sarcophagi, still complete, never open, and proving that the ancients
buried their dead even before Christianity prohibited the use of the
funeral pyre. Families had their choice between the two systems, and
burned neither men who had been struck by lightning (they thought the
bodies of such to be incorruptible), nor new-born infants who had not
yet cut their teeth. Thus it was that the remains of Diomed's youngest
children could not be found, while those of the elder ones were
preserved in a glass urn contained in a vase of lead.
A tomb that looks like a sentry-box, and stands as though on duty in
front of the Herculaneum gate, had, during the eruption, been the refuge
of a soldier, whose skeleton was found in it. Another
strangely-decorated monument forms a covered hemicycle turned toward the
south, fronting the sea, as though to offer a shelter for the fatigued
and heated passers-by. Another, of rounded shape, presents inside a
vault bestrewn with small flowers and decorated with bas-reliefs, one of
which represents a female laying a fillet on the bones of her child.
Other monuments are adorned with garlands. One of the least curious
contained the magnificent blue and white glass vase, of which I shall
have to speak further on. That of the priestess Mamia, ornamented with a
superb inscription, forms a large circular bench terminating in a lion's
claw. Visitors are fond of resting there to look out upon the landscape
and the sea. Let us not forget the funereal triclinium, a
simply-decorated dining-hall, where still are seen three beds of
masonry, used at the banquets given in honor of the dead. These feasts,
at which nothing was eaten but shell-fish (poor fare, remarks Juvenal),
were celebrated nine days after the death. Hence came their title,
_novendialia_. They were also called _silicernia_; and the guests
conversed at them about the exploits and benevolent deeds of the man who
had ceased to live. Polybius boasts greatly of these last honors paid to
illustrious citizens. Thence it was, he says, that Roman greatness took
its rise.
In fact, even at Pompeii, in this humble _campo santo_ of the little
city, we see at every step virtue rewarded after death by some
munificent act of the decurions. Sometimes it is a perpetual grant (a
favor difficult to obtain), indicated by the following letters:
H.M.H.N.S. (_hoc monumentum hæredes non sequitur_), insuring to them
the perpetual possession of their sepulchre, which could not be disposed
of by their heirs. Sometimes the space conceded was indicated upon the
tomb. For instance, we read in the sepulchre of the family of
Nistacidius: "A. Nistacidius Helenus, mayor of the suburb Augusto-Felix.
To Nistacidius Januarius and to Mesionia Satulla. Fifteen feet in depth,
fifteen feet in frontage."
This bench of the priestess Mamia and that of Aulus Vetius (a military
tribune and duumvir dispensing justice) were in like manner constructed,
with the consent of the people, upon the lands conceded by the
decurions. In fine--and this is the most singular feature--animals had
their monuments. This, at least, is what the guides will tell you, as
they point out a large tomb in a street of the suburbs. They call it the
_sepolcro dei bestiani_, because the skeletons of bulls were found in
it. The antiquaries rebel against this opinion. Some, upon the strength
of the carved masks, affirm that it was a burial place for actors;
others, observing that the inclosure walls shut in quite a spacious
temple, intimate that it was a cemetery for priests. For my part, I have
nothing to offer against the opinion of the guides. The Egyptians,
whose gods Rome adopted, interred the bull Apis magnificently. Animals
might, therefore, find burial in the noble suburb of Pompeii. As for the
lower classes, they slept their final sleep where they could; perhaps in
the common burial pit (_commune sepulcrum_), an ancient barbarism that
has been kept up until our times; perhaps in those public burial ranges
where one could purchase a simple niche (_olla_) for his urn. These
niches were sometimes humble and touching presents interchanged by poor
people.
And in this street, where death is so gay, so vain, so richly adorned,
where the monuments arose amid the foliage of trees perennially green,
which they had endeavored, but without success, to render serious and
sombre, where the mausolea are pavilions and dining-rooms, in which the
inscriptions recall whole narratives of life and even love affairs,
there stood spacious inns and sumptuous villas--for instance, those of
Arrius Diomed and Cicero. This Arrius Diomed was one of the freedmen of
Julia, and the mayor of the suburb. A rich citizen, but with a bad
heart, he left his wife and children to perish in his cellar, and fled
alone with one slave only, and all the silver that he could carry away.
