worth the trouble of being studied or reconstructed. The mural paintings
form an adornment of questionable taste. A rear door puts the temple in
communication with the _Senaculum_, or Senate-house, as the neighboring
structure was called; but the Pompeian Senators being no more than
decurions, it is an ambitious title. A vestibule that comes forward as
far as the colonnade of the Forum; then a spacious saloon or hall; an
arch at the end, with a broad foundation where the seats of the
decemviri possibly stood; then, walls built of rough stones arranged in
net-work (_opus reticulatum_), some niches without statues--such is all
that remains. But with a ceiling of wood painted in bright colors (the
walls could not have held up a vaulted roof), and completely paved,
completely sheathed with marble, as some flags and other remnants
indicate, this hall could not have been without some richness of effect.
Those who sat there were but the magistrates of a small city; but behind
them loomed up Rome, whose vast shadow embraced and magnified
everything.
At length we have before us the Pantheon, the strangest and the least
easy to name of the edifices of Pompeii. It is not parallel to the
Forum, but its obliquity was adroitly masked by shops in which many
pieces of coin have been found. Hence the conclusion that these were
_tabernæ argentariæ_, the money-changers' offices, and I cannot prove
the contrary. The two entrance doors are separated by two Corinthian
columns, between which is hollowed out a niche without a statue. The
capitals of these columns bear Cæsarean eagles. Could this Pantheon have
been the temple of Augustus? Having passed the doors, one reaches an
area, in which extended, to the right and to the left, a spacious
portico surrounding a court, in the midst of which remain twelve
pedestals that, ranged in circular order, once, perhaps, sustained the
pillars of a circular temple or the statues of twelve gods. This, then,
was the Pantheon. However, at the extremity of the edifice, and directly
opposite to the entrance, three apartments open. The middle one formed a
chapel; three statues were found there representing Drusus and Livia,
the wife of Augustus, along with an arm holding a globe, and belonging,
no doubt, to the consecrated statue which must have stood upon the
pedestal at the end, a statue of the Emperor. Then this was the temple
of Augustus. The apartment to the left shows a niche and an altar, and
served, perhaps, for sacrifices; the room to the right offers a stone
bench arranged in the shape of a horse-shoe. It could not be one of
those triple beds (_triclinia_) which we shall find in the eating
saloons of the private houses; for the slope of these benches would have
forced the reclining guests to have their heads turned toward the wall
or their feet higher than their heads. Moreover, in the interior of this
bench runs a conduit evidently intended to afford passage to certain
liquids, perhaps to the blood of animals slaughtered in the place. This,
therefore, was neither a Pantheon nor a temple of Augustus, but a
slaughter-house (_macellum_.) In that case, the eleven apartments
abutting to the right on the long wall of the edifice would be the
stalls. But these rooms, in which the regular orifices made in the wall
were to hold the beams that sustained the second story, were adorned
with paintings which still exist, and which must have been quite
luxurious for those poor oxen. Let us interrogate these paintings and
those of all these walls; they will instruct us, perhaps, with reference
to the destination of the building. There are mythological and epic
pieces reproducing certain sacred subjects, of which we shall speak
further on. Others show us winged infants, little Cupids weaving
garlands, of which the ancients were so fond; some of the bacchanalian
divinities, celebrating the festival of the mills, are crowning with
flowers the patient ass who is turning the wheel. Flowers on all
sides--that was the fantasy of antique times. Flowers at their wild
banquets, at their august ceremonies, at their sacrifices, and at their
festivals; flowers on the necks of their victims and their guests, and
on the brows of their women and their gods. But the greatest number of
these paintings appear destined for banquetting-halls; dead nature
predominates in them; you see nothing but pullets, geese, ducks,
partridges, fowls, and game of all kinds, fruits, and eggs, amphoræ,
loaves of bread and cakes, hams, and I know not what all else. In the
shops attached to this palace belong all sorts of precious
articles--vases, lamps, statuettes, jewels, a handsome alabaster cup;
besides, there have been found five hundred and fifty small bottles,
without counting the goblets, and, in vases of glass, raisins, figs,
chestnuts, lentils, and near them scales and bakers' and pastry-cooks'
moulds. Could the Pantheon, then, have been a tavern, a free inn
(_hospitium_) where strangers were received under the protection of the
gods? In that case the supposed butcher-shop must have been a sort of
office, and the _triclinium_ a dormitory. However that may be, the
table and the altar, the kitchen and religion, elbow each other in this
strange palace. Our austerity revolts and our frivolity is amused at the
circumstance; but Catholics of the south are not at all surprised at it.
