cross the street of the baths obliquely. We thus reach the dwelling of
the ædile Pansa. He, at least, is the proprietor designated by general
opinion, which, according to my ideas, is wrong in this particular. An
inscription painted on the door-post has given rise to this error. The
inscription runs thus: _Pansam ædilem Paratus rogat_. This the early
antiquarians translated: _Paratus invokes Pansa the ædile_. The early
antiquaries erred. They should have rendered it: _Paratus demands Pansa
for ædile_. It was not an invocation but an electoral nomination. We
have already deciphered many like inscriptions. Universal suffrage put
itself forward among the ancients as it does with us.
Hence, the dwelling that I am about to enter was not that of Pansa,
whose name is found thus suggested for the ædileship in many other
places, but rather that of Paratus, who, in order to designate the
candidate of his choice, wrote the name on his door-post.
Such is my opinion, but, as one runs the risk of muddling everything by
changing names already accepted, I do not insist upon it. So let us
enter the house of Pansa the ædile.
This dwelling is not the most ornate, but it is the most regular in
Pompeii, and also the least complicated and the most simply complete.
Thus, all the guides point it out as the model house, and perceiving
that they are right in so doing, I will imitate them.
In what did a Pompeian's dwelling differ from a small stylish residence
or villa of modern times? In a thousand and one points which we shall
discover, step by step, but chiefly in this, that it was turned
inwards, or, as it were, doubled upon itself; not that it was, as has
been said, altogether a stranger to the street, and presented to the
latter only a large painted wall, a sort of lofty screen. The upper
stories of the Pompeian houses having nearly all crumbled, we are not in
a position to affirm that they did not have windows opening on the
public streets. I have already shown you _mæniana_ or suspended
balconies from which the pretty girls of the place could ogle the
passers-by. But it is certain that the first floor, consisting of the
finest and best occupied apartments, grouped its rooms around two
interior courts and turned their backs to the street. Hence, these two
courts opening one behind the other, the development of the front was
but a small affair compared with the depth of the house.
These courts were called the _atrium_, and the peristyle. One might say
that the atrium was the public and the peristyle the private part of the
establishment; that the former belonged to the world and the second to
the family. This arrangement nearly corresponded with the division of
the Greek dwelling into _andronitis_ and _gynaikotis_, the side for the
men and the side for the women. Around the atrium were usually
ranged--we must not be too rigorously precise in these distinctions--the
rooms intended for the people of the house, and those who called upon
them. Around the peristyle were the rooms reserved for the private
occupancy of the family.
I commence with the atrium. It was reached from the street by a narrow
alley (the _prothyrum_), opening, by a two-leaved door, upon the
sidewalk. The doors have been burned, but we can picture them to
ourselves according to the paintings, as being of oak, with narrow
panels adorned with gilded nails, provided with a ring to open them by,
and surmounted with a small window lighting up the alley. They opened
inwards, and were secured by means of a bolt, which shot vertically
downward into the threshold instead of reaching across.
I enter right foot foremost, according to the Roman custom (to enter
with the left foot was a bad omen); and I first salute the inscription
on the threshold (_salve_) which bids me welcome. The porter's lodge
(_cella ostiarii_) was usually hollowed out in the entryway, and the
slave in question was sometimes chained, a precaution which held him at
his post, undoubtedly, but which hindered him from, pursuing robbers.
Sometimes, there was only a dog on guard, in his place, or merely the
representation of a dog in mosaic: there is one in excellent
preservation at the Museum in Naples retaining the famous inscription
(_Cave canem_)--"Beware of the dog!"
[Illustration: The Atrium in the House of Pansa, restored.]
