MASTER NEGA TIVE . 91 -80259 MICROFILMED 1991 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission jfrom Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States - Title 17, United States Code - concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material... Columbia University Library reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. AUTHOR: NEVILLE-ROLFE, EUSTACE TITLE: POMPEII, POPULAR AND PRACTICAL PLACE: APLES DA TE : 1899 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARCF.T Master Negative # llsJj^31-^ Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record Restrictions on Use: ,874.7 ril4161 1.. Hoville-Eolf e , Eustace, 1845-1908. Pompeii, popular and practical j an easy book on a difficult subject, by Eustace Neville-Rolf e ... 3d ed., rev. and cor. ... Naple^, Prasa, 1899. vi, 311 p. fold. map. 20 cm. 208327 vj TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA FILM SIZE: j^rf_j»u«___ REDUCTION RATIO: IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA C^ IB IIB DATE FILMED: ^TjXlAl__ INITIALS <£l^ FILMED BY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODBRIDGE. CT~ " Lilt BIBLIOGIIAPHIC ilUlEGULARiTlES MAIN ENTRY; /l/gK/^Lg - RoLFF^ ^( {.^^. , in Hje Citp of ^eto gorb ^"^ • LIBRARY W^^. ^^.hJX POMPEII POPULAR AND PRACTICAL AN EASY BOOK ON A DIFFICULT SUBJECT BY EUSTACE NEVILLE - ROLFE b. a. H. B. M. Consul, Naples. Editor of « A Complete Handbook to the Naples Museum » Author of « Naples in 1S88 » « Naples in the Nineties » etc. THIRD EDITION re^'-isod ^rmd oorrootod WITH A MAP * NAPLES EMIL PRASS 59-60 Piazza dei Martiri, Palazzo Partaotia 1899 HxtO'W l^T^ ^ ^ *^t-;1 , CO ' ^ /j-n the press, >s printed in Ekevier type on hand-made paper. 350 copies ,6mo, price 6 Lire, or bound in half-parch- ment, uncut, red tops, 7 Lire 50c. 50 copies on large paper, 20 Lire. oUcojnprrsea on,y t^o Hundred. E.ery publication is fully described, 2'^'b' ten a laiour of lo., , and ^hicH is worthily enshrimd in E^i\ Naples — Printed by Pierro e Veraldi POMPEII POPULAR AND PRACTICAL POMPEII POPULAR AND PRACTICAL { I I ■'■■v.; 6 i^' I- CONTENTS ^ » > Chapter I. History of the city . . . . » II. Topography of P(»mpeii. . . \/lII. Social Life at Pompeii . . . IV. Pompeian Art V. The Sea Gate and Museum . VI. The Public Buildings : First group VII. The Public Buildings: Second group VIII. The Walls and Gates. — The Amphitheatre IX. The Street of the Tombs . . X. Literature and Industries . . IX. The House of the Vettii . . XIL Itinerary Index » » » pag-e I » 22 » 37 » 56 » 77 98 131 » 163 » 199 » 228 » 261 » 276 » 309 ) 'A'' ■■v"' INTRODUCTION I have endeavoured in this little book to write a work which shall be popular in the sense that it is easily understood, and prac- tical because it shall sum up in a few words the most important points of the various buldings which are submitted to the consi- deration of the reader. I have avoided the use of Latin, Greek, and technical words as ^ far as possible; and where I have inserted inscriptions in the text I have been careful to append translations of them. I'am afraid that this is a rash proceeding, the reading of many of the Pompeian inscriptions being speculative, but I think that it is better to run the risk of being occasionally incorrect, than to print an inscription without a trans- lation in a book intended for general reading. The arrangement of the book speaks for itself. The first four chapters give such general . -* 2fy: il -Vaftlfc, IK jAfiTL^ ' B&gai** Aayfc^iii. * ■.'^.^ ■ .zfiw i !■ wfiat »>> Jafiisl^iJ* i^tan/ VI IXTRODUCTION information as is necessary to a right under- standing of the practical part of the subject. The Itinerary is so arragend that every site of interest in the town is visited in the course of three execursions, without going twice over any part of the ground. Besides this I have s added directions how to see as much as can be seen in one day, and how to employ a limited time to the best advantage. I have especially to thank Mr J. H. Taylor M. A. of Cambridge for his valuable notes on the last edition, and his suggestions for this one. With one exception I have incorpor- ated them all into the text. The exception concerns the date of the destruction , which Mr Taylor places as being October 24th, instead of the received day November 29th, The argument involves technicalities too learned for so popular a work as this, and to alter the date without explaining why, would give rise to much misunderstanding. I hope that the copious index at the end of the book may be useful. Naples i8gg. E. Neville-Rolfe H. B. M. Consul I % 1 POMPEII POPULAR AND PRACTICAL CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE CITY Greek Temple 650 b. c. — Oscan Colonisation — Samnite Conquest 420 B. c. — Treaty with Rome 341 b. c. — Secojid Samnite War J04 B. c. — Second Punic War 216 B. c. — Social War go b. c. — Siege of Sulla 88 B. c. — Pagus Augustus Felix 7 b. q.^ Death of Au- gustus at Nola 14 A. D. — Earthquakes 6j A. D. — Final Destruction 79 A. D. 1 o OBTAIN a right conception of the city of Pompeii as it now exists, it is obviously desi- rable to ascertain as much as possible of its pri- mitive history. The pages of early writers are searched in vain for any mention of it, and we are compelled to turn to the ruins themselves for information as to the first few centuries after its foundation. It thus becomes advisable to fix upon the oldest building extant in the town ; and here all are agreed in assigning the post of honour to the ji.- 'aba'y POMPEII HISTORY OF THE CITY remains of a Greek Temple, the ruins of which may still be seen in the Triangular Forum of the city. With the details of this temple we shall have more to do later on in our work, and it is only necessary to state here that its simi- larity to the Paestum temples fixes its date with comparative certainty at about 65o b. c. Hence the history of Pompeii may be said to range , over seven hundred and twenty-nine years, dur- ing which period the city was founded by the Oscans; built by the Samnites; besieged, sacked and rebuilt by the Romans, who held it till it was shattered by earthquakes in a. d. 63 and then rebuilt it again only in time to see it fi- nally covered up in a. d. 79 by a convulsion of nature such as has rarely been paralleled in the history of the world. The Greek Temple of which we have spoken is by common consent stated to have been de- dicated to Hercules, who according to Solinus landed at this spot with a < pompa bourn > or procession of oxen ; and this writer leaves us to infer that his m. pompa > gave the name of Pom- peii to the town. The legend to which Solinus refers states that Hercules, by order of Eurys- theus King of Argos and Mycenae, was sent to Cadiz to slay the powerful monster Geryon, and possess himself of the herds of cattle for which his kingdom was famous. The hero, having ac- complished this arduous task, sailed for Cam- pania w^ith his spoil, w^hich he landed at the mouth of the river Sarnus hard by the spot where Pom- peii now stands. If this legendary account of the matter is from the historical standpoint , not very satis- factory it is at any rate the only story we have of the earliest occupation of the site, and until w^e can find a better one , we must perforce accept it. How the legend arose, and why it has obtained nearly universal acceptance it is. use- less to enquire. The only certain thing is that somewhere about the time when the Greeks co-, Ionised South Italy, a temple probably dedicated to Hercules was built at the mouth of the river Sarnus. At this period Paestum and Cumae were both flourishing Greek colonies. Both w^ere near Pom- peii; Cumae being some twenty miles to the westward, and Paestum some thirty miles to the eastward. Between them lay the dangerous head- land of the Sorrentine peninsula which could be avoided by landing at Pompeii and going across to Salerno whence the journey to Paestum could be safely effected by sea. There would thus be nothing extraordinary in a colony having been formed as a kind of half-way house, and a temple / POMPEII HISTORY OF THE CITY erected as a landmark to show navigators the entrance to a secure harbour. There remains however the difficulty that no other essentially Greek remains of this period have been found on the site; no tombs as at Cumae and Paestum with painted vases to deter- mine their period; no gold ornaments or silver trinkets; nothing in short (except the remains of the temple) to enable us to say definitely that a Greek colony ever existed on the spot. We must now pass over a period of some two hundred years, and even thus we shall not get to the domain of certain history. By this time (say b. c. 5oo) the Oscans were in possession of the rich plains of Campania. They were a pastoral people of uncertain origin, lead- ing probably a nomadic life, and merely driving their flocks and herds within the roughly-walled enclosure of the city, the ground plan of which was divided up irregularly according to the re- quirements and inheritance of every family. Little or nothing remains of them except their language, which continued to be spoken in Campania for many centuries, and was used for public inscrip- tions even in Roman times. They were driven out of Campania in 420 b. c. by the Samnites, a powerful tribe of hardy mountaineers, who swooped down upon them from the higher Ap- i| \ ,1 penines; and having possessed themselves of their lands and their wealth , held the rich plains of prosperous Campania under their sway for upwards of three hundred years. Strabo the great geographer and traveller who died A. D. 2 5, states in his fifth book that Pompeii was first occupied by the Oscans, then by the Tyrrheno-Pelasgi, and afterwards by the Romans. He further states that in his day Pompeii served as the port for Nola, Nuceria, and Acerrae, and that the merchandise was conveyed to these towns by means of the river Sarnus. And this account is confirmed by Livy who states that in b. c. 309 the Roman galleys anchored at Pompeii under P. Cornelius, and devastated Nuceria until they were driven back by the aborigines. The Samnites (influenced by the Greek art around them) built up the town in the Doric style, paved their streets, erected houses of mas- sive blocks of stone without mortar, and left so many traces of their occupation , that Roman development and the frequent rebuilding of sub- sequent ages has never been able to obliterate them. About 360 b. c. the Samnites were at the height of their power. They had overrun southern Italy, and it was becoming patent that the su- premacy of the continent must be decided bet- ween the Romans and their turbulent neighbours. /I POMPEII HISTORY OF THE CITY A dispute having arisen between the Samnites and the Sidicini (a tribe who had maintained their independence) these last implored the as- sistance of the Campanians, who were defeated in a pitched battle at the very walls of Capua. In their straits they applied to Rome for assi- stance, and a decisive battle was fought at the foot of Mount Gaurus, in which the Samnites were routed and forced to conclude a treaty with Rome in 341 b. c. In the following year we find the Romans and the Samnites fighting side by side on the slopes of Vesuvius and gaining a signal victory over the Latins. The Romans thus got a footing in Campania, and it was not until twelve years afterwards that the Samnites became jealous of the increasing power of their rivals, and strengthened themsel- ves by an alliance with the Greek colonists of Neapolis, who were an offshoot from the more ancient colony of Cumae. The Romans were too powerful to be resisted, and Neapolis only escaped destruction by submission. Meanwhile the Romans had declared war a- gainst the Samnites, and this second Samnite war lasted with varying success for twenty-three years, and terminated in 304 b. c. In 216 B. c. Hannibal having overrun Italy, made himself master of Campania j and Pompeii in common with many other towns of the pro- vince opened her gates to him. But it was not till long after this that Pom- peii assumed direct historical importance, though, as w^e have seen, one of the decisive battles of the world was fought upon the slopes of Vesuvius, and certainly w^ithin a few miles of her gates. Throughout the Social War of 90 b. c. the / neighbourhood of Pompeii was a battle-field. Ju- lius Caesar occupied Acerrae, in which he was besieged by the Samnites under their Consul Papius. Pompeii must have been the base of the Samnite operations, as the town was connected with Acerrae by the river Sarnus. On this ac- count no doubt Pompeii was subsequently be- sieged by Sulla, and after a desperate resistance made terms with the Romans. It was probably at this period that a portion of the city walls were destroyed, and Pompeii does not appear in the Civil War of 88 b. c. though Sulla was still besieging Nola, the siege of which he sub- sequently raised to march upon Rome. Sulla became a patron of Pompeii, and accord-' ing to Cicero conferred great benefits upon the town. Cicero was in a position to judge, because he had a villa at Pompeii to which he makes frequent reference \ and though perhaps an ad- \A ^jfcWlt. >.■»' jQM'^fci'-'K.nijifcJM jaUrffcAtt'diilniiMlitftirO-awafcai 8 POMPEII vocate in pleading the cause of his client may be led into exaggerated statements, it must be remembered that Sulla was so important a man that his public actions must have been univer- sally known and canvassed. Suetonius mentions the accidental death at Pompeii of Drusus the son of Claudius, who was throwing a pear up, and endeavouring to catch it in his mouth when it stuck in his throat and choked him. From this period Pompeii takes her regular place upon the page of history, and the refer- ences to the city are numerous and trustworthy. During the reign of Augustus, Pompeii ob- tained municipal privileges, *) and there can be little doubt that this celebrated Emperor, who died at Nola 14 a. d. w^as personally acquainted with the city. It was during his reign and about 7 B. c. that the suburb « Pagus Augustus Felix > was built by a Roman colony, under the patro- nage of Marcus Arrius Diomedes, whose tombs are extant opposite to the large villa called after him on slender authority. We have thus brought *) Augustus extended the principles of municipal self- government to many of the military colonies of Julius Cae- sar, which gave the inhabitants the full rights of Roman citizenship, including the privilege of voting at Rome , a right which in those days could be rarely exercised by coun- try people, on account of their distance from the Capital. I! HISTORY OF THE CITY 9 :\ .1 / down the history of the town to the becrinnino- of the Christian era, and nothing of great im- portance seems to have occurred there in the first half century after Christ. Tacitus gives full details of the Nucerine riot in the Pompeian am- phitheatre, and calls the town <( a celebrated city of Campania >. Towards the close of Nero^s reic^n \/ the whole region around Vesuvius was devastated by violent earthquakes, which proved to be the precursors of the volcanic eruption which ulti- mately overwhelmed the city. To these earth- quakes both Tacitus and Seneca make reference, and the latter calls them to witness to refute the theory of Calisthenes that places near the sea were free from such visitations. Seneca goes into minute detail about the mat- ter, which occurred just two years before his murder by Nero. The actual date of the prin- cipal earthquake was the 5th of February 63 a. d., and though Pompeii and Herculaneum were the chief sufferers it is clear that the whole recrion was affected to a certain extent. The ruins of the city do not give us an accurate estimate of the damage done, because there can be 4K) doubt that the ultimate destruction was accom- panied by serious earthquakes, and the move- ment of mosaic pavements and other stable substances may no doubt be attributable as / / J. 10 POMPEII I HISTORY OF THE CITY 11 much to one set of seismic phenomena as to the other. Seneca says that many lives were lost, that a great part of Herculaneum though not thrown down, was rendered uninhabitable ; and that Na- ples had many private houses shattered, though none of the public buildings were injured. In short the seismic vertical appears to have been between Pompeii and Herculaneum; and the wave of the shock seems to have extended to Naples on the West, and with greater vio- lence to Nuceria on the East. To this historic account Seneca adds what is probably legendary ; we say legendary, because all who are acquainted with the result of earth- quakes know that even in these days similar stories always follow in the wake of these -dis- asters. He says that a flock of six hundred sheep was killed on the spot, and that very many of the inhabitants went out of their mind. It seems clear that it long remained matter for doubt whether the city should be rebuilt or not, but eventually this course was decided upon, and a thorough rebuilding took place, so that we have the remains of a city which we may take to be of the time of the end of Nero's reign, say a. d. 65 to 68. Some writers put the rebuilding as late as the time of Vespasian a. \ 1 D. 69 to 79, but we doubt the panic lasting more than a couple of years, and think it probable that within two years from the date of the ca- tastrophe, that is in the spring of a. d. 65, the rebuilding would probably have commenced. Ac- cepting this date as a reasonable conjecture, we should see before us a city with a developement of fourteen consecutive years, commencing in A. D. 65 and brought to a sudden and fatal stand- still on the 23rd day of November a. p, 79. Here again we shall be found at issue with many of the older writers, and more particularly with that great father of Pompeii, Professor Fiorelli, who gives the date as the 24th of August. Pliny gave the day and the month , but un- fortunately there is a discrepancy in the manu- scripts which have survived to us, some of them giving the one date, and some the other. We are therefore left to decide for ourselves, and various specimens found in Pompeii leave us no option but to declare in favour of the later date. Here the articles of food discovered in the excavations come mainly to our assistance. Dried grapes have been found, and it is certain that these would not be dried so early as August, when the vines have hardly come into bearing, whereas the regular season for drying grapes h W*£itolttf* ^"'J'- W ^ --"* <^ 1 fcaaJ "Laf i / 12 POMPEII HISTORY OF THE CITY is in the months of October and November, when the vintage is over. Again, the earliest walnuts-are barely gathered in the month of August, and many walnuts have been found in the excavations. The same remark applies to chestnuts and pinenuts which are autumnal fruits; but perhaps the most convincing proof is the fact that in very many of the gardens the amphorce or wine jars have been found upside down, having been evi- dently washed out to receive the new wine. Those in the garden of the House of the Faun had been already filled, and Professor Cali has ascer- tained by analysis that the wine which was put into them was new and of that season's growth. The day of the destruction being thus fixed with tolerable certainty, we will say a few words about the hour. Bulwer Lytton places the population of Pom- peii in the Amphitheatre at the time of the ca- lamity, and adds no little to the dramatic inte- rest of « The Last days of Pompeii y> by this incident. The historical accuracy of the state- ment may be open to doubt, though it would not alter the fact that the eruption took place in the afternoon. Dion Cassius states that < Herculaneum and Pompeii were destroyed when the people of the 13 /I li :p;-.. /■W" '" < - i I latter town were sitting in the theatre >. Both towns had theatres , but we do not know that Herculaneum had an Amphiteatre at all: and even if it had, the shows in the Amphitheatre were rare, and it is scarcely likely that two towns so near to one another would have shows on the same day. On the other hand plays in the theatres were frequent , and the words may easily be taken to mean « at theatre time >, namely in the afternoon, which quite corresponds to Pliny*s account. It appears that on that terrible afternoon, the v^ mountain suddenly sent up a lofty column of black smoke which after rising to an enormous height, spread itself out into a cloud having the shape of a giant pine tree. This would show that at the first period of the eruption there was little or no wind blowing, and it is probable that thus a means of escape was provided for such of the inhabitants as had the presence of mind to be- take themselves to the mountains which over- hang Castellammare. Meanwhile the cloud seems to have increased in size and density, while the mountain cast up ashes, pumice, and red-hot stones. Some few of the latter may have reached as far as Pompeii, but the traces of fire in the city are so few, that it is reasonable to assume that hardly any red-hot lava reached the city at all, and that 14 POMPEII where traces of fire exist, they were caused by the falling in of the roofs upon domestic fires which may have caused slight combustion in a few instances. The first stratum of volcanic matter seems to have covered the town with an impalpable pow- der which obscured the weak daylight of a No- vember afternoon, and choked all such of the inhabitants as were not able to effect their escape. \ We may assume that the night of the 23rd of November saw the flight of all those who were ever to get away from the doomed city. Some of these escaped by land, others no doubt by sea. The road to Naples must certainly have been impracticable, and the exodus must have taken place by the Gates which lead out towards Stabiae and the sea shore. Neither Gate is well adapted for the issue of a panic-stricken crowd, and if chariots were used by some of the refugees, there must have been considerable loss of life in the throng, when the steep descent to the Stabian Gate was reached by it. It is not to be supposed that Pliny the Elder who was in command of the Roman fleet at Misenum, could have arrived at Stabiae before the morning of the 24th of November. In the meantime the character of the eruption had somewha:t changed. We read that he could not CITY 15 get out of the bay of Stabi^ with his fleet, on iccount of the violent head wind which was blow- ng at the time. The direction of the wind would be N. W. and this would blow directly from the mountain towards Pompeii, and would bear with it the masses of pumice stone and other volcanic deSrzs with which we find the ruined buildings filled up. The rain meanwhile fell in torrents, and left s traces in some of the layers of ash, which 'are granulated into pellets about the size of peas, hese layers alternate with the layers of pumice tone, thus showing that the character of the -ruption was constantly changing. Traces of lightning are also perceptible in a variety of in- stances, of which perhaps the most interesting is a small glass vase completely twisted round a hairpin which stood in it ; this is now preset- ved in the Naples Museum (Small Bronzes, Ta- ble-case Lxm bis). Phenomena of a different character were tak- ing place on the Herculaneum side of the vol- cano. The wind carried all the loose matter away towards the S. E. but a torrent of liquid mud was pouring down the slope towards Hercula- neum, filling up everything that came in its way, land completely cutting off all communication with Naples. In succeeding centuries this mud 16 HISTORY OF THE CITY 17 has become completely hard, and though it had now to be cut away with a chisel, it was ori ginally a soft warm paste which preserved, a;^ by a miracle, the art treasures imbedded in it, doing little or no damage to bronze or marble, and scarcely injuring so delicate a vegetable sub- stance as papyrus. The best accounts we have of the calamity ^re those two well-known letters written by the younger Pliny from Misenum, and describind most likely the events of November the 231 and the days immediately following it. It is scar- cely necessary to reprint these letters, it w^'l be sufficient to give a resume of them. Th were written at the request of Tacitus, and tii( first of them relates the death of the Elder Pliny the great historian and naturalist, who at th( time of the calamity fell a victim to his enthu-j siasm for scientific investipfation. As soon as th( phenomena were observed he got a swift galley! under way, but before he was able to start h< received a request from some of his marines whcl lived at Retina (now Resina) to send ships tcJ take them off. He accordingly manned his large] ships, and seems to have endeavoured to lan( at Retina, but finding this impossible he bore ufj for Stabiae, where he landed, and eventually lo his life in an endeavour to observe the pheno- lena of the eruption. His body was recovered on le third day, completely uninjured. < He looked,> ays his nephew , « as if he were asleep >. In his second letter the younger Pliny descri- bes his flight with his mother from Misenum, which seems to have occurred on the followino- morning. They would probably take the road to Baiae and Cumae, because he speaks of the water retiring from the shore, and leaving the fish high and dry upon the strand. Had he taken a road which may have existed along the other coast to Cumae, he would probably not have observed the retrocession of the sea, as the Cu- maean beach is on the open ocean, while the Baian beach forms part of the Bay of Naples. Be this as it may, the narrative of their flicrht is a tale of adventure, and the mention of the violent earthquakes which they encountered shows the subterraneous connection between Vesuvius and the peninsula of Misenum. The earthquakes I seem to have been incessant, and the atmosphe- |ric conditions absolutely suffocating. Pliny's mother was a very stout old lady, to iwhom rapid locomotion seems to have been dif- pcult, and they were compelled to draw aside out lof the road that they might not be trampled lown by the crowd of fugitives. Even at this distance from the scene of action , (and we I 18 POiMPEII may reasonably conjecture that they were twent v] miles from the volcano) they had to rise froi time to time to shake off the volcanic dust fron their garments. The next day they seem to have seen the sun jaundiced by the dust in the air, and to have observed the whole face of the country covered as if by a fall of snow. If all this was the case at Misenum, it must have been ten times worse in the neicrhbourhood o of the mountain. Here the earthquakes were continuous, and the rain of falling matter seems to have suffered no intermission at all. The whole region was covered with scoriae to the depth of some twenty feet ; the river Sarnus appears to have been choked up, and all the trees destroyed. Let us endeavour to imagine the sight froi the top of Monte Sant' Angelo on the third of December a. d. 79. The darkness was clearing, off, but the site of the city was no longer v sible. The pent-up waters of the river were forc-l ing themselves a new channel at the foot of th' Stabian hills, and nothing remained to indicate the position of Pompeii but the upper part 0I the wall of the Greater Theatre, and the ellip tical outline which indicated the spot where th( Amphitheatre of the town lay buried. Withou drawing unnecessarily on the imagination of oui HISTORY OF THE CITY 19 tjeaders we may add to this picture the home- less inhabitants of three or four populous towns, (tamped out on the mountain sides in November iwithout food or shelter, and in utter despair as ^to what should next be done. In our days, the news of such a calamity would be known all over the world in twenty-four hours. In those days the news would not have reached even Rome in twice that time; but to the honour of Titus, who was the reigning emperor, it must be said that he acted with the most praise- worthy promptitude. Suetonius tells us that he appointed overseers to put matters straight, that he ordered houses to be rebuilt where such a course was desira- le, and that he decreed that the goods of those f'ho had died without representatives should be 'divided among such as had survived and had \been deprived of all means of livelihood. What followed is uncertain ; but the ruins prove hat in many instances the citizens contrived to ^et the bearings of their houses, and having clug down to them, secured a great portion of heir valuables. It is absolutely: -jcertai n that J ;he i d ea— of re- building the city was never carried out, and as it was left in the year a. d. 29 so it remained ior very many centuries. But although the ori- eo POMPEII HISTORY OF THE CITY 21 ginal city was never rebuilt, one bearing t same name arose afterwards on nearly the sa site, and this is mentioned by a monk named Mar tino as having existed in a. d. 838. This cit) is also named in Pentinger's map,* (a copy oi' which is in the Coin gallery of the Naples Mu4 seum) but there is no other indication of it. It was probably an unimportant hamlet, and very likely shared the fate of its namesake in one of the many subsequent eruptions of the mountain.) The -^e^scovery of Pompeii dates from! 1595, when by order of the Count of Sarno ad acqueduct was made to convey the waters of the upper Sarno to the town of Torre dell'Annun- ziata. This conduit enters the town on thej eastern side near the Amphitheatre, and passing across the street of Stabiae to the temple of Isi^ turns to the right beneath the Forum, and reA appears again just below the garden of the Hous^ of Diomede at the extreme end of the stree of the Tombs. In the course of the necessary works con]- nected with this acqueduct two inscriptions wer4 found, both referring to Pompeii, but both un frotunately lost. ''' The date of the original map may safely be pi in the i3.th century a. d. acec ^ ^ It was not till 1 748 that real excavations vv^ere c.bmmenced, but these were carried out without pToper plan and in the most irregular manner, l^Jie object of the excavators being merely to fpnd specimens of value, and no care was taken ven of these. Many were dispersed, many sold, nd many stolen. Interesting waterpipes were elted for old lead; the marble was pillaged, the mosaics broken up ; and it was not in fact till i860, when the Neapolitan provinces became part of United Italy, that a regular plan was ijnitiated by Professor Fiorelli by which every- tjhing that is found is carefully recorded , and 11 that is valuable is put in safe keeping. The excavations have since been carried on i/n the most methodical manner; tramways have ^een laid to carry off the rubbish , and it is stimated that in about fifty years the whole of t^he city will be laid open, though this of course epends upon the amount of subsidy granted by tuie Government. It is much to be regretted that win^ to financial difficulties the c/rant has been o cipnsiderably reduced in recent years. j ».ia»:aMMtr^t^«^SM^a^^t^'^J.-^.^ CHAPTER II TOPOGRAPHY OF POMPEII Distajice from Naples, Castellammare, Vesuvius and the Sea -^Ancient Coast line -^ Course of the Sarnus —ItsS Quays — Experimental Excavations — Vesuvius and Monte So7nma — The steppiiig stones in the streets -^ Present aspect of houses --Their original height— ^ Siz^ of the city — Population — Names of the streets — Fio\ relli 's division — Advertisements — Tavern signs — \ Water supply — Heating of houses. r OMPEii is seventeen miles from Naples, fouf from Castellammare, five in a direct line froni the crater of Vesuvius, and about a mile and li half from the sea. That it was much nearer to the sea in anr cient times than it is now, is very unlikely, ajs there would seem to be no reason why the coast at Pompeii should change and that of Herculaj neum so few miles off remain in its old posi-f tion. Experimental borings made to test the ac-f 4 i y s I V f" topo(;haphy 23 tual condition of the subsoil between the city and the sea, produced neither shells nor sea-sand to within five hundred yards of the present coast- line, i.nd in one instance soil and fresh w^ater were alone found until the point where the Sa- lerno railway line branches off to Castellammare. Here sea-shells were found at no inconsiderable depth, but this point is so near the beach that this h hardly matter for wonder. Besides, the volcanic matter which covered the region on the Pompeii side of the mountain was of the lightest possible description. Vast quantities of it fell upon the sea no doubt, but it all floated away, just as similar volcanic mat- ter did in the case of the Java eruption of i885, when the ocean was covered for miles with sco- riae and ashes. The descriptions of the coast as it existed in Roman times given us by Livy, Seneca, and Pliny, all coincide with the shore as it now is, and w^e may feel confident that nothing has changed materially except the course of the Sar- nus and its size. Pompeii owed its fame as a seaport merely to the fact that it was situated on the estuary of that stream, which was navi- gable for the light vessels used in ancient times. That the sea ever came up to the city walls in historic times, is a theory long since aban- I: # a, I 24 POMPEir \ doned, though a casual inspection of the gene- ral configuration of the ground, and of the marsh which lies between the city and Castellammare, may perhaps have led the early excavators to form the opinion that the hill upon which Pom- peii stands may once have formed part of the coast line. All the western side of the city, and a great part of the southern side, stand upon a bluff overlooking the marshy plain below^ The whole of this plain was covered by the eruption, and consequently there has been an alteration of the apparent level, and this alteration may very li- kely have caused the loss of a large amount of the water of the Sarnus, and converted what was once a navigable river into an insignificant stream. The ancient course of the Sarnus was about three hundred yards beyond the present railway line. The busy quays were lined with buildings, of which a whole row was discovered and filled up again some years since ; but this riverside suburb extended almost to the walls of the town; for when the foundations for a new house were being sunk between the railway and the high road in 1887 about a quarter of mile to the eastward of the Pompeii Station, we had the good fortune to see the remains of a Ro- man building, and, as it has since been filled 4 A 4'} V f TOPOGRAPHY 25 up, a few words upon it will doubtless be of interest. It was a large corn mill, lying some tw^elve feet below the present surface. The stones for grinding the corn were more than double the size of those used in the usual Pompeian bake- ries, and must have required one or perhaps two mules to turn them. It was interestintr to note the scores written on the walls of the warehouses. These were marked by rough strokes about an inch long written in charcoal, every tenth stroke being drawn of double length for facility of reckon- ing. We have little doubt that these scores re- ferred to the number of sacks of corn delivered to the miller, as each row was added up in Ro- man numerals at the end of the line. It is very much to be regretted that these remains (be- ing on private property) w^ere doomed to be destroyed, to make room for the foundations of a modern building which now stands over them. Many experimental excavations have been made in the vicinity of Pompeii, and amongst other things the trunks of cypress trees which lined the banks of the river have been disco- vered, and the remains of a bridge which spanned the Sarnus, thus indicating exactly the ancient position of the river. \i 26 POMPEII TOPOGRAPHY All these experimental excavations have been filled in again, but it seems probable fhat the bridge over the Sarnus was above the port of Pompeii, and that the traffic beyond it was by barges drawn by mules, as described by Horace in his celebrated account of his journey to Brun- dusium. In the winter of 1886-7, some tombs were discovered in private groiind, lining a road which led out into the country not far from the Am- phitheatre. These were partially explored at the expense of the Government , and are interesting as being the tombs of poor people , thus con- x^ firming our opinion that the more squalid portion of the city will be found near the amphitheatre. V The city of Pompeii is in the form of an ir- regular hexagonal oval with its broad part to- wards the coast, and is surrounded by a high wall in which are eight Gates. The principal streets lead out to the Gates, and are practi- cally straight, though some of the smaller streets are narrow and tortuous. The highest part of the city is behind the northwestern corner of the Forum and from this point the ground slo- pes downwards in every direction, sometimes ft 4 4 4 4> 4) t 27 !► ¥ i ^ V IJ I (as in the case of the Sea Gate and the Gate of Stabiae) very steeply indeed. Although the eruption which buried Pompeii is the first on record, it is certain that Monte Somma had been active enough in pre-historic times, for Pompeii is built on a bed of lava many centuries old, and a good deal of lava was used in paving the streets and in the construction of some of the buildings. Vesuvius which now forms so important a feature in the landscape, had no existence in the Roman times. We learn as well from the frescoes as from the ancient writers, that the country all the way from Pompeii to the rocky declivities of Monte Somma was a luxuriant and fertile plain. There is indeed still a belt of cul- tivation between the city and the mountain, but it extends only to the little village of Bosco tre Case, a poor hamlet about three miles away where the cultivable soil ceases, and the dreary wilderness of lava beds begins. The city commands beautiful views in every 1/ direction. Sea and sky, mountain and valley, the distant town of Naples and the more distant is- lands of the Bay, all combine to form a pano- rama of the most exquisite description; no site in Europe could be more picturesque, none is more mterestm^:. o " ii iiiii mi i 28 POMPEII TOPOGRAPHY 29 The streets are paved with irregular blocks V of lava, precisely like those of Naples, except that at Pompeii sidewalks are found everywhere, whereas at Naples they are conspicuous only by their absence. The rain-water from the roofs ran for the most part inwards, and was collected in the implitvia of the houses from whence it ran into tanks, and when these were full its outflow was generally by a pipe into the street. Only a part of the town seems to have been furnished with \/ sewers, hence the streets were waterways, and when the roofs existed must have been impass- able in heavy rains. To obviate this inconve- nience, stepping stones were placed across them at frequent intervals, and these must have been a great obstacle to the circulation of wheeled traffic. This and other considerations , such as the deficient stable accomodation, lead us to suppose that private carriages were but little used in the town, and that the wheel traffic was chiefly confined to carts. These would ea- sily pass the stepping stones, as they would proceed at a foot's pace, and the horses being loosely yoked in the curricle fashion could rea- dily step over the stones, or pass between them in the wheel tracks which are everywhere vi- sible. s/ V-T- - ' J. 4 ^'1 V < i * #. « W0 If The appearance of the buildings will gene- rally cause a feeling of disappointment. In Ro- man times they were probably rarely higher than two stories, that is they had a ground floor and one floor above it, with the exception of the House of Diomede which was three stories high and some of the houses near the lesser Forum, which being against the side of the hill have a two story basement under the ground floor. We must not dismj-ss a point so disputed as the height of the Pompeian houses without a few words of comment. A building act of the Reign of Augustus limited the height of houses to 70 feet, and this was reduced in Trajan's time to 60 feet. But we much doubt any hou- ses so high having existed in Pompeii, at all events after the rebuilding of the town which followed the earthquake of 63 a. d. The loose materials found in the excavations are never sufficient to account for more than one story above that which is actually standing; and thou-xh the lower walls are very strong and appear to be built to carry a more lofty structure, these are often of pre-Roman work and built of lar^e blocks of stone, a style of building which is ne- cessarily more solid than brickwork. There is no evidence whatever to support the theory that the upper stories of the houses were of wood \^ I, 30 POMPEII The houses on the walls leading from the triangular forum westwards are not a fair cri- terion, for it is clear that their basements were constructed after the city walls were dismantled, and that they were encroachments on what had once been the fortifications of the town. Now, on the other hand, the roofs throughout the city having all fallen in, and the upper parts of the walls havingf in most instances crumbled away,^ we find a city which looks as if it were in course of being built, with its roofless walls standing only some ten or twelve feet above the ground. It must be remembered that scarcely any wood-work has survived, consequently the hou- ses are without doors, and in most instances only a sloping mark remains upon the wall to show where the staircases formerly stood. One result of this is to make the houses seem very much smaller than they really are, and especially to dwarf the rooms till they appear inconveniently minute. It is not our intention to load this book with measurements, but in treat- ing of some of the houses we will give the di- mensions of the rooms, to enable the reader better to appreciate their actual size. I It must also be remembered that the town Itself was very small to our notions, and that «) # ^ i >fi \ s •I ^'« ( TOPOGRAPHY 31 the longest straight line which could be drawn in it, namely from the Gate of Herculaneum to the Amphitheatre would be little more than three quarters of a mile. The population of the city is estimated at 12,000 and an allowance of 8000 more for the suburbs is probably a liberal one. The main streets of the city are at right an- gles to one another, thus dividing it into « blocks >. These have been named and numbered for con- venience of reference, but in Roman times there was no such designation, or at least none such was painted up. The reason for this would pro- bably be that the streets of all Roman towns were known by a regular series of names; the principal Street running North and South being called « Cardo >, and that running East and West « Decumanus >.Tt has been conjectured that the street now called the Street of Stabiae was the Cardo of Pompeii, while the Decuma- nus Major was the present Street of Nola, and the Decumanus Minor the Street of Abun- dance. According to Professor Fiorelli 's admirable plan, ihe town is divided into eight Regiones, ^ each regio being divided into a convenient num- ber of insulce or blocks by the cross streets, and each insula having its separate numeration. A little attention to' the careful plans published 1/ 32 POMPEII with this work, will enable the reader to iden- tify any house in the town without difficulty. The blank on the map shows the part still remaining to be excavated, and of that already searched Regio I. is the poorest, and Regiones V. and VI. the richest. vVery many inscriptions painted usually in red letters will be noticed on the walls of the houses. Most of these are election advertisements ask- ing the inhabitants to vote for So-and-so as ^dile, or for some one or other of the public offices. The following are instances of such inscrip- tions, and are selected because they tend to show the existence of trade societies in Pompeii. MARCELLINUM. ^DILEM. LIGNARI. ET. PLOSTARI. ROGANT. «; The Carpenters and Carters wish Marcel- linus to be y£dile >. VERUM. MD. O. F. VNGVENTARI. FACITE. ROG. Please make Veriis y^dile. The Perfumers ask you to make him, so. Similar inscriptions in favour of different can- didates are recorded by the Saltworkers, the Porters, the Goldsmiths and the Fruiterers. TOPOGRAPHY •j'l €• #> 4 4* 4 \i ♦ i These advertisements generally ended with the letters O. V. F. {^Oro vos faciatis) w^hich is equivalent to <( Please vote for him >. The entertainments in the Amphitheatre were ^ also advertised in this manner, and besides these many graffiti or rudely scratched inscriptions have been discovered, some of which are very interesting, and will be mentioned when w^e are treating of the places where they occur. Taverns were almost universally placed at v the street corners, and seem to have closely resembled the small wine-shops of Naples. The regular sign in Roman times was a bush, and as ivy w^as the plant sacred to Bacchus, an ivybush was the favourite sign of a drinking shop ; so much so , that the Romans had the proverb which we still keep in English as a proverb, though the custom of a bush at an Inn door, common a hundred years ago, has died out in the British Isles altogether. In the neighbourhood of Na- ples a tavern will hardly be found which has not the orthodox bush against its doorway. If the sign w^as used in Pompeii there is na- turally no trace of it now, but several of their tavern signs still remain. Close to the back of the Temple of Jupiter on the north-eastern side is a sign in terracotta representing two men car- 3 34 POMPEII rying an amphora slung on a pole, much in the same way as the < Jolly Brewers > carry a bar- rel between them in the tavern sign at home. Within a few doors of this, in the same street, and directly opposite the northwestern exit of the Forum, is a sign representing a goat, which in many of the books is stated to be the sign of a dairyman or milkseller. It is more probable that it was simply the sign of a wine shop, the goat being sacred to Bacchus nd usually sacrificed to him. Again the « Chequers > is a very common Inn sign, and is accounted for by the fact that € Chequers > or « draughts y> was a very fa- vourite game with the Romans, as is abundantly proved by the frescoes found in the wine shops. i/The supply of water in Pompeii must have been extremely plentiful, but until lately it was unknown whence it w^as derived. The discovery of an acqueduct near Bosco tre Case in 1884 set the matter at rest : and though it could not be traced without more expense than was jus- tifiable, its direction seems to show that the Pompeian water supply was derived from the Nolan hills from whence in fact the town of Naples is now furnished with most excellent water. At any rate in walking through Pompeii we TOPOGRAPHY 35 r4 .