Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

I have done no more here than merely to sketch the plan of the house. Would you refurnish it? Then, rifle the Naples museum, which has despoiled it. You will find enough of bedsteads, in the collection of bronzes there, for the cubicula; enough of carved benches, tables, stands, and precious vases for the œcus, the exedra, and the wings, and enough of lamps to hang up; enough of candelabra to place in the saloons. Stretch carpets over the costly mosaic pavements and even over the simple _opus signinum_ (a mixture of lime and crushed brick) which covered the floor of the unpretending chambers with a solid incrustation. Above all, replace the ceilings and the roofs, and then the doors and draperies; in fine, revive upon all these walls--the humblest as well as the most splendid--the bright and vivid pictures now effaced. What light, and what a gay impression! How all these clear, bold colors gleam out in the sunshine, which descends in floods from an open sky into the peristyle and the atrium! But that is not all: you must conjure up the dead. Arise, then, and obey our call, O young Pompeians of the first century! I summon Pansa, Paratus, their wives, their children, their slaves; the ostiarius, who kept the door; the _atriensis_, who controlled the atrium; the _scoparius_, armed with his birch-broom; the _cubicularii_, who were the bedroom servants; the _pedagogue_, my colleague, who was a slave like the rest, although he was absolute master of the library, where he alone, perhaps, understood the secrets of the papyri it contained. I hasten to the kitchen: I want to see it as it was in the ancient day,--the _carnarium_, provided with pegs and nails for the fresh provisions, is suspended to the ceiling; the cooking ranges are garnished with chased stew-pans and coppers, and large bronze pails, with luxurious handles, are ranged along on the floor; the walls are covered with shining utensils, long-handled spoons bent in the shape of a swan's neck and head, skillets and frying-pans, the spit and its iron stand, gridirons, pastry-moulds (patty-pans?) fish-moulds (_formella_), and what is no less curious, the _apalare_ and the _trua_, flat spoons pierced with holes either to fry eggs or to beat up liquids, and, in fine, the funnels, the sieves, the strainers, the _colum vinarium_, which they covered with snow and then poured their wine over it, so that the latter dropped freshened and cooled into the cups below,--all rare and precious relics preserved by Vesuvius, and showing in what odd corners elegance nestled, as Moliere would have said, among the Romans of the olden times.

None but men entered this kitchen: they were the cook, or _coquus_, and his subaltern, the slave of the slave, _focarius_. The meal is ready, and now come other slaves assigned to the table,--the _tricliniarches_, or foreman of all the rest; the _lectisterniator_, who makes the beds; the _praegustator_, who tastes the viands beforehand to reassure his master; the _structor_, who arranges the dishes on the plateaux or trays; the _scissor_, who carves the meats; and the young _pocillatro_, or _pincerna_, who pours out the wine into the cups, sometimes dancing as he does so (as represented by Moliere) with the airs and graces of a woman or a spoiled child.

There is festivity to-day: Paratus sups with Pansa, or rather Pansa with Paratus, for I persist in thinking that we are in the house of the elector and not of the future ædile. If the master of the house be a real Roman, like Cicero, he rose early this morning and began the day with receiving visits. He is rich, and therefore has many friends, and has them of three kinds,--the _salutatores_, the _ductores_, and the _assectatores_. The first-named call upon him at his own house; the second accompany him to public meetings; and the third never leave him at all in public. He has, besides, a number of clients, whom he protects and whom he calls "my father" if they be old, and "my brother" if they be young. There are others who come humbly to offer him a little basket (_sportula_), which they carry away full of money or provisions. This morning Paratus has sent off his visitors expeditiously; then, as he is no doubt a pious man, he has gone through his devotions before the domestic altar, where his household gods are ranged. We know that he offered peculiar worship to Bacchus, for he had a little bronze statue of that god, with silver eyes; it was, I think, at the entrance of his garden, in a kettle, wrapped up with other precious articles, Paratus tried to save this treasure on the day of the eruption, but he had to abandon it in order to save himself. But to continue my narration of the day as this Pompeian spent it. His devotions over, he took a turn to the Forum, the Exchange, the Basilica, where he supported the candidature of Pansa. From there, unquestionably, he did not omit going to the Thermæ, a measure of health; and, now, at length, he has just returned to his home. During his absence, his slaves have cleansed the marbles, washed the stucco, covered the pavements with sawdust, and, if it be in winter, have lit fuel oil large bronze braziers in the open air and borne them into the saloons, for there are no chimneys anywhere. The expected guest at length arrives--salutations to Pansa, the future ædile! Meanwhile Sabina, the wife of Paratus, has not remained inactive. She has passed the whole morning at her toilet, for the toilet of a Sabina, Pompeian or Roman, is an affair of state,--see Boettger's book. As she awoke she snapped her fingers to summon her slaves, and the poor girls have hastened to accomplish this prodigious piece of work. First, the applier of cosmetics has effaced the wrinkles from the brows of her mistress, and, then, with her saliva, has prepared her rouge; then, with a needle, she has painted her mistress' eyelashes and eyebrows, forming two well-arched and tufted lines of jetty hue, which unite at the root of the nose. This operation completed, she has washed Sabina's teeth with rosin from Scio, or more simply, with pulverized pumice-stone, and, finally, has overspread her entire countenance with the white powder of lead which was much used by the Romans at that early day.

