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 [pg 39]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, [pg 40]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 [pg 41]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 [pg 42]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 [pg 43]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 [pg 44]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 [pg 45]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 [pg 46]imagination its shapeless ruins, so that we may obtain a fleeting picture of the Pompeian Forum in early Imperial days.
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 [pg 47]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 [pg 48]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 [pg 49]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 [pg 50]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.”
[pg 51] 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 [pg 52]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 [pg 53]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 [pg 54]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 [pg 55]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 [pg 56]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 [pg 57]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, [pg 58]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 [pg 59]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.
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 [pg 60]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 [pg 61]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 [pg 62]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 along[pg 63]side 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 [pg 64]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 [pg 65]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.