{ 4 V I ♦^ > ( ) 4 4 observe numerous public fountains in the stn and almost every private house had ornamental waterworks belonging to it. These were usually placed in front of the Hall door, and as this door would be open except in severe weather, the fountains and gardens w^ould have a very pretty appearance from the street, and brighten the whole city. Leaden water pipes will be observed running in all directions, though tradition says that great numbers of them w^re torn up by the Bourbon Kings and melted down for sale. The Romans it will be seen understood the theory 'of jets and sprays of water, and though the best of their fountains have been removed to the Naples Museum, enoogh remain in their original places to give a good idea of their taste in this respect. Pompeii has been almost stripped of its sta- tuary, and all the best paintings have also been removed. This was no doubt necessary to their preservation, and they can besides be much more conveniently seen and compared in a Museum than they could be were they scattered here and there throughout a ruined city. Recently however, owing partly to the crowded condition of the Museum, the buildings of Pompeii have in many cases been roofed in , and their art fu,. .«>- ■HMje.->...jijj.»l..-,-a....j^j.jaaJ.M-..i.-^^.i.- ■»/!..■.■< l^^ggBUHHiiaiii^ 36 POMPEII treasures left on the spot where they were found. ^/There are about the Pompeian houses a few general characteristics which will strike the care- ful observer. One of these is the almost uni- versal absence of chimneys, w^hich leads some writers to infer that the climate of the country has materially changed since the Roman times. This how^ever is not necessarily the case, for we find a strong prejudice against fires prevail- ing now in Southern Italy , and it is only of late years that the use of grates has become common in Naples, the inhabitants preferring an unwholesome brazier to a bright fire, and a cold house to a warm one. yAnother feature of a Roman house is the ex- treme darkness wiiich must have prevailed in it. Some of the smaller windows were (glazed, but very many rooms had no window at all, and moreover opened into the cloister of the atrium, so that no direct light can have reached them. But we shall see further on, that home life w^as not a necessity to the Pompeians, and it is pro- bably only a very slight exaggeration to say that they used their houses to eat and to sleep in, and spent their days mainly in places of pub- lic resort. 4 ♦J 4' I ^ A I 4 I CHAPTER III SOCIAL LIFE AT POMPEII Character of Vespasian — Strictures on Roman morals by St. Paul and Jnvenal^ The religion of the period — The Deification of Augustus — The adttiinistration of Justice — Morality of the stage — The Baths — The Forum — Gluttony - Gambling— Suicide — The poorer classes — Home life — Domestic slavery — Freedmen — Children — Schoolmasters — Education — Daily life Marriage — The weddiiig cake — Coming of age — The y^dile — Duumvirs — Decurions. This chapter will deal mainly with the state^^ of Roman Society during the years a. d. 65 to 79, in order that we may gather a general idea of the people, at the time jof jyie^destructifiji of Pompeii. This period comprises the last tw^o years of the reign of Nero, who died a. d. 68, the short but infamous reigns of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, who were all murdered in the year a. d. 69; and the whole reign of Vespasian who was proclaimed Emperor at Alexandria in 38 POMPEII A. D. 69 and died in a. d. 79. He was suc- ceeded by his son Titus, who had obtained the Imperial dignity only a few months before the destruction of Pompeii took place. The most important of these reigns to the matter in hand is that of Vespasian, for it cov- ers nearly the whole of the period of w^hich w^e are treating. He w^as of obscure descent, a thorough soldier, and much addicted to practi- cal reforms. He gave great attention to the re- pair of the public buildings at Rome, and spent much care and money upon the highways. The Imperial example w^ould naturally have a great \X influence in the provinces , and it is no doubt due to the Emperor 's initiative in his Capital City that so much care and such elaborate de- coration was lavished upon the buildings of Pompeii. Vespasian w^as an excellent Emperor, though his personal morality seems to have been no better than that of his neighbours. Of the state of things existing in about a. d. 60, St. Paul has draw^n a fearful but by no means an exag- gerated picture, in his Epistle to the Romans; and the poet Juvenal, who w^as born rather be- fore this and was the great satirist of the first century, was equally severe upon_J;he_ state of Roman morals and exposes them in the^ros- SOCIAL LIFE AT POMPEII m \ ! > sest man ner^ He says that « succeeding genera- tions can only imitate our vices, they cannot add to them » ; and we shall see that the-_xums_ of Pompeii more than hear, out w^hatever was written of the depravity of the period. The dawn of the Christian era took place at a time when the most civilised nation on the face of the globe was rushing to the doom which vice always pre- pares for its votaries. The ancient glory of Rome was w^aning; her aristocracy was utterly corrupt; honour and virtue had perished from the land, to give place to inhuman vice and wanton cruelty. Let us glance for a moment at the worship of the period, of which Gibbon says so justly that it w^as considered « by the people as equally true, by the philosophers as equally false, and by the magistrates as equaUy useful >. The wor- ship was utterly degraded, h^ut still their temples were kept up wit h gr eat splendour, and their -ritual was carried out with extreme minuteness. The proudest title of the Emperor was that of < Pontifex Maximus » and the greatest Deity the Olympian Jupiter w^hom the Romans had adopted from the Greeks. But even Jupiter was only believed in by the lower orders. Horace writes that « they believed Jupiter reigned because he thundered », Ovid says € the gods are made by the poets >, Seneca that they are an « ignoble 40 POMPEII SOCIAL LIFE AT POMPEII 41 crowds, and Martial preferred the favour of Caesar to that of Jupiter! It was probably a feeling of this sort which made the deification of the Emperor, and the worship first of the Julia Gens, and afterwards of Augustus, so popular and prevalent in Roman times. His widow Livia was made a priestess by the Roman Senate, and is thus represented in the statue found in the Augusteum at Pompeii. That the festival of Augustus was kept with great splendour at Naples is matter of history, and to judge by the frequent occurrence of the word € Augustalis » in the Pompeian inscriptions, w^e may presume that this class of priests was very numerous, though it is conjectured that it was not very select. sy Partly however from a disbelief in the gods of their own mythology , and partly because ignorance must always be fed by superstition, foreign gods and goddesses w^ere constantly tak- ing their place in the Roman system. That many of these should come from Egypt Was only nat- ural, for was not Italy nourished by the Libyan granaries? Were not the merchants of Egypt paramount in South Italy, and did they not bring their gods with them? Moreover, as if the worship of the gods of Rome was not vile enough; as if the cult of si f ^^ < I li <> 1 ^1 j/^**^ Bacchus, Venus, and Fortune, did not already overstep the bounds of absolute debauchery, these foreign rites vied with one another in infamy and w^ickedness, till even the very heathens themselves suppressed them one by one, perceiv- ing that they were sapping the very lifeblood and energy of the people. And thus it arose that the maintenance of a creed w^hich was supported only by pandering to the vices of its devotees, led more and more to the de- r pravity of the nation, ruined the self respect of the people and hurried on the decline of the Empire. And if the religion of the country was in decadence, if the Priest, the Flamen, and the Augur were as gross impostors as the Chaldean astrologer and the spiritualistic necromancer who were gradually supplanting them in public favour, could it be said that tlie sacred fount of Justice was^ -any pur^^r? W^as the Basilica less impious than the Temple? Was it a Christian slander which was written in a. d. 6o. by St. Luke, that Felix the Roman Governor « hoped that money should have been given him by Paul that he might loose him: wherefore he sent for him the oftener » ? Was it a fact, or was it only an un- warrantable surmise that this same Felix, disre- garding the justice of the case, * left Paul bound > merely < to shew the Jews a pleasure*? 42 POMPEII ki ^We are afraid that we must reply that Justice no longer presided over the Law Courts with blinded eyes, and equally poised scales. Apart from the atrocities unblushingly perpetrated by the Emperors, the cruelty and venality of the Judges was notorious, and bribery of the worst kind was universally practised. \/rhe theatre, and especially the comic stage, was as deirraded and vicious as it could be. The Oscan drama with its buffoon ( from whence sprang the Pulcinella of Naples ) took its rise at Atella near Pompeii , and the dramas were acted then, as now, in the local patois, and filled .jBcitli-amsavoury jokes and the most abominable gestures. vThe Baths were the centre of the vice of the upper classes and admitted places of assignation ; while any woman who sold goods publicly in the Forum was no longer entitled to respect, but might be treated as the basest of her sex. ^/The public life of Pompeii was thus as vile as it could well be. The deo^radation of woman was,, as great as it has ever been in the history of _ the world, and where woman is degraded, man will surely be dissipated and worthless. And this was the case in the middle of the first century. vl'he upper classes were extremely wealthy, and spent their money in lavish profusion on the SOCIAL LIFE AT POMPEII 43 <\ , I gratification of their worst instincts. We can hardly credit the sums said to have been spent on a single banquet, and can scarcely believe that so civilised a nation could have recourse to vomiting in order that they might eat again. Yet with all their luxurious extravagance they ^^ were a deeply wretched race. Their magnificence could not give them happiness, any more than their uncontrolled vice gave them freedom; and Horace wrote truly of them, that « dark care brooded over their brass-prowed pleasure boats, and sat behind their caparisoned horsemen >. Their lives were passed in the flashing exci- tement of spurious pleasure. Gambling was uni-^^ versal, and ruin, then as ever, followed in its train. Drunkennes was prevalent and incurred no censure whatever; the vilest gluttony was rather creditable than otherwise , and in short thej/^ wealthy classes seem to have been restrained by no moral code at all. It is not to be wondered at that suicide was common. The sated appetite could find no eew pleasure, the ruined gambler no resource ; and a voluntary death seemed preferable to an exis- tence from which every joy had been reft by misuse. It is surprising to see how great writers , clever hardheaded men , could venture to glorify the miserable cowardice of suicide ; 44 POMPEII but they undoubtedly did so; holding it to be a virtue in a rr.an to face the inevitable, and to destroy himself when his earthly pleasures were at an end. ^The poorer classes were as squalid and mi- serable as the wealthy were luxurious aod ex- travagant. We have not yet discovered the low parts of the town ; these will no doubt be found in the neighbourhood of the Amphitheatre, and we cannot but feel sure that the testimony of the ancient writers about the working classes, will be found as correct as their censures on the wealthy. We have so far touched on the public and semipublic life of the Pompeians, let us now - ^^^^ to the homes, and see, if we can, what went on within doors, and what effect the training they received there was likely to have upon the youth of the city. ^The Master of a Roman house was an auto- crat of the most absolute description. Over his slaves he had the power of life and death, and he did not hesitate to exercise it. A slave was brutally flogged, chained, or crucified on the smal- lest provocation, and even Roman ladies did not hesitate to have their women whipped when they displeased them. Juvenal describes pathetically how poor Psecas was cruelly flogged with oxhide SOCIAL LIFE AT POMPEII 45 if 4 1/ l^ thongs for putting one of her mistresses curlses out of place, and this was no exceptional treatment even for the female slaves. In the Naples Museum {^Small bronzes No. 73937) i^ ^ bronze collar bearing the inscription € I am a slave arrest me because I am running- o aw^ay ». This collar was no doubt welded to the neck of some wretch who had endeavoured to escape from the w^anton cruelties of his barbarous master. It would serve the purpose of a convict's dress, and ensure the apprehension of the fugitive at the hands of any one who fell in with him. The ears of slaves were also bored after the Jewish fashion, and in- case of dishonesty the wretch was branded on the forehead by the executioner, with the letters fur signifying « A thief ». Manacles for slaves are exhibited in the same wall case with the collar we have men- tioned, and a small bronze figure of a slave with his hands tied behind him, is near them. The Master occasionally gave his freedom to \^ a slave who then became a < Libertus >, always more or less subservient to his former Master, who was now styled his Patron. A great part of the commerce of this period was conducted by these Liberti, for commerce was considered degrading in those days, and perhaps the Patron found a part of the capital, and shared in the 46 POMPEII profits. Certain it is that these Liberti were a ruffianly class, and that they exercised a good deal of power in an underhand way. How far they continued to regulate their former masters' households may be doubtful, but it is certain that they always owed them a definite allegiance, and we often find valuable gifts presented by them to their patrons. Slaves w^ere sometimes able by saving up their daily allowance of food to pur- chase their own freedom, and that class which was employed in the theatres, received money payments besides their dress and rations. The release of a slave from slavery was re- gularly effected in three ways. The first and most formal was by his master's declaration in open Court before the Praetor: the second was by the master instructing the Censor to enroll the man as a citizen: and the third was by will. The English word « manumission > which is used of liberating persons from slavery, is derived directly from the Roman ceremony; for the master having declared before the Pr^tor that the man was free, struck him lightly with his hand, and thus literally « manumitted > him, that is to say * discharged him from his hand ». In the third case the freedom might be given with or without conditions, and sometimes the i) i SOCIAL LIFE AT POMPEII ft' I'! 9 i it testator instructed his heir to liberate the slave or slaves indicated , but not more than half of a man's slaves could be liberated by will. The enormous number of slaves owned by a wealthy citizen was naturally a matter of considerable danger to him, and hence a law was passed that in the case of a Roman dying under circumstances ' of suspicion, all his slaves should be put to death at once. Nor was the conduct of the Roman to their X own children one whit better than that under which their slaves groaned. St. Paul writing to the Galatians in a. d. 58, says that c the heir as long as he is a child differeth nothin^r from a servant (i. e. a slave) though he be lord of all. > A Father had full power of life and death over his child during its minority; indeed as soon as it was born he either accepted it as a member of his family, or he rejected it and it was aban- doned to die in the streets. If it was accepted, it passed to the ladies' apartments and the Father probably never saw it again till it w^as full grown; but his power of life and death remained , and the child might be put to death at his good will and pleasure. The schoolmasters were as brutal as other clas- ses, and the classical writers make us wonder that the Roman youth ever survived their harsh treat- i f vi^4| ) And what was the daily life of the Roman ladies? We can hardly suppose that they carried de- pravity to the extent which their husbands did, yet if we read the accounts of Roman life at Baiae, we cannot think they came much short of It. Dress was naturally a passion with them, and they spent enormous sums upon it. Jewelry and '^ perfumes absorbed a large portion of their means. The rou£-e with which they painted their faces is still extant, and we may infer that if their lives were less depraved than those of their hus- bands , it is as much as we can say for them. That they had innocent amusements is abundantly proved by the paintings in the Naples Museum, where we find pretty pictures of ladies playing the lyre; sketching from a statue; touching in an inscription; and a group, perhaps the most graceful of all, represents a beautiful girl having her hair dressed in the presence of her friends. Again, on a massive silver pail in the Gem room is a fine bas relief of a lady at her bath, attended by four female slaves. The colonnade at the back may perhaps indicate that the scene is laid in the Public Baths to which ladies as well as gentle- men habitually repaired. They also attended the Theatres and the sports of the Arena , where ^ they were witnesses of the shocking scenes of I! 50 POMPEII brutality which did so much to degrade the Ro- man nation. Their usual method of locomotion appears to have been by litter, in which they were carried on the shoulders of slaves to all parts of the town. That they spent a great part V of their time in the temples is also certain ; in fact the main reason why the worship of Isis was put down, was because the Roman ladies spent hours in pretended celebrations of the rites, during which time they were completely uncontrolled. While we are on the subject of Roman ladies, it will be convenient to speak of the marriage rites of those days, since this is a subject which in all ages has mightily influenced the status of women. By an edict of Augustus, engagements were limited to two years, a law which we think might advantageously be re-enacted now. During this period either party might sue the other for breach of promise of marriage, if it was proposed to break off the engagement. Girls might not be engaged till they were ten years old, and might not be married till they were twelve, but at this early age the consent of their guardians was in- dispensable. There were also tables of affinity which regulated the marriages of those who were not blood relations, as well' as provisions to prevent the marriage of those whose near relationship rendered it undesirable. 'j--'- ) SOCIAL LIFE AT POMPEII 51 / As to the form of marria^^e it was usually merely a mutual consent before witnesses , and there was no religious ceremony at all. The more solemn form of marriage was that by € confar- reatio » when the man and woman partook jointly of a cake in the presence of ten witnesses, and one of the Priests of high rank; but this rite seems to have been but little practised in the period we are treating of, excepting among the upper classes. A marriage never took place upon an unlucky day, or upon the eve of it; the whole months of February and May were considered inauspi- cious, and upon a great number of festivals the marriage of maidens was prohibited, although the nuptials of a widow might properly be celeb'^rated. The bride\s dress was a long white tunic bound with a girdle. Her veil as well as her shoes, were of a bright yellow colour, and her hair was parted with the point of a spear for the wedding ceremony. She was conducted to the house of the husband in the evening, accompanied by a torch- light procession and bearing a distaff in her hand; and was carried over the threshold , lest she should have the ill-luck to stumble in crossing it. Her husband handed her fire and water which she touched in token of purification, and the keys of the house were delivered into her hands. A 52 POMPEII SOCIAL LIFE AT POMPEII 53 \ wedding feast was then held , after which the bride and bridegroom retired , and the guests, before breaking up, joined in singing an « epi- thalammm > or bridal song, which at this period was often of an objectionable character. The Romans were allowed only one wife at a time, and divorce was very common among them. The divorce of such persons as had been married by con/arreatio was not an easy matter, but in other cases a wife was divorced with little or no difficulty; the usual form being to take the keys of the house away from her, and to turn her out of doors. Infidelity, drunkenness, or sorcery seem to have been the usual causes of divorce, though there are many cases on record of Roman ladies be- ing divorced, only because they had not borne children to their husbands. It seems probable that when a dissolution of marria^^e was contem- plated, a domestic trial was held before the re- latives of both parties. The wife's dowry was usually her separate property , but in the case of a divorce it was dealt with according to the merits of the particular case. There remains yet another important domestic ceremony of Roman times which we shall not meet with in our studies of the city of Pompeii, to which allusion may properly be made here, na- 'O-^ mely the « Coming of age > of the Roman Youth. This took place at about the age of fifteen, up to w^hich period the boys of Rome wore the < toga prcetexta > and a trinket called the < bulla patricia > round their necks. The name of the trinket was derived from the Latin word < bulla > signifying a bubble, which was the shape of the object. Tw^o gold bullce and one of carnelian are exhibited in the Naples Museum. Coming of age / was a religious ceremony and was performed in the Forum. Here sacred rites, and often a sacrifice were held to celebrate the occasion; the boy assu- med the « toga virilis > and the bulla of childhood was hung up with the household gods of his parents. A small statue thought to be Britannicus (Naples Museum No. 6229) represents him with this ornament on his neck. It will be advantageous here to mention the public functionaries of the town whose titles ap- pear constantly in the following pages. The yEdile seems to have occupied very much the position of Mayor of the town, and his duties were alike multifarious and important. The in- scriptions show that the ^diles were elected. € Paratus >, says one of these instructive docu- ments, < asks that Pansa be made ^dile >, an inscription which gave its name to the so-called House of Pansa at Pompeii. y 54 POMPEII SOCIAL LIFE AT POMPEII 55 The duty of the i^diles was to act as Borough Magistrates and Commissioners of Police: tiiey - also superintended tiie supply of provisions to the public, and were responsible for the conduct of all the public games. They had further to see that temples and public buildings were kept in proper order, and that private houses whose con- dition was dangerous to the public safety should be put in repair. Their powers were very con- siderable, and they were able to enforce their orders by prosecution and fine. Thus in times of scarcity the ^dile could at once punish any mdividual who was hoarding his corn in hopes of a rise in the price, and without further ado could cause the hoard to be issued to the public. One main object which the ^:dile always kept in view was to be more magnificent than his predecessor, and to give more splendid entertain- ments to the populace, in hopes that he might secure their votes when he became a candidate for the higher offices of the State. Under him ^worked the Duumviri, who were elected annually from the townspeople. We learn from an inscrip- tion thatit Paquius Proculus who was a baker of the city, and whose portrait is in the Naples Mu- seum (No. 9o58) was made a Duumvir by the Pompeians on account of his popularity. The Decuriones were the Town Council of X i *« V <. Roman times, and we see from the inscriptions in the Street of the Tombs that it was they who voted posthumous honours to departed citi- zens, assigned them a sepulchre in the place of honour, and ordered a statue to be put up to them in the Forum after their decease. These memo- rial statues formed an important part of the de- coration of the city, and though many of them were destroyed by the earthquake of a. d. 63, we can identify the site of more than one of them by the inscriptions which have survived to us. To judge from the interesting inscription over the door of the Temple of I sis it would appear that the Decuriones were a self-elected body. CHAPTER IV POMPEIAN ART The pitblic buildings — Domestic Architecture — The mar- ble statuary — The bronze statuary — The small bro7izes — The painting a?td mosaics — The Jewelry — Gerns and Terra-cot fa. Ix such n city as Pompc^ii where every stone has its special lesson for us, it is obviously dan- gerous to generalise , and to speak in groups of buildings which differ so materially in period as well as in details. The only safe course is to take the city stone by stone , giving a fact here, an inference there, a conjecture further on^ as knowledge and circumstances may permit. Such a course as this would be beyond the scope of a popular work; and those who desire to enter into such minute details must study the complete works of Dyer in English, Overbeck and Mau in German, and the numerous books, papers, and POMPEIAN ART o/ \ |» .1 ; pamphlets written in Italian by FiorelH, Ruggiero, De Petra and other experts. The « Bibliografia di Pompei, Ercolano e Stabia >, by Mr. Furchheim (Naples 1 891) is a most valuable contribution to the literature on the subject. It must be remembe- red that new discoveries are constantly upsetting the most time-honoured theories, and no work however elaborate can be so compiled that it will not get out of date in the course of a short time. For our own part we can do no more tlian accept what appears to us the most probable solution of contested points , and w^e desire to disclaim all intention of as to matters which are in dispute now, and will probably re- main doubtful for many years, and perhaps for ever. This disclaimer on our part is extremely necessary on entering upon so debatable a question as that of Pompeian art, w^hich we take to include the architecture, public and domestic, of the citv; the statuary both marble and bronze- the household utensils, and the decorative paint- ing. We shall also say a few words on the mosaics which form so important an item in the decoration of the city, and offer observations on gems and jew^elry, terra-cotta and glass. Since the finest specimens of art found in the city have been removed to the Naples Museum, w^e shall have frequent occasion to refer to those 58 POMPEII famous collections, and recommend our readers to make themselves acquainted with Mr. Monaco's complete < Ha7idbook to the Naples Museum > the English edition of which we have edited for him for several years past. They will find in it accurate descriptions of all the most important specimens. We must further premise that as we shall enter into detail in the case of each important build- ing when we are describing it, the present chapter will be merely a synopsis of the matter, and is only intended to give a general idea to enable the reader to understand the details which follow. The Public Buildings of Pompeii , being mostly of the Samnite period or antecedent to it, were originally in the Doric style, though the temples of Jupiter and of Fortune were Corinthian, and other traces of Corinthian art and many composite pillars, will be found in various parts of the town. In rebuilding the city, the Romans covered the- Doric pillars with stucco and converted them into- the Ionic style, painting them over with designs, and thus spoiling the dignified simplicity of the earlier epoch. So-called restorers have done the same thing in every period; and the Temple restorers of Pompeii in the first century were not one whit more objectionable than some Church restorers of POMPEIAN ART 59 i» 1 ■ k^K V * 1 Vm England in the nineteenth. Both followed the barbarous fashion of an age of decline; both sa- crificed dignity to unmeaning ornament; both leave succeeding generations to lament over their folly. The Romans were strictly an imitative people, .and though excellent builders they rarely dis- played any originality. The great difference bet- ween their architecture and that of the Greeks, is that the Romans used the Arch which they had learnt from the Etruscans, whereas the Greeks seem not to have known it, and certainly they had no word in their language to express it. The temples of Pompeii being all in Greek style are built without arches , but in the Baths we -find the ordinary barrel vault; a semicircular arch running the whole length of the apartment to be covered, and simply thrown across from wall to wall. The only other special kind of building we £nd is the dome which occurs in some of the private houses and also in the Baths; and one or two instances of the half-dome or apse , of which the most important is in the so-called Curia Sefzatorum in the Greater Forum. The Domestic Architecture of Pompeii is interest- ing mainly from the fact that it is in a transition style, which combines almost everything that preceded it, and contains the rudiments of every m POMPEII style which followed it. We find houses with a Samnite doorway, a Doric atrium, an Ionic pe- ristyle, an arched cellar, and a mosaic pavement. Indeed everywhere in the town we find the old jostling- the comparatively new ; the Roman as- serting- his dominion over the work of the Greek and of the Samnite. Thus no universal rule can be laid down about the houses of Pompeii, for they contain a mixture of styles, varying accord- ing to the periods when their several parts were altered or modified. In very many cases the fa- fades are very ancient, beino- constructed of larcre blocks of stone neatly fitted without mortar. Such houses date back certainly to the Samnite times, and may even have been built by the Oscans. These in many cases were covered with stucco by the Romans , that they might be decorated with sacred serpents, coloured dados, and other devices ; and in one case an Oscan inscription was found upon the stone underneath the Roman plaster. Too much however must not be made of this incident , nor can it be taken to prove Oscan building, for Oscan continued for centuries to be the language of the lower orders, and, as we have already said, the comic stage used this dialect quite down into Roman times. We shall now proceed to describe ^a Roman -house, premising that there were five kinds of POMPEIAN ART 61 • Ir 'li houses in Roman times, differing mainly accord- ing to the construction of the Atrium or great hall. Of these the most common in Pompeii are the. Tuscan and the Corinthian, of which the former is the more ancient , and may be identified by the fact of there being no pillars in the Atrium, the roofs having been supported by beams, with the usual rectangular opening called a Complii- vium in the top , to allow of the water falling into the tmpluvmm below. Instances of this mode of construction will be found in the houses of the Faun, of the Surgeon, and of Pansa. The Corinthian Atrium was surrounded by a cloister supported on columns (not necessarily Corinthian in style). It had a larger Compluvium, and we may suppose that it was here that the tight-rope performances were held to amuse the guests of the wealthy patricians. We learn from the frescos that the Romans had curtains to draw across these openings in sunny w^eather. A good example of a Corinthian Atrium will be found in the House of the Quaestor, and in the House of the Centenary. The following description applies more or less to all the houses of Pompeii, the larger ones containing all the rooms mentioned , and the smaller ones only a few of them. The Ostium (though the word only means « a 62 POMPEII POMPEIAN ART 63 door >) was the term used for the entry, a narrow hall leading from the street into the Atrmm, which was the most important part of the house, and fitted up with great magnificence. Here the Roman noble received his clients, for every lesser individual in Roman times had a patron to whom he repaired for advice and assistance, and the morning reception by a Roman patronus , was one of the most important events of his usually idle day. Cicero complains bitterly of the way his valuable time was taken up by visitors who came to consult him; and indeed before the law became a regular profession, the patronus used to appear in Court to support the cause of his client, and even to plead for him before the Judge. Various other services were also rendered by the patronus to the client, who in return supported him at elections, transacted his business for him, and acted generally as trusted dependants. The Tablinum or muniment room was situated directly opposite to the front door, and appears to have been a recess, the front of which was veiled by a curtain in summer and closed by folding doors in winter. The Alae were similar but smaller recesses, to the right and left of the Tablinum, from which they were separated by the Fauces, The rest of 0) I / 1 1 / the Atrium was surrounded by small bedrooms for the gentlemen of the family; there was often a door from it leading into one of the shops adjoining the chief entrance; and frequently in the more important dwellings a door into the next house, which was used as a guest-house by wealthy Romans when their friends came to stay with them. The Fauces were narrow passages on each side of the Tablinum, leading from the Atrium to the Peristyle, which was a cloistered enclosure like the atrium, but usually much larger , and having in most cases a garden in the centre of it. Round the Peristyle were the ladies' bedrooms, and beyond it frequently another garden with an outdoor Triclinium, The Triclinium or dining room , was situated in various parts of the house according to the position of the kitchens and offices, but usually in the peristyle. The Exhedra was the drawing-room of the house and occupied the same position in the peristyle as the Tablinum did in the Atrium, The slaves excepting the Janitor or porter, slept upstairs. The porter's lodge was usually a room (little better than a cupboard) adjoining the front door; but scarcely more inconvenient than the ordinary accommodation provided to this day in Naples for domestics of the same class. . 1 64 POMPEII POMPEIAN ART 65 There is (as far as we are aware) no trace of a wooden floor in Pompeii, and in this point again the ancient Pompeii closely resembles the modern Naples. Where mosaics were not used the floors were of concrete irregularly sprinkled with fragments of tiles and marble. To treat of the ceilings of the Pompeian houses would be to enter into a labyrinth of conjecture, as there is scarcely a single one standing which could be safely taken as a guide. Virgil speaks of « the lamps hanging from the gilded rafters >, and the vaulted roofs of the baths of Pompeii were pro- fusely decorated. Whether the ceilings of the houses were so or not, we must leave our readers to conjecture. Some of the ceilings of the lower story of the house of Diomede are still standing, but as they are vaulted they do not afford a certain criterion. They are decorated in fresco like the walls, and if the Roman ceilings were of plaster they were of course susceptible of similar treatment. The Statuary of Pompeii is inferior in point of artistic merit to that of Herculaneum. The gallery of the marble masterpieces in the Naples Museum contains only three specimens from Pompeii including the archaic Diana (No. 6008), which we believe was found much nearer to Torre dell'Annunziata than to Pompeii. The ^M il Other specimens are Pompey the Great, (No. 6028) who was treacherously murdered at Alexandria B. c. 48. His connection with the town of Pom- peii is obscure, unless indeed he came there with Sulla with whom he was on terms of friendship before he became his rival. The third represents Brutus (No. 602 5). This is a very perfect bust with a most repulsive cast of countenance. He committed suicide in b. c. 42, and is best known as the murderer of Caesar. The Portico of the Emperors contains only four contributions from Pompeii, which comprise two portraits of Livia, wife of Augustus; one of Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, and one which may possibly be Augustus. The Hall of the Balbi has a few portrait statues and busts from Pompeii , the only remarkable ones being those of Eumachia (6232) which came from the Exchange, and that of Marcus Holco- nius Rufus (6233) which bore an inscription stat- ing that « he had been five times Duumvir and Magistrate, twice Quinquennalis, a Military Tri- bune elected by the people, a priest of Augustus, a chief of the colony >. It would be useless la- bour to recapitulate here the portrait busts and the gods and goddesses found in Pompeii all of which are of the Roman period, while of the basreliefs the only one which claims special 5 .«i n^i^-^.j-,1; ..— —sa.. -..^ r^».t.^>.-..^£j|jg^|a^a«;jg;a;|||i^^ 66 POMPEII attention is No. 6687, which represents a comic scene from an ancient play, and is particularly interesting. Plato who died b. c. 347 tells us that in his day the Greeks coloured their statues, and we have ocular demonstration that the Pompeians did likewise, but Plato lived nearly a century after the great period of art, and no doubt the device was then used only by inferior artists. It w^ould be almost as fair to argue from the gaudy mon- strosities of the Naples Churches that modern Italians were in the habit of painting marble statues! To say that the extremes met in sculp- ture, is only to observe what has always occured in the history of all the arts. It is often difficult to discriminate between the rise and the decline of art, for like nature it seems to have a second childhood, and the faults of the Archaic period reappear in the works of the Decadence. The Bronzes from Pompeii are nobly represented by the statuette of the Dancing Faun, which is probably the finest specimen of its class extant; and the other statuettes standino- near it in the same hall of the large bronzes. In life size work in bronze, Pompeii has provided us with frightful monstrosities, though we must except the two Apollos (5629 and 5630) of which the latter >< H •i '. i. «A 9 i n ■ t > !■ / > ■ it 1 7 ! ! POMPEIAN ART 67 is especially interesting on account of its strong- Etruscan type. The gala gladiatorial armour also came from Pompeii and is extremely elaborate in design. The immense collection of small bronzes in the Museum , numbering something like eighteen thousand specimens came in the - main from the excavations of Pompeii , and is replete with interest from the point of view of the decorative artist. The commonest of the kitchen utensils is scrupulously finished and ela- borately ornamented, while the more important objects such as the Isiac laver, and some of the door fittings, display excellent taste and firstrate workmanship. The Surgical Instruments show us how good was their knowledge of anatomy, and how well they understood the various functions of the human body. Many of these instruments reinvented in subsequent ages , are almost identical with those used in the present day by our ow^n sur- geons. The Mural Paintings of Pompeii are perhaps the most interesting of all its relics. These were painted upon the plaster of the walls while it was still fresh , and thus became incorporated with the wall itself and have displayed incredible durability. Vitruvius describes most carefully how a wall should be prepared in order that it should 68 POMPEII have a good < face » for the painter , and no doubt his precepts were carefully followed at Pompeii where we find walls with a surface like polished marble. We can dismiss the landscapes of Pompeii in a very few words, for that style of painting was not in favour with the ancients and they used it merely for inferior decoration. In style it was very like the modern Chinese. Lakes and bridges , colonnades and pagodas, with boats, trees, and statues scattered about; the whole being drawn in atrocious perspective, and painted in gorgeous colours. Their ornament however was quite a different affair and here we quote Mr. Poynter R. A. whose judgment on such a matter is conclusive. In a lecture delivered at the South Kensington Museum, and published by Macmillan in 1882, he says : > '» f* 4 ^•t e '-■♦ 1 I The long gold chain with gold wheels at stated intervals which was found in the House of the Faun, and seems likely to have been an official ornament, is of unexampled magnificence, and the massive gold armlets of serpentine design, weighing two pounds, found in the same house, no doubt decorated the lovely arms of some Pompeian beauty. They remind us of Haidee's bracelets which Byron thus describes: One large gold bracelet clasped each lovely arm Lockless — so pliable from the pure gold That the hand stretched and shut it without harm The limb which it adorned its only mould. Don Juan, Canfo III, 71. Of the engraved gems of Pompeii the reader can judge for himself if he is able to visit the Naples Museum They, generally speaking, par- took of the universal decadence, and especially so for the reason that locks and keys were ra- pidly coming into use. In more ancient times every cupboard was secured by a seal if it con- tained objects of value. In Roman times important documents were sealed, but keys had superseded seals for domestic purposes. The Romans, mo- reover, had invented signet rings, whereas the 74 POMPEII Greeks wore their signets upon their wrists ac- cording to Eastern usage. The signet of the Bible is always spoken of as being on the < hand > and not upon the finger, and when the Amalekite spoiled the body of Saul, he brought David the < bracelet that was upon his arm » for the sole reason that it bore the Royal signet, the un- questionable emblem of the kingly power. ^ With regard to the glass of Pompeii we ob- serve that it was in common use. Many windows were glazed, and much of the ordinary household ware was made of glass, but with one or two exceptions (such as the well-known cinerary urn No. 1 352 1 in the Naples Museum), no specimens of special importance have been discovered in Pompeii. It is in the nature of things that fine glass should have been broken, and that inferior and coarser specimens should have survived to us; but even this will not account for the de- cadence of the art and the unquestioned supe- '^riority of the Greeks over the Romans in this branch of manufacture. Terra-cotta was a favourite material of Roman times, and though easily broken it has the merit of being practically indestructible, and hence it is most valuable to the antiquarian in enabling him to define the various stages of primitive culture. The Romans adopted it for every kind i' 41 « U *> POMPEIAN ART ^■) 4- III f i I ;?!■ of domestic purpose. Their dinner services were made of it, they used it for lamps, stoves, jars and cinerary urns: we have a dovecot made of it; and like the modern Neapolitans, they made money-boxes of the same material. It was also a favourite material for childrens'toys, and the walls of the Roman temples were hung with terra-cotta emblems of various parts of the hu- man body, which had been cured from sundry diseases by vows made to the shrine invoked. It is indeed a singular instance of a pagan sur- vival to enter a Neapolitan church and to see similar objects made (as if from the same moulds) in wax and silver, dedicated to the Madonna of the shrine just as the Romans dedicated iden- tical offerings to the Diana Tifatina or to the Venus Ponipeia7ia. Before concluding this part of our subject it is necessary to impress upon our readers that as far as we know now, (and our knowledge is suf- ficiently mature to make us tolerably certain) the Art of Pompeii w^as a long way behind that of Herculaneum. Visitors are too apt to come to the conclusion that because Pompeii is the more interesting city to them, that therefore it is the more important in itself; and they are apt to mass the collections in the Museum as coming from Pompeii, whereas in fact nearly 76 POMPEII v^, all the best things there came from Herculaneum; the truth being that the excavations of the latter city which produced the large Bronzes, the prin- cipal statues, and all the great finds of silver, were filled up again a hundred years ago. Her- culaneum was a larger , richer , and finer city than Pompeii , and we must reckon it an un- fortunate accident that the wealthier city should be so difficult of excavation, that we are com- pelled to be content to expend our energies upon the poorer one. ^ I V ,--■■«!