Chapter 2

Happily, the Italian Government established by the revolution of 1860, came into power to set all these acts of negligence and roguery to rights. Signor Fiorelli, who is all intelligence and activity, not to mention his erudition, which numerous writings prove, was appointed inspector of the excavations. Under his administration, the works which had been vigorously resumed were pushed on by as many as seven hundred laborers at a time, and they dug out in the lapse of three years more treasures than had been brought to light in the thirty that preceded them. Everything has been reformed, nay, _moralised_, as it were, in the dead city; the visitor pays two francs at the gate and no longer has to contend with the horde of guides, doorkeepers, rapscallions, and beggars who formerly plundered him. A small museum, recently established, furnishes the active inquirer the opportunity of examining upon the spot the curiosities that have already been discovered; a library containing the fine works of Mazois, of Raoul Rochette, of Gell, of Zahn, of Overbeck, of Breton, etc., on Pompeii, enables the student to consult them in Pompeii itself; workshops lately opened are continually busy in restoring cracked walls, marbles, and bronzes, and one may there surprise the artist Bramante, the most ingenious hand at repairing antiquities in the world, as likewise my friend, Padiglione, who, with admirable patience and minute fidelity, is cutting a small model in cork of the ruins that have been cleared, which is scrupulously exact. In fine--and this is the main point--the excavations are no longer carried on occasionally only, and in the presence of a few privileged persons, but before the first comer and every day, unless funds have run short.

"I have frequently been present," wrote a half-Pompeian, a year or two ago, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_--"I have frequently been present for hours together, seated on a sand-bank which itself, perhaps, concealed wonders, and witnessed this rude yet interesting toil, from which I could not withdraw my gaze. I therefore have it in my power to write understandingly. I do not relate what I read, but what I saw. Three systems, to my knowledge, have been employed in these excavations. The first, inaugurated under Charles III., was the simplest. It consisted in hollowing out the soil, in extricating the precious objects found, and then in re-filling the orifice--an excellent method of forming a museum by destroying Pompeii. This method was abandoned so soon as it was discovered that a whole city was involved. The second system, which was gradually brought to perfection in the last century, was earnestly pursued under Murat. The work was started in many places at once, and the laborers, advancing one after the other, penetrating and cutting the hill, followed the line of the streets, which they cleared little by little before them. In following the streets on the ground-level, the declivity of ashes and pumice-stone which obstructed them was attacked below, and thence resulted many regrettable accidents. The whole upper part of the houses, commencing with the roofs, fell in among the rubbish, along with a thousand fragile articles, which were broken and lost without there being any means of determining the point from which they had been hurled down. In order to obviate this inconvenience, Signor Fiorelli has started a third system. He does not follow the streets by the ground-level, but he marks them out over the hillocks, and thus traces among the trees and cultivated grounds wide squares indicating the subterranean, islets. No one is ignorant of the fact that these islets--_isole, insulæ_ in the modern as well as in the ancient language of Italy--indicate blocks of buildings. The islet traced, Signor Fiorelli repurchases the land which had been sold by King Ferdinand I. and gives up the trees found upon it.[A]

"The ground, then, being bought and the vegetation removed, work begins. The earth at the summit of the hill is taken off and carried away on a railroad, which descends from the middle of Pompeii by a slope that saves all expense of machinery and fuel, to a considerable distance beyond the amphitheatre and the city. In this way, the most serious question of all, to wit, that of clearing away the dirt, is solved. Formerly, the ruins were covered in with it, and subsequently it was heaped up in a huge hillock, but now it helps to construct the very railroad that carries it away, and will, one day, tip it into the sea.

"Nothing can present a livelier scene than the excavation of these ruins. Men diligently dig away at the earth, and bevies of young girls run to and fro without cessation, with baskets in their hands. These are sprightly peasant damsels collected from the adjacent villages most of them accustomed to working in factories that have closed or curtailed operations owing to the invasion of English tissues and the rise of cotton. No one would have dreamed that free trade and the war in America would have supplied female hands to work at the ruins of Pompeii. But all things are linked together now in this great world of ours, vast as it is. These girls then run backward and forward, filling their baskets with soil, ashes, and _lapillo_, hoisting them on their heads, by the help of the men, with a single quick, sharp motion, and thereupon setting off again, in groups that incessantly replace each other, toward the railway, passing and repassing their returning companions. Very picturesque in their ragged gowns of brilliant colors, they walk swiftly with lengthy strides, their long skirts defining the movements of their naked limbs and fluttering in the wind behind them, while their arms, with gestures like those of classic urn-bearers, sustain the heavy load that rests upon their heads without making them even stoop. All this is not out of keeping with the monuments that gradually appear above the surface as the rubbish is removed. Did not the sight of foreign visitors here and there disturb the harmony of the scene, one might readily ask himself, in the midst of this Virgilian landscape, amid these festooning vines, in full view of the smoking Vesuvius, and beneath that antique sky, whether all those young girls who come and go are not the slaves of Pansa, the ædile, or of the duumvir Holconius."