The atrium was not altogether a court, but rather a large hall covered
with a roof, in the middle of which opened a large bay window. Thus the
air and the light spread freely throughout the spacious room, and the
rain fell from the sky or dripped down over the four sloping roofs into
a marble basin, called _impluvium_, that conveyed it to the cistern, the
mouth of which is still visible. The roofs usually rested on large
cross-beams fixed in the walls. In such case, the atrium was Tuscan, in
the old fashion. Sometimes, the roofs rested on columns planted at the
four corners of the impluvium: then, the opening enlarged, and the
atrium became a tetrastyle. Some authors mention still other kinds of
_atria_--the Corinthian, which was richly decorated; the _dipluviatum_,
where the roof, instead of sloping inward, sloped outward and threw off
the rain-water into the street; the _testudinatum_, in which the roof
looked like an immense tortoise-shell, etc. But these forms of roofs,
especially the last mentioned, were rare, and the Tuscan atrium was
almost everywhere predominant, as we find it on Pansa's house.
Place yourself at the end of the alley, with your back toward the
street, and you command a view of this little court and its
dependencies. It is needless to say that the roof has disappeared: the
eruption consumed the beams, the tiles have been broken by falling, and
not only the tiles but the antefixes, cut in palm-leaves or in lion's
heads, which spouted the water into the impluvium. Nothing remains but
the basin and the partition walls which marked the subdivisions of the
ground-floor. One first discovers a room of considerable size at the
end, between a smaller room and a corridor, and eight other side
cabinets. Of these eight cabinets, the six that come first, three to the
right and three to the left, were bedrooms, or _cubicula_. What first
strikes the observer is their diminutive size. There was room only for
the bed, which was frequently indicated by an elevation of the masonry,
and on that mattresses or sheepskins were stretched. The bedsteads often
were also of bronze or wood, quite like those of our time. These
cubicula received the air and the light through the door, which the
Pompeians probably left open in summer.
Next to the cubicula came laterally the _alae_, the wings, in which
Pansa (if not Paratus) received his visitors in the morning--friends,
clients, parasites. These rooms must have been rich, paved, as they
were, with lozenges of marble and surrounded with seats or divans. The
large room at the end was the _tablinum_, which separated, or rather
connected, the two courts and ascended by two steps to the peristyle. In
this tablinum, which was a show-room or parlor, were kept the archives
of the family, and the _imagines majorum_, or images of ancestors, which
were wax figures extolled in grand inscriptions, stood there in rows.
You have observed that they were conducted with great pomp in the
funeral processions. The Romans did not despise these exhibitions of
vanity. They clung all the more tenaciously to their ancestry as they
became more and more separated from them by the lapse of ages and the
decay of old manners and customs.
To the left of the tablinum opened the library, where were found some
volumes, unfortunately almost destroyed; and off to the right of the
tablinum ran the fauces, a narrow corridor leading to the peristyle.
Thus, a show-room, two reception rooms, a library, six bedchambers for
slaves or for guests, and all these ranged around a hall lighted from
above, paved in white mosaic with black edging between and adorned with
a marble basin,--such is the atrium of Pansa.
I am now going to pass beyond into the fauces. An apartment opens upon
this corridor and serves as a pendant to the library; it is a bedroom,
as a recess left in the thickness of the wall for the bedstead
indicates. A step more and I reach the peristyle.
The peristyle is a real court or a garden surrounded with columns
forming a portico. In the house of Pansa, the sixteen columns, although
originally Doric, had been repaired in the Corinthian style by means of
a replastering of stucco. In some houses they were connected by
balustrades or walls breast high, on which flowers in either vases or
boxes of marble were placed, and in one Pompeian house there was a frame
set with glass panes. In the midst of the court was hollowed out a
spacious basin (_piscina_), sometimes replaced by a parterre from which
the water leaped gaily. In the peristyle of Pansa's house is still seen,
in an intercolumniation, the mouth of a cistern. We are now in the
richest and most favored part of the establishment.
At the end opens the _œcus_, the most spacious hall, surrounded, in the
houses of the opulent Romans, with columns and galleries, decorated with
precious marbles developing into a basilica. But in the house of Pansa
do not look for such splendors. Its œcus was but a large chamber between
the peristyle and a garden.
To the right of the œcus, at the end of the court, is half hidden a
smaller and less obtrusive apartment, probably an _exedra_. On the right
wing of the peristyle, on the last range, recedes the triclinium. The
word signifies triple bed; three beds in fine, ranged in horse-shoe
order, occupied this apartment, which served as a dining-room. It is
well known that the ancients took their meals in a reclining attitude
and resting on their elbows. This Carthaginian custom, imported by the
Punic wars, had become established everywhere, even at Pompeii. The
ancients said "make the beds," instead of "lay the table."