— I f ft -^^ 4 'I ( ¥^' f CHAPTER V THE SEA GATE AND MUSEUM OF POMPEII The Management of Pompeii — The Guides — Methods of Excavation — The Approach to Pompeii — The ^ea Gate — The Shrine of Minerva — The Gold Lamp — The Local Museum: i. Lobby — 2. Gallery—^, Bronze Room, \A/ E are now in a position to take a practical survey of Pompeii, and if our readers have made the journey by train (which is far the more convenient way) they will find themselves on arriving at the Pompeii station, within three hun- dred yards of the entrance to the excavations: or if they should have taken one of the trains on the Castellammare line they will get out at Torre deirAnnunziata Centrale, which is about three quarters of a mile from the ruins. In either case they will take their ticket at the gate, and pass through the turnstile accompanied by a Gov- ernment Guide. ^.■l.*IM«S.|l-SA-, .■^i*..--.-;«.~J:ua,..U...i|j,ia|ajj 78 POiMPEII I The excavations and management of Pompeii are completely under the control of the Govern- ment, the central authority being the Minister of Public Instruction in Rome , the excavation department being presided over by a director who has succeded the late illustrious veteran Senator Fiorelli , justly called the « Father of Pompeii » for it is to his incentive that the careful conduct of the excavations has been due for nearly thirty years; and it is mainly owing to his organisation that the ruins are kept up in a condition which is a credit alike to the Italian Government, and to the responsible of- ficials. * The expense of keeping up Pompeii in first rate order is of course very considerable , as the city must be watched by night as well as by day, and this combined with the duty of providing guides to accompany the twenty thou- * It will not be out of place to mention here that excavations by private persons are not permitted in any site reserved by the Government for National excavations. In places not so reserved, excavating rights may be pur- chased from the owners of the soil, but notice must be given to the Government who appoint an Inspector of their own, and make conditions with the person apply- ing for a license which involve him in giving the Gov- ernment a prior right of purchase, if he desires to sell the objects discovered. \ THE SEA GATE AND MUSEUM OF POMPEII 79 sand visitors who annually resort to the ruins, necessitates a large and intelligent staff. It would be difficult to find a body of men better suited to their work than the extremely civil and com- petent employes who exercise their somewhat monotonous duties at Pompeii. The same staff also provides guides for Her- culaneum, Paestum, and the other neighbouring antiquities which are under Government control, and as these are open to the public the whole year round, their duties are sufficiently heavy. Before the establishment of a railway station at Pompeii the entrance to the ruins was near the House of Diomede at the extreme end of the Street of the Tombs. The present entrance is much more convenient, as by it we reach at once the very heart of the city, the very centre from which all its life radiated. In the early days unfortunately, the excava- tors were content to deposit the refuse of the excavations outside the walls of the town, and did not think it necessary to remove it to a greater distance. Their mechanical appliances were not so perfect as ours; tramways were practically unknown, and the disposal of the re- fuse was consequently a great and ever-increasing difficulty. The result of this often was that buildings were excavated, ransacked and filled ^ 1 1 80 POMPEII \ Up again. We have shown how this was done at Herculaneum, and the same thing occurred in more than one instance at Pompeii , where the important House of Cicero or Frugi has been reburied ; and several other features of interest have shared the same fate. This of course was in the days when casual excavations were made in a haphazard way at the will and plea- sure of the King, or indeed almost of the first comer if he had a little Court favour or influence. This is at an end now; but the present method of excavation was not arrived at all at once. The first plan which was attempted was to clear out a street, and then proceed house by house down it. It was found that this was not the best method of procedure, because by this means the crush of the material inside the house forced out the front walls, and often injured the paint- ings on them ; sometimes even causing the fall of the wall itself. The present plan was accord- ingly adopted, and by this system the whole of a house is as it were skimmed off in layers, the tramway being led up to the spot, and the trucks filled by the workmen. The tramway lines are laid on a slope, so that the refuse is car- ried away by its own weight , and the truck being self-tipping, deposits the soil away down by the amphitheatre, and by this simple process 1/ ' ^ =-{ THE SEA GATE AND MUSEUM OF POMPEII 81 continues to form its own line of embankment which will be prolonged in an easterly direction as long as the excavations continue. The day may come when the accumulation of rubbish outside the Sea Gate will be cleared away, and the surroundings of that structure laid open to our study; but while so much of direct interest remains to be done, a mere fancy improvement is not likely to be undertaken. In going over the city the reader will not fail to notice that many of the rooms are excavated only to within about three feet of the floor, the doorway being banked up with large stones. The reason of this proceeding is, that as from the nature of things whatever is in a Pompeian room is always on the floor of it, these half- excavated rooms retain all their valuables still safely buried beneath some three feet of soil. To clear out these is therefore a matter requir- ing only about an hour's labour, and they are accordingly reserved for persons having orders for a private excavation. Such orders are custo- marily only granted to distinguished personages, after whom in many cases the house has been called. The names of the houses are derived either from outside sources as in this instance, or from some inscription or work of art found in them. 6 82 POMPEII This is naturally somewhat confusing at first , but it is simpler than the scientific numeration. Thus for example the well-known House of the Tragic Poet is officially described as Regio VI Insula VIII No. 5, a description which is beyond the mnemonic powers of ordinary mortals. Although our description of the Sea Gate should perhaps more properly form part of the chapter we propose to devote to the w^alls and gates of the city, we insert it here, because it is the first object that meets the traveller's eye when he enters the city, and in the case of many visitors the only one of the eight gates they see at all, though most people get as far as the Gate of Herculaneum , which leads out to the Street of the Tombs. Owing to the steepness of the declivity on this side of the town, there w^as no gate into the city between these two, and the wall bet- ween them has apparently been destroyed. This, as we have said, w^as probably done after the siege of Sulla w^hen Pompeii was finally made an open town. Nor was there any gate between that of the Sea and the Gate of Stabiae , for the reason that this part of the city stood so much above the plain beneath it. The Sea Gate of Pompeii , was discovered about THE SEA GATE AND MUSEUM OF POMPEII 83 f^ ' I « i1 \ X ♦ . mi. Si 1817, and spanned the only road which led out on the western side of the town. The gradient of it is so steep that it seems unlikdy that it; was used for vehicular traffic ; and as there are no ruts in the pavement, it is, improbable that carts passed either up or down it. It is obvious that to drive a loaded cart up it would be a difficult matter, and that to drive one down would necessitate the use of a powerful drag, which must infallibly have left traces upon the pave- ment. The number of important warehouses on the western side of the city, led former writers to suppose that the sea came so close to the walls that ships could be unladen on the very spot. This has proved to be a fallacy , but as the fact remains that a great part, (and probably the greatest part) of the grain brought to Pom- peii was water-borne, and that the warehouses were situated at this end of the town, we are driven to the probable conclusion that sumpter mules were used to convey it from the port to the city, and that these passed through the Sea Gate. This would account for a footway being made, as well as a w^der road, and we may infer that the mule trains were constantly passing up the latter, while the former was devoted to the use of the citizens. A villa stood withoutjiiis gate^ but hardly any traces of it are now visible. I B3ji»M«itiiiiiiat!dai«iJMaai*«i>aaiii^^ ^^i-i.....-.--.^.i j^ ....i;. j—mt,;— ■»<.'v^a..-.4^. 84 POMPEII On the left of the Gate is a small brick seat over which some indolent Pompeian had scribbled the name of a lady called < Attica » with some lines after it which show that she was better known than respected in the city. On the right is a shrine in which the remains of a terra-cotta statue of Minerva were discovered, and it seems probable that she was the tutelary goddess of the city gates. Near this shrine the splendid gold lamp now in the Naples Museum was found, and its vicinity to the shrine led some of the earlier writers to suppose that it was a votive offering to the goddess. This conjecture is most improbable, for we cannot conceive so valuable an object left open to the predatory instincts of the populace. Moreover, the lamp (though otherwise perfect) has lost its lid, and the natural inference seems to be that it was dropped by some re- fugee in his flight and that when he reached the ships and made good his escape, he found that the lid alone of his lamp (by which he had carried it) remained in his possession, the hinge having given way and deposited the body of the lamp upon the road. The Gate itself is a remarkable structure, and its details have been very considerably altered since it was originally built. It had, as we have said, two passages: the one paved for mules, #» 1 ► I #» * ¥ %\ THE SEA GATE AND MUSEUM OF POMPEII 85 the other macadamised for foot passengers. What its original form was we can only judge from a comparison of the walls of Pompeii with other walls of the same period, and this would lead us to conclude that it was much narrower, and had a pointed arch made of large blocks of stone. The present barrel arch is Roman , and origi- nally ran right through at the same width, being divided longitudinally by the low rampart of the footway, which then, as now, commenced by nine irregular steps leading to a plateau in the middle of the wall. Here the footway now comes to an abrupt conclusion, half the archway being closed by a most unsatisfactory rubble wall. An inspection of the causeway in front of houses Nos. i and 2 at the top of the gate, leads us to infer that it was reached by a flight of steps from the footway below , and indeed the upper step is still in its place across the causeway. The removal of a very little soil would probably disclose other steps and put the matter beyond doubt. If our conjecture is correct, it would prove Professor Fiorelli to be right in his statement that the house No. i. was a late addition; a statement which is fully borne out by the style in which it is erected. At the outer end of the gateway the mule-path was closed by two wooden doors, and the foot- 86 POMPEII THE SEA GATE AND MUSEUM OF POMPEII 87 path by an iron grating. The walls of the passage were covered with valueless inscriptions, one of which was a caricature of a man named Victor, drawn in charcoal and accompanied by a derisive inscription. About half way up the vaulted pas- sage was a long narrow store-house constructed in the thickness of the city wall. This has now been fitted up as a Museum , and is used to exhibit such articles as for divers reasons it is not considered expedient to remove to Naples. We very much hope that the Authorities at Pompeii may some day see their w^ay to increase the Museum accommodation provided on the spot. We think also that in the interest of the vast concourse of uninstructed visitors, it would be very desirable to rebuild the whole of one of the many available Pompeian houses, decorate it carefully , and furnish it with some of the thousand duplicate specimens which are now stored away for want of room to exhibit them in. The uninitiated would thus acquire a knowledge pf a Roman dwelling such as they cannot now^ obtain w^ithout long and careful study. We feel sure that a visit to such a house would be at once the most popular and the most instructive part of a day at Pompeii, and a small additional fee would soon cover the expense. i' At \. m ^tr 1 ► I i i The Museum of Pompeii is a long narrow corridor divided into three parts, which we may name (i) the Lobby, (2) the Gallery, and (3) the Bronze Room. The most important specimens in it are the plaster casts of objects found in the ashes which enveloped the town ; and before proceed- ing to describe the specimens in the Museum, we \\\\\ endeavour to explain how^ these plaster casts are obtained. It will be observed that they consist of doors and other perishable objects, as well as of human bodies. These objects, animate as well as inanimate, fell in the ash and were completely covered bv it. The ash w^as as fine or even finer than ordinary domestic dust, and consequently enve- loped the substances completely. It will readily be understood that it made an equal pressure all round them, and that they w^ere consequently almost as completely surrounded as if they had been immersed in water. The great weight which snbsequently fell upon the upper surface of this ash, scarcely disturbed the objects buried in it for it fell by degrees and uniformly over the entire surface. The substances buried consequently made an exact mould of their forms in the ash, just as an object buried in a snowdrift makes an exact mould in the snow. This is a natural phenomenon lilBttaiidaMaiSafijafaiiiiii^Matojiaariiri^^ , ■ ■•-- irriMaiiaiBaBiiJaiiMiMiiiMiim 88 POMPEII THE SEA GATE AND MTJSEUM Of- POMPEfl 8'J which most people are acquainted with, and nothing could give a more accurate idea of the process we are explaining. If the reader has followed us thus far, he will readily understand that all that was peris- hable in the substances buried, perished in the lapse of centuries. That is to say, the clothes and flesh of the victims , the woodwork of doors , and the willows of basket work , have all completely vanished ; but the imperishable parts remained, namely the iron and bronze work of the doors, and the bones and ornaments of the human subjects. These all remained exactly in the place where they fell; and more than this, they held their original places in an accurate mould which the falling ash made around them. Consequently when the excavators come upon a cavity, they pour liquid plaster of Paris into it, and having left it time to harden, they remove the external ash and obtain an exact cast of the object; all that was perishable being now replaced by plaster of Paris, and all that was imperishable being firmly fixed in the plaster, and in its original place. We now proceed to note the principal objects of interest in this little Museum. 1 «> 4 m t 1 ' t ■A I" I i The Lobby In the centre: Model of a Roman window- grating set up with its shutter hung by hinges from the top. In glass Cases: Specimens af ancient canvas and a model of a Roman lock carefully copied from a Pompeian original. Against THE left wall: Model of a Pompeian wooden cupboard, with locker below. The plaster casts of the sides of it (taken by the process we have described) from which the model was made, will be observed on the wall. WiTHL\ ax iron railing: An iron capstan (woodwork modern). A large iron safe, or deed box. In front of this safe is a plaster cast of a Roman basket, precisely similar to those now used by the modern excavators. In the corner is a model of a Roman door. The tires and hobs of two wheels , as well as one complete wheel will be observed on the South wall; and on the other walls some plaster casts of ancient woodwork and a few fragments of Roman in- scriptions. The Gallery Casts of bodies: The levels at which the bodies were discovered vary, but they may be said to 9() POMPEII average nine feet from the level of the street. They were all found in the ashes , never of course in the pumice. It will be observed in the plaster of the lower part of the second body- that there are marks of pumice upon it, and from this w^e ar^ue that the victims remained in their houses till the rain of pumice ceased, and were driven out of them when the shower of ashes began. They then fell and were smothered. 1. A middle-aged Roman lying on his back. This is one of the sharpest of the casts. He seems to have died peacefully. 2. Cast of the body of a slave, apparently a North African. The nose and lips are decidedly of the negro type, and the imprint of the w^ooUy hair can be readily seen near the right ear. The folds of his clothes have come out with re- markable clearness. At his side is an iron in- strument shaped like a walking-stick, but having a pivot in the middle, which makes us think that it was a part of the apparatus for closing a large door. 3. This cast is also of a man, and probably of a slave, from the low^ type of his face and his receding forehead. If the raised band encircling his body is a belt, it would be a further indi- cation of his servile condition. The riorht hand is firmly clasped and the expression of the mouth (» \ i i THE SEA GATE AND MUSEUM OF POMPEII 91 is one of extreme agony. The left hand is on the belt, and the legs are extended. 4. Cast of a dog found tied to his kennel, behind the door of the house of Vesonius Pri- mus. The poor brute had contrived to mount upon the falling ashes till the length of his chain prevented his getting any further, w^hen he died on his back in great agony. 5. Cast of a man who wore trousers ; very likely an Egyptian. 6. A male body much less perfect than the others. The left hand has made an admirable cast, and had an iron ring on the little finger. The face is of a man of fifty. He wore a moustache, but' otherwise w^as clean shaven. 7. The next cast stands over a staircase to allow of its being examined from below as w^ell as from above. It is the figure of a young girl, and is the most pathetic of all the casts in the collection. Her hair is gathered in a knot upon the top of her head, and her left hand seems in the act of brushing the ashes away from her mouth, while her right arm supports her fore- head. She appears to have drawn her clothes up round her neck. That she j was young is certain, but the size of her hands and the absence of any jewelry, lead us to think that she did not belong to the wealthier classes. !t-^»itsAL. ^^tfJ— *■ - -}A.iSShHi^iit-*.xj»l^ «ti.j ^AmAj *-a»Ma.iM»»-'>^*- ^-^ 92 POMPEII THE SEA GATE AND MUSEUM OF POMPEII 93 8. This cast is not a very perfect one. There is a silver serpentine ring on the little finger of the left hand. This ring, and another obvious consideration, have led to the inference that she was a married woman. g. Two female bodies, usually called < Mother and daughter >. 10. An old man lying on his face. His left leg had been amputated at the knee, which ac- counts for his inability to escape. 11. The emaciated body of a child of about six years of age. This child must probably have been ill at the time of the catastrophe and consequently unable to escape. The remaining casts do not require special description. On the end w^all : Specimens of differently coloured marbles found in the excavations. Below them four <( terms > * in coloured marble; the Satyr's head on the corner one being interesting for its expression. In the rack along the eastern wall is a col- lection of amphorae of various kinds. These were filled with wine and buried in the ground about 2 inches. Some will be seen m situ in the -'' A term is a foursided pillar with a human head at the top of it. 01 4^ \ \i f course of our walk through the town. In the centre of this rack are two very fine sheets of window glass, the largest being very nearly two feet square. We shall now^ return to the door by which we entered and take the wall case on the riuht wall from that end , as its compartments are numbered from right to left. Against the end w^all: 2447. A very fine head of Silenus. This is one of the boldest pieces of painting in Pompeii, and the colouring is excellent. It should be looked at from a little distance when its wonderful effect will be readily appreciated. On the other side is Narcissus admirincr his reflection in the water, with Cupid on his knee. Below this is a kneelincr Atlas in terra-cotta. supporting an abacus which was broken and repaired in Roman times. Wall case i : Small pipkins and grotesque cups and pots — Three money boxes and some curious little red cups — A very large bowl w^ith four handles and perforated bottom , to strain vegetables. Wall-case ii: Similar specimens. In the bot- tom right-hand corner is a terra-cotta inkstand with some interestincr water-bottles. o Wall-case hi: The two lower shelves contain iilWBlillihifTBrit HI 'illiilliipg'-»J^"ii— '*^J"^''^*-*-="-^-i^i*.iitTlaii I II n^aaiMllfcaM^AjM—afa BUriaftnWuiitilMMIliM nn iTaMili^liJJfctfcJiilM liiilll 94 POMPEII THE SEA GATE AND MUSEUM OF POMPEII 9.' small terra-cotta altars. The three hollow-shaped clay troughs are thought to have served some analogous purpose, the one shaped like a cradle in the left corner being especially curious and grotesque. Above WALL-CASE IV is a terra-cotta spouting with a lion in the round, holding up an Acanthus leaf with his paws. On each side are warriors and horses in basrelief, gaily painted in red and green. The WALL-CASES IV to X inclusive, contain common earthenware pots not requiring minute description. The WALL-CASES XI to XV contain the platters, bowls, saucers and dishes of a Roman dinner service. This is usually known as «Samian ware> and the patterns upon it are very clever and beautiful. On the bottom shelf of wall-cases xii are two fine specimens of glazed earthenware and in xiii some very large platters which had been carefully repaired in Roman times. Beneath these cases are some clay mortars, and two specimens which look like chimney-pots, but which were really small cupolas to give light and air to under- ground warehouses and passages. Wall-cases xvi and xvii contain lamps of no special importance, but the large tiles beneath them will be of interest to the architectural reader. ^> 4) 4» 4> i > I / Wall-cases xviii, xix and xx contain gar- goyles many of which are interesting for their modelling. Wall-case xxi: This contains some freely rendered basreliefs in terra-cotta for the friezes of houses, and the lower shelf contains some painted vases of a late period. These are not Roman, but were found in some Samnite tombs discovered near the Street of the Tombs in the early days of the excavations. . The Bronze Room Cast of an old man (evidently a Roman) who seems to have died quite peacefully, and looks as if he were asleep. The following case contains the cast of a man who died in great agony. He was probably a slave. The skeletons in the left wall-case speak for themselves, with the exception of that of a fowl on the first shelf, and that of a rabbit in a bronze bowl next to it. This is wrongly marked Sus, the original supposition having been that it was a sucking pig, which is clearly disproved by the molar teeth.— This was actually prepared for the meal of a Roman on the 24th of Novem- ber a. d. 79 ! i '^"■^•-^'■^■^-''" -f iiii IBiiiTiffSiitiiiiTiii i'r'>^T-*-^'**"*'''''»i6ifa>igi ^jlgdiaagl&UHjIijk 96 POMPEII THE SEA GATE AND MUSEUM OF POMPEII 97 By the window are two nice marble Statuettes one of the Young Hercules, the other of Venus doing her hair. Wall-case, (western wall). The first six divisions of this wall-case contain kitchen utensils and a few sacrificial pater(B , some stoves and a brazier, scales, strigils, buckles for harness, spoons, lamps, and fragments of furniture; all in bronze. The next division contains Roman glass, of which one specimen is blue, one marbled, and the rest plain. Some lachrymatories , or tear bottles will be noticed. These used to be laid upon the breast of the corpse in the burial pe- riods, and placed near the cinerary urn in the cremation times. The next division contains colours for paintings, comprising, red, green, pink, yellow, ochre and three shades of blue. The next two divisions contain articles of food, among which are divers kinds of grain and fruits, the remains of some fish (which look like bran) among which the sepia and the red mullet have been identified. Various kinds of grain , some hens' eggs, walnuts and other fruit will be noticed, as well as twelve loaves found in an oven. The wall-case ends with a division full of L*' « /' V human skulls and sea-shells, all of which last have their scientific names written upon them. The turtle on the bottom shelf is interesting and points to an Aldermanic repast in the Ro- man times! We leave the Museum and proceed up the inclined plane on our right till we reach the level ground at the top. Here we observe on our left a pavement of a pretty geometrical pattern laid in round flint-stones, in front of the doors Nos. ii and 12, which appear to have been wine-shops. Holes will be observed in the edge of the kerbstone at this spot to which it is supposed that the Romans fastened their horses. This may be the case, but in the present mstance and in many others, the position of the holes would lead one to infer that they were intended to secure the awnings of the shops. Opposite is a temple discovered in i8q8, which was in course of construction at the time of the destruction of the city. It is interesting for the capitals of the pillars which were only partially finished, and thus display the Roman method of carving marble. IF I THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 9i CHAPTER VI THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII First group: The Greater Foruni^ The Basilica-^ The Temple of Apollo—The Grajiaries—The Temple of Jupiter-^ The Arch of Nero— The Temple of Fortune— The Baths of the Forum— The Arch of Caligula— The Augusteum or Macellum— The Curia Senatorum— The Temple of Mercury— The Exchange of Euma- chia—The School of Verna—The so-called Treasury and Curice. 1 HE FORUM * was the chief open space in the city, and as an open space it boasted no doubt a very respectable antiquity. Just as every country town has its market square and every village its green now-a-days, so in ancient times every community required an open space for purposes alike of business and pleasure. And the analogy of things present to things past is * Excavated between 1 813-18. / k < .V ^ readily seen in this matter, for do we not de- corate our market-places with our finest Banks, our monumental Town Halls, and our magnificent Cathedrals ? Nor is it unusual to see the Courts of Justice occupying a similar position of im- portance in our English country towns. And this is exactly what we find at Pompeii Justice, Commerce, Religion and Civic admini- stration all found a place in the Forum; and the several buildings dedicated to these various branches of the social economy encircled it on every side. But it had not always been so. In the early days the inhabitants of the town did not have these buildings, for the very valid reason that they- did not want them. The pa- storal Oscan and the bandit Samnite cared for none of these things. Their justice lay in the strength of their right arm; their commerce in seizing whatever they could and keeping it if they were able to do so; and as for their re- ligion it was pretty much what the religion of primitive man always is, and consisted mainly of the worship of the heavenly bodies under forms more or less absurd or grotesque. We can scarcely imagine what they must have thought when the Greeks went to the trouble of building the costly and magnificent Doric temple of Hercules: they must have wondered iailrtgaMAriiBafaiUahii»ahaiaiii"«i"ft^^;tS*ft4WMiMwaal^ KX) POMPEII THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 101 as much as the unlettered savage of to-day wonders at the building of a missionary church in his forgotten wilderness! And what was the Forum then? A mere place where four roads met, unpaved and uncared for. Centuries passed away, and the Samnites began to settle into town life. They fortified the city, paved the streets, and reduced chaos to order. Still we see but scanty survivals of the Samnites in the architecture of the Forum of Pompeii, and it seems certain that during their occupation it was little else than an open space used as a market-place, with roads lead- ing into it from all directions. A glance at it as it now is, will show that such a description no longer applied to it in the later days, when it came under the control of the Roman Empire. As we look at it now, we see that obstructions were put to prevent wheeled traffic from enter- ing its enclosure, and that both on the eastern and western sides, streets which originally must have led into it, were turned into blind alleys by the erection of the later buildings, which made the former market-place the glory of the Roman city. But it was not built in a day, and it is scarcely easy to say at what date its architectural ensemble was at the finest point of its develop- ment. The Doric pillars which surrounded it |i| \ ^ ^^ were no doubt before the time of Augustus, while such of the Ionic pillars of, the upper story as remain were probably later than the earthquakes of a. d. 63 ; for it is clear that this upper portico was never finished, no remains of it having been found on the eastern side, and the only steps leading up to it being on its western face. The area was paved w^ith large slabs of white travertine, and the numerous pedestals we see were surmounted by statues of illustrious citizens to whom this tribute had been voted « by a decree of the Decurions with the consent of the people y> on account of the benefits they had rendered to the town in their lifetime. These statues were thrown down by the earthquake of A. D. 63, but thanks to a painting now in the Naples Museum w^e know that many of them were equestrian, and we may infer that most of them were in bronze. There is one large pe- destal situated in front of the Temple of Jupiter to which this description does not apply. It is certain that no statue or group would be erected to turn its back to the greatest temple, the most important shrine 10 the city: nor is it at all probable that it would face the temple, thus turning its back on the whole Forum. It is extremely difficult to arrive at a certain 102 POMPEII THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 103 conclusion as to this structure in its present degraded state. In ancient times it was faced with travertine or marble , and may have had steps leading up to it. If so, it would probably have been a platform, rostra, from which orators addressed the popular assemblies , and whence also funeral orations were pronounced. There were twelve equestrian and four ordi- narv statues on the western side of the Forum; four equestrian statues and a small arch at the southern end, and two equestrian statues on the eastern side. The whole of the northern end was occupied by the Temple of Jupiter, flanked on either side by triumphal arches; the remaining sides were lined by the Basilica, the temples, and other public edifices. And now let us pause for a moment to con- sider what use was made of the Forum in an- cient times. Originally, that is before civic life really existed, the Forum was simply a market- place. The Samnitic measures carefully readjusted to the Roman standard, prove that in the remote times as well as in the more strictly historical period , corn was habitually bought and sold there. Again, the frescoes we have mentioned show the hardware dealers of the Roman period spreading out their cutlery upon the pavement fust as their Neapolitan posterity do now-a-days; i! 1 I > i m- » I ! all proving that buying and selling was for centuries the main object of the Forum. But as population increased and the necessi- ties of the case were more pressing, it became advisable to establish more markets than one, and this led to the separation of the I^^ora Venalia or market places from th^ Forum ^/z///^ or political piazza. To decide how many of these Fora there were , and where they were situated will in- volve us in some conjectures later on. Pompeii for example must certainly have had a Forum Boar turn or cattle market, and such market was undoubtedly not held in either of the existing Fora in Roman times. Overbeck states that the cattle market was discovered near the Amphi- theatre and subsequently filled up, but \vi does not give us his authority for the statement, which however he would not make unless he had good grounds for believing it to be correct. The Forum of which we are treating was at any rate a market for corn in the Roman times, and the part of it that was allotted to this purpose seems to have been the recess between the Temple of Apollo and that of Jupiter. The public measures for grain now in the Naples Museum are almost conclusive proof of this, and no doubt these were used to justify measures of local manufacture. It is remarkable, however, 104 POMPEir that all the bronze measures in the Naples Museum, (most of which came from Pompeii) which bear any mark at all, are stated to have been Exacta in Capitolio, showing that these were justified in Rome and not at Pompeii. The ordinary provision markets being thus removed from the Forum, it now began to ac- quire its purely civil character. In point of political life it was here that elections were held, and mup^pal officers ap- pointed. Here no doubt were the treasury and the town hall. Here the yEdile looked after the Board of Works , and the Duumvir after the Magisterial business. Here enthusiastic scenes took place when the popular voice seconded the decree of the Decurions according special ho- nours to illustrious citizens. The Forum was also used for other important purposes of Civil life. It was the religious centre, for it was here that the great sacrifices were celebrated, and all the public festivals solemnised. It was thron- ged for public rejoicings; and no doubt in her great sieges, it was here that the united voice of the brave little city acclaimed the determi- nation of the garrison to hold out to the last. Nor was the Forum only a place for politics, religion, and general business, for it is clear that before the Amphitheatre was built the public 1. \ i rv- '- ' ' ^ • . .1, .-'■■■- - -A ■;?? *w. ••* '.1 ■*.* -'.'■it THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 105 trames and u^ladiatorial combats were held in it; as indeed was the case in all the Roman towns of that period. Vitruvius states that it was on this account that the Romans discarded the square form ( f the Greek Agora and built their Fora in the proportion of one to three, a proportion by the way not exactly observed in Pompeii, the space in question being some thirty yards lonpfer than its double breadth. We will now take the buildings which sur- round the Forum one by one , beginning with the Basilica or Law Court (excavated in i8o6; 1 813-14), which stands in the S. W. corner. The name of this buildjng as well as its form and purpose was derived from the Greeks; who gave this appellation to the Sioa at Athens where the Archon Basiletis administered justice. In Roman times, the Basilica, though primarily a law-court, was also the centre of commerce, and might be described as the € Royal Exchange > of the day. Just as in the case of the Fora. the Basilicae became unequal to the double pur- pose as the volum.e of trade increased; for the judges found it impossible to hear causes w^hile the numerous merchants were making their bargains , and it became necessary to have a separate building for each purpose. The Basilicae of .Rome have a further interets 1(X) POMPEII for us, in that they were often subsequently adapted to Christian worship when that form of religion spread itself over the Empire ; and the Basilica shape has been retained throughout the Christian centuries in many Cathedrals and large churches. The Basilica of Pompeii w^as standing in 77 B. c. as we learn from an inscription mentioning the Consulship of Marcus Lepidus and Q. Ca- tullus who were Consuls in that year, but the entrance portico is older still, for an inscription found upon it states that it was erected by Vibius Popidius the Quaestor , showing that it must have been built before the city became a colony, when that office was abolished. The judgment seat at the western end belongs to a later period and a fragment of an inscription found in a neighbouring house which seems to have belonged to it, leads us to infer that it was erected by M. Artorius Primus, who was the Architect of the greater theatre. Beneath it was a cell for prisoners , or possibly a de- pository for the records of the Court, and it seems probable that the Judge's throne was reached by a flight of w^ooden steps which have perished. The Basilica had an entrance on its northern side leading into the street of the Sea Gate, as 41 r .ii J THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 107 well as one on its southern side , but its main approach was by a handsome vestibule facing the Forum, which had five doors, the pillars of which were adorned with statues , and corresponded to the internal arrangement of the area of the building. This area was divided into a nave with two aisles, of which the former was open to the sky, while the latter formed a cloister surrounding the entire building. This cloister was supported on twenty-eight large Ionic brick pillars of admirable construction , and had a spectators' gallery above it, accessible from the upper story of the Forum colonnade, the approach to which will be seen outside the southern wall of the Basilica. With the exception of some very fine tufa capitals, all the decorations of the building were found in fragments, but they are known to have included an equestrian statue in gilded bronze, several ^erms and lavers, and many inscriptions, all of which were most inefficiently recorded by the early excavators. A very large number of graffiti scribbled on the walls were taken to the Naples Museum and have been published by Prof. Zangemeister. They consisted of remarks upon the law's delay, and similar complaints, as well as of verses from Virgil, Ovid, and Propertius; and it is worthy 108 POMPEII THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 109 of note that hitherto no quotation from Horace has been found, showing perhaps that his charm- ing odes were not so much appreciated in Roman times as they are in our own. The Temple of ApoHo (1818) is the next building to the North of the Basilica, and is one of the temples which existed during the Samnite oc- cupation. It is the largest and handsomest of the Pompeian temples, and was long supposed to have been dedicated to Venus the protecting goddess of Pompeii. This dedication was justified . in various ways. It was argued that there must have been a temple to the < Pompeian Venus > whose name appears so often in the inscriptions, and that granting this, there was no other than this one eligible for the purpose. Further, a statue of Venus which is now in the Naples Museum was found there, as w^ell as a head also representing her; again the very peculiar con- struction of the altar was called to witness , because the offerings to Venus being fruits and flowers, required an altar different from those adapted to ordinary sacrifices. But perhaps the thing that led the authorities most entirely astray,, was an inscription relating to the closing in of the temple by Holconius Rufus and Ignatius Postumus, the Duumvirs, wherein the words col. y 4 r 1 ^ J > V i VEN. COR. occur. These words were translated € The College of the incorporated Venereans > and appeared to justify the conclusion to which the antiquaries had arrived. That there was weight in their arguments is certain; sufficient weight indeed to make it more than probable that Venus at some time or an- other may have shared this sumptuous edifice with the Roman Sun-god; and this is the more probable because there was a bronze Diana which formed part of a group with an herma- phrodite Apollo, a krm of Mercury, and another thought to be Maia. There were also besides the principal altar, two detached altars which seem to show that more than one deity was actually worshipped in the precincts. If however we turn to another set of survi- vals, we find traces so distinct of the worship of Apollo that no doubt can remain that the temple was not only dedicated to him, but that his worship obtained in it down to Roman times. The most important of these survivals will be seen on the threshold of the cella (or shrine) where a facsimile of the ancient slab will be observed; the slab itself being in the Naples Museum No. 11 3398. This slab is marked with small dots or punctures which were first* noticed in 1883; and from the forms of these dots the 110 POMPEII THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 111 Oscan letters which had been originally secured by them were ingeniously ascertained. None of the letters remained , and in some parts the threshold was so much worn away that the dots themselves had disappeared. The characters which were still traceable made up the following sentence, the italics in brackets being conjectural: < Quaestor 0{ppius) Cz.m^{anius) by decision of the Council permitted to be made out of the treasury of Apollo >. What it was that he permitted to be made we cannot say, but Overbeck offers the reaso- nable conjecture that it was the marble floor of the cella, just as we observe that the pavement in the smaller theatre was given by Marcus Oculatius Verus, the Duumvir who recorded his gift by a similar inscription in Latin. Be this as it may, the inscription alone is almost posi- tive proof that the temple was dedicated to Apollo, for the money from his treasury would hardly be devoted to the purposes of another shrine. Nor is this the only trace of that deity; for we find in the cella the omphalos, a stone cone nearly two feet high, which was supposed to represent the centre of the earth, and was the universal symbol of the Sun-god. Besides this t ^ - I we find a colossal tripod painted on the right hand pillar, and a sundial standing by the side of the steps. It will not be necessary to remind the classical reader that in the opening scene of the Greek tragedy bearing his name, Orestes who had taken refuge in the temple of Apollo after murdering his mother, is discovered seated upon the omphalos in the shrine of the god. The tripod again is the universal attribute of this deity, and became so because the Priestess Pythia used to sit upon the tripod of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. In this position she inhaled the gas from the fissure in the rock below, and this caused her to give vent to the incoherent ravings which the attendant priests turned into hexameter verse, and doled out to the worship- pers as the answers of the god. The sundial erected on a marble pillar to the left of the steps by the Duumvirs Sepunius and Erennius, may also have been an appropriate offering to the sungod, but it is perhaps too much to assert this in the case of a town where sundials were common. We have stated advisedly that this temple was the finest in Pompeii : no other covered so much ground; no other was so profusely deco- rated; of no Samnite building in Pompeii have we so complete and so authentic an history. It 11-2 FOMPEII THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS 01' POMPEII li;i was originally a shrine surrounded by a colon- nade, but when the portico of the Forum was built it was obviously necessary to shut off the temple by a wall, to avoid the unsatisfactory appearance of two colonnades standing back to back. The temple was in the Doric style of all the Samnite monuments, but the restorers con- verted the partition wall into Ionic, and proceeded to carry out their ill-considered alteration through the entire building. They decorated the walls with paintings mainly representing scenes of the Trojan war, in which the played so conspicuous a part; but such of these as have not been re- moved to the Naples Museum have utterly perished. The cella is in the Corinthian style with six columns in front and ten on either side. The floor of the shrine is beautifully paved in coloured marbles, and contains, besides the omphalos, the pedestal of the principal statue. The records of the excavation of the temple are meagre and unsatisfactory as is usual in the early excavations, this building having been discovered in 1818, and no comprehensible ex- planation has yet been arrived at of the fact that the body of the bronze Apollo, now at Naples, was found in the temple, while the two It 1 / > * I legs of the statue were discovered in one of the towers on the city walls. The oracular statue of Diana, now in the Museum at Naples, was also found in this temple and is a most interesting specimen, because there was evidently a speak- ing tube which led to the mouth through the back of the head, and holes in the right shoul- der-blade seem to have been made to contain wires to work the eyes. The inscriptions record the various persons who presented valuable gifts to the temple of the god , and the ancient pillars are still seen imbedded in the more recent walls. At the nor- thern end of the temple is a door leading out into the Forum, near which is a flight of steps which appear to us to have led to the roof of the portico of the temple, and not to that of the Forum. A modern workshop erected on this spot has rendered all speculation on the subject only guesswork. Between the northern door nf the temple of Apollo and the temple of Jupiter, is a range of brick buildings forming the northern end of the West side of the Forum, of which the first was most probably the c Corn Ex- change > of the city; the second undoubtedly a public latrine; and the last, to which access is obtained by a small low door (now closed) is stated by many writers to have been a prison, 114 POMPEII THE PUBUC build: NGS OF POMPEII 115 which is further vouched for by the untrust- worthy legend that skeletons fastened in stocks were found in it. Fiorelli dismisses this legend with a smi^e, and suggests that the building was probably the treasury of the Temple of Jupiter which stands opposite to it. It has a modern door which is now locked, but the an- cient door was of iron and led into a chamber lighted by a small aperture from above ; this led into another that was completely dark. Above these chambers were two shops with doors about four feet above the level of the street, which must have been approached by wooden steps. This would show^ that they are of later construction than the chamber below, as their steps must have been a decided obstruction to the narrow thoroughfare, and were probably only a make- shift. The Temple of Jupiter (1817) flanked by tw^o triumphal arches which span the main entrances of the Forum , occupies the northern side, and there is ample proof both from the inscriptions and the statuary found in it that it was dedi- cated to this deity. A double flight of steps leads up on either side to a large platform in front of the temple. These steps are fifteen in num- ber* the architect having followed the instructions / ♦ of Vitruvius, who lays down the maxim that the approach to a temple should consist of an unequal number of steps, so that the worshipper beginning the ascent with his right foot, should likewise plant his right foot first within the building. The facade of the temple consists of six very fine Corinthian columns, of which the right hand one has been put together again. This was done in 1884 when a succession of Roman games was held at Pompeii for a charitable purpose connected with the disastrous earthnuake which occurred at Casamicciola in the preceding year. The cella seems to have been built on the Greek plan with two rows of columns one above the other, the floor of the gallery resting on the lower tier, and the roof of the temple on the upper one. Access to the gallery seems to have been obtainable by a small staircase hidden behind the three diminutive cells at the back. There is a large basement to the temple acces- sible by a small door (now locked) on the eastern side of the base. In this a colossal head of Jupiter was found, as well as a vast number of fragments of the temple, showing that this edifice had suffered severely in the 63 earth- quake, and that at the time of the destruction of the city, steps were being taken to restore it. |gjiLaKAigtti^MU|gli|d!