THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. By the author of Pelham, &c. 2 vols. New
York: Harper & Brothers. 1834.
The "Messenger" ought to have contained an earlier notice of this
fashionable and brilliant work. If our readers have not seen it, we
would advise them by all means to send forthwith to the bookseller and
purchase a copy. We are free to confess that it has raised Mr. Bulwer
fifty per cent. at least in our estimation,--yet we do not think it by
any means a faultless performance. Mr. Bulwer's pictures, in all his
works that we have read, are too gaudy,--too highly wrought,--and
therefore too much above nature,--and want the delightful repose and
serene features which distinguish the great Scottish magician. He is,
nevertheless, an author of vivid and powerful fancy, of extensive
learning, and of high capacity to seize upon his readers and enchain
them by fine imagery and impassioned eloquence. The work before us is
one of undoubted merit. The subject is of great historical interest,
and the author has contrived to reanimate the "city of the dead" with a
group of actors who, with some exceptions, admirably sustain their
respective parts, and contribute their due share to the continued
interest and final catastrophe of the story. We shall not attempt any
analysis of the book, for that would be to deprive such of our readers
as have not seen it, of much of that exquisite pleasure which attends
the progressive developement of the plot, and the gradual
disentanglement of all the intricacies in a work of fiction. The
tragical story of Pompeii is familiar to classical readers, and
especially the graphic account of its doom by the younger Pliny, who
was an eye witness to the calamity. Its discovery and partial
restoration in latter times,--the laborious excavations which have
brought back its temples, its theatres, its triumphal arches and
spacious edifices, to the light of day;--its antique curiosities and
fine paintings, rescued as it were from a dark interment of seventeen
centuries, and now exhibited in their original form and freshness, are
all circumstances of powerful interest,--but have been so frequently
referred to by tourists, antiquarians and others, that they do not
require any particular notice at our hands. We regard Mr. Bulwer as
highly fortunate in the choice of his subject; and, as he enjoyed great
advantages by his presence on the spot, he has contrived to embellish
his story by a variety of interesting details derived from actual
inspection. The minute account, for example, of the dwelling of
Glaucus, in the third chapter,--of the complicated arrangement and
splendid ornaments of the various apartments, is not the creation of
fancy but a lively representation of a living model. By the way, since
this same chapter contains a very curious account of a Pompeian supper,
besides some other interesting matters, we are tempted to insert the
whole in our columns, especially as many of our readers may have no
opportunity of seeing the volumes from which it is extracted. The
_umbra_, who is introduced as one of the guests, is a species of animal
not peculiar we believe, to the Roman age. Society has in all ages
abounded in parasites and toadies, who, for the sake of a plentiful
repast and _fashionable_ company, have very willingly echoed the
sentiments of a rich patron. Glaucus, one of the principal personages
in the tale, had assembled a small party to partake of his luxurious
bounty,--and the chapter opens with a fine description of the host
himself. We introduce it to our readers.
* * * * *
Heaven had given to Glaucus every blessing but one: it had given him
beauty, health, fortune, genius, illustrious descent, a heart of fire,
a mind of poetry; but it had denied him the heritage of freedom. He was
born in Athens, the subject of Rome. Succeeding early to an ample
inheritance, he had indulged that inclination for travel so natural to
the young, and had drunk deep of the intoxicating draught of pleasure,
amid the gorgeous luxuries of the imperial court.
He was an Alcibiades without ambition. He was what a man of
imagination, youth, fortune and talents readily becomes when you
deprive him of the inspiration of glory. His house at Rome was the
theme of the debauchees, but also of the lovers of art; and the
sculptors of Greece delighted to task their skill in adorning the
porticoes and _exedra_ of an Athenian. His retreat in Pompeii--alas!
the colors are faded now, the walls stripped of their paintings!--its
main beauty, its elaborate finish of grace and ornament, is gone; yet
when first given once more to the day, what eulogies, what wonder did
its minute and glowing decorations create--its paintings--its mosaics!
