LA CITTÀ MORTA
Pompeii can never be visited without the same haunting conviction, the
same oppressive thought: how terribly difficult it is to understand the
City of the Dead which holds in so small a space the whole secret of the
antique world! There are far more grandiose and impressive ruins to be
seen in Rome; the city of Timgad in Northern Africa is more complete as a
specimen of a Roman settlement than the half-excavated town near Vesuvius;
yet here, and here only, can the men of the past stretch hands, as it
were, across the barrier of eighteen intervening centuries to the dweller
of to-day, and the dead-and-gone spirits of a highly organized
civilization can whisper into the living ears of the twentieth century.
For Pompeii will speak to us, if we will take the trouble to learn the
tongue in which alone she can convey the secret of her story. It is
needless to say that this language is not obtainable by one or two cursory
visits to the Naples Museum, and a few hurried half-hours given to the
contents of the guide-book; no, the language of Pompeii, which constitutes
the key of access to the hidden chambers of the Roman world, can only be
acquired with much expenditure of precious time and with infinite trouble.
But “life is short and time is fleeting,” and our bustling age expects to
seize its required knowledge in the twinkling of an eye; well, in that
case the story of Pompeii must remain a sealed volume to the traveller,
who is conveyed to the City of the Dead in a train crammed with
fellow-tourists; who eats a heavy unwholesome luncheon to the sound of
mandoline-players twanging sprightly Neapolitan airs; and who is finally
piloted round the sacred area by a chattering guide in the oppressive heat
and glare of a sunny afternoon. Fatigued in mind and body, such an one
will sink with ill-concealed relief upon the dusty velvet cushions of the
returning train, thoroughly disappointed in the vaunted marvels of
Pompeii, which his imagination had led him to expect. A vague impression
of low broken walls, of narrow—to his eyes absurdly narrow—streets, of
broken columns and of peeling frescoes fills his tired brain, as he is
borne back to his hotel in Naples. But this disenchantment is his own
fault, for no one who sets foot within the Sea Gate of the buried city in
the proper spirit of knowledge and appreciation can possibly fail to enjoy
the privilege which has thus been afforded him—
“to stand within the City Disinterred;
And hear the autumnal leaves like light footfalls
Of spirits passing through the streets; and hear
The Mountain’s slumberous voice at intervals
Thrill through those roofless halls.”
Before passing through the Porta Marina into the purlieus of the city, let
us first of all instil into our minds the essential difference that exists
between the ruins of Pompeii and the historic fragments of Rome or Athens.
When we gaze upon the well-known sites of the vanished glories of the
Palatine or the Acropolis, we experience no effort in looking backward
through the vista of the past and in conjuring up some vague
representation of the scenes that were once enacted in these places; the
more imaginative feel the very air vibrating with the unseen spirits of
men and women famous in the world’s history. He must be indeed a
Philistine or a dullard who cannot contrive to arouse a passing exaltation
at the thought of treading in the footsteps of Cicero and the Caesars in
Rome, of Pericles and Socrates in Athens, for the very soil of the Forum
and the stones of the citadel of Pallas seem impregnated with the very
essence of history. But this is far from being the case at Pompeii, where
long careful study of details and a grasp of hard facts are really of more
avail than a poetic imagination in reclothing with flesh the dry bones of
the past, for the importance of the Campanian city is almost purely
social. The _names_ of many of its prominent citizens are certainly
familiar to us from inscriptions found, yet who were these persons that we
should take so deep an interest in their lives and fates? Who were Pansa
the ædile, Eumachia the priestess, Caecilius Jucundus, Aulus Vettius and
Epidius Rufus, and a score of other Pompeian worthies? The answer is, they
were officials or simple dwellers in a flourishing provincial town; they
had no especial literary or public reputation; their names were probably
little known beyond the walls of their own city. Imagine an English
country town, such as Exeter or Shrewsbury, suddenly overwhelmed by some
unforeseen freak of Nature and afterwards embalmed in the manner of
Pompeii as a curiosity for the edification of future ages. To what extent,
we ask, would the discovery of a place of this size and population supply
the existing dweller with a complete impression of our national life and
civilization in the opening years of the twentieth century? The reply will
be that it would give a very good idea of the average provincial town, but
that it would hardly serve as a fair criterion to judge of the life
pursued in the capital, or in the really large cities. Such a comparison
will afford us a certain clue to the unveiling of the mysteries of
Pompeii.