|| 116 POMPEII It is difficult to account for the extremely limited accomodation in this temple, which must from its importance have required a considerable staff of priests. The tiny cells at the back can hardly be taken into consideration, and even if there was an upper story to them, its space must have been very limited indeed. The Triumphal Arch (1818) on the eastern side of the temple was dedicated by an inscription to Nero Caesar son of Germanicus, and was at one time cased with marble. On the Forum side are niches for statues, and on the other there are deeper niches and pipes running up into them, showing that fountains stood in them. No trace was found of any statue upon the top of the arch, from which we should infer that it was built in the earlier years of Nero's reign, and, that the statue perished in the earthquake of a. d. 63. The Arch on the w^estern side of the Temple is now shorn of almost all its ancient decoration, and as no inscriptions were found upon it, any statements as to its use are purely conjectural. We shall now leave the Forum for a moment to visit three public buildings which stand about fifty yards behind the temple of Jupiter; namely, the Temple of Fortune, the Baths of the Forum, and the Arch of Caligula. THE PUHIJC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 117 i Cj :?*■■■ ^ »■■'„■•■■ #=1 Emerging from the Forum we have before us the Street of Mercury, the widest and in many respects the most interesting in Pompeii , run- ning from the Arch of Caligula to the city walls. On our right we may observe in the corner of a small shop a bit of roofing set up with its pretty spoutings, to show visitors the method of roofing adopted in Roman times. Adjoining this, in an open space are some colossal pithoi, or jars of terracotta. These were found near the ancient bed of the river Sarnus and were moved here for safe custody. They were used to contain dry goods. The Temple of Fortune (1823) stands at the right hand upper corner of the street , and faces to the westward. It was a beautiful little Corinthian temple, built by the Duumvir Marcus Tullius and dedicated probably about a. d. 4. It had an iron railing in front of it, and whether by acci- dent or design , the fragments of this railing when struck with metal produce the notes of the musical scale, a circumstance which has not yet been accounted for. An altar stood Just within the railincr , and the vestibule was adorned with four Corinthian columns, while within the cella was the statue of the goddess, standing beneath an architrave 118 POMPEII 'tT' THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 119 upon which was an inscription dedicating the temple to the Fortune of Augustus. The Statue of Fortune was not found , and Fiorelli thinks that the statues of the family of Augustus were removed from the temple when the Augusteum was built; and the portraits of Marcus Tullius, a statue thought to be Cicero , and a female statue of which the face is broken off, substituted in their place. The ladies of Roman times were specially devoted to the worship of Fortune , who was supposed to be ab^e to hide the personal defects of her votaries from the eyes of their husbands and lovers. The Forum Baths (1824-25) occupy the whole block opposite the Temple of Fortune, with the exception of a few shops on its eastern and southern face. Their main entrance was into the wide street in which the Temple of Fortune stands, and led into the court or palaestra. It is generally admitted that this is the older of the two bathing establishments at Pompeii. Fiorelli dates it from the time of Sulla , and considers that it was finished in the time of Augustus about 5 A. D. An inscription informs us that these Baths were built with public money by Cc-esius, Occius, and Niraemius, the JEdWe and ■t k ■1^ i- Duumvirs of the day, and the circumstances at- tending its dedication were recorded in a painted inscription long since vanished, which after salut- ing Maius as the chief of the colony states that < on the occasion of the dedication of the baths, by the liberality of Nigidius there would be a hunting scene played by Athletes, that the spec- tators would be sprinkled with perfumes , and the awnings would be spread. > A similar in- scription to the same effect was found on the walls of the ladies' sid ' of the establishment. The ground plan of the Baths is of the shape of a wedge having its broad end to the North, of which advanta, as female figures used for a similar purpose are called € Caryatids >. These were slightly stuc- coed over, and some of the niches appear to have been bricked up with the view of strengthen- ing the supports of the roof. This would probably be on account of earthquake damage. The ceiling is constructed on the barrel vault principle, and is profusely ornamented with stucco reliefs many of which are excellent in design. The circular intersections were painted in bright colours. At the further end of this apartment is a modern iron grating erected to enclose a large bronze brazier and benches, presented to .■^.j ■— ■ ..^ jjMMaiim— ''■>-'-'*•- ■■j..rfi«»>«ij.j|M!ia^^*fc^ .■■■ji^^^jffit^.jahjfaita.atert.at"' *^^*^'^^ 122 POMPE I the baths by Nigidius Vaccula , who by way of a quiet pun on his own name placed the figure of a heifer upon the brazier, and heads of the same creature upon the legs of the benches. This hall was also lighted by a glazed window. From it we pass into the Calidarium or hot chamber which had a hollow space beneath the floor for the circulation of the hot air, as well as hollow walls to raise the temperature. These walls are constructed upon a principle which will be more conveniently observed when we reach the Stabian baths. The hot chamber was lighted from above by day, and at night by a lamp which stood above the circular fountain at the southern end of the room. Upon this fountain was a bronze inscription stating that it was erected with public money by the Duumvirs Melissaeus and Rufus, and that it cost 52 5o sestertii or about fifty pounds sterling. At the other end of the hot chamber is a marble bath which was used with hot water, this cham- ber being (like the one in the Stabian baths) arranged exactly according to the rules laid down by Vitruvius who was an architect of the Augustan period. The system of the water supply and the heating apparatus can still be clearly traced, although the arch which once carried the waterpipe across the street from the THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 1^3 4[- V^i^t ;!' ^ rf neighbouring blocks has fallen in. The boilers were on the upper floor to which access was obtained by a brick staircase. The ladies' baths were at the north-western corner; and were much smaller and less ornate than those we have already described. They were heated by the same apparatus and supplied from the same reservoir as those of the men. The actual process undergone by the Romans at their baths will be so much better understood when the more elaborate Stabian establishment is considered, that we postpone our observations on the method of their ablutions to the next chapter. The Arch of Caligula (1824), like that of Nero, is now destitute of all its ancient ornament. It was naturally a little more ancient than that of Nero, which it resembled in many respects, for here again we find waterpipes let into the ma- sonry. On the top of it was a bronze equestrian statue of the Emperor, found in many fragments, which joined together may be seen in the Na- ples Museum. We will now return to the Forum and con- sider the buildings on the eastern and southern sides of it, premising however that differences of opinion exist about every one of them. The POMPEII THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 125 tirst on our left is known by three distinct names in the writers, namely the Augusteum, Pantheon, and Macellum (1818-22). Of these three names the first seems to us at once the most likely and the most neutral. The most likely because statues of Livia the wife of Augustus , and of Drusus the son of Tiberius, as well as a fragment of an arm hold- ing up the globe which was probably a part of a statue of Augustus were found in the shrine; and the most neutral because such a dedication would scarcely have interfered with the coincident use of the building for other purposes. That it was a * Pantheon was argued from the tw^elve bases surrounding an altar in the centre of the Court, which were supposed to have supported statues of the twelve principal divinities. This theory has been generally abandoned, as also has another which suggested that these twelve bases were the foundations of the supports of a circular temple of Vesta. That it was a Ma- cellum or provision market is likely, first because as we have already stated this kind of mer- chandise was moved from the civil fora in ancient times; and secondly because the large counter in the eastern end seems especially adapted for the sale of such articles as fish and poultry. That this counter was used as a Triclinium is ♦^■ J*: '^: *7 •^,, 41 4* ^ m^. -¥ \hv obviously an untenable surmise, first on account^ of its being too narrow, and secondly because it slopes inwards, whereas Roman triclinia al- ways sloped outwards. The eleven chambers on the southern wall had an upper story and a wooden gallery run- ning outside them. Three of these drain outwards by a four inch pipe which looks as if they were constructed to be washed down, and this sup- ports the Macellum theory. The market pictures also serve to indicate the use of the building. They consist of fish, fowls and game lying ready, for sale. The building was extremely ornate, and con- tained several statues. The fagade towards the Forum was covered with marble and had some shops against it, which are thought to have been those of money-changers or jewellers. Besides the principal entrance, the building had northern and southern doors leading out into the side streets, of which the northern door adjoined a spacious court to the left of the cella , which may have been used for banquets connected with the rites. In short we think it certain that the upper end of the building was used for the worship of Augustus, though it seems that the remainder was a market. 12G POMPEII THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 127 The Curia Senatorum is the next building and presents nothing remarkable. It was an apse with a half dome over the further end, and a structure in the centre w^hich may have been an altar or rostra. If it was a Curia it would be the meeting place of the Decurions, and as they certainly had a meeting place, and it was most likely to be in the Forum, this conjecture is as good as any other. The building is now completely stripped of its marble, statues, and other ornaments. The Temple of Mercury ^1822) is next to it. It has in its centre a marble altar with a basrelief representing a sacrifice on the front of it, while the sides are decorated with various sacrificial emblems. The assertion that it was built by the priestess Mamia and dedicated to Augustus is founded upon an inscription which is thought from its dimensions to have come from the pediment of the cella, though no record of its discovery exists. The sacrificial emblems on the altar are no guide, for they would serve as well for the Augustan rites as for those of Mercury, and indeed if the former appellation has slender support, the latter has none at all; unless we admit that the building next to it is an Exchange, in which case there may be some show of reason V' a¥ \ fm .x^sli- ■^i in putting the shrine of Mercury, who was the presiding deity of the financial world in close proximity to the money market; but apart from this we see no reason to assign it to one deity ,rather than to another. The Exchange of Eumachia (1820) fills up the re- maining space between the temple of Mercury and the street of Abundance , and was a very handsome building dedicated to the « Concordia Aucusta >. It will be remembered that the Arch of Janus at Rome was always open in time of war, and that Augustus closed it in token of the universal peace of the Roman Empire in the very year in which Our Saviour was born. Horace mentions the fact in his odes, thus showing that it had a hold on the popular feelings of his day, and this temple at Pompei was no doubt dedicated to commemorate this famous universal peace. The front was faced with marble, and had four statues, two of which we learn from the inscrip- tions were dedicated to ^:neas and Romulus or Quirinus, the former having been the builder of the Lavinian city, and the latter the founder both of Rome and of the Arch of Janus, which Horace calls the . The other two statues are thought to have 128 POMPEII THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII PiO been Julius and Augustus Caesar, the founders of the Roman Empire. The inscription to ^neas was much broken but has been thus restored: « ^neas son of Venus and Anchises brought to Italy the survivors of the Trojan war, built the Lavinian city and reigned there three years. Afterwards when a battle had been fought he vanished and was taken into the number of the gods ». The inscription to Romuhis was much more perfect, and runs thus: « Romulus the son of Mars built Rome and reigned thirty-eight years. He slew Aero king of the Cseninen- ses and dedicated the spoil to Jupiter Feretrius. When he was received into the number of the gods he was called Quirinus ». The door of the portico was decorated with the beautiful marble arabesques now in the Na- ples Museum, representing birds and diminutive animals in fine curves of bold foliage. Passing through it we reach a large Court which was surrounded by a covered passage, as well as by a cloister of the usual description supported by Corinthian pillars. This was further decorated with portraits of illustrious citizens who had ob- tained this honour by a decree of thq Decurions. y T I «' i» lii * 1^ J Within the portico were various vats and water taps, and as it was built by the public priestess Eumachia, it is thought probable that she per- mitted the use of them to the Fullers, who out of gratitude erected in her honour the statue of which a plaster cast now stands at the further end of the buildinir- The question of the use to which this edifice was put is a difficult one to decide, but the balance of probability seems to incline in favour of its having been used as a Stock Exchange by the merchants of the town. They would in all probability be turned out of the Basilica, where their conversation interfered seriously with the administration of justice, and no place could have been found more convenient for them than this one. Here the money changers would have their seats, and the commercial business of the city would be transacted. If it is asked what the Fullers had to do with this, the answer is that they were a wealthy and important city guild: for as the Romans wore woollen clothes almost exclusively , a well dressed man (and dress was a passion with them) must have had frequent recourse to the fullers, who being a wealthy community, no doubt did a little money- lending and other financial business whenever opportunity offered. 9 130 POMPEII The remaining buildings in the Forum scarcely require minute description.. That at the opposite •corner of the Street of Abundance is called the -« School of Verna > for no better reason than that this pedagogue and his pupils wrote up an inscription in it, stating that they desired one Capella to be made Duumvir. This building probably used for holding Comitia or elections was decorated with statues and marble. No positive conclusion can be come to as to any of the three large buildings at the southern end of the Forum , but it is tolerably certain that they were public offices, and may perhaps have been used as Courts of first instance. There is no authority for calling the centre one a treasury. Indeed all we know about them is that they were evidently public buildings of some kind, and certainly of a late period. ^ ( . s » % ^ A "V CHAPTER VII THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII Second groiip : The Lesser or Triangular Forum^The Portico of Vinicius^ The Temple of Hercules — The Ljtdi Gladiatorii or Fe7icing School-^The Greater or Tragic Theatre— The Lesser or Covered Theatre— The Temple of his — The so-called Temple of ^sculapius-^ The Stabian Baths. It will be observed on leaving the Greater Forum that the Street of Abundance is rendered impassable to carriages by three large blocks of white travertine set up in the middle of the roadway. These were of late period and their identity with the material which forms the pa- vement of the Forum seems to denote that they are of the same date. They show how jealously the Romans protected their principal resort from the inconvenience and noise of wheeled traffic. The Forum seems in later times to have had 132 POMPEII THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 133 no bridle access at all, excepting- by the small and circuitous street which leads round alone the western wall of the town , and joins the street of the Sea Gate near the northern en- trance of the Basilica. Another street equally narrow and more than equally circuitous led into the south eastern corner, but this is com- pletely blocked by a public fountain. Hence we may suppose that the admission of carts was altogether discountenanced, and that vehicles or horses were not allowed in the Forum except- ing in cases of absolute urgency. The Triangular Forum (1769) bears much the same relation to the second group of public buildings as the Greater Forum does to the first; and from it also carriages were excluded. It stands upon the southern wall of the city, having the theatres and barracks on its eastern side, and ordinary dwelling houses to the west- ward of it. It is approached by a handsome Ionic portico consisting of eight massive Nuce- rine stone columns , which have been so con- scientiously restored that the most casual observer can at once distinguish the new parts from the original ones. This portico was adorned with the busts of distinguished citizens, and although these pillars ^1 -■,*■-'■•■» '.■if. 'it 4 . .^i^iS' 4P« 4 H:^' ^ ;-6sv-mt \*> i' \Jk <- did not escape the general stucco decoration with which the Romans disfigured the ancient monuments of their city, this has vanished from lapse of time, and we see the columns with their charming cornice much as they must have appeared before they were tampered with by the ignorant fashions of a degraded age. This building was one of those discovered 111 1769 in some of the earliest excavations made , and to this if^cident we must attribute the loss of much of the ornamentation of the portico, and the fact that few of the massive tiles which covered it have been preserved to us. No care whatever seems to have been taken of these fragments ; indeed those which are now set up were found heaped together in a corner, and it is certain that many pieces which are missing were used for the repair of some of the neighbouring buildings. Immediately on entering the triangular en- closure we encounter the base of a statue erected to « Marcus Claudius Marcellus Patron >, and find ourselves at the apex of the Forum, which m ancient times was surrounded on the eastern and western sides by a Doric cloister supported on a hundred pillars, but open on the southern side except for the Temple of Hercules, which stands here in close proximity to the city walls. 134 POMPEII THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 135 The space now occupied by the Forum was probably in more ancient times the site of the sacred grove which was universally planted round the Grecian temples. It was perhaps owing to the presence of these trees, or perhaps to the loftiness of the sacred edifice, that these crroves were so frequently struck by lightning. Horace speaks of this in his odes when he says of Ju- piter that he « casts his thunderbolts on the unchaste groves > ; and we shall see further on that a phenomenon of this description may perhaps have occurred on the very spot we are now describincr. o The cloister which though much less ancient than the temple, dates back probably to the later Samnite times was stuccoed and painted by the Romans, who also made ways into it on the eastern side to the Portico of Vinicius and the Greater Theatre, as well as a flight of stone steps which leads into the palcestra of the Lu- dus Gladi torius, or fencinor school. The Portico of Vinicius which is reached by the first doorway on the left, is an area surrounded on three sides by a colonnade , and is almost identical in form with the School of Verna in the Greater Forum. It was identified by an im- portant inscription of the Samnite period which -■■"A ■ «tejVjff*L < n I states that Vibius Adiranus left a sum of mon^y to the republic of Pompeii by his will ; and that the Senate of the city dedicated it to the con- struction of this tribes, (public meeting place?) at the time when Vibius Vinicius the son of Marius was Quaestor. The inscription goes on to say that the Quaestor superintended the con- struction of the edifice, and approved of it after it was finished. It is to be regretted that the inscription does not tell us the purpose of the building more exactly, but the steps in the centre of the south- ern portico, and the base in front of them leave us little doubt that it was a place for public meetings, and that the steps we have mentioned led up to a platform, rostra, for orators. Some writers have supposed that the large cistern behind this building was used for water- ing the theatre but it is obviously too low for this purpose and could not have afforded suffi- cient pressure to throw water on to any but the lower seats. The Temple of Hercules (1767) though the least perfect of the ruins of Pompeii is the most an- cient and the most massive building in the city and was for ceirturies the most magnificent. Owing perhaps to its proximity to the walls, 13() POMPEII the temple had evidently become a ruin even in Roman times, and it is certain that they had broken up many of its colossal stones and used them for the structure or repair of their own buildings. To appreciate the magnificent position of this temple it is necessary to mount the five lofty steps which lead up to its rectangular base. From hence the most charming view extends over the plain of Castellammare and the hills of the Sorrentine peninsula; a landscape excep- tionally lovely even in this city of beautiful views. The facade of the temple was supported by six Doric columns of colossal size, and the sides by eleven, (the pillar at the angle being counted twice over). There is not a single column stand- mg, but their ancient positions can be readily recognised. Three altars were found to the North- east of the temple; and just beyond the steps of its eastern front is a rectangular enclosure like a large dust bin, in which the refuse of the sacrifices was deposited. Beyond this, but to the left of it, is a pretty little building in the Doric style and of early date, built according to the Oscan inscription, by Numerius Trebius. We do not know why this building is supposed to have been a Biden- tal\ a name given to any spot which had been 4^ ,J t" 1 ^^^^ V A W 1 W A ■T^^ 1 ^J ■]"f \ THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 137 struck by lightning, because a bidens or sheep was sacrificed there. Such enclosures were holy ground and might not be trodden upon. Cicero informs us that the Duumvir Erennius was killed by lightning on a clear day at Pompeii, but the construction of this building is evidently anterior to the institution of Duumvirs at Pompeii, con- sequently it could not record the death of Erennius. Overbeck asserts most positively that it was merely a well or cistern to provide water for the use of the temple; and though Dyer says that its construction warrants either theory, the less romantic explanation seems so much more probable that we have no hesitation in pronouncing for it. On the West of the temple is a semicircular stone seat in admirable preservation, which had a sundial upon it, and an inscription recording the names of the Duumvirs who had erected it at their own expense. The above gives in a few practical words all we can gather from the ruins of the temple, but it is obvious that in the days ofits magnificence it was equal to the Paestum temples , and the problem of its destruction still remains unsolved. And this problem can be solved only by con- jecture. Had the building been thrown down by the 63 earthquake, we can easily imagine that 138 POMPEII the Romas of that day who knew nothing and cared less about art, would have broken up the stones to repair their houses with the fragments ; but asrainst this we must set the fact that most o of the rebuilding after this disaster was in brick and not in stone , and that the ruins of the buildings themselves would generally provide stone enough for the purpose of filling in bet- ween brick coigns and mullions. That the wall of the Isiac Curiae was built of stone fragments is obvious enough, but again it must be remembered that it was originally built of stone , and that the present temple of Isis was rebuilt from its foundations mainly no doubt of the materials on the spot. Hence we strongly suspect that the destruction of the Temple of Hercules occurred a long time before 63 and a long time before building w^ith bricks was usual at Pompeii. We are inclined to conjecture that the building was a ruin before the siege of Sulla, but how it became a ruin is another matter. Such a "building would certainly not fall to pieces of itself, any more than the Temples of Paestum have fallen, and even if it did, we should expect that some traces of such massive stone-work would surely be visible in in the buildings repaired with it. It is possible of course that the remains of the temple were THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 139 *1 ^4 for wearing in the processions which usually formed the opening spectacle of the combats in the arena. The fencing schools of Roman times were presided over by a lanista , who stood to the gladiators in the same position as a trainer to a modern pugilist. The men were brought into the most perfect bodily training by special food and abundant exercise. Their points and paces were scrutinised by their patrons just as sport- ing men criticise the form and gallop of a fa- vourite racehorse, and the betting upon the contests ran high when well-known combatants were matched together. The passion for this kind of amusement seems to have risen to a great height in southern Italy, as we find a very large number of amphitheatres within a short distance of Naples, of which we may instance those of Pozzuoli, Cumae, and Posilipo only a very few miles from one another, not to mention the celebrated arena of Capua where the Venus Victrix and the Psyche were discovered. jiJ-jtijJMM'alfaiMk.MJ, 142 POMPEII THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 143 The Theatres of Pompeii adjoin the barracks, and give us a capital idea of the buildings in which the ancients enacted their dramas. To understand them it is necessary to know a little of the history of the Roman stage and its development. That the Etruscans were very fond of the drama is certain; that they had stone theatres is by no means equally sure; for modern research has decided that the theatre at Fiesole , and other similar buildings in Italy , long attri- buted to the Etruscans, were in fact Roman. Whether or not, it seems certain that the stone theatre was a late introduction into Rome, and that the earliest Roman theatres were built of wood. Pliny describes the wooden theatre of Scaurus at Rome, built in 58 b. c, as a splendid edifice with a stage in three stories , of which the lower one was marble, the second glass, and the upper of gilded woodwork; but the first stone theatre was built by Pompey in 55 b. c. andappears to have been the earliest stone theatre in Italy. The Roman theatre though different from that of the Greeks seems certainly to have been de- rived from it, the main variation being that the actors in Roman times were brought much nearer to the audience. The reason for this would pro- bably be that the Greeks depended more upon ♦ ^ Wf^'/'i , •^^ V ^ * ^ 1 scenic effect for the success of their dramatic performance, and the Romans more upon the words being distinguishable. The play of Medea seems to have been a favourite one in Roman times, and Seneca's Latin version of it may perhaps have been played. We notice it frequently in the frescoes and es- pecially in the vestibule of the House of the Centenary, where the scene seems certainly to have been taken from the stage, and not from the legend. Horace again in his Ars Poetica (when he says that the climax of the tragedy must be left to the imagination , and must not be enacted upon the stage) cites the Greek play of Medea and not one of the current Roman dramas. He says « Medea must not slay her boys in the sight of the audience >; and he would not have selected this incident bad it not been that the play was well-known to his readers; nor would he have given the caution against the perpetration of horrors upon the scene, had this not been a tendency of his time which he thought it in the interests of dramatic art to re- primand sternly. That dramatic art was in decadence in the Pompeian age is manifest from the contemporary writers, though we can gather nothing on the subject from the theatres themselves. 144 POMPEII Assuming that the space occupied by these and by the Lndi gladiatorii was once a mere open Square, we may fairly gather that wooden theatres were erected upon it before the fashion of stone ones came in, and that when stone theatres were in vogue , the Pompeians took advantage of the slope of the ground at the nor- thern end of the square to erect their theatres (as was the Roman custom) upon the hillside, and facing the South. The Greater or Tragic Theatre {\l(^^\ 1793-96) of Pompeii stood with its back to the curice of the temple of Isis, and its walls were abundantly scribbled upon by the patrons of the drama. Upon them was an inscription rudely scratched which was appealed to for some time as evidence of Christianity having existed in Pompeii. This supposition was rudely dispelled when the whole inscription was read. It is as follows: <( Methe Cominia the Atellan loves Crestus ». Thus far perhaps the Christian interpreters were justified in their conjecture ; but the conclusion of the document must have been a severe shock to their feelings. It runs, < May the Venus of Pom- peii abide in their hearts , and may they ever live happily together >. Justin Martyr in his first Apology Chapter IV makes a play upon the L( ) ^ ^ » i> THE PUBLIC BUTLBTNGS OF POMPEII 145 words XpfoToc (Christ) and Xpi^oro? (Excellent), The latter was probably the name of the Pom- peian. The theatre dates from the time of Augustus, and was built by Marcus Artorius at the expense of the brothers Holconius , whose statues un- doubtedly stood upon the stage, just as those of the Balbi stood on the stage at Herculaneum. It would appear from the numerous inscriptions relating to the Holconii, that every time they obtained a new political office, a new mscription was placed under their statues, and the old one put on one side, because as these portraits were erected at the public expense , it is not likely that there would have been in a sirrsrle build- ing as many statues of these brothers as would account for the large number of fragments of inscriptions discovered in the theatre alluding to them, but bearing different titles. .The stage was provided w^ith three exits ac- cording to rule, all being placed in the back; and was decorated with numerous statues , of which only the pedestals remain. Such a stage would be inconveniently narro# to our ideas, but Horace lays down the rule that only three actors should appear on the stage at one time, and that if for any reason a fourth were intro- duced, he should on no account be allowed to 10 14G POMPEII speak. And we think that our modern experience bears out this doctrine, for nothing is more dif- ficult to execute satisfactorily on the modern stage than a scene in which many performers are on the boards at the same time. The large trench in front of the stage was for the curtain, which was lowered into it at the commencement of the performance and raised at the conclusion of it; thus reversino- the method which our superior mechanical arrangements have enabled us to adopt. The semicircle in front of the curtain would be devoted to the orchestra whose name it bore. The magnates of the city sat upon the lower rows, each upon his bisellium , w^hich was no doubt brought down by his slaves when their master intended to witness the performance. A centre seat in a conspicuous position was allotted to the Holconii as founders of the theatre, and an inscription may be seen on the site of it. This w^as once in bronze letters , but now ap- pears as if cut into the marble, and records their titles and bounty. The Audttorimn of the theatre is reckoned to have held about 5ooo people, an estimate which allows about thirteen inches to each spectator. Numbers may still be found carved on some of the seats. These were divided r^ •* THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEH 147 horizontally into twenty-nine tiers, which were arranged in three divisions, the occupants of each division being determined by a statute of Augustus, according to their rank. The seats were further divided vertically into five wedges by the stairways which led up between them. The whole theatre was surrounded by an arched crypt which gave access to the galleries by inner staircases. On the inner side of the upper row are large blocks of stone , pierced by square holes. These were the sockets for masts which upheld the awnings to protect the spectators from the sun. These awnings w^ere an invention of the Campanians , and any one who has experienced the extreme difficulty of stretch- ing an awning over a large surface must appre- ciate their ingenuity. The method used can be seen in the fresco of the Nucerine riot to which we shall allude in our description of the Am- phitheatre. The Smaller or Comic Theatre (1769; 1793) seems to have been begun about 2 5 b. c. by the Duumvirs Valgus and Porcius who erected it to the order of the Decurions or Town Council. It is a small building and we know that it was roofed in, because the inscription speaks of it as the < covered theatre ». That it was com- 148 POMPEI pletely roofed in is unlikely, because that would have rendered it inconveniently dark , and that It was artificially lighted and used at night is extremely improbable. We may therefore con- clude that the spectators were protected from the sun by a permanent penthouse which served the purpose of the more expensive and trouble- some awnings which were necessary in the case of the tragic theatre. The roof appears to have been shattered in the 63 earthquake, and a quantity of new tiles placed by the walls of the green-room justifies the conclusion that it was being rebuilt at the time of the destruction of the city. The orchestra was paved with coloured mar- bles, and an inscription in bronze letters states that Marcus Oculatius Verus the Duumvir, presented it to the town pro ludis, that is to say instead of giving them public games on his accession to ofiflce. The inscription is in the Naples Mu- seum but it has been wrongly restored, the name of Holconius having been substituted for that of Verus. It is notable that the games after the election seem to have been a recognised right of the people, but one cannot help reflect- ing that the paving of the theatre must have been cheaper than a show in the Amphitheatre, and have pleased the public in a less degree. i*i^£jK Ik i.. 1^"' THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 149 The building is much less important than its larger neighbour, and was evidently devoted to low comedy played probably in the Oscan dialect, with the clever fool of Atella as its leading character. As this buffoon is so frequently re- presented on the later Greek vases, and survives to this day as the central figure of Neapolitan low comedy, we may confidently assume that he has kept his place ever since in the Latin race, while the existence of many persons much more useful has been unrecorded , and many institutions apparently much more stable have vanished. The Temple of Isis (1764-65) and its Curiae fill up the corner behind the theatre, and concerning them there is no doubt whatever, for they are among the few discoveries of the earlier exca- vators of which a comprehensive record was kept. The principal inscription is as follows: N . POPIDIVS . N . F . CELSINUS .^DEM . ISIDIS . TERR.« . MOTU . CONLAPSAM A . FVNDAMENTO. P . S . RESTITUIT . HVNC . DECVRIONES OB . LIBERALITATEM CVM . ESSEX . ANNORUM . SEXS . ORDINE . SUO . GRATIS ADLEGERUNT A } •»f to be thrown, and many burnt fruits and similar objects were found in k. Tlie handsome hall at the back of the shrine served no doubt for ini- tiations , and led to tlie priests' apartments at the back. The legend which asserts that the skeleton of a priest who was having his dinner, and that of another who had cut his way through the wall were found here, is one of the many little romances which have grown up around the ruins. The Temple of ^sculapius (1766) is by far the smallest of the public buildings of Pompeii, but it is not wanting in interest, especially to tlic architect, on account of the grotesque character of its stonework. Its dedication to ^-Esculapius is extremely doubtful , and if it derived its name only from the terracotta statue now in the Naples Museum the name is certainly wrong, as the statue re- presents Jupiter, and the companion statue Juno. They are we believe the largest ancient terra- cotta statues extant in perfect condition, but there can be little doubt that they do not represent yKsculapius and his daughter Hygieia.* In our * The legend of ^sctifapius is so little known that it may be worth while to mention that he was supposed to be the son of Apollo, who sent him to the Centaur 154 POMPEII THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 155 description of the Stabian Gate we shall show our reasons for conjecturing that this is the shrine of the Meilichian Jupiter which is mentioned in the inscription found under that Gate. Fiorelli mentions a shrine of the Meilichian Jupiter built by the Greeks in the purest Doric style, but does not tell us where it is; and we confess our inability to identify it by this (de- scription. Further on he speaks of a similar shrine as probably existing near the Sta- bian Gate and upon the Via Pompeiana. As however he calls the little temple we are con- sidering the Temple of ^Zsculapius, we think he excludes our conjecture that this is the shrine of the Meilichian Jupiter, though it is to be ob- served that he gives it the name of « Temple of ^sculapius, Hygieia, Jupiter, Juno, and Pria- pus > in his index, thus admitting a degree of uncertainty as to its dedication. The Stabian Baths (i 855-58) which we take last Chiron to be educated. Chiron was the legendary doctor of men and horses, and taught him medicine, ^sculapius after many legendary adventures landed on the insula Tiberina (in the Tiber at Rome) in the form of a serpent which hence became his emblem. A statue of him was found upon this island in a temple dedicated to him. The statue passed into the Farnese collection , and is now in the Naples Museum. a f ) in this group of public buildings , stand at the corner of the streets of Abundance and of Sta- biae, and are the best preserved of the numerous Roman baths in Europe. Here we see the build- ing in which the ladies and gentlemen of Pompeii passed the greater part of their day. These baths were the centre of the social life of the town, and though they cannot compete for magnificence either of structure or decoration with the Baths of Caracalla at Rome, their perfect preservation has enabled us to understand a Roman bathing establishment as no other similar ruins have ever done before. As we have given a very complete description of the Forum Baths in the preceding chapter, we purpose in this instance to treat of the Ro- man bath in a more general manner, and to follow the bather through the various processes he underwent in the course of an afternoon vi- sit to this establishment. Before doing this it will be advisable to enter a little into the history of Roman ablutions, as these were subject to that general law of de- velopment which Professor Darwin has taught us rules all mundane affairs. Seneca tells us that the ancient Romans (by which he means those before the Empire) washed their legs and arms daily , and their bodies 156 POMPEII THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 157 occasionally only. This would be accounted for by these members being bare, and exposed to the effects of mingled dust and perspiration. We may presume that their faces shared in the daily ablution, although the philosopher does not in- clude them. For washing of this kind no public institution was necessary, and we are left in the dark as to the exact period when public baths were introduced. But whenever it was, there can be no doubt that the unwritten law with respect to private baths, exacted great prudery in the matter. A father might not bathe with his son if he were beyond the age of absolute boyhood, and the notion of a public bath open to the male sex indiscriminately, would have been indignantly scouted. Time, and the growing desire of clean- liness and comfort overcame all conventionalities of this kind, and no patrician's villa was com- plete unless it had what we call a « Turkish bath >, belonging to it. But the bath which growing civilisation had made a necessity of that personal cleanliness which always follows in the train of higher culture, soon became a pleasure, and the desire for it spread downwards from the class w^ho could afford it, to the class who could not. This necessitated public baths for the lower or- ders, and in time it was found that the heating l^ r- 4 V and arrangement of the public baths were far superior to those in private houses. The one could be enjoyed at any time, the other needed long preparation and cosdy appliances. English- men, not yet middle-aged, can remember the time when in an ordinary English household a hot bath was not procurable without a good deal of notice. How much more then must the Roman middle classes have felt the difficulty with no- thing in their houses that we should dignify with the name of a fire ? Hence even wealthy men began to use the public baths, and the ladies rapidly followed suit. . That the ladies must have a separate estab- lishment of their own required no argument; that it would save trouble to heat it from the same bci'ers as that of the gentlemen was also self-evident, so an annexe for ladies w^as added to the existing baths, and as in most cases these had already almost filled up all the available space, the ladies' baths were usually crowded up into a corner. That the ladies resented the fact of their baths being inferior to those of the gendemen is proved by a curious story told by Aulius Gellius, who says that a lady who was the wife of a Consul at Teanum insisted on bathing in the more sumptuous side of the edifice, and that the Willi- Mr tf- 158 POMPEII THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS 01' POiMPEII 159 Quaestor in consequence turned the men out to gratify her caprice ! The pleasure of the bath was now enjoyed by both sexes with complete propriety, but in the later Pompeian time the luxury of the bath had begun to declare itself, and though we find the sexes still separated, we cannot help noti- cing that the separation in the Forum baths was much nearer absolute than that in the Stabian establishment, and we are led to speculate that the separation contemplated in the incomplete baths of the street of Nola would have been still less discernible. At any rate Hadrian, who died barely forty years after the destruction of Pompeii, made a law^ forbidding promiscuous bathing, so that we may be sure that the custom existed in his time. Originally the baths were open only from sunrise to sunset, but the numerous lamps found in the Pompeian bathing establishments lead us to infer that they at least were open after night- fall. Having thus traced the rise and decline of the Roman bath, we can only wonder how it arose that an institution which when properly carried on was so beneficial and so pleasant, should have utterly vanished from the country. It seems to have lasted in Italy till about 460 A. D. when all trace of it disappears in the %• \ » ^ 4 %y 'A r-.M^ Western Empire, although the Romans clearly introduced it into their Eastern Empire, where it still remains one of the great institutions of the country, as any traveller in Turkey will have noticed. From hence it has travelled westward again, so that it may be truly said. that Rome is the mother of the modern < Turkish Bath >. Let us now pass on to consider how these gor- geous establishments were used by their custom- ers. Here, first of all we must make allowance for that variety of taste which influenced the people of Pompeii, just as much as it influences those of London. Some no doubt never took a cold bath; others probably never entered a hot one. Some were exhilarated by a good wrestling bout in the palaestra; others were quite conten't to raise their bodies to the required temperature by following the advice of the Roman medical writer Celsus, who recommends his patients to sit quietly in the tepidarium, or warm chamber, < without undressing », until their perspiration should have commenced. We think that writers on Roman baths have hardly taken these matters sufficiently into consideration, when they have laid down a general rule as if it were applicable to every variety of case; and have apparently neglected the personal idiosyncrasies of the indi^ vidual. 