Passionately enamoured of poetry and the drama, which recalled to
Glaucus the wit and the heroism of his race, that fairy mansion was
adorned with representations of Æschylus and Homer. And antiquaries,
who resolve taste to a trade, have turned the patron to the professor,
and still (though the error is now acknowledged) they style in custom,
as they first named in mistake, the disburied house of the Athenian
Glaucus, "THE HOUSE OF THE DRAMATIC POET."
Previous to our description of this house, it may be well to convey to
the reader a general notion of the houses of Pompeii, which he will
find to resemble strongly the plans of Vitruvius; but with all those
differences, in detail, of caprice and taste which, being natural to
mankind, have always puzzled antiquaries. We shall endeavor to make
this description as clear and unpedantic as possible.
You enter then, usually, by a small entrance passage (called
_vestibulum_) into a hall, sometimes with (but more frequently without)
the ornament of columns; around three sides of this hall are doors
communicating with several bed chambers, (among which is the porter's,)
the best of these being usually appropriated to country visiters. At
the extremity of the hall, on either side to the right and left, if the
house is large, there are two small recesses, rather than chambers,
generally devoted to the ladies of the mansion; and in the centre of
the tesselated pavement of the hall is invariably a square shallow
reservoir for rain water (classically termed _impluvium_,) which was
admitted by a hole in the roof above; the said aperture being covered
at will by an awning. Near this impluvium, which had a peculiar
sanctity in the eyes of the ancients, were sometimes (but at Pompeii
more rarely than at Rome) placed images of the household gods; the
hospitable hearth, often mentioned by the Roman poets, and consecrated
to the Lares, was, at Pompeii, almost invariably formed by a moveable
_brasier_; while in some corner, often the most ostentatious place, was
deposited a huge wooden chest, ornamented and strengthened by bands of
bronze or iron, and secured by strong hooks upon a stone pedestal so
firmly as to defy the attempts of any robber to detach it from its
position. This chest was supposed to be the money-box or coffer of the
master of the house; though, as no money has been found in any of the
chests discovered at Pompeii, it is probable that it was sometimes
rather designed for ornament than use.
In this hall (or _atrium_, to speak classically) the clients and
visiters of inferior rank were usually received. In the houses of the
more "respectable," an _atriensis_, or slave peculiarly devoted to the
service of the hall, was invariably retained, and his rank among his
fellow slaves was high and important. The reservoir in the centre must
have been rather a dangerous ornament, but the centre of the hall was
like the grass-plat of a college, and interdicted to the passers to and
fro, who found ample space in the margin. Right opposite the entrance,
at the other end of the hall, was an apartment (_tablinum_,) in which
the pavement was usually adorned with rich mosaics, and the walls
covered with elaborate paintings. Here were usually kept the records of
the family, or those of any public office that had been filled by the
owner: on one side of this saloon, if we may so call it, was often a
dining room, or _triclinium_; on the other side, perhaps, what we
should now term a cabinet of gems, containing whatever curiosities were
deemed most rare and costly; and invariably a small passage for the
slaves to cross to the farther parts of the house without passing the
apartments thus mentioned. These rooms all opened on a square or oblong
colonnade, technically termed peristyle. If the house was small, its
boundary ceased with this colonnade, and in that case its centre,
however diminutive, was ordinarily appropriated to the purpose of a
garden, and adorned with vases of flowers placed upon pedestals, while
under the colonnade, to the right and left, were doors, admitting to
bed rooms,[1] to a second _triclinium_, or eating room, (for the
ancients generally appropriated two rooms at least to that purpose, one
for summer and one for winter, or perhaps one for ordinary, the other
for festive occasions;) and if the owner affected letters, a cabinet,
dignified by the name of library,--for a very small room was sufficient
to contain the few rolls of papyrus which the ancients deemed a notable
collection of books.
[Footnote 1: The Romans had bed rooms appropriated not only to the
sleep of night, but also to the day siesta (_cubicula diurna_.)]
