reference to the cleanliness of the streets, and recalling in terms
still more precise the "Commit no Nuisance" put up on the corners of
some of our streets with similar intent. On more than one wall at
Pompeii the figures of serpents, very well painted, sufficed to prevent
any impropriety, for the serpent was a sacred symbol in ancient
Rome--strange mingling of religion in the pettiest details of common
life! Only a very few years ago, the Neapolitans still followed the
example of their ancestors; they protected the outside walls of their
dwellings with symbolical paintings, rudely tracing, not serpents, but
crosses on them.
[Footnote C: These olives which, when found, were still soft and pasty,
had a rancid smell and a greasy but pungent flavor. The kernels were
less elongated and more bulging than those of the Neapolitan olives;
were very hard and still contained some shreds of their pith. In a word,
they were perfectly preserved, and although eighteen centuries old, as
they were, you would have thought they had been plucked but a few months
before.]
IV.
THE SUBURBS.
THE CUSTOM HOUSE.--THE FORTIFICATIONS AND THE GATES.--THE ROMAN
HIGHWAYS.--THE CEMETERY OF POMPEII.--FUNERALS: THE PROCESSION, THE
FUNERAL PYRE, THE DAY OF THE DEAD.--THE TOMBS AND THEIR
INSCRIPTIONS.--PERPETUAL LEASES.--BURIAL OF THE RICH, OF ANIMALS,
AND OF THE POOR.--THE VILLAS OF DIOMED AND CICERO.
"Ce qu'on trouve aux abords d'une grande cite,
Ce sont des abattoirs, des murs, des cimitieres:
C'est ainsi qu'en entrant dans la societé
On trouve ses egouts."
Alfred de Musset would have depicted the suburban quarters of Pompeii
exactly in these lines, had he added to his enumeration the wine-shops
and the custom-house. The latter establishment was not omitted by the
ancients, and could not be forgotten in our diminutive but highly
commercial city. Thus, the place has been discovered where the collector
awaited the passage of the vehicles that came in from the country and
the neighboring villages. Absolutely nothing else remains to be seen in
this spacious mosaic-paved hall. Scales, steelyards, and a quantity of
stone or metal weights were found there, marked with inscriptions
sometimes quite curious; such, for example, as the following: _Eme et
habbebis_, with a _b_ too many, a redundancy very frequent in the Naples
dialect. This is equivalent, in English, to: Buy and you will have. One
of the sets of scales bears an inscription stating that it had been
verified or authorized at the Capitol under such consuls and such
emperors--the hand of Rome!
Besides the custom-house, this approach to the city contained abundance
of stables, coach-houses, taverns, bath-houses, low drinking-shops, and
other disreputable concerns. Even the dwellings in the same quarter have
a suspicious look. You follow a long street and you have before you the
gate of Herculaneum and the walls.
These walls are visible; they still hold firm. Unquestionably, they
could not resist our modern cannon, for if the ancients built better
than we do, we destroy better than they did; this is one thing that must
in justice be conceded to us. Nevertheless, we cannot but admire those
masses of _peperino_, the points of which ascend obliquely and hold
together without mortar. Originally as ancient as the city, these
ramparts were destroyed to some extent by Sylla and repaired in _opus
incertum_, that is to say, in small stones of every shape and of various
dimensions, fitted to one another without order or regularity in the
layers, as though they had been put in just as they came. The old
structure dated probably from the time of Pompeian autonomy--the Oscans
had a hand in them. The surrounding wall, at the foot of which there
were no ditches, would have formed an oval line of nearly two miles had
it not been interrupted, on the side of the mountains and the sea,
between the ports of Stabiæ and of Herculaneum. These ramparts consisted
of two walls--the scarp and counterscarp,--between which ran a terraced
platform; the exterior wall, slightly sloping, was defended by
embrasures between which the archer could place himself in safety, in an
angle of the stonework, so soon as he had shot his arrow. The interior
wall was also crested with battlements. The curvilinear rampart did not
present projecting angles, the salients of which, Vitruvius tells us,
could not resist the repeated blows of the siege machinery of those
days. It was intersected by nine towers, of three vaulted stories each,
at unequal distances, accordingly as the nature of the ground demanded
greater or less means of defence, was pierced with loopholes and was not
very solid. Vitruvius would have had them rounded and of cut stone;
those of Pompeii are of quarried stone, and in small rough ashlars,
stuck together with mortar. The third story of each tower reached to the
platform of the rampart, with which it communicated by two doors.