To the right of the peristyle on the first range, glides a corridor
receding toward a private door that opens on a small side street. This
was the _posticum_, by which the master of the house evaded the
importunate visitors who filled the atrium. This method of escaping
bores was called _postico fallere clientem_. It was a device that must
have been familiar to rich persons who were beset every morning by a
throng of petitioners and hangers-on.
The left side of the peristyle was occupied by three bedchambers, and by
the kitchen, which was hidden at the end, to the left of the œcus. This
kitchen, like most of the others, has its fireplaces and ovens still
standing. They contained ashes and even coal when they were discovered,
not to mention the cooking utensils in terra cotta and in bronze. Upon
the walls were painted two enormous serpents, sacred reptiles which
protected the altar of Fornax, the culinary divinity. Other paintings (a
hare, a pig, a wild boar's head, fish, etc.) ornamented this room
adjoining which was, in the olden time among the Pompeians, as to-day
among the Neapolitans, the most ignoble retreat in the dwelling. A
cabinet close by served for a pantry, and there were found in it a large
table and jars of oil ranged along on a bench.
Thus a large portico with columns, surrounding a court adorned with a
marble basin (_piscina_); around the portico on the right, three
bedchambers or _cubicula_; on the right, a rear door (_posticum_) and an
eating room (_triclinium_); at the end, the grand saloon (_œcus_),
between an exedra and kitchen--such was the peristyle of Pansa.
This relatively spacious habitation had still a third depth (allow me
the expression) behind the peristyle. This was the _xysta_ or garden,
divided off into beds, and the divisions of which, when it was found,
could still be seen, marked in the ashes. Some antiquaries make it out
that the xysta of Pansa was merely a kitchen garden. Between the xysta
and the peristyle was the _pergula_, a two-storied covered gallery, a
shelter against the sun and the rain. The occupants in their flight left
behind them a handsome bronze candlestick.
Such was the ground-floor of a rich Pompeian dwelling. As for the upper
stories, we can say nothing about them. Fire and time have completely
destroyed them. They were probably very light structures; the lower
walls could not have supported others. Most of the partitions must have
been of wood. We know from books that the women, slaves, and lodgers
perched in these pigeon-houses, which, destitute, as they were, of the
space reserved for the wide courts and the large lower halls, must have
been sufficiently narrow and unpleasant. Other more opulent houses had
some rooms that were lacking in the house of Pansa: these were, first,
bathrooms, then a _spherister_ for tennis, a _pinacothek_ or gallery of
paintings, a _sacellum_ or family chapel, and what more I know not. The
diminutiveness of these small rooms admitted of their being infinitely
multiplied.
I have not said all. The house of Pansa formed an island (_insula_) all
surrounded with streets, upon three of which opened shops that I have
yet to visit. At first, on the left angle, a bakery, less complete than
the public ovens to which I conducted you in the second chapter
preceding this one. There were found ornaments singularly irreconcilable
with each other; inscriptions, thoroughly Pagan in their character,
which recalled Epicurus, and a Latin cross in relief, very sharply
marked upon a wall. This Christian symbol allows fancy to spread her
wings, and Bulwer, the romance-writer, has largely profited by it.
A shop in the front, the second to the left of the entrance door,
communicated with the house. The proprietor, then, was a merchant, or,
at least, he sold the products of his vineyards and orchards on his own
premises, as many gentlemen vine-growers of Florence still do. A slave
called the _dispensator_ was the manager of this business.
Some of these shops opening on a side-street, composed small rooms
altogether independent of the house, and probably occupied by
_inquilini_,[D] or lodgers, a class of people despised among the
ancients, who highly esteemed the homestead idea. A Roman who did not
live under his own roof would cut as poor a figure as a Parisian who did
not occupy his own furnished rooms, or a Neapolitan compelled to go
afoot. Hence, the petty townsmen clubbed together to build or buy a
house, which they owned in common, preferring the inconveniences of a
divided proprietorship to those of a mere temporary occupancy. But they
have greatly changed their notions in that country, for now they move
every year.
