanctuary was also reached with the right foot. The temple
was _peripterous_, that is to say, entirely surrounded with open
columns with Corinthian capitals. The portico opened broadly, and a
mosaic of marbles, pleasingly adjusted, formed the pavement of the
_cella_, of which the painted walls represented simple panels, separated
here and there by plain pilasters. Our Lady of Pompeii dwelt there.

The last monument of the Forum on the south-west side is the Basilica;
and the street by which we have entered separates it from the temple of
Venus. The construction of the edifice leaves no doubt as to its
destination, which is, moreover, confirmed by the word _Basilica_ or
_Basilaca_, scratched here and there by loungers with the points of
their knives, on the wall. _Basilica_--derived from a Greek word which
signifies _king_--might be translated with sufficient exactness by
_royal court_. At Rome, these edifices were originally mere covered
market-places sheltered from the rain and the sun. At a later period,
colonnades divided them in three, sometimes even into five naves, and
the simple niche which, intended for the judges' bench, was hollowed out
at the foot of its monuments, finally developed into a vaulted
semicircle. At last, the early Christians finding themselves crowded in
the old temples, chose the high courts of justice to therein celebrate
the worship of the new God, and the Roman Basilica imposed its
architecture and its proportions upon the Catholic Cathedral. In the
semicircle, then, where once the ancient magistracy held its justice
seat, arose the high altar and the consecrated image of the crucified
Saviour.

The Basilica of Pompeii presents to the Forum six pillars, between which
five portals slid along grooves which are still visible. A vestibule, or
sort of chalcidicum extends between these five entrances and five
others, indicated by two columns and four pillars. The vestibule once
crossed, the edifice appears in its truly Roman grandeur; at first
glance the eye reconstructs the broad brick columns, regularly truncated
in shape (they might be considered unfinished), which are still erect on
their bases and which, crowned with Ionic volutes, were to form a
monumental portico along the four sides of this majestic area paved with
marble. Half columns fixed in the lateral walls supported the gallery;
they joined each other in the angles; the middle space must have been
uncovered. Fragments of statues and even of mounted figures proclaim the
magnificence of this monument, at the extremity of which there rose, at
the height of some six feet above the soil, a tribune adorned with half
a dozen Corinthian columns and probably destined for the use of the
duumvirs. The middle columns stood more widely apart in order that the
magistrates might, from their seats, command a view of the entire
Basilica. Under this tribune was concealed a mysterious cellar with
barred windows. Some antiquaries affirm that there was the place where
prisoners were tortured. They forget that in Rome, in the antique time,
cases were adjudged publicly before the free people.

Some of the walls of the Basilica were covered with _graphites_, that is
to say, with inscriptions scratched with the point of a nail or of a
knife by loungers on the way. I do not here copy the thousand and one
insignificant inscriptions which I find in my rambles. They would teach
us nothing but the names of the Pompeian magistrates who had constructed
or reconstructed this or that monument or such-and-such a portion of an
edifice with the public money. But the graphites of the Basilica merit a
moment's attention. Sometimes, these are verses of Ovid or of Virgil or
Propertius (never of Horace, singular to say), and frequently with
curious variations. Thus, for example:

    "Quid pote durum _Saxso_ aut quid mollius unda?
    Dura tamen molli _Saxsa_ cavantur aqua."
                                          (_Ovid_.)

Notice the _s_ in the _saxo_ and the _quid pote_ instead of _quid
magis_; it is a Greekism.

Elsewhere were written these two lines:

    "Quisquis amator erit Scythiæ licet ambulet oris:
    Nemo adeo ut feriat barbarus esse volet."

Propertius had put this distich in an elegy in which he narrated a
nocturnal promenade between Rome and Tibur. Observe the word _Scythiæ_
instead of _Scythicis_, and especially, _feriat_, which is the true
reading,--the printed texts say _noceat_. Thus an excellent correction
has been preserved for us by Vesuvius.

Here are other lines, the origin of which is unknown:

    "Scribenti mi dictat Amor, monstrat que Cupido
    Ah peream, sine te si Deus esse velim!"

How many modern poets have uttered the same exclamation! They little
dreamed that a Pompeian, a slave no doubt, had, eighteen centuries
before their time, scratched, it with a nail upon the wall of a
basilica. Here is a sentence that mentions gold. It has been carried out
by the English poet, Wordsworth:

    "Minimum malum fit contemnendo maximum,
    Quod, crede mi, non contemnendo, erit minus."

Let us copy also this singular truth thrown into rhyme by some gourmand
who had counted without his host:

    "Quoi perna cocta est, si convivæ adponitur,
    Non gustat pernam, lingit ollam aut caccabum."

This _quoi_ is for _cui_; the caccabus was the kettle in which the fowl
was cooked.

Here follows some wholesome advice for the health of lovers:

    "Quisquis amat calidis noil debet fontibus uti:
    Nam nemo flammis ustus amare potest."

I should never get through were I to quote them all. But how many short
phrases there are that, scratched here and there, cause this old
monument to spring up again, by revealing the thoughts and fancies of
the loungers and passers-by who peopled it so many years ago.

A lover had written this:

    "Nemo est bellus nisi qui amavit."

A friend:

    "Vale, Messala, fac me ames."

A superlative wag, but incorrect withal:

    "Cosmus nequitiae est magnussimae."

A learned man, or a philosopher:

    "Non est exsilium ex patria sapientibus."

A complaining suitor:

    "Sara non belle facis.
    Solum me relinquis,
    Debilis...."

A wrangler and disputant threatening the other party with a law-suit:

    "Somius _Corneilio_ (Cornelio) jus _pendre_ (perendie?)"

A sceptic who cherishes no illusions as to the mode of administering
justice:

    "Quod pretium legi?"

A censor, perhaps a Christian, who knew the words addressed by the Jews
to the blind man who was cured:

    "Pyrrhus Getae conlegae salutem.
    Moleste fero quod audivi te mortuom (sic).
    Itaque vale."

A jovial wine bibber:

    "Suavis vinari sitit, rogo vas valde sitit."[B]

A wit:

     "Zetema mulier ferebat filium simulem sui nec meus erat, nec mi
     simulat; sed vellem esset meus, et ego volebam ut meus esset."

Tennis-players scribble:

     "Amianthus, Epaphra, Tertius ludant cum Hedysio, Incundus Nolanus
     petat, numeret Citus et Stacus Amianthus."

Wordsworth remarks that these two names, Tertius and Epaphras, are found
in the epistles of St. Paul. Epaphras (in Latin, Epaphra; the suppressed
letter _s_ shows that this Pompeian was merely a slave) is very often
named on the walls of the little city; he is accused, moreover, of being
beardless or destitute of hair (_Epaphra glaber est_), and of knowing
nothing about tennis. (_Epaphra pilicrepus non es_). This inscription
was found all scratched over, probably by the hand of Epaphras himself,
who had his own feelings of pride as a fine player.

