The Wonders of Pompeii Part 6

What a ma.s.s of curious and costly things! What is the use of rummaging in books! With the museums of Naples before us, we can reconstruct all the triclinia of Pompeii at a glance.

There, then, are the guests, gay, serene, reclining or leaning on their elbows on the three couches. The table is before them, but only to be looked at, for slaves are continually moving to and fro, from one to the other, serving every guest with a portion of each dish on a slice of bread. Pansa daintily carries the delicate morsel offered him to his mouth with his fingers, and flings the bread under the table, where a slave, in crouching att.i.tude, gathers up all the debris of the repast.

No forks are used, for the ancients were unacquainted with them. At the most, they knew the use of the spoon or cochlea, which they employed in eating eggs. After each dish they dipped their fingers in a basin presented to them, and then wiped them upon a napkin that they carried with them as we take our handkerchiefs with us. The wealthiest people had some that were very costly and which they threw into the fire when they had been soiled; the fire cleansed without burning them. Refined people wiped their fingers on the hair of the cupbearers,--another Oriental usage. Recollect Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

At length, the repast being concluded, the guests took off their wreaths, which they stripped of their leaves into a goblet that was pa.s.sed around the circle for every one to taste, and this ceremony concluded the libations.

I have endeavored to describe the supper of a rich Pompeian and exhibit his dwelling as it would appear reconstructed and re-occupied. Reduce its dimensions and simplify it as much as possible by suppressing the peristyle, the columns, the paintings, the tablinum, the exedra, and all the rooms devoted to pleasure or vanity, and you will have the house of a poor man. On the contrary, if you develop it, by enriching it beyond measure, you may build in your fancy one of those superb Roman palaces, the extravagant luxuriousness of which augmented, from day to day, under the emperors. Lucius Cra.s.sus, who was the first to introduce columns of foreign marble, in his dwelling, erected only six of them but twelve feet high. At a later period, Marcus Scaurus surrounded his atrium with a colonnade of black marble rising thirty-eight feet above the soil.

Mamurra did not stop at so fair a limit. That distinguished Roman knight covered his whole house with marble. The residence of Lepidus was the handsomest in Rome seventy-eight years before Christ. Thirty-five years later, it was but the hundredth. In spite of some attempts at reaction by Augustus, this pa.s.sion for splendor reached a frantic pitch. A freedman in the reign of Claudius decorated his triclinium with thirty-two columns of onyx. I say nothing of the slaves that were counted by thousands in the old palaces, and by hundreds in the triclinium and kitchen alone.

"O ye beneficent G.o.ds! how many men employed to serve a single stomach!"

exclaimed Seneca, who pa.s.sed in his day for a master of rhetoric. In our time, he would be deemed a socialist.

[Footnote D: So strong was this feeling, that the very name _inquilinus_, or lodger, was an insult. Cicero not having been born at Rome, Catiline called him offensively _civis inquilinus_--a lodger citizen. (_Sall.u.s.t_.)]

[Footnote E: Let not fingers that are too thick, and ill-pared nails, make gestures too conspicuous.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Peristyle of the House of the Quaestor at Pompeii.]

VII.

ART IN POMPEII.

THE HOMES OF THE WEALTHY.--THE TRIANGULAR FORUM AND THE TEMPLES.--POMPEIAN ARCHITECTURE: ITS MERITS AND ITS DEFECTS.--THE ARTISTS OF THE LITTLE CITY.--THE PAINTINGS HERE.--LANDSCAPES, FIGURES, ROPE-DANCERS, DANCING-GIRLS, CENTAURS, G.o.dS, HEROES, THE ILIAD ILl.u.s.tRATED.--MOSAICS.--STATUES AND STATUETTES.--JEWELRY.--CARVED GLa.s.s.--ART AND LIFE.

The house of Pansa was large, but not much ornamented. There are others which are shown in preference to the visitor. Let us mention them concisely in the catalogue and inventory style:

The house of the Faun.--Fine mosaics; a masterpiece in bronze; the Dancing Faun, of which we shall speak farther on. Besides the atrium and the peristyle, a third court, the xysta, surrounded with forty-four columns, duplicated on the upper story. Numberless precious things were found there, in the presence of the son of Goethe. The owner was a wine-merchant.(?)

