expression of fear escaped me, had not my support been grounded in that
miserable, though mighty, consolation, that all mankind were involved in
the same calamity, and that I was perishing with the world itself. At
last this dreadful darkness was dissipated by degrees, like a cloud or
smoke; the real day returned, and even the sun shone out, though with a
lurid light, like when an eclipse is coming on. Every object that
presented itself to our eyes--which were extremely weakened--seemed
changed, being covered deep with ashes as if with snow.
We returned to Misenum, where we refreshed ourselves as well as we
could, and passed an anxious night between hope and fear; though,
indeed, with a much larger share of the latter; for the earthquake still
continued, while many frenzied persons ran up and down, heightening
their own and their friends' calamities by terrible predictions.
However, my mother and I, notwithstanding the danger we had passed and
that which still threatened us, had no thoughts of leaving the place
till we could receive some news of my uncle.
And now you will read this narrative without any view of inserting it in
your history, of which it is not in the least worthy; and indeed you
must put it down to your own request if it should appear not worth even
the trouble of a letter. Farewell.
LORD EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
The Amphitheatre at Pompeii was crowded to the doors. A lion was at
large in the arena, and the populace surged toward an Egyptian priest,
Arbaces, demanding that he be thrown down to be devoured. As the mob
rolled around him, intent on his death, Arbaces noted a strange and
awful apparition. His craft made him courageous; he stretched forth his
hand.
"Behold!" he shouted with a voice of thunder, which stilled the roar of
the crowd; "behold how the gods protect the guiltless! The fires of the
avenging Orcus burst forth against the false witness of my accusers!"
The eyes of the crowd followed the gesture of the Egyptian, and beheld,
with ineffable dismay, a vast vapor shooting from the summit of
Vesuvius, in the form of a gigantic pine tree; the trunk, blackness--the
branches, fire!--a fire that shifted and wavered in its hues with every
moment, now fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red, that again
blazed terrifically forth with intolerable glare!
There was a dead, heart-sunken silence--through which there suddenly
broke the roar of the lion, which was echoed back from within the
building by the sharper and fiercer yells of its fellow-beast. Dread
seers were they of the burden of the atmosphere, and wild prophets of
the wrath to come!
Then there arose on high the universal shrieks of women; the men stared
at each other, but were dumb. At that moment they felt the earth shake
beneath their feet; the walls of the theatre trembled, and beyond, in
the distance, they heard the crash of falling roofs; an instant more and
the mountain-cloud seemed to roll toward them, dark and rapid, like a
torrent; at the same time it cast forth from its bosom a shower of ashes
mixed with vast fragments of burning stone. Over the crushing
vines--over the desolate streets--over the Amphitheatre itself--far and
wide--with many a mighty splash in the agitated sea--fell that awful
shower!
No longer thought the crowd of justice or of Arbaces; safety for
themselves was their sole thought. Each turned to fly--each dashing,
pressing, crushing, against the other. Trampling recklessly over the
fallen--amid groans and oaths and prayers and sudden shrieks, the
enormous crowd vomited itself forth through the numerous passages.
Whither should they fly? Some, anticipating a second earthquake,
hastened to their homes to load themselves with their more costly goods,
and escape while it was yet time; others, dreading the showers of ashes
that now fell fast, torrent upon torrent, over the streets, rushed under
the roofs of the nearest houses or temples or sheds--shelter of any
kind--for protection from the terrors of the open air. But darker and
larger and mightier spread the cloud above them. It was a sudden and
more ghastly Night rushing upon the realm of Noon!
Meanwhile the streets were already thinned; the crowd had hastened to
disperse itself under shelter; the ashes began to fill up the lower
parts of the town; but, here and there, you heard the steps of fugitives
cranching them warily, or saw their pale and haggard faces by the blue
glare of the lightning or the more unsteady glare of torches, by which
they endeavored to steer their steps. But ever and anon the boiling
water, or the straggling ashes, mysterious and gusty winds, rising and
dying in a breath, extinguished these wandering lights, and with them
the last living hope of those who bore them.