He perished in front of his garden gate. May the earth press heavily
upon him!
His villa, which consisted of three stories, not placed one above the
other, but descending in terraces from the top of the hill, deserves a
visit or two. You will there see a pretty court surrounded with columns
and small rooms, one of which--of an elliptical shape and opening on a
garden, and lighted by the evening twilight, but shielded from the sun
by windows and by curtains, the glass panes and rings of which have been
found--is the pleasantest nook cleared out among these ruins. You will
also be shown the baths, the saloons, the bedchambers, the garden, a
host of small apartments brilliantly decorated, basins of marble, and
the cellar still intact, with amphoræ, inside of which were still a few
drops of wine not yet dried up, the place where lay the poor suffocated
family--seventeen skeletons surprised there together by death. The fine
ashes that stifled them having hardened with time, retain the print of a
young girl's bosom. It was this strange mould, which is now kept at the
museum, that inspired the _Arria Marcella_ of Theophile Gautier--that
author's masterpiece, perhaps, but at all events a masterpiece.
As for Cicero, get them to show you his villa, if you choose. You will
see absolutely nothing there, and it has been filled up again. Fine
paintings were found there previously, along with superb mosaics and a
rich collection of precious articles; but I shall not copy the
inventory. Was it really the house of Cicero? Who can say? Antiquaries
will have it so, and so be it, then! I do not deny that Cicero had a
country property at Pompeii, for he often mentions it in his letters;
but where it was, exactly, no one can demonstrate. He could have
descried it from Baiæ or Misenum, he somewhere writes, had he possessed
longer vision; but in such case he could also have seen the entire side
of Pompeii that looks toward the sea. Therefore, I put aside these
useless discussions and resume our methodical tour.
I have shown you the ancients in their public life; at the Forum and in
the street, in the temples and in the wine-shops, on the public
promenade and in the cemeteries. I shall now endeavor to come upon them
in their private life, and, for this end, to peep at them first in a
place which was a sort of intermediate point between the street and the
house. I mean the hot baths, or thermæ.
V.
THE THERMÆ.
THE HOT BATHS AT ROME.--THE THERMÆ OF STABIÆ.--A TILT AT SUN
DIALS.--A COMPLETE BATH, AS THE ANCIENTS CONSIDERED IT; THE
APARTMENTS, THE SLAVES, THE UNGUENTS, THE STRIGILLÆ.--A SAYING OF
THE EMPEROR HADRIAN.--THE BATHS FOR WOMEN.--THE READING ROOM.--THE
ROMAN NEWSPAPER.--THE HEATING APPARATUS.
The Romans were almost amphibious. They bathed themselves as often as
seven times per diem; and young people of style passed a portion of the
day, and often a part of the night, in the warm baths. Hence the
importance which these establishments assumed in ancient times. There
were eight hundred and fifty-six public baths at Rome, in the reign of
Augustus. Three thousand bathers could assemble in the thermæ of
Caracalla, which had sixteen hundred seats of marble or of porphyry. The
thermæ of Septimius Severus, situated in a park, covered a space of one
hundred thousand square feet, and comprised rooms of all kinds:
gymnasia, academic halls where poets read their verses aloud, arenas for
gladiators, and even theatres. Let us not forget that the Bull and the
Farnese Hercules, now so greatly admired at Naples, and the masterpieces
of the Vatican, the Torso at the Belvidere, and the Laocoon were found
at the baths.
These immense palatial structures were accessible to everybody. The
price of admission was a _quadrans_, and the _quadrans_ was the fourth
part of an _as_; the latter, in Cicero's time, was worth about one cent
and two mills. Even this charge was afterward abolished. At daybreak,
the sound of a bell announced the opening of the baths. The rich went
there particularly between the middle of the day and sunset; the
dissipated went after supper, in defiance of the prescribed rules of
health. I learn from Juvenal, however, that they sometimes died of it.
Nevertheless, Nero remained at table from noon until midnight, after
which he took warm baths in winter and snow baths in summer.
In the earlier times of the republic there was a difference of hours for
the two sexes. The thermæ were monopolized alternately by the men and
the women, who never met there. Modesty was carried so far that the son
would not bathe with his father, nor even with his father-in-law. At a
later period, men and women, children and old folks, bathed pell-mell
together at the public baths, until the Emperor Hadrian, recognizing the
abuse, suppressed it.
