The Wonders of Pompeii Part 8

One is surprised so see so large an amphitheatre in so small a city.

But, let us not forget that Pompeii attracted the inhabitants of the neighboring towns to her festivals; history even tells us an anecdote on this subject that is not without its moral.

The Senator Liveneius Regulus, who had been driven from Rome and found an asylum in Pompeii, offered a gladiator show to the hospitable little city. A number of people from Nocera had gone to the pageant, and a quarrel arose, probably owing to munic.i.p.al rivalries, that eternal curse of Italy; from words they came to blows and volleys of stones, and even to slashing with swords. There were dead and wounded on both sides. The Nocera visitors, being less numerous, were beaten, and made complaint to Rome. The affair was submitted to the Emperor, who sent it to the Senate, who referred it to the Consuls, who referred it back again to the Senate. Then came the sentence, and public shows were prohibited in Pompeii for the s.p.a.ce of ten years. A caricature which recalls this punishment has been found in the Street of Mercury. It represented an armed gladiator descending, with a palm in his hand, into the amphitheatre: on the left, a second personage is drawing a third toward him on a seat; the third one had his arms bound, and was, no doubt, a prisoner. This inscription accompanies the entire piece: "Campanians, your victory has been as fatal to you as it was to the people of Nocera."[K]

The hand of Rome, ever the hand of Rome!

For that matter, the ordinances relating to the amphitheatre applied to the whole empire. One of the Pompeian inscriptions announces that the duumvir C. Cuspius Pansa had been appointed to superintend the public shows and see to the observance of the Petronian law. This law prohibited Senators from fighting in the arena, and even from sending slaves thither who had not been condemned for crime. Such things, then, required to be prohibited!

I have described the arena and the seats; let me now pa.s.s on to the show itself. Would yon like to have a hunt or a gladiatorial combat? Here I invent nothing. I have data, found at Pompeii (the paintings in the amphitheatre and the bas-reliefs on the tomb of Scaurus), that reproduce scenes which I have but to transfer to prose. Let us, then, suppose the twenty thousand spectators to be in their places on thirty-four ranges of seats, one above the other, around the arena; then, let us take our seats among them and look on.

First we have a hunt. A panther, secured by a long rope to the neck of a bull let loose, is set on against a young _bestiarius_, who holds two javelins in his hands. A man, armed with a long lance, irritates the bull so that it may move and second the rush of the panther fastened to it. The lad who has the javelins, and is a novice in his business, is but making his first attempt; should the bull not move, he runs no risk, yet I should not like to be in his place.

Then follows a more serious combat between a bear and a man, who irritates him by holding out a cloth at him, as the matadors do in bull-fights. Another group shows us a tiger and a lion escaping in different directions. An unarmed and naked man is in pursuit of the tiger, who cannot be a very cross one. But here is a _venatio_ much more dramatic in its character. The nude bestiarius has just pierced a wolf through and through, and the animal is in flight with the spear sticking in his body, but the man staggers and a wild boar is rushing at him. At the same time, a stag thrown down by a la.s.so that is still seen dangling to his antlers, awaits his death-blow; hounds are dashing at him, and "their fierce baying echoes from vale to vale."

But that is not all. Look at yon group of victors: a real matador has plunged his spear into the breast of a bull with so violent a stroke that the point of the weapon comes out at the animal's back; and another has just brought down and impaled a bear; a dog is leaping at the throat of a fugitive wild boar and biting him; and, in this ferocious menagerie, peopled with lions and panthers, two rabbits are scampering about, undoubtedly to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of the throng. The Romans were fond of these contrasts, which furnished Galienus an opportunity to be jocosely generous. "A lapidary," says M. Magnin, "had sold the emperor's wife some jewels, which were recognized to be false; the emperor had the dishonest dealer arrested and condemned to the lions; but when the fatal moment came, he turned no more formidable creature loose upon him than a capon. Everybody was astonished, and while all were vainly striving to guess the meaning of such an enigma, he caused the _curion_, or herald, to proclaim aloud: "This man tried to cheat, and now he is caught in his turn.""

