CHAPTER IX

VESUVIUS AND THE CITIES WHICH HE HAS DESTROYED--HERCULANEUM, POMPEII,

AND STABIAE

It is to most strangers approaching Naples for the first time a matter

of surprise to discover that Vesuvius has two peaks rising out of the

same base, and that far removed from all the range of Apennines which,

dim and distant, hedge in the wide fertile plain.

When viewed from Naples, Monte Somma, the landward peak, appears

scarcely less conical than its neighbour, which contains the crater;

but from the other side it has a wholly different aspect, and if one

looks at it from the Sorrento cliffs one perceives that it is no peak,

but a long ridge, the segment of a circle which, if completed, would

enfold the present eruptive cone.

The fact is important, for not only is it the key to all the

topography of the mountain, but it is essential to the comprehension

of what happened on that August day of the year 79 A.D., when the dead

volcano woke to life. The broken circle of Monte Somma was complete in

those days; and men looking up from Pompeii or Herculaneum saw a

mountain vastly different from that which we behold, yet one which,

from the part before us, can be reconstructed by an easy use of the

imagination.

If a man will take his stand on the lower heights of the hills behind

Castellammare, he will find that he looks over Pompeii, over Bosco

Reale lying on the first slopes which swell upward from the plain,

into the mouth of the gap which parts Vesuvius from Somma. Even from

that distance he will obtain a forcible impression of the black cliff

of Somma, towering almost sheer to the height of a thousand feet above

the bottom of the gap, while the outer face of the same rock wall

slopes towards the sunny plain and the woods of Ottajano with an

incline so gentle as to be comparatively easy of ascent.

Clearly the two faces of Somma have been differently formed. The sheer

one was, at least in part, the actual wall of the prehistoric crater,

that caldron in which the volcanic forces raged in days so ancient

that they had been clean forgotten when the Romans ruled the land. The

present cone did not exist. The circuit of Monte Somma was unbroken,

and lay clothed with green meadows up to the very summit. But where,

then, is the rest of that gigantic wall? It was blown away by the

eruption that destroyed Pompeii.

This is the first tremendous fact which the visitor to Naples has to

realise; and it is well worth while to absorb it thoroughly before

setting foot upon the mountain, for nothing else seen there carries

with it the same impression of overwhelming, cataclysmal awe. It is

from a distance that the terror of the thing can be appreciated best.

When one goes forward from the observatory on the mountain-side,

skirting the flank of the eruptive cone, into that portion of the gap

which is called the Atrio del Cavallo--though it would at certain

times be found as safe to stable a steed in the Kelpie's flow as in

this wilderness of burnt rock--the sight of the steep wall towering on

one's left is infinitely striking. But at so close a distance, and in

the immediate neighbourhood of so many other sights, it is scarcely

possible to concentrate one's thoughts on the girth of the ancient

crater. To comprehend the extent of the wall which has been blown away

one must go further off, till one can distinguish the shape of Somma's

wall, till one's eye can measure the vast size of the crater which

would be formed by its completion, even allowing for the doubts which

have been raised whether the circuit could have been so vast as this

measurement would imply. There are some shattered fragments of the

wall to be seen upon the south or seaward side of the volcano. The

ridge where the white observatory building stands is one; another,

named the "pedementina," appears as a shoulder of the mountain,

clearly distinguishable from Naples. But these scattered remnants help

little towards the general impression. It is by contemplating Somma

that one learns to comprehend the appalling nature of the convulsion

which, with little warning, blasted away so immense a portion of the

mountain regarded by those who dwelt beneath it as one of the eternal

hills.

Far from having any title to immortality Vesuvius is among the

youngest and most mutable of mountains. The present cone is, as I

said, the creation of the last eighteen centuries, piled up by

successive eruptions to something more than the height of Somma, which

once, as its name implies, towered far above it. Even though the

antiquity of the mountain be reckoned by the age of Somma, or of some

earlier cone, on the ruins of which Somma may have reared itself, it

is as nothing when set beside the great wall of mountains which

sweeps round the plain and ends in the great crags of St. Angelo and

the cliffs of Capri. Those hills may be termed "eternal" by as true a

warrant as any on the earth. But long after they were shaped and

fashioned the sea flowed over the Campagna Felice and the site of

Naples. Vesuvius was a volcanic vent-hole underneath the water, like

many another which now seethes and hisses deep down in the blue bay,

forming lava reefs about which the best fish always cluster. Then came

the upheaval of the sea floor, and Vesuvius stood on dry land, no

longer a sea-drenched reef or islet, but a hill of ashes and of lava

piled over a crack in the earth's crust, which belched forth fiery

torrents for unnumbered years, and sank at last to rest after an

outburst which, if one may judge by the hugeness of the crater it

scooped out, must have been terrible almost beyond conception.

Yet it was completely forgotten! How many centuries of rest must it

not have needed to erase from the minds of men all memory of a

cataclysm so tremendous! In the days when doom was drawing near to the

cities of the Campagna, an old tradition was current that fire had

once been seen coming out of the summit of Vesuvius. Doubtless many

people looking up at the green mountain pastures shrugged their

shoulders at the tale. Yet Strabo, the geographer, remarked that the

rocks upon the surface of the mountain looked as if they had been

subjected to fire. It is difficult for us to detach the idea of terror

from Vesuvius, and to contemplate it with thoughts at all resembling

those which the dwellers in the buried cities bestowed upon it. There

has, however, been one period when the summit of the mountain

presented an aspect probably not far unlike that which a Pompeiian

would have seen, had curiosity led him to the top after visiting his

vineyards or his pastures on the lower slopes. That time was in the

years immediately preceding the eruption of 1631. Vesuvius had been

almost at rest for near five centuries, and there were many who

believed its fires to be extinct.

The Abate Braccini ascended the mountain in 1612, nineteen years

before the outbreak. Vesuvius was then, as it is now, somewhat higher

than Somma, though the comparative level has been changed more than

once in the last three centuries. On the summit Braccini found a

profound chasm, a mile in circuit, surrounded by a bulwark of calcined

stones, on which no vegetation grew. Having crossed it, he descended

to a little plain, where he found plants of divers kinds, though in no

profusion. But from that point there was a gulf of verdure. One could

descend it by tortuous paths, which led to the very bottom of the

abyss, and were used not only by woodcutters plying their trade among

the dense forest trees which had grown up to maturity on the lava

soil, but also by animals which strayed down to browse on the

succulent, rich grass. Neither men nor cattle retained any fear of the

green crater depths. Only the rim of calcined stones at the summit

seems to have betrayed the volcanic fire of old days, except that here

and there a wreath of smoke coiled away across the elms and oaks and

the pleasant scrub of broom and other underwood.

About the same time a Neapolitan descended to the bottom of the

crater. He found there a flat plain with two small lakes, the crater

walls all pierced with caverns, through some of which the wind

whistled with a noise which sounded awfully on that dim, lonely spot.

There were tales of treasure hidden in the caves, but no man had dared

explore them. The crater was so deep that the descent and ascent

occupied three hours.

Such was the aspect of the mountain in days when it had certainly

rested for a shorter space than in the great age of Pompeii and

Herculaneum. All men must have known what none remembered in either of

those doomed cities. The tales of terror spreading from the mountain

were still fresh, yet they inspired no more fear than there is in

Ischia to-day of Monte Epomeo; and the herdsmen sat and whistled all

day long upon the slopes as they do now within an hour's climb of

Casamicciola.

To this false security must be ascribed the fact that those who dwelt

about the mountain paid little heed to the indications of an

approaching break in its long rest. Profound changes were taking place

within the abyss which Braccini has described; and on the 1st or 2nd

of December, 1631, an inhabitant of Ottajano, visiting the summit,

found the woods gone, the chasm filled up to the brim. A level plain

had replaced the yawning gulf. The bold Ottajanese walked across from

one side to the other, surprised, no doubt, to see what had occurred,

but, so far as we can judge from Braccini's narrative, by no means

afflicted with any sense of awe at the magnitude of the event, still

less inclined to see in it a foretaste of danger for the country.

A few nights later the peasants of Torre del Greco and of Massa di

Somma began to complain that the growlings of the demons confined

within the mountain disturbed their rest. Religious ceremonies were

carried out, but the growls continued. On the night of the 15th, the

air being extraordinarily clear, there hung in the sky above the

mountain a star of strange size and brilliance. Dusk fell upon that

day, and still there was no alarm; but somewhat later in the evening,

a servant crossing the Ponte della Maddalena, on his way home from

Portici, saw a flash of lightning strike the mountain; while at Resina

a deep red glow appearing on the summit perplexed the villagers, for

no such sight had been seen within the memory of living man.

