Chapter XXV: Naples.--Pompeii and Paestum

NAPLES, October 23d.

"See Naples and die!" is an old Italian proverb, which, it must be confessed, is putting it rather strongly, but which still expresses, with pardonable exaggeration, the popular sense of the surpassing beauty of this city and its environs. Florence, lying in the valley of the Arno, as seen from the top of Fiesole, is a vision of beauty; but here, instead of a river flowing between narrow banks, there opens before us a bay that is like a sea, alive with ships, with beautiful islands, and in the background Vesuvius, with its column of smoke ever rising against the sky. The bay of Naples is said to be the most beautiful in the world; at least its only rival is in another hemisphere--in the bay of Rio Janeiro. It must be fifty miles in circuit (it is nineteen miles across from Naples to Sorrento), and the whole shore is dotted with villages, so that when lighted up at night, it seems girdled with watch fires.

And around this broad-armed bay (as at Nice and other points along the Mediterranean), Summer lingers after she has left the north of Italy. Not only vineyards and olive groves cover the southern slopes, but palm trees grow in the open air. Here the old Romans loved to come and sun themselves in this soft atmosphere. On yonder island of Capri are still seen the ruins of a palace of Tiberius; Cicero had a villa at Pompeii; and Virgil, though born at Mantua, wished to rest in death upon these milder shores, and here, at the entrance of the grotto of Posilippo, they still point out his tomb.

In its interior Naples is a great contrast to Rome. It is not only larger (indeed, it is much the largest city in Italy, having half a million of inhabitants), but brighter and gayer. Rome is dark and sombre, always reminding one of the long-buried past; Naples seems to live only in the present, without a thought either of the past or of the future. A friend who came here a day or two before us, expressed the contrast between the two cities by saying energetically, "Naples is life: Rome is death!" Indeed, we have here a spectacle of extraordinary animation. I have seen somewhere a series of pictures of "Street Scenes in Naples," and surely no city in Europe offers a greater variety of figures and costumes, as rich and poor, princes and beggars, soldiers and priests, jostle each other in the noisy, laughing crowd.

Even the poorest of the people have something picturesque in their poverty. The lazzaroni of Naples are well known. They are the lowest class of the population, such as may be found in all large cities, and which is generally the most disgusting and repulsive. But here, owing to the warm climate, they can live out of doors, and thus the rags and dirt, which elsewhere are hidden in garrets and cellars, are paraded in the streets, making them like a Rag Fair. One may see a host of young beggars--little imps, worthy sons of their fathers--lying on the sidewalk, asleep in the sun, or coolly picking the vermin from their bodies, or showing their dexterity in holding aloft a string of macaroni, and letting it descend into their mouths, and then running after the carriage for a penny.

The streets are very narrow, very crowded, and very noisy. From morning to night they are filled with people, and resound with the cries of market-men and women, who make a perfect Bedlam. Little donkeys, which seem to be the universal carryalls, come along laden with fruit, grapes and vegetables. The loads put on these poor beasts are quite astonishing. Though not much bigger than Newfoundland dogs, each one has two huge panniers hung at his sides, which are filled with all sorts of produce which the peasants are bringing to market. Often the poor little creature is so covered up that he is hardly visible under his load, and might not be discovered, but that the heap seems to be in motion, and a pair of long ears is seen to project through the superincumbent mass, and an occasional bray from beneath sounds like a cry for pity.

The riding carts of the laboring people also have a power of indefinite multiplication of the contents they carry. I thought that an Irish jaunting-car would hold about as many human creatures as anything that went on wheels, but it is quite surpassed by the country carts one sees around Naples, in which a mere rat of a donkey scuds along before an indescribable vehicle, on which half a dozen men are stuck like so many pegs (of course they stand, for there is not room for them to sit), with women also, and a baby or two, and a fat priest in the bargain, and two or three urchins dangling behind! Sometimes, for convenience, babies and vegetables are packed in the same basket, and swung below!

With such variety in the streets, one need not go out of the city for constant entertainment. And yet the charm of Naples is in its environs, and one who should spend a month or two here, might make constant excursions to points along the bay, which are attractive alike by their natural beauty and their historical interest. He may follow the shore from Ischia clear around to Capri, and enjoy a succession of beautiful points, as the shore-line curves in and out, now running into some sheltered nook, where the olive groves grow thick in the southern sun, and then coming to a headland that juts out into the sea. Few things can be more enchanting than such a ride along the bay to Baiae on one side or from Castellamare to Sorrento and Amalfi, on the other.

Our first visit was to POMPEII, so interesting by its melancholy fate, and by the revelations of ancient life in its recent excavations. It was destroyed in an eruption of Vesuvius in the reign of Titus, in the year 79, and so completely was it buried that for seventeen hundred years its very site was not known. It was only about the middle of the last century that it was discovered, and not till within a few years that excavations were prosecuted with much vigor. Now the city is uncovered, the roofs are taken off from the houses, and we can look down into the very homes of the people, and see the interior of their dwellings, and all the details of their domestic life.