We have just glanced over the history of Pompeii before and after its destruction. Let us now enter the city. But a word of caution before we start. Do not expect to find houses or monuments still erect and roofed in like the Pantheon at Rome and the square building at Nismes, or you will be sadly disappointed. Rather picture to yourself a small city of low buildings and narrow streets that had been completely burned down in a single night. You have come to look at it on the day after the conflagration. The upper stories have disappeared, and the ceilings have fallen in. Everything that was of wood, planks, and beams, is in ashes; all is uncovered, and no roofs are to be seen. In these structures, which in other days were either private dwellings or public edifices, you now can everywhere walk under the open sky. Were a shower to come on, you would not know where to seek shelter. It is as though you were in a city in progress of building, with only the first stories as yet completed, but without the flooring for the second. Here is a house: nothing remains of it but the lower walls, with nothing resting on them. At a distance you would suppose it to be a collection of screens set up for parlor theatricals. Here is a public square: you will now see in it only bottom platforms, supports that hold up nothing, shafts of columns without galleries, pedestals without statues, mute blocks of stone, space and emptiness. I will lead you into more than one temple. You will see there only an eminence of masonry, side and end walls, but no front, no portico. Where is art? Where is the presiding deity of the place? The ruins of your stable would not be more naked a thousand years hence. Stones on all sides, tufa, bricks, lava, here and there some slabs of marble and travertine, then traces of destruction--paintings defaced, pavements disjointed and full of gaps and cracks--and then marks of spoliation, for all the precious objects found were carried off to the museum at Naples, and I can show you now nothing but the places where once stood the Faun, the statue of Narcissus, the mosaic of Arbelles and the famous blue vase. Such is the Pompeii that awaits the traveller who comes thither expecting to find another Paris, or, at least, ruins arranged in the Parisian style, like the tower of St. Jacques, for instance.

You will say, perhaps, good reader, that I disenchant you; on the contrary, I prevent your disenchantment. Do not prepare the way for your own disappointment by unreasonable expectations or by ill-founded notions; this is all that I ask of your judgment. Do not come hither to look for the relics of Roman grandeur. Other impressions await you at Pompeii. What you are about to see is an entire city, or at all events the third of an ancient city, remote, detached from every modern town, and forming in itself something isolated and complete which you will find nowhere else. Here is no Capitol rebuilt; no Pantheon consecrated now to the God of Christianity; no Acropolis surmounting a Danish or Bavarian city; no Maison Carrée (as at Nismes) transformed to a gallery of paintings and forming one of the adornments of a modern Boulevard. At Pompeii everything is antique and eighteen centuries old; first the sky, then the landscape, the seashore, and then the work of man, devastated undoubtedly, but not transformed, by time. The streets are not repaired; the high sidewalks that border them have not been lowered for the pedestrians of our time, and we promenade upon the same stones that were formerly trodden by the feet of Sericus the merchant and Epaphras the slave. As we enter these narrow streets we quit, perforce, the year in which we are living and the quarter that we inhabit. Behold us in a moment transported to another age and into another world. Antiquity invades and absorbs us and, were it but for an hour, we are Romans. That, however, is not all. I have already repeatedly said that Vesuvius did not destroy Pompeii--it has preserved it.

The structures that have been exhumed crumble away in the air in a few months--more than they had done beneath the ashes in eighteen centuries. When first disinterred the painted walls reappear fresh and glowing as though their coloring were but of yesterday. Each wall thus becomes, as it were, a page of illustrated archeology, unveiling to us some point hitherto unknown of the manners, customs, private habits, creeds and traditions; or, to sum all up in a word, of the life of the ancients.

The furniture one finds, the objects of art or the household utensils, reveal to us the mansion; there is not a single panel which, when closely examined, does not tell us something. Such and such a pillar has retained the inscription scratched upon it with the point of his knife by a Pompeian who had nothing else to do; such a piece of wall on the street set apart for posters, presents in huge letters the announcement of a public spectacle, or proclaims the candidature of some citizen for a contested office of the state.

I say nothing of the skeletons, whose attitudes relate, in a most striking manner, the horrors of the catastrophe and the frantic struggles of the last moment. In fine, for any one who has the faculty of observation, every step is a surprise, a discovery, a confession won concerning the public and private life of the ancients. Although at first sight mute, these blocks of stone, when interrogated, soon speak and confide their secrets to science or to the imagination that catches a meaning with half a word; they tell, little by little, all that they know, and all the strange, mysterious things that took place on these same pavements, under this same sky, in those miraculous times, the most interesting in history, viz.: the eighth century of Rome and the first of the Christian era.

