The Wonders of Pompeii Part 5

I commence with the atrium. It was reached from the street by a narrow alley (the _prothyrum_), opening, by a two-leaved door, upon the sidewalk. The doors have been burned, but we can picture them to ourselves according to the paintings, as being of oak, with narrow panels adorned with gilded nails, provided with a ring to open them by, and surmounted with a small window lighting up the alley. They opened inwards, and were secured by means of a bolt, which shot vertically downward into the threshold instead of reaching across.

I enter right foot foremost, according to the Roman custom (to enter with the left foot was a bad omen); and I first salute the inscription on the threshold (_salve_) which bids me welcome. The porter's lodge (_cella ostiarii_) was usually hollowed out in the entryway, and the slave in question was sometimes chained, a precaution which held him at his post, undoubtedly, but which hindered him from, pursuing robbers.

Sometimes, there was only a dog on guard, in his place, or merely the representation of a dog in mosaic: there is one in excellent preservation at the Museum in Naples retaining the famous inscription (_Cave canem_)--"Beware of the dog!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Atrium in the House of Pansa, restored.]

The atrium was not altogether a court, but rather a large hall covered with a roof, in the middle of which opened a large bay window. Thus the air and the light spread freely throughout the s.p.a.cious room, and the rain fell from the sky or dripped down over the four sloping roofs into a marble basin, called _impluvium_, that conveyed it to the cistern, the mouth of which is still visible. The roofs usually rested on large cross-beams fixed in the walls. In such case, the atrium was Tuscan, in the old fashion. Sometimes, the roofs rested on columns planted at the four corners of the impluvium: then, the opening enlarged, and the atrium became a tetrastyle. Some authors mention still other kinds of _atria_--the Corinthian, which was richly decorated; the _dipluviatum_, where the roof, instead of sloping inward, sloped outward and threw off the rain-water into the street; the _testudinatum_, in which the roof looked like an immense tortoise-sh.e.l.l, etc. But these forms of roofs, especially the last mentioned, were rare, and the Tuscan atrium was almost everywhere predominant, as we find it on Pansa's house.

Place yourself at the end of the alley, with your back toward the street, and you command a view of this little court and its dependencies. It is needless to say that the roof has disappeared: the eruption consumed the beams, the tiles have been broken by falling, and not only the tiles but the antefixes, cut in palm-leaves or in lion's heads, which spouted the water into the impluvium. Nothing remains but the basin and the part.i.tion walls which marked the subdivisions of the ground-floor. One first discovers a room of considerable size at the end, between a smaller room and a corridor, and eight other side cabinets. Of these eight cabinets, the six that come first, three to the right and three to the left, were bedrooms, or _cubicula_. What first strikes the observer is their diminutive size. There was room only for the bed, which was frequently indicated by an elevation of the masonry, and on that mattresses or sheepskins were stretched. The bedsteads often were also of bronze or wood, quite like those of our time. These cubicula received the air and the light through the door, which the Pompeians probably left open in summer.

Next to the cubicula came laterally the _alae_, the wings, in which Pansa (if not Paratus) received his visitors in the morning--friends, clients, parasites. These rooms must have been rich, paved, as they were, with lozenges of marble and surrounded with seats or divans. The large room at the end was the _tablinum_, which separated, or rather connected, the two courts and ascended by two steps to the peristyle. In this tablinum, which was a show-room or parlor, were kept the archives of the family, and the _imagines majorum_, or images of ancestors, which were wax figures extolled in grand inscriptions, stood there in rows.

You have observed that they were conducted with great pomp in the funeral processions. The Romans did not despise these exhibitions of vanity. They clung all the more tenaciously to their ancestry as they became more and more separated from them by the lapse of ages and the decay of old manners and customs.

To the left of the tablinum opened the library, where were found some volumes, unfortunately almost destroyed; and off to the right of the tablinum ran the fauces, a narrow corridor leading to the peristyle.

Thus, a show-room, two reception rooms, a library, six bedchambers for slaves or for guests, and all these ranged around a hall lighted from above, paved in white mosaic with black edging between and adorned with a marble basin,--such is the atrium of Pansa.

