The Wonders of Pompeii Part 3

Besides these fountains, placards and posters enlivened the streets; the walls were covered with them, and, in sundry places, whitewashed patches of masonry served for the announcements so lavishly made public. These panels, dedicated entirely to the poster business, were called _alb.u.ms_.

Anybody and everybody had the right to paint thereon in delicate and slender red letters all the advertis.e.m.e.nts which now-a-days we print on the last, and even on many other pages of our newspapers. Nothing is more curious than these inscriptions, which disclose to us all the subjects engaging the attention of the little city; not only its excitements, but its language, ancient and modern, collegiate and common--the Oscan, the Greek, the Latin, and the local dialect. Were we learned, or anxious to appear so, we could, with the works of the really erudite (Fiorelli, Garrucci, Mommsen, etc.), to help us, have compiled a chapter of absolutely appalling science in reference to the epigraphic monuments of Pompeii. We could demonstrate by what gradations the Oscan language--that of the Pompeian autonomy--yielded little by little to the Roman language, which was that of the unity of the state; and to what extent Pompeii, which never was a Greek city, employed the sacred idiom of the divine Plato. We might even add some observations relative to the accent and the dialect of the Pompeians, who p.r.o.nounced Latin as the Neapolitans p.r.o.nounce Tuscan and with singularly a.n.a.logous alterations.

But what you are looking for here, hurried reader, is not erudition, but living movement. Choose then, in these inscriptions, those that teach us something relative to the manners and customs of this dead people--dead and buried, but afterward exhumed.

The most of these announcements are but the proclamations of candidates for office. Pompeii was evidently swallowed up at the period of the elections. Sometimes it is an elector, sometimes a group of citizens, then again a corporation of artisans or tradesmen, who are recommending for the office of aedile or duumvir the candidate whom they prefer. Thus, Paratus nominates Pansa, Philippus prefers Caius Aprasius Felix; Valentinus, with his pupils, chooses Sabinus and Rufus. Sometimes the elector is in a hurry; he asks to have his candidate elected quickly.

The fruiterers, the public porters, the muleteers, the salt-makers, the carpenters, the truckmen, also unite to push forward the aedile who has their confidence. Frequently, in order to give more weight to its vote, the corporation declares itself unanimous. Thus, all the goldsmiths preferred a certain Photinus--a fishmonger, thinks Overbeck--for aedile.

Let us not forget _the sleepers_, who declare for Vatia. By the way, who were these friends of sleep? Perhaps they were citizens who disliked noise; perhaps, too, some a.s.sociation of nocturnal revellers thus disguised under an ironical and rea.s.suring t.i.tle. Sometimes the candidate is recommended by a eulogistic epithet indicated by seals, a style of abbreviation much in use among the ancients. The person recommended is always a good man, a man of probity, an excellent citizen, a very moral individual. Sometimes positive wonders are promised on his behalf. Thus, after having designated Julius Polybius for the aediles.h.i.+p, an elector announces that he will bring in good bread. Electoral intrigue went still further. _We_ are pretty well on in that respect, but I think that the ancients were our masters. I read the following bare-faced avowal on a wall: _Sabinum aedilem, Procule, fac et ille te faciet_. (Make Sabinus aedile, O Proculus, and he may make thee such!) Frank and cool that, it strikes me!

But enough of elections; there is no lack of announcements of another character. Some of these give us the programme of the shows in the amphitheatre; such-and-such a troop of gladiators will fight on such a day; there will be hunting matches and awnings, as well as sprinklings of perfumed waters to refresh the mult.i.tude (_venatio, vela, sparsiones_). Thirty couples of gladiators will ensanguine the arena.

There were, likewise, posters announcing apartments to let.

Some of these inscriptions, either scratched or painted, were witticisms or exclamations from facetious pa.s.sers-by. One ran thus: "Oppius the porter is a robber, a rogue!" Sometimes there were amorous declarations: "Augea loves Arabienus." Upon a wall in the Street of Mercury, an ivy leaf, forming a heart, contained the gentle name of Psyche. Elsewhere a wag, parodying the style of monumental inscriptions, had announced that under the consulate of L. Monius Asprenas and A. Plotius, there was born to him the foal of an a.s.s. "A wine jar has been lost and he who brings it back shall have such a reward from Varius; but he who will bring the thief shall have twice as much."