As night passed and day approached, the reports of those who had

ventured up the slopes grew more awful. Peasants between Torre del

Greco and Torre dell'Annunziata had seen smoke pour in volumes out of

the Atrio del Cavallo. A herdsman on the mountain saw the pastures

rent, and the sweet herbage turned into a raging blast furnace.

Santolo di Simone ventured some way up to ascertain the truth. He saw

the ground cleft in divers places, out of which poured smoke and

flame, while all the air was filled with thunderous reports, and great

stones cast out of the fiery gulfs were hurled about the slopes.

Meantime dawn in Naples was at hand; and as the light increased, men

going about the common affairs of their existence began to take note

of an extraordinary cloud which hung above Vesuvius, having the

precise shape of a gigantic pine tree. Some wondered and some feared,

but none understood what was the terror which had come upon them, till

Braccini, going into his library and taking down his Pliny, read them

that vivid passage which describes the sight young Pliny saw when he

looked towards Vesuvius from Misenum. "There," said Braccini, as he

closed the book, "there, in the words of sixteen centuries ago, is

depicted what you see to-day."

That pine tree has become awfully familiar to most Neapolitans now

alive; and to some of those who visit the city during an eruption it

seems as if familiarity had bred contempt, and caused the occasion to

be regarded as one for merriment, since it draws strangers there in

countless numbers, and enriches every trader on the coast. But there

is terror also in the streets when the shocks come rapidly, when doors

and windows rattle with continuous concussions, and all the city reeks

with sulphurous stenches coming one knows not whence. To this natural

and human fear there was added, in the days of which Braccini wrote,

the shock of a horrible surprise. The people were not dreaming of

eruptions. They thought of them as little as did their far-distant

kinsmen, who occupied the lovely shore when Pompeii was a city of the

quick, not of the dead. That is what makes Braccini's tale so

interesting. It reproduces for us, as nearly as is possible, a picture

of what must have happened in the city streets on that morning when

Pliny came sailing from Misenum at the urgent cry of Herculaneum for

help, only to find his ships beaten off the coast by a hail of fiery

stones.

The Cardinal Archbishop of Naples was at Torre del Greco on that

fateful morning. He hurried back to the city, and having celebrated

the Sacrament, and given orders for the rite to be solemnised

throughout the city, he went up to the treasury where the relics of

the saints were kept, intending to arrange a solemn procession. The

blood of San Gennaro was found already liquefied and boiling! Great

crowds accompanied the procession, the superstitious Neapolitans

turned to their priests and saints at the first sign of danger, and

marched behind the relics with effusion of piety, the men scourging

themselves till the blood ran from their shoulders, the women

dishevelled and weeping, while crowds of boys chanted the Litany with

extraordinary tenderness. The shops were shut. Naples had become a

city of devotees.

But San Gennaro, though his blood had boiled, was not ready to

disperse the peril. The shocks of earthquake grew louder. The

concussions rattled faster from the mountain. Towards noon thick

darkness stole down upon the city, as it had upon Misenum sixteen

hundred years before. The smell of sulphur in the streets was choking.

Men asked themselves if so strong a reek could possibly travel from

Vesuvius, and whether some vent had not opened close at hand. The

houses, says Braccini, were swaying like ships at sea, and in the air

there was a horrible roaring sound like the blast of many furnaces.

The darkness grew more dense, and tongues of lightning flashed

continuously out of the mirk sky. The crashes became quite appalling.

Naples went wild with terror. The Viceroy sent drummers round the city

appealing to the people to live cleanly in that which appeared to be

the supreme moment of the created world. Men and women utterly unknown

to each other ran up and embraced, seeking comfort, and crying, "Gesu,

misericordia !"

So passed the first day of the reawakened activity of Vesuvius. The

night brought no abatement of terror. Early in the morning the crashes

redoubled. The whole mountain seemed to be springing into the air, and

all the surface of the earth rocked like water in a vessel which is

violently shaken. At the same moment the sea retreated for near half a

mile, and then swept back to a point far above its level. At Naples

nothing more than that was seen, but the miserable inhabitants of

Resina perceived that those mighty birth throes had ended in the

ejection of a vast flood of lava, which was pouring down the mountain

on the seaward side. The fiery torrent came on with such speed that it

had reached the sea in less than an hour from the outbreak. As it

advanced it split into seven streams, each one of which took a

different course of devastation. One flowed in the direction of San

Jorio, which it destroyed, engulfing, it is said, no less than three

thousand persons, including a religious procession. A second arm of

the flood destroyed Bosco Reale and Torre dell'Annunziata, running out

more than two hundred yards into the sea, where it formed a reef so

hot that the water round about it boiled for days. A third wrecked

Torre del Greco, a fourth poured over Resina, and a fifth, passing

westwards, ruined San Giorgio a Cremano, and touched Barra and San

Giovanni. Meantime a sixth stream, after filling the valleys divided

by the ridge on which the observatory stands now, swept down on Massa

di Somma, and reached San Sebastiano.

In this point the eruption of 1631 differed from that which destroyed

Pompeii. In the latter there was no lava, but only falling stone and

ash, either dry, or compacted into mud by storms of rain and showers

of water thrown out of the crater. But it was not by lava only that

the country was devastated three centuries and a half ago. Ashes fell

also in such masses that near Vesuvius they were heaped up twelve feet

deep, and great quantities of them drifting across southern Italy fell

upon the shores of that lovely bay where Taranto looks across to the

snow-topped mountains of Calabria. Stones fell also of astounding

weight. One which was thrown into Massa di Somma is reported to have

weighed 50,000 pounds; while another, which fell as far away as Nola,

was of such dimensions that a team of twenty oxen could not stir it.

When this great eruption ended, the relative heights of Vesuvius and

Somma were reversed, and the eruptive cone, which had risen 50 feet

above its neighbour, stood nearly 200 feet below it. It is almost the

rule that in great eruptions Vesuvius suffers loss of height, while

the cone is piled up by smaller ones.

Such is the country in which a teeming population elects to live. It

is said that no less than 80,000 persons have their homes on the

slopes of the mountain--a fact which appears inexplicable to those who

do not know by experience how small the loss of life may be in the

greatest eruption. It is true that in 1631 a vast number of persons

perished. But this was due probably in some measure to the fact that

they did not know their danger and took no proper measures to avoid

it. The men then living had seen nothing like the sudden peril which

beset them. But every peasant of our day is well aware what lava

floods may do, and how their course will lie. All have their little

images of San Gennaro, which they set up in their cottages, and many

can tell how the good saint has averted from his vineyard a fiery

torrent which crawled on to the point when it seemed as if not even

heavenly power could avert destruction, yet twisted off to one side

and left him scatheless. At times, of course, the velocity of the lava

is so great that no man can do aught but flee. In 1766 Sir William

Hamilton saw a stream which ran in the first mile with a velocity

"equal to that of the River Severn at the passage near Bristol," while

in 1794 the lava ran through Torre del Greco at the rate of one foot

in a second. Yet the loss of life was small. "Napoli fa i peccati,"

say the people, "e Torre li paga !"--Naples commits the sins and Torre

pays for them. It is true enough; yet the toll is taken more in

property than life. Moreover, the after-fruits of an eruption are

worth rubies to the people, so fertile is the soil created by the

decaying lava.

[Illustration: CARDPLAYERS--NAPLES]

That the loss of life remains so small is the more surprising in view

of the fact that Vesuvius can by no means be trusted to discharge

itself on all occasions by the main crater. In fact, the flanks of the

mountain, strengthened and compacted as they are by the outflow of

countless lava streams, are yet seamed and fissured by the rupture of

the surface to form other vents. Occasionally these "bocche" mouths,

as the Italians call them, have opened far down the slopes among the

cultivated fields and vineyards. It was so in 1861, not fortunately

one of the greatest of eruptions. The bocche of that year are on the

hillside no great way above Torre del Greco. Nothing, in fact, is

certain about the operation of volcanic forces, and this is a fact

which may be borne in mind by those who elect to ascend the mountain

during an eruption. Sir William Hamilton in 1767 had a narrow escape.

"I was making my observations," he says, "upon the lava, which had

already from the spot where it first broke out reached the

valley"--that is, the Atrio del Cavallo--"when on a sudden, about

noon, I heard a violent noise within the mountain, and at a spot about

a quarter of a mile off the place where I stood, the mountain split,

and with much noise from this new mouth a fountain of liquid fire shot

up many feet high, and then like a torrent rolled on directly towards

us. The earth shook, and at the same time a volley of stones fell

thick upon us; in an instant clouds of black smoke and ashes caused

almost a total darkness; the explosions from the top of the mountain

were much louder than any thunder I ever heard, and the smell of the

sulphur was very offensive. My guide, alarmed, took to his heels; and

I must confess I was not at my ease. I followed close, and we ran near

three miles without stopping."