Then came the _ornatrix_, or hairdresser. The fair Romans dyed their hair blonde, and when the dyeing process was not sufficient, they wore wigs. This example was followed by the artists, who put wigs on their statues; in France they would put on crinoline. Ancient head-dresses were formidable monuments held up with pins of seven or eight inches in length. One of these pins, found at Herculaneum, is surmounted with a Corinthian capital upon which a carved Venus is twisting her hair with both hands while she looks into a mirror that Cupid holds up before her. The mirrors of those ancient days--let us exhaust the subject!--were of polished metal; the richest were composed of a plate of silver applied upon a plate of gold and sustained by a carved handle of wood or ivory; and Seneca exclaimed, in his testy indignation, "The dowry that the Senate once bestowed upon the daughter of Scipio would no longer suffice to pay for the mirror of a freedwoman!"

At length, Sabina's hair is dressed: Heaven grant that she may be pleased with it, and may not, in a fit of rage, plunge one of her long pins into the naked shoulder of the ornatrix! Now comes the slave who cuts her nails, for never would a Roman lady, or a Roman gentleman either, who had any self-respect, have deigned to perform this operation with their own hands. It was to the barber or _tonsor_ that this office was assigned, along with the whole masculine toilet, generally speaking; that worthy shaved you, clipped you, plucked you, even washed you and rubbed your skin; perfumed you with unguents, and curried you with the strigilla if the slaves at the bath had not already done so. Horace makes great sport of an eccentric who used to pare his own nails.

Sabina then abandons her hands to a slave who, armed with a set of small pincers and a penknife (the ancients were unacquainted with scissors), acquitted themselves skilfully of that delicate task--a most grave affair and a tedious operation, as the Roman ladies wore no gloves. Gesticulation was for them a science learnedly termed _chironomy_. Like a skilful instrument, pantomime harmoniously accompanied the voice. Hence, all those striking expressions that we find in authors,--"the subtle devices of the fingers," as Cicero has it; the "loquacious hand" of Petronius. Recall to your memory the beautiful hands of Diana and Minerva, and these two lines of Ovid, which naturally come in here:

"Exiguo signet gestu quodcunque loquetur,
Cui digiti pingues, cui scaber unguis erit."[E]

The nail-paring over, there remains the dressing of the person, to be accomplished by other slaves. The seamstresses (_carcinatrices_) belonged to the least-important class; for that matter, there was little or no sewing to do on the garments of the ancients. Lucretia had been dead for many years, and the matrons of the empire did not waste their time in spinning wool. When Livia wanted to make the garments of Augustus with her own hands, this fancy of the Empress was considered to be in very bad taste. A long retinue of slaves (cutters, linen-dressers, folders, etc.), shared in the work of the feminine toilet, which, after all, was the simplest that had been worn, since the nudity of the earliest days. Over the scarf which they called _trophium_, and which sufficed to hold up their bosoms, the Roman ladies passed a long-sleeved _subucula_, made of fine wool, and over that they wore nothing but the tunic when in the house. The _libertinæ_, or simple citizens' wives and daughters, wore this robe short and coming scarcely to the knee, so as to leave in sight the rich bracelets that they wore around their legs. But the matrons lengthened the ordinary tunic by means of a plaited furbelow or flounce (_instita_), edged, sometimes, with golden or purple thread. In such case, it took the name of _stola_, and descended to their feet. They knotted it at the waist, by means of a girdle artistically hidden under a fold of the tucked-up garment. Below the tunic, the women when on the street wore, lastly, their _toga_, which was a roomy mantle enveloping the bosom and flung back over the left shoulder; and thus attired, they moved along proudly, draped in white woollens.

At length, the wife of Paratus is completely attired; she has drawn on the white bootees worn by matrons; unless, indeed, she happens to prefer the sandals worn by the libertinæ,--the freedwomen were so called,--which left those large, handsome Roman feet, which we should like to see a little smaller, uncovered. The selection of her jewelry is now all that remains to be done. Sabina owned some curious specimens that were found in the ruins of her house. The Latins had a discourteous word to designate this collection of precious knick-knackery; they called it the "woman's world," as though it were indeed all that there was in the world for women. One room in the Museum at Naples is full of these exhumed trinkets, consisting of serpents bent into rings and bracelets, circlets of gold set with carved stones, earrings representing sets of scales, clusters of pearls, threads of gold skilfully twisted into necklaces; chaplets to which hung amulets, of more or less decent design, intended as charms to ward off ill-luck; pins with carved heads; rich clasps that held up the tunic sleeves or the gathered folds of the mantle, cameoed with a superb relief and of exquisite workmanship worthy of Greece; in fine, all that luxury and art, sustaining each other, could invent that was most wonderful. The Pompeian ladies, in their character of provincials, must have carried this love of baubles that cost them so dearly, to extremes: thus, they wore them in their hair, in their ears, on their necks, on their shoulders, their arms, their wrists, their legs, even on their ankles and their feet, but especially on their hands, every finger of which, excepting the middle one, was covered with rings up to the third joint, where their lovers slipped on those that they desired to exchange with them.