At the end of the peristyle was generally the kitchen. Supposing the
house was large, it did not end with the peristyle, and the centre
thereof was not in that case a garden, but might be perhaps adorned
with a fountain, or basin for fish; and at its end, exactly opposite to
the tablinum, was generally another eating room, on either side of
which were bed rooms, and perhaps a picture saloon, or _pinatheca_.[2]
These apartments communicated again with a square or oblong space,
usually adorned on three sides with a colonnade like the peristyle, and
very much resembling the peristyle, only longer. This was the proper
_viridarium_ or garden, being usually adorned with a fountain, or
statues, and a profusion of gay flowers: at its extreme end was the
gardener's house; on either side beneath the colonnade were sometimes,
if the size of the family required it, additional rooms.
[Footnote 2: In the stately palaces of Rome, the pinatheca usually
communicated with the atrium.]
At Pompeii, a second or third story was rarely of importance, being
built only above a small part of the house, and containing rooms for
the slaves; differing in this respect from the more magnificent
edifices of Rome, which generally contained the principal eating room
(or _coenaculum_) on the second floor. The apartments themselves were
ordinarily of small size: for in those delightful climes they received
any extraordinary number of visiters in the peristyle (or portico,) the
hall, or the garden; and even their banquet rooms, however elaborately
adorned and carefully selected in point of aspect, were of diminutive
proportions; for the intellectual ancients, being fond of society, not
of crowds, rarely feasted more than nine at a time, so that large
dinner rooms were not so necessary with them as with us.[3] But the
suite of rooms seen at once from the entrance must have had a very
imposing effect; you beheld at once the hall richly paved and
painted--the tablinum--the graceful peristyle, and (if the house
extended farther) the opposite banquet room and the garden, which
closed the view with some gushing fount or marble statue.
[Footnote 3: When they entertained very large parties, the feast was
usually served in the hall.]
The reader will now have a tolerable notion of the Pompeian houses,
which resembled in some respects the Grecian, but mostly the Roman,
fashion of domestic architecture. In almost every house there is some
difference in detail from the rest, but the principal outline is the
same in all. In all you find the hall, the tablinum, and the peristyle
communicating with each other; in all you find the walls richly
painted, and in all the evidence of a people fond of the refining
elegancies of life. The purity of the taste of the Pompeians in
decoration is however questionable: they were fond of the gaudiest
colors, of fantastic designs; they often painted the lower half of
their columns a bright red, leaving the rest uncolored; and where the
garden was small, its wall was frequently tinted to deceive the eye as
to its extent, imitating trees, birds, temples, &c. in perspective--a
meretricious delusion which the graceful pedantry of Pliny himself
adopted, with a complacent pride in its ingenuity.
But the house of Glaucus was at once one of the smallest, and yet of
the most adorned and finished, of all the private mansions of Pompeii;
it would be a model at this day for the house of "a single man in
Mayfair"--the envy and despair of the coelibian purchasers of buhl and
marquetrie.
You enter by a long and narrow vestibule, on the floor of which is the
image of a dog in mosaic, with the well known "cave canem," or "beware
the dog." On either side is a chamber of some size; for the interior
house not being large enough to contain the two great divisions of
private and public apartments, these two rooms were set apart for the
reception of visiters who neither by rank nor familiarity were entitled
to admission in the penetralia of the mansion.
Advancing up the vestibule, you enter an atrinum, that when first
discovered was rich in paintings, which _in point of expression_ would
scarcely disgrace a Raphael. You may see them now transplanted to the
Neapolitan Museum; they are still the admiration of connoisseurs; they
depict the parting of Achilles and Briseis. Who does not acknowledge
the force, the vigor, the beauty! employed in delineating the forms and
faces of Achilles and the immortal slave!
On one side the atrinum, a small staircase admitted to the apartments
for the slaves on the second floor; there too were two or three small
bed rooms, the walls of which portrayed the rape of Europa, the battle
of the Amazons, &c.
