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. Huddled together are the forms of a mother and a babe;
and you see how, with her last conscious thought, the mother tried
to cover her baby's face from the killing rain of dust and blistering
ashes. And there is the shape of a man who wrapped his face in a
veil to keep out the fumes, and died so. The veil is there,
reproduced with a fidelity no sculptor could duplicate, and through
its folds you may behold the agony that made his jaw to sag and
his eyes to pop from their sockets.
Nearby is a dog, which in its last spasms of pain and fright curled
up worm fashion, and buried its nose in its forepaws and kicked
out with its crooked hind legs. Plainly dogs do not change their
emotional natures with the passage of years. A dog died in Pompeii
in 79 A. D. after exactly the same fashion that a dog might die
to-day in the pound at Pittsburgh.
From here we went on into the city proper; and it was a whole city,
set off by itself and not surrounded by those jarring modern
incongruities that spoil the ruins of Rome for the person who
wishes to give his fancy a slack rein. It is all here, looking
much as it must have looked when Nero and Caligula reigned, and
much as it will still look hundreds of years hence, for the
Government owns it now and guards it and protects it from the
hammer of the vandal and the greed of the casual collector. Here
it is - all of it; the tragic theater and the comic theater; the
basilica; the greater forum and the lesser one; the market place;
the amphitheater for the games; the training school for the
gladiators; the temples; the baths; the villas of the rich; the
huts of the poor; the cubicles of the slaves; shops; offices;
workrooms; brothels.
The roofs are gone, except in a few instances where they have been
restored; but the walls stand and many of the detached pillars
stand too; and the pavements have endured well, so that the streets
remain almost exactly as they were when this was a city of live
beings instead of a tomb of dead memories, with deep groovings of
chariot wheels in the flaggings, and at each crossing there are
stepping stones, dotting the roadbed like punctuation marks. At
the public fountain the well curbs are worn away where the women
rested their water jugs while they swapped the gossip of the town;
and at nearly every corner is a groggery, which in its appointments
and fixtures is so amazingly like unto a family liquor store as
we know it that, venturing into one, I caught myself looking about
for the Business Men's Lunch, with a collection of greasy forks
in a glass receptacle, a crock of pretzels on the counter, and a
sign over the bar reading: No Checks Cashed - This Means You!
In the floors the mosaics are as fresh as though newly applied;
and the ribald and libelous Latin, which disappointed litigants
carved on the stones at the back of the law court, looks as though
it might have been scored there last week - certainly not further
back than the week before that. A great many of the wall paintings
in the interiors of rich men's homes have been preserved and some
of them are fairly spicy as to subject and text.