Her toilet completed, Sabina descended from her room in the upper story. The ordinary guests, the friend of the house, the clients and _the shadows_ (such was the name applied to the supernumeraries, the humble doubles whom the invited guests brought with them), awaited her in the peristyle. Nine guests in all--the number of the Muses. It was forbidden to exceed that total at the suppers of the triclinium. There were never more than nine, nor less than three, the number of the Graces. When a great lord invited six thousand Romans to his table, the couches were laid in the atrium. But there is not an atrium in Pompeii that could contain the hundredth part of that number.

The ninth hour of the day, i.e., the third or fourth in the afternoon, has sounded, and it is now that the supper begins in all respectable houses. Some light collations, in the morning and at noon, have only sharpened the appetites of the guests. All are now assembled; they wash their hands and their feet, leave their sandals at the door, and are shown into the triclinium.

The three bronze bedsteads are covered with cushions and drapery; the one at the end (_the medius_) in one corner represents the place of honor reserved for the important guest, the consular personage. On the couch to the right recline the host, the hostess, and the friend of the house. The other guests take the remaining places. Then, in come the slaves bearing trays, which they put, one by one, upon the small bronze table with the marble top which is stationed between the three couches like a tripod. Ah! what glowing descriptions I should have to make were I at the house of Trimalcion or Lucullus! I should depict to you the winged hares, the pullets and fish carved in pieces, with pork meat; the wild boar served up whole upon an enormous platter and stuffed with living thrushes, which fly out in every direction when the boar's stomach is cut open; the side dishes of birds' tongues; of enormous _murenæ_ or eels; barbel caught in the Western Ocean and stifled in salt pickle; surprises of all kinds for the guests, such as sets of dishes descending from the ceiling, fantastic apparitions, dancing girls, mountebanks, gladiators, trained female athletes,--all the orgies, in fine, of those strange old times. But let us not forget where we really are. Paratus is not an emperor, and has to confine himself to a simple citizen repast, quiet and unassuming throughout. The bill of fare of one of these suppers has been preserved, and here we give it:

_First Course._--Sea urchins. Raw oysters at discretion. _Pelorides_ or palourdes (a sort of shell-fish now found on the coasts of Poitou in France). Thorny shelled oysters; larks; a hen pullet with asparagus; stewed oysters and mussels; white and black sea-tulips.

_Second Course._--_Spondulae_, a variety of oyster; sweet water mussels; sea nettles; becaficoes; cutlets of kid and boar's meat; chicken pie; becaficoes again, but differently prepared, with an asparagus sauce; _murex_ and purple fish. The latter were but different kinds of shell-fish.

_Third Course._--The teats of a sow _au naturel_; they were cut as soon as the animal had littered; wild boar's head (this was the main dish); sow's teats in a ragout; the breasts and necks of roast ducks; fricasseed wild duck; roast hare, a great delicacy; roasted Phrygian chickens; starch cream; cakes from Vicenza.

All this was washed down with the light Pompeian wine, which was not bad, and could be kept for ten years, if boiled. The wine of Vesuvius, once highly esteemed, has lost its reputation, owing to the concoctions now sold to travellers under the label of _Lachrymæ Christi_. The vintages of the volcano must have been more honestly prepared at the period when they were sung by Martial. Every day there is found in the cellars of Pompeii some short-necked, full-bodied, and elongated _amphora_, terminating in a point so as to stick upright in the ground, and nearly all are marked with an inscription stating the age and origin of the liquor they contained. The names of the consuls usually designated the year of the vintage. The further back the consul, the more respectable the wine. A Roman, in the days of the Empire, having been asked under what consul his wine dated, boldly replied, "Under none!" thereby proclaiming that his cellar had been stocked under the earliest kings of Rome.

These inscriptions on the amphoræ make us acquainted with an old Vesuvian wine called _picatum_, or, in other words, with a taste of pitch; _fundanum_, or Fondi wine, much esteemed, and many others. In fine, let us not forget the famous growth of Falernus, sung by the poets, which did not disappear until the time of Theodoric.

But besides the amphoræ, how much other testimony there still remains of the olden libations,--those rich _crateræ_, or broad, shallow goblets of bronze damascened with silver; those delicately chiselled cups; those glasses and bottles which Vesuvius has preserved for us; that jug, the handle of which is formed of a satyr bending backward to rub his shoulders against the edge of the vase; those vessels of all shapes on which eagles perch or swans and serpents writhe; those cups of baked clay adorned with so many arabesques and inviting descriptions. "Friend," says one of them "drink of my contents."

"Friend of my soul, this goblet sip!"

rhymes the modern bard.

What a mass of curious and costly things! What is the use of rummaging in books! With the museums of Naples before us, we can reconstruct all the triclinia of Pompeii at a glance.

There, then, are the guests, gay, serene, reclining or leaning on their elbows on the three couches. The table is before them, but only to be looked at, for slaves are continually moving to and fro, from one to the other, serving every guest with a portion of each dish on a slice of bread. Pansa daintily carries the delicate morsel offered him to his mouth with his fingers, and flings the bread under the table, where a slave, in crouching attitude, gathers up all the debris of the repast. No forks are used, for the ancients were unacquainted with them. At the most, they knew the use of the spoon or cochlea, which they employed in eating eggs. After each dish they dipped their fingers in a basin presented to them, and then wiped them upon a napkin that they carried with them as we take our handkerchiefs with us. The wealthiest people had some that were very costly and which they threw into the fire when they had been soiled; the fire cleansed without burning them. Refined people wiped their fingers on the hair of the cupbearers,--another Oriental usage. Recollect Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

At length, the repast being concluded, the guests took off their wreaths, which they stripped of their leaves into a goblet that was passed around the circle for every one to taste, and this ceremony concluded the libations.