Again, still other inscriptions were notifications to the public in reference to the cleanliness of the streets, and recalling in terms still more precise the "Commit no Nuisance" put up on the corners of some of our streets with similar intent. On more than one wall at Pompeii the figures of serpents, very well painted, sufficed to prevent any impropriety, for the serpent was a sacred symbol in ancient Rome--strange mingling of religion in the pettiest details of common life! Only a very few years ago, the Neapolitans still followed the example of their ancestors; they protected the outside walls of their dwellings with symbolical paintings, rudely tracing, not serpents, but crosses on them.

[Footnote C: These olives which, when found, were still soft and pasty, had a rancid smell and a greasy but pungent flavor. The kernels were less elongated and more bulging than those of the Neapolitan olives; were very hard and still contained some shreds of their pith. In a word, they were perfectly preserved, and although eighteen centuries old, as they were, you would have thought they had been plucked but a few months before.]

IV.

THE SUBURBS.

THE CUSTOM HOUSE.--THE FORTIFICATIONS AND THE GATES.--THE ROMAN HIGHWAYS.--THE CEMETERY OF POMPEII.--FUNERALS: THE PROCESSION, THE FUNERAL PYRE, THE DAY OF THE DEAD.--THE TOMBS AND THEIR INSCRIPTIONS.--PERPETUAL LEASES.--BURIAL OF THE RICH, OF ANIMALS, AND OF THE POOR.--THE VILLAS OF DIOMED AND CICERO.

"Ce qu'on trouve aux abords d'une grande cite, Ce sont des abattoirs, des murs, des cimitieres: C'est ainsi qu'en entrant dans la societe On trouve ses egouts."

Alfred de Musset would have depicted the suburban quarters of Pompeii exactly in these lines, had he added to his enumeration the wine-shops and the custom-house. The latter establishment was not omitted by the ancients, and could not be forgotten in our diminutive but highly commercial city. Thus, the place has been discovered where the collector awaited the pa.s.sage of the vehicles that came in from the country and the neighboring villages. Absolutely nothing else remains to be seen in this s.p.a.cious mosaic-paved hall. Scales, steelyards, and a quant.i.ty of stone or metal weights were found there, marked with inscriptions sometimes quite curious; such, for example, as the following: _Eme et habbebis_, with a _b_ too many, a redundancy very frequent in the Naples dialect. This is equivalent, in English, to: Buy and you will have. One of the sets of scales bears an inscription stating that it had been verified or authorized at the Capitol under such consuls and such emperors--the hand of Rome!

Besides the custom-house, this approach to the city contained abundance of stables, coach-houses, taverns, bath-houses, low drinking-shops, and other disreputable concerns. Even the dwellings in the same quarter have a suspicious look. You follow a long street and you have before you the gate of Herculaneum and the walls.

These walls are visible; they still hold firm. Unquestionably, they could not resist our modern cannon, for if the ancients built better than we do, we destroy better than they did; this is one thing that must in justice be conceded to us. Nevertheless, we cannot but admire those ma.s.ses of _peperino_, the points of which ascend obliquely and hold together without mortar. Originally as ancient as the city, these ramparts were destroyed to some extent by Sylla and repaired in _opus incertum_, that is to say, in small stones of every shape and of various dimensions, fitted to one another without order or regularity in the layers, as though they had been put in just as they came. The old structure dated probably from the time of Pompeian autonomy--the Oscans had a hand in them. The surrounding wall, at the foot of which there were no ditches, would have formed an oval line of nearly two miles had it not been interrupted, on the side of the mountains and the sea, between the ports of Stabiae and of Herculaneum. These ramparts consisted of two walls--the scarp and counterscarp,--between which ran a terraced platform; the exterior wall, slightly sloping, was defended by embrasures between which the archer could place himself in safety, in an angle of the stonework, so soon as he had shot his arrow. The interior wall was also crested with battlements. The curvilinear rampart did not present projecting angles, the salients of which, Vitruvius tells us, could not resist the repeated blows of the siege machinery of those days. It was intersected by nine towers, of three vaulted stories each, at unequal distances, accordingly as the nature of the ground demanded greater or less means of defence, was pierced with loopholes and was not very solid. Vitruvius would have had them rounded and of cut stone; those of Pompeii are of quarried stone, and in small rough ashlars, stuck together with mortar. The third story of each tower reached to the platform of the rampart, with which it communicated by two doors.