Thus it is that the stones of Pompeii are full of revelations with
reference to its people. The Basilica is easy to reconstruct and provide
with living occupants. Yonder duumviri, up between the Corinthian
columns; in front of them the accused; here the crowd; lovers confiding
their secrets to the wall; thinkers scribbling their maxims on them;
wags getting off their witticisms in the same style; the slaves, in
fine, the poor, announcing to the most remote posterity that they had,
at least, the game of tennis to console them for their abject condition!
Still three small apartments the extremity of which rounded off into
semicircles (probably inferior tribunes where subordinate magistrates,
such as commissioners or justices of the peace, had their seats); then
the school of Verna, cruelly dilapidated; finally a small triumphal arch
on which there stood, perhaps, a _quadriga_, or four-yoked chariot-team;
some pedestals of statues erected to illustrious Pompeians, to Pansa, to
Sallust, to Marcus Lucretius, Decidamius Rufus; some inscriptions in
honor of this one or that one, of the great Romulus, of the aged
Æneas,--when all these have been seen, or glanced at, at least, you will
have made the tour of the Forum.

You now know what the public exchange was in a Roman city; a spacious
court surrounded by the most important monuments (three temples, the
bourse, the tribunals, the prisons, etc.), inclosed on all sides (traces
of the barred gates are still discernible at the entrances), adorned
with statues, triumphal arches, and colonnades; a centre of business and
pleasure; a place for sauntering and keeping appointments; the Corso,
the Boulevard of ancient times, or in other words, the heart of the
city. Without any great effort of the imagination, all this scene
revives again and becomes filled with a living, variegated throng,--the
portico and its two stories of columns along the edge of the
reconstructed monuments; women crowd the upper galleries; loiterers drag
their feet along the pavement; the long robes gather in harmonious
folds; busy merchants hurry to the Chalcidicum; the statues look proudly
down from their re-peopled pedestals; the noble language of the Romans
resounds on all sides in scanned, sonorous measure; and the temple of
Jupiter, seated at the end of the vista, as on a throne, and richly
adorned with Corinthian elegance, glitters in all its splendor in the
broad sunshine.

An air of pomp and grandeur--a breath of Rome--has swept over this
collection of public edifices. Let us descend from these heights and
walk about through the little city.

[Footnote B: For _sitiat_.]

III.

THE STREET.

     THE PLAN OF POMPEII.--THE PRINCELY NAMES OF THE HOUSES.--APPEARANCE
     OF THE STREETS, PAVEMENTS, SIDEWALKS, ETC.--THE SHOPS AND THE
     SIGNS.--THE PERFUMER, THE SURGEON, ETC.--AN ANCIENT
     MANUFACTORY.--BATHING ESTABLISHMENTS.--WINE-SHOPS, DISREPUTABLE
     RESORTS.--HANGING BALCONIES, FOUNTAINS.--PUBLIC PLACARDS: LET US
     NOMINATE BATTUR! COMMIT NO NUISANCE!--RELIGION ON THE STREET.

You have no need of me for this excursion. Cast a glance at the plan,
and you will be able to find your own way. You will there see an oval
inclosure, a wall pierced with several entrances designated by the names
of the roads which ran from them, or rather of the cities at which these
roads terminated--Herculaneum, Nola, Stabiæ, etc. Two-thirds of the egg
are still immaculate; you discover a black spot only on the extreme
right, marking out the Amphitheatre. All this white space shows you the
part of Pompeii that has not yet been designated. It is a hillside
covered with vineyards, gardens, and orchards. It is only on the left
that you will find the lines marking the streets, the houses, the
monuments, and the public squares. The text gives us the fancied names
attributed to the streets, namely: the Street of Abundance, the Street
of Twelve Gods, the Street of Mercury, the Street of Fortune, the Street
of Fortunata, Modest Street, etc. The names given to the houses are
still more arbitrary. Most of them were christened, under the old
system, by the august or illustrious personages before whom they were
dug out for the first time. Thus, we have at Pompeii the house of
Francis II., that of Championnet, that of Joseph II.; those of the Queen
of England, the King of Prussia, the Grand Duke of Tuscany; that of the
Emperor, and those of the Empress and of the Princes of Russia; that of
Goethe, of the Duchess de Berry, of the Duke d'Aumale--I skip them by
scores. The whole Gotha Almanac might there be passed in review. This
determined, ramble through the streets at will, without troubling
yourself about their names, as these change often at the caprice of
antiquaries and their guides.

The narrowness of these streets will surprise you; and if you come
hither to look for a Broadway, you had better have remained at home.
What we call great arteries of traffic were unknown to the Pompeians,
who cut only small paved paths between their houses--for the sake of
health, they said. We entertain different views of this question of
salubrity.

The greatest width of a Pompeian street is seven yards, and there are
some which are comprised, sidewalks and all, within a space of two yards
and a half. These sidewalks are raised, very narrow, and paved very
variously, according to the wealth or the fancy of the proprietors, who
had to keep them in good order. Here are handsome stone flags; further
on merely the soil beaten down; in front of the next house are marble
slabs, and here and there patches of _opus signinum_, a sort of
rudimentary mosaic, to which we shall refer further on. These sidewalks
were intersected with curbstones, often pierced with holes--in front of
shops, for instance--perhaps for tethering the cows and donkeys of the
peasants who every morning brought the citizens milk or baskets of
vegetables to their own doors. Between the sidewalks was hollowed out
the street, paved with coarse blocks of lava which time has not worn
down. When Pansa went to the dwelling of Paratus his sandals trod the
same stones that now receive the impress of our boots. On rainy days
this street must have been the bed of a torrent, as the alleys and
by-ways of Naples are still; hence, one, sometimes three, thicker blocks
were placed so as to enable foot passengers to cross with dry feet.
These small fording blocks must have made it difficult for vehicles to
get by; hence, the ruts that are still found traceable on the pavement
are the marks of wagons drawn slowly by oxen, and not of those light
chariots which romance-writers launch forth so briskly in the ancient
city. Moreover, it has been ascertained that the Pompeians went afoot;
only the quality had themselves drawn about in chariots in the country.
Where could room have been found for stables and carriage-houses in
those dwellings scarcely larger than your hat? It was in the suburbs
only, in the outskirts of the city, that the dimensions of the
residences rendered anything of the kind possible. Let us, then,
obliterate these chariots from our imagination, if we wish to see the
streets of Pompeii as they really were.

After a shower, the rain water descended, little by little, into the
gutters, and from the latter, by holes still visible, into a
subterranean conduit that carried it outside of the city. One of these
conduits is still open in the Street of Stabiæ, not far from the temple
of Isis.

As to the general aspect of these ancient thoroughfares, it would seem
dull enough, were we to represent the scene to our fancy with the houses
closed, the windows gone, the dwellings with merely a naked wall for a
front, and receiving air and light only from the two courts. But it was
not so, as everything goes to prove. In the first place, the shops
looked out on the street and were, indeed almost entirely open, like our
own, offering to the gaze of the passers-by a broad counter, leaving
only a small space free to the left or the right to let the vendors pass
in and out. In these counters, which were usually covered with a marble
slab, were hollowed the cavities wherein the grocers and liquor-dealers
kept their eatables and drinkables. Behind the counters and along the
walls were stone shelves, upon which the stock was put away. Festoons
of edibles hung displayed from pillar to pillar; stuffs, probably,
adorned the fronts, and the customers, who made their purchases from the
sidewalk, must have everywhere formed noisy and very animated groups.
The native of the south gesticulates a great deal, likes to chaffer,
discusses with vehemence, and speaks loudly and quickly with a glib
tongue and a sonorous voice. Just take a look at him in the lower
quarters of Naples, which, in more than one point of view, recall the
narrow streets of Pompeii.