I am now going to pa.s.s beyond into the fauces. An apartment opens upon this corridor and serves as a pendant to the library; it is a bedroom, as a recess left in the thickness of the wall for the bedstead indicates. A step more and I reach the peristyle.

The peristyle is a real court or a garden surrounded with columns forming a portico. In the house of Pansa, the sixteen columns, although originally Doric, had been repaired in the Corinthian style by means of a replastering of stucco. In some houses they were connected by bal.u.s.trades or walls breast high, on which flowers in either vases or boxes of marble were placed, and in one Pompeian house there was a frame set with gla.s.s panes. In the midst of the court was hollowed out a s.p.a.cious basin (_piscina_), sometimes replaced by a parterre from which the water leaped gaily. In the peristyle of Pansa's house is still seen, in an intercolumniation, the mouth of a cistern. We are now in the richest and most favored part of the establishment.

At the end opens the _cus_, the most s.p.a.cious hall, surrounded, in the houses of the opulent Romans, with columns and galleries, decorated with precious marbles developing into a basilica. But in the house of Pansa do not look for such splendors. Its cus was but a large chamber between the peristyle and a garden.

To the right of the cus, at the end of the court, is half hidden a smaller and less obtrusive apartment, probably an _exedra_. On the right wing of the peristyle, on the last range, recedes the triclinium. The word signifies triple bed; three beds in fine, ranged in horse-shoe order, occupied this apartment, which served as a dining-room. It is well known that the ancients took their meals in a reclining att.i.tude and resting on their elbows. This Carthaginian custom, imported by the Punic wars, had become established everywhere, even at Pompeii. The ancients said "make the beds," instead of "lay the table."

To the right of the peristyle on the first range, glides a corridor receding toward a private door that opens on a small side street. This was the _postic.u.m_, by which the master of the house evaded the importunate visitors who filled the atrium. This method of escaping bores was called _postico fallere clientem_. It was a device that must have been familiar to rich persons who were beset every morning by a throng of pet.i.tioners and hangers-on.

The left side of the peristyle was occupied by three bedchambers, and by the kitchen, which was hidden at the end, to the left of the cus. This kitchen, like most of the others, has its fireplaces and ovens still standing. They contained ashes and even coal when they were discovered, not to mention the cooking utensils in terra cotta and in bronze. Upon the walls were painted two enormous serpents, sacred reptiles which protected the altar of Fornax, the culinary divinity. Other paintings (a hare, a pig, a wild boar's head, fish, etc.) ornamented this room adjoining which was, in the olden time among the Pompeians, as to-day among the Neapolitans, the most ign.o.ble retreat in the dwelling. A cabinet close by served for a pantry, and there were found in it a large table and jars of oil ranged along on a bench.

Thus a large portico with columns, surrounding a court adorned with a marble basin (_piscina_); around the portico on the right, three bedchambers or _cubicula_; on the right, a rear door (_postic.u.m_) and an eating room (_triclinium_); at the end, the grand saloon (_cus_), between an exedra and kitchen--such was the peristyle of Pansa.

This relatively s.p.a.cious habitation had still a third depth (allow me the expression) behind the peristyle. This was the _xysta_ or garden, divided off into beds, and the divisions of which, when it was found, could still be seen, marked in the ashes. Some antiquaries make it out that the xysta of Pansa was merely a kitchen garden. Between the xysta and the peristyle was the _pergula_, a two-storied covered gallery, a shelter against the sun and the rain. The occupants in their flight left behind them a handsome bronze candlestick.

Such was the ground-floor of a rich Pompeian dwelling. As for the upper stories, we can say nothing about them. Fire and time have completely destroyed them. They were probably very light structures; the lower walls could not have supported others. Most of the part.i.tions must have been of wood. We know from books that the women, slaves, and lodgers perched in these pigeon-houses, which, dest.i.tute, as they were, of the s.p.a.ce reserved for the wide courts and the large lower halls, must have been sufficiently narrow and unpleasant. Other more opulent houses had some rooms that were lacking in the house of Pansa: these were, first, bathrooms, then a _spherister_ for tennis, a _pinacothek_ or gallery of paintings, a _sacellum_ or family chapel, and what more I know not. The diminutiveness of these small rooms admitted of their being infinitely multiplied.

