Chapter 11

This Olconius or Holconius was the Marquis of Carabas of Pompeii. His name may be read everywhere in the streets, on the monuments, and on the walls of the houses. We have seen already that the fruiterers wanted him for ædile. We have pointed out the position of his statue in the theatre. We know by inscriptions that he was not the only illustrious member of his family. There were also a Marcus Holconius Celer, a Marcus Holconius Rufus, etc. Were this petty municipal aristocracy worth the trouble of hunting up, we could easily find it on the electoral programmes by collecting the names usually affixed thereon. But Holconius is the one most conspicuous of them all; so, hats off to Holconius!

I return to the theatre. Two large side windows illuminated the stage, which, being covered, had need of light. The back scene was not carved, but painted and pierced for five doors instead of three; those at the ends, which were masked by movable side scenes served, perhaps, as entrances to the lobbies of the priestesses.

Would you like to go behind the scenes? Passing by the barracks of the gladiators, we enter an apartment adorned with columns, which was, very likely, the common hall and dressing-room of the actors. A celebrated mosaic in the house of the poet (or jeweller), shows us a scenic representation: in it we observe the _choragus_, surrounded by masks and other accessories (the choragus was the manager and director); he is making two actors, got up as satyrs, rehearse their parts; behind them, another comedian, assisted by a costumer of some kind, is trying to put on a yellow garment which is too small for him. Thus we can re-people the antechamber of the stage. We see already those comic masks that were the principal resource in the wardrobe of the ancient players. Some of them were typical; for instance, that of the young virgin, with her hair parted on her forehead and carefully combed; that of the slave-driver (or _hegemonus_), recognized by his raised eyelids, his wrinkled brows and his twists of hair done up in a wig; that of the wizard, with immense eyes starting from their sockets, seamed skin covered with pimples, with enormous ears, and short hair frizzed in snaky ringlets; that of the bearded, furious, staring, and sinister old man; and above all, those of the Atellan low comedians, who, born in Campania, dwell there still, and must assuredly have amused the little city through which we are passing. Atella, the country of Maccus was only some seven or eight leagues distant from Pompeii, and numerous interests and business connections united the inhabitants of the two places. I have frequently stated that the Oscan language, in which the Atellan farces were written, had once been the only tongue, and had continued to be the popular dialect of the Pompeians. The Latin gradually intermingled with these pieces, and the confusion of the two idioms was an exhaustless source of witticisms, puns, and bulls of all kinds, that must have afforded Homeric laughter to the plebeians of Pompeii. The longshoremen of Naples, in our day, seek exactly similar effects in the admixture of pure Italian and the local _patois_. The titles of some of the Atellian farces are still extant: "Pappus, the Doctor Shown Out," "Maccus Married," "Maccus as Safe Keeper," etc. These are nearly the same subjects that are still treated every day on the boards at Naples; the same rough daubs, half improvised on the spur of the moment; the same frankly coarse and indecent gayety. The Odeon where we are now, was the Pompeian San Carlino. Bucco, the stupid and mocking buffoon; the dotard Pappus, who reminds us of the Venetian Pantaloon; Mandacus, who is the Neapolitan Guappo; the Oscan Casnar, a first edition of Cassandra; and finally, Maccus, the king of the company, the Punchinello who still survives and flourishes,--such were the ancient mimes, and such, too, are their modern successors. All these must have appeared in their turn on the small stage of the Odeon; and the slaves, the freedmen crowded together in the upper tiers, the citizens ranged in the middle cavea or family-circle, the duumvirs, the decurions, the augustals, the ædiles seated majestically on the bisellia of the orchestra, even the priestesses of the proscenium and the melancholy Eumachia, whose statue confesses, I know not what anguish of the heart,--all these must have roared with laughter at the rude and extravagant sallies of their low comedians, who, notwithstanding the parts they played, were more highly appreciated than the rest and had the exclusive privilege of wearing the title of Roman citizens.

Now, if these trivialities revolt your fastidious taste, you can picture to yourself the representation of some comedy of Plautus in the Odeon of Pompeii; that is, admitting, to begin with, that you can find a comedy by that author which in no wise shocks our susceptibilities. You can also fill the stage with mimes and pantomimists, for the favor accorded to that class of actors under the emperors is well known. The Cæsars--I am speaking of the Romans--somewhat feared spoken comedy, attributing political proclivities to it, as they did; and, hence, they encouraged to their utmost that mute comedy which, at the same time, in the Imperial Babel, had the advantage of being understood by all the conquered nations. In the provinces, this supreme art of gesticulation, "these talking fingers, these loquacious hands, this voluble silence, this unspoken explanation," as was once choicely said, were serviceable in advancing the great work of Roman unity. "The substitution of ballet pantomimes for comedy and tragedy resulted in causing the old masterpieces to be neglected, thereby enfeebling the practice of the national idioms and seconding the propagation, if not of the language, at least of the customs and ideas of the Romans." (Charles Magnin.)