To run three miles over the broken and uneven lava reefs of the Piano,

with a fiery torrent hunting close behind, is not an experience which

would be relished by the ordinary tourist, however far it might be

sweetened in the retrospect to the adventurous man of science. Yet

happy is the man who in such a case gets off with a sharp run. In 1872

a party of tourists were less happy. The terrible eruption of that

year deserves attention, being certainly the greatest within the

present generation, and fortunately it has been described with

knowledge and precision by Professor Palmieri who, with noble devotion

to the cause of science, had spent so many years in the observatory

planted on the barren ridge of trachyte which divides the two

valley-arms which the Atrio del Cavallo projects towards Naples. Those

valleys receive the streams of lava which are ejected into the Atrio,

and when the volume of the flow is large, it has happened that the

observatory has been almost engirdled with the red-hot torrents--a

position of which, if the danger may be exaggerated, the awe certainly

cannot, and which must fill all men with admiration for the

illustrious scientists who endure it.

Palmieri regarded the eruption as the last phase of a series of

disturbances which began at the end of January, 1871. From November,

1868, until the end of December, 1870, the mountain had been almost

quiet. Only a few fumaroles discharging smoke bore witness to the need

for watchfulness. "Early in 1871 the delicate instruments of the

observatory which register earth tremors were observed to be slightly

agitated, and the crater discharged a few incandescent projectiles,

detonating at the same time, but not remarkably. On the 13th of

January an aperture appeared on the northern edge of the upper plain

of the Vesuvian cone; at first a little lava issued from it, then a

small cone arose which threw out incandescent projectiles and much

smoke of a reddish colour, whilst the central crater continued to

detonate more loudly and frequently. The lava flow continued to

increase until the beginning of March, without extending much beyond

the base of the cone, although it had great mobility. In March the

little cone appeared not only to subside but even partly to give way,

as almost always happens with eccentric cones when their activity is

at an end.... A little smoke issued from the small crater, and a loud

hissing from the interior was audible. By lying along the edge I could

see a cavity of cylindrical form about ten metres deep.... The bottom

of the crater was level, but in the centre a small cone of about two

metres had formed, pointed in such a manner that it possessed but a

very narrow opening at the apex, from which smoke issued with a

hissing sound, and from which were spurted a few very small

incandescent stones and scoriae. This little cone increased in size as

well as in activity until it filled the crater and rose four or five

metres above the brim. New and more abundant lavas appeared near the

base of this cone, and pouring continually into the 'Atrio del

Cavallo' rushed into the 'Fossa della Vetrana' in the direction of the

observatory, and towards the Crocella, where they accumulated to such

an extent as to cover the hillside for a distance of about three

hundred metres.... For many months the lava descended from the cone

and traversed the 'Atrio del Cavallo.'... On the 3rd and 4th of

November a copious and splendid stream coursed down the principal cone

on its western side, but was soon exhausted. The new small cone

appeared again at rest, but did not cease to emit smoke...."

In the beginning of January, 1872, the little cone again became

active, the crater of the preceding October resumed strength, there

were bellowings, projectiles, and copious outflows of lava. In

February the action of the hidden forces abated somewhat; but in

March, at the full moon, the cone opened on the north-western side,

the cleavage being marked out by a line of fumaroles, and a lava

stream issued from the lowest part without any noise and with very

little smoke, pouring down into the Atrio del Cavallo as far as the

precipices of Monte Somma. This lava ceased flowing after a week, but

the fumaroles still pointed out the clefts, and between the small

re-made cone and the central crater a new crater of small dimensions

and interrupted activity opened. On the 23rd of April, another full

moon, the observatory instruments were agitated, the activity of the

craters increased, and on the evening of the 24th splendid lavas

descended the cone in many directions. The spectacle was of superb

beauty. There was clear moonshine, and from Naples the outline of a

vast fiery tree was seen to be traced on the black side of the

mountain. Strangers poured into the city. The long period of activity

without destruction disposed them to regard the show as a display of

fireworks. Half Naples set its heart on ascending the mountain by

night, and little wonder, for the moonlit bay reddened by the wide

reflection from the burning breast of the volcano made a sight on

which no man could look without the sense of witnessing a thing which

was absolutely unearthly in the splendour of its beauty.

But on the following morning the flow was nearly spent. One stream

only continued to flow from the base of the cone. And this one was

almost inaccessible, by reason of the roughness of the ground. As

night fell the visitors began to arrive. No less than 120 carriages

are said to have passed the hermitage by dusk. Palmieri tried to

dissuade the sightseers from going on, but in vain. The display of

the previous night had been too splendid. They hoped continually that

the show might be repeated. It was, but in a manner which they little

looked for.

The crater was casting out huge stones, with detonations resembling

the discharge of whole parks of artillery at once. From time to time

the din ceased absolutely, then low and softly it began again, and

gained force quickly till it crashed as loudly as before. When

midnight was past, immense clouds of smoke began to pour out of all

the craters, and lava broke out simultaneously from many points upon

the slopes. Out of the chief crater rose the awful pine tree. The

detonations grew more constant. There was still time to flee; but the

spectacle was growing grander every moment, and inexperienced guides

led forward a large party into the Atrio, where they stood watching

such a sight as living men have rarely seen. At half-past three came

the catastrophe. The whole of the great cone rent itself from top to

bottom with an appalling crash, casting out a huge stream of fiery

lava. At the same moment two large craters formed upon the summit,

discharging showers of red-hot scoriae, while the pillar of the pine

tree rose up to many times more than even the vast height which it

then stretched across the sky. A cloud of choking blinding smoke

enveloped the visitors, a fiery hail rained down on them, the lava

broke out immediately by them, and barred their retreat to the

observatory. Eight medical students were engulfed by the fire, with

others who were not known. Eleven more were grievously injured; and

when the survivors were able to reach the observatory, it was in

several cases but to die.

The lava flow from this grand fissure was restrained for some time

within the Atrio; but issuing thence at last divided, one branch

threatening Resina, but stopping happily almost as soon as it reached

the cultivated ground, while the larger branch ran through the Fossa

della Vetrana, traversing its whole length of 1,300 metres in three

hours. It dashed into the Fossa della Faraone, then again divided, one

arm of the diminished stream destroying a great part of the villages

of Massa and San Sebastiano, and flowing on so far in the direction of

Naples that had it continued but for four-and-twenty hours longer it

must have flowed into the city streets.

It may be supposed that whilst this awful eruption was proceeding, the

position of the courageous men of science in the observatory was

rather glorious than safe. Nothing can exceed the value of the

services rendered to science by these gentlemen who elect to spend

their lives upon a spot which is always dreary and exposed to constant

danger. They are of the outposts of mankind. I take my cap off to

their stout hearts and their keen intellects. To them their danger is

a little thing, and they would not thank me if I were to dwell too

long on it. But I will take Professor Palmieri's own words, and beg

those who read to ponder over what is involved in them. "On the night

of the 26th of April the observatory lay between two torrents of fire.

The heat was insufferable. The glass of the windows was hot and

crackling, especially on the side of the Fossa della Vetrana. In all

the rooms there was a smell of scorching."

[Illustration: NAPLES--A SLUM.]

Meantime the spectacle of the mountain must have been bewilderingly

grand. The cone was seamed and perforated on every side, and the fiery

lava issuing from the vents covered it so completely that, in

Palmieri's picturesque expression, Vesuvius "sweated fire." On the

27th of April the igneous period of the eruption was over, though

the rain of ashes and projectiles became more abundant, the crashes

were louder than ever, the pine tree was of a darker colour, and was

continually furrowed by flashes of lightning; while on the 29th stones

fell at the observatory of such size that the glass of the unshuttered

windows was broken. By midnight, of that day, however, there was a

marked improvement, and on the 1st of May the eruption was at an end.

* * * * *

The visitor who strolls to-day through the main street of Portici sees

nothing but a continuation of the squalid life and poverty of building

which have followed him continuously from the eastern quarters of the

city. The mean aspect of the town is unexpected. One had not looked

for any striving after the dream of classical beauty, once so frequent

and so great upon the Campanian shore. But this was the chosen

pleasure resort of the Bourbon kings; and some greater dignity might

have been expected in the close neighbourhood of a palace.

The palace is there still. The noisy street runs through its

courtyard. Poor deserted palace! It has lost its royalty of aspect,

and for all one sees in passing by the discoloured walls and shuttered

windows it might be any poverty-stricken crowded palazzo in Naples.