Notwithstanding all that remains of them, the walls of Pompeii were no
longer of service at the time of the eruption. Demolished by Sylla and
then by Augustus, shattered by the earthquake, and interrupted as I have
said, they left the city open. They must have served for a public
promenade, like the bastions of Geneva.
Eight gates opened around the city (perhaps there was a ninth that has
now disappeared, opening out upon the sea). The most singular of all of
them is the Nola gate, the construction of which appears to be very
ancient. We there come across those fine cut stones that reveal the
handiwork of primitive times. A head considerably broken and defaced,
surmounting the arcade, was accompanied with an Oscan inscription,
which, having been badly read by a savant, led for an instant to the
belief that the Campanians of the sixth century before Jesus Christ
worshipped the Egyptian Isis. The learned interpreter had read: _Isis
propheta_ (I translate it into Latin, supposing you to know as little as
I do of the Oscan tongue). The inscription really ran, _idem probavit_.
[Illustration: The Nola Gate at Pompeii.]
It is worth while passing through the gate to get a look at the angle
formed by the ramparts at this one point. I doubt whether the city was
ever attacked on that side. Before reaching the gate the assailants
would have had to wind along through a narrow gallery, where the
archers, posted on the walls and armed with arrows and stones, would
have crushed them all.
The Herculaneum gate is less ancient, and yet more devastated by time
than the former one. The arcade has fallen in, and it requires some
attention to reinstate it. This gate formed three entrances. The two
side ways were probably intended for pedestrians; the one in the middle
was closed by means of a portcullis sliding in a groove, still visible,
but covered with stucco. As the portcullis, in descending, would have,
thrown down this coating, we must infer that at the time of the eruption
it had not been in use for a long while, Pompeii having ceased to be a
fortified place.
The Herculaneum gate was not masked inside, so that the archers,
standing upon the terraces that covered the side entrances, could fire
upon the enemy even after the portcullis had been carried. We know that
one of the stratagems of the besieged consisted in allowing the enemy to
push in, and then suddenly shutting down upon them the formidable
_cataracta_ suspended by iron chains. They then slaughtered the poor
wretches indiscriminately and covered themselves with glory.
Having passed the gate, we find ourselves on one of those fine paved
roads which, starting at Rome in all directions, have everywhere left
very visible traces, and in many places still serve for traffic. The
Greeks had gracefulness, the Romans grandeur. Nothing shows this more
strikingly than their magnificent highways that pierce mountains, fill
up ravines, level the plains, cross the marshes, bestride rivers, and
even valleys, and stretched thus from the Tiber to the Euphrates. In
order to construct them, they first traced two parallel furrows, from
between which they removed all the loose earth, which they replaced with
selected materials, strongly packed, pressed, and pounded down. Upon
this foundation (the _pavimentum_) was placed a layer of rough stone
(_statumen_), then a filling-in of gravel and lime (the _rudus_), and,
finally, a third bed of chalk, brick, lime, clay, and sand, kneaded and
pounded in together into a solid crust. This was the nucleus. Last of
all, they placed above it those large rough blocks of lava which you
will find everywhere in the environs of Naples. As before remarked,
these roads have served for twenty centuries, and they are good yet.
[Illustration: The Herculaneum Gate, restored.]
The Herculaneum road formed a delightful promenade at the gates of
Pompeii; a street lined with trees and villas, like the Champs Elyseés
at Paris, and descending from the city to the country between two rows
of jaunty monuments prettily-adorned, niches, kiosks, and gay pavilions,
from which the view was admirable. This promenade was the cemetery of
Pompeii. But let not this intimation trouble you, for nothing was less
mournful in ancient times than a cemetery. The ancients were not fond of
death; they even avoided pronouncing its name, and resorted to all sorts
of subterfuges to avoid the doleful word. They spoke of the deceased as
"those who had been," or "those who are gone." Very demonstrative, at
the first moment they would utter loud lamentations. Their sorrow thus
vented its first paroxysms. But the first explosion over, there remained
none of that clinging melancholy or serious impression that continues in
our Christian countries. The natives of the south are epicureans in
their religious belief, as in their habits of life. Their cemeteries
were spacious avenues, and children played jackstones on the tombs.