I have endeavored to describe the supper of a rich Pompeian and exhibit his dwelling as it would appear reconstructed and re-occupied. Reduce its dimensions and simplify it as much as possible by suppressing the peristyle, the columns, the paintings, the tablinum, the exedra, and all the rooms devoted to pleasure or vanity, and you will have the house of a poor man. On the contrary, if you develop it, by enriching it beyond measure, you may build in your fancy one of those superb Roman palaces, the extravagant luxuriousness of which augmented, from day to day, under the emperors. Lucius Crassus, who was the first to introduce columns of foreign marble, in his dwelling, erected only six of them but twelve feet high. At a later period, Marcus Scaurus surrounded his atrium with a colonnade of black marble rising thirty-eight feet above the soil. Mamurra did not stop at so fair a limit. That distinguished Roman knight covered his whole house with marble. The residence of Lepidus was the handsomest in Rome seventy-eight years before Christ. Thirty-five years later, it was but the hundredth. In spite of some attempts at reaction by Augustus, this passion for splendor reached a frantic pitch. A freedman in the reign of Claudius decorated his triclinium with thirty-two columns of onyx. I say nothing of the slaves that were counted by thousands in the old palaces, and by hundreds in the triclinium and kitchen alone.

"O ye beneficent gods! how many men employed to serve a single stomach!" exclaimed Seneca, who passed in his day for a master of rhetoric. In our time, he would be deemed a socialist.

[Footnote D: So strong was this feeling, that the very name _inquilinus_, or lodger, was an insult. Cicero not having been born at Rome, Catiline called him offensively _civis inquilinus_--a lodger citizen. (_Sallust_.)]

[Footnote E: Let not fingers that are too thick, and ill-pared nails, make gestures too conspicuous.]

VII.

ART IN POMPEII.

THE HOMES OF THE WEALTHY.--THE TRIANGULAR FORUM AND THE
TEMPLES.--POMPEIAN ARCHITECTURE: ITS MERITS AND ITS DEFECTS.--THE
ARTISTS OF THE LITTLE CITY.--THE PAINTINGS HERE.--LANDSCAPES,
FIGURES, ROPE-DANCERS, DANCING-GIRLS, CENTAURS, GODS, HEROES, THE
ILIAD ILLUSTRATED.--MOSAICS.--STATUES AND
STATUETTES.--JEWELRY.--CARVED GLASS.--ART AND LIFE.

The house of Pansa was large, but not much ornamented. There are others which are shown in preference to the visitor. Let us mention them concisely in the catalogue and inventory style:

The house of the Faun.--Fine mosaics; a masterpiece in bronze; the Dancing Faun, of which we shall speak farther on. Besides the atrium and the peristyle, a third court, the xysta, surrounded with forty-four columns, duplicated on the upper story. Numberless precious things were found there, in the presence of the son of Goethe. The owner was a wine-merchant.(?)

The house of the Quæstor, or of Castor and Pollux.--Large safes of very thick and very hard wood, lined with copper and ornamented with arabesques, perhaps the public money-chests, hence this was probably the residence of the quæstor who had charge of the public funds; a Corinthian atrium; fine paintings--the _Bacchante_ the _Medea_, the _Children of Niobe_, etc. Rich development of the courtyards.

The house of the Poet.--Homeric paintings; celebrated mosaics; the dog at the doorsill, with the inscription _Cave Canem_; the _Choragus causing the recitation of a piece_. All these are at the museum.

The house of Sallust.--A fine bronze group; Hercules pursuing a deer (taken to the Museum at Palermo); a pretty stucco relievo in one of the bedchambers; Three couches of masonry in the triclinium; a decent and modest _venereum_ that ladies may visit. There is seen an Acteon surprising Diana in the bath, the stag's antlers growing on his forehead and the hounds tearing him. The two scenes connect in the same picture, as in the paintings of the middle ages. Was this a warning to rash people? This venereum contained a bedchamber, a triclinium and a lararium, or small marble niche in which the household god was enshrined.

The house of Marcus Lucretius.--Very curious. A peristyle forming a sort of platform, occupied with baubles, which they have had the good taste to leave there; a miniature fountain, little tiers of seats, a small conduit, a small fish-tank, grotesque little figures in bronze, statuettes and images of all sorts,--Bacchus and Bacchantes, Fauns and Satyrs, one of which, with its arm raised above its head, is charming. Another in the form of a Hermes holds a kid in its arms; the she-goat trying to get a glimpse of her little one, is raising her fore-feet as though to clamber up on the spoiler. These odds and ends make up a pretty collection of toys, a shelf, as it were, on an ancient what-not of knick-knacks.

