barbarians. The traces that they have left in the little city show that
they got along quite merrily there. 'Tis true that they could not live,
as they did at Rome, in close intimacy with emperors and empresses, but
they were, none the less, the spoiled pets of the residents of Pompeii.
Lodged in a sumptuous barrack, they must have been objects of envy to
many of the population. The walls are full of inscriptions concerning
them; the bathing establishments, the inns, and the disreputable haunts,
transmit their names to posterity. The citizens, their wives, and even
their children admired them. In the house of Proculus, at no great
height above the ground, is a picture of a gladiator which must have
been daubed there by the young lad of the house. The gladiator whose
likeness was thus given dwelt in the house. His helmet was found there.
So, then, he was the guest of the family, and Heaven knows how they
feasted him, petted him, and listened to him.
In order to see the gladiators under arms, we must pass over the part of
the city that has not yet been uncovered, and through vineyards and
orchards, until, in a corner of Pompeii, as though down in the bottom of
a ravine, we find the amphitheatre. It is a circus, surrounded by tiers
of seats and abutting on the city ramparts. The exterior wall is not
high, because the amphitheatre had to be hollowed out in the soil. One
might fancy it to be a huge vessel deeply embedded in the sand. In this
external wall there remain two large arcades and four flights of steps
ascending to the top of the structure. The arena was so called because
of the layer of sand which covered it and imbibed the blood.
It is reached by two large vaulted and paved corridors with a quite
steep inclination. One of these is strengthened with seven arches that
support the weight of the tiers. Both of them intersect a transverse,
circular corridor, beyond which they widen. It was through this that the
armed gladiators, on horseback and on foot, poured forth into the arena,
to the sound of trumpets and martial music, and made the circuit of the
amphitheatre before entering the lists. They then retraced their steps
and came in again, in couples, according to the order of combat.
To the right of the principal entrance a doorway opens into two square
rooms with gratings, where the wild beasts were probably kept. Another
very narrow corridor ran from the street to the arena, near which it
ascended, by a small staircase, to a little round apartment apparently
the _spoliatorium_, where they stripped the dead gladiators. The arena
formed an oval of sixty-eight yards by thirty-six. It was surrounded by
a wall of two yards in height, above which may still be seen the
holes where gratings and thick iron bars were inserted as a precaution
against the bounds of the panthers. In the large amphitheatres a ditch
was dug around this rampart and filled with water to intimidate the
elephants, as the ancients believed them to have a horror of that
element.
[Illustration: The Amphitheatre of Pompeii.]
Paintings and inscriptions covered the walls or podium of the arena.
These inscriptions acquaint us with the names of the duumvirs,--N.
Istadicius, A. Audius, O. Caesetius Saxtus Capito, M. Gantrius
Marcellus, who, instead of the plays and the illumination, which they
would have had to pay for, on assuming office, had caused three cunei to
be constructed on the order of the decurions. Another inscription gives
us to understand that two other duumvirs, Caius Quinctius Valgus and
Marcus Portius, holding five-year terms, had instituted the first games
at their expense for the honor of the colony, and had granted the ground
on which the amphitheatre stood, in perpetuity. These two magistrates
must have been very generous men, and very fond of public shows. We know
that they contributed, in like manner, to the construction of the
Odeon.
Would you now like to go over the general sweep of the tiers--the
_visorium_? Three grand divisions as in the theatre; the lowermost
separated, by entries and private flights of steps, into eighteen boxes;
the middle and upper one divided into cunei, the first by twenty
stairways, the second by forty. Around the latter was an inclosing wall,
intersected by vomitories and forming a platform where a number of
spectators, arriving too late for seats, could still find standing-room,
and where the manœuvres were executed that were requisite to hoist the
velarium, or awning. All these made up an aggregate of twenty-four
ranges of seats, upon which were packed perhaps twenty thousand
spectators. So much for the audience. Nothing could be more simple or
more ingenious than the system of extrication by which the movement, to
and fro, of this enormous throng was made possible, and easy. The
circular and vaulted corridor which, under the tiers, ran around the
arena and conducted, by a great number of distinct stairways, to the
tiers of the lower and middle cavea, while upper stairways enabled the
populace to ascend to the highest story assigned to it.