Would you like to hear a few details in reference to the interments of
the ancients. "The usage was this," says Claude Guichard, a doctor at
law, in his book concerning funereal rites, printed at Lyons, in 1581,
by Jean de Tournes: "When the sick person was in extreme danger, his
relatives came to see him, seated themselves on his bed, and kept him
company until the death-rattle came on and his features began to assume
the dying look. Then the nearest relative among them, all in tears,
approached the patient and embraced him closely, breast against breast
and face against face, so as to receive his soul, and mouth to mouth,
catching his last breath; which done, he pressed together the lips and
eyes of the dead man, arranging them decently, so that the persons
present might not see the eyes of the deceased open, for, according to
their customs, it was not allowable to the living to see the eyes of the
dead.... Then the room was opened on all sides, and they allowed all
persons belonging to the family and neighborhood, to come in, who chose.
Then, three or four of them began to bewail the deceased and call to him
repeatedly, and, perceiving that he did not reply one word, they went
out and told of the death. Then the near relatives went to the bedside
to give the last kiss to the deceased, and handed him over to the
chambermaids of the house, if he was a person of the lower class. If he
was one of the eminent men and heads of families, he committed him to
the care of people authorized to perform this office, to wash, anoint,
and dress him, in accordance with the custom and what was requisite in
view of the quality, greatness, and rank of the personage."
Now there were at Rome several ministers, public servitors, and
officials, who had charge of all that appertained to funerals, such as
the _libitinarii_, the _designatores_, and the like. All of which was
wisely instituted by Numa Pompilius, as much to teach the Romans not to
hold things relating to the dead in horror, or fly from them as
contaminating to the person, as in order to fix in their memory that all
that has had a beginning in birth must in like manner terminate in
death, birth and death both being under the control and power of one and
the same deity; for they deemed that Libitina was the same as Venus, the
goddess of procreation. Then, again, the said officers had under their
orders different classes of serfs whom they called, in their language,
the _pollinctores_, the _sandapilarii_, the _ustores_, the _cadaverum
custodes_, intrusted with the care of anointing the dead, carrying them
to the place of sepulture, burning them, and watching them. "After
_pollinctores_ had carefully washed, anointed, and embalmed the body,
according to the custom regarding it and the expense allowed, they
wrapped it in a white linen cloth, after the manner of the Egyptians,
and in this array placed it upon a bed handsomely prepared as though for
the most distinguished member of the household, and then raised in front
of the latter a small dresser shaped like an altar, upon which they
placed the usual odors and incense, to burn along with tapers and
lighted candles.... Then, if the deceased was a person of note, they
kept the body thus arranged for the space of seven consecutive days,
inside the house, and, during that time, the near relatives, dressed in
certain long robes or very loose and roomy mantles called _ricinia_,
along with the chambermaids and other women taken thither to weep, never
ceased to lament and bewail, renewing their distress every time any
notable personage entered the room; and they thought that all this while
the deceased remained on earth, that is to say, kept for a few days
longer at the house, while they were hastening their preparations for
the pomp and magnificence of his funeral. On the eighth day, so as to
assemble the relatives, associates, and friends of the defunct the more
easily, inform the public and call together all who wished to be
present, the procession, which they called _exequiæ_, was cried aloud
and proclaimed with the sound of the trumpet on all the squares and
chief places of the city by the crier of the dead, in the following
form: 'Such a citizen has departed from this life, and let all who wish
to be present at his obsequies know that it is time; he is now to be
carried from his dwelling.'"