If the mimes do not suffice, call into the Odeon the rope-dancers, the acrobats, the jugglers, the ventriloquists,--for all these lower orders of public performers existed among the ancients and swarmed in the Pompeian pictures,--or the flute-players enlivening the waits with their melody and accompanying the voice of the actors at moments of dramatic climax. "How can he feel afraid," asked Cicero, in this connection, "since he recites such fine verses while he accompanies himself on the flute?" What would the great orator have said had he been present at our melodramas?

We may then imagine what kind of play we please on the little Pompeian stage. For my part, I prefer the Atellan farces. They were the buffooneries of the locality, the coarse pleasantry of native growth, the hilarity of the vineyard and the grain-field, exuberant fancy, grotesque in solemn earnest; in a word, ideal sport and frolic without the least regard to reality--in fine, Punchinello's comedy. We prefer Moliere; but how many things there are in Moliere which come in a direct line from Maccus!

It is time to leave the theatre. I have said that the Odeon opened into the gladiators' barracks. These barracks form a spacious court--a sort of cloister--surrounded by seventy-four pillars, unfortunately spoiled by the Pompeians of the restoration period. They topped them with new capitals of stucco notoriously ill adapted to them. This gallery was surrounded with curious dwellings, among which was a prison where three skeletons were found, with their legs fastened in irons of ingeniously cruel device. The instrument in question may be seen at the museum. It looks like a prostrate ladder, in which the limbs of the prisoners were secured tightly between short and narrow rungs--four bars of iron. These poor wretches had to remain in a sitting or reclining posture, and perished thus, without the power to rise or turn over, on the day when Vesuvius swallowed up the city.

It was for a long time thought that these barracks were the quarters of the soldiery, because arms were found there; but the latter were too highly ornamented to belong to practical fighting troops, and were the very indications that suggested to Father Garrucci the firmly established idea, that the dwellings surrounding the gallery must have been occupied by gladiators. These habitations consist of some sixty cells: now there were sixty gladiators in Pompeii because an album programme announced thirty pair of them to fight in the amphitheatre.

The pillars of the gallery were covered with inscriptions scratched on their surface. Many of these graphites formed simple Greek names Pompaios, Arpokrates, Celsa, etc., or Latin names, or fragments of sentences, _curate pecunias, fur es Torque, Rustico feliciter!_ etc. Others proved clearly that the place was inhabited by gladiators: _inludus Velius_ (that is to say _not in the game, out of the ring_) _bis victor libertus--leonibus, victor Veneri parmam feret_. Other inscriptions designate families or troops of gladiators, of which there are a couple familiar to us already, that of N. Festus Ampliatus and that of N. Popidius Rufus; and a third, with which we are not acquainted, namely, that of Pomponius Faustinus.

What has not been written concerning the gladiators? The origin of their bloody sports; the immolations, voluntary at first, and soon afterward compulsory, that did honor to the ashes of the dead warriors; then the combats around the funeral pyres; then, ere long, the introduction of these funeral spectacles as part of the public festivals, especially in the triumphal parades of victorious generals; then into private pageants, and then into the banquets of tyrants who caused the heads of the proscribed to be brought to them at table. The skill of such and such an artist in decapitation (_decollandi artifex_) was the subject of remark and compliment. Ah, those were the grand ages!

As the reader also knows, the gladiators were at first prisoners of war, barbarians; then, prisoners not coming in sufficient number, condemned culprits and slaves were employed, ere long, in hosts so strong as, to revolt in Campania at the summons of Spartacus. Consular armies were vanquished and the Roman prisoners, transformed to gladiators, in their turn were compelled to butcher each other around the funeral pyres of their chiefs. However, these combats had gradually ceased to be penalties and punishments, and soon were nothing but barbarous spectacles, violent pantomimic performances, like those which England and Spain have not yet been able to suppress. The troops of mercenary fighters slaughtered each other in the arenas to amuse the Romans (not to render them warlike). Citizens took part in these tournaments, and among them even nobles, emperors, and women; and, at last, the Samnites, Gauls, and Thracians, who descended into the arena, were only Romans in disguise. These shows became more and more varied; they were diversified with hunts (_venationes_), in which wild beasts fought with each other or against _bestiarii_, or Christians; the amphitheatres, transformed to lakes, offered to the gaze of the delighted spectator real naval battles, and ten thousand gladiators were let loose against each other by the imperial caprice of Trajan. These entertainments lasted one hundred and twenty-three days. Imagine the carnage!