But turn in beneath the archway on the right, and go by the large cool

staircase, across the clanking stones, until you emerge into the hot

spring sun again. There is a noble semicircular expanse, flanked on

either hand by a terrace, adorned with busts and vases, and with

stairs descending to the garden, which stretches down to a belt of

pine trees, cut away a little in the centre to reveal that band of

heavenly blue which is the sea. The young trees standing by the pine

are in fresh leaf; the grass is full of poppies; white butterflies are

skimming to and fro across it; all is silent and deserted. A

bare-armed stable-boy comes out to train a skinny pony round the

terrace. The stucco of the walls is peeling off; the long rows of

windows are shuttered; the sentry boxes stand empty. It is forty years

since any courtier came out to taste the evening freshness on this

spot where Sir William Hamilton talked of the wonders of the buried

cities so long and eagerly that he forgot to watch the wife and friend

whose sins the world forbears to reckon when it remembers the beauty

of the one and the valour and wisdom of the other.

It is but a little way beyond the palace to the spot where the Prince

d'Elboeuf is said, while sinking a well in the year 1709, to have

chanced on things of which he did not know the meaning. This is one of

the fables which demonstrate the extreme difficulty of speaking the

truth, even about important and world-famous matters. Nothing is more

certain than that the prince sank his "well" with the hope and

intention of drawing up not water, but antiquities. The fact is, that

in the year just mentioned he bought a country house, which stood near

the site of the present railway station. It was perfectly well known

that Herculaneum lay buried underneath Portici or Resina, and the

prince began excavating of set purpose. It was mere chance which

guided him to a spot where his first shaft came right down on the

benches of the theatre, thus letting in to Herculaneum the first gleam

of daylight which had entered there for more than sixteen centuries.

Not much more than that stray glimmer has enlightened the old academic

city even now; for none of the energy and learned patience lavished

daily on Pompeii has been expended here.

Herculaneum as it lies to-day, awaiting its turn for excavation,

creates in one respect an impression which Pompeii excites in a far

less degree. It retains the visible aspect of a buried city. The sense

of overwhelming tragedy is never lost. Pompeii stands free and open

under the clear sky; so large, so perfect, that in the fascination of

its archaeology one is somewhat led away from the disaster. It is a

deserted city. One knows what it was that drove the people out, but it

is easy to forget. Perhaps one cares more to gloat over the rich old

life laid bare so freely than to burden one's mind with memory of that

day when the glow of August sunshine turned to darkness "as of a room

shut up," and death came down from the mountain into the crowded

streets.

At Herculaneum the mere fragment of a street, the few half-buried

houses, the pit in which they lie, the cavernous darkness which hides

the amphitheatre, stimulate the imagination till it leaps to a sudden

comprehension of what it was that happened on that day of woe. One

passes from the dirty street of Resina into a building of no dignity,

somewhat like the entrance to the public baths of some small English

town. A guide appears and guides one down a flight of steps which are

at first palpably modern. But ere long the tread changes. One is on an

ancient stair, and almost immediately the guide pauses in a vaulted

corridor running right and left through perfect darkness. The height

is hardly more than permits a tall man to walk upright. Here and there

an arched opening in the corridor goes one sees not whither. Passing

under such an arch one may descend four steps, beyond which rises

another wall. That wall is tufa; it is no part of the structure. It

flowed or fell here when it was half liquid; it came out from

Vesuvius, and it is what overwhelmed the city.

The steps, thus interrupted by the intrusion of what are now stone

walls, are the upper tier of seats in the amphitheatre. A gleam of

daylight breaks the darkness: it comes from the Prince d'Elboeuf's

shaft, which pierces the stone steps and goes down far below them. One

looks up the tubular wet boring and then plunges forward to the bottom

of the theatre through blackness barely scattered by the candles which

the guide carries.

A short descent of nineteen steps in all brings one to the floor of

the theatre, at the spot appropriated to the orchestra. The stage is a

low platform, approached on either hand by steps. It is deprived of

some part of its original depth by pillars and barriers hardened out

of that choking mud which poured down from the mountain. Such barriers

present themselves on every side; they leave the theatre formless;

they create gangways where none existed, walls where the spectators

had clear line of vision, darkness where the sun shone freely eighteen

centuries ago. In one of these gangways behind the stage the clear

impression of human features looks down from the rough wet ceiling; it

is the impression of a player's mask. There were doubtless many in the

theatre when the seething flood rolled in.

Among this darkness and these sights the sense of tragedy tightens on

the imagination. The cruelty of the ruin stands before one and is not

to be set aside. There are remains of frescoes here and there; but

they are almost destroyed, and serve only to increase the pity that a

theatre which once rang with laughter and glowed so richly with soft

light and colour should lie wet, buried and forsaken in the darkness.

It is sometimes said that Herculaneum was destroyed by lava--the

guides use the word to this day. But Vesuvius threw out no lava in the

great eruption which destroyed the cities. It ejected much in

prehistoric times. Pompeii itself is built upon a lava ridge, which in

the old days was quarried for millstones, thus giving rise to an

important industry. But in historic times lava did not flow--if we may

trust geologists--till the year 1036 A.D.

Herculaneum was destroyed by fragments of pumice stone and ashes,

scarcely distinguishable from those which one may see raked away from

the half-uncovered walls of some new house at Pompeii. With this storm

of falling cinders--how dense and thick one may picture dimly by

remembering once more that all the seaward wall of the vast old crater

was being blown away--with this crushing, choking shower, came

torrents of rain, enough to turn the falling ashes to a sort of mud,

which hardened into tufa. Indeed, just as the yellow tufa of Posilipo

is composed of volcanic ash ejected underneath the sea, and is thus

formed of ash and water, such precisely is the crust which hardened

over Herculaneum, and holds the city in its clutch unto this hour.

Perhaps the mud formed on the mountain slopes, and came rolling down

upon the town. Professor Phillips thought it formed within the crater.

Some obvious warning of great peril there must have been, and that

quite early on the fatal 24th of August; for it was not long past noon

when a message reached Pliny at Misenum, begging for his ships, since

escape was even then impossible except by sea. Already Pliny, looking

from Misenum, saw the mountain topped by that vast and awful cloud

shaped like a pine tree, out of which ashes were raining down on the

three cities. His ships, approaching the coast towards evening, ran

into a hail of pumice stone. The ashes fell hotter and hotter on the

decks, and in continually larger masses. The sea ebbed suddenly. Ruins

were tumbling from the mountain. There was no possibility of giving

help to the doomed city, and Pliny gave orders to steer off the coast.

No eye has seen Herculaneum from that day to this. What became of the

citizens is not known. Comparatively few bodies have been found; but

the excavations were too imperfect to prove that somewhere in the city

bounds they do not lie in heaps.

Such was the end of Herculaneum, by ashes, not by lava. It is true

that lava beds lie above the city now. Probably the lava of 1631

passed over it. Sir William Hamilton distinguished the debris of no

less than six eruptions besides that which destroyed it. Sir Charles

Lyell also thought that a large part of the covering of the city was

subsequent to its first destruction.

At Herculaneum all that is most interesting lies underground, and

nearly all is still invisible. But little effort has been made at any

time to disinter the city. The searchers who dug there at the command

of Charles of Bourbon between the years 1750 and 1761--to which period

we must refer nearly all the most precious discoveries--contented

themselves with sinking shafts in likely spots, from which they mined

and tunnelled as far as seemed possible to them, and then filled up

the shaft again and sank another. Thus the notices of what they found,

and still more of how they found it, are imperfect. They have,

moreover, been carelessly preserved. Some were even wantonly destroyed

in the last century by men who did not appreciate their value. Yet

enough has been retained to stimulate the highest interest in

Herculaneum, if not indeed to justify the belief that whenever it

shall be possible to overcome the obvious difficulties of excavation,

treasures will be found which may far exceed in quantity and beauty

those which Pompeii has yielded.

This will be better understood by considering what has been written by

Signor Comparetti and Signor de Petra concerning a single villa of

Herculaneum, now, alas! buried up once more in darkness. It stood

between the "new diggings" and the royal palace of Portici. I will

preface my abstract of the treatise of the two scholars by some

passages taken from the letters of Camillo Paderni, director of the

excavations, to Mr. Thomas Hollis, in 1754.