Notwithstanding all that remains of them, the walls of Pompeii were no longer of service at the time of the eruption. Demolished by Sylla and then by Augustus, shattered by the earthquake, and interrupted as I have said, they left the city open. They must have served for a public promenade, like the bastions of Geneva.

Eight gates opened around the city (perhaps there was a ninth that has now disappeared, opening out upon the sea). The most singular of all of them is the Nola gate, the construction of which appears to be very ancient. We there come across those fine cut stones that reveal the handiwork of primitive times. A head considerably broken and defaced, surmounting the arcade, was accompanied with an Oscan inscription, which, having been badly read by a savant, led for an instant to the belief that the Campanians of the sixth century before Jesus Christ wors.h.i.+pped the Egyptian Isis. The learned interpreter had read: _Isis propheta_ (I translate it into Latin, supposing you to know as little as I do of the Oscan tongue). The inscription really ran, _idem probavit_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Nola Gate at Pompeii.]

It is worth while pa.s.sing through the gate to get a look at the angle formed by the ramparts at this one point. I doubt whether the city was ever attacked on that side. Before reaching the gate the a.s.sailants would have had to wind along through a narrow gallery, where the archers, posted on the walls and armed with arrows and stones, would have crushed them all.

The Herculaneum gate is less ancient, and yet more devastated by time than the former one. The arcade has fallen in, and it requires some attention to reinstate it. This gate formed three entrances. The two side ways were probably intended for pedestrians; the one in the middle was closed by means of a portcullis sliding in a groove, still visible, but covered with stucco. As the portcullis, in descending, would have, thrown down this coating, we must infer that at the time of the eruption it had not been in use for a long while, Pompeii having ceased to be a fortified place.

The Herculaneum gate was not masked inside, so that the archers, standing upon the terraces that covered the side entrances, could fire upon the enemy even after the portcullis had been carried. We know that one of the stratagems of the besieged consisted in allowing the enemy to push in, and then suddenly shutting down upon them the formidable _cataracta_ suspended by iron chains. They then slaughtered the poor wretches indiscriminately and covered themselves with glory.

Having pa.s.sed the gate, we find ourselves on one of those fine paved roads which, starting at Rome in all directions, have everywhere left very visible traces, and in many places still serve for traffic. The Greeks had gracefulness, the Romans grandeur. Nothing shows this more strikingly than their magnificent highways that pierce mountains, fill up ravines, level the plains, cross the marshes, bestride rivers, and even valleys, and stretched thus from the Tiber to the Euphrates. In order to construct them, they first traced two parallel furrows, from between which they removed all the loose earth, which they replaced with selected materials, strongly packed, pressed, and pounded down. Upon this foundation (the _pavimentum_) was placed a layer of rough stone (_statumen_), then a filling-in of gravel and lime (the _rudus_), and, finally, a third bed of chalk, brick, lime, clay, and sand, kneaded and pounded in together into a solid crust. This was the nucleus. Last of all, they placed above it those large rough blocks of lava which you will find everywhere in the environs of Naples. As before remarked, these roads have served for twenty centuries, and they are good yet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Herculaneum Gate, restored.]

The Herculaneum road formed a delightful promenade at the gates of Pompeii; a street lined with trees and villas, like the Champs Elysees at Paris, and descending from the city to the country between two rows of jaunty monuments prettily-adorned, niches, kiosks, and gay pavilions, from which the view was admirable. This promenade was the cemetery of Pompeii. But let not this intimation trouble you, for nothing was less mournful in ancient times than a cemetery. The ancients were not fond of death; they even avoided p.r.o.nouncing its name, and resorted to all sorts of subterfuges to avoid the doleful word. They spoke of the deceased as "those who had been," or "those who are gone." Very demonstrative, at the first moment they would utter loud lamentations. Their sorrow thus vented its first paroxysms. But the first explosion over, there remained none of that clinging melancholy or serious impression that continues in our Christian countries. The natives of the south are epicureans in their religious belief, as in their habits of life. Their cemeteries were s.p.a.cious avenues, and children played jackstones on the tombs.