These shops are now dismantled. Nothing of them remains but the empty
counters, and here and there the grooves in which the doors slid to and
fro. These doors themselves were but a number of shutters fitting into
each other. But the paintings or carvings which still exist upon some
side pillars are old signs that inform us what was sold on the adjoining
counter. Thus, a goat in terra cotta indicated a milk-depot; a mill
turned by an ass showed where there was a miller's establishment; two
men, walking one ahead of the other and each carrying one end of a
stick, to the middle of which an amphora is suspended, betray the
neighborhood of a wine-merchant. Upon other pillars are marked other
articles not so readily understood,--here an anchor, there a ship, and
in another place a checker-board. Did they understand the game of
Palamedes at Pompeii? A shop near the Thermæ, or public warm baths, is
adorned on its front with a representation of a gladiatorial combat. The
author of the painting thought something of his work, which he protected
with this inscription: "_Abiat (habeat) Venerem Pompeianam iradam
(iratam) qui hoc læserit!_ (May he who injures this picture have the
wrath of the Pompeian Venus upon him!)"

Other shops have had their story written by the articles that they
contained when they were found. Thus, when there were discovered in a
suite of rooms opening on the Street of Herculaneum, certain levers one
of which ended in the foot of a pig, along with hammers, pincers, iron
rings, a wagon-spring, the felloe of a wheel, one could say without
being too bold that there had been the shop of a wagon-maker or
blacksmith. The forge occupied only one apartment, behind which opened
a bath-room and a store-room. Not far from there a pottery is indicated
by a very curious oven, the vault of which is formed of hollow tubes of
baked clay, inserted one within the other. Elsewhere was discovered the
shop of the barber who washed, brushed, shaved, clipped, combed and
perfumed the Pompeians living near the Forum. The benches of masonry are
still seen where the customers sat. As for the dealers in soap,
unguents, and essences, they must have been numerous; their products
supplied not only the toilet of the ladies, but the religious or funeral
ceremonies, and after having perfumed the living, they embalmed the
dead. Besides the shops in which the excavators have come suddenly upon
a stock of fatty and pasty substances, which, perhaps, were soaps, we
might mention one, on the pillar of which three paintings, now effaced,
represented a sacrificial attendant leading a bull to the altar, four
men bearing an enormous chest around which were suspended several vases;
then a body washed and anointed for embalming. Do you understand this
mournful-looking sign? The unguent dealer, as he was called, thus _made
up_ the body and publicly placarded it.

From the perfumery man to the chemist is but a step. The shop of the
latter tradesman was found--so it is believed, at all events in clearing
out a triple furnace with walled boilers. Two pharmacies or drug-stores,
one in the Street of Herculaneum, the other fronting the Chalcidicum,
have been more exactly designated not only by a sign on which there was
seen a serpent (one of the symbols of Æsculapius) eating a pineapple,
but by tablets, pills, jars, and vials containing dried-up liquids, and
a bronze medicine chest divided into compartments which must have
contained drugs. A groove for the spatula had been ingeniously
constructed in this curious little piece of furniture.

Not far from the apothecary lived the doctor, who was an apothecary
himself and a surgeon besides, and it was in his place that were
discovered the celebrated instruments of surgery which are at the
museum, and which have raised such stormy debates between Dr. Purgon and
Dr. Pancratius. The first, being a doctor, deemed himself competent to
give an account of these instruments, whereat the second, being an
antiquary, became greatly irritated, seeing that the faculty, in his
opinion, has nothing to do with archæology. However that may be, the
articles are at the museum, and everybody can look at them. There is a
forceps, to pull teeth with, as some affirm; to catch and compress
arteries, as others declare; there is a specillum of bronze, a probe
rounded in the form of an S; there are lancets, pincers, spatulas,
hooks, a trident, needles of all kinds, incision knives, cauteries,
cupping-glasses--I don't know what not--fully three hundred different
articles, at all events. This rich collection proves that the ancients
were quite skilful in surgery and had invented many instruments thought
to be modern. This is all that it is worth our while to know. For more
ample information, examine the volume entitled _Memoires de l'Academie
d'Herculaneum_.

Other shops (that of the color merchant, that of the goldsmith, the
sculptor's atelier, etc.) have revealed to us some of the processes of
the ancient artists. We know, for instance, that those of Pompeii
employed mineral substances almost exclusively in the preparation of
their colors; among them chalk, ochre, cinnabar, minium, etc. The
vegetable kingdom furnished them nothing but lamp-black, and the animal
kingdom their purple. The colors mixed with rosin have occasioned the
belief that encaustic was the process used by the ancients in their
mural paintings, an opinion keenly combatted by other hypotheses,
themselves no less open to discussion; into this debate it is not our
part to enter. However the case may be, the color dealer's family was
fearfully decimated by the eruption, for fourteen skeletons were found
in his shop.

As for the sculptor, he was very busy at the time of the catastrophe;
quite a number of statues were found in his place blocked out or
unfinished, and with them were instruments of his profession, such as
scissors, punchers, files, etc. All of these are at the museum in
Naples.

There were artists, then, in Pompeii, but above all, there were
artisans. The fullers so often mentioned by the inscriptions must have
been the most numerous; they formed a respectable corporation. Their
factory has been discovered. It is a peristyle surrounded with rooms,
some of which served for shops and others for dwellings. A painted
inscription on the street side announces that the dyers (_offectores_)
vote for Posthumus Proculus. These _offectores_ were those who retinted
woollen goods. Those who did the first dyeing were called the
_infectores. Infectores qui alienum colorem in lanam conficiunt,
offectores qui proprio colori novum officiunt_. In the workshop there
were four large basins, one above the other; the water descended from
the first to the next one and so on down to the last, there being a
fifth sunken in the ground. Along the four basins ran a platform, at the
end of which were ranged six or seven smaller basins, or vats, in which
the stuffs were piled up and fulled. At the other extremity of the
court, a small marble reservoir served, probably, as a washing vat for
the workmen. But the most curious objects among the ruins were the
paintings, now transferred to the museum at Naples, which adorned one of
the pillars of the court. There a workman could be very distinctly seen
dressing, with a sort of brush or card, a piece of white stuff edged
with red, while another is coming toward him, bearing on his head one
of those large osier cages or frames on which the girls of that region
still spread their clothes to dry. These cages resemble the bell-shaped
steel contrivances which our ladies pass under their skirts. Thus, in
the Neapolitan dialect, both articles are called drying-horses
(_asciutta-panni_). Upon the drying-horse of the Pompeian picture
perches the bird of Minerva, the protectress of the fullers and the
goddess of labor. To the left of the workmen, a young girl is handing
some stuffs to a youthful, richly-dressed lady, probably a customer,
seated near by. Another painting represents workmen dressing and fulling
all sorts of tissues, with their hands and feet in tubs or vats exactly
like the small basins which we saw in the court. A third painting shows
the mistress of the house giving orders to her slaves; and the fourth
represents a fulling press which might be deemed modern, so greatly does
it resemble those still employed in our day. The importance of this
edifice, now so stripped and dilapidated, confirms what writers have
told us of the Pompeian fullers and their once-celebrated branch of
trade.

However, most of the shops the use of which has not been precisely
designated, were places where provisions of different kinds were kept
and sold. The oil merchant in the street leading to the Odeon was
especially noticeable among them all for the beauty of his counter,
which was covered with a slab of _cipollino_ and gray marble, encrusted,
on the outside, with a round slab of porphyry between two rosettes.
Eight earthenware vases still containing olives[C] and coagulated oil
were found in the establishment of this stylish grocer.

