Part 14

He was an Alcibiades without ambition. He was what a man of imagination, youth, fortune and talents readily becomes when you deprive him of the inspiration of glory. His house at Rome was the theme of the debauchees, but also of the lovers of art; and the sculptors of Greece delighted to task their skill in adorning the porticoes and _exedra_ of an Athenian. His retreat in Pompeii--alas! the colors are faded now, the walls stripped of their paintings!--its main beauty, its elaborate finish of grace and ornament, is gone; yet when first given once more to the day, what eulogies, what wonder did its minute and glowing decorations create--its paintings--its mosaics! Passionately enamoured of poetry and the drama, which recalled to Glaucus the wit and the heroism of his race, that fairy mansion was adorned with representations of Æschylus and Homer. And antiquaries, who resolve taste to a trade, have turned the patron to the professor, and still (though the error is now acknowledged) they style in custom, as they first named in mistake, the disburied house of the Athenian Glaucus, "THE HOUSE OF THE DRAMATIC POET."

Previous to our description of this house, it may be well to convey to the reader a general notion of the houses of Pompeii, which he will find to resemble strongly the plans of Vitruvius; but with all those differences, in detail, of caprice and taste which, being natural to mankind, have always puzzled antiquaries. We shall endeavor to make this description as clear and unpedantic as possible.

You enter then, usually, by a small entrance passage (called _vestibulum_) into a hall, sometimes with (but more frequently without) the ornament of columns; around three sides of this hall are doors communicating with several bed chambers, (among which is the porter's,) the best of these being usually appropriated to country visiters. At the extremity of the hall, on either side to the right and left, if the house is large, there are two small recesses, rather than chambers, generally devoted to the ladies of the mansion; and in the centre of the tesselated pavement of the hall is invariably a square shallow reservoir for rain water (classically termed _impluvium_,) which was admitted by a hole in the roof above; the said aperture being covered at will by an awning. Near this impluvium, which had a peculiar sanctity in the eyes of the ancients, were sometimes (but at Pompeii more rarely than at Rome) placed images of the household gods; the hospitable hearth, often mentioned by the Roman poets, and consecrated to the Lares, was, at Pompeii, almost invariably formed by a moveable _brasier_; while in some corner, often the most ostentatious place, was deposited a huge wooden chest, ornamented and strengthened by bands of bronze or iron, and secured by strong hooks upon a stone pedestal so firmly as to defy the attempts of any robber to detach it from its position. This chest was supposed to be the money-box or coffer of the master of the house; though, as no money has been found in any of the chests discovered at Pompeii, it is probable that it was sometimes rather designed for ornament than use.

In this hall (or _atrium_, to speak classically) the clients and visiters of inferior rank were usually received. In the houses of the more "respectable," an _atriensis_, or slave peculiarly devoted to the service of the hall, was invariably retained, and his rank among his fellow slaves was high and important. The reservoir in the centre must have been rather a dangerous ornament, but the centre of the hall was like the grass-plat of a college, and interdicted to the passers to and fro, who found ample space in the margin. Right opposite the entrance, at the other end of the hall, was an apartment (_tablinum_,) in which the pavement was usually adorned with rich mosaics, and the walls covered with elaborate paintings. Here were usually kept the records of the family, or those of any public office that had been filled by the owner: on one side of this saloon, if we may so call it, was often a dining room, or _triclinium_; on the other side, perhaps, what we should now term a cabinet of gems, containing whatever curiosities were deemed most rare and costly; and invariably a small passage for the slaves to cross to the farther parts of the house without passing the apartments thus mentioned. These rooms all opened on a square or oblong colonnade, technically termed peristyle. If the house was small, its boundary ceased with this colonnade, and in that case its centre, however diminutive, was ordinarily appropriated to the purpose of a garden, and adorned with vases of flowers placed upon pedestals, while under the colonnade, to the right and left, were doors, admitting to bed rooms,[1] to a second _triclinium_, or eating room, (for the ancients generally appropriated two rooms at least to that purpose, one for summer and one for winter, or perhaps one for ordinary, the other for festive occasions;) and if the owner affected letters, a cabinet, dignified by the name of library,--for a very small room was sufficient to contain the few rolls of papyrus which the ancients deemed a notable collection of books.