Would you like to hear a few details in reference to the interments of the ancients. "The usage was this," says Claude Guichard, a doctor at law, in his book concerning funereal rites, printed at Lyons, in 1581, by Jean de Tournes: "When the sick person was in extreme danger, his relatives came to see him, seated themselves on his bed, and kept him company until the death-rattle came on and his features began to a.s.sume the dying look. Then the nearest relative among them, all in tears, approached the patient and embraced him closely, breast against breast and face against face, so as to receive his soul, and mouth to mouth, catching his last breath; which done, he pressed together the lips and eyes of the dead man, arranging them decently, so that the persons present might not see the eyes of the deceased open, for, according to their customs, it was not allowable to the living to see the eyes of the dead.... Then the room was opened on all sides, and they allowed all persons belonging to the family and neighborhood, to come in, who chose.

Then, three or four of them began to bewail the deceased and call to him repeatedly, and, perceiving that he did not reply one word, they went out and told of the death. Then the near relatives went to the bedside to give the last kiss to the deceased, and handed him over to the chambermaids of the house, if he was a person of the lower cla.s.s. If he was one of the eminent men and heads of families, he committed him to the care of people authorized to perform this office, to wash, anoint, and dress him, in accordance with the custom and what was requisite in view of the quality, greatness, and rank of the personage."

Now there were at Rome several ministers, public servitors, and officials, who had charge of all that appertained to funerals, such as the _libitinarii_, the _designatores_, and the like. All of which was wisely inst.i.tuted by Numa Pompilius, as much to teach the Romans not to hold things relating to the dead in horror, or fly from them as contaminating to the person, as in order to fix in their memory that all that has had a beginning in birth must in like manner terminate in death, birth and death both being under the control and power of one and the same deity; for they deemed that Libitina was the same as Venus, the G.o.ddess of procreation. Then, again, the said officers had under their orders different cla.s.ses of serfs whom they called, in their language, the _pollinctores_, the _sandapilarii_, the _ustores_, the _cadaverum custodes_, intrusted with the care of anointing the dead, carrying them to the place of sepulture, burning them, and watching them. "After _pollinctores_ had carefully washed, anointed, and embalmed the body, according to the custom regarding it and the expense allowed, they wrapped it in a white linen cloth, after the manner of the Egyptians, and in this array placed it upon a bed handsomely prepared as though for the most distinguished member of the household, and then raised in front of the latter a small dresser shaped like an altar, upon which they placed the usual odors and incense, to burn along with tapers and lighted candles.... Then, if the deceased was a person of note, they kept the body thus arranged for the s.p.a.ce of seven consecutive days, inside the house, and, during that time, the near relatives, dressed in certain long robes or very loose and roomy mantles called _ricinia_, along with the chambermaids and other women taken thither to weep, never ceased to lament and bewail, renewing their distress every time any notable personage entered the room; and they thought that all this while the deceased remained on earth, that is to say, kept for a few days longer at the house, while they were hastening their preparations for the pomp and magnificence of his funeral. On the eighth day, so as to a.s.semble the relatives, a.s.sociates, and friends of the defunct the more easily, inform the public and call together all who wished to be present, the procession, which they called _exequiae_, was cried aloud and proclaimed with the sound of the trumpet on all the squares and chief places of the city by the crier of the dead, in the following form: 'Such a citizen has departed from this life, and let all who wish to be present at his obsequies know that it is time; he is now to be carried from his dwelling.'"

Let us step aside now, for here comes a funeral procession. Who is the deceased? Probably a consular personage, a duumvir, since lictors lead the line. Behind them come the flute-players, the mimes and mountebanks, the trumpeters, the tambourine-players, and the weepers (_praefiicae_), paid for uttering cries, tearing their hair, singing notes of lamentation, extolling the dead man, mimicking despair, "and teaching the chambermaids how to best express their grief, since the funeral must not pa.s.s without weeping and wailing." All this makes up a melancholy but burlesque din, which attracts the crowd and swells the procession, to the great honor of the defunct. Afterward come the magistrates, the decurions in mourning robes, the bier ornamented with ivory. The duumvir Lucius Labeo (he is the person whom they are burying) is "laid out at full length, and dressed in white shrouds and rich coverings of purple, his head raised slightly and surrounded with a handsome coronet, if he merit it." Among the slaves who carry the bier walks a man whose head is covered with white wool, "or with a cap, in sign of liberty."