I have described the hunts at Pompeii; they were small affairs compared with those of Rome. The reader may know that t.i.tus, who finished the Coliseum, caused five thousand animals to be killed there in a single day in the presence of eighty thousand spectators. Let us confess, however, that with this exhibition, of tigers, panthers, lions, and wild boars, the provincial hunts were still quite dramatic.

I now come to the gladiatorial combats. To commence with the preliminaries of the fight, a ring-master, with his long staff in his hand, traces the circle, within which the antagonists must keep. One of the latter, half-armed, blows his trumpet and two boys behind him hold his helmet and his shield. The other has nothing, as yet, but his shield in his hand; two slaves are bringing him his helmet and his sword. The trumpet has sounded, and the ring-master and slaves have disappeared.

The gladiators are at it. One of them has met with a mishap. The point of his sword is bent and he has just thrown away his shield. The blood is flowing from his arm, which he extends toward the spectators, at the same time raising his thumb. That was the sign the vanquished made when they asked for quarter. But the people do not grant it this time, for they have turned the twenty thousand thumbs of their right hands downwards. The man must die, and the victor is advancing upon him to slaughter him.

Would you like to see an equestrian combat? Two hors.e.m.e.n are charging on each other. They wear helmets with visors, and carry spears and the round shield (_parma_), but they are lightly armed. Only one of their arms--that which sustains the spear--is covered with bands or armlets of metal. Their names and the number of their victories already won are known. The first is Bebrix, a barbarian, who has been triumphant fifteen times; the second is n.o.bilior, a Roman, who has vanquished eleven times.

The combat is still undecided. n.o.bilior is just delivering a spear thrust, which is vigorously parried by Bebrix.

Would you prefer a still more singular kind of duel--one between a _secutor_ and a _retiarius?_ The retiarius wears neither helmet nor cuira.s.s, but carries a three-p.r.o.nged javelin, called a trident, in his left hand, and in his right a net, which he endeavors to throw over the head of his adversary. If he misses his aim he is lost; the secutor then pursues him, sword in hand, and kills him. But in the duel at which we are present, the secutor is vanquished, and has fallen on one knee; the retiarius, Nepimus, triumphant already on five preceding occasions, has seized him by the belt, and has planted one foot upon his leg, but the trident not being sufficient to finish him, a second secutor, Hippolytus by name, who has survived five previous victories, has come up.

Hippolytus rests one hand upon the helmet of the vanquished secutor who vainly clasps his knees, and with the other, cuts his throat.

Death--always death! In the paintings; in the bas-reliefs that I describe; in the scenes that they reproduce; in the arena where these combats must have taken place, I can see only unhappy wretches undergoing a.s.sa.s.sination. One of them, holding his shield behind him, is thinking only how he may manage to fall with grace; another, kneeling, presses his wound with one hand, and stretches the other out toward the spectators; some of them have a suppliant look, others are stoical, but all will have to roll at last upon the sand of the arena, condemned by the inexorable caprice of a people greedy for blood. "The modest virgin," says Juvenal, "turning down her thumb, orders that the breast of yonder man, grovelling in the dust, shall be torn open." And all--the heavily armed Samnite, the Gaul, the Thracian, the secutor; the _dimach.o.e.rus_, with his two swords; the swordsman who wears a helmet surmounted with a fish--the one whom the retiarius pursues with his net, meanwhile singing this refrain, "It is not you that I am after, but your fish, and why do you flee from me?"--all, all must succ.u.mb, at last, sooner or later, were it to be after the hundredth victory, in this same arena, where once an attendant employed in the theatre used to come, in the costume of Mercury, to touch them with a red-hot iron to make sure that they were dead. If they moved, they were at once dispatched; if they remained icy-cold and motionless, a slave harpooned them with a hook, and dragged them through the mire of sand and blood to the narrow corridor, the _porta libitinensis_,--the portal of death,--whence they were flung into the spoliarium, so that their arms and clothing, at least, might be saved. Such were the games of the amphitheatre.