We spent four or five hours in exploring this buried city, going with a guide from street to street, and from house to house. How strange it seemed to walk over the very pavements that were laid there before our Saviour was born, the stones still showing the ruts worn by the wheels of Roman chariots two thousand years ago!

We examined many houses in detail, and found them, while differing in costliness (some of them, such as those of Diomed and Sallust and Polybius, being dwellings of the rich), resembling each other in their general arrangement. All seemed to be built on an Oriental model, designed for a hot climate, with a court in the centre, where often a fountain filled the air with delicious coolness, and lulled to rest those who sought in the rooms which opened on the court a retreat from the heat of the summer noon. From this central point of the house, one may go through the different apartments--bedroom, dining-room, and kitchen--and see how the people cooked their food, and where they eat it; where they dined and where they slept; how they lay down and how they rose up. In almost every house there is a niche for the Penates, or household gods, which occupied a place in the dwellings of the old Pompeiians, such as is given by devout Catholics to images of the Virgin and saints, at the present day.

But that which excites the greatest wonder is the decorations of the houses--the paintings on the walls, which in their grace of form and richness of color, are still subjects of admiration, and furnish many a model to architects and decorators. A great number of these have been removed to the Museum at Naples, where artists are continually studying and copying them. In this matter of decorative art, Wendell Phillips may well claim--as he does in his eloquent lecture on "The Lost Arts"--that there are many things in which the ancients, whether Romans, Greeks, or Egyptians, were superior to the boastful moderns.

Something of the luxury of those times is seen in the public baths, which are fitted up with furnaces for heating the water, and pipes for conveying it, and rooms for reclining and cooling one's self after the bath, and other refinements of luxury, which we had vainly conceived belonged only to modern civilization.

From the houses we pass to the shops, and here we find all the signs of active life, as if the work had been interrupted only yesterday. Passing along the street, one sees the merchant's store, the apothecary's shop, and the blacksmith's forge. To be sure, the fire is extinguished, and the utensils which have been discovered have been carried off to the Museum at Naples; but it needs only to light up the coals, and we might hear again the ring on the anvils where the hammer fell, struck by hands that have been dust for centuries. And here is a bakery, with all the implements of the trade: the stone mills standing in their place for grinding the corn (is it not said that "two shall be grinding at the mill; one shall be taken and the other left"?); the vessels for the flour and for water, the trough for kneading the bread, and the oven for baking--long brick ovens they are, just like those in which our New England mothers are wont to bake their Thanksgiving pies. Nay, we have some of the bread that was baked, loaves of which are still preserved, charred and blackened by the fire, and possibly might be eaten, although the bread is decidedly well done.

Of course, the most imposing structures that have been uncovered are the public buildings in the Forum and elsewhere--the basilica for the administration of justice; the theatres for games; and the temples for the worship of the gods.

I was curious as to the probable loss of life in the destruction of the city, and conclude that it was not very great in proportion to the population. We have no means of knowing exactly the number of inhabitants. Murray's Guide Book says 30,000, but a careful measurement shows that not more than 12,000 could have been within the walls, while perhaps as many more were outside of it. As yet there have been discovered not more than six hundred skeletons; so that it is probable that the greater number made their escape.

But even these--though few compared with the whole--are enough to disclose, by their attitudes, the suffering and the agony of their terrible fate. From their postures, it is plain that the inhabitants were seized with mortal terror when destruction came upon them. Many were found with their bodies prone on the earth, who had evidently thrown themselves down, and buried their faces in their hands, as if to hide from their eyes the danger that was in the air. Some tried to escape with their treasures. In one house five skeletons were found, with bracelets and rings of gold, silver, and bronze, lying on the pavement. A woman was found with four rings on one of her fingers, set with precious stones, with gold bracelets and earrings and pieces of money. Perhaps her avarice or her vanity proved her destruction. But the hardest fate was that of those who could not fly, as captives chained in their dungeons. Three skeletons were found in a prison, with the manacles still on their fleshless hands. Even dumb beasts shared in the general catastrophe. The horse that had lost its rider pawed and neighed in vain; and the dog that howled at his master's gate, but would not leave him, shared his fate. The skeletons of both are still preserved.

Altogether, the most vivid account which has been given of the overthrow of the city, is by the English novelist, Bulwer, in his "Last Days of Pompeii." He pictures a great crowd collected for gladiatorial combats. That the people had these cruel sports, is shown by the amphitheatre which remains to this day; and the greatest number of skeletons in any one spot was thirty-six, in a building for the training of gladiators. In the amphitheatre, according to the novelist, the people were assembled when the destruction came. The lion had been let loose, but more sensitive than man to the strange disturbance in the elements, crept round the arena, instead of bounding on his prey, losing his natural ferocity in the sense of terror. Beasts in the dens below filled the air with howls, till the assembly, roused from the eager excitement of the combat, at length looked upward, and in the darkening sky above them read the sign of their approaching doom.