That is the freedman Menomachus, who has grown rich, and who is conducting the mourning for his master. Then come unoccupied beds, "couches fitted up with the same draperies as that on which reposes the body of the defunct" (it is written that Sylla had six thousand of these at his funeral), then the long line of wax images of ancestors (thus the dead of old interred the newly dead), then the relatives, clad in mourning, the friends, citizens, and townsfolk generally in crowds. The throng is all the greater when the deceased is the more honored. Lastly, other trumpeters, and other pantomimists and tumblers, dancing, grimacing, gambolling, and mimicking the duumvir whom they are helping to bury, close the procession. This interminable mult.i.tude pa.s.ses out into the Street of Tombs by the Herculaneum gate.

The _ustrinum_, or room in which they are going to burn the body, is open. You are acquainted with this Roman custom. According to some, it was a means of hastening the extrication of the soul from the body and its liberation from the bonds of matter, or its fusion in the great totality of things; according to others, it was but a measure in behalf of public health. However that may be, dead bodies might be either buried or burned, provided the deposit of the corpse or the ashes were made outside of the city. A part of the procession enters the _ustrinum_. Then they are going to burn the duumvir Lucius Labeo.

The funeral pyre is made of firs, vine branches, and other wood that burns easily. The near relatives and the freedman take the bier and place it conveniently on the pile, and then the man who closes the eyes of the dead opens them again, making the defunct look up toward the sky, and gives him the last kiss. Then they cover the pile with perfumes and essences, and collect about it all the articles of furniture, garments, and precious objects that they want to burn. The trumpets sound, and the freedman, taking a torch and turning away his eyes, sets fire to the framework. Then commence the sacrifices to the manes, the formalities, the pantomimic action, the howlings of the mourners, the combats of the gladiators "in order to satisfy the ceremony closely observed by them which required that human blood should be shed before the lighted pile;"

this was done so effectually that when there were no gladiators the women "tore each other's hair, scratched their eyes and their cheeks with their nails, _heartily_, until the blood came, thinking in this manner to appease and propitiate the infernal deities, whom they suppose to be angered against the soul of the defunct, so as to treat it roughly, were this doleful ceremony omitted and disdained."... The body burned, the mother, wife, or other near relative of the dead, wrapped and clad in a black garment, got ready to gather up the relics--that is to say, the bones which remained and had not been totally consumed by the fire; and, before doing anything, invoked the deity manes, and the soul of the dead man, beseeching him to take this devotion in good part, and not to think ill of this service. Then, after having washed her hands well, and having extinguished the fire in the brazier with wine or with milk, she began to pick out the bones among the ashes and to gather them into her bosom or the folds of her robe. The children also gathered them, and so did the heirs; and we find that the priests who were present at the obsequies could help in this. But if it was some very great lord, the most eminent magistrates of the city, all in silk, ungirdled and barefooted, and their hands washed, as we have said, performed this office themselves. Then they put these relics in urns of earthenware, or gla.s.s, or stone, or metal; they besprinkled them with oil or other liquid extracts; they threw into the urn, sometimes, a piece of coin, which sundry antiquaries have thought was the obolus of Charon, forgetting that the body, being burned, no longer had a hand to hold it out; and, finally, the urn was placed in a niche or on a bench arranged in the interior of the tomb. On the ninth day, the family came back to banquet near the defunct, and thrice bade him adieu: _Vale!

Vale! Vale!_ then adding, "May the earth rest lightly on thee!"

Hereupon, the next care was the monument. That of the duumvir Labeo, which is very ugly, in _opus incertum_, covered with stucco and adorned with bas-reliefs and portraits of doubtful taste, was built at the expense of his freedman, Menomachus. The ceremony completed and vanity satisfied, the dead was forgotten; there was no more thought, excepting for the _ferales_ and _lemurales_, celebrations now retained by the Catholics, who still make a trip to the cemetery on the Day of the Dead.

The Street of the Tombs, saddened for a moment, resumed its look of unconcern and gaiety, and children once more played about among the sepulchres.

There are monuments of all kinds in this suburban avenue of Pompeii.