[Illustration: Candelabra, Jewelry, and Kitchen Utensils found at
Pompeii.]
I have done no more here than merely to sketch the plan of the house.
Would you refurnish it? Then, rifle the Naples museum, which has
despoiled it. You will find enough of bedsteads, in the collection of
bronzes there, for the cubicula; enough of carved benches, tables,
stands, and precious vases for the œcus, the exedra, and the wings, and
enough of lamps to hang up; enough of candelabra to place in the
saloons. Stretch carpets over the costly mosaic pavements and even over
the simple _opus signinum_ (a mixture of lime and crushed brick) which
covered the floor of the unpretending chambers with a solid
incrustation. Above all, replace the ceilings and the roofs, and then
the doors and draperies; in fine, revive upon all these walls--the
humblest as well as the most splendid--the bright and vivid pictures now
effaced. What light, and what a gay impression! How all these clear,
bold colors gleam out in the sunshine, which descends in floods from an
open sky into the peristyle and the atrium! But that is not all: you
must conjure up the dead. Arise, then, and obey our call, O young
Pompeians of the first century! I summon Pansa, Paratus, their wives,
their children, their slaves; the ostiarius, who kept the door; the
_atriensis_, who controlled the atrium; the _scoparius_, armed with his
birch-broom; the _cubicularii_, who were the bedroom servants; the
_pedagogue_, my colleague, who was a slave like the rest, although he
was absolute master of the library, where he alone, perhaps, understood
the secrets of the papyri it contained. I hasten to the kitchen: I want
to see it as it was in the ancient day,--the _carnarium_, provided with
pegs and nails for the fresh provisions, is suspended to the ceiling;
the cooking ranges are garnished with chased stew-pans and coppers, and
large bronze pails, with luxurious handles, are ranged along on the
floor; the walls are covered with shining utensils, long-handled spoons
bent in the shape of a swan's neck and head, skillets and frying-pans,
the spit and its iron stand, gridirons, pastry-moulds (patty-pans?)
fish-moulds (_formella_), and what is no less curious, the _apalare_ and
the _trua_, flat spoons pierced with holes either to fry eggs or to beat
up liquids, and, in fine, the funnels, the sieves, the strainers, the
_colum vinarium_, which they covered with snow and then poured their
wine over it, so that the latter dropped freshened and cooled into the
cups below,--all rare and precious relics preserved by Vesuvius, and
showing in what odd corners elegance nestled, as Moliere would have
said, among the Romans of the olden times.
[Illustration: KITCHEN UTENSILS FOUND AT POMPEII]
None but men entered this kitchen: they were the cook, or _coquus_, and
his subaltern, the slave of the slave, _focarius_. The meal is ready,
and now come other slaves assigned to the table,--the _tricliniarches_,
or foreman of all the rest; the _lectisterniator_, who makes the beds;
the _praegustator_, who tastes the viands beforehand to reassure his
master; the _structor_, who arranges the dishes on the plateaux or
trays; the _scissor_, who carves the meats; and the young _pocillatro_,
or _pincerna_, who pours out the wine into the cups, sometimes dancing
as he does so (as represented by Moliere) with the airs and graces of a
woman or a spoiled child.