But no high-wrought description can add to the actual terror of that day, as recounted by historians. There are some things which cannot be overdrawn, and even Bulwer does not present to the imagination a greater scene of horror than the plain narrative of the younger Pliny, who was himself a witness of the destruction of Pompeii from the bay, and whose uncle, advancing nearer to get a better view, perished.

A city which has had such a fate, and which, after being buried for so many centuries, is now disentombed, deserves a careful memorial, which shall comprise both an authentic historical account of its overthrow, with a detailed report of the recent discoveries. We are glad, therefore, to meet here a countryman of ours who has taken the matter in hand, and is fully competent for the task. Rev. J. C. Fletcher, who is well known in America as the author of a work on Brazil, which is as entertaining as it is instructive, has been residing two years in Naples, preparing for the Harpers a work on Pompeii, which cannot fail to be of great interest, and to which we look forward as the most valuable account we shall have of this long-buried city.

Another excursion of almost equal interest was to PAESTUM, some fifty miles below Naples, the ruins of which are second only to those of the Parthenon. It is an excursion which requires two days, and which we accordingly divided. We went first to Sorrento, on the southern shore of the bay, one of the most beautiful spots around Naples, a kind of eyrie, or eagle's nest, perched on the cliff, and looking off upon the glittering waters. Here we were joined by a German lady and her daughter, whom we had met before in Florence and in Rome, and who are to be our travelling companions in the East; and who added much to our pleasure as we picnicked the next day in the Temple of Neptune. With our party thus doubled we rode along the shore over that most beautiful drive from Sorrento to Castellamare, and went on to Salerno to pass the night, from which the excursion to Paestum is easily made the next day.

Notwithstanding the great interest of this excursion, it has been made less frequently than it would have been but for the fact that, until quite recently, the road has been infested by brigands, who had an unpleasant habit of starting up by the roadside with blunderbusses in their hands, and assisting you to alight from the carriage, and taking you for an excursion into the mountains, from which a message was sent to your friends in Naples, that on the deposit of a thousand pounds or so at a certain place you would be returned safely. If friends were a little slow in taking this hint, and coming to the rescue, sometimes an ear of the unfortunate captive was cut off and sent to the city as a gentle reminder of what awaited him if the money was not forthcoming immediately. Of course, it did not need many such warnings to squeeze the last drop of blood out of friends, who eagerly drained themselves to save a kinsman, who had fallen into the jaws of the lion, from a horrible fate.

That these were not idle tales told to frighten travellers, we had abundant evidence. Within a very few years there have been repeated adventures of the kind. An English gentleman whom we met at Salerno, who had lived some forty years in this part of Italy, told us that the stories were not at all exaggerated; that one gang of bandits had their headquarters but half a mile from his house, and that when captured they confessed that they had often lain in wait for _him_!

These pleasing reminiscences gave a cheerful zest to the prospect of our journey on the morrow, although at present there is little danger. Since the advent of Victor Emmanuel, brigandage, like a good many other institutions of the old regime, has been got rid of. Our English friend last saw his former neighbors, as he was riding in a carriage, and three of them passed him, going to be shot. Since then the danger has been removed; and still it gives one a little excitement to drive where such incidents were common only a few years ago, and even now it is not at all disagreeable to see soldiers stationed at different points along the road.

Though brigandage has passed away _here_, like many an other relic of the good old times, it still flourishes in Sicily, where all efforts to extirpate it have as yet proved unsuccessful, and where one who is extremely desirous of a little adventure, may find it without going far outside the walls of Palermo.

But we will not stop to waste words on brigands, when we have before us the ruins of Paestum. As we drive over a long, level road, we see in the distance the columns of great temples rising over the plain, not far from the sea. They are perhaps more impressive because standing alone, not in the midst of a populous city like the Parthenon, with Athens at its base, but like Tadmor in the wilderness, solitary and desolate, a wonder and a mystery. Except the custodian of the place there was not a human creature there; nor a sound to be heard save the cawing of crows that flew among the columns, and lighted on the roof. In such silence we approached these vast remains of former ages. The builders of these mighty temples have vanished, and no man knows even their names. It is not certain by whom they were erected. It is supposed by a Greek colony that landed on the shores of Southern Italy, and there founded cities and built temples at least six hundred years before the Christian era. The style of architecture points to a Greek origin. The huge columns, without any base, and with the plain Doric capitals, show the same hands that reared the Parthenon. But whoever they were, there were giants in the earth in those days; and the Cyclopean architecture they have left puts to shame the pigmy constructions of modern times. How small it makes one feel to compare his own few years with these hoary monuments of the past! So men pass away, and their names perish, even though the structures they have builded may survive a few hundred, or a few thousand years. What lessons on the greatness and littleness of man have been read under the shadow of these giant columns. Hither came Augustus, in whose reign Christ was born, to visit ruins that were ancient even in his day. Here, where a Caesar stood two thousand years ago, the traveller from another continent (though not from New Zealand) stands to-day, to muse--at Paestum, as at Pompeii--on the fate which overtakes all human things, and at last whelms man and his works in one undistinguishable ruin.