The bathing concerns were also very numerous. They were the
coffee-houses of the ancient day. Hot drinks were sold there, boiled and
perfumed wine, and all sorts of mixtures, which must have been
detestable, but for which the ancients seem to have had a special fancy.
"A thousand and a thousand times more respectable than the wine-shops of
our day, these bathing-houses of ages gone by, where men did not
assemble to shamefully squander their means and their existence while
gorging themselves with wine, but where they came together to amuse
themselves in a decent manner, and to drink warm water without
risk."... Le Sage, who wrote the foregoing sentence, was not accurately
informed. The liquors sold at the Pompeian bathing-houses were very
strong, and, in more than one place where the points of the amphorae
rested, they have left yellow marks on the pavement. Vinegar has been
detected in most of these drinks. In the tavern of Fortunata, the marble
of the counter is still stained with the traces of the ancient goblets.

Bakeries were not lacking in Pompeii. The most complete one is in the
Street of Herculaneum, where it fills a whole house, the inner court of
which is occupied with four mills. Nothing could be more crude and
elementary than those mills. Imagine two huge blocks of stone
representing two cones, of which the upper one is overset upon the
other, giving every mill the appearance of an hour-glass. The lower
stone remained motionless, and the other revolved by means of an
apparatus kept in motion by a man or a donkey. The grain was crushed
between the two stones in the old patriarchal style. The poor ass
condemned to do this work must have been a very patient animal; but what
shall we say of the slaves often called in to fill his place? For those
poor wretches it was usually a punishment, as their eyes were put out
and then they were sent to the mill. This was the menace held over their
heads when they misbehaved. For others it was a very simple piece of
service which more than one man of mind performed--Plautus, they say,
and Terence. To some again, it was, at a later period, a method of
paying for their vices; when the millers lacked hands they established
bathing-houses around their mills, and the passers-by who were caught in
the trap had to work the machinery.

Let us hasten to add that the work of the mill which we visited was not
performed by a Christian, as they would say at Naples, but by a mule,
whose bones were found in a neighboring room, most likely a stable, the
racks and troughs of which were elevated about two and a half feet above
the floor. In a closet near by, the watering trough is still visible.
Then again, religion, which everywhere entered into the ancient manners
and customs of Italy, as it does into the new, reveals itself in the
paintings of the _pistrinum_; we there see the sacrifices to Fornax, the
patroness of ovens and the saint of kitchens.

But let us return to our mills. Mills driven by the wind were unknown to
the ancients, and water-mills did not exist in Pompeii, owing to the
lack of running water. Hence these mills put in motion by manual
labor--the old system employed away back in the days of Homer. On the
other hand, the institution of complete baking as a trade, with all its
dependent processes, did not date so far back. The primitive Romans made
their bread in their own houses. Rome was already nearly five hundred
years old when the first bakers established stationary mills, to which
the proprietors sent their grain, as they still do in the Neapolitan
provinces; in return they got loaves of bread; that is to say, their
material ground, kneaded, and baked. The Pompeian establishment that we
visited was one of these complete bakeries.

[Illustration: Discoveries of Loaves of Bread baked 1800 years ago in a
Baker's Oven.]

We could still recognize the troughs that served for the manipulation of
the bread, and the oven, the arch of which is intact, with the cavity
that retained the ashes, the vase for water to besprinkle the crust and
make it shiny, and, finally, the triple-flued pipe that carried off the
smoke--an excellent system revealed by the Pompeian excavations and
successfully imitated since then. The bake-oven opened upon two small
rooms by two apertures. The loaves went in at one of these in dough, and
came out at the other, baked. The whole thing is in such a perfect state
of preservation that one might be tempted to employ these old bricks,
that have not been used for eighteen centuries, for the same purpose.
The very loaves have survived. In the bakery of which I speak several
were found with the stamps upon them, _siligo grani_ (wheat flour), or
_e cicera_ (of bean flour)--a wise precaution against the bad faith of
the dealers. Still more recently, in the latest excavations, Signor
Fiorelli came across an oven so hermetically sealed that there was not a
particle of ashes in it, and there were eighty-one loaves, a little sad,
to be sure, but whole, hard, and black, found in the order in which they
had been placed on the 23d of November, 79. Enchanted with this
windfall, Fiorelli himself climbed into the oven and took out the
precious relics with his own hands. Most of the loaves weigh about a
pound; the heaviest twelve hundred and four grains. They are round,
depressed in the centre, raised on the edges, and divided into eight
lobes. Loaves are still made in Sicily exactly like them. Professor de
Luca weighed and analyzed them minutely, and gave the result in a letter
addressed to the French Academy of Sciences. Let us now imagine all
these salesrooms, all these shops, open and stocked with goods, and then
the display, the purchasers, the passers-by, the bustle and noise
peculiar to the south, and the street will no longer seem so dead. Let
us add that the doors of the houses were closed only in the evening; the
promenaders and loungers could then peep, as they went along, into every
alley, and make merry at the bright adornments of the _atrium_. Nor is
this all. The upper stories, although now crumbled to dust, were in
communication with the street. Windows opened discreetly, which must,
here and there, have been the framework of some brown head and
countenance anxious to see and to be seen. The latest excavations have
revealed the existence of hanging covered balconies, long exterior
corridors, pierced with casements, frequently depicted in the
paintings. There the fair Pompeian could have taken her station in order
to participate in the life outside. The good housewife of those times,
like her counterpart in our day, could there have held out her basket to
the street-merchant who went wandering about with his portable shop; and
more than one handsome girl may at the same post have carried her
fingers to her lips, there to cull (the ancient custom) the kiss that
she flung to the young Pompeian concealed down yonder in the corner of
the wall. Thus re-peopled, the old-time street, narrow as it is, was
gayer than our own thoroughfares; and the brightly-painted houses, the
variegated walls, the monuments, and the fountains, gave vivid animation
to a picture too dazzling for our gaze.

[Illustration: Closed House with a Balcony, recently discovered.]

These fountains, which were very simple, consisted of large square
basins formed of five stone slabs, one for the bottom and four for the
sides, fastened together with iron braces. The water fell into them from
fonts more or less ornamental and usually representing the muzzle of
some animal--lions' heads, masks, an eagle holding a hare in his beak,
with the stream flowing into a receptacle from the hare's mouth. One
of these fountains is surrounded with an iron railing to prevent
passers-by from falling into it. Another is flanked by a capacious
vaulted reservoir (_castellum_) and closed with a door. Those who have
seen Rome know how important the ancients considered the water that they
brought from a distance by means of the enormous aqueducts, the ruins of
which still mark all the old territories of the empire. Water, abundant
and limpid, ran everywhere, and was never deficient in the Roman cities.
Still it has not been discovered how the supply was obtained for
Pompeii, destitute of springs as that city was, and, at the same time,
elevated above the river, and receiving nothing in its cisterns but the
rain-water so scantily shed beneath the relentless serenity of that
southern sky. The numberless conduits found, of lead, masonry, and
earthenware, and above all, the spouting fountains that leaped and
sparkled in the courtyards of the wealthy houses, have led us to suppose
the existence of an aqueduct, no longer visible, that supplied all this
part of Campania with water.

