has narrow sidewalks. The broken walls of houses fence it in closely
on both sides and cast black shadows across it. It is paved with clean
blocks of lava. You will see wheel ruts worn deep in the hard stone.
Almost two thousand years old they are, made by the carts of the
farmers, perhaps, who brought in vegetables for the market. At the
street crossings you will see three or four big stone blocks standing
up above the pavement. They are stepping-stones for rainy weather.
Evidently floods used to pour down these sloping streets. You can
imagine little Roman boys skipping across from block to block and trying
to keep their sandals dry.
The street will lead you to the district of good houses where the
wealthy men lived. Through open doorways you will get glimpses into the
old ruined courtyards. It is hard guessing how the rooms used to look.
But when you come to the door of the house of Vettius you will cry out
with wonder. There is a lovely garden in the corner of the house. A long
passage leads to it straight from the street. Around it runs a paved
porch with pretty columns. Here you will walk in the shade and look out
at the gay little garden, blooming in the sunshine. In every corner tiny
streams of water spurt from little statues of bronze and marble and
trickle into cool basins. Marble tables stand among the flowers. You
will half expect a slave to bring out old drinking cups and wine bowls
and set them here for his master’s pleasure, or tablets and stylus for
him to write his letters. Everything is in order and beautiful. It was
not quite so when the excavators uncovered this house. The statues were
thrown down. The flowers were scorched and dead under the piled-up
ashes. But it was easy for the modern excavators to tell from the ground
where the flower beds had been and where the gravel paths. Even the
lead water pipe that carried the stream to the fountain needed little
repairing. So the excavators set up the statues, cleaned the marble
tables and benches, planted shrubs and flowers, repaired the porch roof,
and we have a garden such as the old Romans loved and such as many
houses in Pompeii had.
Several rooms look out upon this garden. One of them is perhaps the most
interesting place in all Pompeii. You will walk into it and look around
and laugh with delight. The whole wall is painted with pictures, big and
little--pictures of columns and roofs, of plants and animals, of men
and gods. They are all framed in with wide spaces of beautiful red. And
tucked away between them in narrow bands of black are the gayest little
scenes in the world. They are worth going all the way across the ocean
to see. Psyches--delicate little winged girls like fairies--are picking
slender flowers and putting them into tall, graceful baskets. They are
so light and so tiny that they seem to be flitting along the wall
like bright butterflies. In other panels plump little cupids--winged
boys--are playing at being men. They are picking grapes and working a
wine press and selling wine. It is big work for tiny creatures, and they
must kick up their dimpled legs and puff out their chubby cheeks to do
it. They are melting gold and carrying gold dishes and selling jewelry
and swinging a blacksmith’s hammer with their fat little arms. They are
carrying roses to market on a ragged goat and weaving rose garlands and
selling them to an elegant little lady. Everywhere these gay little
creatures are skipping about at their play among the beautiful red
spaces and large pictures. This was surely a charming dining room in the
old days. The guests must have been merry every time their eyes lighted
upon the bright wall. And if they looked out at the open side, there
smiled the garden with its flowers and statues and splashing fountains
and columns.
There lived in this house two men by the name of Vettius. We know this
because the excavators found here two seals. In those days men fastened
their letters and receipts and bills with wax. While the wax was soft
they stamped their names in it with a metal seal. On the stamps that
were found in this house were carved Aulus Vettius Restitutus and Aulus
Vettius Conviva. Perhaps they were freedmen who once had been slaves of
Aulus Vettius. But they must have earned a fortune for themselves, for
there were two money chests in the house. And they must have had slaves
of their own to take care of their twenty rooms and more. In the tiny
kitchen the excavators found a good store of charcoal and the ashes of
a little fire on top of the stone stove. And on its three little legs
a bronze dish was sitting over the dead fire. A slave must have been
cooking his master’s dinner when the volcano frightened him away.
Vettius’ dining room is empty of its wooden tables and couches. But some
houses had stone ones built in their gardens for pleasant summer days.
These the ashes did not crush, and they are still in place. Columns
stood about the tables and vines climbed up them and across to make cool
shade. The tables were always long and narrow and built around three
sides of a rectangle. Low couches stand along the outside edges. Here
guests used to lie propped up on their left elbows with pretty cushions
to make them comfortable. In the open space in the middle of the square
servants came and went and passed the dishes across the narrow tables.