Amid the other horrors, the mighty mountain now cast up columns of
boiling water. Blent and kneaded with the half-burning ashes, the
streams fell like seething mud over the streets in frequent intervals.
And full, where the priests of Isis had now cowered around the altars,
on which they had vainly sought to kindle fires and pour incense, one of
the fiercest of those deadly torrents, mingled with immense fragments
of scoria, had poured its rage. Over the bended forms of the priests it
dashed: that cry had been of death--that silence had been of eternity!
The ashes--the pitchy stream--sprinkled the altars, covered the
pavement, and half concealed the quivering corpses of the priests!
In proportion as the blackness gathered did the lightnings around
Vesuvius increase in their vivid and scorching glare. Nor was their
horrible beauty confined to the usual hues of fire; no rainbow ever
rivalled their varying and prodigal dyes. Now brightly blue as the most
azure depth of a southern sky--now of a livid and snakelike green,
darting restlessly to and fro as the folds of an enormous serpent--now
of a lurid and intolerable crimson, gushing forth through the columns of
smoke, far and wide, and lighting up the whole city from arch to
arch--then suddenly dying into a sickly paleness, like the ghost of
their own life!
In the pauses of the showers you heard the rumbling of the earth beneath
and the groaning waves of the tortured sea; or, lower still, and audible
but to the watch of intensest fear, the grinding and hissing murmur of
the escaping gases through the chasms of the distant mountain. Sometimes
the cloud appeared to break from its solid mass, and, by the lightning,
to assume quaint and vast mimicries of human or of monster shapes,
striding across the gloom, hurtling one upon the other, and vanishing
swiftly into the turbulent abyss of shade; so that to the eyes and
fancies of the affrighted wanderers the unsubstantial vapors were as the
bodily forms of gigantic foes--the agents of terror and of death.
The ashes in many places were already knee-deep; and the boiling showers
which came from the steaming breath of the volcano forced their way into
the houses, bearing with them a strong and suffocating vapor. In some
places immense fragments of rock, hurled upon the house roofs, bore down
along the streets masses of confused ruin, which yet more and more, with
every hour, obstructed the way; and, as the day advanced, the motion of
the earth was more sensibly felt--the footing seemed to slide and
creep--nor could chariot or litter be kept steady, even on the most
level ground.
Sometimes the huger stones, striking against each other as they fell,
broke into countless fragments, emitting sparks of fire, which caught
whatever was combustible within their reach; and along the plains beyond
the city the darkness was now terribly relieved, for several houses, and
even vineyards, had been set on flames; and at various intervals the
fires rose sullenly and fiercely against the solid gloom. To add to this
partial relief of the darkness, the citizens had, here and there, in the
more public places, as the porticoes of temples and the entrances to the
forum, endeavored to place rows of torches; but these rarely continued
long; the showers and the winds extinguished them, and the sudden
darkness into which their sudden birth was converted had something in it
doubly terrible and doubly impressing on the impotence of human hopes,
the lesson of despair.
Frequently, by the momentary light of these torches, parties of
fugitives encountered each other, some hurrying toward the sea, others
flying from the sea back to the land; for the ocean had retreated
rapidly from the shore--an utter darkness lay over it, and upon its
groaning and tossing waves the storm of cinders and rock fell without
the protection which the streets and roofs afforded to the land.
Wild--haggard--ghastly with supernatural fears, these groups encountered
each other, but without the leisure to speak, to consult, to advise; for
the showers fell now frequently, though not continuously, extinguishing
the lights, which showed to each band the death-like faces of the other,
and hurrying all to seek refuge beneath the nearest shelter.
The whole elements of civilization were broken up. Ever and anon, by the
flickering lights, you saw the thief hastening by the most solemn
authorities of the law, laden with and fearfully chuckling over the
produce of his sudden gains. If, in the darkness, wife was separated
from husband, or parent from child, vain was the hope of reunion. Each
hurried blindly and confusedly on. Nothing in all the various and
complicated machinery of social life was left save the primal law of
self-preservation!
In parts, where the ashes lay dry and uncommixed with the boiling
torrents, cast upward from the mountain at capricious intervals, the
surface of the earth presented a leprous and ghastly white. In other
places cinder and rock lay matted in heaps, from beneath which emerged
the half-hid limbs of some crushed and mangled fugitive.