Many of them are simple pillars in the form of Hermes-heads. There is one in quite good preservation that was closed with a marble door; the interior, pierced with one window, still had in a niche an alabaster vase containing some bones. Another, upon a plat of ground donated by the city, was erected by a priestess of Ceres to her husband, H. Alleius Luceius Sibella, aedile, duumvir, and five years' prefect, and to her son, a decurion of Pompeii, deceased at the age of seventeen. A decurion at seventeen!--there was a youth who made his way rapidly. Cicero said that it was easier to be a Senator at Rome than a decurion at Pompeii.

The tomb is handsome--very elegant, indeed--but it contained neither urns, nor sarcophagi; it probably was not a place of burial, but a simple cenotaph, an honorary monument.

The same may be said of the handsomest mausoleum on the street, that of the augustal Calventius: a marble altar gracefully decorated with arabesques and reliefs (dipus meditating, Theseus reposing, and a young girl lighting a funeral pile). Upon the tomb are still carved the insignia of honor belonging to Calventius, the oaken crowns, the _bisellium_ (a bench with seats for two), the stool, and the three letters O.C.S. (_ob civum servatum_), indicating that to the ill.u.s.trious dead was due the safety of a citizen of Rome. The Street of the Tombs, it will be seen, was a sort of Pantheon. An inscription discovered there and often repeated (that which, under Charles III., was the first that revealed the existence of Pompeii), informs us that, upon the order of Vespasian, the tribune Suedius Clemens had yielded to the commune of Pompeii the places occupied by the private individuals, which meant that the notables only, authorized by the decurions, had the right to sleep their last slumber in this triumphal avenue, while the others had to be dispossessed. Still the hand of Rome!

Another monument--the one attributed to Scaurus--was very curious, owing to the gladiatorial scenes carved on it, and which, according to custom, represented real combats. Each figure was surmounted with an inscription indicating the name of the gladiator and the number of his victories. We know, already, that these sanguinary games formed part of the funeral ceremonies. The heirs of the deceased made the show for the gratification of the populace, either around the tombs or in the amphitheatre, whither we shall go at the close of our stroll, and where we shall describe the carvings on the pretended monument of Scaurus.

The tomb of Nevoleia Tyche, much too highly decorated, encrusted with arabesques and reliefs representing the portrait of that lady, a sacrifice, a s.h.i.+p (a symbol of life, say the sentimental antiquaries), is covered with a curious inscription, which I translate literally.

"Nevoleia Tyche, freedwoman of Julia, for herself and for Caius Munatius Faustus, knight and mayor of the suburb, to whom the decurions, with the consent of the people, had awarded the honor of the _bisellium_. This monument has been offered during her lifetime by Nevoleia Tyche to her freedmen and to those of C. Munatius Faustus."

a.s.suredly, after reading this inscription, we cannot reproach the fair Pompeians with concealing their affections from the public. Nevoleia certainly was not the wife of Munatius; nevertheless, she loved him well, since she made a trysting with him even in the tomb. It was Queen Caroline Murat who, accompanied by Canova, was the first to penetrate to the inside of this dovecote (January 14, 1813). There were opened in her presence several gla.s.s urns with leaden cases, on the bottom of which still floated some ashes in a liquid not yet dried up, a mixture of water, wine, and oil. Other urns contained only some bones and the small coin which has been taken for Charon's obolus.

I have many other tombs left to mention. There are three, which are sarcophagi, still complete, never open, and proving that the ancients buried their dead even before Christianity prohibited the use of the funeral pyre. Families had their choice between the two systems, and burned neither men who had been struck by lightning (they thought the bodies of such to be incorruptible), nor new-born infants who had not yet cut their teeth. Thus it was that the remains of Diomed's youngest children could not be found, while those of the elder ones were preserved in a gla.s.s urn contained in a vase of lead.

A tomb that looks like a sentry-box, and stands as though on duty in front of the Herculaneum gate, had, during the eruption, been the refuge of a soldier, whose skeleton was found in it. Another strangely-decorated monument forms a covered hemicycle turned toward the south, fronting the sea, as though to offer a shelter for the fatigued and heated pa.s.sers-by. Another, of rounded shape, presents inside a vault bestrewn with small flowers and decorated with bas-reliefs, one of which represents a female laying a fillet on the bones of her child.