The house of the Quaestor, or of Castor and Pollux.--Large safes of very thick and very hard wood, lined with copper and ornamented with arabesques, perhaps the public money-chests, hence this was probably the residence of the quaestor who had charge of the public funds; a Corinthian atrium; fine paintings--the _Bacchante_ the _Medea_, the _Children of Niobe_, etc. Rich development of the courtyards.

The house of the Poet.--Homeric paintings; celebrated mosaics; the dog at the doorsill, with the inscription _Cave Canem_; the _Choragus causing the recitation of a piece_. All these are at the museum.

The house of Sall.u.s.t.--A fine bronze group; Hercules pursuing a deer (taken to the Museum at Palermo); a pretty stucco relievo in one of the bedchambers; Three couches of masonry in the triclinium; a decent and modest _venereum_ that ladies may visit. There is seen an Acteon surprising Diana in the bath, the stag's antlers growing on his forehead and the hounds tearing him. The two scenes connect in the same picture, as in the paintings of the middle ages. Was this a warning to rash people? This venereum contained a bedchamber, a triclinium and a lararium, or small marble niche in which the household G.o.d was enshrined.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The House of Lucretius.]

The house of Marcus Lucretius.--Very curious. A peristyle forming a sort of platform, occupied with baubles, which they have had the good taste to leave there; a miniature fountain, little tiers of seats, a small conduit, a small fish-tank, grotesque little figures in bronze, statuettes and images of all sorts,--Bacchus and Bacchantes, Fauns and Satyrs, one of which, with its arm raised above its head, is charming.

Another in the form of a Hermes holds a kid in its arms; the she-goat trying to get a glimpse of her little one, is raising her fore-feet as though to clamber up on the spoiler. These odds and ends make up a pretty collection of toys, a shelf, as it were, on an ancient what-not of knick-knacks.

Then, there are the Adonis and the Hermaphrodite in the house of Adonis; the sacrarium or domestic chapel in the house of the Mosaic Columns; the wild beasts adorning the house of the Hunt; above all, the fresh excavations, where the paintings retain their undiminished brilliance.

But if all these houses are to be visited, they are not to be described.

Antiquaries dart upon this prey with frenzy, measuring the tiniest stone, discussing the smallest painting, and leaving not a single frieze or panel without some comment, so that, after having read their remarks, one fancies that everything is precious in this exhumed curiosity-shop. These folks deceive themselves and they deceive us; their feelings as virtuosos thoroughly exhaust themselves upon a theme which is very attractive, very curious, 'tis true, but which calls for less completely scientific hands to set it to music, the more so that in Pompeii there is nothing grand, or ma.s.sive, or difficult to comprehend.

Everything stands right forth to the gaze and explains itself as clearly and sharply as the light of day.

Moreover, these houses have been despoiled. I might tell you of a pretty picture or a rich mosaic in such-and-such a room. You would go thither to look for it and not find it. The museum at Naples has it, and if it be not there it is nowhere. Time, the atmosphere, and the sunlight have destroyed it. Therefore, those who make out an inventory of these houses for you are preparing you bitter disappointments.

The only way to get an idea of Pompeian art is not to examine all these monuments separately, but to group them in one's mind, and then to pay the museum an attentive visit. Thus we can put together a little ideal city, an artistic Pompeii, which we are going to make the attempt to explore.

Pompeii had two and even three forums. The third was a market; the first, with which you are already acquainted, was a public square; the other, which we are about to visit, is a sort of Acropolis, inclosed like that of Athens, and placed upon the highest spot of ground in the city. From a bench, still in its proper position at the extremity of this forum, you may distinguish the valley of the Sarno, the shady mountains that close its perspective, the cultivated checker-work of the country side, green tufts of the woodlands, and then the gently curving coast-line where Stabiae wound in and out, with the picturesque heights of Sorrento, the deep blue of the sea, the transparent azure of the heavens, the infinite limpidity of the distant horizon, the brilliant clearness and the antique color. Those who have not beheld this scenery, can only half comprehend its monuments, which would ever be out of place beneath another sky.