Let us step aside now, for here comes a funeral procession. Who is the
deceased? Probably a consular personage, a duumvir, since lictors lead
the line. Behind them come the flute-players, the mimes and mountebanks,
the trumpeters, the tambourine-players, and the weepers (_præfiicæ_),
paid for uttering cries, tearing their hair, singing notes of
lamentation, extolling the dead man, mimicking despair, "and teaching
the chambermaids how to best express their grief, since the funeral must
not pass without weeping and wailing." All this makes up a melancholy
but burlesque din, which attracts the crowd and swells the procession,
to the great honor of the defunct. Afterward come the magistrates, the
decurions in mourning robes, the bier ornamented with ivory. The
duumvir Lucius Labeo (he is the person whom they are burying) is "laid
out at full length, and dressed in white shrouds and rich coverings of
purple, his head raised slightly and surrounded with a handsome coronet,
if he merit it." Among the slaves who carry the bier walks a man whose
head is covered with white wool, "or with a cap, in sign of liberty."
That is the freedman Menomachus, who has grown rich, and who is
conducting the mourning for his master. Then come unoccupied beds,
"couches fitted up with the same draperies as that on which reposes the
body of the defunct" (it is written that Sylla had six thousand of these
at his funeral), then the long line of wax images of ancestors (thus the
dead of old interred the newly dead), then the relatives, clad in
mourning, the friends, citizens, and townsfolk generally in crowds. The
throng is all the greater when the deceased is the more honored. Lastly,
other trumpeters, and other pantomimists and tumblers, dancing,
grimacing, gambolling, and mimicking the duumvir whom they are helping
to bury, close the procession. This interminable multitude passes out
into the Street of Tombs by the Herculaneum gate.
The _ustrinum_, or room in which they are going to burn the body, is
open. You are acquainted with this Roman custom. According to some, it
was a means of hastening the extrication of the soul from the body and
its liberation from the bonds of matter, or its fusion in the great
totality of things; according to others, it was but a measure in behalf
of public health. However that may be, dead bodies might be either
buried or burned, provided the deposit of the corpse or the ashes were
made outside of the city. A part of the procession enters the
_ustrinum_. Then they are going to burn the duumvir Lucius Labeo.
The funeral pyre is made of firs, vine branches, and other wood that
burns easily. The near relatives and the freedman take the bier and
place it conveniently on the pile, and then the man who closes the eyes
of the dead opens them again, making the defunct look up toward the sky,
and gives him the last kiss. Then they cover the pile with perfumes and
essences, and collect about it all the articles of furniture, garments,
and precious objects that they want to burn. The trumpets sound, and the
freedman, taking a torch and turning away his eyes, sets fire to the
framework. Then commence the sacrifices to the manes, the formalities,
the pantomimic action, the howlings of the mourners, the combats of the
gladiators "in order to satisfy the ceremony closely observed by them
which required that human blood should be shed before the lighted pile;"
this was done so effectually that when there were no gladiators the
women "tore each other's hair, scratched their eyes and their cheeks
with their nails, _heartily_, until the blood came, thinking in this
manner to appease and propitiate the infernal deities, whom they suppose
to be angered against the soul of the defunct, so as to treat it
roughly, were this doleful ceremony omitted and disdained."... The body
burned, the mother, wife, or other near relative of the dead, wrapped
and clad in a black garment, got ready to gather up the relics--that is
to say, the bones which remained and had not been totally consumed by
the fire; and, before doing anything, invoked the deity manes, and the
soul of the dead man, beseeching him to take this devotion in good part,
and not to think ill of this service. Then, after having washed her
hands well, and having extinguished the fire in the brazier with wine
or with milk, she began to pick out the bones among the ashes and to
gather them into her bosom or the folds of her robe. The children also
gathered them, and so did the heirs; and we find that the priests who
were present at the obsequies could help in this. But if it was some
very great lord, the most eminent magistrates of the city, all in silk,
ungirdled and barefooted, and their hands washed, as we have said,
performed this office themselves. Then they put these relics in urns of
earthenware, or glass, or stone, or metal; they besprinkled them with
oil or other liquid extracts; they threw into the urn, sometimes, a
piece of coin, which sundry antiquaries have thought was the obolus of
Charon, forgetting that the body, being burned, no longer had a hand to
hold it out; and, finally, the urn was placed in a niche or on a bench
arranged in the interior of the tomb. On the ninth day, the family came
back to banquet near the defunct, and thrice bade him adieu: _Vale!