You now enter the tablinum, across which at either end hung rich
draperies of Tyrian purple, half withdrawn.[4] On the walls were
depicted a poet reading his verses to his friends; and in the pavement
was inserted a small and most exquisite mosaic, typical of the
instructions given by the director of the stage to his comedians.
[Footnote 4: The tablinum was also secured at pleasure by sliding
doors.]
You passed through this saloon and entered the peristyle; and here (as
I have said before was usually the case with the smaller houses of
Pompeii) the mansion ended. From each of the seven columns that adorned
this court hung festoons of garlands; the centre, supplying the place
of a garden, bloomed with the rarest flowers, placed in vases of white
marble, that were supported on pedestals. At the left end of this small
garden was a diminutive fane, resembling one of those small chapels
placed at the side of roads in Catholic countries, and dedicated to the
Penates; before it stood a bronze tripod; to the left of the colonnade
were two small cubiculi or bed rooms; to the right was the triclinium,
in which the guests were now assembled.
This room is usually termed by the antiquaries of Naples, "the chamber
of Leda;" and in the beautiful work of Sir William Gell, the reader
will find an engraving from that most delicate and graceful painting of
Leda presenting her new-born to her husband, from which the room
derives its name. This beautiful apartment opened upon the fragrant
garden. Round the table of citrean[5] wood, highly polished and
delicately wrought with silver arabesques, were placed the three
couches, which were yet more common at Pompeii than the semi-circular
seat that had grown lately into fashion at Rome; and on these couches
of bronze, studded with richer metals, were laid thick quiltings
covered with elaborate broidery, and yielding luxuriously to the
pressure.
[Footnote 5: The most valued wood; not the modern citron tree. Some,
among whom is my learned friend Mr. W. S. Landor, conjecture it, with
much plausibility, to have been mahogany.]
"Well, I must own," said the ædile Pansa, "that your house, though
scarcely larger than a case for one's fibulæ, is a gem of its kind. How
beautifully painted is that parting of Achilles and Briseis!--what a
style!--what heads!--what a--hem!"
"Praise from Pansa is indeed valuable on such subjects," said Clodius,
gravely. "Why, the paintings on _his_ walls--ah! there is, indeed, the
hand of a Zeuxis!"
"You flatter me, my Clodius; indeed you do," quoth the ædile, who was
celebrated through Pompeii for having the worst paintings in the world;
for he was patriotic, and patronised none but Pompeians,--"you flatter
me: but there is something pretty--Ædepol, yes--in the colors, to say
nothing of the design;--and then for the kitchen, my friends--ah! that
was all my fancy."
"What is the design?" said Glaucus. "I have not yet seen your kitchen,
though I have often witnessed the excellence of its cheer."
"A cook, my Athenian--a cook sacrificing the trophies of his skill on
the altar of Vesta, with a beautiful muræna (taken from the life) on a
spit at a distance: there is some invention there!"
At that instant the slaves appeared, bearing a tray covered with the
first preparative initia of the feast. Amid delicious figs, fresh herbs
strewed with snow, anchovies, and eggs, were ranged small cups of
diluted wine sparingly mixed with honey. As these were placed on the
table, young slaves bore round to each of the five guests (for there
were no more) the silver basin of perfumed water and napkins edged with
a purple fringe. But the ædile ostentatiously drew forth his own
napkin, which was not, indeed, of so fine a linen, but in which the
fringe was twice as broad, and wiped his hands with the parade of a man
who felt he was calling for admiration.
"A splendid _mappa_ that of yours," said Clodius; "why, the fringe is
as broad as a girdle."
"A trifle, my Clodius, a trifle! They tell me this stripe is the latest
fashion at Rome; but Glaucus attends to these things more than I."
"Be propitious, O Bacchus!" said Glaucus, inclining reverentially to a
beautiful image of the god placed in the centre of the table, at the
corners of which stood the Lares and the saltholders. The guests
followed the prayer, and then, sprinkling the wine on the table, they
performed the wonted libation.