"This route," says Paderni, "led us towards a palace, which lay near

the garden. But before they arrived at a palace they came to a square

... which was adorned throughout with columns of stucco. At the

several angles of the square was a terminus of marble, and on every

one of these stood a bust of bronze of Greek workmanship, one of which

had on it the name of the artist. A small fountain was placed before

each terminus, which was constructed in the following manner. Level

with the pavement was a vase to receive the water which fell from

above. In the middle of this vase was a stand of balustrade work, to

support another marble vase. This second vase was square on the

outside and circular within, where it had the appearance of a scallop

shell; in the centre whereof was the spout which threw up the water

that was supplied by leaden pipes within the balustrade. Among the

columns ... were alternately placed a statue[1] of bronze and a bust

of the same material, at the equal distance of a certain number of

palms.... The statues taken out from April 15 to September 30 are in

number seven, near the height of six Neapolitan palms, except one of

them, which is much larger, and of excellent expression. This

represents a faun lying down, who appears to be drunk, resting upon

the goatskin in which they anciently put wine.... September 27.--I

went myself to take out a head in bronze, which proved to be that of

Seneca, and the finest that has hitherto appeared.... Our greatest

hopes are from the palace itself, which is of a very large extent. As

yet we have only entered into one room, the floor of which is formed

of mosaic work, not inelegant. It appears to have been a library,

adorned with presses inlaid with different sorts of wood, disposed in

rows. I was buried in this spot more than twelve days, to carry off

the volumes found there, many of which were so perished that it was

impossible to remove them. Those which I took away amounted to the

number of 337, all of them at present incapable of being opened. These

are all in Greek characters. While I was busy in this work I observed

a large bundle, which from the size I imagined must contain more than

a single volume. I tried with the utmost care to get it out, but could

not, from the damp and weight of it. However, I perceived that it

consisted of about eighteen volumes.... They were wrapped about with

the bark of a tree, and covered at each end with a piece of wood.

"November 27th.--We discovered the figure of an old faun, or rather a

Silenus, represented as sitting on a bank, with a tiger lying on his

left side, on which his hand rested. Both these figures served to

adorn a fountain, and from the mouth of the tiger had flowed water.

From the same spot were taken out, November 29th, three little boys

of bronze of a good manner. Two of them are young fauns, having the

horns and ears of a goat. They have likewise silver eyes, and each of

them the goatskin on his shoulder, wherein anciently they put wine,

and through which here the water issued. The third boy is also of

bronze, has silver eyes, is of the same size with the two former, and

in a standing posture like them, but is not a faun. On one side of

this last stood a small column, upon the top of which was a comic mask

that served as a capital to it and discharged water from its mouth.

December 16th.--In the same place were discovered another boy with a

mask and three other fauns.... Besides these we met with two little

boys in bronze, somewhat less than the former. These likewise were in

a standing posture, had silver eyes, and had each a vase upon his

shoulder whence the water flowed. We also dug out an old faun, crowned

with ivy, having a long beard, a hairy body, and sandals on his feet.

He sat astride upon a goatskin, holding it at the feet with both his

hands...."

Thus far Paderni; and I have made this long extract to little purpose

if the reader has not already recognised some among the finest objects

in the great museum at Naples. This villa, with its garden full of

statues, its cool peristyle all humming with the plash of falling

water, its shadowy colonnade sheltering the marvellous bronzes, must

have been a place of wonderful beauty. He was a rare collector who

dwelt there. He had twenty-three large bronze busts and eight small

ones, thirteen large bronze statues and eighteen small ones. In his

garden stood not less than nine marble statues, and of marble busts he

had certainly seven and probably seven more. Among these not one is of

mean workmanship. The greater part are famous all round the world for

beauty. They are unsurpassed, and they all came from a single villa

just beyond the walls of this buried city.

Who was the man who made himself a home so splendid? The style of the

decorations points to the latter years of the Republic. It is in

marked distinction from the more ornate style which prevailed under

the Empire, and of great mythological pictures there was none. One

thing only enables us to guess with something like assurance who among

the patricians of those days owned the villa--namely the library. The

mode of inference is curious.

It was no small library which was lifted by Paderni from the presses

where it had lain for seventeen centuries. The papyri numbered 1,806,

though by no means all were separate treatises, while some were mere

scraps. All were charred and damaged to such a degree as to render

their examination a work whose difficulty baffled many men of science.

At length the task was accomplished by an ingenious arrangement of

silk threads, which unfolded the papyrus upon a false back made partly

of onion skins, and laid it open to investigation. The results are

curious. Indeed, they are something more than curious; and making due

allowance for the fact that wise men do not permit themselves to be

ruffled by the tricksy mockeries of time, it must be admitted that the

story of this library is exasperating.

All the world knows how small a space the treasures of Greek and Latin

literature occupy upon our shelves compared with that which they would

fill were they intact. What melancholy gaps! How much pure delight has

not been reft from us! Where is the scholar who in moments of low

spirits has not roamed round his library reckoning up his losses?

Livy shorn of more than half his bulk, Terence mangled, Cicero lacking

heaven knows how many of his finest compositions! Petrarch had the

treatise of the great orator "De Gloria," but nobody has seen it

since. It is a painful subject--the canker at the heart of learned

men, the skeleton at the feasts of all academies.

So much the greater, then, was the joy when the news ran round Europe

that a library, formed in the best age of Latin literature, was

discovered at Herculaneum. Now, surely, some of the lost treasures

would be restored! All the universities chuckled and stood on tiptoe.

Humanity, with the help of a volcano, had scored a point against time

at last.

But the rolls of papyri were sadly like mere lumps of charcoal.

Paderni saw a letter here, a letter there, but on the whole could make

nothing of them. The smile died on the faces of the scholars. The

trick was not won yet. Who would unroll these charred manuscripts, and

who could possibly read them when unrolled?

Many people tried and failed, Sir Humphry Davy among the number.

Learned hearts sank, and hope flickered almost to extinction. At

length Padre Piaggi invented an ingenious arrangement of silk threads,

whereby the charred and brittle rolls were unwrapped in the manner

described above. It was a slow and weary process, but the wit of man

has devised no better. One by one the treasures of the past were read.

It took a century and a half, but we know the contents of some three

hundred and fifty of them now.

Broadly stated, the outcome of all the pother has been to restore to

an unthankful world what is probably a complete set of the works of

Philodemus! "Philodemus!" gasp the scholars. "Who wanted him?" A

fifth-rate Greek philosopher and a fourth-rate poet, who lived at Rome

in the days of Cicero, better esteemed for his verses than his

reasoning, and not much for either. But no Livy? No Terence? No

Cicero? Not one line; hardly anything but the prose treatises of

Philodemus, concerning which Signor Comparetti observes with emphasis

that the oblivion they lay in was anything but undeserved.

Such is the greatest practical joke played on us by the Time Spirit in

the present age. But now, laying aside our disappointment and bad

temper, let us see what can be made out of this curious, if worthless,

discovery. Who could have cared to collect the works of Philodemus,

large and small, even to the notes he made from other books? The

philosophy was Epicurean, but the chief works of the leaders of that

school are with few exceptions not there. Who could it be but

Philodemus himself, the only man, surely, for whom such a collection

would have value? But what, then, was the library doing in this

splendid and costly villa at Herculaneum? Philodemus was a poor Greek

scholar, the last man who could have afforded to collect fine marbles

or to house them nobly. The villa must have belonged to his patron and

protector. Cicero names for us the patrician who enjoyed the privilege

of hearing Philodemus reason when he would. It was Piso, Lucius

Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, attacked by Cicero in one of the greatest

of his orations. Piso had known this poor scholar from a boy, learnt

the philosophy of Epicurus from him, and gave him rooms in his own

house. To Piso, probably, belonged this villa. Here he may have ended

his stormy life in the society of Philodemus; and when that learned

man ascended to Parnassus, his books remained in what had been his

study, preserved perhaps by some lingering attachment to his memory,

perhaps by such a superstitious pride in what is never read as may be

seen in certain country houses of to-day, where the squire believes

the dusty volumes collected by his grandfather are a credit to the

house, and chides the housemaid if he ever finds a cobweb on the

peaceful shelves. It will also be remembered that, unless you want the

space very much, it is easier to leave books alone than to destroy

them. On the whole, I do not think the discovery of this library

affords any evidence of the prevalence of cultivated taste in

Herculaneum. Rather the opposite, indeed, for whatever value the

owners of the house may have attached to the library the fact remains

that they added to it nothing in the hundred years which followed the

decease of Philodemus.

As for the statues and the bronzes, the finest were doubtless part of

the spoils of Piso's proconsulate in Macedonia. Cicero taunted him

with having stripped Greece of its treasures, as Verres ransacked

those of Sicily. The conduct of both men was barbarous perhaps; but

the candid visitor will look many times at the Sleeping Faun, or the

Mercury in repose, before daring to ask himself whether he would have

come home from Macedonia without them. If he discover that he would,

he may yet find cause to rejoice that Piso was less virtuous; for a

very short reflection on the state of Greece during the last twenty

centuries suggests that if a moralist had been proconsul we should

have lacked many pleasures which we now enjoy.