One is surprised so see so large an amphitheatre in so small a city.
But, let us not forget that Pompeii attracted the inhabitants of the
neighboring towns to her festivals; history even tells us an anecdote on
this subject that is not without its moral.
The Senator Liveneius Regulus, who had been driven from Rome and found
an asylum in Pompeii, offered a gladiator show to the hospitable little
city. A number of people from Nocera had gone to the pageant, and a
quarrel arose, probably owing to municipal rivalries, that eternal curse
of Italy; from words they came to blows and volleys of stones, and even
to slashing with swords. There were dead and wounded on both sides. The
Nocera visitors, being less numerous, were beaten, and made complaint to
Rome. The affair was submitted to the Emperor, who sent it to the
Senate, who referred it to the Consuls, who referred it back again to
the Senate. Then came the sentence, and public shows were prohibited in
Pompeii for the space of ten years. A caricature which recalls this
punishment has been found in the Street of Mercury. It represented an
armed gladiator descending, with a palm in his hand, into the
amphitheatre: on the left, a second personage is drawing a third toward
him on a seat; the third one had his arms bound, and was, no doubt, a
prisoner. This inscription accompanies the entire piece: "Campanians,
your victory has been as fatal to you as it was to the people of
Nocera."[K]
The hand of Rome, ever the hand of Rome!
For that matter, the ordinances relating to the amphitheatre applied to
the whole empire. One of the Pompeian inscriptions announces that the
duumvir C. Cuspius Pansa had been appointed to superintend the public
shows and see to the observance of the Petronian law. This law
prohibited Senators from fighting in the arena, and even from sending
slaves thither who had not been condemned for crime. Such things, then,
required to be prohibited!
I have described the arena and the seats; let me now pass on to the show
itself. Would yon like to have a hunt or a gladiatorial combat? Here I
invent nothing. I have data, found at Pompeii (the paintings in the
amphitheatre and the bas-reliefs on the tomb of Scaurus), that reproduce
scenes which I have but to transfer to prose. Let us, then, suppose the
twenty thousand spectators to be in their places on thirty-four ranges
of seats, one above the other, around the arena; then, let us take our
seats among them and look on.
First we have a hunt. A panther, secured by a long rope to the neck of a
bull let loose, is set on against a young _bestiarius_, who holds two
javelins in his hands. A man, armed with a long lance, irritates the
bull so that it may move and second the rush of the panther fastened to
it. The lad who has the javelins, and is a novice in his business, is
but making his first attempt; should the bull not move, he runs no risk,
yet I should not like to be in his place.
Then follows a more serious combat between a bear and a man, who
irritates him by holding out a cloth at him, as the matadors do in
bull-fights. Another group shows us a tiger and a lion escaping in
different directions. An unarmed and naked man is in pursuit of the
tiger, who cannot be a very cross one. But here is a _venatio_ much more
dramatic in its character. The nude bestiarius has just pierced a wolf
through and through, and the animal is in flight with the spear sticking
in his body, but the man staggers and a wild boar is rushing at him. At
the same time, a stag thrown down by a lasso that is still seen dangling
to his antlers, awaits his death-blow; hounds are dashing at him, and
"their fierce baying echoes from vale to vale."
But that is not all. Look at yon group of victors: a real matador has
plunged his spear into the breast of a bull with so violent a stroke
that the point of the weapon comes out at the animal's back; and another
has just brought down and impaled a bear; a dog is leaping at the throat
of a fugitive wild boar and biting him; and, in this ferocious
menagerie, peopled with lions and panthers, two rabbits are scampering
about, undoubtedly to the great amusement of the throng. The Romans were
fond of these contrasts, which furnished Galienus an opportunity to be
jocosely generous. "A lapidary," says M. Magnin, "had sold the emperor's
wife some jewels, which were recognized to be false; the emperor had the
dishonest dealer arrested and condemned to the lions; but when the
fatal moment came, he turned no more formidable creature loose upon him
than a capon. Everybody was astonished, and while all were vainly
striving to guess the meaning of such an enigma, he caused the _curion_,
or herald, to proclaim aloud: "This man tried to cheat, and now he is
caught in his turn.""
