THE base of Mount Vesuvius is about four miles from Naples. In going to
Pompeii you skirt the coast, having the burning mountain on the left.
Pompeii lies four miles further on the margin of the bay, so that if
another great eruption was to take place, with an east wind, Naples
might stand in the same danger as Pompeii; still they build houses and
villages and grow grapes up the mountain side. One village has been
destroyed no less than eight times. We did not go to see the crater, the
day we had to spare was not bright and clear, and the fatigue more than
two invalids cared to undertake. But we went to Pompeii. Within a few
minutes from leaving the railway station you reach a kind of hotel and
lodge, buy permission tickets, and take a guide. You enter by an arched
gateway, something like the ancient gates of Chester. The streets are
about as broad and steep as Watergate. Pompeii is about equal in area to
the ancient City of Chester. As you enter the gates you can see the deep
ruts of the two chariot wheels worn fully six inches into the solid
blocks of stone pavement. Their streets, which are straight and narrow,
strike each other at right angles, with a narrow parapet on each side.
The houses are of one storey, externally very plain–no projections or
balconies, but a simple doorway. You have to cross the threshold of the
houses to peer into the mode of life of these Pompeians, who were
suddenly swept out of existence on the 29th November, A.D. 79. Bulwer
Lytton has written a work on the supposed customs and habits of these
people. It would take a book to describe your reflections on this “City
of the Dead.” It has not the appearance of a city destroyed by fire; all
that has disappeared are the roofs, the doors, the people, and the
furniture. The walls and plaster for the most part are perfect, the
fountains and statues are there, the Mosaic floors are bright and clean,
and the fresco painting as bright as when it was done. It seems strange
that none of the present habitations of the Italians resemble those of
the ancients, so vastly different to the tall stuccoed houses of
Naples–one storey houses with an entrance hall, and an open courtyard
with large and small chambers entering from a piazza that skirted the
buildings. Some of the richer houses have an inner courtyard with a
garden in the centre, and different offices leading from it; while
others have engraved on stone the name of the owner. The Forum, or
principal open square, seems to have suffered most; broken pillars and
Corinthian columns are scattered about the halls of justice and the
judge’s vacant seat; the dungeon where two prisoners, fettered, were
discovered a few years ago in a state of petrifaction–they had been left
to their fate on that fearful night. There are many public buildings
around the Forum, and the Latin tablets referring to the business
carried on in them; the steps that time and bustle and business had
worn; the Pagan temples with their tables of sacrifice, are still to be
seen. Then there are the theatres–the day theatre open to the sky, and
the night theatre covered. The tickets of admission were rather
peculiar, for instance, the musicians’ had a lyre, those for the upper
galleries a pigeon, and free tickets a skull–all were carved ivory
tokens. At the outskirts of the town is the amphitheatre, which held
30,000 people, where senators used to harangue their constituents and
gladiators fought their deadly fights, where prisoners were brought from
their cells to fight with and to be torn to pieces by hungry wild
beasts. They have the street of Fortune and the street of Merchants. You
see the wine shop displaying its sign, an earthenware jar, and inside
you see the same seats, the same wine jars, empty and desolate. The
habitués are not there discussing the topics of the day or revelling
with the fulness of the wine cup; they are gone eighteen centuries ago.
There is the apothecary’s shop with its sign–the twisted serpent, and
bakeries with deep brick ovens. In some respects fashions have not
altered much, in a baker’s oven were found black charred loaves with the
baker’s name stamped on them, the same squat shape as you see carried
about the streets of Naples to-day, and known in England as cottage
loaves; from the same oven they shew you a young sucking pig, petrified
to stone, that was there cooking for some one’s supper, in their hurry
and confusion they left this dainty morsel behind. When a workman was
one day using a pick he struck something hollow, it was found when
examined to be in shape like a human body. Several of these hollow
shells were afterwards exhumed, for safety and preservation they were
filled with liquid plaster of paris. The fine ashes and the moisture of
the body together formed this human shell a man in the act of running,
with a key in one hand and some money in another. There is a beautifully
formed girl of seventeen, her face turned a little on one side, with
sweet innocent features clearly defined, with her hair dressed with
girlish coquetry; a boy of twelve has fallen on his face, and there he
lay. There was the body of a dog found with a collar round its neck in
the vestibule of a house; the poor dog must have died hard, it has
rolled over in its agony, and lies on its back with its mouth open, its
limbs violently contorted, and the whole frame twisted and wrenched in a
manner to denote severe pain. There was a girl found, with a golden
clasp brooch bearing the name of Julia Diamede, said to be the daughter
of one of the rich men of the city, whose house gives an idea of his
wealth from its costly fittings discovered. These wonderful relics are
shewn you in a small museum erected in Pompeii. You see the baths with
the niches and seats for undressing, with nails to hang up their
clothes; you are shewn the so-called Turkish bath, but what was really
the ancient Roman bath, with its small stone seats upon which to sit
while waiting for the hot air to induce perspiration.
There is abundance of proof that the people of Pompeii were steeped in
degradation and vice, for the frescos and inscriptions were such that
they have been moved from the view of women and children.
In the Museum Nationale, Naples, they have a Pompeii section; it
contains almost everything you would find in a broker’s shop–pots, pans,
fish hooks, money chests, candelabras, buckets, handsome cloak clasps
(same as lately worn, and now produced in Birmingham by the gross),
cooking stoves, braziers, charred walnuts, barley, olives with the drop
of oil caused by the heat to stand out, a _glass bottle of oil_, eggs,
onions, dates, pears, tortoises, corks, portion of a woman’s dress
finely woven like merino, hinges, locks, taps, a circulating hot-water
boiler with brass tap, a cooking apparatus similar to the French Bain
Marie pan of the present day, leaden pipes, scales and weights, the
metal pen supposed to have been a modern English invention, the safety
pin, which is now so largely made in Birmingham for use in the nursery;
a banker’s paper, receipts for money, a mass of copy in papyrus,
legends, treaties, forceps, lances, probes, speculum and different
doctor’s instruments, medicine phials, dice, and hundreds of articles
supposed to be newly invented, and sold nowadays as novelties. The
cameos and intaglios are of such rich and exquisite work that our modern
lapidaries cannot equal them.
[Illustration: Decoration]
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[Illustration: Decoration]