160 POMPEH THE PUBIJC BUILDINGS OF POMPEII 161 If we enter the Stabian Baths by their prin- cipal entrance we find ourselves in a large Court or palcBstra. Now the word palcestra is derived from the Greek, and means a « wrestling ground*, and this no doubt is the purpose for which the enclosure was primarily intended. The seats under the southern portico would be for the spectators who would no doubt consist of elderly men (the most unsparing of critics), ladies, and such of the gilded youth of the town as preferred flirting to athletic exercises. The more muscular youths would be engaged in wrestling: playing i;/^//^r/^/^r/V^;;^, a game which corresponded to our < fives >, and more remotely to lawn tennis: swinging the corycos, a sack of sand which was suspended from a pole: or hurl- ing the large stone bowls which were found in the court. The ordinary games with a handball were very favourite with the Romans, and in- volved a good deal of muscular exercise. Horace says that the blear-eyed and those whose di- gestion was weak found them unsuitable , and the frescoes of the Roman baths show several varieties of the game. Martial tells us he was playing at ball when the bell announced that the baths were ready , and no dotibt he was only conforming to ordinary custom by doing so. On the left of the spectators were three co- 1; ^H » * f 4 vered courts, of which one served as the dressing- room of the swimming-bath, and the other two for games at ball in wet weather, or for those who preferred to be protected from the sun when the weather was fine. We can readily imagine the muscular youth of the city indulging in a good game in the palaestra, and afterwards enjoying a swim in the fine bath which occupied more than half of its western side. Such as these would care nothincr for the enervating luxury of the warm bath, and would never use it except for curative purposes. But the class w^e have spoken of as spectators looked upon the matter in quite another light. They had not come to the baths for a little violent exercise (of which they were probably incapable), nor for a dip in cold water the very sighc of which was enough for them: they had come to hear the gossip of the town, to pick up such items of new\s as form the staple of our < society papers » now-a-days: to chat over the last play or the coming gladiatorial show; to while away their time in criticising the decora- tion of the palrestra, the sports of the bathers, or the latest dinner party; or perhaps to pay their court to some professional beauty who was always to be found at the Stabian baths at a certain hoiir. II 162 POMPEII Such is the scene in the palaestra as the shadow from the gnomon of the large public sun-dial of Atinius falls upon the appointed hour (pro- bably I p. M.) at which the hot water will be ready, and the air chambers duly heated. A bell rincrs loud and lono; to summon the bathers; Chloe stops her dainty ears with her pearly finorers; Marius shouts to the slave that he has made noise enough; for Marius was at an orgy last night and he is rather nervous this morn- inp-. Indeed he has come to the Thermae in the hopes of leaving his headache behind him, and of <( pulling himself together > for the feast of to-night. Is he not to sup with Sallust the epi- cure, and would it not be an absolute disaster to go to such a house without an appetite ? Besides Chloe is to be there, and his witty toncrue must be at its best to entertain her. Is she not the beauty of the city , and is not he her recognised admirer, envied by all \\i^ jetmesse dorec of Pompeii! Let us follow him into the door on the right, now that he has escorted Chloe with her four slave girls to the door at the upper end of the Court over which the word mulier (woman) used to stand in bronze letters. We will follow her presently, but for the moment we will enter the other door and see what becomes of the exclaims Marius, « these slaves of the Thermae are bent on baking us alive! Come Africanus, and let us get done with this >. The Nubian approaches, and with his soft black hands soon covers his master with a thick lather which he rubs in with a will. He then takes the strigil which is a concave bronze hook with a convenient handle , and with this he carefully scrapes Marius from head to foot, castino- warm water over him from time to time till his skin is as soft as that of a young child. And now while his Master bends his head forward, he pours upon it first warm, then tepid, then cold water, till he gasps again, and tells him to desist. They then adjourn to the plunge bath, which is in a circular building near the entrance. How cool and de- lightful it looks with its domed roof just giving us a peep of the blue sky through the aperture at the top, and its pure white marble bath gli- stening with the sheen of the greenish water, 166 POMPEII THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF POMPEH 161 and surrounded with flowers and shrubs dexte- rously painted on the walls. Marius draws a long breath and plunges in. He feels as if new life were being poured into his jaded frame as he seats himself under the heavy jet , and allows the falling water to give his aching head a final cooling; and as he recovers himself he begins to think almost lovingly of the evening's banquet. And now the nimble Briton is drying him; and wTapping himself in a sheet Marius is under the barbers' hands. The fragrant crocus-oil is applied all over his body ; his hair is carefully curled, and our young exquisite saunters into the portico, putting on his rings as he goes, and debating in his mind whether he shall look into the theatres, content himself with a stroll in the Forum, or order out some of his slaves to take a row^ up the Sarnus in his brass-prowed galley. We w^ill now return to Chloe, w^ho with her four slave-girls entered the cool chamber on the ladies side of the Thermae, some two or more hours ago. Here she was subjected to much the same treatment as Marius underwent, saving that there being no extremely hot chamber on her side of the Baths she did not run the same risk of being baked alive. 'J' * v>.l j 4> w »• t \ { ,1 # 4 But if the hot chamber for the ladies was many degrees cooler than that used by the sterner sex, it was also much more handsomely decorated, or at all events much more of its decoration has survived to our times. The marble bath at one end and the labrum or fountain at the other , are so perfect that one might turn the w^ater into them and use them again to-morrow^ , while the mosaic floor has scarcely a cube missing; though enough of the arch has fallen away to let us into the secret of the method by which the Romans constructed their vaults, namely by building amphorae into them, in order to combine liorhtness with strencrth. But Chloe s toilet is not so simple as that of Marius; her raven tresses require to be combed out, and with all the care of her maidens they have not been able to keep them perfectly dry. She w^ill not therefore show herself again in the palaestra, but sends word without that her litter is to be brought to the little western door, which leads from the Baths into the small street at the back. As soon as her litter is announced she pas- ses down the passage where are the private bath rooms, till she reaches the door. She calls impatiently to the porter , for she does not wish to be seen leaving by this exit. 16cS POMPEII It is out-of-the-way, and odd stories are told of some of the ladies who go in and out by it: so she steps nimbly into her litter and drawing the curtains of it , orders her bearers to carry her home again. Her maidens follow bearing her elegant silver strigils, embossed with the bust of the chaste Diana; her silver mirror adorned with a relief representing the death of Cleopatra, her alabaster jars of costly ointment; her glass vessels of exquisite perfumes, the proudest spoils of Sabaean caravans; her ivory combs and silver hairpins, her gold bracelets and her coral amu- lets. And woe indeed to them if anything should be missing on their arrival, for Chloe's venge- ance is swift and sure, and the terrible lash of her savage Greek Majordomo hangs ever ready on the pillars of the peristyle. i ' W' > -''. -.,"■,, » li 4 CHAPTER VIII rUE ^VAlAS AND GATES — Tin: AMPHITHEATRE Introductory Remarks — The Gate of StabicE — Jtipiter Meilichuis — The Niuerhie Gate and Tombs — The Amphitheatre and its Sports— The Gate of No la-^ The Gate of Hercidaneum — The City avails. O^^iGiNALLv the walls of Pompeii were pierced by eight gates, to which Professor Fiorelli has given the following names: Of the Sea — of Stabiae — Nuceria — Sarno — Nola — Capua Ve- suvius — and Herculaneum. Of these only four are at present visible in their entirety, namely those of the Sea, of Sta- biae, of Nola and of Herculaneum. A small portion of the Gate of Vesuvius is also visible, but the others thougli once opened up , are now quite covered again. The walls are traceable all the w^ay from the Amphitheatre to the Gate of Herculaneum, and ^l^jj^a^^^^li^^^e^ig^ 170 POMPEII THE WALLS AND GATES 171 1 the circuit of them can be made either on foot or on horseback. If the latter plan is adopted, the high road must be taken as far as the Am- phitheatre, as the walls cannot be approached before that point on the outer side. But the pedestrian will find it interesting to make the entire circuit , within the walls to the Amphi- theatre, and without them for the rest of the distance. The excursion will occupy a couple of hours including a visit to the Amphitheatre. The walls are visible only at a few points within the city, but if the outer circuit is made , the site of all the towers can be identified, and numerous places will be observed w^here impor- tant breaches have been made in the defences which have been patched up subsequently by a different and very inferior kind of masonry, stuccoed over so as to look like the original wall. It will be observed that the outer walls of all the towers have been pulled down, and this was no doubt done to dismantle the city. An inspection of these ramparts will be interest- ing to military men and archaeologists , but it involves a long walk, and the expenditure of a good deal of time, and should therefore not be undertaken by those who have not leisure, unless they are specially interested in the matter. The original spouting for draining the ramparts will t ■f-i -1 I *r be noticed, and there are a few characters cut upon the stones in divers places. Some writers assert that these are Oscan inscriptions; others that they are merely mason's marks, the latter being the more probable solution. The most interesting portion of the city de- fences may easily be visited by walking from the Gate of Herculaneum a few hundred yards to the eastward outside the wall. Here the treneral character of the defences can be readily studied, and this is certainly the point where the forti- fication of the town was most elaborate. We shall consider this part of the wall in detail in connection with the Gate of Herculaneum (see index). In the careful description already given of the Sea Gate (see index) and of the wall adjoining it, we have made it clear that the fortifications of Pompeii were practically destroyed on the whole of the western and a great part of the south- ern side of the city , and that there was no available carriage exit all the way from the gate of Herculaneum to that of Stabia. The natural fall of the ground and the absence of gates consequently made this the strongest side of the city, and it will be observed that on this side there are no traces of watch-towers, for the reason that such towers would be quite unne- 172 POMPEII cessary, assault being impossible from this di- rection. The Gate of StabiaB (i85i-52) stands at the bottom of a steep hill which forms the end of the Street of Stabiae and is near to the theatres and Ludus Gladiatorius, which we considered in the preced- ing chapter. Here too the wall commences again, the gate being pierced right through it with a barrel vault similar to that of the Sea Gate only much lower. There can be no doubt that the Stabian Gate, or at any rate the wall adjoining it is very ancient, and the difference in style between it and the Gate of Herculaneum which is probably the most recent of the gates and certainly of the Roman period , is especially remarkable. On the right as w^e approach the archw^ay, is a public fountain with a head of Medusa upon it, and on the left, steps leading up to the city wall. This gate bore two inscriptions; one in Oscan in the centre of the vault on the left- hand side, the other in Latin outside the Gate on the eastern side. The Oscan inscription was on a block of travertine, which has been removed to the Naples Museum and replaced by a fac- simile in white marble put up in the original place. THE WAIXS AND GATES 173 ",f" .11 f -S^ * > The Latin inscription appears to be ancient, and certainly if it is an imitation it is a very good one. We will take the Oscan inscription first, adopting the excellent translation published by Dyer: The ^diles Publins Sittius son of Marcus , and Nu- merius Pontius son of Publius laid down the limits of this street, and fixed the terminus of it ten feet beyond the Stabian Gate. They also fixed the limits of the Via Pompeiana three feet before the enclosure of Jupiter Meilichius. These streets as well as the Jovia and Decumana were constructed by the public slaves of Pompeii under the direction of the surveyors of the streets, and the same ^diles approved of them. The Latin inscription states that Avianus and Spedius the Duumvirs paved the road from the milestone to Gisiarii, which was on the confines of the Pompeian territory at their own expense. These inscriptions are both very important, and contain a great deal of topographical infor- mation, but to explain them involves a good deal of conjecture. It is clear from the Oscan inscrip- tion that the Gate we are considering was called the Stabian Gate, but Fiorelli conjectures that the streets referred to were all outside the town, and that a shrine of Jupiter Meilichius stood not 174 POMPEII far from the Gate and presumably on the out- side of it. This of course may be the case, but we can see no argument to support it, nor any reason why the places referred to in the Oscan inscription may not just as well be inside as outside the Gate. The words « The /Ediles laid down the limits of this street, and fixed the terminus of it ten feet beyond the Stabian Gate », may surely mean that the y^diles (who were town officials) agreed to carry their paving ten feet beyond the Gate. Again, three other streets are mentioned, namely Pompeiana, Jovia and Decumana , all approved by the /Ediles and all probably within the town. Is there, we may ask, any reason why the shrine of Jupiter Meilichius should not have been within the town also? Is there any reason why it should not be the little temple known as the Temple of /'Esculapius, which every scholar now^ admits was dedicated to Jupiter? Again, who was Ju- piter Meilichius? It w^as Jupiter in his benignant and propitious character. Breton points out that Meilichius is merely a Latinised form of the Greek word meaning « kind > or <( amiable ». Now although Overbeck considers that the terra-cotta statue found in the temple was of very late period, and probably bought ready- made to replace a better one which had been V THE WALLS .AND (iATES 175 i ' 4 i destroyed in the earthquake, anyone who exam- ines it must admit that it has the face of a benignant and not of a stern deity. Indeed it was probably the expression of the face which led the finders of it to call it ^Esculapius rather than Jupiter. If these arc not untenable conjec- tures, this is the <( enclosure of Jupiter Meilichius » alluded to in the Oscan inscription, and w^e have the topography of this inscription as clearly as possible. « This Street » namely the Via Sta- biana w^ould begin ten feet outside the Stabian Gate and run to within three feet of the temple of Jupiter. Here it would meet the Via Pompe- iana which would run down from the present street of Nola to the shrine of Jupiter, and the Via Decumana would be the important street (called on our plan Strada del Tempio d* hide) which runs past the temple of Isis and helps to form the angle at the so-called /Esculapian shrine ; while the fourth street mentioned in the inscription namely the: « Via Jovia » would be the street called on our map Strada dcU' An- fiteatro which runs into the Strada Stabiana directly opposite the northern corner of the shrine. The fact that the stone w^as set up with its inscription towards the city seems to point to the inference that whatever the Ediles did was done within the city, and not without the 176 POMPEII walls; their business was inside the town, not outside it; their labourers were « public slaves of Pompeii > ; and there is a shrine of Jupiter ready to hand with important crossways meet- ing^ at its ancrle. Directly in front of the door of this shrine of Jupiter is a stone which once belonged to a fountain; but it was clearly never a fountain in its present position. Hence it may be a mark belonging to the roadways, though it bears no inscription to justify our conjecture. To turn now to the Latin inscription we find that it is placed outside the v^all, and faces the country. It states that whatever was done by the Duumvirs was done « at their own expense. > There is no mention of the « public slaves of Pompeii » here ; the road » from the milestone to Gisiarii » was a present to the townspeople by the Duumvirs, just as we noticed in the last chapter that the marble pavement of the covered theatre was the gift of Verus the Duumvir, instead of the games which it was usual for a man to give on his accession to office. There are so many instances in Pompeii of public works being undertaken by the Duumvirs pro ludis (instead of games) that, we may safely guess that the road to Gisiarii is another case in point, and we may reasonably conclude that THE WALLS AND GATES 177 j'*^ f the milestone alluded to stood near the Gate. It does not appear altogether impossible that the stone upon which the Oscan inscription was written may be the miliarius alluded to, although it was not properly speaking a milestone , but only something like one. Be that as it may, there can be no doubt that the Duumvirs made a road outside the town from Pompeii to Gi- siarii at the confines of the Pompeian territory, and we may ask in conclusion why they should have done so if the ^^diles had already made four roads at the public expense outside this very Gate? The question of the repair of the public streets, though a little beside our actual subject, is an interesting one, and there are many considera- tions which lead us to infer with some deyrree of certainty that each householder was liable to repair the street opposite his door , and was permitted to lay down the footway according to his own taste. For it will be observed that there exists in Pompeii a very great variety in the paving of the sidewalks , and that a new type often , or even usually, appears in front of a single house. The house of the Faun has the salutation have on the pavement in front of it , certainly put there by the owner of the house, a liberty which 12 178 POMPEII THE WALLS AND GATES 179 a man would hardly have taken without having the right to do so. Many similar instances will be apparent to the observant visitor. With re- gard to the paving of the carriage-way . the Street of Nola offers near the street of Vesu- vius a striking proof of our contention where we notice portions of the roadway in excellent order lying between portions that are in the most deplorable condition, showing that some householders did their duty to the public, while others neglected it. Had the ^diles paved the street, they would surely have done so conti- nuousl)' and not* in patches. To conclude our account of the Gate of Stabiae we must add that like the Gate of the Sea it had a niche , in which it is probable that a statue of Minerva was placed, because the word PATRUA w^as found scratched in large letters at the back of the niche, and this is a well-known appellation of the warrior goddess. It will be seen further on, that the Gate of Nola was also dedicated to Minerva, and thus all the ancient gates we have as yet discovered were under her protection. The Gate of Herculaneum had no such dedication , but as we shall see , this was of much more modern construction. We regret that our space does not permit us to give a full account of some private excava- *■ *■ «► \ tions undertaken in i885 outside the Stabian Gate. The splendid necklace of pearls and eme- ralds now in the Naples Museum was found there, and was patriotically sold by the proprietor to the Government at a nominal price. Upw^ards of two hundred skeletons w^ere also found, show- ing thaj: many of the inhabitants had endeavoured to escape by this road, and had taken refuge in the buildings outside the walls. The Gate of Nuceria is no longer visible. It stood in a very poor quarter of the town, near the Amphitheatre, and it is only thanks to the discovery of some tombs outside it in 1886 that we need mention it. These were parallel with the highway which is in a shocking state of dis- repair, and stand some four feet above its level, the causeways on either side being considerably raised. The tombs are much in the style of the small arbours of suburban tea-gardens; they are built of brick plastered and painted. The inscrip- tions were mostly painted in red; the busts found were inartistic, the burials were of the cremation period, and the coins of the reign of Tiberius. It thus is quite clear that this was a burial place for the poorer classes, but as it lies outside the ground claimed by the Government as cover- ing Pompeii, there is not much prospect of any further excavation being undertaken on the spot, 180 POMPEII THE AMPHITHEATRE 181 as excavation is a costly process and nothin^-r of a remunerative character would be likely to be found. The inscriptions on such of these tombs as are still visible were published in the Atti dell' Accademia del Lincei iSSj, One of them referred to a strayed horse which might be re- covered by its owner on application to the proprietor of the farm by the Sarnus ; the me- morial inscriptions were in many cases in memory of people who belonged to Nuceria, which leads us to conjecture that the bodies of the victims of the Nucerine riot were cremated on the spot and the ashes placed in these sepulchres. The Amphitheatre of Pompeii (1749, 181 3-1 6) is not a very remarkable one, and certainly does not compare favourably with the Coliseum at Rome or with the interesting building of the same character at Pozzuoli; but as a feature in the history of the town it deserves careful study. We have noted already that in Pompeii , as in most towns, the public games were held in the Forum before the Amphitheatre was erected; but as might be expected the dedication of spe- cial buildings to these shows added immensely to their magnificence and popularity. The Romans probably got the idea of their gladiatorial combats from the Etruscans, who \ V ■'■/ f offered human sacrifices at the tombs of their friends ; and such sacrifices appear to have been the origin of the gladiatorial contests. The step between butchering human beings in cold blood and making them fight till they killed each other, is not a very great one, and no doubt by de- grees many spectators would be attracted to see the combats, until eventually these shows became regular pageants held in honour of important personages who often left money by will to pay for them; the idea being that the hero should have someone to wait upon him in the next world; and frequently for the same reason a horse was butchered, so that he might have a steed to carry him if he required one ; for the ancients did not disallow a future state to the lower creation. A strange survival of this custom is observable in military funerals at home where the charger follows his master to the grave, and if he has been a favourite, is usually shot afterwards- The brutality of the contests in the later ti- mes was a part of the general degradation of the Romans, w^ho not content with the innocent contests of the Circus w^hich they had derived from the Greeks, seem to have developed the more cruel and degrading sports of the Amphi- theatre from their own debased imaginations. It is necessary to mark the distinction which existed 182 POMPEII THE AMPHITHEATRE 183 between the games of the Greek Pentathlum, which consisted of racing and other athletic exercises, and the shows of the Amphitheatre, which although they varied in different periods, were always cruel and generally utterly revolt- ing. It is true that before the Amphitheatres the Romans used to have similar brutal shows in the Circus, but this was putting the Circus to a use entirely unknown to the Greeks, and a use moreover for which its long shape, with a wall running down the middle, especially unfitted it. At Rome successive amphitheatres were built of wood and it was not till the reicrn of Ve- spasian that the Flavian Amphitheatre was com- menced, and that was not finished till the reign of Titus. But the Coliseum even in its present ruinous condition, is a building so vast and so imposing that we must banish all recollection of it from our minds, if we desire to form an idea of the comparatively small structure at Pompeii. The sports held in both of them were identical, and it will be interesting to consider these before we inquire into the plan of the building in which they were held. The gladiators were a class of slaves specially trained for these combats in schools such as those we have already described. The lanista or trainer let out his troop on the occasion of a * -. .' * 4' . '''■»■' ■ ^i^ <> *- \ festival being given either by public officials, who gave them to gain favour with the populace, or by private persons who caused them to be held in honoi?r of their deceased relatives. These shows extended from 264 b. c. to the time of Honorius when they were finally suppressed, but they seem to have reached the climax of their splendour in the first century of our era. The Gladiators derived their name from the gladius or short sword with which they fought, and were divided into several classes according: to the nature of the contests in which they were engaged. Sometimes they fought in groups, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in chariots or on horseback, now in armour now without armour; and it was not uncommon to set men to fight blindfold to amuse the people. They were also frequently armed with the weapons of other nations , as for example those of the Thracians or of the Samnites; and one peculiar style of combat was carried out by the use of the lasso, which as a matter of skill must have been an interesting contest, had not the conclusion of it been so gruesome and terrible. We will conclude the list with a mention of the Retiarii who fought with a net in which they endeavoured to entangle their enemy, and when so disabled they ran him through with a trident. BA-^ j,.*^ '"^jj^a—MfellMMJM 184 POMPEII There was another use to which some am- phitheatres and notably that of Pozzuoli and probably that of Cumae also were put, namely the Natimachia, or sea fight, but as the amphi- theatre of Pompeii was not adapted to this cruel sport, we need only explain that the arena was flooded with water and that boats filled with armed men rowed in from either end and their crews hacked each other to pieces till the arena became a lake of blood. The Naumachia was eventually put down on account of the great waste of slaves occasioned by it, and the edict suppressing it was probably anterior to the con- struction of the Pompeian arena. It is indeed hardly to be believed how so civilised a race as the Romans of the first century could take delight in such horrible scenes, but so it was; and when after a hard fight the vanquished wretch lay prostrate at the feet of the victor, an appeal was made to the spectators who if he had fought well would sometimes let him off, but if he had shown the slightest timidity or cowardice, would turn down their thumbs to indicate that he must be slain.* His opponent then ran him through ; a hook was attached to * The authorities vary as to whether « thumbs up > or « thumbs down » stood as the sign for mercy or the reverse. THE AMPHITHEATRE 185 ♦-1 I his corpse and he was drawn out of the arena. In very many cases the sports were advertised to be held sine missione, and then no quarter at all was given. It is scarcely possible to believe the number of men reported to have been shown in the arena on great occasions, but Dion Cassius states that when the triumph of Trajan over the Daci was celebrated by games, more than ten thousand men were exhibited! This will be best understood in modern times by stating that the number of men was about equivalent to ten infantry regiments of the line marching past at their full war strength; a number sufficient to make up a very respectable review in the present day. If these figures are not exaggerated we can hardly imagine the fearful scene that must have occurred as troop after troop entered the fatal arena, and fought for dear life in the centre of an excited throng of bloodthirsty spectators. A gladiator was always looked down upon, nor could he ever attain equestrian rank; and though Cicero holds up their courage and fear- lessness of death to admiration, there can be no doubt that a certain stigma attached itself thejj, as now, to the pugilistic profession. About the middle of the first century, a class of amateurs 186 POMPEII THE AMPHITHEATRE 187 sprang up who used to appear publicly in the arena and who fought no doubt with blunted or wooden weapons. It is said that Nero -who was a great patron of the games appeared personally in the arena, and this may perhaps be the ru- diment from which the mediaeval tournament sprang, for in the days of chivalry the most noble were not ashamed to seek renown in the lists. We must now pass on to other purposes for ^ w^hich the Amphitheatres were used. Of these the chief was the Venatio, often called legitima in the Pompeian inscriptions , though in what sense legitima we are not able to decide. This Venatio which literally means « hunting scene » is particularly interesting in Christian history as having been the origin of Christians being thrown to the wild beasts ; a custom which probably arose from the fact that persons of this persuasion declined to fight as gladiators, which the captives from the more savage races such as the Gauls and the Daci willingly did. The Venatio was a very favourite pastime of the Romans and appears to have been introduced in 25 1 B. c, when in common with the crladia- o torial shows it was held in the Circus. The great Venatio of Julius Caesar is said to have lasted five days, and the animals exhibited included giraffes, then seen in Italy for the first time. ) We have mention at various periods of elephants, lions, "hippopotami, rhinoceri and crocodiles being hunted in the Circus at Rome. Julius Caesar introduced bull-fights, and Augustus showed a snake fifty cubits in length. The number of animals including ostriches, bears, deer, boars and wild goats reported slain on great occasions IS beyond belief. The paijitings at Pompeii fre- quently represent groups from these scenes, but the most important representation of them is (or rather was) a stucco basrelief on the tomb of Scaurus which has long since perished, though it was fortunately engraved by Mazois in his large work on Pompeii, and copies of it are re- produced in the principal illustrated books on the subject. In the Imperial Venationes, the Cir- cus was planted with trees stuck into the ground to simulate a forest ; whether this was done in the Pompeian Amphitheatre we have no means of judging, but the advertisements of the games at Pompeii make it clear that the Venatio was as popular in that city as in other parts of the Empire. The following is a translation of the most important of these advertisements which has survived to us: Twenty pairs of gladiators paid for by Dec! m us Lu- cretius Satrius Valens, priest , (flamtn) in the time of 188 POiMPEI THE AMPHITflEATRE 189 Nero the son of Csesar Augustus ; and ten pairs of gla- diators, paid for by Decimus Lucretius the son of De- cimus Valens will light at Pompeii on the nth, 13th and 14th of April. There will be a proper hunting scene (legitima Vena- tio) and the awnings will be spread. Celer-Emilius Celer writer of inscriptions, wrote this by moonlight. Turning to the history of the Pompeian Am- phitheatre we find the site given to the people by Valgus and Porcius the Duumvirs in the time of Sulla, but the construction of so large and costly a building took a number of years, for we find the games still being held in the -Forum in b. c. 19, and we further find a record of a vote of the Decurions in b. c. 6 for pro- ceeding with the construction of the Amphithea- tre, showing that though it may have been in use it was not yet complete. The principal en- trance to the building was at the northern end of the ellipse, and leads by a sloping road into the arena below. Here the statues of Pansa father and son, were discovered with inscriptions record- ing their official positions in the city. These statues are no longer extant, but the inscriptions remain, together with a large number oi graffiti among which we notice a record of the unanimous election of Paquius Proculus a baker of Pompeii to be Duumvir, and an elegiac couplet congra- > ! u tulating the wall that it had remained standin in spite of the nonsense of so many scribblers: « Admiror paries te non cecidisse minis Qui tot scriptorum taedia sustineas » There was a similar entrance to the Arena on the southern side, and from both of them passages ran to the right and the left giving access to the dens beneath the seats. The twenty cunei or wedges into which the ellipse was divided were presented at various periods by different magistrates on their acces- sion to office, and their munificence was recorded by inscriptions which it is unnecessary to re- produce. The Amphitheatre was divided horizontally into three ranks, and on the top of the lower wall was an iron railing to secure the spectators from any of the wild beasts jumping out of the arena into the audience. This wall was once stuccoed and painted with appropriate scenes, but these have all vanished. The small door in the centre of the ellipse was that through which the dead bodies of the combatants were drawn with an iron hook called uncus to a circular mortuary cell beneath the seats. It was a common form of insult in Roman 190 POMPEII times to tell a man that he was « fit only for the hook ». Of this slang expression there is an instance on the walls of a hoiise which we shall notice hereafter. Of the exterior appearance of the building we are able to form a tolerable idea from an interesting fresco now in the Entresol of the Naples Museum , from which it would appear that a boulevard encompassed three sides of the building, beneath the trees of w^hich sellers of refreshments erected their stalls and awnings in precisely the fashion of the modern Neapolitan acqtiaiiiolo!^ The remainder of the ellipse is girt by the fortifications. The arcades beneath the seats were let out by the ^^diles as w^e learn from the inscriptions painted up in them of which the following is a specimen : PERMISSV. ^DILIVM . CN . ANINIUS . FORTUNATUS .OCCUP. By permission of the ^diles, Cneius Aninius Fortu- natus occupies {this arch). * The drawing alluded to is so roughly done that it is unsafe to rely upon it as a proof of the relative po- sitions of the Amphitheatre and the city walls. It was evidently drawn from memory, and was intended as a record of the riot, and not as a picture of the Amphi- theatre. THE AMPHITHEATRE 191 <) %1 4 f^ i 11 1 |v< J i V i r The galleries of the Amphitheatre are acces- sible from the outside , and it is desirable to mount the steps in order to appreciate the scale of the building, which can be best done from this point by sending one of the party to the centre of the arena. The fresco to which we have already alluded gives us a rough idea of an historic scene which took place in this Amphitheatre in the year 69 A. D. in the reign of Nero. It would appear that by the munificence of one Livinius Regulus some sports were to be held at Pompeii , and that the inhabitants of the neighbouring important town of Nuceria attended them in considerable numbers. We do not know how the dispute between the Pompeians and their visitors arose; but at any rate from words, the factions seem to have come to blows; and the fresco repre- sents a free fight taking place upon the seats, and in the vicinity of the buildings. Whether the gladiators joined in and added a professio- nal element to the contest we cannot say, but it is certain that the Nucerines were defeated with great slaughter, and that the riot assumed alarming proportions. So much so indeed, that the matter was referred to the Senate at Rome, who brought it before the Emperor: he referred it back to the Senate, and in the end an edict 192 POMPEII THE GATE OF NOLA 193 was issued prohibiting games in the Pompeian Amphitheatre for ten years. This edict after being in force throughout the years when the city was deserted on account of the earthquake, would expire in 69 a. d. and consequently the sports had been taken up again only some ten years before the destruction of the town. It is calculated that the building was constructed to hold twenty-thousand people and it is certain fhat it was frequently thronged with spectators. The usual manner of opening the programme tor the day was by a procession of the perfor- mers who marched round the arena; and saluted the giver of the games who occupied the post of honour by the statue of the Emperor. This with the Curule chair, the ancient emblem of the Kingly power, was placed over the principal entrance, if the monarch were not present in person. The form of salutation was Morituri te salutamtis. < We who are about to die salute you > an inexpressibly pathetic form of address which one might have thought sufficient to recall even a Roman Emperor to a sense of shame. The proceedings usually began by a sham fight with wooden swords , to get the men's blood up , and to excite the spectators. The gladiators were then matched and the bloody business of the day was begun. And when it %^ #> i m was all over and the excited throng made their way homewards discussing the sights they had witnessed, and gloating over the horrors of that awful Arena, the dead were drawn out from the charnel house and burnt, the wounded were conveyed to the Ludiis Gladiatorius , the la- nista counted up his gains, and set them against the value of the human beings who had been slain ; the giver of the entertainment calculated the cost of the show and how many votes it would secure him at the coming election, as he bowed right and left to the populace who gave him Imperial honours as the hero of the hour! The Gate of Nola(i748) sometimes miscalled the Gate of Isis, is on the eastern side of the city, in that part of the wall where the defences were the weakest and the town consequently most liable to surprise. On this account the construction of it is different from that of the other gates , and strategically speaking much superior to it. The Gate with its arch is completely within the walls, and these run out for several yards beyond it, the paved way between them sloping outwards , and the cul- de-sac formed by the walls being flanked by two towers and some very solid masonry. The walls moreover form a sharp angle at the outer '3 194 POMPEII THE GATE OF HERCULANEUM 195 extremity of the cul-de-sac , so that no enemy could approach the gate without being taken in flank. The keystone of the arch on the inner side is adorned with a female head in high re- lief, which owing to an error in reading the Oscan inscription which was once beside it, was long thought to be Isis , by whose name the Gate has accordingly been called. Overbeck corrects the error made, and sets out the in- scription thus: V. Popidiis V. med: tut: aama- fluffed isidu profatted. < Vibius Popidius son of Vibius, Medix tuticus (equivalent to the Roman /TAWe) allowed this gate to be built and ap- proved it. > It will be seen from the above that the word iszdu profatted in the inscription misled the first discoverers who supposed that it referred to a Prophet of Isis, and made them recognise that goddess in the female head which Overbeck with much greater probability claims to be a Mmerva. He sees upon the head traces of a helmet, but the upper part of it is now so mu- tilated that we confess that we cannot follow him here. As the other Gates we have noticed were under the patronage of Minerva, there is every probability that this one was also dedi- cated to her. /■s Vt 9 "m^ \: J «i ^v t The Gate of Herculaneum (1763-64-69) was un- doubtedly the most modern and in the later times the most important of the city gates. It is quite different in character from all the others , and was most probably built in its present form after the siege of Sulla. It appears likely that when he became master of the position, his first step was to dismantle the city; and it does not seem too much to conjecture that he caused the outer walls of the watch-towers to be pulled down, destroyed the gate which once stood on the site of the pre- sent Gate of Herculaneum, ruined the wall from thence to the Stabian Gate, and felt secure that the defences of the city could give no further trouble. The walls were never repaired, and remain now as Sulla left them; but the Romans in later times rebuilt the Gate because it had become the chief business entrance to their city, and because it opened upon the Street of the Tombs, which besides being their € Westminster Abbey >, was the principal public walk they had outside their walls. The Gate has three divisions , one in the centre which formed the carriage-way, and two narrower ones to the right and left of it for foot passengers. These entrances had wooden doors at the city end of the archway, while on 196 POMPEII THE WALLS OF POMPEII 197 the outer side the central arch was closed by a portcullis, and the side arches with iron doors. There was no attempt to make the Gate into a fortification. It was merely an ordinary gate- way, and never had any military pretension about it at all, and certainly never could have had any great architectural beauty to recommend It. Nor were any inscriptions found to give us any trace of its history, which is accordingly to be' conjectured- only from the character of the ruins. The Walls of Pompeii may be conveniently studied from the eastern side of this Gate, and fortu- nately this is the most perfect part of them as well as the most accessible. Their