I have described the hunts at Pompeii; they were small affairs compared
with those of Rome. The reader may know that Titus, who finished the
Coliseum, caused five thousand animals to be killed there in a single
day in the presence of eighty thousand spectators. Let us confess,
however, that with this exhibition, of tigers, panthers, lions, and wild
boars, the provincial hunts were still quite dramatic.
I now come to the gladiatorial combats. To commence with the
preliminaries of the fight, a ring-master, with his long staff in his
hand, traces the circle, within which the antagonists must keep. One of
the latter, half-armed, blows his trumpet and two boys behind him hold
his helmet and his shield. The other has nothing, as yet, but his shield
in his hand; two slaves are bringing him his helmet and his sword. The
trumpet has sounded, and the ring-master and slaves have disappeared.
The gladiators are at it. One of them has met with a mishap. The point
of his sword is bent and he has just thrown away his shield. The blood
is flowing from his arm, which he extends toward the spectators, at the
same time raising his thumb. That was the sign the vanquished made when
they asked for quarter. But the people do not grant it this time, for
they have turned the twenty thousand thumbs of their right hands
downwards. The man must die, and the victor is advancing upon him to
slaughter him.
Would you like to see an equestrian combat? Two horsemen are charging on
each other. They wear helmets with visors, and carry spears and the
round shield (_parma_), but they are lightly armed. Only one of their
arms--that which sustains the spear--is covered with bands or armlets of
metal. Their names and the number of their victories already won are
known. The first is Bebrix, a barbarian, who has been triumphant fifteen
times; the second is Nobilior, a Roman, who has vanquished eleven times.
The combat is still undecided. Nobilior is just delivering a spear
thrust, which is vigorously parried by Bebrix.
Would you prefer a still more singular kind of duel--one between a
_secutor_ and a _retiarius?_ The retiarius wears neither helmet nor
cuirass, but carries a three-pronged javelin, called a trident, in his
left hand, and in his right a net, which he endeavors to throw over the
head of his adversary. If he misses his aim he is lost; the secutor then
pursues him, sword in hand, and kills him. But in the duel at which we
are present, the secutor is vanquished, and has fallen on one knee; the
retiarius, Nepimus, triumphant already on five preceding occasions, has
seized him by the belt, and has planted one foot upon his leg, but the
trident not being sufficient to finish him, a second secutor, Hippolytus
by name, who has survived five previous victories, has come up.
Hippolytus rests one hand upon the helmet of the vanquished secutor who
vainly clasps his knees, and with the other, cuts his throat.
Death--always death! In the paintings; in the bas-reliefs that I
describe; in the scenes that they reproduce; in the arena where these
combats must have taken place, I can see only unhappy wretches
undergoing assassination. One of them, holding his shield behind him,
is thinking only how he may manage to fall with grace; another,
kneeling, presses his wound with one hand, and stretches the other out
toward the spectators; some of them have a suppliant look, others are
stoical, but all will have to roll at last upon the sand of the arena,
condemned by the inexorable caprice of a people greedy for blood. "The
modest virgin," says Juvenal, "turning down her thumb, orders that the
breast of yonder man, grovelling in the dust, shall be torn open." And
all--the heavily armed Samnite, the Gaul, the Thracian, the secutor; the
_dimachoerus_, with his two swords; the swordsman who wears a helmet
surmounted with a fish--the one whom the retiarius pursues with his net,
meanwhile singing this refrain, "It is not you that I am after, but your
fish, and why do you flee from me?"--all, all must succumb, at last,
sooner or later, were it to be after the hundredth victory, in this same
arena, where once an attendant employed in the theatre used to come, in
the costume of Mercury, to touch them with a red-hot iron to make sure
that they were dead. If they moved, they were at once dispatched; if
they remained icy-cold and motionless, a slave harpooned them with a
hook, and dragged them through the mire of sand and blood to the narrow
corridor, the _porta libitinensis_,--the portal of death,--whence they
were flung into the spoliarium, so that their arms and clothing, at
least, might be saved. Such were the games of the amphitheatre.