There is festivity to-day: Paratus sups with Pansa, or rather Pansa with
Paratus, for I persist in thinking that we are in the house of the
elector and not of the future ædile. If the master of the house be a
real Roman, like Cicero, he rose early this morning and began the day
with receiving visits. He is rich, and therefore has many friends, and
has them of three kinds,--the _salutatores_, the _ductores_, and the
_assectatores_. The first-named call upon him at his own house; the
second accompany him to public meetings; and the third never leave him
at all in public. He has, besides, a number of clients, whom he protects
and whom he calls "my father" if they be old, and "my brother" if they
be young. There are others who come humbly to offer him a little basket
(_sportula_), which they carry away full of money or provisions. This
morning Paratus has sent off his visitors expeditiously; then, as he is
no doubt a pious man, he has gone through his devotions before the
domestic altar, where his household gods are ranged. We know that he
offered peculiar worship to Bacchus, for he had a little bronze statue
of that god, with silver eyes; it was, I think, at the entrance of his
garden, in a kettle, wrapped up with other precious articles, Paratus
tried to save this treasure on the day of the eruption, but he had to
abandon it in order to save himself. But to continue my narration of the
day as this Pompeian spent it. His devotions over, he took a turn to the
Forum, the Exchange, the Basilica, where he supported the candidature of
Pansa. From there, unquestionably, he did not omit going to the Thermæ,
a measure of health; and, now, at length, he has just returned to his
home. During his absence, his slaves have cleansed the marbles, washed
the stucco, covered the pavements with sawdust, and, if it be in winter,
have lit fuel oil large bronze braziers in the open air and borne them
into the saloons, for there are no chimneys anywhere. The expected guest
at length arrives--salutations to Pansa, the future ædile! Meanwhile
Sabina, the wife of Paratus, has not remained inactive. She has passed
the whole morning at her toilet, for the toilet of a Sabina, Pompeian or
Roman, is an affair of state,--see Boettger's book. As she awoke she
snapped her fingers to summon her slaves, and the poor girls have
hastened to accomplish this prodigious piece of work. First, the applier
of cosmetics has effaced the wrinkles from the brows of her mistress,
and, then, with her saliva, has prepared her rouge; then, with a needle,
she has painted her mistress' eyelashes and eyebrows, forming two
well-arched and tufted lines of jetty hue, which unite at the root of
the nose. This operation completed, she has washed Sabina's teeth with
rosin from Scio, or more simply, with pulverized pumice-stone, and,
finally, has overspread her entire countenance with the white powder of
lead which was much used by the Romans at that early day.
Then came the _ornatrix_, or hairdresser. The fair Romans dyed their
hair blonde, and when the dyeing process was not sufficient, they wore
wigs. This example was followed by the artists, who put wigs on their
statues; in France they would put on crinoline. Ancient head-dresses
were formidable monuments held up with pins of seven or eight inches in
length. One of these pins, found at Herculaneum, is surmounted with a
Corinthian capital upon which a carved Venus is twisting her hair with
both hands while she looks into a mirror that Cupid holds up before her.
The mirrors of those ancient days--let us exhaust the subject!--were of
polished metal; the richest were composed of a plate of silver applied
upon a plate of gold and sustained by a carved handle of wood or ivory;
and Seneca exclaimed, in his testy indignation, "The dowry that the
Senate once bestowed upon the daughter of Scipio would no longer suffice
to pay for the mirror of a freedwoman!"
At length, Sabina's hair is dressed: Heaven grant that she may be
pleased with it, and may not, in a fit of rage, plunge one of her long
pins into the naked shoulder of the ornatrix! Now comes the slave who
cuts her nails, for never would a Roman lady, or a Roman gentleman
either, who had any self-respect, have deigned to perform this operation
with their own hands. It was to the barber or _tonsor_ that this
office was assigned, along with the whole masculine toilet, generally
speaking; that worthy shaved you, clipped you, plucked you, even washed
you and rubbed your skin; perfumed you with unguents, and curried you
with the strigilla if the slaves at the bath had not already done so.
Horace makes great sport of an eccentric who used to pare his own nails.
[Illustration: Lamps of Earthenware and Bronze found at Pompeii.]
Sabina then abandons her hands to a slave who, armed with a set of small
pincers and a penknife (the ancients were unacquainted with scissors),
acquitted themselves skilfully of that delicate task--a most grave
affair and a tedious operation, as the Roman ladies wore no gloves.
Gesticulation was for them a science learnedly termed _chironomy_. Like
a skilful instrument, pantomime harmoniously accompanied the voice.
Hence, all those striking expressions that we find in authors,--"the
subtle devices of the fingers," as Cicero has it; the "loquacious hand"
of Petronius. Recall to your memory the beautiful hands of Diana and
Minerva, and these two lines of Ovid, which naturally come in here:
"Exiguo signet gestu quodcunque loquetur,
Cui digiti pingues, cui scaber unguis erit."[E]