construction is admirable, although the work of successive ages may readily be traced upon them. The lower part is of huge blocks of travertine so neatly joined together without mortar that some writers have referred them to the Pelasgic period. A comparison with the Pelasgic wall at Scauro near Gaeta, leads us to conclude that this im- putes to them a higher antiquity than can fairly be claimed for them, but they have been subjected to many modifications in the course of their eventful history, and owing to the alteration of the surface of the ground by the great eruption, «) M \ ^» I M I ,«• they present to our minds many problems which in the existing state of our knowledge are not easy of solution. We cannot be sure whether there was a trench outside the wall but in all probability there was, because the walls being double with an earth- work between them it would seem certain that the builders would make a trench if only to obtain the necessary earth for their rampart. The battlements are of different stone from the lower part of the walls, but both are of remarkably good construction , and the frequency of the towers on the North Side of the city leads us to infer that this part of the fortification required to be of greater strength than the rest as the nature of the ground at this point did not adapt itself to strategical necessities. The outer face of the towers has been pulled down so that its construction cannot even be conjectured, but it is clear that they were two stories in height, as this is indicated by the remains of the stair- case, while the first tower had a secret way into the town by means of a tunnel within the a£-£-er, which opens into the ground-floor room of the first house on the right as one descends the wall from this tower towards the city. That such a passage could be of much practical use may be reasonably doubted, and we think that 198 POMPEII on inspection it will be admitted that it was a later addition. There is nothing about the house to make us infer that it was the official residence of anyone connected with the garrison , and if it was not, it is hardly easy to understand the object with which such a passage was constructed. There is a legend concerning this passage related by Beule in his book Le Drame dii Vi- suve and repeated in a pamphlet by Ludovico Pepe 1887, which states that the skeletons of a man and his dog were found in this passage, and that the bones of the man had been gnawed by the dog, showing that the man had died first, and that the dog had maintained life for some time upon the corpse of his master. As this pas- sage was discovered more than a hundred years ago, we do not place much faith in the story. \ ic t 4 t I ^<. •#j V V ■i L^ I CHAPTER IX THE STREET OF THE TOMBS Burial and Cremation — The Survey of Suedius — Funeral Rites — The Blue Amphora — The Street of the Tombs — The Sepulchres of Restitutus and Mamia — The House of Frugi — The Ustrinum — The Cenotaph of Calven- tius Quietus— The Bisellium — The Tomb of Ntsvoleia Tyche — The Triclinium of Saturninus — Garlands — Mourning — The House of Diomede — The Ossuary — Samnite Tombs and traces of a Burial petiod — The Inn — The House of the Mosaic Columns — The Tomb of Terentius. Throughout the history of the world, the measure of respect paid to the dead has been an index of the state of civilisation of the living, and the sanctity of the grave has made the tombs of antiquity the treasure-chambers of scientific archaeology. We also find that burial and cremation have shared public favour in well- defined cycles; that a period of cremation has 200 POMPEII succeded a period of burial and vice versa throughout history ; indeed many people assert, that at the present moment the civilised world is entering upon a period of cremation, and that burial , now the rule , will in the next century become the exception. Nearly all the tombs hitherto found at Pom- peii are of cremation periods, for, in the first century, the Christians , following the Jewish custom reintroduced burial,* and of Christianity we have as yet discovered no trace at Pompeii. A few unimportant Samnite tombs, and a few tombs, of an ancient burial period have been discovered near this necropolis , and the vases found in them may be seen in the gallery of * Though the question of Christian burials is foreign to our subject the following reflections will be interesting. In the Gospel of St John xix 40. we read that « they took the body of Jesus and wound it in linen clothes with the spices as the manner of the Jews is to bury», showing that the Jewish and Gentile modes of burial were diverse. Our Lord, moreover, was buried in a tomb hewn out of the rock, the door of which was vertical and secured by a large stone, which had to be « rolled away » before the sepulchre could be entered. That the Christians adhered to this method of sepulture is abun- dantly evident from the catacombs both of Rome and Naples; and as far as we know the Christians never adopted cremation. THE STREET » OF THE TOMBS 201 V >-/ the Pompeii museum (see chap. v.). These date about 2 5o B. c, but in our opinion the majority of the Roman tombs of the necropolis, date from the reign of Vespasian. Our reason for this statement is founded on the following inscription which will be seen on tomb No. 5 on the left hand about twenty yards from the Gate of Herculaneum. It runs as follows: « By Authority of Vespasian, Suedius Clemens Tribune having heard the pleadings and made the measurements, restored to the Republic of Pompeii , the public sites which had been encroached upon by private persons ». It seems perfectly clear from this, that in the time of Vespasian (69 to 79 a. d.), the Pom- peians desired to constitute a public cemetery outside their new Gate, and found that tow^n lands had been usurped by private individuals. They applied to Vespasian, who sent Suedius Clemens the Tribune, to look into the matter. He sur- veyed the ground, put up the inscription at the point where his survey commenced , and the grateful citizens placed his statue over the in- scription. (See Naples Museum No 6235). Again the tomb next above this inscription is that of Mamia, the public priestess, by whom the so-called temple of Mercury was dedicated. It is confessedly open to doubt whether this is, or 202 POMPEII is not, the temple to the < genius of Augustus > which we learn from a stray inscription was dedicated by her , but there can be no doubt that she dedicated a temple to the aforesaid genius somewhere or other in Pompeii; and the fact that she had a sepulchre given her by the town , is evident from the inscription on her tomb. Hence we may certainly argue that her's was one of the earliest tombs outside this gate, and most certainly erected after the deification of Augustus. This Emperor died a. d. 14 and Vespasian succeeded to the throne fiftyfive years afterwards. The first tomb outside the gate was that of Cerrinius Restitutus, an Augustal, and was the- refore of course of a post-Augustan period; the next was of Veius a military Tribune ; the next of Marcus Porcius who was probably the father of Mamia, as the letters p. f. on her tomb seem to stand for Porci filia; and then we come to that of Mamia, and immediately afterwards we find the inscription of Suedius Clemens. We think we are accordingly justified in the inference that Suedius Clemens erected his Ve- spasian inscription at the point where his survey began, and that the encroachments complained of commenced lower down than the tomb of Mamia. The nature of the ground coincides with THE STREET OF THE TOMBS 203 e- tr. I \ this hypothesis, for there is a well-paved road to the left which led down towards the sea between the tomb of Mamia and the inscription of Suedius. To sum up the matter w^e think it certain that the Gate of Herculaneum was built after the time of Augustus , and that the first four tombs on the left, were before the time of Ve- spasian. That after his accession the Pompeians were anxious to extend their cemetery and ap- plied to the Emperor to rescue the town lands from the encroachments of private persons; and that the Emperor thereupon appointed Suedius Clemens to inquire into the matter. The result of his inquiry was the establishment of the street as we now find it, and the tombs beyond his inscription are consequently all of a date within ten years of the destruction of the city. In order to arrive at a correct understanding of this remarkable necropolis it will be advisable to say a few words on the funeral customs of the Romans. Funerals were of two kinds, public and pri- vate; the former being paid for by the State, the latter by the family of the deceased. It is abundantly evident that the street we are considering was primarily intended for public funerals , and that we have not yet hit upon 204 POMPEII THE STREET OF THE TOMBS '205 the necropolis used by the upper class of private citizens. Experimental excavations have disclosed some isolated tombs in other places, but noth- ing like a regular cemetery has yet been dis- covered, and it is confidently believed that no more public tombs exist in this street beyond those already excavated. It is true that these public tombs \\ere in fact family vaults in which many persons were buried besides the man they were originally granted to, but there must be a necropolis somewhere else for wealthy people who were unconnected with political life. We will now consider the public funerals of the Romans , premising that the private cere- monies w^ould probably differ but little from them; excepting that they w^ould usually be conducted on a smaller scale , and with less pomp and circumstance. When a man of importance died , a cypress tree was placed at his door in token of mourn- ing, his body was anointed and laid out, he was dressed in his official robes, and lay in state in ithe vestibule of his house with his feet towards the door. A coin was placed in his mouth, as an earnest of the honesty with which the soul would pay its way across the Styx , and this coin is very valuable to us as indicating approx- imately the date of the burial. ^ When the day of the funeral arrived , the Master of the Ceremonies at the house of the deceased marshalled the procession which was headed by the lic"^rs , dressed in black, and followed by musicians .\nd paid Mourners, male and female who gave vcr.' to v* wildest ex- pression of grief, and chanti^J a t'^^^ -nl di yr in honour of the deceased. Another ciass of professionals wearing wax masks preceded the corpse and were held to represent the shades of the ancestors of the defunct , and after these follow^ed 1 mimic, who imitated the words and actions w^hich had been characteristic of the departed in his lifetime. Next came the Liberti or freedmen w^hom the deceased had liberated during his life, or who had obtained their liberty under his will. These were sometimes very nu- merous, as by this means a Roman added pomp to his funeral at no expense to himself; a weak- ness of human nature which finds its vent in our day in charitable bequests , too frequently given by testators at the expense of their near relations. The bier, which was often of a most costly description, was carried by the relations or by persons of importance , to the Forum, where funeral orations were delivered before proceeding to the cemetery. On arrival there, the body was placed on a 206 POMPEII THE STREET OF THE TOMBS 207 funeral pyre in the Ustrinum , an enclosure where the cremation was carried out. Here the body was sprinkled wnth perfumes and wine, and the chief mourner with averted face set light to the pile, upon which the relatives continued to heap offerings till the corpse was entirely consumed. The ashes were then collected and put in a cinerary urn , which was placed in a niche in the tomb. The site of the tomb was given by the town, but the tomb itself seems to have been erected by the family. The cinerary urns of antiquity form a most interesting study. In South Italy they may be reckoned as extending (with some intervals) over five hundred years, but in our present work we have only to do with those of the first cen- tury of our era. These were of glass, lead, or terra-cotta, the glass urns being sometimes en- cased in lead. Specimens of these with human ashes in them are exhibited in the Naples Mu- seum. The most important cinerary vase of the Roman period found in Pompeii is the celebrated blue amphora with exquisite designs in white glass fused upon it. It is similar in character to the Portland Vase now in the British Museum though less pure in design. The latter was found in a tomb near Rome. They are the only two specimens extant of •1 4, 1^ >1 f ^% % work of this kind adapted to this purpose. The Portland vase represents the meeting of Peleus and Thetis on Mount Ida; the Pompeii vase a vintage scene performed by graceful Cupids. Both are exquisite, but the Portland vase is the more classic of the two. The Street of the Tombs is the only road outside the town w^hich has been cleared to any important extent. It is a wide road with broad footways carefully protected by a wide curb- stone and lined on both sides with the tombs of important officials. There were besides the tombs four houses in this street , namely , the houses of Frugi and Diomede on the left, and the house of the Mosaic Columns, and a larae building thought to have been a suburban inn on the right. Of these the House of Frugi was excavated long ago, and again filled up, the House of Diomede is one of the largest and most perfect in the excavations, and the other two are almost devoid of interest. The most important tombs are on the left or western side of the street, and commence with the tomb of Marcus Cerrinius Restitutus , an Augustal. This would scarcely be worth mention- ing, were it not that it was long supposed to be a sentry-box, and the legend of the soldier dying at his post was invented and applied to it. 20S POMPEII THE STREET OF THE TOMBS 209 There is in the Naples Museum a helmet much oxydised by lapilli which was long shown with a skull in it, as the helmet worn by the above- named sentry. This fraud gave currency to the story ; but the skull has long since been removed from the helmet, and the legend is falling into well-deserved oblivion. The seat and tomb of Mamia are important features of the street, the former being a stone hemicycle of the usual character with an easily legible inscription cut all round the back of it in unusually large letters MAMIAE . P . F . SACERDOTI . PUBLICAE . LOCVS . SEPVLTVR . DATVS . DECVRIONVM . DECRETO . To Mamia the daughter of Porcus, public priestess, a place for sepulture was given by decree of the Decurions. The tomb stands behind the seat and is a handsome building surrounded by pillars of the Corinthian order, and having an area all round it. The ashes of Mamia were in a clay urn with a leaden cover, and occupied the niche of honour in the centre of the tomb; round it were ten other niches, and in the area of the tomb as well as in the vacant space behind the hemicycle a great number of people had been buried show- iJr j1 t, ing certainly that Mamia's death must have taken place several years before the destruction of the city; for it is obvious that her's would be the first ashes deposited there; and the fact that among the others we find Istacidius with his son and daughter, three members of the Melissea family, and two of the Bucci, leads us to con- clude that the hospitality of Mamia extended to the ashes of her friends for at least a genera- tion, lliis would make her tomb date about a. D. 40, and justify our former conjecture concern- ing it. If Suedius Clemens had left us a plan of his work instead of his portrait , he would have been better entitled to our o^ratitude and saved us from a good deal of barren conjecture; but it is quite clear that his survey gave general satisfaction, or his portrait would not have oc- cupied so honourable a position. Immediately below it , was the garden and Villa of Marcus Crassus Frugi, a house we have mentioned as having been excavated in the early days and filled up again afterwards. It w^as a magnificent house, complete with shops and upper story, surrounded by trees and terraces, with a large water tank of its own , and a bathing establishment where salt or fresh water baths might be enjoyed at pleasure. The inscription 14 210 POMPEII THE STREET OF THE TOMBS 211 relating to these baths was found built into one of the walls of the garden and evidently not in its original place. It runs thus: THERMS. M . CRASSI . FRVGI AQUA . MARINA . ET . BALN AQVA . DULCI . lANVARIVS . L « Warm baths of M. Crassus Frugi. With salt water and fresh water baths. Kept by the freedman Januarius. » The house was adorned with the best single- figure paintings yet discovered , namely the famous Bacchantes or dancing girls , the Roper- dancers, and the charming groups of Centaurs as well as the famous theatrical mosaics by Dioscorides of Samos^ which are, as far as we know, the only signed mosaics of antiquity. It is much to be regretted that so remarkable a house should no longer be visible , and the more so because it is reputed to have been the Pompeian villa of Cicero , and therefore has a special historical interest. There are two plau- sible reasons why this should have been Cicero's house; the first, that he states that if his sight were keen enough he would be able to see Baiae from his Pompeian villa, and this observation < ;.ii"^i suits with no other site so well as it does .with this one. The second reason is that it was outside the walls, and he tells us that when he was there during the Civil War, Ninnius Quadratus told him that the Centurions of the cohorts stationed at Pompeii desired him to remain till next day, in order that they might give up themselves and their city to him. He suspected intrigue on their part, and having no confidence in them, left the place before daybreak so that they should not be able to find him. Now it is unlikely that so important a person should have been able to leave the city unobserved had his house been within the walls, whereas from the house of Frugi he could no doubt readily escape with- out detection. It his naturally only a matter of fanciful in- terest which particular house was inhabited by Cicero, but there is a problem arising out of this necropolis which has never been satisfactorily answered, and that is where the cremation ground was. We know that the spot where the bodies were burnt was called Ustrinum by the Romans, and we known further that some of their tombs were built with a private burning place beside them. No such tomb occurs at Pompeii, and consequently there must have been a public place where the process was carried on. In our 212 POMPEir days a Crematorium is a closed furnace where the body is incinerated without smell and with- out difficulty. Indeed if the electric light su- persedes gas; our present gasworks would w^ith very little modification make excellent crematoria^ but in Roman times there were no such conve- niences, and the bodies were simply burned upon a heap of logs, and in the open air. Any one who has enjoyed an evening drive at Bombay knows that the process is not altogether inodo- rous, and we can hardly suppose that wealthy citizens such as those who inhabited the House of Frugi or the Villa of Diomede would have tolerated a nuisance of the kind at their doors. Hence w^e must discard the notion that the Ustrimtm was behind the tomb of Scaurus, and w^e must read between the lines when Professor Fiorelli places Ustrino in his index, and w^e find on turning to the text ; << 35- 36- On the right is a monument either destroyed or unfinished, and an area surrounded by a wall ». The Professor's silence is eloquent; and means to say that he has not beefi able to identify the locality of the ustrinum. And for our own part we feel confident that the place of burning is one of the many problems of Pompeii which still await solution. 't I, I i )i \ THE STREET OF THE TOMBS 213 It is scarcely worth while in a modern w^ork to give the details of tombs wdien such details are nonexistent. It is most unfortunate that the decorations of some of the tombs being in stucco have perished from the weather, but pictures of their reliefs will be found in the illustrated books, copied from the old but important w^ork of Mazois on Pompeii. We must not how^ever pass over No. 26 w^hich is the Cenotaph of Calventius Quietus, because cenotaphs represent an interesting phase of the posthumous honours paid to the deceased by the Romans. The word signifies « an empty tomb > and such buildings w^ere habitually erected to people w^ho had passed away without having burial rites. Thus if a man were drowned at sea or killed in battle, a tomb was erected for him at home in the belief that this would mve his o spirit rest, and a safe transit across the Styx. The idea is pathetic , and is frequently made use of by the poets, sometimes by making the unburied corpse re-appear, sometimes, as in Horace's well-know^n ode, by making the spirit beg the passing stranger to cast a handful of sand upon the unburied corpse , in token that rites of some kind had been performed upon it, so that the wandering soul might have rest. We do not know anything about Calventius 214 POMPEII Quietus further than the fact that he was not buried in his tomb, and besides this , such of his history as is related by his laconic epitaph which runs as follows; « To Calventius Quietus Augustal. To him, on account of his liberality, the honour of the bisellium was granted by de- cree of the Decurions and by the consent of the people. » It is necessary that we should here explain what is meant by the < honour of the bisellium > a phrase which occurs on some of the tombs in the street before us. The only classical writer who makes use of the word bisellium is Varro, but there is no doubt that the right of using this seat on public occasions was granted to important persons by the Decurions in provincial towns. A representation of the seat in basrelief with its footstool will be observed on the tomb of Naevoleia No. 22 and two specimens of bi- sellia, one adorned with the heads of horses, the other with the heads of asses, may be seen in the Naples Museum. The British Museum also has a very elegant one, much lighter than those from Pompeii, the provenance of which is unknown , but it came to the nation with the Temple collection. The word bisellium would naturally indicate a seat for two people, but it is obvious from the dimensions of those which THE STREET OF THE TOMBS 215 V (♦ are extant, that no two ordinary persons could occupy so small a seat at one time with anything approaching to dignity. The tomb which to-day will naturally claim most attention as being in the best preservation is that numbered 22, which is the tomb of Naevoleia Tyche and the Munatii. On the south- ern side is the bisellium we have mentioned, and on the front the portrait of Naevoleia and a funeral procession of public functionaries and other men and women with offerings, executed jn bas-relief upon a marble slab. The inscription beneath states that Naevoleia Tyche while she was alive erected this monument for herself and for Munatius Faustus, who was an Augustal and a resident in the suburb. The inscription further says that the Decurions with the consent of the people decreed him the bisellium on account of his merits. The northern end of the tomb dis- plays a vessel entering port with the sailors on her yard brailing up her sail. This is spoken of by many writers as an allusion to the com- mercial pursuits of Munatius, but it appears to us far more likely to be a touching symbol of he close of life, typically expressing the entry of the soul into rest. Adjoining this tomb is a court containing an open air triclinium of the usual character, oc- 216 POMPEII THE STREET OF THE TOMBS 217 cupying a space about equivalent to that taken up by one of the tombs. The inscription found over the door states that the Freedman Calli- stus dedicated it to Saturninus. It seems most probable that it was used for funeral feasts, and that the effigy of the deceased was placed upon the brick pillar in the centre. Funeral feasts were certainly held by the Romans, and a por- tion was put on one side for the deceased and left on his tomb for him. This portion , when the relatives were out of sight , frequently fell to the share of some vagrant, who, to say the least of it, wanted it more than the dead man did. There was however in Roman times no epithet more opprobrious than bustiarius a term applied to those who obtained surreptitious nour- ishment from this source, and were free enough from superstition to enjoy the meal. An emblem we frequently notice on Roman tombs is the Serta or garlands (the word being always used in the plural). These appear to have been very beautiful , and the making of them was a regular trade in ancient times. They took the form either of crowns or of festoons, and were used for festive decorations as well as for sepulchral adornment. We can trace the leaves, flowers and fruits of which they were made by examining their marble representation, I '■=>• % and we can have no doubt that they were woven by skiful hands. The Romans used mourning- much as we do, except that the men wore it only for a few days, during which time they did not shave nor did they have their hair cut. The women wore white and left off their ornaments , and in the case of a husband or a parent they continued to wear mourning for twelve months. Apart from this , the Romans seem to have succeeded in banishin^r the horrible from their o reverence for the dead. It appears by a strange irony to have been reserved to our later Chri- stianity to introduce the ghastly element into our cemeteries. In the Roman time we find neither skulls nor cross-bones upon the tombs. Mazois gives a picture of a stucco relief from Pompeii representing a woman standing over the skele- ton of a child; but it is we believe the only instance on record and may very likely represent a particular incident, as the child is lying on a heap of stones. The early Christian tombs show the palm of victory, the ship in full sail, or the seven-branch candlestick , pointing beyond the grave to the future life, but they never display the emblems of mortality. We think that we have now given sufficient general details to enable our readers to master 218 POMPEII THE HOUSi: OF DIOMEDE 219 the remaining tombs on the western side of the street at their leisure and to understand all that they will see in them. We shall therefore pro- ceed at once to notice the interesting villa at the end of the street. The House of Diomede (1771-74) is the last an- cient house in the Street of the Tombs.* Whether the house actually belonged to Marcus Arrius Diomede or not , we cannot pretend to say. Certain it is that his family were buried in front of it, and certain also that a man of his name was one of the important people belonging to the Pagus Augustus Felix, the suburb founded in 7 B. c, outside Gate of Herculaneum. The house was a sumptuous one. On the upper of the two remaininor floors was an atrium with fourteen pillars opening on a fine terrace. Here were two well-tops which led into the large cisterns below. Here was the shrine of his house- hold gods among which Minerva reigned para- mount; and next to the atrium a miniature bath- ing establishment containing all the departments of the public baths neatly arranged on a small scale. Abundant water was laid on to the plunge * We have slated above that no ceilings are standing at Pompeii. This is mistake. Two interesting ceilings will be found in this house. %^%'X ^A^^ii "."s.\^[;^' ,^N ; Kf 4 bath, and excellent arrangements were made for heating the hot chamber. There was even a small kitchen range to cook the warm drinks with which the Romans stimulated perspiration. All the fittings spoke of ease, wealth, and lux- ury. The principal bedroom had an alcove for the bed which was shut off by a curtain if we are to believe the silent testimony of numerous curtain rings found at the entrance of it. Here too the cosmetic and ointment pots of his wife were found still standing on the table where the hapless woman put them down when she last used them. The upper rooms were the winter quarters of the family; in summer-time they lived in the cool arched rooms below , looking out through the vine-clad cloister upon the beautiful garden. Here was a large fish-pond and a shady bower supported on lofty pillars , and covered no doubt with climbing plants. Round the gar- den was a cloister, cool in summer; and protected from the w^eather in winter. It must have been a charming house , with its picturesque views over sea and land, its large garden and foun- tains, its spacious terraces, its delightful aspect. And it was close to the town too, for five min- utes' walk led one to the Forum, and the front door opened upon the promenade which w^as frequented in the cool of the day by all the L. . ■ »^...». ^■■^^j.^iBaahjya-^-*.-:^ «.^J ^<.^. -. ■■.. w-^^^j •■■,«. .. ^^^.-.i: ■-» .^ ji..:— .■■■ .Mj».jj^A>| 220 POMPEII THE HOUSE OF DiOxMEDE 221 citizens who desired a breath of fresh air. The family were all at home on the afternoon of the 23rd of November a. d. 79; the days were short and it would soon be dark and cheerless out of doors. Ye gods! hark to that sound as of rolling thunder! Behold the darkness gather in the sky as the rain of ashes falls thick and fast around ! See how the house reels as shock after shock of earthquake assails it! Mark how the beams play in their sockets and crush out the walls of the upper story as the building seems to right itself again ! But Diomede maintains his presence of mind for he well remembers the great earthquake of sixteen years ago, and his wife with her wo- man' s wit calls her children together , for did not their cellar remain safe and intact then, and will it not shelter them now? Yes indeed; the house may fall , but that vaulted cellar which runs quite round beneath the cloister of the garden is as safe as the everlasting hills! She is up on the terrace as she speaks , for it is winter, and the vaulted rooms below are cold and damp, so she sends the children down to the cellar, and pauses a moment herself to re- scue her jewel case, while Diomede , followed by his freedman Felix, runs off to his strong- ij \ k < V! room to secure such articles of value as he can carry away. His wife has reached the cellar. She is safe! Her voice sounds shrill as she in- quires if all her children are present and the faces around her are ashy pale in the light of the one lantern which the thoughtful porter has brought with him. < You did well, Janitor, to bring that light, > she says, « is it freshly trimmed ? >. < Aye Ma- dam y>, he replies, for this is our Master's lan- tern which the freedman Januarius carried before him for so many years, and it is always kept ready in case he should want to go into town at night. Januarius was a slave then, and held my office of Janitor. He is a freedman now, and rich. Did he not make a large fortune by ma- naging the baths of Frugi ? ». € Thou too shalt be a freedman for this thy service, but go seek thy master; he only is missing. We are eighteen here: all the household but thy master and Felix. He did but go to fetch some valuables from his strong-room, some gold from his area, where is he ? » « Felix was with him > replied the Janitor , reluctantly approaching the cellar door. <( Stay I hear my master call! he falls, he struggles! >. < Open the door to him! >, shrieks his mistress, and Janitor obeys her com- mand in time to see his master and Felix writh- 090 POMPEII ing on the ground; unable to speak, their hands laden with money-bags and treasure, their lamp still flickering in the dust. A sensation of giddiness seizes him. He turns in time to see his mistress and all the family crouching against the wall gasping for breath. Can he close the door ? No ! the falling ash has choked hinge and bolt. He falls backwards, and the last earthly sound which reaches the ears of his Master's family is the dull thud of his body as he falls backwards down the cellar stairs, a corpse ! And there they lay for eighteen-hundred years; father and slave without; mother and children within ; money and jewels , lantern and keys alone remaining to tell their mute tale of tragic suffering and untimely death. The place where this hapless family cowered against the cellar wall may yet be seen; had the plaster process been known when this house was discovered we should have had casts of their bodies, and have been almost able to say that we knew them by sight. They died clinging to one another; the imprint of their clothes was clearly visible, and it is recorded that they had covered their faces as a last hope of keeping away the stifling ashes, and the mephitic exhalations of that ter- rible eruption. But nothing remained of them ; THE HOUSE OF DIOMEDE 223 dust went to dust ; ashes to ashes; their jewelry was found, and a large silvered key now in the Museum, was clenched in their father's right hand, while round him lay the money in gold and silver rescued from that strong box, which was fated never to be opened again. The visitor should not fail to Pfo down into this cellar and it is better to enter it by the southern door, (that is the one nearest to the town) taking care to stoop in passing the lintel which is very low on this side; he will then walk completely round and his eyes will become accustomed to the darkness, so that he will see without difficulty the amphorae against the wes- tern wall , and the marks made by the bodies close to the door at the south-eastern end of the rectangle. Immediately below the House of Diomede is the turn-stile, which used to be the entrance to the excavations before the railway was made, and beyond it, in a modern building, is a col- lection of the human bones found in the city. These are neatly arranged, and anyone desiring to behold a gruesome spectacle can see them through the bars of the door. As we return towards the city we may notice on our left Nos. 30 to 32, where the road be- 224 POMPEII comes suddenly wider. We should conjecture that the smaller road which branches off to the right at this point, was the original way to the town before the wider street was laid down. It is here that the Samnite tombs were found. These were identified by thestyle of vases con- tained in them, some of w^hich were of Nolan ware, others of coarser material. Two bronze coins were also found, having the head of Apollo on one side , and a humanfaced bull on the other. These Samnitic sepulchres would probably date back to 2 5o b. c. Near them were some tombs made of tiles, belonging to a burial pe- riod , and many cinerary urns. It is here no doubt that the more ancient cemetery existed, and we think it most likely that further exca- vation w^ould discover the ustrititnn or burning place, as in all probability traditional custom caused the Romans to use the same spot as their predeccessors had adopted for a similar purpose. The long row of arcades on the left is thought to have been the front of a large inn, situated outside the Gate so that the market people might get ready to enter the city by the time the gate w^as open. There is nothing of interest in the building, which is not completely excavated. A handsome public seat covered with an apse THE HOUSE OF THE MOSAIC COLUMNS 225 <> and originally profusely decorated is the next object of interest. It bears no inscription, and seems to have been put up only for the accom- modation of the public. Next to it is the tomb No. 8, which is a very fine building constructed of large stones, having its entrance on the side away from the road. It bore no inscription, but contained the blue amphora which w^e have al- ready described. The House of the Mosaic Columns contains a very large mosaic fountain and the remains of a few columns; the four perfect columns taken from it are in the Naples Museum. Their construction is very much admired for the technical skill by which the mosaicist obtained so elaborate a pat- tern on a convex surface. The Tomb of Terentius will strike our eye as we approach the Gate. The site and two thousand sesterces were granted him by the town , and the tomb was erected by his wife Fabia , who placed his ashes in a triple urn, the inner one being of glass, the middle one of clay, and the outer one of lead. Experimental excavations made outside the other gates prove that cemeteries exist on the roads leading to the town, notably on the road i^t< 226 POMPEII THE TOMB OF TERENTIUS 227 outside the gate of Stabiae. These were proba- bly all the tombs of private persons. Mommsen has published several of the inscriptions belong- ing to them , and they are in some instances especially interesting, one of them having borne a fine fcasrelief of a venatio and ^gladiatorial contest, given no doubt in honour of the deceased, which wiDuld show that he was a wealthy person. He seems to have been interred in the reign of Tiberius. Another private inscription, now in the Naples Museum (No. 4680) came from a Pom- peian sepulchre, and is an interesting record of a freedman who was probably an important man in his way. The inscription runs thus: . CN . pompeIvs, . pompeIae . CN . MAGNI . F . lIb . ISOCHRYSVS . SIBI . ET POMPeIaE . MAXIMAE . CONLIBERTAE SVAE . FEMINAE . IVCVNDISSIMAE . EX . QUA NIHIL . VMQVAM . DOLvI . NISI . CVM . DECESSIT ET . LIBERTIS . LIBERT ABVSQVE . SVIS H . M . H . N . S « Cneius Pompeius Isochrysus the freedman of Pcmpeia daughter of Cneius Magnus, for himself and his fellow freed-woman and most delightful mate Pompeia Maxima (she never at any time brought grief upon me save when she (died) and his freedmen and women. This se- pulchre ^oes not go to my heirs. » I 1 i. I 1 |7 Ji> ^ 4 It will be observed that he speaks of Pompeia as € femiiia » and not as < tixor > showing that he had not contracted a recognised marriage with her. The letters h. m. h. n. s. at the end of the inscription stand for the words Hoc mo- numeftttim heredes non sequitiir, < This sepulchre does not go to my heirs >. The old freedman did not wish to be intruded upon after his death, and accordingly specified exactly for whose be- nefit he had built his vault. An exhaustive work on the tombs of antiquity would be a great boon to archaeology, and we commend the subject to the consideration of such British antiquaries as are competent to compile such a book. It may be taken for cer- tain that the ancient sepulchres hitherto discovered, numerous as they are , and extending as they do over many centuries, are as nothing to those which are still to be found, and if our present knowledge were redeemed from its chaotic con- dition great assistance would be given to future research. CHAPTER X LITERATURE AND INDUSTRIES Nature of Pompeian Literature — Roman System of Chro- nology — Dated Inscriptions — Soldiers* Discharge— ^Tes- sera of Purpilin — Dated Wiyie-jars. Literary Cur iosities^^ Amatory Elegiac— The Lady of Puteoli — Sneezing Salutation — To a Pretty Girl — A Warning tj Idlers — A Spiteful Gladiator^' Felix the Bearbaiter — Campanians and Nucerines—^ Three Clowns. Election Placards by Trade Gtcilds. Material Trac:s of Jewellers — Carpenters — Fishermen — Barbers — Tailors — Hatters — A ncieji t Music — Dyers — Fullers. Ancient remains of modern industries — Surgery — Writ- ing Materials — Books — Wax Tablets — Usury — Metal Pens — Coachmen and Carters — Bakers — Corii Mills ^^ Ovens — Loaves —The House of the Taujicrs — Allego- rical Mosaic —Shops named by cojijecture — Shops not yet found — Coopers — Blacksmiths — Bootmakers— Sundry Dealers — Fruiterers — Natural History — Glass-blowing. Although no books have been found at Pom- peii, the city contains an abundant and interesting / 7 I •■( LITERATURE AND INDUSTRIES 229 ;> ^ '^m ^ i^^ * — > \] 'm^ literature of its own. No one can possibly contend that a city of this size with its lawyers and doctors, its merchants and its temi:les had no books in it, and we are driven to the conclusion that the ash which enveloped Pompeii destroyed the scrolls of papyrus, while the mud lava which rolled into Herculaneum preserved them. At the same time we must admit that nothing analo- gous to the fine library of Calpurnius Piso, the great liller teur of Herculaneum has been dis- covered in the sister city , nor has any room been found there which seems to have been arranged for the purpose of study. The literature of Pompeii properly so called consists of one scrap of papyrus the characters of which are not susceptible of coherent inter- pretation. Besides this there are the wax tablets found in the house of Jucundus; and last, but not least, the innumerable inscriptions scattered far and wide upon the walls ^and engraved upon the various objects found in the excavations. We have already dealt with a great number of these ; but there are several others w^hich were discovered in localities w^hose small importance does not entitle them to a place in this work, and with some of these we now purpose to deal, by treating of them as detached literary curio- sities. Many verses from the ^Eneid of Virgil •230 POMPEII LITERATURE AND INDUSTRIES 231 and the works of Ovid have been found upon the walls of the town. We do not think it ne- cessary to reproduce these, as the chief interest they have is the proof they afford that the Roman poets were extensively read by the Pompeians, and the particular lines quoted are of no material consequence. We believe w^e are correct in stat- ing that no quotations occur from the Greek poets, and the Greek inscriptions are not very numerous. The most important of them was an original epigram written beneath the picture of the fight of Pan and Eros, of which we published a metrical translation in Mr. Monaco's handbook to the Museum, but we think we may in our present work be content to pass over the Greek inscriptions altogether and confine ourselves to those which are written in Oscan or in Latin. We shall not attempt to reproduce the Oscan character because none but students can read it, but we insert the original Latin of the shorter inscriptions together with a translation giving what we believe to be a correct rendering of them. These translations have all been made expressly for this work, but we are w^ell aware that they are not always the only meaning that can be attached to the words, but only such a meaning as in our opinion seems most natural and probable. 1 iltoaffiiSar \ V Vi It will be noticed that the absence of a defi- nite system of dates causes a great deal of trouble in our work at Pompeii, and gives rise to conjecture where in other circumstances we should have certainty. If w^e could know , for example, when Pansa was ^^Zdile, or Holconius Duumvir, much w^ould be simplified which is now mysterious, much would be straightforward which is now ambiguous; for the dates of the various Duumvirates would give us the epoch of nearly every important building in the city, as the names of the Duumvirs are found upon almost all of them. We have seen that even the tombs are undated, though the age of the oc- cupants is not unfrequently mentioned in the inscriptions. If we seek a reason for this, we shall find it in the cumbrous system by which the Romans reckoned their chronology. The usual w'ay by w^hich we ascertain a Roman date is by the names of the Consuls for the year, just as we distinguish the dates on some of the Greek vases by the names of the Archons. Now it is not impossible that in a town so distant from the metropolis the names of the Consuls might sometimes be uncertain , especially as now and then a Consul held office only for part of a year, a Consul suffectus being appointed in his place. 232 POMPEII LITERATURE AND INDUSTRIES 233 Thus though Tacitus says that « in the second Consulship of Nero and L. Calpurnius Piso few things of importance occurred, thus treating them as having been Consuls for the whole year 57 A. D.; we find on reference to the Pompeian tablets that Nero and Csesius Martialis are spo- ken of as being Consuls for the latter half of that year, a statement on the part of the Pom- peian writer which is contested by many good classical scholars, although the manuscript leaves no room for doubt that the name of Martialis was written advisedly. No doubt however , the leading political people of the city must have known who the Consuls were, just as the lead- ing men of our country towns know who holds the office of Lord Mayor of London, although that also is an annual office and the name of the occupant of it is probably not generally known by the middle classes of our Provincial towns. Hence although we are not surprised that the names of the Consuls do not appear in or- dinary inscriptions, it seems strange that they should not be read on the tombs of official personages, unless it is accounted for by the fact that the ground was given by the town and the tomb erected by the family. Even granting this, one would have expected the names of the Consuls to appear upon the statues erected in the Forum. il f 4f r li H y\ \ hi ! The fact however remains that of the few dated inscriptions discovered in Pompeii some were certainly not written there, but were en- graved upon objects m.ade probably in Rome. Thus we have a steelyard in the Museum, No. 7405 6, gauged in the Capitol at Rome in the eighth Consulate of Vespasian and the sixth of Titus, which corresponds to a. d. 77, or two years before the destruction of Pompeii; there is also a scale of the reign of Claudius, and an important liquid measure of ten pounds , the Congiiis of Vespasian spoken of by Pliny. This was dated in the sixth Consulate of Vespasian and the fourth of Titus, that is to say in a. d. 75. But the most interesting inscription of this kind is in a table-case in the Hall of the Farnese Bull, No. 3706, and is an example of an honourable discharge granted to all the veterans who had fought in the Misenian fleet under SextusLucilius. The document gave to them, their children and their heirs, the privileges of citizenship, and the rights of comiiibiiiniy that is to say of recognised marriage if they had wives, and of contracting recognised marriages if they had not; the condition apparently being that they must have been entitled to twenty-six or more instalments of pay, and must have been among those who served at Paestum whose names were written below. Do- 2.