[Footnote 1: The Romans had bed rooms appropriated not only to the sleep of night, but also to the day siesta (_cubicula diurna_.)]

At the end of the peristyle was generally the kitchen. Supposing the house was large, it did not end with the peristyle, and the centre thereof was not in that case a garden, but might be perhaps adorned with a fountain, or basin for fish; and at its end, exactly opposite to the tablinum, was generally another eating room, on either side of which were bed rooms, and perhaps a picture saloon, or _pinatheca_.[2] These apartments communicated again with a square or oblong space, usually adorned on three sides with a colonnade like the peristyle, and very much resembling the peristyle, only longer. This was the proper _viridarium_ or garden, being usually adorned with a fountain, or statues, and a profusion of gay flowers: at its extreme end was the gardener's house; on either side beneath the colonnade were sometimes, if the size of the family required it, additional rooms.

[Footnote 2: In the stately palaces of Rome, the pinatheca usually communicated with the atrium.]

At Pompeii, a second or third story was rarely of importance, being built only above a small part of the house, and containing rooms for the slaves; differing in this respect from the more magnificent edifices of Rome, which generally contained the principal eating room (or _coenaculum_) on the second floor. The apartments themselves were ordinarily of small size: for in those delightful climes they received any extraordinary number of visiters in the peristyle (or portico,) the hall, or the garden; and even their banquet rooms, however elaborately adorned and carefully selected in point of aspect, were of diminutive proportions; for the intellectual ancients, being fond of society, not of crowds, rarely feasted more than nine at a time, so that large dinner rooms were not so necessary with them as with us.[3] But the suite of rooms seen at once from the entrance must have had a very imposing effect; you beheld at once the hall richly paved and painted--the tablinum--the graceful peristyle, and (if the house extended farther) the opposite banquet room and the garden, which closed the view with some gushing fount or marble statue.

[Footnote 3: When they entertained very large parties, the feast was usually served in the hall.]

The reader will now have a tolerable notion of the Pompeian houses, which resembled in some respects the Grecian, but mostly the Roman, fashion of domestic architecture. In almost every house there is some difference in detail from the rest, but the principal outline is the same in all. In all you find the hall, the tablinum, and the peristyle communicating with each other; in all you find the walls richly painted, and in all the evidence of a people fond of the refining elegancies of life. The purity of the taste of the Pompeians in decoration is however questionable: they were fond of the gaudiest colors, of fantastic designs; they often painted the lower half of their columns a bright red, leaving the rest uncolored; and where the garden was small, its wall was frequently tinted to deceive the eye as to its extent, imitating trees, birds, temples, &c. in perspective--a meretricious delusion which the graceful pedantry of Pliny himself adopted, with a complacent pride in its ingenuity.

But the house of Glaucus was at once one of the smallest, and yet of the most adorned and finished, of all the private mansions of Pompeii; it would be a model at this day for the house of "a single man in Mayfair"--the envy and despair of the coelibian purchasers of buhl and marquetrie.

You enter by a long and narrow vestibule, on the floor of which is the image of a dog in mosaic, with the well known "cave canem," or "beware the dog." On either side is a chamber of some size; for the interior house not being large enough to contain the two great divisions of private and public apartments, these two rooms were set apart for the reception of visiters who neither by rank nor familiarity were entitled to admission in the penetralia of the mansion.

Advancing up the vestibule, you enter an atrinum, that when first discovered was rich in paintings, which _in point of expression_ would scarcely disgrace a Raphael. You may see them now transplanted to the Neapolitan Museum; they are still the admiration of connoisseurs; they depict the parting of Achilles and Briseis. Who does not acknowledge the force, the vigor, the beauty! employed in delineating the forms and faces of Achilles and the immortal slave!

On one side the atrinum, a small staircase admitted to the apartments for the slaves on the second floor; there too were two or three small bed rooms, the walls of which portrayed the rape of Europa, the battle of the Amazons, &c.