Then, there are the Adonis and the Hermaphrodite in the house of Adonis; the sacrarium or domestic chapel in the house of the Mosaic Columns; the wild beasts adorning the house of the Hunt; above all, the fresh excavations, where the paintings retain their undiminished brilliance. But if all these houses are to be visited, they are not to be described. Antiquaries dart upon this prey with frenzy, measuring the tiniest stone, discussing the smallest painting, and leaving not a single frieze or panel without some comment, so that, after having read their remarks, one fancies that everything is precious in this exhumed curiosity-shop. These folks deceive themselves and they deceive us; their feelings as virtuosos thoroughly exhaust themselves upon a theme which is very attractive, very curious, 'tis true, but which calls for less completely scientific hands to set it to music, the more so that in Pompeii there is nothing grand, or massive, or difficult to comprehend. Everything stands right forth to the gaze and explains itself as clearly and sharply as the light of day.

Moreover, these houses have been despoiled. I might tell you of a pretty picture or a rich mosaic in such-and-such a room. You would go thither to look for it and not find it. The museum at Naples has it, and if it be not there it is nowhere. Time, the atmosphere, and the sunlight have destroyed it. Therefore, those who make out an inventory of these houses for you are preparing you bitter disappointments.

The only way to get an idea of Pompeian art is not to examine all these monuments separately, but to group them in one's mind, and then to pay the museum an attentive visit. Thus we can put together a little ideal city, an artistic Pompeii, which we are going to make the attempt to explore.

Pompeii had two and even three forums. The third was a market; the first, with which you are already acquainted, was a public square; the other, which we are about to visit, is a sort of Acropolis, inclosed like that of Athens, and placed upon the highest spot of ground in the city. From a bench, still in its proper position at the extremity of this forum, you may distinguish the valley of the Sarno, the shady mountains that close its perspective, the cultivated checker-work of the country side, green tufts of the woodlands, and then the gently curving coast-line where Stabiæ wound in and out, with the picturesque heights of Sorrento, the deep blue of the sea, the transparent azure of the heavens, the infinite limpidity of the distant horizon, the brilliant clearness and the antique color. Those who have not beheld this scenery, can only half comprehend its monuments, which would ever be out of place beneath another sky.

It was in this bright sunlight that the Pompeian Acropolis, the triangular Forum, stood. Eight Ionic columns adorned its entrance and sustained a portico of the purest elegance, from which ran two long slender colonnades widening apart from each other and forming an acute angle. They are still surmounted with their architrave, which they lightly supported. The terrace, looking out upon the country and the sea, formed the third side of the triangle, in the middle of which rose some altars,--the ustrinum, in which the dead were burned, a small round temple covering a sacred well, and, finally, a Greek temple rising above all the rest from the height of its foundation and marking its columns unobstructedly against the sky. This platform, resting upon solid supports and covered with monuments in a fine style of art, was the best written page and the most substantially correct one in Pompeii. Unfortunately, here, as everywhere else, stucco had been plastered over the stone-work. The columns were painted. Nowhere could a front of pure marble--the white on the blue--be seen defined against the sky.

The remaining temples furnish us few data on architecture. You know those of the Forum. The temple of Fortune, now greatly dilapidated, must have resembled that of Jupiter. Erected by Marcus Tullius, a reputed relative of Cicero, it yields us nothing but very mediocre statues and inscriptions full of errors, proving that the priesthood of the place, by no means Ciceronian in their acquirements, did not thoroughly know even their own language. The temple of Esculapius, besides its altar, has retained a very odd capital, Corinthian if you will, but on which cabbage leaves, instead of the acanthus, are seen enveloping a head of Neptune. The temple of Isis, still standing, is more curious than handsome. It shows[F] that the Egyptian goddess was venerated at Pompeii, but it tells us nothing about antique art. It is entered at the side, by a sort of corridor leading into the sacred inclosure. The temple is on the right; the columns inclose it; a vaulted niche is hollowed out beneath the altar, where it served as a hiding-place for the priests,--at least so say the romance-writers. Unfortunately for this idea, the doorway of the recess stood forth and still stands forth to the gaze, rendering the alleged trickery impossible.

Behind the cella, another niche contained a statue of Bacchus, who was, perhaps, the same god as Osiris. An expurgation room, intended for ablutions and purifications, descending to a subterranean reservoir, occupied an angle of the courtyard. In front of this apartment stands an altar, on which were found some remnants of sacrifices. Isis, then, was the only divinity invoked at the moment of the eruption. Her painted statue held a cross with a handle to it, in one hand, and a cithera in the other, and her hair fell in long and carefully curled ringlets.

This is all that the temples give us. Artistically speaking, it is but little. Neither are the other monuments much richer in their information concerning ancient architecture. They let us know that the material chiefly employed consisted of lava, of tufa, of brick, excellently prepared, having more surface and less thickness than ours; of _peperino_ (Sarno stone), which time renders very hard, sometimes with travertine and even marble in the ornaments; then there was Roman mortar, celebrated for its solidity, less perfect at Pompeii, however, than at Rome; and finally, the stucco surface, covering the entire city with its smooth and polished crust, like a variegated mantle. But these edifices tell us nothing in particular; there is neither a style peculiar to Pompeii discernible in them, nor do we find artists of the place bearing any noted name, or possessing any singularity of taste and method. On the other hand, there is an easy eclecticism that adopts all forms with equal facility and betrays the decadence or the sterility of the time. I recall the fact that the city was in process of reconstruction when it was destroyed. Its unskilful repairs disclose a certain predilection for that cheap kind of elegance which among us, has taken the place of art. Stucco tricks off and disfigures everything. Reality is sacrificed to appearance, and genuine elegance to that kind of showy avarice which assumes a false look of profusion. In many places, the flutings are economically preserved by means of moulds that fill them in the lower part of the columns. Painting takes the place of sculpture at every point where it can supply it. The capitals affect odd shapes, sometimes successfully, but always at variance with the simplicity of high art. Add to these objections other faults, glaring at first glance,--for instance, the adornment of the temple of Mercury, where the panels terminate alternately in pediments and in arcades; the façade of the purgatorium in the temple of Isis, where the arcade itself cutting the cornice, becomes involved hideously with the pediment. I shall say nothing either, of the fountains, or of the columns, alas! formed of shell-work and mosaic.