The groans of the dying were broken by wild shrieks of women's
terror--now near, now distant--which, when heard in the utter darkness,
were rendered doubly appalling by the crushing sense of helplessness and
the uncertainty of the perils around; and clear and distinct through all
were the mighty and various noises from the fatal mountain; its rushing
winds; its whirling torrents; and, from time to time, the burst and roar
of some more fiery and fierce explosion. And ever as the winds swept
howling along the street, they bore sharp streams of burning dust, and
such sickening and poisonous vapors as took away, for the instant,
breath and consciousness, followed by a rapid revulsion of the arrested
blood, and a tingling sensation of agony trembling through every nerve
and fibre of the frame.
Suddenly all became lighted with an intense and lurid glow. Bright and
gigantic through the darkness, which closed around it like the walls of
hell, the mountain shone--a pile of fire! Its summit seemed riven in
two; or rather, above its surface there seemed to rise two monster
shapes, each confronting each, as demons contending for a world. These
were of one deep blood-red hue of fire, which lighted up the whole
atmosphere far and wide; but _below_, the nether part of the mountain
was still dark and shrouded, save in three places, adown which flowed,
serpentine and irregular, rivers of molten lava. Darkly red through the
profound gloom of their banks they flowed slowly on, as toward the
devoted city. Over the broadest there seemed to spring a cragged and
stupendous arch, from which, as from the jaws of hell, gushed the
sources of the sudden Phlegethon. And through the still air was heard
the rattling of the fragments of rock, hurtling one upon another as they
were borne down the fiery cataracts--darkening, for one instant, the
spot where they fell, and suffused the next, in the burnished hues of
the flood in which they floated!
* * * * *
Nearly seventeen centuries had rolled away when the city of Pompeii was
disinterred from its silent tomb,[45] all vivid with undimmed hues; its
walls fresh as if painted yesterday--not a hue faded on the rich mosaic
of its floors--in its forum the half-finished columns as left by the
workman's hand--in its gardens the sacrificial tripod--in its halls the
chest of treasure--in its baths the _strigil_--in its theatres the
counter of admission--in its saloons the furniture and the lamp--in its
_triclinia_ the fragments of the last feast--in its _cubicula_ the
perfumes and the rouge of faded beauty--and everywhere the bones and
skeletons of those who once moved the springs of that minute yet
gorgeous machine of luxury and of life!
In the house of Diomed, in the subterranean vaults, twenty skeletons
(one of a babe) were discovered in one spot by the door, covered by a
fine ashen dust, that had evidently been wafted slowly through the
apertures, until it had filled the whole space. There were jewels and
coins, candelabra for unavailing light, and wine hardened in the
_amphoræ_ for the prolongation of agonized life. The sand, consolidated
by damps, had taken the forms of the skeletons as in a cast; and the
traveller may yet see the impression of a female neck and bosom of young
and round proportions. It seems to the inquirer as if the air had been
gradually changed into a sulphurous vapor; the inmates of the vaults had
rushed to the door, to find it closed and blocked up by the scoria
without, and, in their attempts to force it, had been suffocated with
the atmosphere.
In the garden was found a skeleton with a key by its bony hand, and near
it a bag of coins. This is believed to have been the master of the
house, who had probably sought to escape by the garden, and been
destroyed either by the vapors or some fragment of stone. Beside some
silver vases lay another skeleton, probably that of a slave.
Various theories as to the exact mode by which Pompeii was destroyed
have been invented by the ingenious; I have adopted that which is the
most generally received, and which, upon inspecting the strata, appears
the only one admissible by common sense; namely, a destruction by
showers of ashes and boiling water, mingled with frequent irruptions of
large stones, and aided by partial convulsions of the earth.