You now enter the tablinum, across which at either end hung rich draperies of Tyrian purple, half withdrawn.[4] On the walls were depicted a poet reading his verses to his friends; and in the pavement was inserted a small and most exquisite mosaic, typical of the instructions given by the director of the stage to his comedians.

[Footnote 4: The tablinum was also secured at pleasure by sliding doors.]

You passed through this saloon and entered the peristyle; and here (as I have said before was usually the case with the smaller houses of Pompeii) the mansion ended. From each of the seven columns that adorned this court hung festoons of garlands; the centre, supplying the place of a garden, bloomed with the rarest flowers, placed in vases of white marble, that were supported on pedestals. At the left end of this small garden was a diminutive fane, resembling one of those small chapels placed at the side of roads in Catholic countries, and dedicated to the Penates; before it stood a bronze tripod; to the left of the colonnade were two small cubiculi or bed rooms; to the right was the triclinium, in which the guests were now assembled.

This room is usually termed by the antiquaries of Naples, "the chamber of Leda;" and in the beautiful work of Sir William Gell, the reader will find an engraving from that most delicate and graceful painting of Leda presenting her new-born to her husband, from which the room derives its name. This beautiful apartment opened upon the fragrant garden. Round the table of citrean[5] wood, highly polished and delicately wrought with silver arabesques, were placed the three couches, which were yet more common at Pompeii than the semi-circular seat that had grown lately into fashion at Rome; and on these couches of bronze, studded with richer metals, were laid thick quiltings covered with elaborate broidery, and yielding luxuriously to the pressure.

[Footnote 5: The most valued wood; not the modern citron tree. Some, among whom is my learned friend Mr. W. S. Landor, conjecture it, with much plausibility, to have been mahogany.]

"Well, I must own," said the ædile Pansa, "that your house, though scarcely larger than a case for one's fibulæ, is a gem of its kind. How beautifully painted is that parting of Achilles and Briseis!--what a style!--what heads!--what a--hem!"

"Praise from Pansa is indeed valuable on such subjects," said Clodius, gravely. "Why, the paintings on _his_ walls--ah! there is, indeed, the hand of a Zeuxis!"

"You flatter me, my Clodius; indeed you do," quoth the ædile, who was celebrated through Pompeii for having the worst paintings in the world; for he was patriotic, and patronised none but Pompeians,--"you flatter me: but there is something pretty--Ædepol, yes--in the colors, to say nothing of the design;--and then for the kitchen, my friends--ah! that was all my fancy."

"What is the design?" said Glaucus. "I have not yet seen your kitchen, though I have often witnessed the excellence of its cheer."

"A cook, my Athenian--a cook sacrificing the trophies of his skill on the altar of Vesta, with a beautiful muræna (taken from the life) on a spit at a distance: there is some invention there!"

At that instant the slaves appeared, bearing a tray covered with the first preparative initia of the feast. Amid delicious figs, fresh herbs strewed with snow, anchovies, and eggs, were ranged small cups of diluted wine sparingly mixed with honey. As these were placed on the table, young slaves bore round to each of the five guests (for there were no more) the silver basin of perfumed water and napkins edged with a purple fringe. But the ædile ostentatiously drew forth his own napkin, which was not, indeed, of so fine a linen, but in which the fringe was twice as broad, and wiped his hands with the parade of a man who felt he was calling for admiration.

"A splendid _mappa_ that of yours," said Clodius; "why, the fringe is as broad as a girdle."

"A trifle, my Clodius, a trifle! They tell me this stripe is the latest fashion at Rome; but Glaucus attends to these things more than I."

"Be propitious, O Bacchus!" said Glaucus, inclining reverentially to a beautiful image of the god placed in the centre of the table, at the corners of which stood the Lares and the saltholders. The guests followed the prayer, and then, sprinkling the wine on the table, they performed the wonted libation.

This over, the convivalists reclined themselves on the couches, and the business of the hour commenced.

"May this cup be my last!" said the young Sallust, as the table, cleared of its first stimulants, was now loaded with the substantial part of the entertainment, and the ministering slave poured forth to him a brimming cyathus--"May this cup be my last, but it is the best wine I have drunk at Pompeii!"