For the city at the mouth of the Sarno was an ancient Campanian
settlement, founded long before the days wherein Greek adventurers beached
their triremes on the shores of the Siren. It was a native community of
Oscans, deriving its name from the Oscan word _pompe_ (five), and, unlike
Paestum, it appears to have retained its original appellation under all
its successive masters. Its primitive inhabitants seem to have
intermingled with their Hellenic victors, and to have grown civilized by
intercourse with them. Temples of heavy Doric architecture were raised;
walls and watch-towers were built; and by the time the city fell into the
hands of the encroaching Romans, it had become a flourishing place with
some twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants, owing its prosperity to its
excellent situation at the mouth of the river, which made Pompeii a
convenient port to serve the rich district of Campania that lies eastward
of Vesuvius. Nuceria (the modern Nocera) and the larger city of Nola were
both dependent on it, for the Sarno was in those days navigable, so that
ships bringing Egyptian corn and Eastern merchandise frequently left the
Pompeian harbour and sailed up stream to unload their cargoes at these
cities. Let us picture then to ourselves a compact town, an irregular oval
in form, surrounded by walls pierced by eight gates and embellished with
twelve towers; its eastern extremity towards Nocera containing the
Amphitheatre, and its most westerly point marked by the Herculaneum gate
leading to the Street of Tombs. Southward, we must imagine the sea much
closer to its walls than at the present day, for the alluvial deposits
have in the course of nearly two thousand years added many acres of solid
ground to the shores of the Bay. Behind the city to the north rose the
mountain side, not seared with the traces of lava as in these days, nor
surmounted by a smoking cone, but radiant with vineyards and gardens which
extended unbroken up to the very rim of the ancient crater. Amidst the
greenery of the luxuriant slopes peeped forth innumerable farms and villas
of wealthy Romans, for this exquisite spot had long become an abode of
cultured leisure. Within the closely packed streets of the town itself
there were to be found few open spaces except the Forum, and perhaps a
small park in front of the amphitheatre, for the place was prosperous,
though not wealthy, and its chief citizens were forced to remain content
with the tiny gardens enclosed within the walls of their own dwellings.
Internally Pompeii presented, like many another Roman town, marks of its
six hundred years of existence. There was at least one perfect Doric
temple; there were Oscan-Grecian buildings, notably the so-called “House
of the Surgeon,” with its air of old-fashioned simplicity; there were
houses of the Republican period; there were numberless dwellings of the
Imperial era; there were unfinished structures that were being completed
at the time of the city’s overthrow. For, sixteen years before Vesuvius
suddenly awoke from its long sleep, the neighbourhood had been visited by
the severe earthquake shock of 63, and the effects produced by this
disaster had not nearly been effaced, when the great event of 79
transformed the town into a huge museum for the delight and instruction of
future generations. Pompeii therefore preserves the marks of more than
half a thousand years of civilization, so that those who will take the
necessary trouble can trace within its area the gradual progress of its
social and political life from the far-off days of Greeks and Oscans to
the reign of the Emperor Titus. The case of a ruined Exeter or Shrewsbury
could not be widely different. The students of ensuing ages would be able
to find in the dead town one or two churches of Norman or Plantagenet
times; portions of medieval city walls and gateways, perhaps even some
undoubted traces of Roman baths or fortifications; some few public
buildings erected under Tudor or Stuart sovereigns; a large number of the
plain roomy mansions of the Georgian period; and, last of all, a
preponderating quantity of nineteenth century structures of every
description—churches, warehouses, factories, inns, barracks, shops,
dwelling-houses. Many would be the inscriptions and monuments we should
find in such a town, alluding to private and public persons utterly
unknown to English history, but more or less noteworthy in local annals:
grandees of civic life, soldiers, philanthropists, clergymen, _et hoc
genus omne_. Future generations of scholars would doubtless strive eagerly
to obtain details of the careers of these provincial worthies, who filled
municipal offices in the reigns of Queen Victoria and King Edward, in
order to throw more light upon the period wherein they flourished. Let us
apply then the same principles to the study of Pompeii _mutatis mutandis_,
for in our quest of better knowledge of the old Roman life we fix
anxiously upon every detail concerning the leading personages of the dead
city. Nevertheless, it is its existence in the aggregate that proves of
surpassing interest to us; we desire to learn of the daily tasks and
occupations of the mass of its population, rather than to become
acquainted with the private histories of its leading individuals; we study
the former, in fact, only as a means to a definite end. We cry for
information, which to a certain extent we can secure, as to how an average
Roman city was administered, provisioned, drained; how its inhabitants
passed their time both in leisure and in business; how they amused
themselves in their homes and in the theatre; what they ate and what they
drank—the endless trifles of human life, in short, which like the
_tesseræ_, the tiny cubes of their own mosaic pavements, go to make up a
complete picture out of a thousand fragments. Not a few of the cubes in
this case are missing, it is true, nor are they ever likely to be found;
nevertheless, we own an abundant supply wherewith we can piece together a
tolerably accurate picture of the life of a Roman provincial city during
the first century of the Christian era.
