NAPLES, _November_ 9_th_.
We made our excursion to Pompeii, passing through Portici, and over the
last lava of Mount Vesuvius. I experienced a strange mixture of
sensations, on surveying at once the mischiefs of the late eruption, in
the ruin of villages, farms, and vineyards; and all around them the most
luxuriant and delightful scenery of nature. It was impossible to resist
the impressions of melancholy from viewing the former, or not to admit
that gaiety of spirits which was inspired by the sight of the latter. I
say nothing of the Museum at Portici, which we saw in our way, on account
of the ample description of its contents already given to the public, and
because it should be described no otherwise than by an exact catalogue,
or by an exhibition of engravings. An hour and half brought us from this
celebrated repository to Pompeii. Nothing can be conceived more
delightful than the climate and situation of this city. It stands upon a
gently-rising hill, which commands the bay of Naples, with the islands of
Caprea and Ischia, the rich coasts of Sorento, the tower of Castel a
Mare; and on the other side, Mount Vesuvius, with the lovely country
intervening. It is judged to be about an Italian mile long, and three
and a half in circuit. We entered the city at the little gate which lies
towards Stabiæ. The first object upon entering is a colonnade round a
square court, which seems to have formed a place of arms. Behind the
colonnade is a series of little rooms, destined for the soldiers’
barracks. The columns are of stone, plaistered with stucco and coloured.
On several of them we found names scratched in Greek and Latin; probably
those of the soldiers who had been quartered there. Helmets and armour
for various parts of the body were discovered amongst the skeletons of
some soldiers, whose hard fate had compelled them to wait on duty, at the
perilous moment of the city’s approaching destruction. Dolphins and
tridents, sculptured in relief on most of these relics of armour, seem to
show that they had been fabricated for naval service. Some of the
sculptures on the arms, probably belonging to officers, exhibit a greater
variety of ornaments. The taking of Troy, wrought on one of the helmets,
is beautifully executed; and much may be said in commendation of the work
of several others.
We were next led to the remains of a temple and altar near these
barracks. From thence to some rooms floored (as indeed were almost all
that have been cleared from the rubbish) with tesselated mosaic pavements
of various patterns, and most of them of very excellent execution. Many
of these have been taken up, and now form the floors of the rooms in the
Museum at Portici, whose best ornaments of every kind are furnished from
the discoveries at Pompeii. From the rooms just mentioned we descended
into a subterraneous chamber, communicating with a bathing apartment. It
appears to have served as a kind of office to the latter. It was
probably here that the clothes used in bathing were washed. A fireplace,
a capacious cauldron of bronze, and earthen vessels, proper for that
purpose, found here, have given rise to the conjecture. Contiguous to
this room is a small circular one with a fireplace, which was the stove
to the bath. I should not forget to tell you that the skeleton of the
poor laundress (for so the antiquaries will have it), who was very
diligently washing the bathing clothes at the time of the eruption, was
found lying in an attitude of most resigned death, not far from the
washing cauldron in the office just mentioned.
We were now conducted to the temple, or rather chapel, of Isis. The
chief remains are a covered cloister; the great altar on which was
probably exhibited the statue of the goddess; a little edifice to protect
the sacred well; the pediment of the chapel, with a symbolical vase in
relief; ornaments in stucco, on the front of the main building,
consisting of the lotus, the sistrum, representations of gods,
Harpocrates, Anubis, and other objects of Egyptian worship. The figures
on one side of this temple are Perseus with the Gorgon’s head; on the
other side, Mars and Venus, with Cupids bearing the arms of Mars. We
next observe three altars of different sizes. On one of them is said to
have been found the bones of a victim unconsumed, the last sacrifice
having probably been stopped by the dreadful calamity which had
occasioned it. From a niche in the temple was taken a statue of marble:
a woman pressing her lips with her forefinger. Within the area is a
well, where the priest threw the ashes of the sacrifices. We saw in the
Museum at Portici some lovely arabesque paintings, cut from the walls of
the cloister. The foliage which ran round the whole sweep of the
cloister itself is in the finest taste. A tablet of basalt with Egyptian
hieroglyphics was transported from thence to Portici, together with the
following inscription, taken from the front gate of the chapel:
N. POPIDUS N. F. CELSINUS.
AEDEM ISIDIS TERRAE MOTU COLLAPSAM
A FUNDAMENTO P. SUA RESTITUIT
HUNC DECURIONES OB LIBERALITATEM
CUM ESSET ANNORUM SEX ORDINI SUO
GRATIS ADLEGERUNT.