Besides these fountains, placards and posters enlivened the streets; the
walls were covered with them, and, in sundry places, whitewashed patches
of masonry served for the announcements so lavishly made public. These
panels, dedicated entirely to the poster business, were called _albums_.
Anybody and everybody had the right to paint thereon in delicate and
slender red letters all the advertisements which now-a-days we print on
the last, and even on many other pages of our newspapers. Nothing is
more curious than these inscriptions, which disclose to us all the
subjects engaging the attention of the little city; not only its
excitements, but its language, ancient and modern, collegiate and
common--the Oscan, the Greek, the Latin, and the local dialect. Were we
learned, or anxious to appear so, we could, with the works of the really
erudite (Fiorelli, Garrucci, Mommsen, etc.), to help us, have compiled a
chapter of absolutely appalling science in reference to the epigraphic
monuments of Pompeii. We could demonstrate by what gradations the Oscan
language--that of the Pompeian autonomy--yielded little by little to the
Roman language, which was that of the unity of the state; and to what
extent Pompeii, which never was a Greek city, employed the sacred idiom
of the divine Plato. We might even add some observations relative to the
accent and the dialect of the Pompeians, who pronounced Latin as the
Neapolitans pronounce Tuscan and with singularly analogous alterations.
But what you are looking for here, hurried reader, is not erudition, but
living movement. Choose then, in these inscriptions, those that teach us
something relative to the manners and customs of this dead people--dead
and buried, but afterward exhumed.

The most of these announcements are but the proclamations of candidates
for office. Pompeii was evidently swallowed up at the period of the
elections. Sometimes it is an elector, sometimes a group of citizens,
then again a corporation of artisans or tradesmen, who are recommending
for the office of ædile or duumvir the candidate whom they prefer. Thus,
Paratus nominates Pansa, Philippus prefers Caius Aprasius Felix;
Valentinus, with his pupils, chooses Sabinus and Rufus. Sometimes the
elector is in a hurry; he asks to have his candidate elected quickly.
The fruiterers, the public porters, the muleteers, the salt-makers, the
carpenters, the truckmen, also unite to push forward the ædile who has
their confidence. Frequently, in order to give more weight to its vote,
the corporation declares itself unanimous. Thus, all the goldsmiths
preferred a certain Photinus--a fishmonger, thinks Overbeck--for ædile.
Let us not forget _the sleepers_, who declare for Vatia. By the way, who
were these friends of sleep? Perhaps they were citizens who disliked
noise; perhaps, too, some association of nocturnal revellers thus
disguised under an ironical and reassuring title. Sometimes the
candidate is recommended by a eulogistic epithet indicated by seals, a
style of abbreviation much in use among the ancients. The person
recommended is always a good man, a man of probity, an excellent
citizen, a very moral individual. Sometimes positive wonders are
promised on his behalf. Thus, after having designated Julius Polybius
for the ædileship, an elector announces that he will bring in good
bread. Electoral intrigue went still further. _We_ are pretty well on in
that respect, but I think that the ancients were our masters. I read the
following bare-faced avowal on a wall: _Sabinum ædilem, Procule, fac et
ille te faciet_. (Make Sabinus ædile, O Proculus, and he may make thee
such!) Frank and cool that, it strikes me!

But enough of elections; there is no lack of announcements of another
character. Some of these give us the programme of the shows in the
amphitheatre; such-and-such a troop of gladiators will fight on such a
day; there will be hunting matches and awnings, as well as sprinklings
of perfumed waters to refresh the multitude (_venatio, vela,
sparsiones_). Thirty couples of gladiators will ensanguine the arena.

There were, likewise, posters announcing apartments to let.

Some of these inscriptions, either scratched or painted, were witticisms
or exclamations from facetious passers-by. One ran thus: "Oppius the
porter is a robber, a rogue!" Sometimes there were amorous declarations:
"Augea loves Arabienus." Upon a wall in the Street of Mercury, an ivy
leaf, forming a heart, contained the gentle name of Psyche. Elsewhere a
wag, parodying the style of monumental inscriptions, had announced that
under the consulate of L. Monius Asprenas and A. Plotius, there was born
to him the foal of an ass. "A wine jar has been lost and he who brings
it back shall have such a reward from Varius; but he who will bring the
thief shall have twice as much."

Again, still other inscriptions were notifications to the public in
reference to the cleanliness of the streets, and recalling in terms
still more precise the "Commit no Nuisance" put up on the corners of
some of our streets with similar intent. On more than one wall at
Pompeii the figures of serpents, very well painted, sufficed to prevent
any impropriety, for the serpent was a sacred symbol in ancient
Rome--strange mingling of religion in the pettiest details of common
life! Only a very few years ago, the Neapolitans still followed the
example of their ancestors; they protected the outside walls of their
dwellings with symbolical paintings, rudely tracing, not serpents, but
crosses on them.

[Footnote C: These olives which, when found, were still soft and pasty,
had a rancid smell and a greasy but pungent flavor. The kernels were
less elongated and more bulging than those of the Neapolitan olives;
were very hard and still contained some shreds of their pith. In a word,
they were perfectly preserved, and although eighteen centuries old, as
they were, you would have thought they had been plucked but a few months
before.]

IV.

THE SUBURBS.

     THE CUSTOM HOUSE.--THE FORTIFICATIONS AND THE GATES.--THE ROMAN
     HIGHWAYS.--THE CEMETERY OF POMPEII.--FUNERALS: THE PROCESSION, THE
     FUNERAL PYRE, THE DAY OF THE DEAD.--THE TOMBS AND THEIR
     INSCRIPTIONS.--PERPETUAL LEASES.--BURIAL OF THE RICH, OF ANIMALS,
     AND OF THE POOR.--THE VILLAS OF DIOMED AND CICERO.

    "Ce qu'on trouve aux abords d'une grande cite,
      Ce sont des abattoirs, des murs, des cimitieres:
    C'est ainsi qu'en entrant dans la societé
      On trouve ses egouts."

Alfred de Musset would have depicted the suburban quarters of Pompeii
exactly in these lines, had he added to his enumeration the wine-shops
and the custom-house. The latter establishment was not omitted by the
ancients, and could not be forgotten in our diminutive but highly
commercial city. Thus, the place has been discovered where the collector
awaited the passage of the vehicles that came in from the country and
the neighboring villages. Absolutely nothing else remains to be seen in
this spacious mosaic-paved hall. Scales, steelyards, and a quantity of
stone or metal weights were found there, marked with inscriptions
sometimes quite curious; such, for example, as the following: _Eme et
habbebis_, with a _b_ too many, a redundancy very frequent in the Naples
dialect. This is equivalent, in English, to: Buy and you will have. One
of the sets of scales bears an inscription stating that it had been
verified or authorized at the Capitol under such consuls and such
emperors--the hand of Rome!

Besides the custom-house, this approach to the city contained abundance
of stables, coach-houses, taverns, bath-houses, low drinking-shops, and
other disreputable concerns. Even the dwellings in the same quarter have
a suspicious look. You follow a long street and you have before you the
gate of Herculaneum and the walls.

