Herculaneum will always be buried, so
the scientists say, for Herculaneum was snuggled close up under
Vesuvius, and the hissing-hot lava came down in waves; and first
it slugged the doomed town to death and then slagged it over with
impenetrable, flint-hard deposits. Pompeii, though, lay farther
away, and was entombed in dust and ashes only; so that it has been
comparatively easy to unearth it and make it whole again. Even
so, after one hundred and sixty-odd years of more or less desultory
explorations, nearly a third of its supposed area is yet to be
excavated.
It was in the year 1592 that an architect named Fontana, in cutting
an aqueduct which was to convey the waters of the Sarno to Torre
dell' Annunziata, discovered the foundations of the Temple of Isis,
which stood near the walls on the inner or land side of the ancient
city. It was at first supposed that he had dug into an isolated
villa of some rich Roman; and it was not until 1748 that prying
archaeologists hit on the truth and induced the Government to send
a chain gang of convicts to dig away the accumulations of earth
and tufa. But if it had been a modern Italian city that was buried,
no such mistake in preliminary diagnosis could have occurred.
Anybody would have known it instantly by the smell. I do not vouch
for the dates - I copied them out of the guidebook; but my experience
with Italian cities qualifies me to speak with authority regarding
the other matter.
Afoot we entered Pompeii by the restored Marine Gate. Our first
step within the walls was at the Museum, a comparatively modern
building, but containing a fairly complete assortment of the relics
that from time to time have been disinterred in various quarters
of the city. Here are wall cabinets filled with tools, ornaments,
utensils, jewelry, furniture - all the small things that fulfilled
everyday functions in the first century of the Christian era.
Here is a kit of surgical implements, and some of the implements
might well belong to a modern hospital. There are foodstuffs
- grains and fruits; wines and oil; loaves of bread baked in 79
A. D. and left in the abandoned ovens; and a cheese that is still
in a fair state of preservation. It had been buried seventeen
hundred years when they found it; and if only it had been permitted
to remain buried a few years longer it would have been sufficiently
ripe to satisfy a Bavarian, I think.
Grimmer exhibits are displayed in cases stretched along the center
of the main hall - models of dead bodies discovered in the ruins
and perfectly restored by pouring a bronze composition into the
molds that were left in the hardened pumice after the flesh of
these victims had turned to dust and their bones had crumbled to
powder.