It is of course quite outside our province to attempt any detailed account
of the wonders of Pompeii. The reader who desires full information must
turn to the elaborate works of Mau and Helbig, of Gell and Overbeck, to
say nothing of the descriptive pages, full of condensed knowledge,
contained in Murray’s and Baedeker’s guide-books in order to obtain a
clear impression of all he wishes to inspect. We can but dwell on a point
here and there, and even then but lightly and superficially, for any
endeavour on our part to add to the statements and theories of the great
archaeologists already cited would be indeed a matter of supererogation
and presumption.
Entering then by the Marine Gate, and pursuing our course eastwards along
the lines of naked broken house-fronts, we reach the great rectangular
space of the Forum. Here at its southern extremity let us select a shady
corner, for the sun beats down fiercely upon the bare ruins at every
season of the year, and even on a winter’s afternoon the air often
shimmers with the heat haze, so that in no place on earth is the use of an
umbrella so necessary or desirable as at Pompeii.
What an ideal spot for the founding of a city! That is our first
impression, as we glance across the broad sunlit enclosure on to the
empurpled slopes of Vesuvius rising grandly above the broken columns of
the great temple of the Capitoline Jove; behind us, we know, is the azure
Bay with Capri and the Sorrentine cape lying on its unruffled bosom, so
that we stand between sea and mountain to north and south, whilst we have
the luxuriant slopes of Vesuvius to westward, and to the east the rich
valley of the Sarno, thickly dotted with groves and hamlets. One element
alone is wanting in the glorious scene before us—Life; it will be our duty
and pleasure to re-invest as far as possible this empty space before us
with the semblance of the busy crowds that once flitted in and out of its
colonnades and porticoes; to rebuild in imagination its shapeless ruins,
so that we may obtain a fleeting picture of the Pompeian Forum in early
Imperial days.
[Illustration: THE FORUM, POMPEII]
Conceive, then, in front of us, instead of this long bare stretch flanked
by broken walls and strewn with shapeless fragments of brick and stone, an
immense double arcade, two stories in height, affording ample protection
against sun or rain and enclosing an oblong pavement whereon are set
numerous statues of emperors or private citizens, occupying lofty
positions of honour above the heads of the surging throng below. Imagine
that group of shattered pillars, which obstructs our full view of the
distant cone of Vesuvius, transformed into an imposing temple, covered
with polychrome decoration, not in the best of taste according to our
modern ideas of art, but gorgeous and cheerful in the clear atmosphere of
the south. Rebuild, in the mind’s eye, the Basilica and the temple of
Apollo on the left, and straight before us, as we look forward from our
coign of vantage at the narrow southern end of the colonnade, let us plant
the three dominant statues of Augustus, Claudius and Agrippina to form our
foreground. If we can construct by stress of fancy some such setting of
classical architecture, gay with primary colours and gilding and graceful
in design, it is easier to people the Pompeian Forum with the masses of
humanity that once mingled here. For we have the knowledge of modern
Italian life to guide us to a certain extent; we have seen the swarms of
citizens who to-day fill the main piazzas of the towns, especially those
of the provincial type, where the morning market is held and the chief
cafés and shops are situated. But if the general use of the piazza is
characteristic of the modern second-class Italian city, this concentration
of life was far more marked in the ancient Roman town, wherein the Forum
must have appeared as the very heart of the whole body social and politic.
Roman city life indeed displayed two strongly antagonistic phases:—the
utmost privacy in the home, the most public exhibition in the Forum, where
every trade and form of business were carried on in the open air, and
whither pursuit of gain, or pleasure, or religious duty led all the
citizens to direct their steps. For, as we have already shown, almost all
the public life of the place was concentrated within this space and its
surroundings; temples, markets, shops, law courts, municipal offices, all
abutted on the Forum; it was not merely the chief, but the only place that
drew together the daily crowd, bent alike on business or amusement. No
chariots were permitted to cross the area sacred to the claims of
money-making, of gossip, and of worship; so that we must picture to
ourselves a great mass of people undisturbed by the passing of vehicles,
or by the shouts and whip-crackings of the noisy charioteers—was ever such
a thing as a quiet Italian coachman, ancient or modern, we digress to
wonder! All was orderly and decorous when compared with the quarrelling,
screaming groups of citizens that block the congested streets of modern
Naples. Happily for us various paintings of the Forum of Pompeii have been
discovered, and these are naturally of immense value in helping us to a
proper understanding of the habits and methods of the people, and of the
general appearance of the Forum itself during its busiest hours. The
costumes of men, women and children; the articles of clothing and of food
ready for sale; the little knots of loiterers or gossips; the citizens
intent on reading the municipal notices that are herein portrayed, all
combine to present us with an authentic picture of Pompeian and therefore
of Roman civic life. “There is nothing new under the sun,” grumbled the
Preacher many centuries before the city under Vesuvius had reached its
zenith of civilization, and it must be confessed that the general
impression conveyed after studying the contemporary pictures of antique
life does not differ very widely from that which we obtain by observing
present Italian conditions. For the frescoes in the Naples Museum and in
certain of the Pompeian houses seem to recall strongly the scenes of the
piazza, where all the elements of society, irrespective of rank or
station, are still wont to congregate. Differences of dress, of manner, of
custom are doubtless evident enough, yet somehow we perceive an essential
sameness in these two representations of classical and modern Italy.