[Footnote K: M. Campfleury has reproduced this design in his very curious book on _Antique Caricature_.]

IX.

THE ERUPTION.

THE DELUGE OF ASHES.--THE DELUGE OF FIRE.--THE FLIGHT OF THE POMPEIANS.--THE PREOCCUPATIONS OF THE POMPEIAN WOMEN.--THE VICTIMS: THE FAMILY OF DIOMED; THE SENTINEL; THE WOMAN WALLED UP IN A TOMB; THE PRIEST OF ISIS; THE LOVERS CLINGING TOGETHER, ETC.--THE SKELETONS.--THE DEAD BODIES MOULDED BY VESUVIUS.

It was during one of these festivals, on the 23d of November, 79, that the terrible eruption which overwhelmed the city burst forth. The testimony of the ancients, the ruins of Pompeii, the layers upon layers of ashes and scoriae that covered it, the skeletons surprised in att.i.tudes of agony or death, all concur to tell us of the catastrophe.

The imagination can add nothing to it: the picture is there before our eyes; we are present at the scene; we behold it. Seated in the amphitheatre, we take to flight at the first convulsions, at the first lurid flashes which announce the conflagration and the crumbling of the mountain. The ground is shaken repeatedly; and something like a whirlwind of dust, that grows thicker and thicker, has gone rushing and spinning across the heavens. For some days past there has been talk of gigantic forms, which, sometimes on the mountain and sometimes in the plain, swept through the air; they are up again now, and rear themselves to their whole height in the eddies of smoke, from amid which is heard a strange sound, a fearful moaning followed by claps of thunder that crash down, peal on peal. Night, too, has come on--a night of horror; enormous flames kindle the darkness like the blaze of a furnace. People scream, out in the streets, "Vesuvius is on fire!"

On the instant, the Pompeians, terrified, bewildered, rush from the amphitheatre, happy in finding so many places of exit through which they can pour forth without crushing each other, and the open gates of the city only a short distance beyond. However, after the first explosion, after the deluge of ashes, comes the deluge of fire, or light stones, all ablaze, driven by the wind--one might call it a burning snow--descending slowly, inexorably, fatally, without cessation or intermission, with pitiless persistence. This solid flame blocks up the streets, piles itself in heaps on the roofs and breaks through into the houses with the crashing tiles and the blazing rafters. The fire thus tumbles in from story to story, upon the pavement of the courts, where, acc.u.mulating like earth thrown in to fill a trench, it receives fresh fuel from the red and fiery flakes that slowly, fatally, keep showering down, falling, falling, without respite.

The inhabitants flee in every direction; the strong, the youthful, those who care only for their lives, escape. The amphitheatre is emptied in the twinkling of an eye and none remain in it but the dead gladiators.

But woe to those who have sought shelter in the shops, under the arcades of the theatre, or in underground retreats. The ashes surround and stifle them! Woe, above all, to those whom avarice or cupidity hold back; to the wife of Proculus, to the favorite of Sall.u.s.t, to the daughters of the house of the Poet who have tarried to gather up their jewels! They will fall suffocated among these trinkets, which, scattered around them, will reveal their vanity and the last trivial cares that then beset them, to after ages. A woman in the atrium attached to the house of the Faun ran wildly as chance directed, laden with jewelry; unable any longer to get breath, she had sought refuge in the tablinum, and there strove in vain to hold up, with her outstretched arms, the ceiling crumbling in upon her. She was crushed to death, and her head was missing when they found her.

In the Street of the Tombs, a dense crowd must have jostled each other, some rushing in from, the country to seek safety in the city, and others flying from the burning houses in quest of deliverance under the open sky. One of them fell forward with his feet turned toward the Herculaneum gate; another on his back, with his arms uplifted. He bore in his hands one hundred and twenty-seven silver coins and sixty-nine pieces of gold. A third victim was also on his back; and, singular fact, they all died looking toward Vesuvius!