Behind one of the altars we saw a small room, in which, our guide
informed us, a human skeleton had been discovered, with some fish bones
on a plate near it, and a number of other culinary utensils. We then
passed on to another apartment, almost contiguous, where nothing more
remarkable had been found than an iron crow: an instrument with which
perhaps the unfortunate wretch, whose skeleton I have mentioned above,
had vainly endeavoured to extricate herself, this room being probably
barricaded by the matter of the eruption. This temple, rebuilt, as the
inscription imports, by N. Popidius, had been thrown down by a terrible
earthquake, that likewise destroyed a great part of the city (sixteen
years before the famous eruption of Vesuvius described by Pliny, which
happened in the first year of Titus, A.D. 79) and buried at once both
Herculaneum and Pompeii. As I lingered alone in these environs sacred to
Isis, some time after my companions had quitted them, I fell into one of
those reveries which my imagination is so fond of indulging; and
transporting myself seventeen hundred years back, fancied I was sailing
with the elder Pliny, on the first day’s eruption, from Misenum, towards
Retina and Herculaneum; and afterwards towards the villa of his friend
Pomponianus at Stabiæ. The course of our galley seldom carried us out of
sight of Pompeii, and as often as I could divert my attention from the
tremendous spectacle of the eruption, its enormous pillar of smoke
standing conically in the air, and tempests of liquid fire continually
bursting out from the midst of it, then raining down the sides of the
mountain, and flooding this beautiful coast with innumerable streams of
red-hot lava, methought I turned my eyes upon this fair city, whose
houses, villas, and gardens, with their long ranges of columned courts
and porticos, were made visible through the universal cloud of ashes, by
lightning from the mountain; and saw its distracted inhabitants, men,
women, and children, running to and fro in despair. But in one spot, I
mean the court and precincts of the temple, glared a continual light. It
was the blaze of the altars; towards which I discerned a long-robed train
of priests moving in solemn procession, to supplicate by prayer and
sacrifice, at this destructive moment, the intervention of Isis, who had
taught the first fathers of mankind the culture of the earth, and other
arts of civil life. Methought I could distinguish in their hands all
those paintings and images, sacred to this divinity, brought out on this
portentous occasion, from the subterraneous apartments and mystic cells
of the temple. There was every form of creeping thing and abominable
beast, every Egyptian pollution which the true prophet had seen in
vision, among the secret idolatries of the temple at Jerusalem. The
priests arrived at the altars; I saw them gathered round, and purifying
the three at once with the sacred meal; then, all moving slowly about
them, each with his right hand towards the fire: it was the office of
some to seize the firebrands of the altars, with which they sprinkled
holy water on the numberless bystanders. Then began the prayers, the
hymns, and lustrations of the sacrifice. The priests had laid the
victims with their throats downward upon the altars; were ransacking the
baskets of flour and salt for the knives of slaughter, and proceeding in
haste to the accomplishment of their pious ceremonies;—when one of our
company, who thought me lost, returned with impatience, and calling me
off to some new object, put an end to my strange reverie. We were now
summoned to pay some attention to the scene and corridor of a theatre,
not far from the temple. Little more of its remains being yet cleared
away, we hastened back to a small house and garden in the neighbourhood
of Isis. Sir W. Hamilton (in his account of Pompeii communicated to the
Society of Antiquaries), when speaking of this house, having taken
occasion to give a general idea of the private mansions of the ancient
citizens, I shall take the liberty of transcribing the whole passage. “A
covered cloister, supported by columns, goes round the house, as was
customary in many of the houses at Pompeii. The rooms in general are
very small, and in one, where an iron bedstead was found, the wall had
been pared away to make room for this bedstead; so that it was not six
feet square, and yet this room was most elegantly painted, and had a
tesselated or mosaic floor. The weight of the matter erupted from Mount
Vesuvius has universally damaged the upper parts of the houses; the lower
parts are mostly found as fresh as at the moment they were buried. The
plan of most of the houses at Pompeii is a square court, with a fountain
in the middle, and small rooms round, communicating with that court. By
the construction and distribution of the houses, it seems, the
inhabitants of Pompeii were fond of privacy. They had few windows
towards the street, except where, from the nature of the plan, they could
not avoid it; but even in that case the windows were placed too high for
anyone in the streets to overlook them. Their houses nearly resemble
each other, both as to distribution of plan, and in the manner of
finishing the apartments. The rooms are in general small, from ten to
twelve feet, and from fourteen to eighteen feet; few communications
between room and room, almost all without windows, except the apartments
situated to the gardens, which are thought to have been allotted to the
women. Their cortiles, or courts, were often surrounded by porticos,
even in very small houses; not but there were covered galleries before
the doors of their apartments to afford shade and shelter. No timber was
used in finishing their apartments, except in doors and windows. The
floors were generally laid in mosaic work. One general taste prevailed
of painting the sides and ceilings of the rooms. Small figures and
medallions of low relief were sometimes introduced. Their great variety
consisted in the colours, and in the choice and delicacy of the
ornaments, in which they displayed great harmony and taste. Their houses
were some two, others three stories high.”