Their mode of worship has retained something of the antique gaiety. For
the common people of Naples, Christmas is a festival of eels, Easter a
revel of _casatelli_; they eat _zeppole_ to honor Saint Joseph; and the
greatest proof of affliction that can be given to the dying Saviour is
not to eat meat. Beneath the sky of Italy dogmas may change, but the
religion will always be the same--sensual and vivid, impassioned and
prone to excess, essentially and eternally Pagan, above all adoring
woman, Venus or Mary, and the _bambino_, that mystic Cupid whom the
poets called the first love. Catholicism and Paganism, theories and
mysteries; if there be two religions, they are that of the south and
that of the north.
You have just explored the whole eastern part of the Forum. Pass now in
front of the temple of Jupiter and reach the western part. In descending
from north to south, the first monument that strikes your attention is a
rather long portico, turned on the east toward the Forum. Different
observers have fancied that they discovered in it a _poecile_, a museum,
a divan, a club, a granary for corn; and all these opinions are equally
good.
Behind the poecile open small chambers, of which some are vaulted.
Skeletons were found in them, and the inference was that they were
prisons. Lower down extends along the Forum the lateral wall of the
temple of Venus. In this wall is hollowed a small square niche in which
there rose, at about a yard in height from the soil, a sort of table of
tufa, indented with regular cavities, which are ranged in the order of
their capacity; these were the public measures. An inscription gives us
the names of the duumvirs who had gauged them by order of the decurions.
As M. Breton has well remarked, they were the standards of measurement.
Of these five cavities, the two smallest were destined for liquids, and
we still see the holes through which those liquids flowed off when they
had been measured. The table of tufa has been taken to the museum, and
in its place has been substituted a rough imitation, which gives a
sufficient idea of this curious monument.
The temple of Venus is entered from the neighboring street which we have
already traversed. The ruin is a fine one--the finest, perhaps, in
Pompeii; a spacious inclosure, or peribolus, framing a portico of
forty-eight columns, of which many are still standing, and the portico
itself surrounding the podium, where rose the temple--properly speaking,
the house of the goddess. In front of the entrance, at the foot of the
steps that ascend to the podium, rises the altar, poorly calculated for
living sacrifices and seemingly destined for simple offerings of fruit,
cakes, and incense, which were consecrated to Venus. Besides the form of
the altar, an inscription found there and a statue of the goddess, whose
modest attitude recalls the masterpiece of Florence, sufficiently
authorize the name, in the absence of more exact information, that has
been given to this edifice. Others, however, have attributed it to the
worship of Bacchus; others again to that of Diana, and the question has
not yet been settled by the savans; but Venus being the patroness of
Pompeii, deserved the handsomest temple in the little city.
The columns of the peribolus or inclosure bear the traces of some
bungling repairs made between the earthquake of 63 and the eruption of
79. They were Doric, but the attempt was to render them Corinthian, and,
to this end, they were covered with stucco and topped with capitals that
are not becoming to them. Against one of these columns still leans a
statue in the form of a Hermes. Around the court is cut a small kennel
to carry off the rain water, which was then caught in reservoirs. The
wall along the Forum was gaily decorated with handsome paintings; one of
these, probably on wood, was burned in the eruption, and the vacant
place where it belonged is visible. Behind the temple open rooms
formerly intended for the priests; handsome paintings were found there,
also--- among them a Bacchus, resting his elbow on the shoulder of old
Silenus, who is playing the lyre. Absorbed in this music, he forgets the
wine in his goblet, and lets it fall out upon a panther crouching at his
feet.
We now have only to visit the temple itself, the house of the goddess.
The steps that scaled the basement story were thirteen--an odd
number--so that in ascending the first step with the right foot, the
level of the sanctuary was also reached with the right foot. The temple
was _peripterous_, that is to say, entirely surrounded with open
columns with Corinthian capitals. The portico opened broadly, and a
mosaic of marbles, pleasingly adjusted, formed the pavement of the
_cella_, of which the painted walls represented simple panels, separated
here and there by plain pilasters. Our Lady of Pompeii dwelt there.