Children used to have little wooden stools and sit in this middle space
opposite their elders. But in one old ruined garden dining room you will
see a little stone bench for the children, built along the end of the
table. It must have been pleasant to have supper there with the sunset
coloring the sky, behind old Vesuvius, the cool breeze shaking the
leaves of the garden shrubs, and the fountain tinkling, and a bird
chirping in a corner, and the shadows beginning to creep under the long
porches, and the tiny flames of lamps fluttering in the dusky rooms
behind.
After you leave the house of Vettius and walk down the street, you will
come to a certain door. In the sidewalk before it you will see “Have”
spelled with bits of colored marble. It is the old Latin word for
“Welcome.” It is too pleasant an invitation to refuse. Go in through
the high doorway and down the narrow passage to the atrium. Every Roman
house had this atrium. It is like a large reception hall with many
rooms opening off it--bedrooms, dining rooms, sitting rooms. Beautiful
hangings instead of doors used to shut these rooms in. The atrium had an
opening in the roof where the sun shone in and softly lighted the big
room. Here the master used to receive his guests. In the house of
Vettius the two money chests were found in the atrium. In this same room
in the house of “Welcome,” there was found on the floor a little bronze
statue, a dancing faun, one of the gay friends of Dionysus. It is a tiny
thing only two feet high, but so pretty that the excavators named the
house after it--The House of the Faun. Evidently the old owner loved
beautiful things and had money to buy them. Even the floors of some of
his rooms are made in mosaic pictures. There are doves at play, and
ducks and fish and shells all laid under your feet in bright bits of
colored marble. And beyond the pleasant court with its porches and
garden is a large sitting room. In the floor of this the excavators
found the most wonderful mosaic picture of all, a picture of a battle,
with waving spears and prancing horses and fallen men. Two kings are
facing each other to fight--Darius, king of Persia, standing in his
chariot, and Alexander, king of Greece, riding his war horse. The bits
of stone are so small and of such perfect color that the mosaic looks
like a beautiful painting. Imagine how the excavators’ hearts leaped
when the spades took the gray ashes off this bright picture. It was too
precious a thing to leave here in the rain and wind. So the excavators
carefully took it up and put it into the museum of Naples where there
are other valuable things from Pompeii.
There are many other houses almost as pleasant and beautiful as this
House of the Faun. Every one has its atrium and its sunny court and its
fountains and statues and its painted walls. But Pompeii was a city of
business, too, and had many workshops. There is a dye shop where the
excavators found large lead pots and glass bottles still full of dye.
There are cleaners’ shops where the slaves used to take their masters’
robes to be cleaned. Here the excavators found vats and white clay
for cleaning, and pictures on the wall showing men at work. There are
tanneries where leather was made. The rusted tools were found which the
men had thrown down so long ago. There is a pottery shop with two ovens
for baking the vases. On a certain street corner you will see an old
wine shop. It is a little room cut into the corner wall of a great
house. Its two sides are open upon the street with broad marble
counters. Below the counters are big, deep jars. Their open tops thrust
themselves through the slab. You can look into their mouths where the
shopkeeper used to dip out the wine. On the walls of the room are marks
that show where shelves hung in ancient days to hold cups and glasses.
In the outer edge of the sidewalk before the shop are two round holes
cut into the stone. Long ago poles were thrust into them to hold an
awning that shaded the walk in front of the counters. We can imagine men
stopping in this pleasant shade as they passed. The busy slave inside
the shop whips out a cup and a graceful, long-handled ladle and dips out
the sweet-smelling wine from the wide-mouthed jar. And we can imagine
how the cups fell clattering from the men’s hands when Vesuvius
thundered. In one shop, indeed, the excavators found an overturned cup
on the counter and a wine stain on the marble. But the most interesting
shops are the bakeries. There were twenty of them in Pompeii. You will
see the ovens in the courtyard. They are big beehives built of stone or
brick. The baker made a fire inside and let the walls become hot. Then
he raked out the coals and cleaned the floor and put in his bread. The
hot walls baked the loaves. In one oven the excavators found a burned
loaf eighteen hundred years old. When the earthquake shook his house,
did the baker snatch out the rest of the ovenful to feed his hungry
family as they groped about for safety in the terrible darkness?