Faults like these shock the eye of purists; but let us constantly bear in mind that we are in a small city, the finest residence in which belonged to a wine-merchant. We could not with fairness expect to find there the Parthenon, or even the Pantheon of Rome. The Pompeian architects worked for simple burghers whose moderate wish was to own pretty houses, not too large nor too dear, but of rich external appearance and a gayety of look that gratified the eye. These good tradesmen were served to their hearts' content by skilful persons who turned everything to good account, cutting rooms by scores within a space that would not be sufficient for one large saloon in our palaces, profiting by all the accidents of the soil to raise their structures by stories into amphitheatres, devising one ingenious subterfuge after another to mask the defects of alignment, and, in a word, with feeble resources and narrow means, realizing what the ancients always dreamed--art combined with every-day life.

For proof of this I point to their paintings covering those handsome stucco walls, which were so carefully prepared, so frequently overlaid with the finest mortar, so ingeniously dashed with shining powder, and, then, so often smoothed, repolished and repacked with wooden rollers that they, at last, looked like and passed for marble. Whether painted in fresco or _dry_, in encaustic or by other processes, matters little--that belongs to technical authorities to decide.[G]

However that may be, these mural decorations were nevertheless a feast for the eyes, and are so still. They divided the walls into five or six panels, developing themselves between a socle and a frieze; the socle being deeper, the frieze clearer in tint, the interspace of a more vivid red and yellow, for instance, while the frieze was white and the socle black. In plain houses these single panels were divided by simple lines; then gradually, as the house selected became more opulent, these lines were replaced by ornamental frames, garlands, pilasters, and, ere long, fantastic pavilions, in which the fancy of the decorative artist disported at will. However, the socles became covered with foliage, the friezes with arabesques, and the panels with paintings, the latter quite simple at first, such as a flower, a fruit, a landscape; pretty soon a figure, then a group, then at last great historical or religious subjects that sometimes covered a whole piece of wall and to which the socle and the frieze served as a sort of showy and majestic framework. Thus, the fancy of the decorator could rise even to the height of epic art.

Those paintings will be eternally studied: they give us precious data, not only on art, but concerning everything that relates to antiquity,--its manners and customs, its ceremonies, its costumes, the homes of those days, the elements and nature as they then appeared. Pompeii is not a gallery of pictures; it is rather an illustrated journal of the first century. One there sees odd landscapes; a little island on the edge of the water; a bank of the Nile where an ass, stooping to drink, bends toward the open jaws of a crocodile which he does not see, while his master frantically but vainly endeavors to pull him back by the tail. These pieces nearly always consist of rocks on the edge of the water, sometimes interspersed with trees, sometimes covered with ranges of temples, sometimes stretching away in rugged solitudes, where some shepherd wanders astray with his flock, or from time to time, enlivened with a historical scene (Andromeda and Perseus). Then come little pictures of inanimate nature,--baskets of fruit, vases of flowers, household utensils, bunches of vegetables, the collection of office-furniture painted in the house of Lucretius (the inkstand, the stylus, the paper-knife, the tablets, and a letter folded in the shape of a napkin with the address, "To Marcus Aurelius, flamen of Mars, and decurion of Pompeii"). Sometimes these paintings have a smack of humor; there are two that go together on the same wall. One of them shows a cock and a hen strolling about full of life, while upon the other the cock is in durance vile, with his legs tied and looking most doleful indeed: his hour has come!

I say nothing of the bouquets in which lilies, the iris, and roses predominate, nor of the festoons, the garlands, nay, the whole thickets that adorn, the walls of Sallust's garden. Let me here merely point out the pictures of animals, the hunting scenes, and the combats of wild beasts, treated with such astonishing vigor and raciness. There is one, especially, still quite fresh and still in its place, in one of the houses recently discovered. It represents a wild boar rushing headlong upon a bear, in the presence of a lion, who looks on at him with the most superb indifference. It is divined, as the Neapolitans say; that is, the painter has intuitively conceived the feelings of the two animals; the one blind with reckless fury, the other supremely confident in his own agility and superior strength.