[Footnote K: M. Campfleury has reproduced this design in his very
curious book on _Antique Caricature_.]
IX.
THE ERUPTION.
THE DELUGE OF ASHES.--THE DELUGE OF FIRE.--THE FLIGHT OF THE
POMPEIANS.--THE PREOCCUPATIONS OF THE POMPEIAN WOMEN.--THE VICTIMS:
THE FAMILY OF DIOMED; THE SENTINEL; THE WOMAN WALLED UP IN A TOMB;
THE PRIEST OF ISIS; THE LOVERS CLINGING TOGETHER, ETC.--THE
SKELETONS.--THE DEAD BODIES MOULDED BY VESUVIUS.
It was during one of these festivals, on the 23d of November, 79, that
the terrible eruption which overwhelmed the city burst forth. The
testimony of the ancients, the ruins of Pompeii, the layers upon layers
of ashes and scoriæ that covered it, the skeletons surprised in
attitudes of agony or death, all concur to tell us of the catastrophe.
The imagination can add nothing to it: the picture is there before our
eyes; we are present at the scene; we behold it. Seated in the
amphitheatre, we take to flight at the first convulsions, at the first
lurid flashes which announce the conflagration and the crumbling of the
mountain. The ground is shaken repeatedly; and something like a
whirlwind of dust, that grows thicker and thicker, has gone rushing and
spinning across the heavens. For some days past there has been talk of
gigantic forms, which, sometimes on the mountain and sometimes in the
plain, swept through the air; they are up again now, and rear themselves
to their whole height in the eddies of smoke, from amid which is heard a
strange sound, a fearful moaning followed by claps of thunder that crash
down, peal on peal. Night, too, has come on--a night of horror; enormous
flames kindle the darkness like the blaze of a furnace. People scream,
out in the streets, "Vesuvius is on fire!"
On the instant, the Pompeians, terrified, bewildered, rush from the
amphitheatre, happy in finding so many places of exit through which they
can pour forth without crushing each other, and the open gates of the
city only a short distance beyond. However, after the first explosion,
after the deluge of ashes, comes the deluge of fire, or light stones,
all ablaze, driven by the wind--one might call it a burning
snow--descending slowly, inexorably, fatally, without cessation or
intermission, with pitiless persistence. This solid flame blocks up the
streets, piles itself in heaps on the roofs and breaks through into the
houses with the crashing tiles and the blazing rafters. The fire thus
tumbles in from story to story, upon the pavement of the courts, where,
accumulating like earth thrown in to fill a trench, it receives fresh
fuel from the red and fiery flakes that slowly, fatally, keep showering
down, falling, falling, without respite.
The inhabitants flee in every direction; the strong, the youthful, those
who care only for their lives, escape. The amphitheatre is emptied in
the twinkling of an eye and none remain in it but the dead gladiators.
But woe to those who have sought shelter in the shops, under the arcades
of the theatre, or in underground retreats. The ashes surround and
stifle them! Woe, above all, to those whom avarice or cupidity hold
back; to the wife of Proculus, to the favorite of Sallust, to the
daughters of the house of the Poet who have tarried to gather up their
jewels! They will fall suffocated among these trinkets, which, scattered
around them, will reveal their vanity and the last trivial cares that
then beset them, to after ages. A woman in the atrium attached to the
house of the Faun ran wildly as chance directed, laden with jewelry;
unable any longer to get breath, she had sought refuge in the tablinum,
and there strove in vain to hold up, with her outstretched arms, the
ceiling crumbling in upon her. She was crushed to death, and her head
was missing when they found her.
In the Street of the Tombs, a dense crowd must have jostled each other,
some rushing in from, the country to seek safety in the city, and others
flying from the burning houses in quest of deliverance under the open
sky. One of them fell forward with his feet turned toward the
Herculaneum gate; another on his back, with his arms uplifted. He bore
in his hands one hundred and twenty-seven silver coins and sixty-nine
pieces of gold. A third victim was also on his back; and, singular fact,
they all died looking toward Vesuvius!