"Bring hither the amphora," said Glaucus; "and read its date and its character."

The slave hastened to inform the party that the scroll fastened to the cork betokened its birth from Chios, and its age a ripe fifty years.

"How deliciously the snow has cooled it!" said Pansa; "it is just enough."

"It is like the experience of a man who has cooled his pleasures sufficiently to give them a double zest," exclaimed Sallust.

"It is like a woman's 'No,'" added Glaucus; "it cools but to inflame the more."

"When is our next wild-beast fight?" said Clodius to Pansa.

"It stands fixed for the ninth ide of August," answered Pansa, "on the day after the Vulcanalia; we have a most lovely young lion for the occasion."

"Whom shall we get for him to eat?" asked Clodius, "Alas! there is a great scarcity of criminals. You must positively find some innocent or other to condemn to the lion, Pansa!"

"Indeed I have thought very seriously about it of late," replied the ædile, gravely. "It was a most infamous law that which forbade us to send our own slaves to the wild beasts. Not to let us do what we like with our own, that's what I call an infringement on property itself."

"Not so in the good old days of the republic," sighed Sallust.

"And then this pretended mercy to the slaves is such a disappointment to the poor people. How they do love to see a good tough battle between a man and a lion! and all this innocent pleasure they may lose (if the gods don't send us a good criminal soon) from this cursed law."

"What can be worse policy," said Clodius, sententiously, "than to interfere with the manly amusements of the people?"

"Well, thank Jupiter and the Fates! we have no Nero at present," said Sallust.

"He was, indeed, a tyrant; he shut up our amphitheatre for ten years."

"I wonder it did not create a rebellion," said Sallust.

"It very nearly did," returned Pansa, with his mouth full of wild boar.

Here the conversation was interrupted for a moment by a flourish of flutes, and two slaves entered with a single dish.

"Ah! what delicacy hast thou in store for us now, my Glaucus?" cried the young Sallust, with sparkling eyes.

Sallust was only twenty-four, but he had no pleasure in life like eating--perhaps he had exhausted all the others; yet had he some talent, and an excellent heart--as far as it went.

"I know its face, by Pollux!" cried Pansa; "it is an Ambracian kid. Ho!" snapping his fingers, a usual signal to the slaves, "we must prepare a new libation in honor to the new-comer."

"I had hoped," said Glaucus, in a melancholy tone, "to have procured you some oysters from Britain; but the winds that were so cruel to Cæsar have forbid us the oysters."

"Are they in truth so delicious?" asked Lepidus, loosening to a yet more luxurious ease his ungirdled tunic.

"Why, in truth, I suspect it is the distance that gives the flavor; they want the richness of the Brundusium oyster. But at Rome no supper is complete without them."

"The poor Britons! There is some good in them after all," said Sallust; "they produce an oyster!"

"I wish they would produce us a gladiator," said the ædile, whose provident mind was still musing over the wants of the amphitheatre.

"By Pallas!" cried Glaucus, as his favorite slave crowned his steaming locks with a new chaplet, "I love these wild spectacles well enough when beast fights beast; but when a man, one with bones and blood like ours, is coldly put on the arena, and torn limb from limb, the interest is too horrid: I sicken--I gasp for breath--I long to rush and defend him. The yells of the populace seem to me more dire than the voices of the Furies chasing Orestes. I rejoice that there is so little chance of that bloody exhibition for our next show!"

The ædile shrugged his shoulders; the young Sallust, who was thought the best natured man in Pompeii, stared in surprise. The graceful Lepidus, who rarely spoke for fear of disturbing his features, cried, "Per Hercle!" The Parasite Clodius muttered, "Ædepol;" and the sixth banqueter, who was the umbra of Clodius, and whose duty it was to echo his richer friend when he could not praise him--the parasite of a parasite,--muttered also, "Ædepol."

"Well, you Italians are used to these spectacles; we Greeks are more merciful. Ah, shade of Pindar!--the rapture of a true Grecian game--the emulation of man against man--the generous strife--the half-mournful triumph--so proud to contend with a noble foe, so sad to see him overcome! But ye understand me not."

"The kid is excellent," said Sallust.