And now I come to the human form. Here we have endless variety; and all kinds, from the caricature to the epic effort, are attempted and exhausted,--the wagon laden with an enormous goat-skin full of wine, which slaves are busily putting into amphoræ; a child making an ape dance; a painter copying a Hermes of Bacchus; a pensive damsel probably about to dispatch a secret message by the buxom servant-maid waiting there for it; a vendor of Cupids opening his cage full of little winged gods, who, as they escape, tease a sad and pensive woman standing near, in a thousand ways,--how many different subjects! But I have said nothing yet. The Pompeians especially excelled in fancy pictures. Everybody has seen those swarms of little genii that, fluttering down upon the walls of their houses, wove crowns or garlands, angled with the rod and line, chased birds, sawed planks, planed tables, raced in chariots, or danced on the tight-rope, holding up thyrses for balancing poles; one bent over, another kneeling, a third making a jet of wine spirt forth from a horn into a vase, a fourth playing on the lyre, and a fifth on the double flute, without leaving the tight-rope that bends beneath their nimble feet. But more beautiful than these divine rope-dancers were the female dancers, who floated about, perfect prodigies of self-possession and buoyancy, rising of themselves from the ground and sustained without an effort in the voluptuous air that cradled them. You may see these all at the museum in Naples,--the nymph who clashes the cymbals, and one who drums the tambourine; another who holds aloft a branch of cedar and a golden sceptre; one who is handing a plate of figs; and her, too who has a basket on her head and a thyrsis in her hand. Another in dancing uncovers her neck and her shoulders, and a third, with her head thrown back, and her eyes uplifted to heaven, inflates her veil as though to fly away. Here is one dropping bunches of flowers in a fold of her robe, and there another who holds a golden plate in this hand, while with that she covers her brows with an undulating pallium, like a bird putting its head under its wing.

There are some almost nude, and some that drape themselves in tissues quite transparent and woven of the air. Some again wrap themselves in thick mantles which cover them completely, but which are about to fall; two of them holding each other by the hand are going to float upward together. As many dancing nymphs as there are, so many are the different dances, attitudes, movements, undulations, characteristics, and dissimilar ways of removing and putting on veils; infinite variations, in fine, upon two notes that vibrate with voluptuous luxuriance, and in a thousand ways.

Let us continue: We are sweeping into the full tide of mythology. All the ancient divinities will pass before us,--now isolated (like the fine, nay, truly imposing Ceres in the house of Castor and Pollux), now grouped in well-known scenes, some of which often recur on the Pompeian walls. Thus, the education of Bacchus, his relations with Silenus; the romantic story of Ariadne; the loves of Jupiter, Apollo, and Daphne; Mars and Venus; Adonis dying; Zephyr and Flora; but, above all, the heroes of renown, Theseus and Andromeda, Meleager, Jason, heads of Hercules; his twelve labors, his combat with the Nemæan lion, his weaknesses,--such are the episodes most in favor with the decorative artists of the little city. Sometimes they take their subjects from the poems of Virgil, but oftener from those of Homer. I might cite a whole house, viz., that of the Poet, also styled the Homeric House, the interior court of which was a complete Iliad illustrated. There you could see the parting of Agamemnon and Chryseis, and also that of Briseis and Achilles, who, seated on a throne, with a look of angry resignation, is requesting the young girl to return to Agamemnon--a fine picture, of deserved celebrity. There, too, was beheld the lovely Venus which Gell has not hesitated to compare, as to form, with the Medicean statue, or for color, to Titian's painting. It will be remembered that she plays a conspicuous part in the poem. A little further on we see Jupiter and Juno meeting on Mount Ida.

"At length" says Nicolini, in his sumptuous work on Pompeii, "in the natural sequence of these episodes, appears Thetis reclining on the Triton, and holding forth to her afflicted son the arms that Vulcan had forged for him in her presence."

It was in the peristyle of this house that the copy of the famous picture by Timanthius of the sacrifice of Iphigenia was found. "Having represented her standing near the altar on which she is to perish, the artist depicts profound grief on the faces of those who are present, especially of Menelaus; then, having exhausted all the symbols of sorrow, he veils the father's countenance, finding it impossible to give a befitting expression." This was, according to Pliny, the work of Timanthus, and such is exactly the reproduction of it as it was found in the house of the poet at Pompeii.

This Iphigenia and the Medea in the house of Castor and Pollux, recalling the masterpiece of Timomachos the Byzantine are the only two Pompeian pictures which reproduce well-known paintings; but let us not, for that reason, conclude that the others are original. The painters of the little city were neither creators nor copyists, but very free imitators, varying familiar subjects to suit themselves. Hence, that variety which surprises us in their reproductions of the same subject. Indeed, I have seen, at least ten Ariadnes surprised by Bacchus, and there are no two alike. Hence, also, that ease and freedom of touch indicating that the decorative artists executing them felt quite at their ease. Assuredly, their efforts, which are of quite unequal merit, are not models of correctness by any means; faults of drawing and proportion, traits of awkwardness and heedlessness, swarm in them; but let anybody pick out a sub-prefecture of 30,000 inhabitants, in France, and say to the painters of the district: "Here, my good friends, just go to work and tear off those sheets of colored paper that you find pasted upon the walls of rooms and saloons in every direction, and paint there in place of them socles and friezes, devotional images, _genre_ pictures, and historical pieces summing up the ideas, creeds, manners and tastes, of our time in such sort that were the Pyrenees, the Cevennes, or the Jura Alps, to crumble upon you to-morrow, future generations, on digging up your houses and your masterpieces, might there study the life of our period although it will be antiquity for them."... What would the painters of the place be apt to do or say? I think I may reply, with all respect to them, that they would at least be greatly embarrassed.