Pompeii, or at least that portion of Pompeii which has been exhumed, had
two public bathing establishments. The most important of these, namely,
the Stabian baths, was very spacious, and contained all sorts of
apartments, side rooms, round and square basins, small ovens, galleries,
porticoes, etc., without counting a space for bodily exercises
(_palæstra_) where the young Pompeians went through their gymnastics.
This, it will be seen, was a complete water-cure establishment.
The most curious thing dug up out of these ruins is a Berosian sun-dial
marked with an Oscan inscription announcing that N. Atinius, son of
Marius the quæstor, had caused it to be executed, by order of the
decurions, with the funds resulting from the public fines. Sun-dials
were no rarity at Pompeii. They existed there in every shape and of
every price; among them was one elevated upon an Ionic column of
_cipollino_ marble. These primitive time-pieces were frequently offered
by the Roman magistrates for the adornment of the monuments, a fact that
greatly displeased a certain parasite whom Plautus describes:
"May the gods exterminate the man who first invented the hours!" he
exclaims, "who first placed a sun-dial in this city! the traitor who has
cut the day in pieces for my ill-luck! In my childhood there was no
other time-piece than the stomach; and that is the best of them all, the
most accurate in giving notice, unless, indeed, there be nothing to eat.
But, nowadays, although the side-board be full, nothing is served up
until it shall please the sun. Thus, since the town has become full of
sun-dials, you see nearly everybody crawling about, half starved and
emaciated."
The other thermæ of Pompeii are much smaller, but better adorned, and,
above all, in better preservation. Would you like to take a full bath
there in the antique style? You enter now by a small door in the rear,
and traverse a corridor where five hundred lamps were found--a striking
proof that the Pompeians passed at least a portion of the night at the
baths. This corridor conducts you to the _apodyteres_ or _spoliatorium_,
the place where the bathers undress. At first blush you are rather
startled at the idea of taking off your clothes in an apartment with six
doors, but the ancients, who were better seasoned than we are, were not
afraid of currents of air. While a slave takes your clothing and your
sandals, and another, the _capsarius_, relieves you of your jewels,
which he will deposit in a neighboring office, look at the apartment;
the cornice ornamented with lyres and griffins, above which are ranges
of lamps; the arched ceiling forming a semicircle divided off in white
panels edged with red, and the white mosaic of the pavement bordered
with black. Here are stone benches to sit down upon, and pins fixed in
the walls, where the slave hangs up your white woollen toga and your
tunic. Above there is a skylight formed of a single very thick pane of
glass, and, firmly inclosed within an iron frame, which turns upon two
pivots. The glass is roughened on one side to prevent inquisitive people
from peeping into the hall where we are. On each side of the window some
reliefs, now greatly damaged, represent combats of giants.
Here you are, as nude as an antique statue. Were you a true Roman, you
would now step into an adjoining cabinet which was the anointing place
(_elæthesium_), where the anointing with oil was done, and, after that,
you will go and play tennis in the court, which was reached by a
corridor now walled up. The blue vault was studded with golden stars.
But you are not a true Roman; you have come hither simply to take a hot
or a cold bath. If a cold one, pass on into the small room that opens at
the end of the hall. It is the _frigidarium_.
This _frigidarium_ or _natatio_ is a circular room, which strikes you at
the outset by its excellent state of preservation. In the middle of it
is hollowed out a spacious round basin of white marble, four yards and a
half in diameter by about four feet in depth; it might serve
to-day--nothing is wanting but the water, says Overbeck. An inside
circular series of steps enabled the Pompeians to bathe in a sitting
posture. Four niches, prepared at the places where the angles would be
if the apartment were square, contained benches where the bathers
rested. The walls were painted yellow and adorned with green branches.
The frieze and pediment were red and decorated with white bas-reliefs.
The vault, which was blue and open overhead, was in the shape of a
truncated cone. It was clear, brilliant, and gay, like the antique life
itself.
Do you prefer a warm bath? Retrace your steps and, from the
_apodyteros_, where you left your clothing, pass into the _tepidarium_.