Nevertheless, these simple and often rude wall-paintings furnish us with
many pieces of information that we search for in vain amidst the ancient
authors, who naturally considered the commonplace everyday scenes of life
beneath the notice of contemporary record. We are enabled to learn, for
instance, how the citizens were usually dressed in the Forum, and how, in
an age when hats and umbrellas were practically non-existent, the pointed
hood, like that of the Arab burnous, was often used to cover the head in
cold or wet weather. Again, it is easy to perceive from the same source
that the diet of the Pompeians must have resembled closely that of their
present descendants; even the shape of the loaves has in most cases
continued unchanged to the present day. And one curious coincidence is
certainly worth mentioning, in that a peculiar method of preparing figs
with caraway seeds, which was long supposed to be a local speciality of a
remote town in Central Italy, has now been recognized as a common method
of dressing this fruit for the table at Pompeii, for large quantities of
figs so treated have been unearthed in shops and kitchens. Such grains of
information as the wearing of hoods and the preserving of figs may appear
trifling enough at first sight, yet it is from a number of petty details
such as these that we are assisted to an intimate understanding of a state
of society extinct nearly two thousand years ago.
Close beside us on the eastern side of the Forum is set the Chalcidicum,
the large building of the priestess Eumachia, one of the most gracious
personalities of Pompeii with which the modern world has become
acquainted. It was this lady who generously presented this structure, one
of the handsomest and most solid of the public buildings of the city, to
the fullers to serve as their exchange, wherein goods might be exposed
upon benches and tables for the convenience alike of sellers and
purchasers. “Priestess Eumachia,” remarks a modern critic, “has done the
thing well; no expense has been spared in the building and its
decorations. The columns of the portico are of white marble; the statues
of Piety and Concord, works of art; and the flower-borders along the
panelled walls, prettily conceived and carefully executed. After so much
plaster and stucco, it is a relief to see something so solid and genuine.
When a third-rate city apes the capital, there must needs be a certain
amount of sham. But at Pompeii it is all sham, or next door to it. In the
entire city are not more than half a dozen edifices whose columns are of
real marble, the bas-reliefs and cornices of anything more solid than
stucco; and of these half-dozen, the Exchange heads the list.”
We feel tolerably secure in assigning this fine building to the early
years of the Emperor Tiberius, and in naming the Emperor’s mother, Livia,
as the divinity to whom it was dedicated. The statue of Concord with the
golden horn of plenty doubtless once adorned the large pedestal which
still stands in the eastern apse of the Exchange, but though the figure
and emblem were those of Concordia, the face bore certainly the features
of Imperial Livia. Yet more interesting than the various speculations as
to the actual uses of this edifice and the different names of the statues
which once embellished its alcoves, is the circumstance that the marble
portrait of the foundress herself has been discovered. It is true that
only a copy in plaster now occupies the pedestal at the back of the apse
where Eumachia’s statue once stood, for the original has been removed for
safety to Naples, but it is not difficult to call to mind the calm gentle
face of this Pompeian Lady Bountiful, and her graceful figure in its
flowing robes. The existence of this statue adds undoubtedly a touch of
special human interest to the whole building, and we find our minds
excited by the brief inscription which still informs the curious that the
fullers of Pompeii erected this portrait in marble in grateful
appreciation “to Eumachia, a city-priestess, daughter of Lucius
Eumachius.”
Outside the Chalcidicum, at the corner of the lane usually termed Via
dell’ Abbondanza, is to be seen a pathetic little memorial of the working
life of the city: the fountain of Concordia Augusta, the divinity of
Eumachia’s noble building hard by. Dusty and heating is the business of
fulling cloth, and it generates thirst, so that it is but natural to find
a fountain close at hand, whereat the labourers could refresh their
parched throats. With what eagerness must the exhausted toilers during
those long summers of centuries past have leaned forward to press their
human lips to the cool mouth of the sculptured goddess that ejected with
pleasing gurgles a volume of water into the basin below! That this
fountain proved a boon to weary citizens is evident enough, for the
features of water-spouting Concordia are half worn away by thirsty human
kisses, and her suppliants’ hands have left deep smooth furrows in the
stone-work of the basin, whereon they were wont to support their bodies,
so as to direct the cooling draught into the dry and dusty gullet. In
Italian cities to-day we can frequently observe some exhausted labourer
bend deftly downwards to snatch a drink of water from the mouth of some
fantastic figure in a public fountain. Who has not paused, for instance,
beside Tacca’s famous bronze boar in the Florentine market-place without
noting an incident of this kind? If we ourselves are too dainty to place
our own aristocratic lips where our fellow-mortals have pressed theirs,
not so are the abstemious descendants of the ancient Romans, the Italians,
whose minds remain untroubled by any nasty-nice qualms of possible
infection.