[Footnote A: The money accruing from this sale is applied to the Pompeian library mentioned elsewhere.]

II.

THE FORUM.

DIOMED'S INN.--THE NICHE OF MINERVA.--THE APPEARANCE AND THE MONUMENTS OF THE FORUM.--THE ANTIQUE TEMPLE.--THE PAGAN EX-VOTO OFFERINGS.--THE MERCHANTS' CITY EXCHANGE AND THE PETTY EXCHANGE.--THE PANTHEON, OR WAS IT A TEMPLE, A SLAUGHTER-HOUSE, OR A TAVERN?--THE STYLE OF COOKING AND THE FORM OF RELIGION.--THE TEMPLE OF VENUS.--- THE BASILICA.--THE INSCRIPTIONS OF PASSERS-BY UPON THE WALLS.--THE FORUM REBUILT.

As you alight at the station, in the first place breakfast at the _popina_ of Diomed. It is a tavern of our own day, which has assumed an antique title to please travellers. You may there drink Falernian wine manufactured by Scala, the Neapolitan chemist, and, should you ask for some _jentaculum_ in the Roman style--_aliquid scitamentorum_, _glandionidum suillam taridum_, _pernonidem_, _sinciput aut omenta porcina_, _aut aliquid ad eum modum_--they will serve you a beefsteak and potatoes. Your strength refreshed, you will scale the sloping hillock of ashes and rubbish that conceals the ruins from your view; you will pay your two francs at the office and you will pass the gate-keeper's turnstile, astonished, as it is, to find itself in such a place. These formalities once concluded you have nothing more that is modern to go through unless it be the companionship of a guide in military uniform who escorts you, in reality to _watch_, you (especially if you belong to the country of Lord Elgin), but not to mulct you in the least. Placards in all the known languages forbid you to offer him so much as an _obolus_. You make your _entrée_, in a word, into the antique life, and you are as free as a Pompeian.

The first thing one sees is an arcade and such a niche as might serve for an image of the Madonna; but be reassured, for the niche contains a Minerva. It is no longer the superstition of our own time that strikes our gaze. Under the arcade open extensive store-houses that probably served as a place of deposit for merchandise. You then enter an ascending paved street, pass by the temple of Venus and the Basilica, and arrive at the Forum. There, one should pause.

At first glance, the observer distinguishes nothing but a long square space closed at the further extremity by a regular-shaped mound rising between two arcades; lateral alleys extend lengthwise on the right and the left between shafts of columns and dilapidated architectural work. Here and there some compound masses of stone-work indicate altars or the pedestals of statues no longer seen. Vesuvius, still threatening, smokes away at the extremity of the picture.

Look more closely and you will perceive that the fluted columns are of Caserta stone, of tufa, or of brick, coated with stucco and raised two steps above the level of the square. Under the lower step runs the kennel. These columns sustained a gallery upon which one mounted by narrow and abrupt steps that time has spared. This upper gallery must have been covered. The women walked in it. A second story of columns, most likely interrupted in front of the monuments, rested upon the other one. Mazois has reconstructed this colonnade in two superior orders--Doric below and Ionic above--with exquisite elegance. The pavement of the square, on which you may still walk, was of travertine. Thus we see the Forum rising again, as it were, in our presence.

Let us glance at the ruins that surround it. That mound at the other end was the foundation of a temple, the diminutive size of which strikes the newcomer at first sight. Every one is not aware that the temple, far from being a place of assemblage for devout multitudes, was, with the ancients, in reality, but a larger niche inclosing the statue of the deity to be worshipped. The consecrated building received only a small number of the elect after they had been befittingly purified, and the crowd remained outside. It was not the palace, but the mere cell of the god. This cell (_cella_) was, at first, the whole temple, and was just large enough to hold the statue and the altar. By degrees it came to be ornamented with a front portico, then with a rear portico, and then with side colonnades, thus attaining by embellishment after embellishment the rich elegance of the Madeleine at Paris. But the proportions of our cathedrals were never adopted by the ancients. Thus, Christianity rarely appropriates the Greek or Roman temples for its worship. It has preferred the vast basilicas, the royal name of which assumes a religious meaning.

The Romans built their temples in this wise: The augur--that is to say, the priest who read the future in the flight of birds--traced in the sky with his short staff a spacious square, which he then marked on the soil. Stakes were at once fixed along the four lines, and draperies were hung between the stakes. In the midst of this space, the area or inclosure of the temple, the augur marked out a cross--the augural cross, indicating the four cardinal points; the transverse lines fixed the limits of the _cella_; the point where the two branches met was the place for the door, and the first stone was deposited on the threshold. Numerous lighted lamps illuminated these ceremonies, after which the chief priest, the _pontifex maximus_, consecrated the area, and from that moment it became settled and immovable. If it crumbled, it must be rebuilt on the same spot, and the least change made, even should it be to enlarge it, would be regarded as a profanation. Thus had the dwelling of the god that rises before us at the extremity of the Forum been consecrated.