Herculaneum, on the contrary, appears to have received not only the
showers of ashes, but also inundations from molten lava; and the streams
referred to must be considered as destined for that city rather than for
Pompeii. Volcanic lightnings were evidently among the engines of ruin at
Pompeii. Papyrus, and other of the more inflammable materials, are found
in a burned state. Some substances in metal are partially melted; and a
bronze statue is completely shivered, as by lightning. Upon the
whole--excepting only the inevitable poetic license of shortening the
time which the destruction occupied--I believe my description of that
awful event is very little assisted by invention, and will be found not
the less accurate for its appearance in a romance.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] The Romans used to lie or walk naked in the sun, after anointing
their bodies with oil, which was esteemed as greatly contributing to
health, and therefore daily practised by them. This custom, however, of
anointing themselves, is inveighed against by the satirists as in the
number of their luxurious indulgences; but since we find the elder Pliny
here, and the amiable Spurinna in a former letter, practising this
method, we cannot suppose the thing itself was esteemed unmanly, but
only when it was attended with some particular circumstances of an
over-refined delicacy.
[42] About six miles distant from Naples.
[43] An island near Naples, now called Capri.
[44] The Stoic and Epicurean philosophers held that the world was to be
destroyed by fire, and all things fall again into original chaos; not
excepting even the national gods themselves from the destruction of this
general conflagration.
[45] Destroyed A.D. 79; first discovered A.D. 1750.
THE JEWS' LAST STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM: THEIR FINAL DISPERSION
A.D. 132
CHARLES MERIVALE
The successful revolt of the Maccabees against the bloody
persecutions of the Assyrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, about B.C.
164, inaugurated a glorious epoch in Jewish history. From that time
the Jews enjoyed their freedom under the dynasty of their
priest-kings till, B.C. 63, the Romans under Pompey took possession
of Jerusalem. A period of Roman tyranny and oppression followed. In
A.D. 66-70 a great revolt of the Jews occurred. The Romans burned
Jerusalem to the ground. Josephus says the number killed in this
revolt was one million one hundred thousand, and the number of
prisoners ninety-seven thousand. Of those who survived, "all above
seventeen years old were sent to Egypt to work in the mines, or
distributed among the provinces to be exhibited as gladiators in
the public theatres and in the combats against wild beasts."
About fifty years later, A.D., 116, a tremendous uprising occurred
among the Jews of the eastern Mediterranean, in which many lives
were lost. It was quickly suppressed by the emperor Trajan, and the
punishments were similar in cruelty to those which followed the
previous insurrection.
But this dauntless people were not yet conquered. When the emperor
Hadrian, A.D., 130, arrived at Jerusalem on his tour of the empire,
he resolved that the holy city of the Jews should be rebuilt as a
Roman colony, and its name changed to Ælia Capitolina; and the Jews
were forbidden to sojourn in the new city. By this and other
measures the spark of revolt was once more kindled among the
religious and patriotic spirits of the Jewish nation. The Jews in
Palestine flew to arms, A.D., 132, encouraged by the prayers, the
vows, and the material support of their compatriots in Rome,
Byzantium, Alexandria, and Babylon. The Jewish war-cry echoed
around the civilized world.
A fitting leader for the insurrectionists soon appeared in the
person of Simon Barcochebas. Julius Severus, who was in Britain
ordering the affairs of that distant province, was summoned to the
East to quell the disturbance, which had swollen to the dimensions
of a revolution and threatened to abolish Roman authority in
Palestine. The conflict which ensued lasted from A.D. 132 to 135,
and was very bitterly contested on both sides. It was not before
the Hebrew leader fell amid thousands of his followers that the
Jewish forces were defeated. We are told that in this last
revolution the Romans took fifty fortresses, nine hundred and
eighty-five villages were occupied, and that the people killed
numbered five hundred and eighty thousand. The Jews were dispersed
to every quarter of the known world and remain so to this day. The
new city of Hadrian continued to exist, but did not prosper; and
the Jews were prohibited under penalty of death from ever setting
foot in Jerusalem.
The thread of imperial life could hardly snap without a jar which would
be felt throughout the whole extent of the empire. Trajan, like
Alexander, had been cut off suddenly in the Far East, and, like
Alexander, he had left no avowed successor. Several of his generals
abroad might advance nearly equal claims to the sword of Trajan; some of
the senators at home might deem themselves not unworthy of the purple of
Nerva.