In several bakeries you will see, also, the mills. They are great
mortar-shaped things standing taller than a man. The heavy stone above
turned around upon the stone below. A man poured wheat in at the top. It
fell down and was ground between the two stones and dropped out at the
bottom as flour. A horse or donkey was hitched to the mill to turn it.
Around and around he walked all day. He was blindfolded to prevent his
becoming dizzy. You will see on the stone floor in one bakery the path
that was made by years of this walking. In the old days this silent
empty court must have been an interesting place. The donkey’s hoofs beat
lazy time on the stone floor. Now and then a slave lifted up a bag of
wheat and poured it into the mill or scooped out the white flour from
the trough at the bottom. Another man sifted the flour and the breeze
blew the white dust over his bare arms. Some of the ovens were smoking
and glowing with fresh fire. Others were shut, with the browning bread
inside, and a good smell hung in the air. And out in front was a little
shop where the master sold the thin loaves and the fancy little cakes.
In the hundreds of houses and shops of this little town the excavators
have found bronze tables and lamps and lamp stands and wine jars and
kitchen pots and pans and spoons and glass vases and silver cups and
gold hairpins and jewelry and ivory combs and bronze strigils and
mirrors and several statues of bronze and marble. But where they
had hoped to find thousands of precious things they have found only
hundreds. Many pedestals are empty of their statues. Here and there the
very paintings have been cut from the walls. Those are the pictures we
should most like to see. How beautiful could they have been?
“Evidently men came back soon after the eruption,” say the excavators.
“The tops of their ruined houses must have stood up above the ashes.
They dug down and rescued their most precious things. We have even found
broken places in walls where we think men dug tunnels from one house to
another. That is why the temple and market place have so few statues.
That is why we find so little jewelry and money and dishes. But we have
enough. The city is our treasure.”
One rich find they did make, however. There was a pleasant farmhouse out
of town on the slope of Vesuvius. Evidently the man who owned it had
a vineyard and an olive grove and grain fields. For there are olive
presses and wine presses and a great court full of vats for making wine
and a floor for threshing wheat and a mill for grinding flour and a
stable and a wide courtyard that must have held many carts. And there
are bathrooms and many pleasant rooms besides. In the room with the wine
presses was a stone cistern for storing the fresh grape juice. Here
the excavators found a treasure and a mystery. In this cistern lay the
skeleton of a man. With him were a thousand pieces of gold money, some
gold jewelry, and a wonderful dinner set of silver dishes. There are a
hundred and three pieces--plates, platters, cups, bowls. And every one
has beaten up from it beautiful designs of flowers and people. An artist
must have made them, and a rich man must have bought them. How did they
come here in this farmhouse? They must have been meant for a nobleman’s
table. Had some thief stolen them and hidden here, only to be caught
by the volcano? Did some rich lady of the city have this farm for her
country place? And had she sent her treasure here to escape when the
volcano burst forth? At any rate here it lay for eighteen hundred years.
And now it is in a museum in Paris, far from its old owner’s home.
In this buried city we find the houses in which men lived, the pictures
they loved, the food they ate, the jewels they wore, the cups they drank
from. But what of the people themselves? Were they real men and women?
How did they look? Did they all escape? Not all, for many skeletons have
been found here and there through the city--in the market place, in the
streets, in the houses. And sometimes the excavators have found still
stranger, sadder things. Often as a man has been digging in the
hard-packed ashes, his spade has struck into a hole. Then he has called
the chief excavator.
“Let us see what it is,” the excavator has said, “Perhaps it will be
something interesting.”
So they have mixed plaster and poured it into the hole. They have given
it a little time to harden and then have dug away the ashes from around
it. In that way they have made a plaster cast just the shape of the
hole. And several times when they have uncovered their cast they have
found it to be the form of a man or woman or child. Perhaps the person
had been hurrying through the street and had stumbled and fallen. The
gases had choked him, the ashes had slowly covered him. Under the
moistening rain and the pressure of all the hundreds of years the ashes
had hardened almost to stone. Meantime the body had decayed and had sunk
down into a handful of dust. But the hardened ashes still stood firm
around the space where the body had been. When this hole was filled with
plaster, the cast took just the form of the one who had been buried
there so long ago--the folds of his clothes, the ring on his finger, the
girl’s knot of hair, the negro slave’s woolly head. So we can really
look upon the faces of some of the ancient people of Pompeii. And in
another way we can learn the names of many of them.