-^ POMPEII mitian and Podius Cascus are stated to have been the Consuls, which gives us the date of the discharge as 71 a. d. and the name of the recipient of the tablet was Garasenus. It is fur- ther stated in the document that the bearer had been described and recognised , and that his name would be found on a bronze inscription fixed on the outer side of the altar of the Julia Gens in the Capitol. This interesting discharge was discovered in a wine-shop near the gate of Stabia in 1874, and the locality in w^hich it w^as found shows perhaps that pensioners in Roman times did not differ materially in their habits from the «. old soldier » of to-day. It is obvious that all three of the above inscriptions were written at Rome, and found their way to Pompeii by accident. A dated inscription of importance may be seen upon a small bone instrument exhibited in the Naples Museum among the checks for thea- tres. Fiorelli thinks it was a tongue -scraper, and states that it was found in 1878. The original inscription runs thus: HILARVS . TURPILIN . SP . ID . QVI C . lUL . P . SER « Hilarus Turpilin, the seventh day before the ides of m ■1* I i ■ 4 ^ l^H 'A> ''M .,m ■¥ -1 w m < 41 9> ! LITERATURE AND INDUSTRIES 235 Quintilis (i. e. the ninth of July) in the Consulate of Julius Caesar and Publius Servilius (i. e. B. c. 48). » There is no internal evidence to show where this inscription was written, but Hilarus Turpilin must have been dead many years before the destruction of Pompeii, since it was dated in that Consulate of Julius Caesar which corresponds to B. c. 48. We know from Horace that it was the habit of the Romans to put the name of the Consuls upon the wine-jars, for he speaks of the wine laid down when < Plancus was Consul > and we search the amphorae of Pompeii accordingly for dated inscriptions. Six in all have been found, all dating from the various consulships of Vespasian, of which the following is the most interesting : IMP . VESPASIANO . VII . COS . nil. IDUS. NOVEMBR EX . F . SITTIANO . IMO . QVEM . COLVIT . ANTONIVS . MARTIALIS . EX . DOTEI. ... « In the seventh consulship of Vespasian (a. d. 76) on the tenth of November, from the lowest part of the Sittian farm which Antonius Martialis cultivated as (pari of his wife's) dowry ». The expression ^;ir dote is a very unusual one, and the above interpretation is suggested by Signor Viola. Mlh.VMhiiC.Ma';»jLiK>j.Jlia«.'-i':./a.iato^aMia?jgWiMiiiWI»iift'»!^^ i ...wiitfj.tat^ |J-J■■^^«J1J. 236 POMPEII So much for the dated inscriptions. We will now turn our attention to some of the literary curiosities furnished by the walls of Pompeii. The following pretty elegiac is from the house of Jucundus, and is one of many original ama- tory couplets found in the city: Quis {quis) amat valeat, pereat qui nescit amare ; Bis tanto pereat quisquis amare vetat. « May he who loves have good luck, may he who knows not how to love perish ; but may he doubly perish who forbids love ». The following may confidently be inserted among the literary curiosities of the city : XV. K. NOV. PVTEOLANA PEPERIT MASCUL. Ill FEMEL I « On the 15th day before the kalends of November, a woman of Puteoli had three boys and one girl at a birth » This date corresponds to the i8.th of October. Another curious inscription was found on one of the columns of the garden of the House of the Faun : VICTORIA. VA. IIT. VBQVII VIS SUAVITER. STIIRNU Victoria Valeas et ubique vis Suaviter sternuas. I 4> > ^1 ■ ' ^'\ ml> M Wr '■f W ^' m * r ^ B. V LITERATURE AND INDUSTRIES 237 « Victoria, good luck to you, and wherever you please may you sneeze pleasantly.* Another salutation to a young lady is worthy of record, but to make it intelligible we must give a Latin version of it as well as the origi- nal inscription: PVPA . QVII . BIILLAIISTIBI MIIMISIT . QVITVVS . IIS . VAL Pupa quae bella es, tibi me misit qui tuus est. Vale. « Oh maiden who art pretty, he who is thine sent me to thee. Farewell. » At a street-corner opposite to the back door of the House of Siricus the following hexameter is written up above a fine picture of sacred * The universality of congratulations in deprecation of ill luck to those who sneeze points to the great an- tiquity of the custom. Xenophon and Homer both mention it, and though the habit of saying « God bless you » is comparatively rare in England, all the other nations of Europe continue to use an appropriate salutation. The Germans say <^ Zur Gesundheit -»', the French, m, Dieu vous b^nisse »; the Mahometans, betrays the gladiator, as the instrument alluded to was that used to draw the dead bodies out of the arena during the combats, and hence the meaning of the inscription is < death to the Pompeians and Ischians >. Rude drawings are also found scratched on the plaster in various parts of the town, some of which are reproduced with illustrations by Dyer. The following will not we think be found in his book. It consists of a rough delineation #)) <* <" V, 4 •f V# LITERATURE AND INDUSTRIES 239 f f of a hunting scene upon the wall of a room (Reg. VIII. Ins: in No. 24) beneath which are the words: HEIC . VIINATIO . PVGNABIT . V . K . SlIPTIIMBRIIS IIT . FELIX . AD . VRSOS . PVGNABIT « Felix will fight this venatio on the fifth day before the kalends of September, and he will also fight against bears ». * This date corresponds to August 28. Another important inscription in a house in the Sixth Regio, records the fight in the am- phitheatre , and probably also alludes to the stopping of the performances there by the Se- nate : CAMPANI . VICTORIA . VNA CVM . NVCERINIS . PERISTIS « « Campanians ye \were done for in the victory together with the Nucerines*. We have spoken of the Pompeians having professional performers to amuse their guests at * It is interesting to note that the lower jaw of a large Brown Bear was found at Pompeii , and is in the Mu- seum there. 240 POMPEII their banquets. The following inscription from Reg : Yiii. Ins ; xii. No. 34 is to the point : C. COMINIUS PYRRICHUS NOVIVS PRISCVS , ET CAMPIVS ET • L PRIMIGENIVS . FANATICI TRES A PVLVINAR SVNETHAEI HIC FVERVNT CVM MARTIALE SODALE ACTIANI ANICETIANI SINCERI SALVIO SODALI FELICITER « C. Cominius Pyrrichus and L. Novius Priscus, and L. Cam pi us Primigenius, three clowns (after performing at) the feast of Synetheus, were here with their chum Martial. True Actiani Anicetiani. Good Luck to chum Salvius. » The above inscription was found in a tavern, and means that the three travelling: clowns named in it, after performing at the feast of Synetheus met a fellow-countryman by name Martialis Sal- vius, who like themselves, was an native of the district of Actianum « of the right sort > and together they enjoyed a carouse out of the money earned by entertaining Synetheus and his friends. That they should have been sober enough to write up the inscription is wonderful ; that they should have left us this interesting scrap of so- cial history is particularly gratifying. f 1 s » J .^A 1 1 ' -A^ •/■>i LITERATURK AND IXDUSTRIKS 241 We have already mentioned some of the elec- tion placards written up by the trade of Pompeii. As these form an interesting" collection of the trades exercised in the town we insert a list of them taken mainly from Overbeck' famous work. They comprise Offcc tores (Dyers) — Pistores (Bakers) — Clibanarii (Pastry-cooksj — Auri- ficcs (Goldsmiths) — Pomarii (Fruiterers) — Z/^;^^zr/V (Carpenters) — Plosirarii {Cdin^rs) — Saliiiienses (Saltworkers) — A^y/V^^?// (Fishermen) Agricolce (Peasants) — Forenses (Market folk) — Mulioiics (Muleters) — Cisarii (Coachmen) — Saccarii (Porters) — Fulloncs (Fullers) — La- iiifricarius (Wool washer) — Sugar ii {T:^^or%^ — Caiiponcs (Innkeepers) — Tonsorcs (Barbers) — Unguciitarii (Ointment sellers) — Perfusor {^qy- fumer) — Vcstiarius (Clothier) — Fornacator (Ovenheater) — Librarii (Booksellers). Besides these we have the Colleges of Isis and Venus which probably include the ministers of the temple; we have also « Phoebus with his customers >; Valen- tinus with his pupils »; « Sema with her children. > Some of the other inscriptions which mention Pilicrepi (Ball-players) ; Dormicntcs iinivcrsi (Sleepy people of all sorts); Seribibi (Late drinkers) all seem to have a somewhat jocular or sarcastic inspiration, and would appear , if translated into our modern idiom^ to be rightly 16 POMPEII LITERATURE AND INDUSTRIES 243 interpreted by such sentences as these < Cric- keters vote for A >, « Sleepy-heads plump for B >, « Tipplers support C >. It is manifest that of all the trades mentioned in these inscriptions we shall only find material traces of a few , and of these in many cases, we find more often the tools of their trade, than the results of their handicraft. Gold and silver ornaments have been found all over the town, and it is supposed, with slender authority, that the small shops discovered in front of the Macellum in tlie Greater Forum, were jewellers* establishments. Carpenters and Fishermen have left us little but the tools of their trade. We have drawn attention to a wardrobe and some doors of which there are casts in the Pompeii Museum; an original wooden box, roughly dovetailed may be seen in the food department of the Naples Museum, and a very complete set of carpenters tools are exhibited in the first room of the small bronzes. The Fishermen have left us their bronze fish-hooks, an interesting drag for pulling up night-lines, and a small iron boat-anchor; this last, though a unique specimen not being equal in scierrtific construction to the admirable anchor which is depicted in mosaic on the threshold of the house at the south-eastern corner of the Street of Mercury. Floats for nets, and sundry pieces of rope may be seen in the food depart- ment, and occasion surprise that such a material as cork should survive , when so many things apparently much more durable have perished. Of the Tonsores or Barbers we have no trace excepting two razors mentioned in the official catalogue of objects discovered. The Barbers were probably as important in Rome as Figaro is now in Italy, for a beard seems to have been seldom worn at this period by the Romans if we may judge from the frescoes and the statues. We believe we are correct in stating that Ha- o drian was the earliest of the Emperors who wore one; and no doubt the Imperial example would count for much in such a matter. Of the Tailors of Pompeii we have naturally no trace, in fact it is a little surprising that we should find a distinction drawn in the inscrip- tions between Sagarii tailors , and Vestiarii who we may conclude to have been sellers of ready-made clothes. The loose garments worn by the Romans w^ould seem to have encouraged the ready-made as against the bespoken trade, for excepting the under garment which was a sort of blouse and often woven,* the clothes of * « Now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout ». John. xix. 23. 244 POMPEII LITERATURE AND INDUSTRIES 245 a Roman were not fitted to his body. Neither Greeks nor Romans wore trousers , and both despised the nations who did so. The statues of men so costumed in the Naples Museum all represent Dacians, though it is worthy of note that some of the soldiers on Trajan's column at Rome wear knee-breeches. We find no hatters among the trades mentio- ned, another proof that the Romans habitually used no covering for their heads , though the soldiers wore helmets exclusively for military reasons ; and tw^o men are represented in one of the rcugh frescoes in the Osteria deg:i Sche- letri in the Street of Mercury with what appear to be conical felt hats on their heads. Had hats been in common use we must most certainly have found them upon the statues and in the frescoes. The fine Farnese statue of a hunter in the Naples Museum is the only Roman statue with a hat, though examples both of Dacians and Phrygians with caps on might be cited from the same collections , and one bronze usually known as Archytas is represented with a turban. The principal instance of a hat in the frescoes is in the picture of Ulysses stealing the Palla- dium at Troy, but this represents a Greek of the heroic age and not a Roman of the period we are treating of. It is often objected that in J 4* *^ ^fiv. t» this climate a hat is a necessity, and it is of- ten urged, without a show^ of reason, that Italy w^as a much hotter climate then, than it is now. To this we reply that the Neapolitan women all go with their heads completely uncovered, and that it is only the men who find hats a necessity. If the frescoes are to be trusted (as no doubt they are) we might easily arrive at the diffe- rent colours used by the Roman Dyers. The centre of the trade in these days was in Asia Minor, and the Tyrian purple was celebrated. In the Acts of the Apostles we read of a « sel- ler of purple of the city of Thyatira » , and though perhaps the finer dyes w^ere imported, no doubt the Romans made a good many of the more ordinary colours for themselves. There seems to have been no Musical Guild in the city. We should have expected to have found the Tibicines or «. flageolet players » in a corporate capacity, for the tibia was the favou- rite instrument of Roman times. Ovid has left us an interesting couplet on the universal use of this instrument : « Cantabat fanis, cantabat tibia ludis ». « Cantabat moestis tibia funeribus». « The tibia used to sound in the temples, at the sports, and in the sad funeral processions ». 246 POMPEII LITERATURE AND IiNDUSTRIES 24' That instruments were played in symphony is evident from the frescoes , notably from the beautiful picture of Pan and the Nymphs in the entresol of the Naples Museum, though it seems unlikely that harmony was understood , as it depends so essentially upon the use of thirds, of which we find no trace in any of the Roman writers. Valerius tells us that the Roman Tibi- cines were incorporated into a college, but this does not seem to have been the case at Pompeii. We use the word <( flageolet » where many writers use the word < flute >, because the tibia was certainly sounded by blowing into the mouth- piece at the top of the instrument, and not by applying the lip to a hole in the barrel of it. Of instruments sounded as our flutes are , we have no certain trace at Pompeii , but of the tibia both single and double we have many examples. The latter was called by the Greeks « male and female >, indicating no doubt that the one was bass and the other treble; the Ro- mans called them simply < right > and «. left >, but the mention of certain music being played with two € right > instruments (duobus dextris) shows that there was a difference in the pitch of the two pipes of the double instrument. We have a mosaic which shows clearly enough how the double tibia was used. It had two mouth- pieces , and was tied round the head of the performer. Of the other musical instruments in use at Pompeii we have certain specimens in the case of the cornua or large trumpets, a doubtful specimen of the tuba or straight trumpet ; a part of some bagpipes ; many sistra, tibiae, and cym- bals ; and an important fragment which seems to have been a large syrinx or Pandean pipe. We know the forms of many of the string in- struments from the frescoes and the bronzes, but no specimens of them have yet been disco- vered ; and this most probably because they would be made of wood, which, with the strings would certainly perish. Of the Fuller's craft we have abundant traces in various establishments scattered about the town in which their business was carried on. One of the most important of these is situated next door to the House of Orpheus in the Street of Vesuvius. Here we see the large pans in which the clothes were washed by men who trod them out with their feet. A picture which represents this operation was taken from the large fulling establishment in the Street of Mer- cury and may be seen in the Naples Museum. These washermen placed their hands upon the brick partitions between the metal wash-tubs, the edges of which may still be seen to be ■ Tiririiliiiii iiif-iiif" iilEafti 248 POMPEII LITERATURE AND INDUSTRIES 219 worn quite smooth by the friction of their hands. The large cisterns for rinsing the clothes are built of brick and covered with cement. These were filled from a leaden pipe which passes up one of the pillars. On the right is a small clip- board or pantry, upon the floor of which the original fuller's soap still lies to the depth of several inches. This soap though eighteen-hun- dred years old, will still dissolve easily in water. We may suppose that as a general rule the clothes were dried in the open air , but when this was impossible they w^ere spread upon a large cage, and a brasier w^as suspended beneath them ; a method still in common use for do- mestic purposes in northern Italy but less adopted in the neighbourhood of Naples, because, owing to the greater warmth of the climate, artificial drying is seldom required. The clothes when sufficiently dry were placed in a press and flat- tened with a powerful screw. Of this also we find an illustration in the fresco we have already mentioned. There seems to be no trace of a flat-iron in Pompeii, indeed the use in England of this common domestic implement does not date back very far, for we find that in the reion of Queen Elizabeth smooth stones inscribed with texts of scripture were used for the purpose of smoothing linen, though how such primitive ap- 'W t; r pliances could « get up > an Elizabethan ruffle passes our comprehension. It is however unsafe to argue that the Pom- peians did not have things because we have only recently invented them. The safety-pin, which is quite a modern invention, w^as in com- mon use in Pompeii. Wire rope wiiich we look upon as a new discovery, was known in those days, and a very fine specimen of it may be seen in the Naples Museum. Martial speaks of sulphur matches, which in our English kitchens replaced the old-fashioned tinder-box scarcely fifty years ago , and the Surgical instruments found in Pompeii were lost to science for cen- turies and reinvented in our day almost in their original form. The Romans do not appear to have used quills for writing, but their pens w^ere made from an Egyptian reed, and nibbed much as ours are. It is most probable that their papyrus w^as ma- nufactured in Egypt where it grew, but no intelligible trace of papyrus has been found in Pompeii, though the mention of officina ltbra- RIA which means « Literary workshop > in an inscription near the gate of Stabia, and an elec- tion placard stating that the booksellers {Librari) wished Sabinus to be Duumvir, found upon the same building, is sufficient proof that the Pom- liBfaJuaiMiiaailithiaateiliifaBUMaiah:.^^^^^ iri>.i«.>..^-teaA*iM6M,>ja .'ia:--iiiair;..i«!iia - ^te^i^SI^^^^Si 250 POMPEII LITERATURE AND INDUSRTIES 251 peians must have had books just as much as the inhabitants of Herculaneum. The books of Ro- man times were made of the papyrus rolled out flat. This formed a strip about three inches wide, and these strips were cut in lengths of about six inches and pasted together into a roll usually about six feet in length. The writing was in columns, and the whole book when finished was rolled upon a stick with a boss at either end. In the ordinary way the writing was only on the outside, but Juvenal speaks of a very long play as being written on both sides, and when this was the case the manuscript w^as called opisthographon or <( written behind > an expres- sion we find in Rev: v. i. and also in the book of Ezekiel , who speaks of a book as being < written within and without >. The books were called volumina because they were rolled, and the Librarii of Pompeii were probably scribes who made a living by copying out manuscripts. The wax tablets we have already alluded to were discovered in the house of the Auctioneer and Usurer Lucius Ca^cilius Jucundus. The use of such tablets dates back to very ancient times. Homer mentions them, and they are frequently alluded to by other classical writers. They were composed of small slabs of deal fitted into a frame and joined by a hinge. The inner surface f, <> m'" M y»i s : y I <> < ■1 4 ; 1 i i i 1 ^B ^ V ^ft ^ w ^■1 was smeared with wax , and the words to be written were traced upon the wax with a poin- ted instrument called a stilus. The two slabs were then shut up and sealed if necessary, and if the missive was an ordinary note , it would be despatched by a slave to its destination. The receiver having read the contents drew the broad end of the stilus across the message to efface it, and wrote the answer upon the same tablet. Those found at Pompeii were all records of commercial transactions carried out by Jucundus, who if we may judge by the malicious expres- sion of his portrait, w^as a man of more than ordinary astuteness, and less than average com- mercial morality. His money-lending transactions were by bills payable in thirty days, with inte- rest at the rate of two per cent per month. The amount he charged to renew a bill does not appear, but we may be sure that it was still more exorbitant. A main branch of his business seems to have been auctioneering, and we find on all the documents relatingr to it that he was careful to subtract his commission before hand- ing over the proceeds of the sale , but it is to be observed that the documents never mention the amount per cent which he charged. The in- genuity with which Professor De Petra de- ciphered these tablets is truly marvellous, and they u POiMPEII may rightly be cited among the greatest disco- veries of antiquity. The originals as well as some of the interpretations may be seen in the department of the papyri at the Naples Museum, but the whole investigation is published in a large quarto pamphlet with facsimile illustrations.^ In the Naples Museum in the second room of the small bronzes among- the writing materials, some stone tablets will be seen which are thoucrht to have been used with wax like the wooden ones. In the same wall-case is a bronze pen nibbed like a modern one, and bearing- a strong resem- blance to the shape of the well-know^n « J » pen of to-day. It is w^e believe the only ancient example of a metal pen. We read of an « iron pen » in Job xix. 24. but we should judge from the context that the allusion w^as only a meta- phor, and not to be taken as indicating the actual existence of such an implement at so early a date. The Coachmen and Carters are represented by the wheels in the local museum, and though the Muleteers have left no material traces behind them, the inscription is interesting as supporting our conjecture about the carriage of the city * It will be worth while to mention that a special Pompeian library will be found in the Socze^a Archeolo- gica at Pompeii. Permission to read there can be obtai- ned at the office in the Naples Museum. UTRIIATITRK AND INDUSTIIIFS ■"•■B^'wa 4, Hi rr^ having been done by mule trains , and further on account of the nickname Miilio eiven to Vespasian because he endeavoured to increase his revenues by this kind of trading. The Bakeries of Pompeii are numerous and in- teresting. It is probable from references made by Martial that the upper classes used fancy bread made in their own houses, and that the loaves made in the bakeries wxTe of coarse bread for the use of slaves and of the lower orders generally. That the bakers of Pompeii ground their own corn is proved by the mills which exist in all the bakeries , and an inspection of these show^s that the wheat was put into the hopper at the top, and that this w^as turned by a handspike so that the corn became triturated upon the cone of the upstanding stone below. The flour fell between the stones into a trough, from which it w^as collected to be kneaded into dough. The mills were turned by hand powder in most cases. We judge this to have been the case because their close proximity to one ano- ther w^ould scarcely allow^ sufficient room for a mule to go round ; and the fact of a stable ad- joining one of the bakeries does not w^eigh materially in the argument, because pack animals would be required by the bakers to bring the corn to the bakery. The work of turning the 254 POMPEII mill, though laborious, was no doubt often per- formed by women. We read in the book of Exodus of the < firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill > and in the Gospel of St. Matthew of « two women grinding at the mill », and althoucrh animals w^ere used for the purpose this was probably the case only in the larger mills, for w^e find in the New^ Testament where the expression « it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck > is used, the w^ord in the original is « a millstone such as is turned by an ass >, showing that the hand-mill and the larger mill were quite distinct. The ovens used in Pompeii differ so little from our own and from each other , that it seems hardly worth while to go -into technicalities about them. They w^ere generally rectangular in shape, covered with a dome, and closed with an iron door. In one of them (Reg. vii Ins. i No. 36) eighty-one loaves were found, of which several specimens are exhibited in the Naples Museum, one of them bearing the inscription which is rendered by Dyer: SILICO CRANII E CICER who suggests that it may indicate that cicer LITERATURE AND INDUSTRIES 255 L ^ »/ L a ' r "v \ (vetch) was mixed with the grain. The letters of the inscription (which was stamped) are how- ever very indistinct , and the above rendering can in our opinion rank only as a conjecture. The Officina Corariorum or « House of the Tan- ners » is situated near the Gate of Stabia, and forms an example of another class of industry. It was a large establishment, probably used for the purpose indicated by its name, but nothing very remarkable was found in it excepting the allegorical mosaic which is now in the Naples Museum. This was found upon the table of an outdoor triclinium, having evidently been moved there from some other place. It represents riches and poverty, life and death, by a series of sym- bols which may be explained as follows. At the top is the letter Alpha, the beginning of all things, made to represent a square, with a plumb-line, the emblem of rectitude, hanging from its apex. It is in fact not an ancde of ni- nety degrees, but obtuse. The two ends of the Alpha are supported on one side by a reversed lance with the royal purple to signify wealth, and on the other by a broken staff, wallet, and rags to denote poverty. The large skull in the centre indicates death; the butterfly beneath it, the soul ; and the wheel, human life. An ino-e- nious writer in an Italian Masonic periodical 25G POMPj«:n endeavoured to prove that this mosaic was cer- tain evidence of the existence of Freemasonry in Pompeii, and further that the building- in which it was found was a Lodge belongin"'- to this ancient and lionourable fraternity ! As we do not think that his speculations on Roman Free- masonry add materially to the archeology either of Masonry or of the city, we refrain from quo- ting his arguments. It appears to us that the premises might just as well have been used for dyeworks as for a tanyard. in which case the garments on each side of the mosaic would represent the dyer's trade, showing the undyed shabby coat on the one side, transformed by the dyer into the purple garment on the other. There are many houses in Pompeii called by the names of various other trades, and if we do not go into these more fully it is not because we have not bestowed careful attention upon them, but because in our opinion the nomencla- ture of them is in the main fanciful. The follow- ing is a tolerably comprehensive list of them ; Armourer's shop, so called because one sword was found in it, and it was decorated with pic- tures of gladiators; Barber's shop, so called because it is a very small place with a pillar in the centre; Milkseller because there is a croat LITERATURE AND INDUSTRIES 257 '*'/ L *) I* L ' H "v upon the doorpost ; Colourman , from colours being found there. Besides these we find Soap- makers, Chemists , and Druggists all named without any special reason. In the same w^ay although we find a house called <( The Sculptor's Studio > we cannot al- low that it is called so with sufficient reason. It seems certain that if we found a studio in Pompeii w^e should find a great deal of unfinished work in it; many models and casts , tools and designs; and we can only hope that the day is not far distant when we shall come upon so in- teresting a discovery ; for there can be no doubt that there must be somewhere in the town , a studio where statues or tombs were being made at the time of the catastrophe. We know indirectly that there were in the city many trades which are not included in the above list. Blacksmiths must have been nume- rous, as a great deal of ironwork exists in all the buildings. A very interesting iron candela- brum was found in 1887, but as far as we are aware all the iron found has been wrought, and not cast. No stirrups have been discovered, and as they are never depicted in the paintings or seen upon the statues, it would seem probable that though the Romans certainly had saddles, the apparently obvious contrivance of a stirrup 17 ><^-.«.A-.>,-!:-i».a.'-.« -liM i.. :,.LlJjjiaiiti&attJMMiaiAJi&ia,i^^ c 258 POMPEII UTEHAIURE AND INDUSTH'ES 259 had not occurred to them. It seems also that in Italy their horses were not shod, though there are some Roman horse-shoes in the British Mu- seum which show that when they got to Encr- land they found this precaution necessary. And this quite coincides with our own experience, which is that horses may safely go unshod in a dry climate, but in a damp one the hoof re- quires a protection of some kind as it becomes much softer from wet, and cannot stand friction and percussion. Many things that we make in iron were in those days made in bronze, for the reason that the latter metal was easily cast, and hence we find hinges, locks and other household furniture made of it in preference to the harder material. The frequent occurrence of boots and shoes in the frescoes and bronzes points to the exi- stence of bootmakers, and the fine bronze shoe upon a fragment of a statue in the Capitoline Museum at Rome shows that skilled tradesmen existed in those days. There must have been Saddlers also, for we have very many specimens of buckles , bits , and metal work belonging to harness, and a close observation of some of the specimens at Naples shows the thread which secured the metal to the leather. The Fruiterers seem to have had a large «9 number of shops near the Forum, and as far as we can judge, their wares were pretty much the same as our greengrocers sell to-day ; except- ing that oranges and lemons had in those days not been intrc duced into Italy. These came sub- sequently from Portugal. Of their other fruits they derived peaches from Persia, and figs from Asia Minor. The Roman flora is well represented in the frescoes, and a complete list was publi- shed with the scientific names, by Professor Co- mes in 1879."^ In the same work an account of the shells of Pompeii will also be found, but we think our readers generally would find these subjects uninteresting, so we do not reproduce the schedules. The very large number of snail- shells discovered is interesting as showing that the Romans were as fond of this delicacy (?) as their Neapolitan posterity, and we think it pro- bable that the snail soup simmered on the Pompeian curbstones just as it does throughout the winter months at the street corners of Naples. There must almost certainly have been a glass- blowing establishment in or near the tow^n, though glass-makers and potters may probably have had their workshops without the walls. It is not * Illustrazionc delle piarite rappresentate neidipinti pom- peiani. Estratto dal Volume Pompei e la reglone sotter- rata dal Vesuvio nell'anno LXXIX, Napoli 1879. 260 POMPEII probable that the glass and pottery came from any <^'-reat distance, as their brittle nature would not allow of a long journey in a cart without springs. We have said enough to show that there is still a great deal to be discovered before we can flatter ourselves that we have found out all there is to know about the trades of Pompeii, or arrived at a certain conclusion as to the me- thods used by the ancients in the production of the various objects of use and ornament which form so great an attraction in the museums of the Graeco-Roman period. M )l^j an ; 'I ■*t I, I CHAPTER XI TFTE HOUSE OF THE VET Til Atrium — Desertion of Ariadne — Hero and Leander — Cy- parissus — Cupid and Pari — Ala — Hercules and the Serpents — Death of Peyitheus — Punishment of Dirce — Peristyle or Garden Court — Oecus — Iphigenia in Tau- ris — The Slaughter of the Pythoii — The Sacrilege of Agamemnon — The band of the Dado — Boys and duck — Target practice — Garland makers — Oil making — The Chariot Race — The Goldsmiths — The Fullers — A day in the country — The Vintage — The Triumph of Bac- chus — The Vintner — The missing picture — The Srnal^ ler Court — Hercules and Auge — Daedalus and Pasi- phae — Ariadne found by Bacchus — The Torture of Ixion — The Kitchen and offices, IMMEDIATELY behind the < House of the Faun> stands the , so called because the seal of the family was found in it. Besides being the last house discovered, it is unquestionably in point of painting and decoration the finest 262 POMPEII house in the city, and must have belonged to a man of wealth and of great taste in the Fine Arts. It is in fact so elaborate that it was im- possible to remove the treasures it contains, so the Direction wisely determined to build it up, roof it over, and preserve it as it is. Moreover they have laid out the garden, and w^e may say that as it stands, we have as good an idea of a Roman house when we enter it as it is possible to contemplate. In size too it is above the ave- rage of Pompeian houses, and the treatment of some of the subjects displays an originality ra- rely met with in the art of the city. For in fact almost all the pictures we have were no doubt traditions of the famous pictures of the better epochs of painting , and had been reproduced again and again by Greek artists who made house decoration their business , wandering as likely as not from town to town , and painting a room here and another there according to the commissions they received. On entering the house we pass through a highly decorated lobby to a Court with the re- mains of the strong boxes in which the owner kept his deeds and his money standing against the walls. These were found empty, showing that Vettius escaped with his life, and returned, dis- covered the situation of his house, and dug out THE HOUSE OF THE VETTII 268 il ipi. ^ 4) ^l \\ i ^Ji his treasure. There can be little doubt that he had a good rummage all over the house, for it is pretty sure that in such a dwelling there must have been imperishable jewels, silver plate, and such things, which would have survived there as they have survived in so many other houses of the city. Let us now take a walk round the house and examine the pictures at our leisure. The first room on our left contains a rendering of the well-worn theme of the Desertion of Ariadne. It will be remembered that when Theseus went to Crete to kill the Minotaur, Ariadne fell in love with the handsome and valiant stranger; gave him the clue to the labyrinth, and eventually fled with him from Crete to Naxos. Soon after his arrival there he basely deserted her, and sailed away to Athens. In most of the paintings Ariadne is re- presented as lying asleep on the beach , and Theseus is observed sailing away in the far di- stance; but our artist has given reins to his fancy and shows her kissing her hand to Theseus as if she were rather pleased than not at his departure ! On the other wall of this room we see an almost grotesque drawing of the legend of Hero and Leander. Hero the priestess of Aphrodite is seen at her window holding in her hand the lamp by which her lover directed his nightly course, for he used to swim across the Helles- >64 POMPEII pont in the evening, returning again before daylight in the morning. He did it once too often, and when his corpse was washed up at the feet of his beloved she completed the tragedy by casting herself into the sea beside him. In order to obtain a second distance the artist has in the background introduced three dolphins which have a rather singular effect. In the second room we find a picture of a youth seated with a wounded stag at his side. This is a most interesting picture, being the first yet discovered of this subject. It represents Cyparissus the son of Telephus, seated on a rock with the tripod, « omphalos », and other emblems of his patron Apollo. His pet stag with a collar round its neck, and a broken javelin sticking up out of its back , is looking up at him with a most piteous expession. According to the legend, Cyparissus wounded his pet by misadventure and was so distressed at the incident, that Apollo changed him into a cypress tree. Besides this there is an important picture of the frequent subject of the Fight between Cupid and Pan in the presence of Bacchus, Silenus, and their retinue. Pan has his left hand tied to his tail, to equa- lise the battle , and the expression of all the Jookers-on is admirably rendered. The idea run- 4 ^}>i t| *) 1^' i \ '5 ft ^ > m THE HOUSE OF THE VETTII 265 ning through the picture, is the triumph of love over strength, and the presence of Ariadne who is seated next to Bacchus points the moral; for Theseus the great hero of antiquity had won Ariadne, and Bacchus the effeminate took her from him by the power of love. There was once a picture on the right wall, but this was destroy- ed when the Vettii ransacked the house after the eruption, for a hole was made through this wall at that point in order to gain access to the room. Of the upper row of pictures the two most important are Leda and the swan , and Jupiter enthroned. The ala on this side of the house is finely decorated but does not require particular descrip- tion. A low wall was built across the front of it, as if it were intended for use as a shallow tank. The rooms adjoining have no decoration calling for special attention, and we may pass on to the room at the left hand corner of the < Peristyle >, or < Garden Court », where we find three im- portant pictures. On the left wall we see Hercules strangling the Serpents in the presence of his mo- ther Alcmena and her husl)and Amphitryon. We have other illustrations of this subject found at Pompeii, and the story is so well known that it is not necessary to give it here. With regard to 266 POMPEII the picture on the wall which faces us as we enter, the case is different. This represents the comparatively unknown legend of the Death of Pen- theus, who is said to have climbed up into a tree to witness the women at their Bacchic revels. Among the ladies engaged in these somewhat compromising proceedings were his mother and sisters, and they were so incensed at being spied upon that they incontinently killed him. He is represented as being held by two of them, while the third has a large stone in her hand with which she is about to crush him. The « throw > of the blue drapery of the central figure cannot fail to attract the attention of a visitor, and the whole execution of the picture is remarkably expressive. The last picture in the room repre- sents the Punishment of Dirce who was tied to a bull by her two step-sons Zethus and Amphion. The famous group of the « Farnese bull > once in the baths of Caracalla at Rome, and now in the Naples museum will have rendered our readers familiar with the legend. We will now pass on to the , or < Garden Court », which has been elegantly laid out by the Direction , and presents no doubt much the same appearance as it did in the days so long gone by. The only thing we miss is the water, which in classical days played abun- ii fi *) ^*4) iSsMk THE HOUSE OF THE VETTII 267 dantly in all directions, as the silent presence of the pipes testifies. The cloister is prettily painted, and it must be remembered that in these cloisters the Romans spent most of their time. Like the Neapolitans of to-day they lived mainly in the open air, and could choose the sunny or the shady side of their cloisters as weather or inclination prompted them. The pictures of the peristyle are merely decorative in character and need no description; while the three tables, of which the one with lions heads is particularly handsome , show that the Roman ladies took whatever was their equivalent for five o' clock tea habitually in the garden, and it will be no- ticed that the tables are so placed that one or other of them was available in whatever direc- tion the wind was blowing or the sun shining. The travertine puteal and marble basins have nothing very special about them ; but there are two elegant pillars with foliage decoration on them, and interesting heads, dating perhaps as far back as the beginning of our era, which de- serve study. The two bronze figures are good of their period, but they are of a very debased time, probably as late a? Nero or Vespasian. We now come to the superlative item in the house ; a room before which everything yet 268 POMPEII found in Pompeii fades into nothingness, and it is most difficult to do anything like justice to it. We must begin by leaving such of the painting as is merely decorative severely alone ; the vi- sitor must study this on his own account , but even if we confine ourselves to the subject pic- tures there is ample scope for a long dissertation. ' For first of all the tone of the red of the ground colour is diverse from the colour usually called « Pompeian red ». It resembles rather an eccle- siastical red, being blue in tone, whereas what we call Pompeian red is of a yellow tone. The figures on the dado are among the finest found in the city both in pose and drapery. They are painted with wonderful spirit and energy. THE THREE CLASSICAL PICTURES To turn now to the pictures properly so cal- led. We have first three classical pictures, representing i. Iphigenia in Tauris, 2. The Slaughter of the Python, 3. The Sacrilege of Agamemnon. There was a fourth picture of the series, but unfortunately that is lost. We have besides five pretty groups of winged girls picking flowers, and we have a series of fifteen pictures of Cupids engaged in a variety of in- dustrial and other pursuits. THE HOUSl': OF THE VETTII 2<>0 itt ^ V>' ^ i hi I. Iphigenia in Tauris. The story is briefly this. Iphigenia was vowed as a sacrifice to Artemis by her father at Aulis, and just as the sacrifice was about to take place, the goddess interposed and carried the maiden off to Tauris where she became her priestess , and had charge of the sacred ima^re which the ancients believed to have fallen from heaven. Her brothers Orestes and Pylades being ignorant of her fate came to tauris intending to steal the image. Thoas king of Tauris gave the usual order that as foreigners they should be sacrificed to Artemis. Iphigenia rescued them, and eventually she and Orestes carried off the sacred image to Sparta. The picture before us represents King Thoas on the extreme right, and Orestes and Pylades on the left, with Iphigenia in the centre. She is holding the image of the goddess in her left hand, and is extinguishing a torch with her right. 2. The Slaughter of the Python. This was the great serpent the survivor of the deluge of Deucalion, which was slain by Apollo. In the foreground we have the < omphalos > of Apollo covered with a white net, and round it the dead serpent is coiled. Behind is a pillar upon which the bow^ and quiver of the God are hanging. Next to it is a priest making a gesture of astonishment. Next to him is Apollo himself, 270 POMPEII THE HOUSE OF THE VETTII 271 dancing and playing on his lyre. The outer fig- ures are two women , one leading a bull , the other leaning on a pillar in a graceful attitude. 3. The Sacrilege of Agamemnon. When the Greek fleet was detained at Aulis, Agamemnon slew a stao- which was sacred to Artemis, and it was on this account that he was ordered by Cal- chas to propitiate the goddess by the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia. The picture is one of very graceful simplicity, and represents Agamem- non with a drawn sword rushing into the sanc- tuary and driving the terrified priestess from the shrine. This was no doubt the preliminary to the sacrilege of killing the stag which w^e see on the left. There are five pretty pictures of winged girls picking flowers, two on each of the long walls, and one on the upper w^all. These require no further description, and together with the deco- rative painting w^e will leave them to the study of the visitor. THE BAND OF THE DADO But the band at the top of the Dado falls into quite a different category, for here we have a number of pictures running in a band com- pletely round this large room , and all in the -^1 'f^^^e . \ i :* *; I ^ i * most exquisite taste, and absolutely marvellous alike in conception, grouping and execution. In- deed the refinement of them is such that even to give an intelligent person who sees them for the first time a key to the study of them, is a sufticiently difticult task. They were originally fifteen in number, but those on the left wall are nearly all gone, while those on the right wall are in wonderful preservation. The subjects are as follows. 