This hall, which is the richest of the bathing establishment, is paved
in white mosaic with black borders, the vault richly ornamented with
_stucature_ and white paintings standing forth from a red and blue
background. These reliefs in stucco represent cupids, chimeras,
dolphins, does pursued by lions, etc. The red walls are adorned with
closets, perhaps intended for the linen of the bathers, over which
jutted a cornice supported by Atlases or Telamons in baked clay covered
with stucco. A pretty border frame formed of arabesques separates the
cornice from the vault. A large window at the extremity flanked by two
figures in stucco lighted up the tepidarium, while subterranean conduits
and a large brazier of bronze retained for it that lukewarm (_tepida_)
temperature which gave it the peculiar name.
[Illustration: The Tepidarium, at the Baths.]
This bronze brazier is still in existence, along with three benches of
the same metal found in the same place; an inscription--_M. Nigidius
Vaccula P.S._ (_pecuniâ sua_)--designates to us the donor who punning on
his own name _Vaccula_, had caused a little cow to be carved upon the
brazier; and on the feet of the benches, the hoofs of that quiet animal.
The bottom of this precious heater formed a huge grating with bars of
bronze, upon which bricks were laid; upon these bricks extended a layer
of pumice-stones, and upon the pumice-stones the lighted coals.
What, then, was the use to which this handsome tepidarium was applied?
Its uses were manifold, as you will learn farther on, but, for the
moment, it is to prepare you, by a gentle warmth, for the temperature of
the stove that you are going to enter through a door which closed of
itself by its own weight, as the shape of the hinges indicates.
This caldarium is a long room at the ends of which rises, on one side,
something like the parapet of a well, and on the other a square basin.
The middle of the room is the stove, properly speaking. The steam did
not circulate in pipes, but exhaled from the wall itself and from the
hollow ceiling in warm emanations. The adornments of the walls consisted
of simple flutings. The square basin (_alveus_ or _baptisterium_) which
served for the warm baths was of marble. It was ascended by three steps
and descended on the inside by an interior bench upon which ten bathers
could sit together. Finally, on the other side of the room, in a
semi-circular niche, rose the well parapet of which I spoke; it was a
_labrum_, constructed with the public funds. An inscription informs us
that it cost seven hundred and fifty sestertii, that is to say,
something over thirty dollars. Yet this _labrum_ is a large marble
vessel seven feet in diameter. Marble has grown dearer since then.
On quitting the stove, or warm bath, the Pompeians wet their heads in
that large wash-basin, where tepid water which must, at that moment,
have seemed cold, leaped from a bronze pipe still visible. Others still
more courageous plunged into the icy water of the frigidarium, and came
out of it, they said, stronger and more supple in their limbs. I prefer
believing them to imitating them.
Have you had enough of it? Would you leave the heating room? You belong
to the slaves who are waiting for you, and will not let you go. You are
streaming with perspiration, and the _tractator_, armed with a
_strigilla_, or flesh brush, is there to rasp your body. You escape to
the tepidarium; but it is there that the most cruel operations await
you. You belong, as I remarked, to the slaves; one of them cuts your
nails, another plucks out your stray hair, and a third still seeks to
press your body and rasp the skin with his brush, a fourth prepares the
most fearful frictions yet to ensue, while others deluge you with oils
and essences, and grease you with perfumed unguents. You asked just now
what was the use of the tepidarium; you now know, for you have been made
acquainted with the Roman baths.
A word in reference to the unguents with which you have just been
rubbed. They were of all kinds; you have seen the shops where they were
sold. They were perfumed with myrrh, spikenard, and cinnamon; there was
the Egyptian unguent for the feet and legs, the Phœnician for the
cheeks and the breast, and the Sisymbrian for the two arms; the essence
of marjoram for the eyebrows and the hair, and that of wild thyme for
the nape of the neck and the knees. These unguents were very dear, but
they kept up youth and health.
"How have you managed to preserve yourself so long and so well?" asked
Augustus of Pollio.
"With wine inside, and oil outside," responded the old man.
As for the utensils of the baths (a collection of them is still
preserved at the Naples museum on an iron ring), they consisted first of
the strigilla, then of the little bottle or vial of oil, and a sort of
stove called the _scaphium_. All these, along with the slippers, the
apron, and the purse, composed the baggage that one took with him to the
baths.