It was in this bright sunlight that the Pompeian Acropolis, the triangular Forum, stood. Eight Ionic columns adorned its entrance and sustained a portico of the purest elegance, from which ran two long slender colonnades widening apart from each other and forming an acute angle. They are still surmounted with their architrave, which they lightly supported. The terrace, looking out upon the country and the sea, formed the third side of the triangle, in the middle of which rose some altars,--the ustrinum, in which the dead were burned, a small round temple covering a sacred well, and, finally, a Greek temple rising above all the rest from the height of its foundation and marking its columns un.o.bstructedly against the sky. This platform, resting upon solid supports and covered with monuments in a fine style of art, was the best written page and the most substantially correct one in Pompeii.

Unfortunately, here, as everywhere else, stucco had been plastered over the stone-work. The columns were painted. Nowhere could a front of pure marble--the white on the blue--be seen defined against the sky.

The remaining temples furnish us few data on architecture. You know those of the Forum. The temple of Fortune, now greatly dilapidated, must have resembled that of Jupiter. Erected by Marcus Tullius, a reputed relative of Cicero, it yields us nothing but very mediocre statues and inscriptions full of errors, proving that the priesthood of the place, by no means Ciceronian in their acquirements, did not thoroughly know even their own language. The temple of Esculapius, besides its altar, has retained a very odd capital, Corinthian if you will, but on which cabbage leaves, instead of the acanthus, are seen enveloping a head of Neptune. The temple of Isis, still standing, is more curious than handsome. It shows[F] that the Egyptian G.o.ddess was venerated at Pompeii, but it tells us nothing about antique art. It is entered at the side, by a sort of corridor leading into the sacred inclosure. The temple is on the right; the columns inclose it; a vaulted niche is hollowed out beneath the altar, where it served as a hiding-place for the priests,--at least so say the romance-writers. Unfortunately for this idea, the doorway of the recess stood forth and still stands forth to the gaze, rendering the alleged trickery impossible.

Behind the cella, another niche contained a statue of Bacchus, who was, perhaps, the same G.o.d as Osiris. An expurgation room, intended for ablutions and purifications, descending to a subterranean reservoir, occupied an angle of the courtyard. In front of this apartment stands an altar, on which were found some remnants of sacrifices. Isis, then, was the only divinity invoked at the moment of the eruption. Her painted statue held a cross with a handle to it, in one hand, and a cithera in the other, and her hair fell in long and carefully curled ringlets.

This is all that the temples give us. Artistically speaking, it is but little. Neither are the other monuments much richer in their information concerning ancient architecture. They let us know that the material chiefly employed consisted of lava, of tufa, of brick, excellently prepared, having more surface and less thickness than ours; of _peperino_ (Sarno stone), which time renders very hard, sometimes with travertine and even marble in the ornaments; then there was Roman mortar, celebrated for its solidity, less perfect at Pompeii, however, than at Rome; and finally, the stucco surface, covering the entire city with its smooth and polished crust, like a variegated mantle. But these edifices tell us nothing in particular; there is neither a style peculiar to Pompeii discernible in them, nor do we find artists of the place bearing any noted name, or possessing any singularity of taste and method. On the other hand, there is an easy eclecticism that adopts all forms with equal facility and betrays the decadence or the sterility of the time. I recall the fact that the city was in process of reconstruction when it was destroyed. Its unskilful repairs disclose a certain predilection for that cheap kind of elegance which among us, has taken the place of art. Stucco tricks off and disfigures everything.

Reality is sacrificed to appearance, and genuine elegance to that kind of showy avarice which a.s.sumes a false look of profusion. In many places, the flutings are economically preserved by means of moulds that fill them in the lower part of the columns. Painting takes the place of sculpture at every point where it can supply it. The capitals affect odd shapes, sometimes successfully, but always at variance with the simplicity of high art. Add to these objections other faults, glaring at first glance,--for instance, the adornment of the temple of Mercury, where the panels terminate alternately in pediments and in arcades; the facade of the purgatorium in the temple of Isis, where the arcade itself cutting the cornice, becomes involved hideously with the pediment. I shall say nothing either, of the fountains, or of the columns, alas!

formed of sh.e.l.l-work and mosaic.

Faults like these shock the eye of purists; but let us constantly bear in mind that we are in a small city, the finest residence in which belonged to a wine-merchant. We could not with fairness expect to find there the Parthenon, or even the Pantheon of Rome. The Pompeian architects worked for simple burghers whose moderate wish was to own pretty houses, not too large nor too dear, but of rich external appearance and a gayety of look that gratified the eye. These good tradesmen were served to their hearts' content by skilful persons who turned everything to good account, cutting rooms by scores within a s.p.a.ce that would not be sufficient for one large saloon in our palaces, profiting by all the accidents of the soil to raise their structures by stories into amphitheatres, devising one ingenious subterfuge after another to mask the defects of alignment, and, in a word, with feeble resources and narrow means, realizing what the ancients always dreamed--art combined with every-day life.

For proof of this I point to their paintings covering those handsome stucco walls, which were so carefully prepared, so frequently overlaid with the finest mortar, so ingeniously dashed with shining powder, and, then, so often smoothed, repolished and repacked with wooden rollers that they, at last, looked like and pa.s.sed for marble. Whether painted in fresco or _dry_, in encaustic or by other processes, matters little--that belongs to technical authorities to decide.[G]

However that may be, these mural decorations were nevertheless a feast for the eyes, and are so still. They divided the walls into five or six panels, developing themselves between a socle and a frieze; the socle being deeper, the frieze clearer in tint, the inters.p.a.ce of a more vivid red and yellow, for instance, while the frieze was white and the socle black. In plain houses these single panels were divided by simple lines; then gradually, as the house selected became more opulent, these lines were replaced by ornamental frames, garlands, pilasters, and, ere long, fantastic pavilions, in which the fancy of the decorative artist disported at will. However, the socles became covered with foliage, the friezes with arabesques, and the panels with paintings, the latter quite simple at first, such as a flower, a fruit, a landscape; pretty soon a figure, then a group, then at last great historical or religious subjects that sometimes covered a whole piece of wall and to which the socle and the frieze served as a sort of showy and majestic framework.

Thus, the fancy of the decorator could rise even to the height of epic art.

Those paintings will be eternally studied: they give us precious data, not only on art, but concerning everything that relates to antiquity,--its manners and customs, its ceremonies, its costumes, the homes of those days, the elements and nature as they then appeared.

Pompeii is not a gallery of pictures; it is rather an ill.u.s.trated journal of the first century. One there sees odd landscapes; a little island on the edge of the water; a bank of the Nile where an a.s.s, stooping to drink, bends toward the open jaws of a crocodile which he does not see, while his master frantically but vainly endeavors to pull him back by the tail. These pieces nearly always consist of rocks on the edge of the water, sometimes interspersed with trees, sometimes covered with ranges of temples, sometimes stretching away in rugged solitudes, where some shepherd wanders astray with his flock, or from time to time, enlivened with a historical scene (Andromeda and Perseus). Then come little pictures of inanimate nature,--baskets of fruit, vases of flowers, household utensils, bunches of vegetables, the collection of office-furniture painted in the house of Lucretius (the inkstand, the stylus, the paper-knife, the tablets, and a letter folded in the shape of a napkin with the address, "To Marcus Aurelius, flamen of Mars, and decurion of Pompeii"). Sometimes these paintings have a smack of humor; there are two that go together on the same wall. One of them shows a c.o.c.k and a hen strolling about full of life, while upon the other the c.o.c.k is in durance vile, with his legs tied and looking most doleful indeed: his hour has come!

I say nothing of the bouquets in which lilies, the iris, and roses predominate, nor of the festoons, the garlands, nay, the whole thickets that adorn, the walls of Sall.u.s.t's garden. Let me here merely point out the pictures of animals, the hunting scenes, and the combats of wild beasts, treated with such astonishing vigor and raciness. There is one, especially, still quite fresh and still in its place, in one of the houses recently discovered. It represents a wild boar rushing headlong upon a bear, in the presence of a lion, who looks on at him with the most superb indifference. It is divined, as the Neapolitans say; that is, the painter has intuitively conceived the feelings of the two animals; the one blind with reckless fury, the other supremely confident in his own agility and superior strength.