A female holding a child in her arms had taken shelter in a tomb which the volcano shut tight upon her; a soldier, faithful to duty, had remained erect at his post before the Herculaneum gate, one hand upon his mouth and the other on his spear. In this brave att.i.tude he perished. The family of Diomed had a.s.sembled in his cellar, where seventeen victims, women, children, and the young girl whose throat was found moulded in the ashes, were buried alive, clinging closely to each other, destroyed there by suffocation, or, perhaps, by hunger. Arrius Diomed had tried to escape alone, abandoning his house and taking with him only one slave, who carried his money-wallet. He fell, struck down by the stifling gases, in front of his own garden. How many other poor wretches there were whose last agonies have been disclosed to us!--the priest of Isis, who, enveloped in flames and unable to escape into the blazing street, cut through two walls with his axe and yielded his last breath at the foot of the third, where he had fallen with fatigue or struck down by the deluge of ashes, but still clutching his weapon. And the poor dumb brutes, tied so that they could not break away,--the mule in the bakery, the horses in the tavern of Albinus, the goat of Siricus, which had crouched into the kitchen oven, where it was recently found, with its bell still attached to its neck! And the prisoners in the blackhole of the gladiators' barracks, riveted to an iron rack that jammed their legs! And the two lovers surprised in a shop near the Thermae; both were young, and they were tightly clasped in each other's arms.... How awful a night and how fearful a morrow! Day has come, but the darkness remains; not that of a moonless night, but that of a closed room without lamp or candle. At Misenum, where Pliny the younger, who has described the catastrophe, was stationed, nothing was heard but the voices of children, of men, and of women, calling to each other, seeking each other, recognizing each other by their cries alone, invoking death, bursting out in wails and screams of anguish, and believing that it was the eternal night in which G.o.ds and men alike were rushing headlong to annihilation. Then there fell a shower of ashes so dense that, at the distance of seven leagues from the volcano, one had to shake one's clothing continually, so as not to be suffocated. These ashes went, it is said, as far as Africa, or, at all events, to Rome, where they filled the atmosphere and hid the light of day, so that even the Romans said: "The world is overturned; the sun is falling on the earth to bury itself in night, or the earth is rushing up to the sun to be consumed in his eternal fires." "At length," writes Pliny, "the light returned gradually, and the star that sheds it reappeared, but pallid as in an eclipse. The whole scene around us was transformed; the ashes, like a heavy snow, covered everything."

This vast shroud was not lifted until in the last century, and the excavations have narrated the catastrophe with an eloquence which even Pliny himself, notwithstanding the resources of his style and the authority of his testimony, could not attain. The terrible exterminator was caught, as it were, in the very act, amid the ruins he had made.

These roofless houses, with the height of one story only remaining and leaving their walls open to the sun; these colonnades that no longer supported anything; these temples yawning wide on all sides, without pediment or portico; this silent loneliness; this look of desolation, distress, and nakedness, which looked like ruins on the morrow of some great fire,--all were enough to wring one's heart. But there was still more: there were the skeletons found at every step in this voyage of discovery in the midst of the dead, betraying the anguish and the terror of that last dreadful hour. Six hundred,--perhaps more,--have already been found, each one ill.u.s.trating some poignant episode of the immense catastrophe in which they were smitten down!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bodies of Pompeians cast in the Ashes.]

Recently, in a small street, under heaps of rubbish, the men working on the excavations perceived an empty s.p.a.ce, at the bottom of which were some bones. They at once called Signor Fiorelli, who had a bright idea.

He caused some plaster to be mixed, and poured it immediately into the hollow, and the same operation was renewed at other points where he thought he saw other similar bones. Afterward, the crust of pumice-stone and hardened ashes which had enveloped, as it were, in a scabbard, this something that they were trying to discover, was carefully lifted off.

When these materials had been removed, there appeared four dead bodies.