These walls are visible; they still hold firm. Unquestionably, they
could not resist our modern cannon, for if the ancients built better
than we do, we destroy better than they did; this is one thing that must
in justice be conceded to us. Nevertheless, we cannot but admire those
masses of _peperino_, the points of which ascend obliquely and hold
together without mortar. Originally as ancient as the city, these
ramparts were destroyed to some extent by Sylla and repaired in _opus
incertum_, that is to say, in small stones of every shape and of various
dimensions, fitted to one another without order or regularity in the
layers, as though they had been put in just as they came. The old
structure dated probably from the time of Pompeian autonomy--the Oscans
had a hand in them. The surrounding wall, at the foot of which there
were no ditches, would have formed an oval line of nearly two miles had
it not been interrupted, on the side of the mountains and the sea,
between the ports of Stabiæ and of Herculaneum. These ramparts consisted
of two walls--the scarp and counterscarp,--between which ran a terraced
platform; the exterior wall, slightly sloping, was defended by
embrasures between which the archer could place himself in safety, in an
angle of the stonework, so soon as he had shot his arrow. The interior
wall was also crested with battlements. The curvilinear rampart did not
present projecting angles, the salients of which, Vitruvius tells us,
could not resist the repeated blows of the siege machinery of those
days. It was intersected by nine towers, of three vaulted stories each,
at unequal distances, accordingly as the nature of the ground demanded
greater or less means of defence, was pierced with loopholes and was not
very solid. Vitruvius would have had them rounded and of cut stone;
those of Pompeii are of quarried stone, and in small rough ashlars,
stuck together with mortar. The third story of each tower reached to the
platform of the rampart, with which it communicated by two doors.

Notwithstanding all that remains of them, the walls of Pompeii were no
longer of service at the time of the eruption. Demolished by Sylla and
then by Augustus, shattered by the earthquake, and interrupted as I have
said, they left the city open. They must have served for a public
promenade, like the bastions of Geneva.

Eight gates opened around the city (perhaps there was a ninth that has
now disappeared, opening out upon the sea). The most singular of all of
them is the Nola gate, the construction of which appears to be very
ancient. We there come across those fine cut stones that reveal the
handiwork of primitive times. A head considerably broken and defaced,
surmounting the arcade, was accompanied with an Oscan inscription,
which, having been badly read by a savant, led for an instant to the
belief that the Campanians of the sixth century before Jesus Christ
worshipped the Egyptian Isis. The learned interpreter had read: _Isis
propheta_ (I translate it into Latin, supposing you to know as little as
I do of the Oscan tongue). The inscription really ran, _idem probavit_.

[Illustration: The Nola Gate at Pompeii.]

It is worth while passing through the gate to get a look at the angle
formed by the ramparts at this one point. I doubt whether the city was
ever attacked on that side. Before reaching the gate the assailants
would have had to wind along through a narrow gallery, where the
archers, posted on the walls and armed with arrows and stones, would
have crushed them all.

The Herculaneum gate is less ancient, and yet more devastated by time
than the former one. The arcade has fallen in, and it requires some
attention to reinstate it. This gate formed three entrances. The two
side ways were probably intended for pedestrians; the one in the middle
was closed by means of a portcullis sliding in a groove, still visible,
but covered with stucco. As the portcullis, in descending, would have,
thrown down this coating, we must infer that at the time of the eruption
it had not been in use for a long while, Pompeii having ceased to be a
fortified place.

The Herculaneum gate was not masked inside, so that the archers,
standing upon the terraces that covered the side entrances, could fire
upon the enemy even after the portcullis had been carried. We know that
one of the stratagems of the besieged consisted in allowing the enemy to
push in, and then suddenly shutting down upon them the formidable
_cataracta_ suspended by iron chains. They then slaughtered the poor
wretches indiscriminately and covered themselves with glory.

Having passed the gate, we find ourselves on one of those fine paved
roads which, starting at Rome in all directions, have everywhere left
very visible traces, and in many places still serve for traffic. The
Greeks had gracefulness, the Romans grandeur. Nothing shows this more
strikingly than their magnificent highways that pierce mountains, fill
up ravines, level the plains, cross the marshes, bestride rivers, and
even valleys, and stretched thus from the Tiber to the Euphrates. In
order to construct them, they first traced two parallel furrows, from
between which they removed all the loose earth, which they replaced with
selected materials, strongly packed, pressed, and pounded down. Upon
this foundation (the _pavimentum_) was placed a layer of rough stone
(_statumen_), then a filling-in of gravel and lime (the _rudus_), and,
finally, a third bed of chalk, brick, lime, clay, and sand, kneaded and
pounded in together into a solid crust. This was the nucleus. Last of
all, they placed above it those large rough blocks of lava which you
will find everywhere in the environs of Naples. As before remarked,
these roads have served for twenty centuries, and they are good yet.

[Illustration: The Herculaneum Gate, restored.]

The Herculaneum road formed a delightful promenade at the gates of
Pompeii; a street lined with trees and villas, like the Champs Elyseés
at Paris, and descending from the city to the country between two rows
of jaunty monuments prettily-adorned, niches, kiosks, and gay pavilions,
from which the view was admirable. This promenade was the cemetery of
Pompeii. But let not this intimation trouble you, for nothing was less
mournful in ancient times than a cemetery. The ancients were not fond of
death; they even avoided pronouncing its name, and resorted to all sorts
of subterfuges to avoid the doleful word. They spoke of the deceased as
"those who had been," or "those who are gone." Very demonstrative, at
the first moment they would utter loud lamentations. Their sorrow thus
vented its first paroxysms. But the first explosion over, there remained
none of that clinging melancholy or serious impression that continues in
our Christian countries. The natives of the south are epicureans in
their religious belief, as in their habits of life. Their cemeteries
were spacious avenues, and children played jackstones on the tombs.

Would you like to hear a few details in reference to the interments of
the ancients. "The usage was this," says Claude Guichard, a doctor at
law, in his book concerning funereal rites, printed at Lyons, in 1581,
by Jean de Tournes: "When the sick person was in extreme danger, his
relatives came to see him, seated themselves on his bed, and kept him
company until the death-rattle came on and his features began to assume
the dying look. Then the nearest relative among them, all in tears,
approached the patient and embraced him closely, breast against breast
and face against face, so as to receive his soul, and mouth to mouth,
catching his last breath; which done, he pressed together the lips and
eyes of the dead man, arranging them decently, so that the persons
present might not see the eyes of the deceased open, for, according to
their customs, it was not allowable to the living to see the eyes of the
dead.... Then the room was opened on all sides, and they allowed all
persons belonging to the family and neighborhood, to come in, who chose.
Then, three or four of them began to bewail the deceased and call to him
repeatedly, and, perceiving that he did not reply one word, they went
out and told of the death. Then the near relatives went to the bedside
to give the last kiss to the deceased, and handed him over to the
chambermaids of the house, if he was a person of the lower class. If he
was one of the eminent men and heads of families, he committed him to
the care of people authorized to perform this office, to wash, anoint,
and dress him, in accordance with the custom and what was requisite in
view of the quality, greatness, and rank of the personage."