This over, the convivalists reclined themselves on the couches, and the
business of the hour commenced.
"May this cup be my last!" said the young Sallust, as the table,
cleared of its first stimulants, was now loaded with the substantial
part of the entertainment, and the ministering slave poured forth to
him a brimming cyathus--"May this cup be my last, but it is the best
wine I have drunk at Pompeii!"
"Bring hither the amphora," said Glaucus; "and read its date and its
character."
The slave hastened to inform the party that the scroll fastened to the
cork betokened its birth from Chios, and its age a ripe fifty years.
"How deliciously the snow has cooled it!" said Pansa; "it is just
enough."
"It is like the experience of a man who has cooled his pleasures
sufficiently to give them a double zest," exclaimed Sallust.
"It is like a woman's 'No,'" added Glaucus; "it cools but to inflame
the more."
"When is our next wild-beast fight?" said Clodius to Pansa.
"It stands fixed for the ninth ide of August," answered Pansa, "on the
day after the Vulcanalia; we have a most lovely young lion for the
occasion."
"Whom shall we get for him to eat?" asked Clodius, "Alas! there is a
great scarcity of criminals. You must positively find some innocent or
other to condemn to the lion, Pansa!"
"Indeed I have thought very seriously about it of late," replied the
ædile, gravely. "It was a most infamous law that which forbade us to
send our own slaves to the wild beasts. Not to let us do what we like
with our own, that's what I call an infringement on property itself."
"Not so in the good old days of the republic," sighed Sallust.
"And then this pretended mercy to the slaves is such a disappointment
to the poor people. How they do love to see a good tough battle between
a man and a lion! and all this innocent pleasure they may lose (if the
gods don't send us a good criminal soon) from this cursed law."
"What can be worse policy," said Clodius, sententiously, "than to
interfere with the manly amusements of the people?"
"Well, thank Jupiter and the Fates! we have no Nero at present," said
Sallust.
"He was, indeed, a tyrant; he shut up our amphitheatre for ten years."
"I wonder it did not create a rebellion," said Sallust.
"It very nearly did," returned Pansa, with his mouth full of wild boar.
Here the conversation was interrupted for a moment by a flourish of
flutes, and two slaves entered with a single dish.
"Ah! what delicacy hast thou in store for us now, my Glaucus?" cried
the young Sallust, with sparkling eyes.
Sallust was only twenty-four, but he had no pleasure in life like
eating--perhaps he had exhausted all the others; yet had he some
talent, and an excellent heart--as far as it went.
"I know its face, by Pollux!" cried Pansa; "it is an Ambracian kid.
Ho!" snapping his fingers, a usual signal to the slaves, "we must
prepare a new libation in honor to the new-comer."
"I had hoped," said Glaucus, in a melancholy tone, "to have procured
you some oysters from Britain; but the winds that were so cruel to
Cæsar have forbid us the oysters."
"Are they in truth so delicious?" asked Lepidus, loosening to a yet
more luxurious ease his ungirdled tunic.
"Why, in truth, I suspect it is the distance that gives the flavor;
they want the richness of the Brundusium oyster. But at Rome no supper
is complete without them."
"The poor Britons! There is some good in them after all," said Sallust;
"they produce an oyster!"
"I wish they would produce us a gladiator," said the ædile, whose
provident mind was still musing over the wants of the amphitheatre.
"By Pallas!" cried Glaucus, as his favorite slave crowned his steaming
locks with a new chaplet, "I love these wild spectacles well enough
when beast fights beast; but when a man, one with bones and blood like
ours, is coldly put on the arena, and torn limb from limb, the interest
is too horrid: I sicken--I gasp for breath--I long to rush and defend
him. The yells of the populace seem to me more dire than the voices of
the Furies chasing Orestes. I rejoice that there is so little chance of
that bloody exhibition for our next show!"