Other monuments are adorned with garlands. One of the least curious contained the magnificent blue and white gla.s.s vase, of which I shall have to speak further on. That of the priestess Mamia, ornamented with a superb inscription, forms a large circular bench terminating in a lion's claw. Visitors are fond of resting there to look out upon the landscape and the sea. Let us not forget the funereal triclinium, a simply-decorated dining-hall, where still are seen three beds of masonry, used at the banquets given in honor of the dead. These feasts, at which nothing was eaten but sh.e.l.l-fish (poor fare, remarks Juvenal), were celebrated nine days after the death. Hence came their t.i.tle, _novendialia_. They were also called _silicernia_; and the guests conversed at them about the exploits and benevolent deeds of the man who had ceased to live. Polybius boasts greatly of these last honors paid to ill.u.s.trious citizens. Thence it was, he says, that Roman greatness took its rise.

In fact, even at Pompeii, in this humble _campo santo_ of the little city, we see at every step virtue rewarded after death by some munificent act of the decurions. Sometimes it is a perpetual grant (a favor difficult to obtain), indicated by the following letters: H.M.H.N.S. (_hoc monumentum haeredes non sequitur_), insuring to them the perpetual possession of their sepulchre, which could not be disposed of by their heirs. Sometimes the s.p.a.ce conceded was indicated upon the tomb. For instance, we read in the sepulchre of the family of Nistacidius: "A. Nistacidius Helenus, mayor of the suburb Augusto-Felix.

To Nistacidius Januarius and to Mesionia Satulla. Fifteen feet in depth, fifteen feet in frontage."

This bench of the priestess Mamia and that of Aulus Vetius (a military tribune and duumvir dispensing justice) were in like manner constructed, with the consent of the people, upon the lands conceded by the decurions. In fine--and this is the most singular feature--animals had their monuments. This, at least, is what the guides will tell you, as they point out a large tomb in a street of the suburbs. They call it the _sepolcro dei bestiani_, because the skeletons of bulls were found in it. The antiquaries rebel against this opinion. Some, upon the strength of the carved masks, affirm that it was a burial place for actors; others, observing that the inclosure walls shut in quite a s.p.a.cious temple, intimate that it was a cemetery for priests. For my part, I have nothing to offer against the opinion of the guides. The Egyptians, whose G.o.ds Rome adopted, interred the bull Apis magnificently. Animals might, therefore, find burial in the n.o.ble suburb of Pompeii. As for the lower cla.s.ses, they slept their final sleep where they could; perhaps in the common burial pit (_commune sepulcrum_), an ancient barbarism that has been kept up until our times; perhaps in those public burial ranges where one could purchase a simple niche (_olla_) for his urn. These niches were sometimes humble and touching presents interchanged by poor people.

And in this street, where death is so gay, so vain, so richly adorned, where the monuments arose amid the foliage of trees perennially green, which they had endeavored, but without success, to render serious and sombre, where the mausolea are pavilions and dining-rooms, in which the inscriptions recall whole narratives of life and even love affairs, there stood s.p.a.cious inns and sumptuous villas--for instance, those of Arrius Diomed and Cicero. This Arrius Diomed was one of the freedmen of Julia, and the mayor of the suburb. A rich citizen, but with a bad heart, he left his wife and children to perish in his cellar, and fled alone with one slave only, and all the silver that he could carry away.

He perished in front of his garden gate. May the earth press heavily upon him!

His villa, which consisted of three stories, not placed one above the other, but descending in terraces from the top of the hill, deserves a visit or two. You will there see a pretty court surrounded with columns and small rooms, one of which--of an elliptical shape and opening on a garden, and lighted by the evening twilight, but s.h.i.+elded from the sun by windows and by curtains, the gla.s.s panes and rings of which have been found--is the pleasantest nook cleared out among these ruins. You will also be shown the baths, the saloons, the bedchambers, the garden, a host of small apartments brilliantly decorated, basins of marble, and the cellar still intact, with amphorae, inside of which were still a few drops of wine not yet dried up, the place where lay the poor suffocated family--seventeen skeletons surprised there together by death. The fine ashes that stifled them having hardened with time, retain the print of a young girl's bosom. It was this strange mould, which is now kept at the museum, that inspired the _Arria Marcella_ of Theophile Gautier--that author's masterpiece, perhaps, but at all events a masterpiece.