On every side there was an army or faction ready to devote itself to the
service of its favorite or its champion.
The provinces lately annexed were at the same time in a state of ominous
agitation; along one half of the frontiers Britons, Germans, and
Sarmatians were mustering their forces for invasion; a virulent
insurrection was still glowing throughout a large portion of the empire.
Nevertheless, the compact body of the Roman Commonwealth was still held
firmly together by its inherent self-attraction. There was no tendency
to split in pieces, as in the ill-cemented masses of the Macedonian
conquest; and the presence of mind of a clever woman was well employed
in effecting the peaceful transfer of power and relieving the State from
the stress of disruption.
Of the accession of Publius Ælius Hadrianus, A.D., 117, to the empire;
of the means by which it was effected; of the character and reputation
he brought with him to the throne; of the first measures of his reign,
by which he renounced the latest conquests of his predecessor, while he
put forth all his power to retain the realms bequeathed him from an
earlier period--is matter for another story.
But let us turn to a review of eastern affairs; to the great Jewish
insurrection, and the important consequences which followed from it.
Trajan was surely fortunate in the moment of his death. Vexed, as he
doubtless was, by the frustration of his grand designs for incorporating
the Parthian monarchy with the Roman, and fulfilling the idea of
universal empire which had flitted through the mind of Pompius or
Julius, but had been deliberately rejected by Augustus and Vespasian,
his proud spirit would have been broken indeed had he lived to witness
the difficulties in which Rome was plunged at his death, the spread of
the Jewish revolt in Asia and Palestine, the aggressions of the Moors,
the Scythians, and the Britons at the most distant points of his
dominions.
The momentary success of the insurgents of Cyprus and Cyrene had
prompted a general assurance that the conquering race was no longer
invincible, and the last great triumphs of its legions were followed by
a rebound of fortune still more momentous.
The first act of the new reign was the formal relinquishment of the new
provinces beyond the Euphrates. The Parthian tottered back with feeble
step to his accustomed frontiers. Arabia was left unmolested; India was
no longer menaced. Armenia found herself once more suspended between two
rival empires, of which the one was too weak to seize, the other too
weak to retain her.
All the forces of Rome in the East were now set free to complete the
suppression of the Jewish disturbances. The flames of insurrection which
had broken out in so many remote quarters were concentrated, and burned
more fiercely than ever in the ancient centre of the Jewish nationality.
Martius Turbo, appointed to command in Palestine, was equally amazed at
the fanaticism and the numbers of people whose faith had been mocked,
whose hopes frustrated, whose young men had been decimated, whose old
men, women, and children had been enslaved and exiled. Under the
teaching of the doctors of Tiberia faith had been cherished and hope had
revived. Despised and unmolested for fifty years, a new generation had
risen from the soil of their ancestors, recruited by the multitudes who
flocked homeward, year by year, with an unextinguishable love of
country, and reënforced by the fugitives from many scenes of
persecution, all animated with a growing conviction that the last
struggle of their race was at hand, to be contested on the site of their
old historic triumphs.
It is not perhaps wholly fanciful to imagine that the Jewish leaders,
after the fall of their city and Temple and the great dispersion of
their people, deliberately invented new means for maintaining their
cherished nationality. Their conquerors, as they might observe, were
scattered like themselves over the face of the globe and abode wherever
they conquered; but the laws, the manners, and the traditions of Rome
were preserved almost intact amid alien races by the consciousness that
there existed a visible centre of their nation, the source, as it were,
to which they might repair to draw the waters of political life. But the
dispersions of the Jews seemed the more irremediable as the destruction
of their central home was complete.
To preserve the existence of their nation one other way presented
itself. In their sacred books they retained a common bond of law and
doctrine, such as no other people could boast. In these venerated
records they possessed, whether on the Tiber or the Euphrates, an elixir
of unrivalled virtue. With a sudden revulsion of feeling the popular
orators and captains betook themselves to the study of law, its history
and antiquities, its actual text and its inner meaning. The schools of
Tiberias resounded with debate on the rival principles of
interpretation, the ancient and the modern, the stricter and the laxer,
known respectively by the names of their teachers, Schammai and Hillel.