We now pursued our way through what is with some probability thought to
have been the principal street. Its narrowness, however, surprised me.
It is scarcely eleven feet wide, clear of the footways raised on each
side of it. The pavement is formed of a large sort of flattish-surfaced
pebbles; not laid down with the greatest evenness or regularity. The
sideways may be about a yard wide, each paved, irregularly enough, with
small stones. There are guard stones at equal intervals, to defend the
foot passengers from carriages and horses. I cannot say I found anything
either elegant or pleasant in the effect of this open street. But, as
the houses in general present little more than a dead wall towards it, I
do not imagine any views, beyond mere use and convenience, were consulted
in the plan. It led us, however, through the principal gate or entrance,
to a sort of Villa Rustica, without the limits of the city, which amply
recompensed our curiosity. The arcade surrounding a square garden, or
courtyard, offers itself first to the observer’s notice. Into this open
a number of coved rooms, adorned with paintings of figures and
arabesques. These rooms, though small, have a rich and elegant
appearance, their ornaments being very well executed, and retaining still
their original freshness. On the top of the arcade runs a walk or open
terrace, leading to the larger apartments of the higher story. One of
the rooms below has a capacious bow-window, where several panes of glass,
somewhat shattered, were found, but in sufficient preservation to show
that the ancients were not without knowledge of this species of
manufacture. As Horace and most of the old Latin Poets dwell much on the
praises of ancient conviviality, and appear to have valued themselves
considerably on their connoisseurship in wine, it was with great pleasure
I descended into the spacious cellars, sunk and vaulted beneath the
arcade above-mentioned. Several earthen amphoræ were standing in rows
against the walls, but the Massic and Falernian with which they were once
stored, had probably long been totally absorbed by the earth and ashes,
which were now the sole contents of these venerable jars. The ancients
are thought to have used oil, instead of corks, and that the stoppers
were of some matter that could make but little resistance, seems
confirmed by the entrance of that, which now supplied the place with
wine. The skeletons of several of the family who had possessed this
villa were discovered in the cellar, together with brass and silver
coins, and many such ornaments of dress as were of more durable
materials. On re-ascending, we went to the hot and cold baths; thence to
the back of the villa, separated by a passage from the more elegant part
of the house; we were shown some rooms which had been occupied by the
farmer, and from whence several implements of agriculture had been
carried, to enrich the collection at Portici. On the whole, the plan and
construction of this villa are extremely curious, and its situation very
happily chosen. I could not, however, help feeling some regret, in not
having had the good fortune to be present at the first discovery. It
must have been highly interesting to see all its ancient relics (the
greatest part of which are now removed) each in its proper place; or, at
least, in the place they had possessed for so long a course of years.
His Sicilian Majesty has ordered a correct draught of this villa to be
taken, which, it is hoped, will one day be published, with a complete
account of all the discoveries at Pompeii.
Our next walk was to see the Columbarium, a very solemn looking edifice,
where probably the families of higher rank only at Pompeii, deposited the
urns of their deceased kindred. Several of these urns, with their ashes,
and one among the rest of glass, inclosed in another of earth, were dug
out of the sepulchral vaults. A quantity of marble statues, of but
ordinary execution, and colossal masks of terra-cotta, constituted the
chief ornaments of the Columbarium. It is situated without the gates, on
the same side of the city as the villa just described. There is
something characteristically sad in its aspect. It threw my mind into a
melancholy, but not disagreeable tone. Under the mixed sentiments it
inspired, I cast one lingering look back on the whole affecting scene of
ruins, over which I had for several hours been rambling, and quitted it
to return to Naples, not without great reluctance.