The "Scavi Nuovi" lie at a little distance from the theatre. One goes

down a steep street sloping to the sea, the Vico di Mare. A gate in

the wall gives admission to what seems at first a quarry, but a second

glance shows one a short street of roofless houses, emerging from the

hillside and running straight in the direction of the shore until

stopped by the opposite bank. Beneath and behind these walls, bright

with mesembryanthemums and wild roses, lies all the city save this

little fragment, this portion of a street, this poor two dozen houses,

with the remnants of four insulae, of which three are occupied by

private houses and the fourth by some rooms belonging to the baths, of

which the greater part are buried still. The houses of the south-west

insula are the most interesting. At the corner is a shop with marble

counter, and close to that is a dwelling of rare beauty, the so-called

"Casa d'Argo." At the door there are four pillars, and on either side

a bench. Out of this entrance one passes through a larger room into

the xystos, colonnaded on three sides. A row of rooms open from it,

all frescoed in the architectural style of which we shall see much at

Pompeii, and giving on the garden. Beyond these rooms there is a

second peristyle, all very beautiful--clearly the dwelling of a man of

taste and means.

But in all this there is no source of pleasure which cannot be enjoyed

far better at Pompeii. It is there and not to Herculaneum that the

traveller goes to see the results of excavation. On this spot, I say

again, it is the tragedy that counts; and as I turn in the warm

sunshine and look up the broken street, where rose bushes bloom

profusely in the untended gardens and the brown lizards slip in and

out among the cold and empty hearths, I see above the houses of the

dirty modern town the huge cone of Vesuvius fronting me directly. So

he stands, looking down upon the ruin he has made, while the long

train of sulky smoke which stains the clear blueness of the April sky

flaunts itself like a warning to mankind that it is vain to set human

forces against his, and that what he wills to hide shall lie lost

and hidden in the earth for ever.

[Illustration: NAPLES--IN THE STRADA DI TRIBUNALI.]

A man willing to go on foot from Resina to Pompeii might find much to

amuse him by the way, especially if he have any care for tracing out

the ravages of eruptions. The seashore is not unpleasant. The lava

reefs that fringe it are curious, and the ports of Torre del Greco and

Torre dell'Annunziata have their share of interest and picturesqueness.

But the crumbs of knowledge to be picked up during such a walk seem

insignificant beside the banquet which lies waiting at Pompeii; and

only those who have already tasted the last dish of that banquet will

care to loiter on the way.

I do not propose to add one more to the countless unscholarly

rhapsodies which have been produced by visitors to Pompeii. Certain

tragic feelings strike every one who enters the old grey streets. They

are too obvious to need description. All else belongs to the domain of

the guide-book or of the expert--to the latter more than to the

former, since the best of guide-books is a sorry companion to a man

who has neglected the works of Helbig or August Mau. It is not to be

expected that the detailed descriptions of Murray or of Gsell-Fels can

supply the broad principles and the general ideas which would have

been a constant delight if acquired in advance. Many of the best

intellects in Europe have been engaged in estimating the significance

of the objects found from day to day in Pompeii. It is in their works

that knowledge should be sought; for there is scarce any subject on

which so much has been written, both so badly and so well, as on this

lost city of the Campanian Plain.

It is, as I have said already, by wandering up and down the Strada

Tribunali in Naples that one may prepare oneself to picture what

would have struck a stranger on first entering Pompeii. A man passing

to-day beneath the vault of the Porta Marina sees a grey street, its

house-fronts perfect, but empty, and startlingly silent. This street

runs into the Forum, and is in easy hearing distance of the babel of

noise which issued constantly from that centre of the city. Under the

colonnade of the Forum tinkers mended pots with clatter and din of

hammers. Women hawked fruit and vegetables up and down, chanting their

praises doubtless as loudly as the "padulani" of to-day in Naples.

Ladies met their shoemakers under the cool shadows of the great

arcade; and there, too, children chased each other up and down,

screaming at their games like any urchins of to-day upon the steps of

San Giovanni Maggiore. We know it, for they are all depicted in

paintings found in neighbouring houses. There is the seller of hot

food with his caldron, not unlike the stall at which the workman stops

to-day in the Piazza Cavour and pays a soldo to have his hunch of

bread dipped into hot tomato broth. What cheerful sounds must have

risen up from all these occupations! How shall one picture them,

except in the streets of some other crowded city? On the left,

abutting on the south-west angle of the Forum, is the Basilica, a

broad hall used as an extension of the market-place, and containing at

the rear the tribunals of justice; while at the opposite, or

north-east corner of the Forum, is the market proper, the Macellum,

where the fish were sold. Certainly they were brought in by this Porta

Marina, far nearer to the shore in those days than now. The scales

scraped off the fish in the Macellum were found there in great

numbers. Close by were pens for living sheep and counters for the

butchers. What a reek of odours, what a hum of eager voices, must

have risen up from this dense quarter of the busy, active town! The

Pompeiians traded with their very hearts. "Lucrum gaudium!" "Oh,

joyous gain!" such were the exclamations which they painted on their

walls. And gain they did! Transmitting over the seas the commerce from

Nola and Nocera, trading doubtless with ships of Alexandria, as

Pozzuoli did; harbouring at their piers upon the Sarno, round which a

suburb had sprung up, galleys of many a seaport city, Greek or

Barbarian, carrying the industries, and not a few among the vices of

the East. Both found a ready welcome in this full-blooded city,

intensely alive to all delights and interests, whether pure or impure.

Venus was protectress of the city, and was worshipped without stint.

There were some within the city whom loathing of its wickedness had

impelled to prophecy, so at least one must infer from the fact that

the words "Sodoma Gomora" are scratched in large letters on one of the

house-fronts.

To whom in that pagan city could Hebrew history have suggested so apt

and terrible a foreboding? A Jew, perhaps, of whom there were

multitudes in Rome; even possibly a Christian, but there is scant

evidence of that. Doubtless the Pompeiians read those words without

comprehending their horrible significance, and went their way to

theatre or to wineshop, a laughing people, a gay, light-hearted

nation, a mixed race, the blood of Oscans and of Samnite mountaineers

mingling with the languid graces of the degenerating Greeks, loving

easily, forgetting lightly, careless, passionate, and intensely human.

Such was Pompeii, a seething, noisy, eager city, filled with the reek

of dense humanity. But now it is swept clean by winds and sunlight.

Its very stews are fragrant. In the morning sweet air blows in from

the sea; at night it steals down no less sweetly from the mountains.

In all the city there is not one stench. The freshness and the silence

of the long streets weigh upon the nerves. There is so little evidence

of ruin, not an ash left, not a bank of earth in all the wide district

which one enters first, nothing to remind us by the evidence of sight

what it was that drove out the people from these once crowded streets

and left the houses and the colonnades open to the whispering sea

wind.

It was not so before the great director Fiorelli came. He it was who

stopped haphazard digging, and cleared each quarter completely before

beginning work upon another. Since, then, his methods have in great

measure freed the city already of its debris, and set its inanimate

life before us as it was, the wiser part at Pompeii is to try to grasp

the arrangements of a Roman city, leaving the necessary musings on the

tragedy to be got through elsewhere.

It is beyond my scope, as I have said already, to assume the authority

of an expert on Pompeii. More experts are not wanted. The lack, at

least in England, is of readers for those who exist. A man intending a

tour in Italy will lay out ungrudgingly ten pounds upon his travelling

gear, but he will scout the idea of spending the price of a new

hat-box on August Mau's treatise, _Pompeii, its Life and Art_, though

it would increase his pleasure tenfold more. Still less will he buy

any book in a foreign tongue. I must, therefore, in my unlearned way,

set down some few facts which will with difficulty be discovered in

the guide-books or from the guides. And firstly as to the houses.

It will occur to any man that a town so large as Pompeii must have

been built in many fashions, old and new. New types grew popular,

while old ones still persisted. There is no town in the world in which

many manners cannot be traced. At Pompeii, where building was arrested

eighteen hundred years ago, the changes of taste are plain and

interesting. Indeed, while the houses all possess the atrium, that is

the large square or oblong hall in front, open to the sky, with

chambers surrounding it on every side, and most have also the

peristyle, the colonnaded court behind; yet there are some which are

built without the peristyle, and which by other points in their

construction give witness of belonging to an earlier and simpler age.

One of these antique houses is easily found by passing through the

Forum, across the Strada delle Terme and up the Strada Consolare,

almost to the Herculaneum gate. It is called the House of the Surgeon;

and as in all the city there is no other which retains so largely the

aspect and arrangements of the earlier time, before Greek influence

was paramount, it should certainly be visited first.