Now there were at Rome several ministers, public servitors, and
officials, who had charge of all that appertained to funerals, such as
the _libitinarii_, the _designatores_, and the like. All of which was
wisely instituted by Numa Pompilius, as much to teach the Romans not to
hold things relating to the dead in horror, or fly from them as
contaminating to the person, as in order to fix in their memory that all
that has had a beginning in birth must in like manner terminate in
death, birth and death both being under the control and power of one and
the same deity; for they deemed that Libitina was the same as Venus, the
goddess of procreation. Then, again, the said officers had under their
orders different classes of serfs whom they called, in their language,
the _pollinctores_, the _sandapilarii_, the _ustores_, the _cadaverum
custodes_, intrusted with the care of anointing the dead, carrying them
to the place of sepulture, burning them, and watching them. "After
_pollinctores_ had carefully washed, anointed, and embalmed the body,
according to the custom regarding it and the expense allowed, they
wrapped it in a white linen cloth, after the manner of the Egyptians,
and in this array placed it upon a bed handsomely prepared as though for
the most distinguished member of the household, and then raised in front
of the latter a small dresser shaped like an altar, upon which they
placed the usual odors and incense, to burn along with tapers and
lighted candles.... Then, if the deceased was a person of note, they
kept the body thus arranged for the space of seven consecutive days,
inside the house, and, during that time, the near relatives, dressed in
certain long robes or very loose and roomy mantles called _ricinia_,
along with the chambermaids and other women taken thither to weep, never
ceased to lament and bewail, renewing their distress every time any
notable personage entered the room; and they thought that all this while
the deceased remained on earth, that is to say, kept for a few days
longer at the house, while they were hastening their preparations for
the pomp and magnificence of his funeral. On the eighth day, so as to
assemble the relatives, associates, and friends of the defunct the more
easily, inform the public and call together all who wished to be
present, the procession, which they called _exequiæ_, was cried aloud
and proclaimed with the sound of the trumpet on all the squares and
chief places of the city by the crier of the dead, in the following
form: 'Such a citizen has departed from this life, and let all who wish
to be present at his obsequies know that it is time; he is now to be
carried from his dwelling.'"

Let us step aside now, for here comes a funeral procession. Who is the
deceased? Probably a consular personage, a duumvir, since lictors lead
the line. Behind them come the flute-players, the mimes and mountebanks,
the trumpeters, the tambourine-players, and the weepers (_præfiicæ_),
paid for uttering cries, tearing their hair, singing notes of
lamentation, extolling the dead man, mimicking despair, "and teaching
the chambermaids how to best express their grief, since the funeral must
not pass without weeping and wailing." All this makes up a melancholy
but burlesque din, which attracts the crowd and swells the procession,
to the great honor of the defunct. Afterward come the magistrates, the
decurions in mourning robes, the bier ornamented with ivory. The
duumvir Lucius Labeo (he is the person whom they are burying) is "laid
out at full length, and dressed in white shrouds and rich coverings of
purple, his head raised slightly and surrounded with a handsome coronet,
if he merit it." Among the slaves who carry the bier walks a man whose
head is covered with white wool, "or with a cap, in sign of liberty."
That is the freedman Menomachus, who has grown rich, and who is
conducting the mourning for his master. Then come unoccupied beds,
"couches fitted up with the same draperies as that on which reposes the
body of the defunct" (it is written that Sylla had six thousand of these
at his funeral), then the long line of wax images of ancestors (thus the
dead of old interred the newly dead), then the relatives, clad in
mourning, the friends, citizens, and townsfolk generally in crowds. The
throng is all the greater when the deceased is the more honored. Lastly,
other trumpeters, and other pantomimists and tumblers, dancing,
grimacing, gambolling, and mimicking the duumvir whom they are helping
to bury, close the procession. This interminable multitude passes out
into the Street of Tombs by the Herculaneum gate.

The _ustrinum_, or room in which they are going to burn the body, is
open. You are acquainted with this Roman custom. According to some, it
was a means of hastening the extrication of the soul from the body and
its liberation from the bonds of matter, or its fusion in the great
totality of things; according to others, it was but a measure in behalf
of public health. However that may be, dead bodies might be either
buried or burned, provided the deposit of the corpse or the ashes were
made outside of the city. A part of the procession enters the
_ustrinum_. Then they are going to burn the duumvir Lucius Labeo.

The funeral pyre is made of firs, vine branches, and other wood that
burns easily. The near relatives and the freedman take the bier and
place it conveniently on the pile, and then the man who closes the eyes
of the dead opens them again, making the defunct look up toward the sky,
and gives him the last kiss. Then they cover the pile with perfumes and
essences, and collect about it all the articles of furniture, garments,
and precious objects that they want to burn. The trumpets sound, and the
freedman, taking a torch and turning away his eyes, sets fire to the
framework. Then commence the sacrifices to the manes, the formalities,
the pantomimic action, the howlings of the mourners, the combats of the
gladiators "in order to satisfy the ceremony closely observed by them
which required that human blood should be shed before the lighted pile;"
this was done so effectually that when there were no gladiators the
women "tore each other's hair, scratched their eyes and their cheeks
with their nails, _heartily_, until the blood came, thinking in this
manner to appease and propitiate the infernal deities, whom they suppose
to be angered against the soul of the defunct, so as to treat it
roughly, were this doleful ceremony omitted and disdained."... The body
burned, the mother, wife, or other near relative of the dead, wrapped
and clad in a black garment, got ready to gather up the relics--that is
to say, the bones which remained and had not been totally consumed by
the fire; and, before doing anything, invoked the deity manes, and the
soul of the dead man, beseeching him to take this devotion in good part,
and not to think ill of this service. Then, after having washed her
hands well, and having extinguished the fire in the brazier with wine
or with milk, she began to pick out the bones among the ashes and to
gather them into her bosom or the folds of her robe. The children also
gathered them, and so did the heirs; and we find that the priests who
were present at the obsequies could help in this. But if it was some
very great lord, the most eminent magistrates of the city, all in silk,
ungirdled and barefooted, and their hands washed, as we have said,
performed this office themselves. Then they put these relics in urns of
earthenware, or glass, or stone, or metal; they besprinkled them with
oil or other liquid extracts; they threw into the urn, sometimes, a
piece of coin, which sundry antiquaries have thought was the obolus of
Charon, forgetting that the body, being burned, no longer had a hand to
hold it out; and, finally, the urn was placed in a niche or on a bench
arranged in the interior of the tomb. On the ninth day, the family came
back to banquet near the defunct, and thrice bade him adieu: _Vale!
Vale! Vale!_ then adding, "May the earth rest lightly on thee!"

Hereupon, the next care was the monument. That of the duumvir Labeo,
which is very ugly, in _opus incertum_, covered with stucco and adorned
with bas-reliefs and portraits of doubtful taste, was built at the
expense of his freedman, Menomachus. The ceremony completed and vanity
satisfied, the dead was forgotten; there was no more thought, excepting
for the _ferales_ and _lemurales_, celebrations now retained by the
Catholics, who still make a trip to the cemetery on the Day of the Dead.
The Street of the Tombs, saddened for a moment, resumed its look of
unconcern and gaiety, and children once more played about among the
sepulchres.

There are monuments of all kinds in this suburban avenue of Pompeii.
Many of them are simple pillars in the form of Hermes-heads. There is
one in quite good preservation that was closed with a marble door; the
interior, pierced with one window, still had in a niche an alabaster
vase containing some bones. Another, upon a plat of ground donated by
the city, was erected by a priestess of Ceres to her husband, H. Alleius
Luceius Sibella, aedile, duumvir, and five years' prefect, and to her
son, a decurion of Pompeii, deceased at the age of seventeen. A decurion
at seventeen!--there was a youth who made his way rapidly. Cicero said
that it was easier to be a Senator at Rome than a decurion at Pompeii.
The tomb is handsome--very elegant, indeed--but it contained neither
urns, nor sarcophagi; it probably was not a place of burial, but a
simple cenotaph, an honorary monument.