One of the streets that leads out from the wall is called the “Street of
Tombs.” It is the ancient burying ground. You will walk along the paved
street between rows of monuments. Some will be like great square altars
of marble beautifully carved. Some will be tall platforms with steps
leading up. There will be marble benches where you may sit and think of
the old Pompeians who were twice buried in their beautiful tombs. And
there on the marble monument you will see their names carved in old
Latin letters, and kind things that their friends said about them. There
are:
Marcus Cerrinius Restitutus; Aulus Veius, who was several times an
officer of the city; Mamia, a priestess; Marcus Porcius; Numerius
Istacidius and his wife and daughter and others of his family, all in
a great tomb standing on a high platform; Titus Terentius Felix, whose
wife, Fabia Sabina, built his tomb; Tyche, a slave; Aulus Umbricius
Scaurus, whose statue was set up in the market place to do him honor;
Gaius Calventius Quietus, who was given a seat of honor at the theater
on account of his generosity; Nævoleia Tyche, who had once been a slave,
but who had been freed, had married, and grown wealthy and had slaves of
her own; Gnæus Vibius Saturninus, whose freedman built his tomb; Marcus
Arrius Diomedes, a freedman; Numerius Velasius Gratus, twelve years old;
Salvinus, six years old; and many another.
After seeing the tombs and houses and shops you will leave that little
city, I think, feeling that the people of ancient times were much like
us, that men and mountains have done wonderful things in this old world,
that it is good to know how people of other times lived and worked and
died.
PICTURES OF POMPEII
A ROMAN BOY.
This statue, now in the Metropolitan Museum, was found at Pompeii.
Probably Caius was dressed just like this, and carried such a stick when
he played in his father’s courtyard.
THE CITY OF NAPLES, WITH MOUNT VESUVIUS ACROSS THE BAY.
VESUVIUS IN ERUPTION, FROM AN AIRPLANE.
Nowadays men know from history what may happen when Vesuvius wakes. But
in 79 A.D., when Pompeii was buried, the mountain had slept for hundreds
of years, and no man knew that an eruption might bury a city.
POMPEII FROM AN AIRPLANE.
The roofs are all gone and all the partitions inside the houses show.
That is why it all looks so crowded and confused. But if you study it
carefully you can see some interesting things. The big open space is
the forum. It is about five hundred feet long, running northeast and
southwest. South of it is the temple of Apollo. North of it, where you
see the bases of columns in a circle, was the market. Next to the market
is the place where the gods of the city were worshipped. The broad
street beside the forum running southeast is the one down which Ariston
fled. Then he turned into the forum, ran out the gate near the lower end
into the steep street that runs southwest and ends at a city gate near
the sea.
NOLA STREET AND THE TEMPLE OF FORTUNE.
You must imagine this temple with an altar in front, a broad flight of
steps, and a portico of beautiful columns. You can see the street paved
with blocks of lava, the deep wheel ruts, and the stepping stones for
rainy weather.
THE STABIAN GATE.
Pompeii was surrounded by two high walls fifteen feet apart, with earth
between. An embankment of earth was piled up inside also. This is one of
the eight gates in the wall. IN THE STREET OF TOMBS.
On the tomb of Nævoleia Tyche was a carving of a ship gliding into port,
the sailors furling the sails. Within this tomb is a chamber where
funeral urns stand, containing the ashes of Tyche and her husband, and
of the slaves they had freed. Pompeians always burned the bodies of the
dead.
THE AMPHITHEATER.
Like other Roman towns, Pompeii had an amphitheater. Here twenty
thousand people could come and watch the gladiators fight in pairs till
one was killed. Then the dead body was dragged off, and another pair
appeared and fought. Sometimes the gladiators were prisoners captured in
war, like the famous Spartacus; sometimes they were slaves; sometimes
criminals condemned to death. Sometimes a man was pitted against a wild
beast; sometimes two wild beasts fought each other. The amphitheater had
no roof. Vesuvius, with its column of smoke, was in plain view from the
seats. There was a great awning to protect the spectators. The lower
seats were for officials and distinguished people; for the middle rows
there was an admission fee; all the upper seats were free.
