Part 12

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.

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 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.