I have not said all. The house of Pansa formed an island (_insula_) all surrounded with streets, upon three of which opened shops that I have yet to visit. At first, on the left angle, a bakery, less complete than the public ovens to which I conducted you in the second chapter preceding this one. There were found ornaments singularly irreconcilable with each other; inscriptions, thoroughly Pagan in their character, which recalled Epicurus, and a Latin cross in relief, very sharply marked upon a wall. This Christian symbol allows fancy to spread her wings, and Bulwer, the romance-writer, has largely profited by it.

A shop in the front, the second to the left of the entrance door, communicated with the house. The proprietor, then, was a merchant, or, at least, he sold the products of his vineyards and orchards on his own premises, as many gentlemen vine-growers of Florence still do. A slave called the _dispensator_ was the manager of this business.

Some of these shops opening on a side-street, composed small rooms altogether independent of the house, and probably occupied by _inquilini_,[D] or lodgers, a cla.s.s of people despised among the ancients, who highly esteemed the homestead idea. A Roman who did not live under his own roof would cut as poor a figure as a Parisian who did not occupy his own furnished rooms, or a Neapolitan compelled to go afoot. Hence, the petty townsmen clubbed together to build or buy a house, which they owned in common, preferring the inconveniences of a divided proprietorship to those of a mere temporary occupancy. But they have greatly changed their notions in that country, for now they move every year.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Candelabra, Jewelry, and Kitchen Utensils found at Pompeii.]

I have done no more here than merely to sketch the plan of the house.

Would you refurnish it? Then, rifle the Naples museum, which has despoiled it. You will find enough of bedsteads, in the collection of bronzes there, for the cubicula; enough of carved benches, tables, stands, and precious vases for the cus, the exedra, and the wings, and enough of lamps to hang up; enough of candelabra to place in the saloons. Stretch carpets over the costly mosaic pavements and even over the simple _opus signinum_ (a mixture of lime and crushed brick) which covered the floor of the unpretending chambers with a solid incrustation. Above all, replace the ceilings and the roofs, and then the doors and draperies; in fine, revive upon all these walls--the humblest as well as the most splendid--the bright and vivid pictures now effaced. What light, and what a gay impression! How all these clear, bold colors gleam out in the sunshine, which descends in floods from an open sky into the peristyle and the atrium! But that is not all: you must conjure up the dead. Arise, then, and obey our call, O young Pompeians of the first century! I summon Pansa, Paratus, their wives, their children, their slaves; the ostiarius, who kept the door; the _atriensis_, who controlled the atrium; the _scoparius_, armed with his birch-broom; the _cubicularii_, who were the bedroom servants; the _pedagogue_, my colleague, who was a slave like the rest, although he was absolute master of the library, where he alone, perhaps, understood the secrets of the papyri it contained. I hasten to the kitchen: I want to see it as it was in the ancient day,--the _carnarium_, provided with pegs and nails for the fresh provisions, is suspended to the ceiling; the cooking ranges are garnished with chased stew-pans and coppers, and large bronze pails, with luxurious handles, are ranged along on the floor; the walls are covered with shining utensils, long-handled spoons bent in the shape of a swan's neck and head, skillets and frying-pans, the spit and its iron stand, gridirons, pastry-moulds (patty-pans?) fish-moulds (_formella_), and what is no less curious, the _apalare_ and the _trua_, flat spoons pierced with holes either to fry eggs or to beat up liquids, and, in fine, the funnels, the sieves, the strainers, the _colum vinarium_, which they covered with snow and then poured their wine over it, so that the latter dropped freshened and cooled into the cups below,--all rare and precious relics preserved by Vesuvius, and showing in what odd corners elegance nestled, as Moliere would have said, among the Romans of the olden times.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KITCHEN UTENSILS FOUND AT POMPEII]

None but men entered this kitchen: they were the cook, or _coquus_, and his subaltern, the slave of the slave, _focarius_. The meal is ready, and now come other slaves a.s.signed to the table,--the _tricliniarches_, or foreman of all the rest; the _lectisterniator_, who makes the beds; the _praegustator_, who tastes the viands beforehand to rea.s.sure his master; the _structor_, who arranges the dishes on the plateaux or trays; the _scissor_, who carves the meats; and the young _pocillatro_, or _pincerna_, who pours out the wine into the cups, sometimes dancing as he does so (as represented by Moliere) with the airs and graces of a woman or a spoiled child.