The last monument of the Forum on the south-west side is the Basilica;
and the street by which we have entered separates it from the temple of
Venus. The construction of the edifice leaves no doubt as to its
destination, which is, moreover, confirmed by the word _Basilica_ or
_Basilaca_, scratched here and there by loungers with the points of
their knives, on the wall. _Basilica_--derived from a Greek word which
signifies _king_--might be translated with sufficient exactness by
_royal court_. At Rome, these edifices were originally mere covered
market-places sheltered from the rain and the sun. At a later period,
colonnades divided them in three, sometimes even into five naves, and
the simple niche which, intended for the judges' bench, was hollowed out
at the foot of its monuments, finally developed into a vaulted
semicircle. At last, the early Christians finding themselves crowded in
the old temples, chose the high courts of justice to therein celebrate
the worship of the new God, and the Roman Basilica imposed its
architecture and its proportions upon the Catholic Cathedral. In the
semicircle, then, where once the ancient magistracy held its justice
seat, arose the high altar and the consecrated image of the crucified
Saviour.
The Basilica of Pompeii presents to the Forum six pillars, between which
five portals slid along grooves which are still visible. A vestibule, or
sort of chalcidicum extends between these five entrances and five
others, indicated by two columns and four pillars. The vestibule once
crossed, the edifice appears in its truly Roman grandeur; at first
glance the eye reconstructs the broad brick columns, regularly truncated
in shape (they might be considered unfinished), which are still erect on
their bases and which, crowned with Ionic volutes, were to form a
monumental portico along the four sides of this majestic area paved with
marble. Half columns fixed in the lateral walls supported the gallery;
they joined each other in the angles; the middle space must have been
uncovered. Fragments of statues and even of mounted figures proclaim the
magnificence of this monument, at the extremity of which there rose, at
the height of some six feet above the soil, a tribune adorned with half
a dozen Corinthian columns and probably destined for the use of the
duumvirs. The middle columns stood more widely apart in order that the
magistrates might, from their seats, command a view of the entire
Basilica. Under this tribune was concealed a mysterious cellar with
barred windows. Some antiquaries affirm that there was the place where
prisoners were tortured. They forget that in Rome, in the antique time,
cases were adjudged publicly before the free people.
Some of the walls of the Basilica were covered with _graphites_, that is
to say, with inscriptions scratched with the point of a nail or of a
knife by loungers on the way. I do not here copy the thousand and one
insignificant inscriptions which I find in my rambles. They would teach
us nothing but the names of the Pompeian magistrates who had constructed
or reconstructed this or that monument or such-and-such a portion of an
edifice with the public money. But the graphites of the Basilica merit a
moment's attention. Sometimes, these are verses of Ovid or of Virgil or
Propertius (never of Horace, singular to say), and frequently with
curious variations. Thus, for example:
"Quid pote durum _Saxso_ aut quid mollius unda?
Dura tamen molli _Saxsa_ cavantur aqua."
(_Ovid_.)
Notice the _s_ in the _saxo_ and the _quid pote_ instead of _quid
magis_; it is a Greekism.
Elsewhere were written these two lines:
"Quisquis amator erit Scythiæ licet ambulet oris:
Nemo adeo ut feriat barbarus esse volet."
Propertius had put this distich in an elegy in which he narrated a
nocturnal promenade between Rome and Tibur. Observe the word _Scythiæ_
instead of _Scythicis_, and especially, _feriat_, which is the true
reading,--the printed texts say _noceat_. Thus an excellent correction
has been preserved for us by Vesuvius.
Here are other lines, the origin of which is unknown:
"Scribenti mi dictat Amor, monstrat que Cupido
Ah peream, sine te si Deus esse velim!"
How many modern poets have uttered the same exclamation! They little
dreamed that a Pompeian, a slave no doubt, had, eighteen centuries
before their time, scratched, it with a nail upon the wall of a
basilica. Here is a sentence that mentions gold. It has been carried out
by the English poet, Wordsworth:
"Minimum malum fit contemnendo maximum,
Quod, crede mi, non contemnendo, erit minus."
Let us copy also this singular truth thrown into rhyme by some gourmand
who had counted without his host:
"Quoi perna cocta est, si convivæ adponitur,
Non gustat pernam, lingit ollam aut caccabum."
This _quoi_ is for _cui_; the caccabus was the kettle in which the fowl
was cooked.
Here follows some wholesome advice for the health of lovers:
"Quisquis amat calidis noil debet fontibus uti:
Nam nemo flammis ustus amare potest."