Part of the gladiators of Pompeii were Greeks, and part were real barbarians. The traces that they have left in the little city show that they got along quite merrily there. 'Tis true that they could not live, as they did at Rome, in close intimacy with emperors and empresses, but they were, none the less, the spoiled pets of the residents of Pompeii. Lodged in a sumptuous barrack, they must have been objects of envy to many of the population. The walls are full of inscriptions concerning them; the bathing establishments, the inns, and the disreputable haunts, transmit their names to posterity. The citizens, their wives, and even their children admired them. In the house of Proculus, at no great height above the ground, is a picture of a gladiator which must have been daubed there by the young lad of the house. The gladiator whose likeness was thus given dwelt in the house. His helmet was found there. So, then, he was the guest of the family, and Heaven knows how they feasted him, petted him, and listened to him.

In order to see the gladiators under arms, we must pass over the part of the city that has not yet been uncovered, and through vineyards and orchards, until, in a corner of Pompeii, as though down in the bottom of a ravine, we find the amphitheatre. It is a circus, surrounded by tiers of seats and abutting on the city ramparts. The exterior wall is not high, because the amphitheatre had to be hollowed out in the soil. One might fancy it to be a huge vessel deeply embedded in the sand. In this external wall there remain two large arcades and four flights of steps ascending to the top of the structure. The arena was so called because of the layer of sand which covered it and imbibed the blood.

It is reached by two large vaulted and paved corridors with a quite steep inclination. One of these is strengthened with seven arches that support the weight of the tiers. Both of them intersect a transverse, circular corridor, beyond which they widen. It was through this that the armed gladiators, on horseback and on foot, poured forth into the arena, to the sound of trumpets and martial music, and made the circuit of the amphitheatre before entering the lists. They then retraced their steps and came in again, in couples, according to the order of combat.

To the right of the principal entrance a doorway opens into two square rooms with gratings, where the wild beasts were probably kept. Another very narrow corridor ran from the street to the arena, near which it ascended, by a small staircase, to a little round apartment apparently the _spoliatorium_, where they stripped the dead gladiators. The arena formed an oval of sixty-eight yards by thirty-six. It was surrounded by a wall of two yards in height, above which may still be seen the holes where gratings and thick iron bars were inserted as a precaution against the bounds of the panthers. In the large amphitheatres a ditch was dug around this rampart and filled with water to intimidate the elephants, as the ancients believed them to have a horror of that element.

Paintings and inscriptions covered the walls or podium of the arena. These inscriptions acquaint us with the names of the duumvirs,--N. Istadicius, A. Audius, O. Caesetius Saxtus Capito, M. Gantrius Marcellus, who, instead of the plays and the illumination, which they would have had to pay for, on assuming office, had caused three cunei to be constructed on the order of the decurions. Another inscription gives us to understand that two other duumvirs, Caius Quinctius Valgus and Marcus Portius, holding five-year terms, had instituted the first games at their expense for the honor of the colony, and had granted the ground on which the amphitheatre stood, in perpetuity. These two magistrates must have been very generous men, and very fond of public shows. We know that they contributed, in like manner, to the construction of the Odeon.

Would you now like to go over the general sweep of the tiers--the _visorium_? Three grand divisions as in the theatre; the lowermost separated, by entries and private flights of steps, into eighteen boxes; the middle and upper one divided into cunei, the first by twenty stairways, the second by forty. Around the latter was an inclosing wall, intersected by vomitories and forming a platform where a number of spectators, arriving too late for seats, could still find standing-room, and where the manœuvres were executed that were requisite to hoist the velarium, or awning. All these made up an aggregate of twenty-four ranges of seats, upon which were packed perhaps twenty thousand spectators. So much for the audience. Nothing could be more simple or more ingenious than the system of extrication by which the movement, to and fro, of this enormous throng was made possible, and easy. The circular and vaulted corridor which, under the tiers, ran around the arena and conducted, by a great number of distinct stairways, to the tiers of the lower and middle cavea, while upper stairways enabled the populace to ascend to the highest story assigned to it.

One is surprised so see so large an amphitheatre in so small a city. But, let us not forget that Pompeii attracted the inhabitants of the neighboring towns to her festivals; history even tells us an anecdote on this subject that is not without its moral.

The Senator Liveneius Regulus, who had been driven from Rome and found an asylum in Pompeii, offered a gladiator show to the hospitable little city. A number of people from Nocera had gone to the pageant, and a quarrel arose, probably owing to municipal rivalries, that eternal curse of Italy; from words they came to blows and volleys of stones, and even to slashing with swords. There were dead and wounded on both sides. The Nocera visitors, being less numerous, were beaten, and made complaint to Rome. The affair was submitted to the Emperor, who sent it to the Senate, who referred it to the Consuls, who referred it back again to the Senate. Then came the sentence, and public shows were prohibited in Pompeii for the space of ten years. A caricature which recalls this punishment has been found in the Street of Mercury. It represented an armed gladiator descending, with a palm in his hand, into the amphitheatre: on the left, a second personage is drawing a third toward him on a seat; the third one had his arms bound, and was, no doubt, a prisoner. This inscription accompanies the entire piece: "Campanians, your victory has been as fatal to you as it was to the people of Nocera."[K]

The hand of Rome, ever the hand of Rome!