There is festivity to-day: Paratus sups with Pansa, or rather Pansa with Paratus, for I persist in thinking that we are in the house of the elector and not of the future aedile. If the master of the house be a real Roman, like Cicero, he rose early this morning and began the day with receiving visits. He is rich, and therefore has many friends, and has them of three kinds,--the _salutatores_, the _ductores_, and the _a.s.sectatores_. The first-named call upon him at his own house; the second accompany him to public meetings; and the third never leave him at all in public. He has, besides, a number of clients, whom he protects and whom he calls "my father" if they be old, and "my brother" if they be young. There are others who come humbly to offer him a little basket (_sportula_), which they carry away full of money or provisions. This morning Paratus has sent off his visitors expeditiously; then, as he is no doubt a pious man, he has gone through his devotions before the domestic altar, where his household G.o.ds are ranged. We know that he offered peculiar worship to Bacchus, for he had a little bronze statue of that G.o.d, with silver eyes; it was, I think, at the entrance of his garden, in a kettle, wrapped up with other precious articles, Paratus tried to save this treasure on the day of the eruption, but he had to abandon it in order to save himself. But to continue my narration of the day as this Pompeian spent it. His devotions over, he took a turn to the Forum, the Exchange, the Basilica, where he supported the candidature of Pansa. From there, unquestionably, he did not omit going to the Thermae, a measure of health; and, now, at length, he has just returned to his home. During his absence, his slaves have cleansed the marbles, washed the stucco, covered the pavements with sawdust, and, if it be in winter, have lit fuel oil large bronze braziers in the open air and borne them into the saloons, for there are no chimneys anywhere. The expected guest at length arrives--salutations to Pansa, the future aedile! Meanwhile Sabina, the wife of Paratus, has not remained inactive. She has pa.s.sed the whole morning at her toilet, for the toilet of a Sabina, Pompeian or Roman, is an affair of state,--see Boettger's book. As she awoke she snapped her fingers to summon her slaves, and the poor girls have hastened to accomplish this prodigious piece of work. First, the applier of cosmetics has effaced the wrinkles from the brows of her mistress, and, then, with her saliva, has prepared her rouge; then, with a needle, she has painted her mistress' eyelashes and eyebrows, forming two well-arched and tufted lines of jetty hue, which unite at the root of the nose. This operation completed, she has washed Sabina's teeth with rosin from Scio, or more simply, with pulverized pumice-stone, and, finally, has overspread her entire countenance with the white powder of lead which was much used by the Romans at that early day.

Then came the _ornatrix_, or hairdresser. The fair Romans dyed their hair blonde, and when the dyeing process was not sufficient, they wore wigs. This example was followed by the artists, who put wigs on their statues; in France they would put on crinoline. Ancient head-dresses were formidable monuments held up with pins of seven or eight inches in length. One of these pins, found at Herculaneum, is surmounted with a Corinthian capital upon which a carved Venus is twisting her hair with both hands while she looks into a mirror that Cupid holds up before her.

The mirrors of those ancient days--let us exhaust the subject!--were of polished metal; the richest were composed of a plate of silver applied upon a plate of gold and sustained by a carved handle of wood or ivory; and Seneca exclaimed, in his testy indignation, "The dowry that the Senate once bestowed upon the daughter of Scipio would no longer suffice to pay for the mirror of a freedwoman!"

At length, Sabina's hair is dressed: Heaven grant that she may be pleased with it, and may not, in a fit of rage, plunge one of her long pins into the naked shoulder of the ornatrix! Now comes the slave who cuts her nails, for never would a Roman lady, or a Roman gentleman either, who had any self-respect, have deigned to perform this operation with their own hands. It was to the barber or _tonsor_ that this office was a.s.signed, along with the whole masculine toilet, generally speaking; that worthy shaved you, clipped you, plucked you, even washed you and rubbed your skin; perfumed you with unguents, and curried you with the strigilla if the slaves at the bath had not already done so.

Horace makes great sport of an eccentric who used to pare his own nails.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lamps of Earthenware and Bronze found at Pompeii.]

Sabina then abandons her hands to a slave who, armed with a set of small pincers and a penknife (the ancients were unacquainted with scissors), acquitted themselves skilfully of that delicate task--a most grave affair and a tedious operation, as the Roman ladies wore no gloves.

Gesticulation was for them a science learnedly termed _chironomy_. Like a skilful instrument, pantomime harmoniously accompanied the voice.

Hence, all those striking expressions that we find in authors,--"the subtle devices of the fingers," as Cicero has it; the "loquacious hand"

of Petronius. Recall to your memory the beautiful hands of Diana and Minerva, and these two lines of Ovid, which naturally come in here:

"Exiguo signet gestu quodcunque loquetur, Cui digiti pingues, cui scaber unguis erit."[E]

The nail-paring over, there remains the dressing of the person, to be accomplished by other slaves. The seamstresses (_carcinatrices_) belonged to the least-important cla.s.s; for that matter, there was little or no sewing to do on the garments of the ancients. Lucretia had been dead for many years, and the matrons of the empire did not waste their time in spinning wool. When Livia wanted to make the garments of Augustus with her own hands, this fancy of the Empress was considered to be in very bad taste. A long retinue of slaves (cutters, linen-dressers, folders, etc.), shared in the work of the feminine toilet, which, after all, was the simplest that had been worn, since the nudity of the earliest days. Over the scarf which they called _trophium_, and which sufficed to hold up their bosoms, the Roman ladies pa.s.sed a long-sleeved _subucula_, made of fine wool, and over that they wore nothing but the tunic when in the house. The _libertinae_, or simple citizens' wives and daughters, wore this robe short and coming scarcely to the knee, so as to leave in sight the rich bracelets that they wore around their legs.

But the matrons lengthened the ordinary tunic by means of a plaited furbelow or flounce (_inst.i.ta_), edged, sometimes, with golden or purple thread. In such case, it took the name of _stola_, and descended to their feet. They knotted it at the waist, by means of a girdle artistically hidden under a fold of the tucked-up garment. Below the tunic, the women when on the street wore, lastly, their _toga_, which was a roomy mantle enveloping the bosom and flung back over the left shoulder; and thus attired, they moved along proudly, draped in white woollens.

At length, the wife of Paratus is completely attired; she has drawn on the white bootees worn by matrons; unless, indeed, she happens to prefer the sandals worn by the libertinae,--the freedwomen were so called,--which left those large, handsome Roman feet, which we should like to see a little smaller, uncovered. The selection of her jewelry is now all that remains to be done. Sabina owned some curious specimens that were found in the ruins of her house. The Latins had a discourteous word to designate this collection of precious knick-knackery; they called it the "woman's world," as though it were indeed all that there was in the world for women. One room in the Museum at Naples is full of these exhumed trinkets, consisting of serpents bent into rings and bracelets, circlets of gold set with carved stones, earrings representing sets of scales, cl.u.s.ters of pearls, threads of gold skilfully twisted into necklaces; chaplets to which hung amulets, of more or less decent design, intended as charms to ward off ill-luck; pins with carved heads; rich clasps that held up the tunic sleeves or the gathered folds of the mantle, cameoed with a superb relief and of exquisite workmanship worthy of Greece; in fine, all that luxury and art, sustaining each other, could invent that was most wonderful. The Pompeian ladies, in their character of provincials, must have carried this love of baubles that cost them so dearly, to extremes: thus, they wore them in their hair, in their ears, on their necks, on their shoulders, their arms, their wrists, their legs, even on their ankles and their feet, but especially on their hands, every finger of which, excepting the middle one, was covered with rings up to the third joint, where their lovers slipped on those that they desired to exchange with them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Necklace, Ring, Bracelets, and Ear-rings found at Pompeii.]