I should never get through were I to quote them all. But how many short
phrases there are that, scratched here and there, cause this old
monument to spring up again, by revealing the thoughts and fancies of
the loungers and passers-by who peopled it so many years ago.
A lover had written this:
"Nemo est bellus nisi qui amavit."
A friend:
"Vale, Messala, fac me ames."
A superlative wag, but incorrect withal:
"Cosmus nequitiae est magnussimae."
A learned man, or a philosopher:
"Non est exsilium ex patria sapientibus."
A complaining suitor:
"Sara non belle facis.
Solum me relinquis,
Debilis...."
A wrangler and disputant threatening the other party with a law-suit:
"Somius _Corneilio_ (Cornelio) jus _pendre_ (perendie?)"
A sceptic who cherishes no illusions as to the mode of administering
justice:
"Quod pretium legi?"
A censor, perhaps a Christian, who knew the words addressed by the Jews
to the blind man who was cured:
"Pyrrhus Getae conlegae salutem.
Moleste fero quod audivi te mortuom (sic).
Itaque vale."
A jovial wine bibber:
"Suavis vinari sitit, rogo vas valde sitit."[B]
A wit:
"Zetema mulier ferebat filium simulem sui nec meus erat, nec mi
simulat; sed vellem esset meus, et ego volebam ut meus esset."
Tennis-players scribble:
"Amianthus, Epaphra, Tertius ludant cum Hedysio, Incundus Nolanus
petat, numeret Citus et Stacus Amianthus."
Wordsworth remarks that these two names, Tertius and Epaphras, are found
in the epistles of St. Paul. Epaphras (in Latin, Epaphra; the suppressed
letter _s_ shows that this Pompeian was merely a slave) is very often
named on the walls of the little city; he is accused, moreover, of being
beardless or destitute of hair (_Epaphra glaber est_), and of knowing
nothing about tennis. (_Epaphra pilicrepus non es_). This inscription
was found all scratched over, probably by the hand of Epaphras himself,
who had his own feelings of pride as a fine player.
Thus it is that the stones of Pompeii are full of revelations with
reference to its people. The Basilica is easy to reconstruct and provide
with living occupants. Yonder duumviri, up between the Corinthian
columns; in front of them the accused; here the crowd; lovers confiding
their secrets to the wall; thinkers scribbling their maxims on them;
wags getting off their witticisms in the same style; the slaves, in
fine, the poor, announcing to the most remote posterity that they had,
at least, the game of tennis to console them for their abject condition!
Still three small apartments the extremity of which rounded off into
semicircles (probably inferior tribunes where subordinate magistrates,
such as commissioners or justices of the peace, had their seats); then
the school of Verna, cruelly dilapidated; finally a small triumphal arch
on which there stood, perhaps, a _quadriga_, or four-yoked chariot-team;
some pedestals of statues erected to illustrious Pompeians, to Pansa, to
Sallust, to Marcus Lucretius, Decidamius Rufus; some inscriptions in
honor of this one or that one, of the great Romulus, of the aged
Æneas,--when all these have been seen, or glanced at, at least, you will
have made the tour of the Forum.
You now know what the public exchange was in a Roman city; a spacious
court surrounded by the most important monuments (three temples, the
bourse, the tribunals, the prisons, etc.), inclosed on all sides (traces
of the barred gates are still discernible at the entrances), adorned
with statues, triumphal arches, and colonnades; a centre of business and
pleasure; a place for sauntering and keeping appointments; the Corso,
the Boulevard of ancient times, or in other words, the heart of the
city. Without any great effort of the imagination, all this scene
revives again and becomes filled with a living, variegated throng,--the
portico and its two stories of columns along the edge of the
reconstructed monuments; women crowd the upper galleries; loiterers drag
their feet along the pavement; the long robes gather in harmonious
folds; busy merchants hurry to the Chalcidicum; the statues look proudly
down from their re-peopled pedestals; the noble language of the Romans
resounds on all sides in scanned, sonorous measure; and the temple of
Jupiter, seated at the end of the vista, as on a throne, and richly
adorned with Corinthian elegance, glitters in all its splendor in the
broad sunshine.
An air of pomp and grandeur--a breath of Rome--has swept over this
collection of public edifices. Let us descend from these heights and
walk about through the little city.
[Footnote B: For _sitiat_.]
III.
