So are the dens where the wild beasts
were kept; so that you look down into this amphitheatre as into a vast
basin standing on its brink, which is on a level with the rest of the
ground around it, and by means of the seats and passages you may descend
into the arena. This Amphitheatre is at a short distance from the rest of
the town. What is at present discovered of this city consists of a long
street with several off-sets of streets issuing from it: a temple, two
theatres, a praetorium, a large barrack, and a peculiarly large house or
villa belonging probably to some eminent person, but no doubt when the
excavation shall be recommenced many more streets will be discovered, as
from the circumstance of there being an amphitheatre, two other theatres
and a number of sepulchral monuments outside the gates, it must have been a
city of great consequence. Most of the houses seem to have had two stories;
the roofs fell in of course by the act of excavation, but the columns
remain entire. I observe that the general style of building in Pompeii in
most of the houses is as follows: that in each building there is a court
yard in the centre, something like the court yard of a convent, which is
sometimes paved in mosaic, and generally surrounded by columns; in the
middle of this court is a fountain or basin: the court has no roof and the
wings of the house form a quadrangle environing it. The windows and doors
of the rooms are made in the interior sides of the quadrangle looking into
the court yard; on the exterior there appears to be only a small latticed
window near the top of the room to admit light. I have seen in Egypt and in
India similarly built houses, and it is the general style of building in
Andalusia and Barbary. In the rooms are niches in the walls for lamps,
precisely in the style of the Moorish buildings in India.
In many of the chambers of the houses at Pompeii are paintings al fresco
and arabesques on the walls which on being washed with water appear
perfectly fresh. The subjects of these paintings are generally from the
mythology. In some of the rooms are paintings al fresco of fish, flesh,
fowl and fruit; in others Venus and the Graces at their toilette, from
which we may infer that the former were dining rooms and the latter
boudoirs. A large villa (so I deem it as it stands without the gates) has a
number of rooms, two stories entire and three court yards with fountains,
many beautiful fresco paintings on the walls of the chambers. Annexed to
this villa is a garden arranged in terraces and a fish pond. A covered
gallery supported by pillars on one of the sides of the garden served
probably as a promenade in wet weather. In the cellars of this villa are a
number of amphorae with narrow necks. Had the ancients used corks instead
of oil to stop their amphorae, wine eighteen hundred years old might have
been found here. It is not the custom even of the modern Italians to use
corks for the wine they keep for their own use: a spoonful of oil is poured
on the top of the wine in the flask and when they mean to drink it they
extract the oil by means of a lump of cotton fastened to a stick or long
pin which enters the neck of the flask and absorbs and extracts the oil.
Among the buildings discovered in Pompeii is a large Temple of Isis; here
you behold the altar and the pillar to which the beasts of sacrifice were
fastened. In this temple at the time of the first excavation were found all
the instruments of sacrifice and other things appertaining to the worship
of that Goddess. These and other valuables such as statues, coins, utensils
of all sorts were removed to Portici, where they are now to be seen in the
Museum of that place. The Praetorium at Pompeii is the next remarkable
thing; it is a vast enclosure: a great number of columns are standing
upright here and the most of them entire; the steps forming the ascent to
the elevated seat where the Praetor usually sat, remain entire. There is a
large building and court yard near one of the gates of the city supposed to
have been a barrack for soldiers; three skeletons were found here with
their legs in a machine similar to our stocks. The scribbling and
caricatures on the walls of this barrack are perfectly visible and legible.
When one wanders thro' the streets of this singularly interesting city, one
is tempted to think that the inhabitants have just walked out. What a
dreadful lingering death must have befallen these inhabitants who could not
escape from Pompeii at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius which covered
it with ashes. The air could only be exhausted by degrees, so that a
prolonged suffocation or a death by hunger must have been their lot.
Four skeletons were found upright in the streets, having in their hands
boxes containing jewellery and things of value, as if in the act of
endeavouring to make their escape: these must soon have perished, but the
skeleton of a woman found in one of the rooms of the houses close to a bath
shews that her death must have been one of prolonged suffering.
What a fine subject Pompeii would furnish for the pen of a Byron! As I have
before remarked, all the valuables and utensils of all sorts found here
have been removed to Portici; it is a great pity that everything could not
be left in Pompeii in the exact situation in which it was found on its
first discovery at the excavation.