Her toilet completed, Sabina descended from her room in the upper story.

The ordinary guests, the friend of the house, the clients and _the shadows_ (such was the name applied to the supernumeraries, the humble doubles whom the invited guests brought with them), awaited her in the peristyle. Nine guests in all--the number of the Muses. It was forbidden to exceed that total at the suppers of the triclinium. There were never more than nine, nor less than three, the number of the Graces. When a great lord invited six thousand Romans to his table, the couches were laid in the atrium. But there is not an atrium in Pompeii that could contain the hundredth part of that number.

The ninth hour of the day, i.e., the third or fourth in the afternoon, has sounded, and it is now that the supper begins in all respectable houses. Some light collations, in the morning and at noon, have only sharpened the appet.i.tes of the guests. All are now a.s.sembled; they wash their hands and their feet, leave their sandals at the door, and are shown into the triclinium.

The three bronze bedsteads are covered with cushions and drapery; the one at the end (_the medius_) in one corner represents the place of honor reserved for the important guest, the consular personage. On the couch to the right recline the host, the hostess, and the friend of the house. The other guests take the remaining places. Then, in come the slaves bearing trays, which they put, one by one, upon the small bronze table with the marble top which is stationed between the three couches like a tripod. Ah! what glowing descriptions I should have to make were I at the house of Trimalcion or Lucullus! I should depict to you the winged hares, the pullets and fish carved in pieces, with pork meat; the wild boar served up whole upon an enormous platter and stuffed with living thrushes, which fly out in every direction when the boar's stomach is cut open; the side dishes of birds' tongues; of enormous _murenae_ or eels; barbel caught in the Western Ocean and stifled in salt pickle; surprises of all kinds for the guests, such as sets of dishes descending from the ceiling, fantastic apparitions, dancing girls, mountebanks, gladiators, trained female athletes,--all the orgies, in fine, of those strange old times. But let us not forget where we really are. Paratus is not an emperor, and has to confine himself to a simple citizen repast, quiet and una.s.suming throughout. The bill of fare of one of these suppers has been preserved, and here we give it:

_First Course._--Sea urchins. Raw oysters at discretion. _Pelorides_ or palourdes (a sort of sh.e.l.l-fish now found on the coasts of Poitou in France). Th.o.r.n.y sh.e.l.led oysters; larks; a hen pullet with asparagus; stewed oysters and mussels; white and black sea-tulips.

_Second Course._--_Spondulae_, a variety of oyster; sweet water mussels; sea nettles; becaficoes; cutlets of kid and boar's meat; chicken pie; becaficoes again, but differently prepared, with an asparagus sauce; _murex_ and purple fish. The latter were but different kinds of sh.e.l.l-fish.

_Third Course._--The teats of a sow _au naturel_; they were cut as soon as the animal had littered; wild boar's head (this was the main dish); sow's teats in a ragout; the b.r.e.a.s.t.s and necks of roast ducks; frica.s.seed wild duck; roast hare, a great delicacy; roasted Phrygian chickens; starch cream; cakes from Vicenza.

All this was washed down with the light Pompeian wine, which was not bad, and could be kept for ten years, if boiled. The wine of Vesuvius, once highly esteemed, has lost its reputation, owing to the concoctions now sold to travellers under the label of _Lachrymae Christi_. The vintages of the volcano must have been more honestly prepared at the period when they were sung by Martial. Every day there is found in the cellars of Pompeii some short-necked, full-bodied, and elongated _amphora_, terminating in a point so as to stick upright in the ground, and nearly all are marked with an inscription stating the age and origin of the liquor they contained. The names of the consuls usually designated the year of the vintage. The further back the consul, the more respectable the wine. A Roman, in the days of the Empire, having been asked under what consul his wine dated, boldly replied, "Under none!" thereby proclaiming that his cellar had been stocked under the earliest kings of Rome.

These inscriptions on the amphorae 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 amphorae, how much other testimony there still remains of the olden libations,--those rich _craterae_, or broad, shallow goblets of bronze damascened with silver; those delicately chiselled cups; those gla.s.ses 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.