The ædile shrugged his shoulders; the young Sallust, who was thought
the best natured man in Pompeii, stared in surprise. The graceful
Lepidus, who rarely spoke for fear of disturbing his features, cried,
"Per Hercle!" The Parasite Clodius muttered, "Ædepol;" and the sixth
banqueter, who was the umbra of Clodius, and whose duty it was to echo
his richer friend when he could not praise him--the parasite of a
parasite,--muttered also, "Ædepol."
"Well, you Italians are used to these spectacles; we Greeks are more
merciful. Ah, shade of Pindar!--the rapture of a true Grecian game--the
emulation of man against man--the generous strife--the half-mournful
triumph--so proud to contend with a noble foe, so sad to see him
overcome! But ye understand me not."
"The kid is excellent," said Sallust.
The slave whose duty it was to carve, and who valued himself on his
science, had just performed that office on the kid to the sound of
music, his knife keeping time, beginning with a low tenor, and
accomplishing the arduous feat amid a magnificent diapason.
"Your cook is of course from Sicily?" said Pansa.
"Yes, of Syracuse."
"I will play you for him," said Clodius; "we will have a game between
the courses."
"Better that sort of game, certainly, than a beast-fight; but I cannot
stake my Sicilian--you have nothing so precious to stake me in return."
"My Phillida--my beautiful dancing girl!"
"I never buy women," said the Greek, carelessly rearranging his
chaplet.
The musicians, who were stationed in the portico without, had commenced
their office with the kid; they now directed the melody into a more
soft, a more gay, yet it may be a more intellectual, strain; and they
chanted that song of Horace beginning "Persicos odi," &c. so impossible
to translate, and which they imagined applicable to a feast that,
effeminate as it seems to us, was simple enough for the gorgeous
revelry of the time. We are witnessing the domestic and not the
princely feast--the entertainment of a gentleman, not of an emperor or
a senator.
"Ah, good old Horace," said Sallust, compassionately; "he sang well of
feasts and girls, but not like our modern poets."
"The immortal Fulvius, for instance," said Clodius.
"Ah, Fulvius the immortal!" said the umbra.
"And Spuræna, and Caius Mutius, who wrote three epics in a year--could
Horace do that, or Virgil either?" said Lepidus. "Those old poets all
fell into the mistake of copying sculpture instead of painting.
Simplicity and repose--that was their notion: but we moderns have fire,
and passions, and energy--we never sleep, we imitate the colors of
painting, its life and its action. Immortal Fulvius!"
"By-the-way," said Sallust, "have you seen the new ode by Spuræna, in
honor of our Egyptian Isis?--it is magnificent--the true religious
fervor."
"Isis seems a favorite divinity at Pompeii," said Glaucus.
"Yes!" said Pansa, "she is exceedingly in repute just at this moment;
her statue has been uttering the most remarkable oracles. I am not
superstitious, but I must confess that she has more than once assisted
me materially in my magistracy with her advice. Her priests are so
pious too! none of your gay, none of your proud ministers of Jupiter
and Fortune; they walk barefoot, eat no meat, and pass the greater part
of the night in solitary devotion!"
"An example to our other priesthoods, indeed!--Jupiter's temple wants
reforming sadly," said Lepidus, who was a great reformer for all but
himself.
"They say that Arbaces the Egyptian has imparted some most solemn
mysteries to the priests of Isis," observed Sallust; "he boasts his
descent from the race of Ramases, and declares that in his family the
secrets of remotest antiquity are treasured."
"He certainly possesses the gift of the evil eye," said Clodius; "if I
ever come upon that Medusa front without the previous charm, I am sure
to lose a favorite horse, or throw the _canes_[6] nine times running."
[Footnote 6: _Canes_, or _caniculæ_, the lowest throw at dice.]
"The last would be indeed a miracle!" said Sallust, gravely.
"How mean you, Sallust?" returned the gamester, with a flushed brow.
"I mean what you would _leave_ me if I played often with you; and that
is--nothing."