Here then is the setting of the picture, and we must ourselves endeavour
to repeople the empty space with the crowds of high and low that once
collected here.
“It is high change, and the Forum is crowded. All Pompeii is here, and his
wife. _Patres conscripti_, inclined to corpulence, taking their
constitutional, exquisites lazily sauntering up and down the pavements;
decurions discussing the affairs of the nation, and the last news from
Rome; city magnates fussing, merchants chaffering, clients petitioning,
parasites fawning, soldiers swaggering, and Belisarius begging at the
gate.... It is a bright and animated scene. Beneath, the crowded Forum,
with its colonnades and statues, at one end a broad flight of steps
leading to the Temple of Jupiter, at the other a triumphal arch; on one
side the Temple of Venus and the Basilica; on the other the Macellum, the
Temple of Mercury, the Chalcidicum; overhead the deep blue sky. Mingled
with the hum of many voices and the patter of feet on the travertine
pavement are the ringing sounds of the stonemasons’ chisels and hammers,
for the Forum is undergoing a complete restoration. Although fifteen years
have elapsed since the city was last visited by earthquake, the damage
then done to the public buildings has not been entirely repaired. First
the Gods, then the people. The temples of Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury are
completed, but the Forum and Chalcidicum are still in the workmen’s
hands.”(2)
With this fleeting glimpse at the public life of the city, let us now turn
our attention to its domestic arrangements. Of the many houses which have
been excavated of recent years under the truly admirable superintendence
of Signor Fiorelli, none is better calculated to give us a striking
impression of the working details of an upper-class Roman household than
the private dwelling which is known equally under the two names of the
Casa Nuova and the House of the Vettii;—perhaps the former name has now
ceased to own any significance, since the buildings were laid bare as far
back as the winter of 1894-5. An hour or two spent in a careful inspection
of this house and its contents is to most persons worth four times the
same amount of time occupied in aimless wandering amongst the hot glaring
streets of the city, peeping into this courtyard and that, and listening
to the interminable tales of guide or custodian. If we study the Casa
Nuova intelligently, lovingly and minutely, it will not be long before we
obtain a tolerable grasp of Roman life and manners, which will prove of
immense service and of genuine delight. What then is it, the question will
be asked, that makes the House of the Vettii so valuable as an example of
antique architecture and decoration, in preference to other mansions which
can boast an equal and often a greater distinction? The answer is simple
enough: it is because this particular group of buildings has been allowed
to remain as far as practicable in the exact condition wherein it was
originally unearthed, when its various rooms and courts were once more
exposed to the light of day. For until the clearing of this “new house” a
decade or so ago, no proper opportunity had so far been afforded to the
amateur of our own times of judging for himself the interior of a Roman
dwelling in full working order, and with all its furniture, paintings, and
utensils complete. Up to this, almost every object of value had been
removed at once for safety, every fresco even of importance had been cut
bodily out of its setting and placed in one of those immense halls on the
ground floor of the Museum in Naples. How well do we remember those gaunt
chilly chambers, filled from pavement to ceiling with painted fragments of
all sizes, a medley of domestic subjects and of classical myths! Torn from
the walls they were specially executed to adorn, divorced from their
proper scheme of surrounding ornament, these wan dejected ghosts stare at
us like faces out of a mist. The uninitiated cannot find pleasure in them,
for they have no pretention to be called works of art; on the contrary
they form an inherent part of a conventional system of house decoration.
The classical student can of course find many points of interest in the
incidents portrayed, but all charm of local environment is absent;—it is,
in short, impossible to judge of Roman decoration from this collection of
crumbling, fading pieces of painted stucco. It would be as easy to imagine
the effect of a rose-bush in full bloom from the sight of a few withered
rose-buds, pressed until every vestige of colour had left their petals, as
to understand the significance of antique domestic art from the contents
of the Museo Nazionale.
But here, in the House of the Vettii, the public was for the first time
initiated into the mysteries of true Roman life; here it was admitted to
gaze upon the fruits of classical taste and refinement, and to contrast
them, favourably or unfavourably, with prevailing modern standards. The
Casa Nuova has been left as an object lesson, a complete museum in itself,
wherein every daily incident of Pompeian life, every domestic secret,
reveal themselves to our inquisitive eyes. Here in the roofless halls we
can be taken from entrance to dining-hall, from _atrium_ to sleeping
rooms, spying into the minutest detail of shape, size and colour, as
though we were seriously intending to rent the house for our own
habitation. The last tenant has even left his money-chest in his hall, his
pots and pans in the kitchen, and as we inspect his utensils, we wonder if
they would suit our own requirements to-day. Of portable objects of
value—plate, jewels, statuettes of precious metals and the like—belonging
to the late owner, there is certainly no trace, for Signor Fiorelli’s
labourers were not the first to break the deep silence of this buried
mansion. For it was the survivors of the stricken town, the citizens of
Pompeii themselves, who were the foremost pioneers to excavate, and they
carried off every work of art they could conveniently remove. Cutting from
above into the deposit of ashes that filled the streets, they managed to
reach in course of time the level of the ground, after which they
tunnelled from room to room, from house to house, collecting every object
they thought worth the trouble of transporting. Perhaps the owners of the
house, the Vettii themselves, presuming they escaped in the general
catastrophe, may have returned with skilled workmen to recover some of
their treasures; perhaps some “man of three letters”—the colloquial Roman
term for thief (_fur_)—may have forestalled the masters’ efforts—who
knows? And at this distance of time, who cares?
The house once occupied by Aulus Vettius Restitutus and Aulus Vettius
Corvina stands in a quiet district not far from the Capuan Gate, and
consequently at some distance from the Forum. Like all Roman habitations
it was essentially Oriental in its outward aspect, and must have resembled
closely any one of those mysterious dwellings of wealthy Arab citizens
which we constantly encounter in the native quarters of Algiers or Tunis.
The gateway giving on the street was wide, certainly, but it was well
defended both by human and canine porters; its windows were few and small,
and were probably closely latticed like those of the nunneries which we
sometimes perceive overhead in the crowded streets of Naples. There must
have been something austere, even suspicious, in the external appearance
of the Casa de’ Vettii, but snarling dog and grim janitor have long since
disappeared, and we pass unmolested through the _atrium_ and thence into
the Great Peristyle, which is perhaps the most remarkable feature of this
house. The peristyle, as its name implies, is a Greek importation in a
Roman city, and its use would have been scorned by the old-fashioned
citizens, such as the master of the “House of the Surgeon”; yet it was in
truth admirably suited to the character of Southern Italy, where it
afforded shelter from sun and wind, and its arcades protected from the
rainfall. The peristyle of the Vettii, with its gaudily tinted pillars of
stucco, is highly ornate; perhaps it passes the limits of good taste in
certain points of colour and æsthetic decoration, yet the general effect
is undoubtedly pleasing to the eye. This courtyard is at once a lounge
open to the sky; it is a garden; it is an art-gallery; for the cheerful
court of Greek domestic architecture had nothing in common with its
successor of the Middle Ages, the monastic cloister of religious
meditation. Cannot we imagine to ourselves the goodman of the house
proudly leading his guests after a sumptuous meal in the adjacent
dining-room into the cool corridors of his peristyle, in order to point
out to them his statues and vases of bronze or porphyry, and to expatiate
upon their value or elegance of form? On such a festive occasion these
great shallow basins of pure white marble before us would be heaped high
with fragrant pyramids of red and white roses, roses that were perhaps
plucked all dewy in the famous gardens of Paestum on the other side of
Mons Gaurus. For the flowering shrubs in the tiny pleasaunce itself are
far too precious to be stripped of their blossoms in so lavish a manner,
and perhaps if Vettius be anything of an amateur gardener, he may comment
to his visitors upon the rare plants that fill his diminutive flower-beds.
Careful and reverent hands have restored the little garden as near as
possible to its pristine plan and appearance. There are still standing the
two bronze statues of urchins holding in their chubby arms ducks from
whose bills once gushed the limpid water, making a soothing sound amidst
the alleys of the peristyle; corroded and injured they certainly appear,
yet here they hold their original positions in Vettius’ domain long after
temple and tower have fallen to the ground. The marble chairs and tripod
tables likewise remain, and around them still thrive the very plants that
the servants of the house were wont to tend in the days of Titus. For, by
a rare chance, we find depicted on the walls of the excavated house the
actual flowers and herbs that were popular during Vettius’ lifetime, and
these have been replanted by modern hands in the garden of the peristyle.
There are clumps of papyrus, the strange mop-headed rush from the banks of
the Nile, introduced into Italy as a botanical novelty after the conquest
of Egypt; there are rose-bushes, of course; and also masses of shining ivy
trained in the ancient Roman manner upon a cage of wicker-work fixed into
the soil. As we watch the verdure-clad sunlit space there descends,
delicately fluttering, one of those splendid pale yellow brimstone
butterflies of the South with flame-coloured blushes on its wings, and
after some moments of graceful hesitation, this new visitor settles upon
the purple head of an iris bloom. With its vivid colouring and its quick
movements the butterfly brings an atmosphere of life into the courtyard
that was hitherto lacking. Its appearance too suggests the famous
allegory, the unsolved riddle of human existence which so puzzled the
divine Plato and the ancient philosophers of Athens and Syracuse. Here are
we, the living men of to-day, watching the corpse of a departed world upon
which the mystic symbol of Psyche has just alighted. _Tempus breve est_ is
the simple little truism that rises to our reflecting minds. Eighteen
centuries between the Vettii and ourselves! They are gone like a flash,
and we are amazed to note how little has our nature altered either for the
better or the worse within that space of time, long enough if we measure
its limit by the standard of history, trivial if we reckon it by the
progress made in human ethics and human understanding. Surely there are
lessons to be learned in the silent city; Pompeii, we realize, is not
merely a heap of antique dross whence we can pick up precious grains of
knowledge, but it is an oracle in itself, which, if properly consulted,
will give us plain answers to our modern speculations, and will possibly
reprove us for our conceited assumption of omniscience.
[Illustration: LA CASA DEI VETTII, POMPEII]
Still brilliant in their strong prevailing tints of black, yellow and
vermilion are the decorative schemes which make a visit to the house of
the Vettii of such supreme importance for those who wish to understand
fully the artistic tastes of the Romans, and also their artistic
limitations. If the contents of the Museum seem colourless and cold, and
prove unsatisfying and disappointing, here the eye of the artist can feast
upon the classical ornamentation which remains fairly fresh in spite of a
dozen years of exposure to daylight. For this province of art is
peculiarly associated with the opening years of the Empire, and Pompeii is
naturally the chief place for its study, and in Pompeii the untouched Casa
Nuova is all important for the student. According to Pliny, the inventor
of this pleasing style of decoration was a certain Ludius, who flourished
in the reign of Augustus, and first persuaded the Romans to embellish
their flat wall-surfaces with designs of “villas and halls, artificial
gardens, hedges, woods, hills, water basins, tombs, rivers, shores, in as
great a variety as could be desired; figures sitting at ease, mariners,
and those who, riding upon donkeys or in waggons, look after their farms;
fishermen, snarers of birds, hunters and vine-dressers; also swampy
passages before beautiful villas, and women borne by men who stagger under
their burdens, and other witty things of this nature; finally, views of
sea-ports, everything charming and suitable”:—a fairly long and
comprehensive list of subjects, truly, from which a patron might pick and
choose, or an artist might execute!
Although the great architect Vitruvius strongly denounced this new
striving after scenic effect and characterized it as petty and false, yet
none can deny that these cheerful scenes with their bright colours and
their agreeable if trivial subjects were singularly well adapted to
improve the appearance of the bare narrow rooms, the meagre proportions of
which seem to us absolutely incompatible with plain comfort, to say
nothing of luxury. Space may be increased, so far as the eye is concerned,
by an architectural or landscape painting ingeniously conceived, and thus
the restricted rooms seem to obtain by means of this new system of
decoration a wider expansion, and with it an increased sense of ease and
lightness. The invention of Ludius became at once the fashion, the rage;
and all Rome began to cover the walls of its narrow chambers with these
novel designs, which had already found favour in Imperial circles.
Campania, where the old Greek love for polychrome still lingered, was not
slow in imitating the new taste of the Capital, so that Pompeii bears
undoubted testimony to the popularity of this revolution in artistic
ideas, which substituted a lighter freer method for the old conventional
severity of treatment. Experts profess to trace—and none will endeavour to
gainsay them—a marked difference between the frescoes executed before the
earthquake of 63 and those undertaken subsequent to that date. The wall
paintings of the first group, carried out when the art was comparatively
novel, are superior in harmony of colour, in choice of themes and in
technical finish to those which belong to the latter period, the sixteen
years that intervened between the earthquake and the eruption of Vesuvius.
From this circumstance it has been inferred, not without reason, that this
particular house must have passed some time before the year 63 out of the
possession of people of good taste into the hands of vulgarians, ignorant
of the fundamental principles of art and anxious only to obtain what was
startling and garish. As freedmen, the two Vettii would naturally belong
to a class which was not remarkable for culture; nevertheless, they seem
to have had the good sense to leave intact some of their predecessor’s
most cherished works of decoration, and for this exhibition of restraint
we must feel duly grateful towards our dead-and-gone hosts, the maligned
Vettii.
But it is not only for purposes of examining Roman internal decoration _in
situ_ that this art gallery of the Casa Nuova is available. Below the
painted panels of the dining-room runs a long string of ornament, whereon
are represented Cupids and Psyches engaged in the various occupations of
Pompeian daily life. Full of dainty grace and of lively expression, these
little winged figures initiate us into a number of the trades and customs
of the ancients. For they are made to appear before us as goldsmiths,
vine-dressers, makers and sellers of olive oil, dealers in wine, fullers
of cloth, and as partakers in a dozen other scenes of town or country
life. Where learned antiquaries had hitherto doubted and disputed, the
discovery of the paintings of these celestial little mechanics and
merchants helped to solve many a difficulty, for the secret of half the
arts and crafts of Pompeii is revealed to us in this playful guise. Nor
are the designs themselves contemptible from an artistic point of view;
look how intent, for example, is the pose of the tiny jeweller working
with a graver’s tool upon the gold vessel before him; how steadily he
bears himself at a task which requires at once strength of hand and
delicacy of workmanship. Look again at the nervous pose of the pretty elf
who is gingerly pouring wine out of a huge amphora, which he holds in his
arms, into a shallow tasting cup offered by a brother Cupid. How
thoroughly must the unknown artist have enjoyed the task of painting this
frieze! How unfettered his fancy, as his brush glided smoothly and deftly
over the carefully prepared wall-surface! Excellent, no doubt, he thought
his work at the time of execution, but even the most conceited of
Campanian artists could hardly have dreamed that these creations of his
brush would still at the end of two thousand years be admired, commented
upon and even reproduced in thousands, by a process he never dreamed of,
for the benefit of citizens of nations as yet unborn or unforeseen.
As the spring evening softly steals over the city and the shadows of the
colonnades lengthen, let us leave the silent halls and chambers of the
Casa dei Vettii and turn our footsteps westward; and issuing out of the
Gate of Herculaneum, let us traverse the famous Street of Tombs, that
extends along the road leading to the sister buried city. In ancient times
this was the Via Domitiana, a branch road of the Appian Way, and it formed
the most frequented entrance into Pompeii. To Roman ideas, therefore, it
was but natural that tombs should be erected alongside its borders, whilst
the spirits of the passing and repassing crowds were in no wise affected
by the memorials of death attending their exits and entrances. And with
the surging human tide that was ever flowing in this thoroughfare the
funeral processions must constantly have mingled, the wailing of the hired
mourners rising sharply above the din of harsh voices, the creaking of
clumsy wooden wheels and the braying of the heavily laden asses. Now over
all reigns a decorous silence, such as we moderns deem fitting for a
cemetery; only the hum of insects breaks the deep quiet of the atmosphere,
nor are there any living creatures visible at this late hour save the bats
which flit restlessly in and out of the weed-grown piles of brick or stone
that once were stately monuments of wealth or piety. Above our heads the
tall sombre cypresses shoot upward like gigantic spear-heads into the
crystal-clear air, pointing heavenward like our own church spires in a
rural English landscape. This Street of the Dead in the City of the Dead
is in truth a solemn and a soothing spot; nor can we find its precincts
melancholy, when we stand in the midst of such glorious scenery. For Monte
Sant’ Angelo towers to our left against the mellow evening sky, flecked
with lines of peach-blossom cloud, whilst in front of us the dark form of
Capri seems to float in a golden haze between firmament and ocean. Behind
us the dark mass of the Mountain with its breath of ascending smoke seems
like an eternal funeral pyre in honour of the Dead, who were spared the
horrors of that fearful disaster which overwhelmed the living. Upon the
broken tombs and altars the light from the setting sun falls with warm
cheerful radiance, flushing stone and brick-work with a ruddy glow like
jasper; whilst, high in the heavens above the cypress tops, the crescent
moon prepares to turn to gold from silver.
_Beati sunt mortui_: here rest, we know, the priestess Mammia, the
decemvir Aricius, Libella the aedile, and a host of other citizens with
whose names the student or the lover of Pompeii is familiar. How many a
time has this line of roadway rung with the sound of the last sad appeal,
the thrice repeated valediction: “_Vale, vale, vale!_ farewell until the
day when Nature will allow us to follow thee!” How often have the wooden
pyres flung up in these precincts their clouds of perfumed smoke into the
clear air, now redolent with the aroma of yellow broom, of dewy thyme and
of sweet marigolds! Perhaps it was amidst these lines of cypress-set tombs
by the Herculaneum Gate that the poetic genius, whose verses were spurned
by his own generation, composed his famous Ode to Naples, for in its
opening lines Shelley tells us it was the aspect of the “city disinterred”
that gave him inspiration:—
“Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre
Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure
Were to spare Death, had never made erasure;
But every living lineament was clear
As in the sculptor’s thought; and there
The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine,
Like winter-leaves o’ergrown by moulded snow,
Seemed only not to move and grow,
Because the crystal silence of the air
Weighed on their life....”
Tranquilly and slowly descends night upon the untenanted city, as one by
one the stars begin to peep forth like chrysolites in the heavens, which
have changed from azure to a deep indigo during the sunset hour. Amid
chilly dews, to the sound of the evening bell from the distant church of
Santa Maria di Pompeii, we hasten in the growing darkness from the Street
of the Tombs towards our modest inn outside the Marine Gate, anticipating
with delight a ramble in the city in the freshness of the coming morning.