For that matter, the ordinances relating to the amphitheatre applied to the whole empire. One of the Pompeian inscriptions announces that the duumvir C. Cuspius Pansa had been appointed to superintend the public shows and see to the observance of the Petronian law. This law prohibited Senators from fighting in the arena, and even from sending slaves thither who had not been condemned for crime. Such things, then, required to be prohibited!

I have described the arena and the seats; let me now pass on to the show itself. Would yon like to have a hunt or a gladiatorial combat? Here I invent nothing. I have data, found at Pompeii (the paintings in the amphitheatre and the bas-reliefs on the tomb of Scaurus), that reproduce scenes which I have but to transfer to prose. Let us, then, suppose the twenty thousand spectators to be in their places on thirty-four ranges of seats, one above the other, around the arena; then, let us take our seats among them and look on.

First we have a hunt. A panther, secured by a long rope to the neck of a bull let loose, is set on against a young _bestiarius_, who holds two javelins in his hands. A man, armed with a long lance, irritates the bull so that it may move and second the rush of the panther fastened to it. The lad who has the javelins, and is a novice in his business, is but making his first attempt; should the bull not move, he runs no risk, yet I should not like to be in his place.

Then follows a more serious combat between a bear and a man, who irritates him by holding out a cloth at him, as the matadors do in bull-fights. Another group shows us a tiger and a lion escaping in different directions. An unarmed and naked man is in pursuit of the tiger, who cannot be a very cross one. But here is a _venatio_ much more dramatic in its character. The nude bestiarius has just pierced a wolf through and through, and the animal is in flight with the spear sticking in his body, but the man staggers and a wild boar is rushing at him. At the same time, a stag thrown down by a lasso that is still seen dangling to his antlers, awaits his death-blow; hounds are dashing at him, and "their fierce baying echoes from vale to vale."

But that is not all. Look at yon group of victors: a real matador has plunged his spear into the breast of a bull with so violent a stroke that the point of the weapon comes out at the animal's back; and another has just brought down and impaled a bear; a dog is leaping at the throat of a fugitive wild boar and biting him; and, in this ferocious menagerie, peopled with lions and panthers, two rabbits are scampering about, undoubtedly to the great amusement of the throng. The Romans were fond of these contrasts, which furnished Galienus an opportunity to be jocosely generous. "A lapidary," says M. Magnin, "had sold the emperor's wife some jewels, which were recognized to be false; the emperor had the dishonest dealer arrested and condemned to the lions; but when the fatal moment came, he turned no more formidable creature loose upon him than a capon. Everybody was astonished, and while all were vainly striving to guess the meaning of such an enigma, he caused the _curion_, or herald, to proclaim aloud: "This man tried to cheat, and now he is caught in his turn.""

I have described the hunts at Pompeii; they were small affairs compared with those of Rome. The reader may know that Titus, who finished the Coliseum, caused five thousand animals to be killed there in a single day in the presence of eighty thousand spectators. Let us confess, however, that with this exhibition, of tigers, panthers, lions, and wild boars, the provincial hunts were still quite dramatic.

I now come to the gladiatorial combats. To commence with the preliminaries of the fight, a ring-master, with his long staff in his hand, traces the circle, within which the antagonists must keep. One of the latter, half-armed, blows his trumpet and two boys behind him hold his helmet and his shield. The other has nothing, as yet, but his shield in his hand; two slaves are bringing him his helmet and his sword. The trumpet has sounded, and the ring-master and slaves have disappeared. The gladiators are at it. One of them has met with a mishap. The point of his sword is bent and he has just thrown away his shield. The blood is flowing from his arm, which he extends toward the spectators, at the same time raising his thumb. That was the sign the vanquished made when they asked for quarter. But the people do not grant it this time, for they have turned the twenty thousand thumbs of their right hands downwards. The man must die, and the victor is advancing upon him to slaughter him.

Would you like to see an equestrian combat? Two horsemen are charging on each other. They wear helmets with visors, and carry spears and the round shield (_parma_), but they are lightly armed. Only one of their arms--that which sustains the spear--is covered with bands or armlets of metal. Their names and the number of their victories already won are known. The first is Bebrix, a barbarian, who has been triumphant fifteen times; the second is Nobilior, a Roman, who has vanquished eleven times. The combat is still undecided. Nobilior is just delivering a spear thrust, which is vigorously parried by Bebrix.