THE STREET.
THE PLAN OF POMPEII.--THE PRINCELY NAMES OF THE HOUSES.--APPEARANCE
OF THE STREETS, PAVEMENTS, SIDEWALKS, ETC.--THE SHOPS AND THE
SIGNS.--THE PERFUMER, THE SURGEON, ETC.--AN ANCIENT
MANUFACTORY.--BATHING ESTABLISHMENTS.--WINE-SHOPS, DISREPUTABLE
RESORTS.--HANGING BALCONIES, FOUNTAINS.--PUBLIC PLACARDS: LET US
NOMINATE BATTUR! COMMIT NO NUISANCE!--RELIGION ON THE STREET.
You have no need of me for this excursion. Cast a glance at the plan,
and you will be able to find your own way. You will there see an oval
inclosure, a wall pierced with several entrances designated by the names
of the roads which ran from them, or rather of the cities at which these
roads terminated--Herculaneum, Nola, Stabiæ, etc. Two-thirds of the egg
are still immaculate; you discover a black spot only on the extreme
right, marking out the Amphitheatre. All this white space shows you the
part of Pompeii that has not yet been designated. It is a hillside
covered with vineyards, gardens, and orchards. It is only on the left
that you will find the lines marking the streets, the houses, the
monuments, and the public squares. The text gives us the fancied names
attributed to the streets, namely: the Street of Abundance, the Street
of Twelve Gods, the Street of Mercury, the Street of Fortune, the Street
of Fortunata, Modest Street, etc. The names given to the houses are
still more arbitrary. Most of them were christened, under the old
system, by the august or illustrious personages before whom they were
dug out for the first time. Thus, we have at Pompeii the house of
Francis II., that of Championnet, that of Joseph II.; those of the Queen
of England, the King of Prussia, the Grand Duke of Tuscany; that of the
Emperor, and those of the Empress and of the Princes of Russia; that of
Goethe, of the Duchess de Berry, of the Duke d'Aumale--I skip them by
scores. The whole Gotha Almanac might there be passed in review. This
determined, ramble through the streets at will, without troubling
yourself about their names, as these change often at the caprice of
antiquaries and their guides.
The narrowness of these streets will surprise you; and if you come
hither to look for a Broadway, you had better have remained at home.
What we call great arteries of traffic were unknown to the Pompeians,
who cut only small paved paths between their houses--for the sake of
health, they said. We entertain different views of this question of
salubrity.
The greatest width of a Pompeian street is seven yards, and there are
some which are comprised, sidewalks and all, within a space of two yards
and a half. These sidewalks are raised, very narrow, and paved very
variously, according to the wealth or the fancy of the proprietors, who
had to keep them in good order. Here are handsome stone flags; further
on merely the soil beaten down; in front of the next house are marble
slabs, and here and there patches of _opus signinum_, a sort of
rudimentary mosaic, to which we shall refer further on. These sidewalks
were intersected with curbstones, often pierced with holes--in front of
shops, for instance--perhaps for tethering the cows and donkeys of the
peasants who every morning brought the citizens milk or baskets of
vegetables to their own doors. Between the sidewalks was hollowed out
the street, paved with coarse blocks of lava which time has not worn
down. When Pansa went to the dwelling of Paratus his sandals trod the
same stones that now receive the impress of our boots. On rainy days
this street must have been the bed of a torrent, as the alleys and
by-ways of Naples are still; hence, one, sometimes three, thicker blocks
were placed so as to enable foot passengers to cross with dry feet.
These small fording blocks must have made it difficult for vehicles to
get by; hence, the ruts that are still found traceable on the pavement
are the marks of wagons drawn slowly by oxen, and not of those light
chariots which romance-writers launch forth so briskly in the ancient
city. Moreover, it has been ascertained that the Pompeians went afoot;
only the quality had themselves drawn about in chariots in the country.
Where could room have been found for stables and carriage-houses in
those dwellings scarcely larger than your hat? It was in the suburbs
only, in the outskirts of the city, that the dimensions of the
residences rendered anything of the kind possible. Let us, then,
obliterate these chariots from our imagination, if we wish to see the
streets of Pompeii as they really were.
After a shower, the rain water descended, little by little, into the
gutters, and from the latter, by holes still visible, into a
subterranean conduit that carried it outside of the city. One of these
conduits is still open in the Street of Stabiæ, not far from the temple
of Isis.