RUINS OF THE GREAT STABIAN BATHS.
A few large houses had baths of their own, but most people went every
day to a great public bath which was a very gay place. This open court
which you see, was for games.
THE RUINED TEMPLE OF APOLLO.
The temple was built on a high foundation. A broad flight of steps led
up to it, with an altar at the foot. There was a porch all round it held
up by a row of columns. Some of the columns have stood up through all
the earthquakes and eruptions of two thousand years. Inside the porch
was a small room for the statue of Apollo. In the paved court around
this temple were many altars and statues of the gods. This was at one
time the most important temple in Pompeii.
THE SCHOOL OF THE GLADIATORS.
In this large open court the gladiators had their training and practice.
In small cells around the court they lived. They were kept under close
guard, for they were dangerous men. Sixty-three skeletons were found
here, many of them in irons.
THE SMALLER THEATER.
Pompeii had two theaters for plays and music, besides the amphitheater
where the gladiators fought. The smaller theater, unlike the others, had
a roof. It seated fifteen hundred people. We think perhaps contests in
music were held here.
A SACRIFICE.
A boar, a ram, and a bull are to be killed, and a part of the flesh is
to be burned on the altar to please the gods.
A SCENE IN THE FORUM.
On the walls of a room in a house in Pompeii men found this picture,
showing how interesting the life of the forum was. At the left is a
table where a man has kitchen utensils for sale. But he is dreaming and
does not see a customer coming. So his friend is waking him up. Near him
is a shoemaker selling sandals to some women.
IVORY HAIRPINS.
Underneath are two ivory toilet boxes. One was probably for perfumed
oil.
APPLIANCES FOR THE BATH.
These were found hanging in a ring in one of the great public baths. You
see a flask for oil, a saucer to pour the oil into, and four scrapers to
scrape off the oil and dirt before a plunge.
PERISTYLE OF THE HOUSE OF THE VETTII.
With the columns and tables and statues that were found, this court has
been built on the site of an old ruined villa. Flowers bloom and the
fountain plays in it to-day just as they did over two thousand years
ago. There are wall paintings in the shadows at the back. The little
boys holding the ducks must look very much like Caius when he was a
little boy. When he went to the farm in the hills for a hot summer, he
had ducks to play with; here are statues to remind him, in the winter
time, of what fun that was.
A garden like this, not generally so large, was laid out _inside_ every
important house in Pompeii. The family rooms surrounded it. These rooms
received most of their light and air from this garden. Caius was lying
on a couch in a garden like this, when the shower of pebbles suddenly
began. Ariston was painting the walls of a room that overlooked the
garden.
LADY PLAYING A HARP.
This is part of a beautiful wall painting in a Pompeian house, the sort
of painting that Ariston was making when the volcano burst forth. See
how much the little boy looks like his mother, and what beautiful bands
they both have in their hair. Chairs like this one have been found in
the ruins, and the same design is on many other pieces of furniture.
The Metropolitan Museum owns the complete wall paintings for a Pompeian
room. They are put up just as they were in Pompeii. There is even an
iron window grating. A beautiful table from Pompeii stands in the
center. The room is one of the gayest in the whole museum, with its rich
reds and bright yellows, greens, and blues.
KITCHEN OF THE HOUSE OF THE VETTII.
In this house the cook must have been in the kitchen, just ready to go
to work when he had to flee. He left the pot on a tripod on a bed of
coals, ready for use. You can see an arched opening underneath the
fireplace. This was where the cook kept his fuel. The small size of
the kitchens shows that the Pompeians were not great gluttons.
KITCHEN UTENSILS.
These kettles and frying pans and ladles are made of bronze, an alloy of
copper and tin. They look very much like our kitchen furnishings.
CENTAUR CUP.
Some rich Pompeian had a pair of beautiful silver cups with graceful
handles. The design was made in hammered silver, and showed centaurs
talking to cupids that are sitting on their backs. A centaur was half
man, half horse.
THE HOUSE OF THE TRAGIC POET (restored).