Like most of the Roman temples, this edifice is elevated on a foundation (the _podium_), and turned toward the north. One ascends to it by a flight of steps that cuts in the centre a platform where, perhaps, the altar stood. Upon the _podium_ there remain some vestiges of the twelve columns that formed the front portico or _pronaos_. Twelve columns, did I say?--three on each side, six in front; always an even number at the facades, so that a central column may not mask the doorway and that the temple may be freely entered by the intercolumnar middle space.

To the right and the left of the steps were pedestals that formerly sustained statues probably colossal. Behind the _pronaos_ could be recognized the place where the _cella_ used to be. Nothing remains of it now but the mosaic pavement and the walls. Traces of columns enable us to reconstruct this sanctuary richly. We can there raise--and it has been done on paper--two colonnades--the first one of the Ionic order, supporting a gallery; the second of the Corinthian order, sustaining the light wooden platform of painted wood which no longer exists. The walls, covered with stucco, still retain pretty decorative paintings. Three small subterranean chambers, of very solid construction, perhaps contained the treasury and archives of the State, or something else entirely different--why not those of the temple? In those times the Church was rich; the Saviour had not ordained poverty as its portion.

What deity's house is it that we are visiting now? Jupiter's, says common opinion, upon the strength of a colossal statue of which fragments have been found that might well have fitted the King of the Gods. Others think it the temple of Venus, the _Venus Physica_ (the beautiful in nature, say æsthetic philosophers) being the patroness of Pompeii. We shall frequently, hereafter, meet with the name of this goddess. Several detached limbs in stone and in bronze, which are not broken at the extremity as though they belonged to a statue, but are polished on all sides and cut in such a manner as to admit of being suspended, were found among the ruins; they were votive offerings. Italy, in becoming Catholic, has retained these Pagan customs. Besides her supreme God, she worships a host of demi-gods, to whom she dedicates her towns and consecrates her temples, where garlands of ex-voto offerings testify to the intercession of the priests and the gratitude of the true believers.

On the two sides of the temple of Jupiter--such is the generally-accepted name--rise arcades, as I have already remarked. The one on the left is a vaulted entrance, which, being too low and standing too far forward, does not correspond with the other and deranges, one cannot exactly make out why, the symmetry of this part of the Forum. The other arcade is evidently a triumphal portal. Nothing remains of it now but the body of the work in brick, some niches and traces of pilasters; but it is easy to replace the marbles and the statues which must have adorned this monument in rather poor taste. Such was the extremity of the Forum.

Four considerable edifices follow each other on the eastern side of this public square. These are, going from south to north, the palace of Eumachia, the temple of Mercury, the Senate Chamber, and the Pantheon.

What is the Eumachia palace? An inscription found at that place reads: "Eumachia, in her name and in the name of her son, has erected to Concord and to august Piety, a Chalcidicum, a crypt and porticoes."

What is a Chalcidicum? Long and grave have been the discussions on this subject among the savans. They have agreed, however, on one point, that it should be a species of structure invented at Chalcis, a city of Eubea.

However that may be, this much-despoiled palace presents a vast open gallery, which was, certainly, the portico mentioned above. Around the portico ran a closed gallery along three sides, and that must have been the crypt. Upon the fourth side--that is to say, before the entry that fronts the Forum--stood forth a sort of porch, a large exterior vestibule: that was probably the Chalcidicum.

The edifice is curious. Behind the vestibule are two walls, not parallel, one of which follows the alignment of the Forum, and the other that of the interior portico. The space between this double wall is utilized and some shops hide themselves in its recesses. Thus the irregularity of the plan is not merely corrected--it is turned to useful account. The ancients were shrewd fellows. This portico rested on fifty-eight columns, surrounding a court-yard. In the court-yard, a large movable stone, in good preservation, with the ring that served to lift it, covered a cistern. At the extremity of the portico, in a hemicycle, stood a headless statue--perhaps the Piety or Concord to which the entire edifice was dedicated. Behind the hemicycle a sort of square niche buried itself in the wall between two doors, one of which, painted on the wall for the sake of symmetry, is a useful and curious document. It is separated into three long and narrow panels and is provided with a ring that should have served to move it. Doors are nowhere to be seen now in Pompeii, because they were of wood, and consequently were consumed by the fire; hence, this painted representation has filled the savants with delight; they now know that the ancients shut themselves in at home by processes exactly like our own.