1. Beginning on the right as we enter we see two boys playing with a duck. 2. Target practice. Boys throwing stones at a wooden target. The boy standing by the target is the loser, and will have to pay forfeit. ON IHE RIGHT WALL ^ 3. Garland makers. A goat laden with flowers is bemg driven towards a group of boys who are busy making garlands of roses. These garlands (called « serta » by the Ro- mans) were used for the decoration of houses and particularly for feasts. The seller is at his counter, a handsome marble table , and many wreaths are seen hanging up for sale in the shop. 4. Oil making. Here we have the press which operates into a stone basin similar to some which 272 POMPEII THE HOUSE OF THE VE ITIl 273 have been found in the city. Two boys are driv- ing in wedges with might and main, to cause a greater pressure. Beyond them two others with long sticks are stirring up the oil in a large vessel. On the dresser behind is a weighing machine, and in front of it a boy holding up a bottle of oil, similar to that in the Naples mu- seum, which was found full of oil at Pompeii. This oives a little more evidence than that al- ready existing that in Roman times oil was sold by weight. 5. The Chariot Race. The race is in chariots drawn by antelopes and run round three olive trees as oroals. The starter is a most comical figure and the upset of the chariot in the centre is extremely realistic , while the expression of the boy who is trying to avoid driving over his fallen companion is inimitable. 6. The Goldsmiths. This is a pretty picture of the making and selling of gold ornaments. The purchaser is seated and the seller with a scale equipoised in his hand, is driving his bargain, while the others are engaged in various opera- tions of the craft. 7. The Fullers. This was an important trade at Pompeii, and the guild was evidently a very wealthy one. We have more than one pictorial representation of the craft , and no less than 'if three establishments where it was cprried on may be seen in the city. The movement of the little figure scrubbing the cloth in the centre is particularly engaging. ON THE UPPER WALL 8. A day in the country. This picture is indistinct, but it is evidently a feast in the open air, and may be some religious rite , as these were al- ways accompanied by feasting, and often held out of doors. 9. The Vintage. A Cupid is gathering grapes while two others are working hard at the wine press. The lower of the two is kneeling on his handspike, while the other little fellow is mak- ing superhuman efforts to turn the windlass a little tighter. 10. The Triumph of Bacchus. This is as spirited a picture as any in the series , and represents the usual Bacchic procession of merry women with the thyrsus, satyrs, goats drawing the car, and musicians; all full of life and freedom. ON THE LEFT WALL 1 1. The Vintner. Here we see the customer tast- ing the wine, which is being handed to him by 18 274 POMPEir THE HOUSE OF THE VETl'II 275 the merchant, while the assistants are pouring another sample into a similar goblet. This is the last of the series, the remaining four being obliterated. THE MISSING PICTURE Having noted the most remarkable thincrs in the room we must not leave it w^ithout discussing the large blank space opposite the main entrance of it on the upper wall. It is a large rectangular cavity in the plaster , which apparently at one time contained a picture. All round the cavity are large holdfasts, put there by the ancients, by whom in fact the painting was certainly removed. They may have removed it because it was part of an older decoration, and not in keeping with the beautiful work we have been describing; or, because it was a valuable picture, and therefore the owner when he searched the house after the eruption took it away because he valued it. We know that the house w^as ransacked , for a fragment of a bronze statuette, and of a marble one were found in the peristyle , which had undoubtedly been broken in process of removal, or we should have found the rest of them. There is not much more to detain us in the I i i ■*. vj i -) house. We have next on our left a small court with a tank and pillars in it very prettily de- corated. In one of the rooms off it are two pic- tures, the one representing Hercules and Auge, and the other in so fragmentary a condition that to name its subject is mere guesswork. The last room of the house contains three pictures, namely, 1. Daedalus and Pasiphae. Here Daedalus is show- ing her the cow he made for her , the details of the legend are not suited for publication in a modern work. 2. Ariadne found by Bacchus at Naxos, of which we have already spoken in the earlier part of this notice; and 3. The Torture of Ixion. This very fine painting represents Ixion fastened to the wheel by Mer- cury, having been condemned to this punishment by Jove on account of his high-treason in hav- ing made love to Juno. Her Majesty sits by much gratified by the work that is going forward, while a crouched figure in the foreground shows pity for the victim. The wheel it will be remembered was set rolling in space for ever and ever! The kitchen and offices are behind this room, and the former has been left exactly as it was found, which gives it a special interest. CHAPTER XII ITINERARY The following itinerary is divided into three excursions, of which the First includes all that part of the city which lies to the w^estw^ard of the Greater Forum and of the street of Mercury: the Second all that quarter to the South of the Street of Abundance, together with the amphi- theatre and city w^alls: the Third, the centre and eastern side of the city. We have decided to adopt the Italian names when they differ mate- rially from the English ones, so that the reader who has the book in his hand when he visits the town, may be able to consult without diffi- culty the Government Guide even if he should not be acquainted with the Italian language. The sequence of the buildings has been very carefully arranged so as to avoid loss of time; indeed by following the book and keeping the ITINERARY 277 * \^- 'i' ^- \ \- -m^- I ^^^^x ^^^B map before him, the reader should without any other assistance be able easily to indentify the items selected. We shall be careful not to re- peat information already given, but merely note the number of the page upon which it may be found , and thus we hope we may be able to give a comprehensive idea of the whole city, and show clearly the relative dependence of its several parts. It will be obvious that the following excursions are only sketches to be filled in by personal observation on the spot. A detailed description of the houses alone w^ould fill many pages, and be very dull reading into the bargain. It must be remembered that all the most interesting specimens have been removed to Naples, and it is most unsatisfactory to write details of objects which are no longer in the houses described. We therefore mention such items only when they are of special interest, as our readers will find them all described in the Complete Handbook to the Naples Museum. We also pass over the architectural details of the houses because the reader can observe these personally, and the key to them will be found in the general description of a Roman house , pages 6i to 64. If these pages are carefully mastered, we apprehend that no difficulty will be found in understanding the V I 278 POMPEII arrangement of the houses we select for the itinerary. Each excursion is calculated to occupy three hours, and it will be found that this is as much as can be done carefully and intelligently in a single day, as walking in the city is very fati- guing. The best course is to leave Naples by the eight o* clock train (ascertain exact time as the time-bills are often altered), spend three hours in the ruins, lunch at one of the Restau- rants outside the Gate, and return by the 1.36 express to Naples. Late in the season it is con- venient to go out by the 2. p. m. train and return by the 6.30. The station of Torre dell'Annunziata Centrale is nearly as convenient as the Pompeii station, being only a few minutes drive from the ruins, hence it is sometimes advisable to go or return by that route. ITINERARY 279 FIRST EXCURSION: THE WESTERN SIDE OF I'HE CITY Tke Sea Gate — The Museum^ The Basilica — The Tem- ple of Apollo— The Corn Hall— The Temple of Jupi- ter — The Arch of Nero — The Temple of Forhme--^ The Forum Baths. The House of the Tragic Poet— of Pansa-^ The Bakery and House of Sallust— The Compitum or Dogana— The Gate of Herculajieum— The Street of the Tombs-- The House of Diomede— The City ivalls. The Street of Mercury— The Houses of Adonis— Apollo — Meleager—The Centaur— Castor and Pollux— of the Labyrinth— Osteria degli Scheletri— The House of the Anchor— Fullojiica Grande— Mosaic fountains. The Arch of Caligula— The Macellum—The Curia Se- natorum—The Temple of Mercury-^ The Exchange of Eumachia—The School of Verna—The Courts of First Instance. La Casa di cinque piani—La Casa del Palestrifa. This excursion commences with the builuings described in Chapters V and VI (pages 77 to 123) where the description of the Forum Baths is concluded. On leaving these we cross the Strada delle Ter me, and enter: The house of the Tragic Poet (Reg. vi. Ins. viii. No. 5) which was excavated in 1825 and is one of the finest in the city. A very large number of 280 POMPEII ITINERARY 281 gold ornaments and a quantity of money were found in it. The vestibule contained on its pa- vement the celebrated black and white mosaic representing a spirited watchdog with the legend CAVE CANEM. < Beware of the dog. > beneath it, and the floor of the tablinum was decorated with the famous mosaic representing the Choragium or « green room > of the ancient stage (Naples Museum 9986). The main feature of the house, from which it derived its name , was a larcre number of paintings taken from the Homeric poems, the most important of w^hich are in the Naples Museum, namely, 9105 Achilles and Bri- seis, 9108 Briseis embarking for Greece, 9559 The Marriage of Jupiter and Juno, and 91 12 The Sacrifice of Iphigenia. All the paintings which were left in the house have perished from ex- posure. This is called the < House of Glaucus > in Bulwer's Last day of Pompeii. The house of Pansa (Reg. vi. Ins. vi. No i, ex- cavated 1 8 14) is formed of two houses originally thrown into one in the Samnite period, and af- terwards enlarged in Roman times by Nigidius Mams its last proprietor who added a large gar- den to it. It is one of the very few houses in Pompeii which had a stable and coach-house belonging to it. These open out into the side 1 V -%) »' V* »»- street. The arrangement of flower beds in the garden could be clearly seen when the house was first discovered. The whole block was the property of Maius, who let the various shops, as IS stated in an inscription long since perished which was as follows : Insula Arriana Polliana the property of Nigidius Maius. To be let from the first of July the shops with their sheds and stables. Apply in the first instance to the Majordomo of Maius. The owner of this house was the man who gave the festivities on the occasion of the open- ing of the Forum Baths, and it was a relation of his who presented the large brasier and the bronze seats to the same establishment. Some very fine silver vessels, and the large bronze lamp with Bacchus riding the panther, as well as the bronze group of Bacchus and Ampelus were found in this house. Passing now into the street which leads to the North towards the Gate of Herculaneum we reach The House of Saliust {K^^. vi. Ins. ii. No, 4, exc. 1806-9). This house still contains some good paintings of Paris and Helen, Mars and Venus Europa, Phryxus and Helle, Diana and Action, the latter being the most important and repre- senting the moment when Action peeped at the 282 POMPEII ITINERARY 2oo bathing goddess. He will be observed in the back-ground with the antlers already sproutincr from his forehead. Next door but one is a Bakery. On the same side of the way is the Compitum (Reg. VI. Ins. i. No. 1 3). This building is mis- called the Dogana or Custom House, on the sup- position that a number of w^eights and scales were found in it. The mistake was originally made by Romanelli , and has been copied by most other WTiters ever since. The building was discovered in May 1788, and one leaden weight was found in it. Hence the idea of its having been a Custom House may be dismissed. Fio- relli thinks that it w^as devoted to religious purposes, and that the statue of some deity stood on the pedestal in the centre. It was closed with an iron grating, and had a stable behind it, in which the remains of a cart and harness and the skeletons of two horses were discovered. La Casa del Chirurgo (H. of th$ Surgeon) (Reg. VI. Ins. No. 10, exc. 1770) is probably the most ancient house in the city. We judge this from the construction of its fa9ade which is built of massive stones without mortar. The atrium is in the Tuscan Style, and the impluvium is of Nucerine stone, and not of marble as is the case in the more modern dw^ellinors. It is here that ▼ . most of the surgical instruments now in the Naples Museum were found, and it is this which gave rise to the supposition that the house was occupied by a medical man. The most important painting in it was the pretty picture of a lady sketching a ^erm of Bacchus, now at Naples. We now refer our readers to page igS for the Gate of Herculaneum, to page 199 for an account of the Street of the Tombs, and when they have visited these, to pages 169 and 196 for the city walls. The walls should first be observed from the outside by walking a few yards along the fosse to the eastward. The gate should then be entered and the walls ascended by the steps on the left. The first buttress on the right should be clim- bed to enjoy the view of the ruins , and the visitor should then proceed along the top of the wall to the third tower, by which means he will get a thoroughly good idea of the city walls. He can then return to the first tower, and just beyond it he will find a footpath leading down the rampart. In the house on his right he will find the way into the wall mentioned on pacre 197- He can then follow the Vicolo di Modesto till he comes to the first turning on his left, the Vicolo di Mercurio. Following this he will find the Strada di Mercurio to be the second 284 POMPEII cross-street and easily distinguishable on account of its breadth, and by the fact that it has one of the wall-towers at its northern end, and the Arch of Caligula at the other. This is a very important street and all the houses in it merit attention. We are now standing at the crossway in the centre of it. Turning our face to the ' city wall we shall take the Casa di Adone ferito (Reg. VI. Ins. VII. No. i8, exc. 1835) so called on account of the fine life-size painting repre- senting the scene where «... Smooth Adonis from his native rock Flows purple to the sea » A Cupid is binding his wound, and Venus is looking on compassionately. The House of Apollo (Reg. vi. Ins. vii. No. 24, exc. 1834), is also important. It is next to the city walls on the left. The waterworks in the piscina are very peculiar , and the decoration of the small room in the corner of the sunken garden is interesting. There is also a fine mo- saic of Achilles seizing the arms from Ulysses in the palace of Lycomedes. This mosaic is on the wall, which is rather unusual. Returning tow^ards the town we find on our left The House of Meleager (Reg. vi. Ins. ix. No. 2, rriNKHAHY 2^5 -*.. exc. 1829-31) which contains a handsome square room with an inner colonnade decorated in two shades of yellow and brown, which we believe to be unique in Pompeii. The House of the Centaur (Reg. vi Ins. ix. No. 5) and the House of Castor and Pollux (No. 6 , some- times called the 77. 0/ the Qucestor, exc. 1828-29) deserve a visit, though their chief treasures have all been removed. This will be a good opportunity to visit the House of the Labyrinth (Reg. vi. Ins. xi. 10, exc. 1835), a fine house with a Corinthian atrium. It obtained its name from the rare mosaic of Theseus and the Minotaur surrounded by black lines on a white ground to represent the Cretan Labyrinth, which mosaic is still in its original place. The House of the Vettii is now close by, and can be taken next. It is fully described in Chapter XI. Between it and the tow^n wall are the ex- cavations of 1897-98 which are worth explor- ing though they have not as yet yelded anything of the first importance. The portion of the town wall laid bare is very fine. We return to the Strada di Mercurio , and visit the Osteria degli Soheletri (Reg. vi. Ins. x. No. i), a wine-shop, where are some interesting pain- tings in the roughest style, representing scenes 286 POMPEII of tavern life in ancient times. The first on the left represents a drinking scene, the second the filling of the amphorae from a large wine-skin on four wheels. The truck is equirotal and was drawn by two mules which are tied to it. They were harnessed by yokes to the pole. On the same wall is a girl handing a cup of wine to a wag- goner with an ox-goad in his hand. Opposite, is a game of draughts played with dice , and the sausages and other eatables hanging up show how^ modern Italian tavern life corresponds to that of the Romans. On the same side of the street is The House of the Anchor (Reg. vi. Ins. x. No. 7, exc. 1825), so called from the mosaic anchor on the door- step. This anchor is of very clever construction, and the ring on the crown of it was no doubt used to bend a buoy-rope to, or to trip the an- chor in case of a foul. The sunken garden of this houie is unique in Pompeii , and when its pedestals were decorated with statues (as no doubt they once w^ere) it must have been very pretty. Opposite to it is (Reg. vi. Ins. viii. No. 20) the Fullonica Grande (exc. 182 5) but this is not as interesting as the similar establishment in the Street of Vesuvius described on page 247. The adjoining houses Nos. 22. and 23 con- (Reg. VIII. Ins. xii. No. 28) which we will ven- ture to give it on speculation. It is especially remarkable because it was in course of repair at the time of the destruction, and the mortar heap with a < zappa > or spade fixed in it stands in the centre of the floor just as the bricklayer s labourer left it more than eighteen-hundred years ago. La Casa dello Scheletro (Reg. vii. Ins. ix. No. 9) is on the other side of the street, and has noth- ing remarkable about it except the skeleton of a woman, lying, as found , in the corner of a room which opens upon the garden. Opposite to this is the Casa di Olconio (Reg. VII,. Ins. IV. No. 4 exc. 1861) which though in- ferior to many of the show houses of the city is interesting on account of its marble statuette and cascade. Holconius was a benefactor to the Greater Theatre, and a man of importance in the city. La Casa di Giuseppe II (Regio viii. Ins. 11. No. 39, exc. 1767-69, then covered up; again exc. i8k85-86) , is upon the city walls at the western angle of the Triangular Forum, and though it is a little out of the way it deserves a visit on account of the very unusual character of its con- struction. It has two floors below the one which w^e enter from the city side. The staircase leads to an important terrace on the first basement I I ^ i-*--* / ITINERARY 291 floor, from which again an inclined plane leads down to the ground level outside the city walls. Here there was an exit to the country and a well-arranged private bathing establishment. The Triangular Forum (p. 1 32) — Portico of Vinicius (p. 134) — The Temple of Hercules (p. 135) — The Ludus Gladiatorius (p. 139) — The Theatres (p. 142 to 149) — The Temple of Isis (p. 149) — The so-called Temple of yEsculapius (p. 153) and the Stabian Baths (p. 164) make up the second group of public buildings fully described in Chapter VII. We may now take La Casa di Corneiio Rufo (Reg. VIII. Ins. IV. No. 14 exc. 1861) which is directly opposite to the Stabian Baths. Here we see in the Atrium the very fine marble supports of his table. It is strange that the slab of the table should be wanting , and this can only be accounted for on the supposition that it had been broken (perhaps in the 63 earthquake) and never replaced. La Casa dei Diadumeni (1866) is on the opposite side of the Street of Stabia, No. 20 in the Strada dei Diadumeni. The causeway in front of this house is very remarkable, and the Lararium is of unusual form. The inscription beneath it gave the name to the house: GENIO . M . N . ET . LARIBUS . DVO . DIADVMENI . LIBERTI . 292 POMPEII The two freedmen Diadumeni to the genius of our Marcus and his household gods. Next door to the House of the Diadumeni is No. 22; a house not yet named, but which we will call La Casa dei Sandah' because a pair of hob- nailed sandals was found on the steps of the Atrium. The rust from the nails has permanently stained the marble. No doubt such shoes would injure the delicate mosaic of the floors, and were exchanged for slippers in the house, but the fact that they stood in readiness in the Atrium is a further proof that the destruction of the city took place in the winter. The Lararium of this house is in character similar but in detail different from that of the house next door. Proceeding now towards the Gate of Stabi^ we have on our left. La Gasa del Citarisla, (Reg. i. Ins. iv. No. 5, exc. 1863) called after the charming Archaistic bronze of Apollo in the Naples Museum. This was a very fine house, with its baths and spacious apartments beautifully painted. Some of the cele- brated pictures came from hence , namely ; Bacchus and Ariadne, and Orestes and Pylades before Thoas, and there is a nice little painting at the further end of the house, where also ITINERARY 293 1» ■^■'4 ;_,? > It \ ^t **■ ' ^ ' i*( ':<■'■.:: «-) were some well-executed brcnze animals which served for fountains. But the great finds of the house were the two heads of Brutus and Pom- pey, now in the gallery of the Masterpieces. These were found in a loft over the stable, and It IS difficult to assign a reason for their com- mittal to so ignoble a place by a man of such excellent taste in art as Popidius the owner of this house must have been , unless indeed he was actuated by political motives, and thought that the great rival of Ca;sar and his treache- rous assassin had no right to places in the house of a loyal subjecc. The house is of enormous extent, and had evidently been much added to by its last owner. Some of the rooms are very large, one of them measuring 36 ft by 24 ft and another 28 ft by 24 ft. The house had its private baths, and an important guest-house which opens into the Strada dei Diadumeni. The Officina Coriariorum or House of the Tanners (Reg. 1. Ins. v.) is near the Gate of Stabise, and though we mentioned it in the last chapter,' we may add that it shows signs of having suf- fered considerable damage in the 63 a. d. earth- quake, as the pillars of the atrium were rebuilt in the latest Pompeian style, though the remains of the more ancient tufa pillars are still visible. The owner must have been a wealthy man, and 294 POMPEII evidently inhabited the house No. 28 directly opposite to the Tannery. This is clear from the bridge made across the street from the one to the other. The dwelling-house has the great peculiarity of an iron grating over the complu- vium, showing probably that the owner of the house kept a good deal of money there for the purposes of his business, and that as the situa- tion was a lonely one , he deemed it wise to secure himself against burglars. The existing grating is of course modern , and copied from the ancient one. We may now proceed to the very interesting Gale of StabiaB (p. 172) and after this, up the Strada Stabiana as far as the third turn on our right, which will lead us in ten minutes walk across the fields to the Amphitheatre (p. 180). Hence the enthusiastic archaeologist will visit the Porta Nolana (page 193) and observe the walls and towers of the city all the way round to the Gate of Herculaneum (p. igS). After this point the walls are inaccessible from the outside, but they can be seen from some of the houses on the right of the street which leads to the Sea Gate by which we return to the railway station . The end of the Second Excursion I ife'i-ai P f) ^\ ITINERARY 295 THIRD EXCURSION THE CENTRE OF THE CITY Strada della Fortuna : — Casa del Fauna (House of the Faun) — C«ja della Parete Nera (H. of the Black Wall)— a^« del Capitelli Figiirati (H. of the Carved Capitals)— Gija di Arianna (^H. of Ariadne)— Ca^a della Caccia (H. of the Chase). Strada del Vesuvio.-^Casa di Otfeo (H. of Orpheus)— Fjillonica (H. of the ¥xi\\Qrs)—For?to (Bakery)— Ca^a di Cecilio Giocondo (H. of Jucundus). Strada di Nola:^Bagni Niiovi {^ew Baths) — C^j^ della Regina Margherita (H. of Queen Margaret) Casa del Canile (H. of the Dog-Kennel) — Ca^^ del Vomitorio (H. of the Vomitorium) Casa del Centenario-^{H, of ihe Centenary j^Scavi Ntwvi 1892 (New excavations 1892.) Strada di Stadia: — Casa di Lucres io {H. of Lucretius)— Casa di Paquio Proculo (H. of Proculus). In the centre of the town:-^Casa delt Orso (H. of the "^eax)-^ Casa del Balcone Pensile (H. of the Balcony)— Fullonica Piccola (Small Fullers Shop)— Ca^a ^/5/m(7 (H. of Siricus) ^Casa dello Specchio (H. of the Mirror). This excursion consists entirely of houses and shops, the only public building included in it being the new baths in the Street of Nola, which were in course of construction at the time of the destruction of the city.* * In case of the reader desiring to unite this excur- sion with the first, he should break off after the Arch 296 POMPEII Th house of the Faun (Reg. vi. Ins. xii. , exc. 1830-32) is always considered the principal house in Pompeii, and must certainly have been the residence of a wealthy citizen. The pavement in front of it bore the salutation « have » * in mo- saic letters, and the house contained some of the finest art treasures which have been found in the city. Together with its adjoining guest- house, and the large garden at the back, it oc- cupies an entire block of the city. It seems probable that the name of its owner was Cas- sius, and some writers have hazarded the con- jecture that he was a wine merchant , for the insufficient reason that a very large number of amphorae were found against the wall in the garden. These had been filled with wine the remains of which were analysed by Professor Call, who states that it was of that year's growth, showing that the destruction of the city occurred after the vintage was gathered. The Ostium of the house has a particoloured of Caliguki, and go to the Casa del Fauno : if he desires to join it to the second excursion, he should abandon the latter part of the second excursion and go from the House of the Diadumeni, to the Casa dello Specchio, and take the third excursion in the reverse order. * In a better period this word would have been writ- ten € AVE >*. It signifies « Hail » !. ITINERARY 297 ^{ I —I *^ 1 marble pavement, and a miniature Corinthian portico about ten feet from the ground. The Atrium was of the Tuscan style with a marble impluvium , in the centre of which stood the Dancing Faun which gave its name to the house. Beyond this was the tablinum with the mosaic of masks and festoons, and the life-size mosaic of fish. The room on the left was paved with the rare mosaic of Bacchus (or rather Acratus) on a panther; the ala on the right had the mosaic of a cat killing a chicken, and the ala on the left still has a pretty mosaic of doves drawing a necklace out of a half-closed dressino-- o case. The exhedra of the peristyle (a room answering to the tablinum of the atrium) had for its threshold the Nile mosaic, and for its pavement the magnificent mosaic of the battle of Issus. Behind this again was the spacious garden surrounded by a cloister with a prome- nade on the top of it, to which access was obtained from the Lararium at the end of the garden. Several skeletons were found in this house, amongst them that of a woman upon whose finger was a ring inscribed « Cassia > showing probably that she was the wife of Cas- sius wdiose name is found written on one of the columns of the garden, and who was, as we have already said, probal)ly the owner of the mansion. 298 POMPEII ITINERARY 299 A very important inscription was found in Oscan letters on the wall at the corner, outside the house, stating that the inhabitants of this quarter were to garrison that portion of the city wall which lay between the tenth and the elev- enth towers, where Titus Fisianus the son of Oppius was in command. Two similar inscrip- tions relating to that part of the wall which lay between the twelfth tower and the Gate of Sar- nus where Marius Adirius the son of Vibius was in command, have also been discovered in other parts of the town. (See Fiorelli pages 83, 103, and 153). These inscriptions were painted upon the original stonework of the wall, and were covered over by the Roman plaster of the later period. They were all written in the Oscan lan- guage, and give us the name of the Gate of Sarnus, and show that it was near the twelfth tower. No doubt if we are fortunate enough to pull down the Roman plaster in the right places, we shall some day find other similar inscriptions which will give us the whole military topography of the city in the Samnite period. La Casa della Parete Nera (Reg. vii. Ins. iv. No. 69, exc. 1833) IS directly opposite the H. of the Faun, and contains some good arabesques on a black ground , some paintings of Cupids , and interesting mosaic floors. ^1 J <- r^^i t The elaborate capitals of the Casa dei capitelli figurati , next door but one , No. 5 7 , can be observed without leaving the street. La Casa del Granduca di Toscana (Reg. vii. Ins. iv. No. 56, exc. 1833) has a small mosaic fountain which is often spoken of in the older books; but is of minor importance now that so many better ones have been discovered. It will interest some of our readers to know that in 1892 a fox and a litter of cubs were found in this house. La Casa di Arianna (Reg. vii. Ins. iv. No. Si, official reference number 31, the house having its front entrance in the Strada degli Augustali, exc. 1833-35) is a very fine house, too seldom visited. We enter from the Strada della For- tuna by its back door, and find ourselves in the peristyle, where the brick edging of the flower- bed (unique in Pompeii) may be observed. There is a fine mosaic in the further room on the right of the peristyle. This room is twelve feet square, the one next to it being twenty-four feet square, and the large apartment with an apse opposite to it, is thirty-three feet by eighteen. La Casa della caccia (Reg. vii. Ins. iv. No. 48, eve. 1835) forms the corner of the Vico Storto, and contains a large picture of a hunting scene, in a hilly country. A wounded wild boar seized 300 POMPEII ITINERARY 301 '.^ by a dog, a bull ripping up a leopard and chased by a lion, a bear on his back and another dash- ing upon him; sportsmen, stags, and other ac- cessories fill up the picture. Proceeding eastwards along the Strada della Fortuna we reach the important cross-way where the Strada di Stabia, and the Strada del Vesu- vio meet those of Fortuna and Nola. Here is a fountain w^ith a basrelief of Silenus upon its cippus. We now turn to our left, and visit La Casa di Orfeo (Reg. VI. Ins. xiv. Vo 20, exc. 1874) where is a bust of Vesonius Primus, and a fine painting of Orpheus charming the beasts with his lyre. It is in this house that the dog was discovered of which we have noticed the plaster cast in the local Museum. Next door is the Fullonica fully described on page 247, and at the present end of the street, on the left, an important Bakery with stable attached to it, and the only perfect mill in Pompeii. This has a metal trench about two feet from the ground, to catch the flour as it came from the hopper above. On our way back to the Strada di Nola we may visit the House of Caecilius Jucundus the Usurer (1875), which is directly opposite the Fullonica and on our present left. The basrelief on the V\\ \1 Lararium is particularly important, as the front face of it seems to represent the 63 a. d. earth- quake, destroying a Temple. We now cross the Strada di Nola and arrive at the Terme Nuove (Reg. ix, Ins. vi., exc. 1877) an establishment of baths incomplete at the time of the estruction, but intended to be of far greater magnificence than anything till then attempted at Pompeii. These baths though seldom visited, deserve careful study. The eastern side of them is in the main complete, and though the furnaces had not yet been put in, we can quite well see where the architect designed to place them. The pa- laestra was actually in course of being laid out at the time of the catastrophe, and though part of the decoration of the halls had been put up, and was found among the ruins, there is none of it now to be seen upon the walls. On entering the baths from the Strada di Nola turn to the left, and pass into a small court with five chambers round it. It is customary to write that no conjecture can safely be made as to the use to which these rooms were put, and it would be presumptuous in us to speak when the great authorities are silent. We may suggest however, that both the other bathing estabish- ments had one room in a similar position, and aMIif^h.il.iaj)'"^--''*----*"'-'^ — ^...■.«^-.-i..«.-W.ic.ji> 302 POMPEir ITINERARY 303 considering the scale of these baths there would seem nothing extraordinary in their having five. Of these one might well be a Thermopolium or refreshment room, one a shop for shaving and hair-cutting for gentlemen, while the three on the left, being more shut off, might well have been for the use of ladies, who however much they might bathe in common with the sterner sex, would certainly not admit them to a view of the mysteries connected with their personal adornment. Passing through these rooms into the area at the back we may see the outflow of the large bath, and the square vat behind it in which the effluent water was collected before it ran off down the gutter. As the bath had in all proba- bility a stream of water running constantly through it perhaps this vat was intended for rinsing out the linen used in the establisment, which would subsequently be hung out near the furnaces if rain chanced to be falling. The arrangements actual and prospective of the baths can be readily seen by walking through them, and comparing them with those of the Stabian and Forum Baths. If the ladies' department was intended to be in the small range of buildings at the southern end of the palaestra they were certainly very <» *' *i badly treated, but as we have stated it seems probable that the fashion of promiscuous bath- ing may have been already prevalent. Nearly opposite to these baths in the Strada di Nola is La Casa della Regina Margherita (Reg. x. No. i), excavated (1889) before Her Majesty the Queen of Italy. In it will be seen some very fine decoration, and an especially notable picture of Narcissus bathing with ny^iphs and Cupids. His reflection appears in the water below, but con- trary to the tradition* of these pictures he is not looking at it. Almost directly behind the Casa della Regina Margherita is a house discovered in 1892, which will probably be called « Casa del Coccodrilio », be- cause two terra-cotta crocodiles were found in it. It is quite the most remarkable house re- cently found; its decorations are fine, and its pavement unique. The closet of the house has a brick drain, which was flushed with water after the modern fashion. We now cross the Street of Nola again, and find Casa del Canlle (Reg. ix. Ins. v. No. 2) a house with a dog-kennel in the atrium, and a very good painting of Thetis and Vulcan in the Ala. No. 4 is a Bakery, and No. 11 a house known as the Casa del Vomitorio, on account of the trench round the out-door triclinium in the gar- no 4 POMPEII den. This trench was no doubt made to carry off the rain water which fell upon the couches, but the name w^as given to the house because it was thought to be designed for the disgusting Roman practice of vomiting after meals. The small room on the right of the Tablinum is decorated with pictures of the Nine Muses with their attributes. La Casa del Centenario (Regio ix) was excavated in 1897 on the occasion of the eighteenth cente- nary of the destruction Tof the city, and proved to be one of the finest houses recently found. In the centre of the peristyle was a fishpond over which stood a fine bronze statuette of a drunken faun holding a wine-skin, now in the Naples Museum. Round the peristyle are fine rooms, one of which has black walls with charming designs, another white walls with light and ele- gant decoration (the picture of dwarfs walking on stilts and gathering grapes is particularly interesting). A guest-house and private bathing arrangement adjoin it, and at the southern end of the peristyle is a large exhedra painted to represent an aquarium. The house which had been a good deal modified and extended since it was originally built, is a most interesting house to study. Next to the implu- vium is a stairway down to the cellar, the only ITINERARY 305 I instance of such a passage leading into the atrium. Little of value was found in this fine mansion, which leads us to infer that the Romans ransacked it in ancient times. The house contains a room to which gentlemen only are admitted. On leaving the Casa del Centenario the visitor should see the 1892 exavations which are to the eastward of it, and this will be a conve- nient point from which to diverge to the Gate of Nola (page 193) unles it was visited in the second excursion, after seeing the Amphitheatre. We now proceed to the Casa di Lucrezio (Reg. IX. Ins. III. No 3, exc. 1847) in the Street of Stabia, where the marble waterworks are par- ticulary interesting, and in the triclinium is a fine painting of the triumph of Bacchus. This house obtained its name from a picture of a two-fold tablet , a knife , a pen , and a folded letter grouped on the southern wall of the clois- ter. On the letter was the inscription M LVCRIITIO FLAM MARTIS DECVRI POMPEII ONI To Marcus Lucretius, priest of Mars, (and) Decurion, Pompeii. The Bakery of Paquius Proculus is opposite to the H. of Lucretius, and is interesting because it was here that the loaves now in the Naples Museum 30 'M)C POMPl'II nF\i<:iiAHY :{o: were discovered, and also because we have in the Museum a portrait of Proculus and his wife nearly life size , the only certain instance of a portrait found on the walls of the city. We will now pass up the Strade degli Augustali, in the centre of the town. Here we find La Casa deirOrso Reg. vii. Ins. ii. No. 48) with a bear in mosaic* on the threshold. Proceeding up the next lane, we reach La Casa del Balcone Pensile (Reg. VII. Ins. XII Xc. 28) a small house important only for its over-hanging balcony, which has been wonderfully restored at great trouble and expense, and is unique in the town. Returning down this street w^e may visit a small Fullonica at the corner, which is interesting because it contains the original wash-tubs, which are no longer tobe seen in the larger establishments. Within a few yards we shall find on our left La Casa di Sirico (Reg. vii. Ins. i. No. 47 exc. 1861). This is in reality the back door of the house, and on the wall opposite to it is a painting of the sacred serpents, with the warning to idlers which we mentioned in the preceding chapter. It appears that this was the business part of the house, through what the busines transacted by Siricus was, we cannot say. On his threshold in mosaic letters are the words. SALVE LVCRU fmj Good luck to profits. I J' ,1 ^l ■ S* '^'-,' '^ ,,'• Many able writers think tiiat tlie deficiency of the M at the end of the inscription , a defi- ciency which occurs elsewhere in the common expression Cave malum often written Cave malu on the Pompeian walls, shows that like the modern Neapolitans, the Romans of South Italy used to clip their words. In the room on the left are some nice paintings of Hercules drunk and teased by Cupids; Thetis presenting armour to Achilles, and pictures of Neptune and Apollo presiding over the building of the walls of Troy (Hom. II. VII-452). Passing through the house we observe a handsome table- support in the atrium , and going out by the front door into the Strada Stabiana , we may take the Via Tertia which leads us past the Casa della Pantera to the Casa dello Specchio, where we shall see a piece of dark purple glass let into the wall evidently for the purpose of being used as a mirror. This is particularly remarkable*^ because silver and not glass was generally used in ancient times for reflecting purposes, and we believe that this in the only instance in antiquity of a glass mirror. The end of the third Eitcursion. The above three excursions form a fairly ex- haustive survey of Pompeii, and include every- .308 POMPEII thing of primary importance in the city. Should the reader only have one day at his disposal he will be able by studying the itinerary given above, and comparing it with the map, to mark off for himself as many of the principal items as he can get into a day's walk. In such a case the Amphitheatre should not be attempted, and that part of the city lying near the Stabian Gate may also be omitted. The Forum baths , the Unfinished baths, and the houses of minor im- portance may also be dispensed with, and though the Street of the Tombs and the House of Dio- mede are among the the most interesting things in Pompeii they are a long way off, and when the visit has to be compressed into a single day, a good deal of fatigue may be avoided by exclud- ing them. Those who have more than three days to devote to the city , wmU find the subject quite inexhaustible, and we hope that this little book may prove a useful introduction to the study of one of the most wonderful survivals of ancient times. » i ,*^ THE END ^^ Vedi. al. lerfio ia. coiuuuiii'iiQiifc , INDEX Aedile 53 Alae 62 Amphitheatre 180 Amatory Elegiac 236 Arch of Nero 116 » Caligula 123 Architecture 58 Atria 61 Augusteum 124 Authorities 56 Bakeries 253, 305 Barbers 243 Basilica 105 Baths of the Forum. ... 118 » Salt 209 » Stabian ,54 » New 301 Bisellium 214 Blue Amphora 206 Boots 258 Bronzes 66 Bulla 53 Carpenters 32, 242 Casa {See House) Casts of Bodies. ..... 89 Ceiling 218 Cerotaph 213 Children 47 Coachmen 252 Colours 71 Coming of age 53 Compitum 282 Congius 233 Corn hall 113 Curia Senatorum 126 Dates, System of. ... . 231 Date of destruction. ... il Duumviri pro ludis. . . . 148 Decurions 54 Discharge {Soldier's) ... 233 Distance from Sea .... 22 Divorce 52 Drainage 28 Drama 42 Dyers 245 Earthquakes 9 Exchange of Eumachia. . . 127 Exhedra 63 Fauces 63 Fishermen 242 Flora 259 Forum, Greater 98 » Boarium 103 » Triangular .... 132 Freedmen 45 Fruiterers 258 Fullonica . . . . 247, 286, 306 Fullers 129, 247 Funeral Rites 203 » Urns 206 Gambling 43 Gate of the Sea 82 » Stabise 172 » Nola 193 » Nuceria .... 179 » Herculaneum . . 195 Gems 73 Glass 250 Hatters 244 Home Life 44 310 fNDEX Horse-shoes 258 Houses > height of 29 » of Adonis 284 » the Anchor 286 » Apollo 284 » Arianna 299 » Balcone pensile. . . 30b » Caccia 299 » Canile {dog-kennel). 303 > Capitelli figurati . . 299 ♦ Castor and Pollux . 285 » Centauro 285 » Centenario 304 » Cicero [or Frugi) .210 > Cinghiale 789 » Cinque Piani. . . . 287 » Citarista 292 » Coccodrillo 303 > Cornelio Rufo ... 291 » Diadumeni 291 » Diomede 218 > Faun 296 » Frugi 209 » Giocondo 300 » Giuseppe Secondo . 290 » Gran Dnca 299 > Holconius 290 » Jucundus 300 » Labyrinth 285 » Lucrezio ^05 » Meleager 284 » Mosaic Columns . . 225 » Orso {the Bear) . . 30^ » Orfeo {Orpheus') . . 300 » Palestrita 287 » Pansa 280 » Paquio Proculo . . 305 » Parete nera 298 » Poeta tragico. ... 279 » Quaestor 285 * Reg.^Marghcrita . . 303 > Sallust 281 » Sandals 292 > Scheletro 290 » Siricus ^06 » Specchio 20" » Surgeon 282 > Tanners 293 Houses Tragic Poet .... 279 » Vettii. , 285 » Vomitorium .... 305 » Zappa 290 Human Remains 223 Inscriptions Amatory 236 Dated . , . , 231 Felix 239 Janatici 240 Fortunatus 190 Garasenus 234 Gladiatorial. . . . . 238, 239 Isochrysus 226 Lignart 32 Martialis 235 Oscan 173^ 298 Otiosis 23& Patrua 178 Plostrari 33 Pomfeitis 226 ^'«/« 237 Puteolana 236 Pnteolanis 238 Turpilin 234 U^'guentari , . 32 Uncus 338 Ursos 239 Victoria 236 Wine-jars 235 Itinerary . 279 Jewelry 72 Jupiter Meilichius 154 Justice 41 Liberti 4^ Literature, 228 Literary Curiosities 236 Life of Gentry 48 Ludus Gladlatorius 139 Macellum 124 Management 78 Marriage ^o Measures 103 Morality 42 Mosaic 72, 25c Mourning 217 Mural Paintings 67 Museum 87 ^lasic 245 IXDEX 311 Names of Houses 81 > Streets 11 Naumachia . . . Nucerine Riot . » Tombs. 184 191 179 Ornament 5g Ossuary 223 Osteria 285 Ostium ^j Out>ide Excavations . . 14, 178 Paintings 70 Pantheon , Pen {bronze) Plaster casts Pliny's letters Population Porta {see Gate) Portico of Vinicius 134 ^o^erty Prison 124 252 16 31 44 140 c Buildings c8 Publi Slaves I - ^ Railway Re-dis overy . , Religion Restoration Saronite tombs Schoolmasters School of Verna ....'. Sculptor Saddlers Sea Gate g- Serta Shells ff^^2i°g 236 Slavery Statuary 5^ Stepping-stones 28 Stirrups '/ ^^,7 Street of the tombs .... 199 » the Amphitheatre . 175 176 77 20 39 58 224 47 130 257 357 216 259 Streets Suicide Surgical Instruments . . Survey of Svedius . . . Tablinum Tailois Tanners Tavern Signs Temple of ^sculapius . » Apollo . . . Augustus . . Fortune . . . Hercules . . Isis Jupiter . . . Mercury . . » » » Terra-cotta The;itres Tibia '^'oga Tomb of Calventius . » Mamia . . . * Noevoleia . . » Res ti tutus . * Terentius . . Tradesmen Triclinium » of Saturninus Triumphal Arches . . Trousers Ustrinum Venatio Vespasian Vesuvius Via Jovia Vice . Walls Water Supply. .... Wax tablets Writing Materials. . . 1 16, 169, 31 43 67 201 62 243 293 33 153 108 124 117 ^35 149 114 126 74 142 245 53 213 208 215 207 225 241 63 215 123 244 21 1 186 38 27 175 42 196 34 250 249 w- ».«," I i iiMiinil Hi I H II n i I if f i !! !( 101065569 / f'j, *? ,r'rv ■:/■- ■-'m «1 :-:■ .*; 'III M •fill '?¥^ 1* '>! t *!ik ' I- ft-* **