A female holding a child in her arms had taken shelter in a tomb which
the volcano shut tight upon her; a soldier, faithful to duty, had
remained erect at his post before the Herculaneum gate, one hand upon
his mouth and the other on his spear. In this brave attitude he
perished. The family of Diomed had assembled in his cellar, where
seventeen victims, women, children, and the young girl whose throat was
found moulded in the ashes, were buried alive, clinging closely to each
other, destroyed there by suffocation, or, perhaps, by hunger. Arrius
Diomed had tried to escape alone, abandoning his house and taking with
him only one slave, who carried his money-wallet. He fell, struck down
by the stifling gases, in front of his own garden. How many other poor
wretches there were whose last agonies have been disclosed to us!--the
priest of Isis, who, enveloped in flames and unable to escape into the
blazing street, cut through two walls with his axe and yielded his last
breath at the foot of the third, where he had fallen with fatigue or
struck down by the deluge of ashes, but still clutching his weapon. And
the poor dumb brutes, tied so that they could not break away,--the mule
in the bakery, the horses in the tavern of Albinus, the goat of Siricus,
which had crouched into the kitchen oven, where it was recently found,
with its bell still attached to its neck! And the prisoners in the
blackhole of the gladiators' barracks, riveted to an iron rack that
jammed their legs! And the two lovers surprised in a shop near the
Thermæ; both were young, and they were tightly clasped in each other's
arms.... How awful a night and how fearful a morrow! Day has come, but
the darkness remains; not that of a moonless night, but that of a closed
room without lamp or candle. At Misenum, where Pliny the younger, who
has described the catastrophe, was stationed, nothing was heard but the
voices of children, of men, and of women, calling to each other, seeking
each other, recognizing each other by their cries alone, invoking death,
bursting out in wails and screams of anguish, and believing that it was
the eternal night in which gods and men alike were rushing headlong to
annihilation. Then there fell a shower of ashes so dense that, at the
distance of seven leagues from the volcano, one had to shake one's
clothing continually, so as not to be suffocated. These ashes went, it
is said, as far as Africa, or, at all events, to Rome, where they filled
the atmosphere and hid the light of day, so that even the Romans said:
"The world is overturned; the sun is falling on the earth to bury itself
in night, or the earth is rushing up to the sun to be consumed in his
eternal fires." "At length," writes Pliny, "the light returned
gradually, and the star that sheds it reappeared, but pallid as in an
eclipse. The whole scene around us was transformed; the ashes, like a
heavy snow, covered everything."
This vast shroud was not lifted until in the last century, and the
excavations have narrated the catastrophe with an eloquence which even
Pliny himself, notwithstanding the resources of his style and the
authority of his testimony, could not attain. The terrible exterminator
was caught, as it were, in the very act, amid the ruins he had made.
These roofless houses, with the height of one story only remaining and
leaving their walls open to the sun; these colonnades that no longer
supported anything; these temples yawning wide on all sides, without
pediment or portico; this silent loneliness; this look of desolation,
distress, and nakedness, which looked like ruins on the morrow of some
great fire,--all were enough to wring one's heart. But there was still
more: there were the skeletons found at every step in this voyage of
discovery in the midst of the dead, betraying the anguish and the terror
of that last dreadful hour. Six hundred,--perhaps more,--have already
been found, each one illustrating some poignant episode of the
immense catastrophe in which they were smitten down!
[Illustration: Bodies of Pompeians cast in the Ashes.]
Recently, in a small street, under heaps of rubbish, the men working on
the excavations perceived an empty space, at the bottom of which were
some bones. They at once called Signor Fiorelli, who had a bright idea.
He caused some plaster to be mixed, and poured it immediately into the
hollow, and the same operation was renewed at other points where he
thought he saw other similar bones. Afterward, the crust of pumice-stone
and hardened ashes which had enveloped, as it were, in a scabbard, this
something that they were trying to discover, was carefully lifted off.
When these materials had been removed, there appeared four dead bodies.