It appears at once on entering the house that the peristyle is

lacking. One may stand within the courtyard of the atrium, and,

looking through the house, see no such vista of colonnaded quadrangle,

of fountains, busts, and splendid distances, as gratified the eye

within the larger and more modern houses. Those beauties were the

contribution of the Greeks to the old simple Latin life. This was the

abode of a "laudator temporis acti," a lover of the old homely times,

when the single courtyard of the atrium sufficed alike for the master,

his family and clients, when the wife sat spinning with her maidens by

the scanty light, as in Ovid's immortal description of Lucretia, and

the slaves came and went about the household duties close at hand. A

colonnade there is certainly, but of only one arcade, and giving on

the garden. There was but little splendour in such a dwelling. Only

when Greek influence destroyed the simplicity of earlier life was the

family quarter distinguished from that of slaves and clients and

relegated to the peristyle, the inner courtyard. There is no trace in

the Surgeon's house of the rich ornament which became so popular in

Pompeii, neither mosaics nor wall paintings. The very building stone

differs from that used in later years; for the house is built of large

square limestone blocks, while the immense majority of houses in the

city are constructed of tufa, quarried chiefly from the ridge on which

the city stands. All these facts mark the Surgeon's house as belonging

to the earliest Pompeiian age of which traces still exist. It is

certainly older than the year 200 B.C., and we may picture the city,

while still untouched by the rare sense of beauty which was flowering

in the Greek coast towns, as consisting largely of houses on this

model, with others of a fashion older and more humble, of which we now

know nothing.

From the House of the Surgeon it is but a little way to that of

Sallust, a larger residence, and one of later date, when tufa had

displaced limestone as a building material. It belongs, therefore, to

the same period as the vast majority of houses in the city, yet in

that period it is of the most antique, the work of a day when Greek

influence was not yet paramount in architecture or in private life. It

has no peristyle, if a late Roman addition be excepted; the family

life was not yet divided. From the atrium one looked through to

colonnade and garden, much as in the Surgeon's house. The only

paintings are in imitation of slabs of marble on the walls.

To reach the House of the Faun we must return to the Strada delle

Terme and follow it towards the north-east until it merges in the

Strada della Fortuna, in which, upon the left, stands the once

magnificent dwelling which takes its name from the beautiful bronze of

the Dancing Faun now in the Naples museum. It is much to be wished

that the treasures of this noble house could have been left in it. It

may in part be older than the house of Sallust, though belonging like

it to the Tufa period, and possessing the additional apartments

prescribed by the influx of Greek taste. Indeed the added rooms, like

all the other portions of the house, were planned with magnificence;

and as there are two atria, so there are two peristyles, each of

singular beauty and built in the purest taste. There is no house in

Pompeii in which a man should pause so long, or to which he should

come back so often; for this is the most perfect specimen of the best

age of building in the city. It is the fruit of a long age of peace,

during which the people drank in thirstily the exquisite sense of

beauty diffused from the Greek coast towns. It is not difficult to

understand how these rough townsmen, bred of sturdy mountaineers, and

inheriting no tradition of fine culture, must have been affected when

they went across the sea to Cumae or to Paestum, saw the austere glory

of the temples rising near the shore, talked with the men whose brains

schemed out that splendour and whose hands learnt how to fashion it,

craftsmen who wrought nothing destitute of loveliness, whose coins

were as noble as their temples, whose hearts must have been afire to

spread more widely their own perception of line and form, and who were

doubtless no less eager to teach than the Pompeiians were to learn.

There is nothing in the world to-day comparable to the magic of that

influence which spread like sunshine out of the Greek cities on the

Campanian coast, no teachers so noble, no scholars so devoted and

receptive, no people who surrender themselves so absolutely to the

dominion of beauty, and will have it pure, and none but it.

Under the first passion of this enthusiasm Pompeii was transformed.

Almost all the public buildings received their present shape from this

wave of pure Greek art. Almost every one is graceful and lovely, the

columns and architraves were white, the ornament not overloaded, the

decorations simple. The artists who tinted the walls confined

themselves to producing masses of colour. Wall pictures there were

none; but the mosaics of the floors were wrought with curious beauty,

and reproduced the first compositions of great painters. The House of

the Faun is beautified by no wall pictures, but it contained on the

floor of the room which divided the two peristyles one of the finest

mosaics ever found, that which depicts the battle of Alexander the

Great upon the Issos.

The stream of Greek influence ran pure for some four generations.

After that it was contaminated. Man can keep no beauty in his hands

for long unspoilt. The change is manifest in Pompeii. The Roman

influence stole in. A muddy taste obscured the simple grace of the

Greek lines, tortured the architecture, piled up unmeaning ornament,

and degraded all the city. There were many stages between the first

step and the last, not a few still beautiful, though the downward

tendency is plain. The house of the Vettii is the finest of the later

period. There one may see wall-paintings of rare charm, mingled with

others of far inferior taste, as if the gallery of some fine

connoisseur had fallen by mischance into the hands of men who did not

understand its worth, and placed the compositions of degraded artists

side by side with the masterpieces of an olden time.

Exact descriptions of these houses are the business of the guide-book.

But there are certain observations which I think it necessary to make

about the paintings--though if anyone would read the work of Helbig on

the subject, it would be much better.

No one who visits Pompeii, no one who has seen in the most hasty way

the collections of the Naples Museum, can fail to be impressed, first

with the worth of the pictures, their dramatic force, their exquisite

grace, their rich and tender fancy; and next by their vast profusion.

What manner of city was this which worshipped art so devoutly that

scarce a single house is without pictures more beautiful than any save

a few collectors can obtain to-day? Helbig, writing more than twenty

years ago, described and classified two thousand. Others perished on

the walls where they were found. More still are being dug up day by

day. No ancient writer has told us that Pompeii was renowned for the

multitude of its paintings. The city bore almost certainly no such

reputation. It was a provincial town of little note, remarkable for

nothing in the eyes of those who visited it. Yet what a world of

beauty must have existed on the earth when these were the common

decorations of a fourth-rate town, excelled by those of Rome, or even

Ostia, in proportion to the higher wealth and dignity of those

imperial haunts! What were the decorations to be seen at Baiae, when

Pompeii was adorned so finely! That group of palaces must surely have

drawn more noble craftsmen, and in greater numbers, than ever visited

the town of trade and pleasure on the Sarno. As in a great museum we

stand before the gigantic bone of some lost animal, striving to

picture in our minds the creature as he lived, getting now a dim

conception of great strength and bulk which is lost again by the

weakness of our fancy ere half realised, so in presence of these

pictures at Pompeii we are tormented by flashing visions of the grace

and splendour of the ancient world which so many centuries ago was

shattered into fragments, and which it may be that no human intellect

will ever reconstruct before the earth grows cold and man fails from

off its surface.

Whence came these pictures, these noble visions of Greek myth, austere

and restrained, these warriors, these satyrs, these happy, laughing

loves? Is it possible that one small city can have bred the artists

who dreamed all these dreams and yet have left no mark in history of

such great achievement? Clearly not. The artists cannot have been

Pompeian. The elder Pliny tells us that in his day painting was at the

point of death, while Petronius declares roundly that it was

absolutely dead. One walks round the Naples Museum and recalls these

judgments with astonishment. Can this art be really moribund, this

Iphigenia, spreading her arms wide to receive the stroke, this

Calchas, finger on lip, watching for the fated moment, this Perseus,

this Ariadne! If this is dying art, Heaven grant that English art may

ere long die of the same death.

But it is not. No man can judge it so. Pliny and Petronius meant

something else, and the key to their despondency is produced by the

discovery that many of these Pompeian pictures are replicas. The same

subjects recur, with almost the same treatment. Sometimes the figures

are identical. Sometimes the painter has elected to reduce the

composition. The painting of Argos watching Io occurs four times in

Pompeii. It has been found also in Rome!--the same picture, but

containing figures which the Campanian artist thought proper to omit.

There is evidence, too, that the picture was diffused over an area far

wider than that lying between Rome and Pompeii. It appears on reliefs,

on medals, and on cameos. Lucian had it in his mind when he wrote a

famous passage in his poem, and it suggested an epigram by Antiphilos.

The case is similar with the fresco of Perseus and Andromeda. Both

were world-known pictures, the composition of a great artist--Helbig

suggests that it was the Athenian Nikias--and both were copied far and

wide by craftsmen who could merely reproduce.

This is what Pliny and Petronius meant. They looked about them and

found only copyists. The great school of painting was dead, and those

who reproduced its works did so without heart or understanding. This

was sorrowful enough for them; but we may regard their woeful faces

cheerfully. Time and the volcano have done us the good service of

preserving to our day copies of some masterpieces of ancient painting.