Vale! Vale!_ then adding, "May the earth rest lightly on thee!"
Hereupon, the next care was the monument. That of the duumvir Labeo,
which is very ugly, in _opus incertum_, covered with stucco and adorned
with bas-reliefs and portraits of doubtful taste, was built at the
expense of his freedman, Menomachus. The ceremony completed and vanity
satisfied, the dead was forgotten; there was no more thought, excepting
for the _ferales_ and _lemurales_, celebrations now retained by the
Catholics, who still make a trip to the cemetery on the Day of the Dead.
The Street of the Tombs, saddened for a moment, resumed its look of
unconcern and gaiety, and children once more played about among the
sepulchres.
There are monuments of all kinds in this suburban avenue of Pompeii.
Many of them are simple pillars in the form of Hermes-heads. There is
one in quite good preservation that was closed with a marble door; the
interior, pierced with one window, still had in a niche an alabaster
vase containing some bones. Another, upon a plat of ground donated by
the city, was erected by a priestess of Ceres to her husband, H. Alleius
Luceius Sibella, aedile, duumvir, and five years' prefect, and to her
son, a decurion of Pompeii, deceased at the age of seventeen. A decurion
at seventeen!--there was a youth who made his way rapidly. Cicero said
that it was easier to be a Senator at Rome than a decurion at Pompeii.
The tomb is handsome--very elegant, indeed--but it contained neither
urns, nor sarcophagi; it probably was not a place of burial, but a
simple cenotaph, an honorary monument.
The same may be said of the handsomest mausoleum on the street, that of
the augustal Calventius: a marble altar gracefully decorated with
arabesques and reliefs (Œdipus meditating, Theseus reposing, and a young
girl lighting a funeral pile). Upon the tomb are still carved the
insignia of honor belonging to Calventius, the oaken crowns, the
_bisellium_ (a bench with seats for two), the stool, and the three
letters O.C.S. (_ob civum servatum_), indicating that to the illustrious
dead was due the safety of a citizen of Rome. The Street of the Tombs,
it will be seen, was a sort of Pantheon. An inscription discovered there
and often repeated (that which, under Charles III., was the first that
revealed the existence of Pompeii), informs us that, upon the order of
Vespasian, the tribune Suedius Clemens had yielded to the commune of
Pompeii the places occupied by the private individuals, which meant
that the notables only, authorized by the decurions, had the right to
sleep their last slumber in this triumphal avenue, while the others had
to be dispossessed. Still the hand of Rome!
Another monument--the one attributed to Scaurus--was very curious, owing
to the gladiatorial scenes carved on it, and which, according to custom,
represented real combats. Each figure was surmounted with an inscription
indicating the name of the gladiator and the number of his victories. We
know, already, that these sanguinary games formed part of the funeral
ceremonies. The heirs of the deceased made the show for the
gratification of the populace, either around the tombs or in the
amphitheatre, whither we shall go at the close of our stroll, and where
we shall describe the carvings on the pretended monument of Scaurus.
The tomb of Nevoleia Tyché, much too highly decorated, encrusted with
arabesques and reliefs representing the portrait of that lady, a
sacrifice, a ship (a symbol of life, say the sentimental antiquaries),
is covered with a curious inscription, which I translate literally.
"Nevoleia Tyché, freedwoman of Julia, for herself and for Caius Munatius
Faustus, knight and mayor of the suburb, to whom the decurions, with the
consent of the people, had awarded the honor of the _bisellium_. This
monument has been offered during her lifetime by Nevoleia Tyché to her
freedmen and to those of C. Munatius Faustus."
Assuredly, after reading this inscription, we cannot reproach the fair
Pompeians with concealing their affections from the public. Nevoleia
certainly was not the wife of Munatius; nevertheless, she loved him
well, since she made a trysting with him even in the tomb. It was Queen
Caroline Murat who, accompanied by Canova, was the first to penetrate to
the inside of this dovecote (January 14, 1813). There were opened in her
presence several glass urns with leaden cases, on the bottom of which
still floated some ashes in a liquid not yet dried up, a mixture of
water, wine, and oil. Other urns contained only some bones and the small
coin which has been taken for Charon's obolus.