The slave whose duty it was to carve, and who valued himself on his science, had just performed that office on the kid to the sound of music, his knife keeping time, beginning with a low tenor, and accomplishing the arduous feat amid a magnificent diapason.

"Your cook is of course from Sicily?" said Pansa.

"Yes, of Syracuse."

"I will play you for him," said Clodius; "we will have a game between the courses."

"Better that sort of game, certainly, than a beast-fight; but I cannot stake my Sicilian--you have nothing so precious to stake me in return."

"My Phillida--my beautiful dancing girl!"

"I never buy women," said the Greek, carelessly rearranging his chaplet.

The musicians, who were stationed in the portico without, had commenced their office with the kid; they now directed the melody into a more soft, a more gay, yet it may be a more intellectual, strain; and they chanted that song of Horace beginning "Persicos odi," &c. so impossible to translate, and which they imagined applicable to a feast that, effeminate as it seems to us, was simple enough for the gorgeous revelry of the time. We are witnessing the domestic and not the princely feast--the entertainment of a gentleman, not of an emperor or a senator.

"Ah, good old Horace," said Sallust, compassionately; "he sang well of feasts and girls, but not like our modern poets."

"The immortal Fulvius, for instance," said Clodius.

"Ah, Fulvius the immortal!" said the umbra.

"And Spuræna, and Caius Mutius, who wrote three epics in a year--could Horace do that, or Virgil either?" said Lepidus. "Those old poets all fell into the mistake of copying sculpture instead of painting. Simplicity and repose--that was their notion: but we moderns have fire, and passions, and energy--we never sleep, we imitate the colors of painting, its life and its action. Immortal Fulvius!"

"By-the-way," said Sallust, "have you seen the new ode by Spuræna, in honor of our Egyptian Isis?--it is magnificent--the true religious fervor."

"Isis seems a favorite divinity at Pompeii," said Glaucus.

"Yes!" said Pansa, "she is exceedingly in repute just at this moment; her statue has been uttering the most remarkable oracles. I am not superstitious, but I must confess that she has more than once assisted me materially in my magistracy with her advice. Her priests are so pious too! none of your gay, none of your proud ministers of Jupiter and Fortune; they walk barefoot, eat no meat, and pass the greater part of the night in solitary devotion!"

"An example to our other priesthoods, indeed!--Jupiter's temple wants reforming sadly," said Lepidus, who was a great reformer for all but himself.

"They say that Arbaces the Egyptian has imparted some most solemn mysteries to the priests of Isis," observed Sallust; "he boasts his descent from the race of Ramases, and declares that in his family the secrets of remotest antiquity are treasured."

"He certainly possesses the gift of the evil eye," said Clodius; "if I ever come upon that Medusa front without the previous charm, I am sure to lose a favorite horse, or throw the _canes_[6] nine times running."

[Footnote 6: _Canes_, or _caniculæ_, the lowest throw at dice.]

"The last would be indeed a miracle!" said Sallust, gravely.

"How mean you, Sallust?" returned the gamester, with a flushed brow.

"I mean what you would _leave_ me if I played often with you; and that is--nothing."

Clodius answered only by a smile of disdain.

"If Arbaces were not so rich," said Pansa, with a stately air, "I should stretch my authority a little, and inquire into the truth of the report which calls him an astrologer and a sorcerer. Agrippa, when ædile of Rome, banished all such terrible citizens. But a rich man--it is the duty of an ædile to protect the rich!"

"What think you of this new sect, which I am told has even a few proselytes in Pompeii, these followers of the Hebrew God--Christus?"

"Oh, mere speculative visionaries," said Clodius; "they have not a single gentleman among them; their proselytes are poor, insignificant, ignorant people!"

"Who ought, however, to be crucified for their blasphemy," said Pansa, with vehemence; "they deny Venus and Jove! Nazarene is but another name for atheist. Let me catch them, that's all!"

The second course was gone--the feasters fell back on their couches--there was a pause while they listened to the soft voices of the South, and the music of the Arcadian reed. Glaucus was the most rapt and the least inclined to break the silence, but Clodius began already to think that they wasted time.