The copyists were often treacherous. There is a fresco of Medea at

Pompeii in which the figure of the mother brooding over the thought of

murdering her children is weak and unconvincing. But at Herculaneum

was found a Medea who is terrible indeed, wild-eyed and murderous,

such a figure as none but the greatest artist could conceive and few

copyists could reproduce. Set this Medea in her place in the Pompeian

fresco and the result may well be the Medea of Timomachus, one of the

most famous pictures of all antiquity.

The school in which these artists, Pompeians or travelling painters,

found their models was Hellenist, Greek art of the period subsequent

to Alexander the Great. They did not draw by preference upon its

highest compositions. Serious treatment of the ancient myths, that

treatment which revealed the great and elemental facts from which they

sprang, was not popular in Pompeii, where the citizens appear to have

preferred a lighter and more artificial view of life--love without its

passion, the comedy of manners rather than the tragedy. These gay

feasters desired to see no skeletons among their roses and their

winecups. They preferred light laughing cupids, kind towards the human

frailties of both men and women. It was a joyous, light-hearted,

unreflecting society on which this terrible destruction fell,

luxurious and vicious. The realisation of that fact tightens the sense

of tragedy, as the sudden annihilation of a group of children playing

with their flowers seems more pitiful than the death of men.

There are a thousand things still to say of Pompeii, but they are

beyond my scope. The westering sun has turned all the hills above

Castellammare into purple clouds. The heat lies among the broken city

walls. It is enough. I turn away, and take up anew the course of my

journey.

It is no long way from the turfed ridges which conceal Pompeii to the

first rises of the Castellammare Mountains. The road crosses the

Sarno, and cuts straight and dusty through wide fields of beans and

lupins, with here and there a gaunt farmhouse, or massaria, bare of

all attempt to make it pleasant to the eye. The bitter lupins are

almost, if not quite, the cheapest food that can be bought in Naples,

and are accordingly sold principally to the very poor by the

"lupinaria," who may be seen any day in the precinct of the Porta

Capuana, or in the byways round about the Mercato. Does anyone ask how

the beans became so bitter? It was by the curse of our Lord, who was

fleeing from the Pharisees, and hid Himself in a field of lupins. The

beans were dry, and betrayed His movements by their rustling;

whereupon He cursed them, and they have been bitter ever since.

[Illustration: PORTA CAPUANA--NAPLES]

There is no doubt that the Sarno was navigable when Pompeii was a

living city, but these many centuries it has been a rather dirty

ditch, unapproachable by shipping. Its chief interest for me lies in

the fact that along its bank, and across all the fertile country up to

the base of the great mountains, was fought the last great battle of

the Goths, those brave Teutons out of whom, as Mr. Hodgkin says, "so

noble a people might have been made to cultivate and to defend the

Italian peninsula." Heaven had been very kind to Italy in this sixth

century after Christ. It had sent down upon her from the north a race

of conquerors, barbarian, it is true, but brave, honourable, sincere,

and possessing every capability for government. They conquered Italy

from end to end. No province, no city, held out against them. From the

Alps to Sicily they were supreme, and their genius, humane and not

disdainful either of the arts or Christianity, was rapidly fusing

every warring element of the peninsula into a mighty nation--Germanic

earnestness infused with Latin wit--when the lord of the world, the

Roman Emperor in distant Constantinople, resolved to put forth his

strength and drive out these strangers, these builders of a nation,

who were tending what he had neglected, defending what he had left

open to attack, and reaping harvests of which he, out of all men, was

least entitled to proclaim himself the sower.

So the Emperor sent first Belisarius, and then Narses, and long and

bitter was the war which followed. Mr. Hodgkin, in his fourth volume,

has told it in a style which is beyond all praise. Upon these plains

was fought out the last battle of the Goths. Here Narses brought them

to bay. For two months they lay along the line of the Sarno, while

Narses, baffled by the river, plotted how to take them in the rear. At

last he won over some traitor of an admiral, who surrendered to him

the Gothic fleet, lying, perhaps, at Castellammare; and the Goths,

finding that the port was no longer theirs, fell back upon the hills,

entrenching themselves upon the spot where the ruined castle of

Lettere now stands. But their supplies were cut off--it was impossible

to feed an army on the barren mountains--and adopting counsels of

despair, they descended to the plain and gave battle to the Imperial

troops.

It was a great and terrible fight. Goths and Romans fought on foot.

Teias the king fell after bearing himself right nobly; but the Goths

fought on, and when darkness interrupted the engagement they did but

pause in order to renew it with no less desperation when the light

returned. When both armies were nearly wearied out the Goths sent a

messenger to Narses. They perceived, they said, that God had declared

against them, and that the strife was hopeless. If terms were granted

they would depart from Italy. The Imperial general accepted their

proposals, and the Goths, the noblest invaders who ever entered Italy,

turned their backs for ever on the fertile land where they had made

their homes, crossed the Alps in order, and were never heard of in

Italy again. So perished, until our day, the last hope of unity for

Italy, and for full thirteen centuries that unhappy land was drenched

in constant blood--the prey of conquerors who could not conquer, and

the sport of statesmen who never learnt to govern. For the Roman

Emperor could build no state comparable to the one he had destroyed,

and what Italy owes to him is forty generations of unhappiness.

In travelling through this country one is haunted by the perpetual

desire to look back into past ages, and admonished almost as often

that as yet one cannot do so. Indeed, one looks forward almost as

often, anticipating that day when scholars will combine to assist in

the excavation of all the buried regions, when every villa shall be

disinterred, and the secrets hidden underneath the vineyards be

exposed to the light of day again. Here on the first slopes of the

hills around Castellammare lay the groups of country villas which

formed ancient Stabiae, and every man who goes this way longs to see

them disinterred. For what is seen at Pompeii is but half the life of

Roman days--a city stripped of its country villas and all its rustic

intercourse. Pompeii stood in the heart of the country. Its citizens

must have had farms upon the mountain slopes; they must have had

concern in husbandry as well as trade; there must have been hourly

comings and goings between the crowded streets and the sweet hillsides

of Varano, where the grapes ripened and the wine-vats gathered the

crushed juice, where the oil dripped slowly from the olive-presses,

and the jars stood waiting for the mountain honey.

The day will come when all this great life of Roman husbandry will be

disclosed to us, and we shall know it as we now know the city streets;

for it is here still upon the mountain slopes, buried safe beneath the

vineyards, waiting only till its vast interest is comprehended by

people in sufficient numbers to provide the funds to excavate it.

Stabiae was by no means another Pompeii. It was no city, but a group of

farms and country villas, and has countless things to teach us which

cannot be seen or learnt beside the Sarno. The very houses were of

other shapes and plans; for the Romans did not reproduce town houses

in the country, but designed them for different uses, and embodied

apartments which had no matches in the city. There are the residences

of wealthy men, adorned with noble peristyles, mosaics, and fine

statues, and side by side with them the home farms--if one may use a

modern term--the chambers of the husbandmen, and the courts in which

they worked. There, too, are buildings far too large for any family

and differing in arrangement from any private dwelling yet discovered.

The use of these great buildings can only be conjectured. Ruggiero,

whose self-denying labour has collected in one monumental work all the

information now obtainable upon the subject, suggests that they may

have been hospitals, a supposition probable enough when we remember

that the Romans must have been no less aware than we ourselves how

potent a tonic is the mountain air for patients suffering from the

fevers bred upon the plains. In Ruggiero's pages one may see the

scanty and imperfect plans sketched out by those who dug upon the site

more than a century ago. Posterity owes those hasty workers but little

gratitude. They were inspired by hardly more than a mean kind of

curiosity. They were treasure-seekers, pure and simple; and what they

judged to be of little value they broke up with their pickaxes.

Swinburne, the traveller, watched a portion of the excavations, but

without intelligence, and has nothing to tell us of much interest.

"When opened," he says, speaking evidently of a villa on Varano, it

may be the very one in which Pliny passed the last night of his life,

"the apartment presented us with the shattered walls, daubed rather

than painted with gaudy colours in compartments, and some birds and

animals in the cornices, but in a coarse style, as indeed are all the

paintings of Stabiae. In a corner we found the brass hinges and lock

of a trunk; near them part of the contents, viz. ivory flutes in

pieces, some coins, brass rings, scales, steelyards, and a very

elegant silver statue of Bacchus about twelve inches high, represented

with a crown of vine leaves, buskins, and the horn of plenty." With

this perfunctory account we must rest content, until some millionaire

shall conceive the notion of delighting all the world instead of

building a palace for himself. But the camel will have gone through

the needle's eye before that happens.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Paderni is wrong here. Signor de Petra shows us that the busts

only were in the peristyle. The statues were all in the garden.