The most curious of these instruments was the strigilla or scraper, bent
like a sickle and hollowed in a sort of channel. With this the slave
_curried_ the bather's body. The poor people of that country who bathed
in the time of the Romans--they have not kept up the custom--and who had
no strigillarii at their service, rubbed themselves against the wall.
One day the Emperor Hadrian seeing one of his veterans thus engaged,
gave him money and slaves to strigillate him. A few days afterward, the
Emperor, going to the baths, saw a throng of paupers who, whenever they
caught sight of him, began to rub vigorously against the wall. He merely
said: "Rub yourselves against each other!"
There were other apartments adjoining those that I have designated, and
very similar to them, only simpler and not so well furnished. These
modest baths served for the slaves, think some, and for the women,
according to others. The latter opinion I think, lacks gallantry. In
front of this edifice, at the principal entrance of the baths, opened a
tennis-court, surrounded with columns and flanked by a crypt and a
saloon. Many inscriptions covered the walls, among others the
announcement of a show with a hunt, awnings, and sprinklings of perfumed
water. It was there that the Pompeians assembled to hear the news
concerning the public shows and the rumors of the day. There they could
read the dispatches from Rome. This is no anachronism, good reader, for
newspapers were known to the ancients--see Leclerc's book--and they
were called the _diurnes_ or _daily doings_ of the Roman people;
diurnals and journals are two words belonging to the same family. Those
ancient newspapers were as good in their way as our own. They told about
actors who were hissed; about funeral ceremonies; of a rain of milk and
blood that fell during the consulate of M. Acilius and C. Porcius; of a
sea-serpent--but no, the sea-serpent is modern. Odd facts like the
following could be read in them. This took place twenty eight years
after Jesus Christ, and must have come to the Pompeians assembled in the
baths: "When Titus Sabinus was condemned, with his slaves, for having
been the friend of Germanicus, the dog of the former could not be got
away from the spot, but accompanied the prisoner to the place of
execution, uttering the most doleful howls in the presence of a crowd of
people. Some one threw him a piece of bread and he carried it to his
master's lips, and when the corpse was tossed into the Tiber, the dog
dashed after it, and strove to keep it on the surface, so that people
came from all directions to admire the animal's devotion."
We are nowhere informed that the Roman journals were subjected to
government stamp and security for good behavior, but they were no more
free than those of France. Here is an anecdote reported by Dion on that
subject:
"It is well known," he says, "that an artist restored a large portico at
Rome which was threatening to fall, first by strengthening its
foundations at all points, so that it could not be displaced. He then
lined the walls with sheep's fleeces and thick mattresses, and, after
having attached ropes to the entire edifice, he succeeded, by dint of
manual force and the use of capstans, in giving it its former position.
But Tiberius, through jealousy, would not allow the name of this artist
to appear in the newspapers."
Now that you have been told a little concerning the ways of the Roman
people, you may quit the Thermæ, but not without easting a glance at the
heating apparatus visible in a small adjacent court. This you approach
by a long corridor, from the _apodytera_. There you find the
_hypocaust_, a spacious round fireplace which transmitted warm air
through lower conduits to the stove, and heated the two boilers built
into the masonry and supplied from a reservoir. From this reservoir the
water fell cold into the first boiler, which sent it lukewarm into the
second, and the latter, being closer to the fire, gave it forth at a
boiling temperature. A conduit carried the hot water of the second
boiler to the square basin of the calidarium and another conveyed the
tepid water of the first boiler to the large receptacle of the labrum.
In the fire-place was found a quantity of rosin which the Pompeians used
in kindling their fires. Such were the Thermæ of a small Roman city.
VI.
THE DWELLINGS.
PARATUS AND PANSA.--THE ATRIUM AND THE PERISTYLE.--THE DWELLING
REFURBISHED AND REPEOPLED.--THE SLAVES, THE KITCHEN, AND THE
TABLE.--THE MORNING OCCUPATIONS OF A POMPEIAN.--THE TOILET OF A
POMPEIAN LADY.--A CITIZEN SUPPER: THE COURSES, THE GUESTS.--THE
HOMES OF THE POOR, AND THE PALACES OF ROME.