The same may be said of the handsomest mausoleum on the street, that of
the augustal Calventius: a marble altar gracefully decorated with
arabesques and reliefs (Œdipus meditating, Theseus reposing, and a young
girl lighting a funeral pile). Upon the tomb are still carved the
insignia of honor belonging to Calventius, the oaken crowns, the
_bisellium_ (a bench with seats for two), the stool, and the three
letters O.C.S. (_ob civum servatum_), indicating that to the illustrious
dead was due the safety of a citizen of Rome. The Street of the Tombs,
it will be seen, was a sort of Pantheon. An inscription discovered there
and often repeated (that which, under Charles III., was the first that
revealed the existence of Pompeii), informs us that, upon the order of
Vespasian, the tribune Suedius Clemens had yielded to the commune of
Pompeii the places occupied by the private individuals, which meant
that the notables only, authorized by the decurions, had the right to
sleep their last slumber in this triumphal avenue, while the others had
to be dispossessed. Still the hand of Rome!

Another monument--the one attributed to Scaurus--was very curious, owing
to the gladiatorial scenes carved on it, and which, according to custom,
represented real combats. Each figure was surmounted with an inscription
indicating the name of the gladiator and the number of his victories. We
know, already, that these sanguinary games formed part of the funeral
ceremonies. The heirs of the deceased made the show for the
gratification of the populace, either around the tombs or in the
amphitheatre, whither we shall go at the close of our stroll, and where
we shall describe the carvings on the pretended monument of Scaurus.

The tomb of Nevoleia Tyché, much too highly decorated, encrusted with
arabesques and reliefs representing the portrait of that lady, a
sacrifice, a ship (a symbol of life, say the sentimental antiquaries),
is covered with a curious inscription, which I translate literally.

"Nevoleia Tyché, freedwoman of Julia, for herself and for Caius Munatius
Faustus, knight and mayor of the suburb, to whom the decurions, with the
consent of the people, had awarded the honor of the _bisellium_. This
monument has been offered during her lifetime by Nevoleia Tyché to her
freedmen and to those of C. Munatius Faustus."

Assuredly, after reading this inscription, we cannot reproach the fair
Pompeians with concealing their affections from the public. Nevoleia
certainly was not the wife of Munatius; nevertheless, she loved him
well, since she made a trysting with him even in the tomb. It was Queen
Caroline Murat who, accompanied by Canova, was the first to penetrate to
the inside of this dovecote (January 14, 1813). There were opened in her
presence several glass urns with leaden cases, on the bottom of which
still floated some ashes in a liquid not yet dried up, a mixture of
water, wine, and oil. Other urns contained only some bones and the small
coin which has been taken for Charon's obolus.

I have many other tombs left to mention. There are three, which are
sarcophagi, still complete, never open, and proving that the ancients
buried their dead even before Christianity prohibited the use of the
funeral pyre. Families had their choice between the two systems, and
burned neither men who had been struck by lightning (they thought the
bodies of such to be incorruptible), nor new-born infants who had not
yet cut their teeth. Thus it was that the remains of Diomed's youngest
children could not be found, while those of the elder ones were
preserved in a glass urn contained in a vase of lead.

A tomb that looks like a sentry-box, and stands as though on duty in
front of the Herculaneum gate, had, during the eruption, been the refuge
of a soldier, whose skeleton was found in it. Another
strangely-decorated monument forms a covered hemicycle turned toward the
south, fronting the sea, as though to offer a shelter for the fatigued
and heated passers-by. Another, of rounded shape, presents inside a
vault bestrewn with small flowers and decorated with bas-reliefs, one of
which represents a female laying a fillet on the bones of her child.
Other monuments are adorned with garlands. One of the least curious
contained the magnificent blue and white glass vase, of which I shall
have to speak further on. That of the priestess Mamia, ornamented with a
superb inscription, forms a large circular bench terminating in a lion's
claw. Visitors are fond of resting there to look out upon the landscape
and the sea. Let us not forget the funereal triclinium, a
simply-decorated dining-hall, where still are seen three beds of
masonry, used at the banquets given in honor of the dead. These feasts,
at which nothing was eaten but shell-fish (poor fare, remarks Juvenal),
were celebrated nine days after the death. Hence came their title,
_novendialia_. They were also called _silicernia_; and the guests
conversed at them about the exploits and benevolent deeds of the man who
had ceased to live. Polybius boasts greatly of these last honors paid to
illustrious citizens. Thence it was, he says, that Roman greatness took
its rise.

In fact, even at Pompeii, in this humble _campo santo_ of the little
city, we see at every step virtue rewarded after death by some
munificent act of the decurions. Sometimes it is a perpetual grant (a
favor difficult to obtain), indicated by the following letters:
H.M.H.N.S. (_hoc monumentum hæredes non sequitur_), insuring to them
the perpetual possession of their sepulchre, which could not be disposed
of by their heirs. Sometimes the space conceded was indicated upon the
tomb. For instance, we read in the sepulchre of the family of
Nistacidius: "A. Nistacidius Helenus, mayor of the suburb Augusto-Felix.
To Nistacidius Januarius and to Mesionia Satulla. Fifteen feet in depth,
fifteen feet in frontage."

This bench of the priestess Mamia and that of Aulus Vetius (a military
tribune and duumvir dispensing justice) were in like manner constructed,
with the consent of the people, upon the lands conceded by the
decurions. In fine--and this is the most singular feature--animals had
their monuments. This, at least, is what the guides will tell you, as
they point out a large tomb in a street of the suburbs. They call it the
_sepolcro dei bestiani_, because the skeletons of bulls were found in
it. The antiquaries rebel against this opinion. Some, upon the strength
of the carved masks, affirm that it was a burial place for actors;
others, observing that the inclosure walls shut in quite a spacious
temple, intimate that it was a cemetery for priests. For my part, I have
nothing to offer against the opinion of the guides. The Egyptians,
whose gods Rome adopted, interred the bull Apis magnificently. Animals
might, therefore, find burial in the noble suburb of Pompeii. As for the
lower classes, they slept their final sleep where they could; perhaps in
the common burial pit (_commune sepulcrum_), an ancient barbarism that
has been kept up until our times; perhaps in those public burial ranges
where one could purchase a simple niche (_olla_) for his urn. These
niches were sometimes humble and touching presents interchanged by poor
people.

And in this street, where death is so gay, so vain, so richly adorned,
where the monuments arose amid the foliage of trees perennially green,
which they had endeavored, but without success, to render serious and
sombre, where the mausolea are pavilions and dining-rooms, in which the
inscriptions recall whole narratives of life and even love affairs,
there stood spacious inns and sumptuous villas--for instance, those of
Arrius Diomed and Cicero. This Arrius Diomed was one of the freedmen of
Julia, and the mayor of the suburb. A rich citizen, but with a bad
heart, he left his wife and children to perish in his cellar, and fled
alone with one slave only, and all the silver that he could carry away.
He perished in front of his garden gate. May the earth press heavily
upon him!

His villa, which consisted of three stories, not placed one above the
other, but descending in terraces from the top of the hill, deserves a
visit or two. You will there see a pretty court surrounded with columns
and small rooms, one of which--of an elliptical shape and opening on a
garden, and lighted by the evening twilight, but shielded from the sun
by windows and by curtains, the glass panes and rings of which have been
found--is the pleasantest nook cleared out among these ruins. You will