Any one can see them now, in the museum at Naples; nothing could be more striking than the spectacle. They are not statues, but corpses, moulded by Vesuvius; the skeletons are still there, in those casings of plaster which reproduce what time would have destroyed, and what the damp ashes have preserved,--the clothing and the flesh, I might almost say the life. The bones peep through here and there, in certain places which the plaster did not reach. Nowhere else is there anything like this to be seen. The Egyptian mummies are naked, blackened, hideous; they no longer have anything in common with us; they are laid out for their eternal sleep in the consecrated att.i.tude. But the exhumed Pompeians are human beings whom one sees in the agonies of death.

One of these bodies is that of a woman near whom were picked up ninety-one pieces of coin, two silver urns, and some keys and jewels.

She was endeavoring to escape, taking with her these precious articles, when she fell down in the narrow street. You still see her lying on her left side; her head-dress can very readily be made out, as also can the texture of her clothing and two silver rings which she still has on her finger; one of her hands is broken, and you see the cellular structure of the bone; her left arm is lifted and distorted; her delicate hand is so tightly clenched that you would say the nails penetrate the flesh; her whole body appears swollen and contracted; the legs only, which are very slender, remain extended. One feels that she struggled a long time in horrible agony; her whole att.i.tude is that of anguish, not of death.

Behind her had fallen a woman and a young girl; the elder of the two, the mother, perhaps, was of humble birth, to judge by the size of her ears; on her finger she had only an iron ring; her left leg lifted and contorted, shows that she, too, suffered; not so much, however, as the n.o.ble lady: the poor have less to lose in dying. Near her, as though upon the same bed, lies the young girl; one at the head, and the other at the foot, and their legs are crossed. This young girl, almost a child, produces a strange impression; one sees exactly the tissue, the st.i.tches of her clothing, the sleeves that covered her arms almost to the wrists, some rents here and there that show the naked flesh, and the embroidery of the little shoes in which she walked; but above all, you witness her last hour, as though you had been there, beneath the wrath of Vesuvius; she had thrown her dress over her head, like the daughter of Diomed, because she was afraid; she had fallen in running, with her face to the ground, and not being able to rise again, had rested her young, frail head upon one of her arms. One of her hands was half open, as though she had been holding something, the veil, perhaps, that covered her. You see the bones of her fingers penetrating the plaster.

Her cranium is shining and smooth, her legs are raised backward and placed one upon the other; she did not suffer very long, poor child! but it is her corpse that causes one the sorest pang to see, for she was not more than fifteen years of age.

The fourth body is that of a man, a sort of colossus. He lay upon his back so as to die bravely; his arms and his limbs are straight and rigid. His clothing is very clearly defined, the greaves visible and fitting closely; his sandals laced at the feet, and one of them pierced by the toe, the nails in the soles distinct; the stomach naked and swollen like those of the other bodies, perhaps by the effect of the water, which has kneaded the ashes. He wears an iron ring on the bone of one finger; his mouth is open, and some of his teeth are missing; his nose and his cheeks stand out promimently; his eyes and his hair have disappeared, but the moustache still clings. There is something martial and resolute about this fine corpse. After the women who did not want to die, we see this man, fearless in the midst of the ruins that are crushing him--_impavidum ferient ruinae_.

I stop here, for Pompeii itself can offer nothing that approaches this palpitating drama. It is violent death, with all its supreme tortures,--death that suffers and struggles,--taken in the very act, after the lapse of eighteen centuries.

ITINERARY.

AN ITINERARY.

In order to render my work less lengthy and less confused, as well as easier to read, I have grouped together the curiosities of Pompeii, according to their importance and their purport, in different chapters.

I shall now mark out an itinerary, wherein they will be cla.s.sed in the order in which they present themselves to the traveller, and I shall place after each street and each edifice the indication of the chapter in which I have described or named it in my work.

In approaching Pompeii by the usual entrance, which is the nearest to the railroad, it would be well to go directly to the Forum. See Chap.

II.

The monuments of the Forum are as follows. I have _italicized_ the most curious:

_The Basilica_. See Chap. II.

_The Temple of Venus_. "

The Curia, or Council Hall. "