And now I come to the human form. Here we have endless variety; and all kinds, from the caricature to the epic effort, are attempted and exhausted,--the wagon laden with an enormous goat-skin full of wine, which slaves are busily putting into amphorae; a child making an ape dance; a painter copying a Hermes of Bacchus; a pensive damsel probably about to dispatch a secret message by the buxom servant-maid waiting there for it; a vendor of Cupids opening his cage full of little winged G.o.ds, who, as they escape, tease a sad and pensive woman standing near, in a thousand ways,--how many different subjects! But I have said nothing yet. The Pompeians especially excelled in fancy pictures.

Everybody has seen those swarms of little genii that, fluttering down upon the walls of their houses, wove crowns or garlands, angled with the rod and line, chased birds, sawed planks, planed tables, raced in chariots, or danced on the tight-rope, holding up thyrses for balancing poles; one bent over, another kneeling, a third making a jet of wine spirt forth from a horn into a vase, a fourth playing on the lyre, and a fifth on the double flute, without leaving the tight-rope that bends beneath their nimble feet. But more beautiful than these divine rope-dancers were the female dancers, who floated about, perfect prodigies of self-possession and buoyancy, rising of themselves from the ground and sustained without an effort in the voluptuous air that cradled them. You may see these all at the museum in Naples,--the nymph who clashes the cymbals, and one who drums the tambourine; another who holds aloft a branch of cedar and a golden sceptre; one who is handing a plate of figs; and her, too who has a basket on her head and a thyrsis in her hand. Another in dancing uncovers her neck and her shoulders, and a third, with her head thrown back, and her eyes uplifted to heaven, inflates her veil as though to fly away. Here is one dropping bunches of flowers in a fold of her robe, and there another who holds a golden plate in this hand, while with that she covers her brows with an undulating pallium, like a bird putting its head under its wing.

There are some almost nude, and some that drape themselves in tissues quite transparent and woven of the air. Some again wrap themselves in thick mantles which cover them completely, but which are about to fall; two of them holding each other by the hand are going to float upward together. As many dancing nymphs as there are, so many are the different dances, att.i.tudes, movements, undulations, characteristics, and dissimilar ways of removing and putting on veils; infinite variations, in fine, upon two notes that vibrate with voluptuous luxuriance, and in a thousand ways.

Let us continue: We are sweeping into the full tide of mythology. All the ancient divinities will pa.s.s before us,--now isolated (like the fine, nay, truly imposing Ceres in the house of Castor and Pollux), now grouped in well-known scenes, some of which often recur on the Pompeian walls. Thus, the education of Bacchus, his relations with Silenus; the romantic story of Ariadne; the loves of Jupiter, Apollo, and Daphne; Mars and Venus; Adonis dying; Zephyr and Flora; but, above all, the heroes of renown, Theseus and Andromeda, Meleager, Jason, heads of Hercules; his twelve labors, his combat with the Nemaean lion, his weaknesses,--such are the episodes most in favor with the decorative artists of the little city. Sometimes they take their subjects from the poems of Virgil, but oftener from those of Homer. I might cite a whole house, viz., that of the Poet, also styled the Homeric House, the interior court of which was a complete Iliad ill.u.s.trated. There you could see the parting of Agamemnon and Chryseis, and also that of Briseis and Achilles, who, seated on a throne, with a look of angry resignation, is requesting the young girl to return to Agamemnon--a fine picture, of deserved celebrity. There, too, was beheld the lovely Venus which Gell has not hesitated to compare, as to form, with the Medicean statue, or for color, to t.i.tian's painting. It will be remembered that she plays a conspicuous part in the poem. A little further on we see Jupiter and Juno meeting on Mount Ida.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Exedra of the House of Siricus.]

"At length" says Nicolini, in his sumptuous work on Pompeii, "in the natural sequence of these episodes, appears Thetis reclining on the Triton, and holding forth to her afflicted son the arms that Vulcan had forged for him in her presence."

It was in the peristyle of this house that the copy of the famous picture by Timanthius of the sacrifice of Iphigenia was found. "Having represented her standing near the altar on which she is to perish, the artist depicts profound grief on the faces of those who are present, especially of Menelaus; then, having exhausted all the symbols of sorrow, he veils the father's countenance, finding it impossible to give a befitting expression." This was, according to Pliny, the work of Timanthus, and such is exactly the reproduction of it as it was found in the house of the poet at Pompeii.

This Iphigenia and the Medea in the house of Castor and Pollux, recalling the masterpiece of Timomachos the Byzantine are the only two Pompeian pictures which reproduce well-known paintings; but let us not, for that reason, conclude that the others are original. The painters of the little city were neither creators nor copyists, but very free imitators, varying familiar subjects to suit themselves. Hence, that variety which surprises us in their reproductions of the same subject.

Indeed, I have seen, at least ten Ariadnes surprised by Bacchus, and there are no two alike. Hence, also, that ease and freedom of touch indicating that the decorative artists executing them felt quite at their ease. a.s.suredly, their efforts, which are of quite unequal merit, are not models of correctness by any means; faults of drawing and proportion, traits of awkwardness and heedlessness, swarm in them; but let anybody pick out a sub-prefecture of 30,000 inhabitants, in France, and say to the painters of the district: "Here, my good friends, just go to work and tear off those sheets of colored paper that you find pasted upon the walls of rooms and saloons in every direction, and paint there in place of them socles and friezes, devotional images, _genre_ pictures, and historical pieces summing up the ideas, creeds, manners and tastes, of our time in such sort that were the Pyrenees, the Cevennes, or the Jura Alps, to crumble upon you to-morrow, future generations, on digging up your houses and your masterpieces, might there study the life of our period although it will be antiquity for them."... What would the painters of the place be apt to do or say? I think I may reply, with all respect to them, that they would at least be greatly embarra.s.sed.

But, on their part, the Pompeians were not a whit put out when they came to repaint their whole city afresh. Would you like to get an accurate idea of their real merit and their indisputable value? If so, ask some one to conduct you through the houses that have been lately exhumed, and look at the paintings still left in their places as they appear with all the brilliance that Vesuvius has preserved in them, and which the sunlight will soon impair. In the saloon of the house of Proculus notice two pieces that correspond, namely, Narcissus and the Triumph of Bacchus--powerless languor and victorious activity. The intended meaning is clearly apparent, and is simply and vividly rendered. The ancients never required commentators to make them understood. You comprehend their idea and their subject at first glance. The most ignorant of men and the least versed in Pagan lore, take their meaning with half a look and give their works a t.i.tle. In them we find no beating about the bush, no circ.u.mlocution, no hidden meanings, no confusion; the painter expresses what he means, does it quickly and does it well, without exaggerating his terms or overloading the scene. His princ.i.p.al personages stand out boldly, yet the accessories do not cry aloud, "Look at me!" The picture of Narcissus represents Narcissus first and foremost; then it brings in a solitude and a streamlet. The coloring has a brilliance and harmoniousness of tint that surprises us, but there are no useless effects in it. In nearly all these frescoes (excepting the wedding of Zephyrus and Flora) the light spreads over it, white and equable (no one says cold and monotonous), for its office is not merely to illuminate the picture, but to throw sufficient glow and warmth upon the wall. The low and narrow rooms having, instead of windows, only a door opening on the court, had need of this painted daylight which skilful pencils wrought for them. And what movement there was in all those figures, what suppleness and what truth to nature![H]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Exedra of the House of Siricus (See p. 195).]

Nothing is distorted, nothing att.i.tudinizes. Ariadne is really asleep, and Hercules, in wine, really sinks to the ground; the dancing girl floats in the air as though in her native element; the centaur gallops without an effort; it is simple _reality_--the very reverse of realism--nature such as she actually is when she is pleasant to behold, in the full effusion of her grace, advancing like a queen because she _is_ a queen, and because she could not move in any other fashion. In a word, these second-rate painters, poor daubers of walls as they were, had, in the absence of scientific skill and correctness, the flash of latent genius in obscurity, the instinct of art, spontaneousness, freedom of touch, and vivid life.