But, on their part, the Pompeians were not a whit put out when they came to repaint their whole city afresh. Would you like to get an accurate idea of their real merit and their indisputable value? If so, ask some one to conduct you through the houses that have been lately exhumed, and look at the paintings still left in their places as they appear with all the brilliance that Vesuvius has preserved in them, and which the sunlight will soon impair. In the saloon of the house of Proculus notice two pieces that correspond, namely, Narcissus and the Triumph of Bacchus--powerless languor and victorious activity. The intended meaning is clearly apparent, and is simply and vividly rendered. The ancients never required commentators to make them understood. You comprehend their idea and their subject at first glance. The most ignorant of men and the least versed in Pagan lore, take their meaning with half a look and give their works a title. In them we find no beating about the bush, no circumlocution, no hidden meanings, no confusion; the painter expresses what he means, does it quickly and does it well, without exaggerating his terms or overloading the scene. His principal personages stand out boldly, yet the accessories do not cry aloud, "Look at me!" The picture of Narcissus represents Narcissus first and foremost; then it brings in a solitude and a streamlet. The coloring has a brilliance and harmoniousness of tint that surprises us, but there are no useless effects in it. In nearly all these frescoes (excepting the wedding of Zephyrus and Flora) the light spreads over it, white and equable (no one says cold and monotonous), for its office is not merely to illuminate the picture, but to throw sufficient glow and warmth upon the wall. The low and narrow rooms having, instead of windows, only a door opening on the court, had need of this painted daylight which skilful pencils wrought for them. And what movement there was in all those figures, what suppleness and what truth to nature![H]

Nothing is distorted, nothing attitudinizes. Ariadne is really asleep, and Hercules, in wine, really sinks to the ground; the dancing girl floats in the air as though in her native element; the centaur gallops without an effort; it is simple _reality_--the very reverse of realism--nature such as she actually is when she is pleasant to behold, in the full effusion of her grace, advancing like a queen because she _is_ a queen, and because she could not move in any other fashion. In a word, these second-rate painters, poor daubers of walls as they were, had, in the absence of scientific skill and correctness, the flash of latent genius in obscurity, the instinct of art, spontaneousness, freedom of touch, and vivid life.

Such were the walls of Pompeii. Let us now glance at the pavements. They will astonish us much more. At the outset the pavements were quite plain. There was a cement formed of a kind of mortar; this was then thoroughly dusted with pulverized brick, and the whole converted into a composition, which, when it had hardened, was like red granite. Many rooms and courts at Pompeii are paved with this composition which was called _opus signinum_. Then, in this crust, they at first ranged small cubes of marble, of glass, of calcareous stone, of colored enamel, forming squares or stripes, then others complicating the lines or varying the colors, and others again tracing regular designs, meandering lines, and arabesques, until the divided pebbles at length completely covered the reddish basis, and thus they finally became mosaics, those carpetings of stone which soon rose to the importance and value of great works of art.

The house of the Faun at Pompeii, which is the most richly paved of all, was a museum of mosaics. There was one before the door, upon the sidewalk, inscribed with the ancient salutation, _Salve!_ Another, at the end of the prothyrum, artistically represented masks. Others again, in the wings of the atrium, made up a little menagerie,--a brace of ducks, dead birds, shell-work, fish, doves taking pearls from a casket, and a cat devouring a quail--a perfect masterpiece of living movement and precision. Pliny mentions a house, the flooring of which represented the fragments of a meal: it was called _the ill-swept house_. But let us not quit the house of the Faun, where the mosaic-workers had, besides what we have told, wrought on the pavement of the œcus a superb lion foreshortened--much worn away, indeed, but marvellous for vigor and boldness. In the triclinium another mosaic represented Acratus, the Bacchic genius, astride of a panther; lastly the piece in the exædra, the finest that exists, is counted among the most precious specimens of ancient art. It is the famous battle of Arbelles or of Issus. A squadron of Greeks, already victorious, is rushing upon the Persians; Alexander is galloping at the head of his cavalry. He has lost his helmet in the heat of the charge, his horses' manes stand erect, and his long spear has pierced the leader of the enemy. The Persians, overthrown and routed, are turning to flee; those who immediately surround Darius, the vanquished king, think of nothing but their own safety; but Darius is totally forgetful of himself. His hand extended toward his dying general, he turns his back to the flying rabble and seems to invite death. The whole scene--the headlong rush of the one army, the utter confusion of the other, the chariot of the King wheeling to the front, the rage, the terror, the pity expressed, and all this profoundly felt and clearly rendered--strikes the beholder at first glance and engraves itself upon his memory, leaving there the imperishable impression that masterpieces in art can alone produce. And yet this wonderful work was but the flooring of a saloon! The ancients put their feet where we put our hands, says an Englishman who utters but the simple truth. The finest tables in the palaces at Naples were cut from the pavements in the houses at Pompeii.

It was in the same dwelling that the celebrated bronze statuette of the Dancing Faun was found. It has its head and arms uplifted, its shoulders thrown back, its breast projecting, every muscle in motion, the whole body dancing. An accompanying piece, however, was lacking to this little deity so full of spring and vigor, and that piece has been exhumed by recent excavations, in quite an humble tenement. It represents a delicate youth, full of nonchalance and grace, a Narcissus hearkening to the musical echo in the distance. His head leans over, his ear is stretched to listen, his finger is turned in the direction whence he hears the sound--his whole body listens. Placed near each other in the museum, these two bronzes would make Pagans of us were religion but an affair of art.[I]