The sunlight and ventilation to the ancients was given
through empty spaces in the roofs.
. . . Hoofs knocked under the weight
of materials thrown out by Vesuvius; it is undoubted, however, that
roofs were provided with covers or supported terraces. In the middle of
the roofs was cut an ouerture through which air and light brought their
benefits to the underlaid ambients. . . . Proprietor disposed the locals
according to his own delight. . . . So that, there were bed, bath,
dining, talking and game rooms." In the peristyle "the ground was
gardened, the area shared in flower beds, had narrow paths; herbs,
flowers, shrubs were put with art well in order on flower beds,
delighted from time to time by statues of various subjects," as may be
noted in the actual restorations of some of the Pompeian houses,
As for their spiritual life, "Pompeian's religion, like by Roman people,
was the Paganism. Deities were worshipped in the temples with prayers,
sagrifices, vows, and festivities. . . . Banquets to the Deity were
joined to prayers. In fact, dining tables were dressed near the altars,
and all around them on dining beds, _tricli-nari,_ placed Divinities
statues as these were assembled to own account to the joyous banquest."
Auspices or auguries "gave interpretation to thunders, lightnings,
winds, rain crashes, comets, or to bird songs and flights. . . .
Horuspices inquired the divine will on the animal bowels, sacrificed to
the altar; they took out further indications by fleshes and bowels
flames when burnt on the altar."
An important feature of Pompeian social life was the bath, which "was
one of the hospitality duty, and very often required in several
religious functions. . . . Large and colossal edifices were quite
furnished with all the necessary for care and sport. Besides localities
for all kind of bath - cold, warm, steam bath - didn't want parks, alleys,
and porticos in order to walk; lists rings for gymnastic exercises,
conversation and reading rooms, localities for theatrical
representations, swimming stations, localities for scientific
disquisitions, moral and religious teachings. The most splendid art
works adorned the ambient."
When we pass to the popular amusements we are presented with the
materials of pictures vividly realized in _The Last Days of Pompeii,_
but somewhat faded since. "In the beginning gladiators' rank was made by
condemned to death slaves and war prisoners. Later also thoughtless
young men, who had never learned an advantageous trade, became
gladiators." In the arena they engaged in sham fights till the
spectators demanded blood. Then, "sometimes one provided one's self nets
for wrapping up the adversary, who, hit by a trident much, frequently
die. When the gladiator was deadly wounded, forsaking the arm, struck
down and stretching the index, asked the people grace of life. The
spectators decided up his destiny, turning the thumb to the breast, or
toward the ground. The thumb turned toward the ground was the unlucky's
death doom, and he had without fail the throat cut off."
Such, dimly but unmistakably seen through our Italian author's
well-reasoned English, were the ancient Pompeians; and, upon the whole,
the visitor to their city could not wish them back in it. I preferred
even those modern Pompeians who followed us so molestively to the train
with bargains in postal-cards and coral. They are very alert, the modern
Pompeians, to catch the note of national character, and I saw one of
them pursuing an elderly American with a spread of hat-pins, primarily
two francs each, and with the appeal, evidently studied from some fair
American girl: "Buy it, Poppa! Six for one franc. Oh, Poppa, buy it!"
I had again lavished my substance upon first-class tickets, and so had
my Utah friend, who expounded his philosophy of travel as we managed to
secure a first-class carriage. "When I can't go first-class in Italy,
I'll go home." I promptly and proudly agreed with him, but I concealed
my morning's experience of the fact that in Italy you may sometimes go
second class when you have paid first. I agreed with him, however, in
not minding the plunder of Italian travel, since, with all the
extortions, it would come to a third less than you expected to spend.
His was the true American spirit.
VI
ROMAN HOLIDAYS
I
HOTELS, PENSIONS, AND APARTMENTS
"Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" the traveller asks rather
anxiously than defiantly when he finds himself a stranger in a strange
place, and he is apt to add, if he has not written or wired ahead to
some specific hotel, "Which of mine inns shall I take mine ease in?" He
is the more puzzled to choose the more inns there are to choose from,
and his difficulty is enhanced if he has not considered that some of his
inns may be full or may be too dear, and yet others undesirable.
The run from Naples in four hours and a half had been so flattering fair
an experience to people who had last made it in eight that they arrived
in Rome on a sunny afternoon of January preoccupied with expectations of
an instant ease in their inn which seemed the measure of their merit.
They indeed found their inn, and it was with a painful surprise that
they did not find the rooms in it which they wanted. There were neither
rooms full south, nor over the garden, nor off the tram, and in these
circumstances there was nothing for it but to drive to some one else's
inn and try for better quarters there. They, in fact, drove to half a
dozen such, their demands rising for more rooms and sunnier and quieter
and cheaper, the fewer and darker and noisier and dearer were those they
found.
The trouble was that they found in the very first alien hotel where they
applied an apartment so exactly what they wanted, with its four rooms
and bath, all more or less full south, though mostly veering west and
north, that they carried the fatal norm in their consciousness and
tested all other apartments by it, the earlier notion of single rooms
being promptly rejected after the sight of it.
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