Clodius answered only by a smile of disdain.
"If Arbaces were not so rich," said Pansa, with a stately air, "I
should stretch my authority a little, and inquire into the truth of the
report which calls him an astrologer and a sorcerer. Agrippa, when
ædile of Rome, banished all such terrible citizens. But a rich man--it
is the duty of an ædile to protect the rich!"
"What think you of this new sect, which I am told has even a few
proselytes in Pompeii, these followers of the Hebrew God--Christus?"
"Oh, mere speculative visionaries," said Clodius; "they have not a
single gentleman among them; their proselytes are poor, insignificant,
ignorant people!"
"Who ought, however, to be crucified for their blasphemy," said Pansa,
with vehemence; "they deny Venus and Jove! Nazarene is but another name
for atheist. Let me catch them, that's all!"
The second course was gone--the feasters fell back on their
couches--there was a pause while they listened to the soft voices of
the South, and the music of the Arcadian reed. Glaucus was the most
rapt and the least inclined to break the silence, but Clodius began
already to think that they wasted time.
"_Bene vobis_ (your health,) my Glaucus," said he, quaffing a cup to
each letter of the Greek's name, with the ease of the practised
drinker. "Will you not be avenged on your ill-fortune of yesterday?
See, the dice court us."
"As you will!" said Glaucus.
"The dice in August, and I an ædile," said Pansa, magisterially; "it is
against all law."
"Not in your presence, grave Pansa," returned Clodius, rattling the
dice in a long box; "your presence restrains all license; it is not the
thing, but the excess of the thing, that hurts."
"What wisdom!" murmured the umbra.
"Well, I will look another way," said the ædile.
"Not yet, good Pansa; let us wait till we have supped," said Glaucus.
Clodius reluctantly yielded, concealing his vexation with a yawn.
"He gapes to devour the gold," whispered Lepidus to Sallust, in a
quotation from the Aulularia of Plautus.
"Ah! how well I know these polypi, who hold all they touch," answered
Sallust, in the same tone, and out of the same play.
The second course, consisting of a variety of fruits, pistachio nuts,
sweetmeats, tarts, and confectionary tortured into a thousand fantastic
and airy shapes, was now placed upon the table, and the ministri, or
attendants, also set there the wine (which had hitherto been handed
round to the guests) in large jugs of glass, each bearing upon it the
schedule of its age and quality.
"Taste this Lesbian, my Pansa," said Sallust; "it is excellent."
"It is not very old," said Glaucus, "but it has been made precocious,
like ourselves, by being put to the fire; the wine to the flames of
Vulcan, we to those of his wife, to whose honor I pour this cup."
"It is delicate," said Pansa, "but there is perhaps the least particle
too much of rosin in its flavor."
"What a beautiful cup!" cried Clodius, taking up one of transparent
crystal, the handles of which were wrought with gems, and twisted in
the shape of serpents, the favorite fashion at Pompeii.
"This ring," said Glaucus, taking a costly jewel from the first joint
of his finger and hanging it on the handle, "gives it a richer show,
and renders it less unworthy of thy acceptance, my Clodius, whom may
the gods give health and fortune long and oft to crown it to brim!"
"You are too generous, Glaucus," said the gamester, handing the cup to
his slave, "but your love gives it a double value."
"This cup to the Graces!" said Pansa, and he thrice emptied his calix.
The guests followed his example.
"We have appointed no director to the feast," cried Sallust.
"Let us throw for him, then," said Clodius, rattling the dice-box.
"Nay," cried Glaucus; "no cold and trite director for us; no dictator
of the banquet; no _rex convivii_. Have not the Romans sworn never to
obey a king? shall we be less free than your ancestors? Ho! musicians,
let us have the song I composed the other night; it has a verse on this
subject, 'The Bacchic Hymn of the Hours.'"
The musicians struck their instruments to a wild Ionic air, while the
youngest voices in the band chanted forth in Greek words, as numbers,
the following strain: