August Mau

“ Naples itself, hidden from our view, lies between those distant heights and the base of Vesuvius.
But meanwhile the sun has set behind Misenum; its last rays are lighting up the cloud of smoke above Vesuvius and the summit of Monte Sant' Angelo. The brilliancy of coloring has faded; the weary eye finds rest in the soft afterglow. ”

“ As the Roman colonies strove in all things to be Rome in miniature, each thought it necessary to have a Capitolium—a temple for the worship of the gods of the Roman Capitol, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva; and this naturally became the most important temple in the city. That the worship of the three divinities was established at Pompeii is evident from the discovery of three images representing them, in the little temple conjecturally assigned to Zeus Milichius. ”

“ The subterranean fires of Vesuvius pressed upward to find an outlet. The accumulations of volcanic dust and pumice stone that had been heaped up on the mountain by former eruptions were again hurled to a great height, and came down upon the surrounding country. On the west side of Vesuvius they mingled with torrents of rain, and flowed as a vast stream of mud down over Herculaneum. On the south side, driven by a northwest wind as they descended from the upper air, they spread out into a thick cloud, which covered Pompeii and the plain of the Sarno. ”

“ Roman soldiers stand thick in serried ranks upon the area. They are the veterans of Sulla. An officer bearing a civil commission, the nephew of the Dictator, appears before them. Standing in front of the temple of Jupiter, he makes a proclamation regarding the founding and administration of the colony. The citizens crowd back timidly into the colonnade. Many of the best of the Pompeians have fallen in battle; of the rest, a part at least will be dispossessed of house and home to make room for the intruders, whose arrogance they will be compelled submissively to endure. ”

“ And this personality is not lost in mystical self-contemplation; the god is following with closest attention the course of events in some far distant place, affairs that in the next moment may require his intervention; excitement and expectancy are seen in the raised upper lip. The ideal of this artist was the wise and powerful king, whose watchful and all-protecting eye sees to the furthest limits of his kingdom. Surely this variation of the Otricoli type must have been conceived in a monarchical period, the period when the Greek world was ruled by the successors of Alexander. ”

“ Fig. 22.—Bust of Jupiter found at Pompeii.
Naples Museum.
Great force of will is seen also in the face of the Pompeian god; but it is will dominated by alert and all-embracing mind. The forehead expands in a broad arch; the eyes, wide open, look out with full vision under sharply cut brows. Here we have no secret brooding; a powerful yet clearly defined and comprehensible personality is stamped upon features carved in bold, free lines. ”

“ The sun as it nears the horizon veils the bare ashen cone with a mantle of deep violet, while the cloud of smoke that rises from the summit shines with a golden glow. Far above the base the sides are covered with vineyards, among which small groups of white houses can here and there be seen. ”

“ In one respect there is an essential difference between the remains of Pompeii and those of the large and famous cities of antiquity, as Rome or Athens, which have associated with them the familiar names of historical characters. Mars' Hill is clothed with human interest, if for no other reason, because of its relation to the work of the Apostle Paul; while the Roman Forum and the Palatine, barren as they seem to-day, teem with life as there rise before the mind's eye the scenes presented in the pages of classical writers. ”

“ With the exception of the Greek temple mentioned above, all the public buildings of Pompeii that do not belong to the time of the Roman colony have a homogeneous character; a list of them would include the colonnade about the Forum, the Basilica, the temples of Apollo and of Jupiter, the Large Theatre with the colonnades of the Forum Triangulare and the Barracks of the Gladiators, the Stabian Baths, the Palaestra, and the outer part of the Porta Marina with the inner parts of the other gates. Closely associated with these public edifices is a large number of private houses ”

“ When the restoration of the temple and its colonnade was undertaken, the feeling for the pure and simple forms of the Greek architecture was no longer present; the prevailing taste demanded gay and fantastic designs, with the use of brilliant colors. The Pompeians improved the opportunity afforded by the rebuilding to make the temple and its colonnade conform to the taste of the times.
First the projecting portions of the Ionic and Corinthian capitals were cut off; then shaft and capital alike were covered with a thick layer of stucco. ”

“ The life of the Forum seemed so interesting to one of the citizens of Pompeii that he devoted to the portrayal of it a series of paintings on the walls of a room. The pictures are 55 light and sketchy, but they give a vivid representation of ancient life in a small city. First, in front of the equestrian statues near the colonnade we see dealers of every kind and description. There sits a seller of copper vessels and iron utensils (Fig. 16) , so lost in thought that a friend is calling his attention to a possible purchaser who is just coming up. ”

“ The style of architecture, however, is in no essential particular different from that of the colonnade and of other buildings of the Tufa Period, and gives no indication of great age. The most probable explanation is that the temple was rebuilt in the Tufa Period on the site of an earlier structure, the orientation of which was preserved. The difference in direction is concealed by the increasing thickness, from south to north, of the pillars between the Forum and the court of the temple. ”

“ How strong this influence was may be seen in the remains at Pompeii. The architecture of the period was Greek; Greek divinities were honored, as Apollo and Zeus Milichius; and the standard measures of the mensa ponderaria were inscribed with Greek names.
In less than a hundred years new strifes arose between the more cultured Samnites of the plain and their rough and warlike kinsmen in the mountains. But Rome took a part in the struggle, and in the Samnite Wars (343-290 B.C.) brought both the men of the mountains and the men of the plain under her dominion. ”

“ When Pompeii was founded we do not know. It is more than likely that a site so well adapted for a city was occupied at an early date. The oldest building, the Doric temple in the Forum Triangulare, is of the style of the sixth century B.C.; we are safe in assuming that the city was then already in existence. ”

“ Gray tufa is a volcanic dust which has been hardened by the presence of water into rock. It has a fine grain, and is easily worked; it was quarried in the vicinity of Nocera. The volcanic dust which formed the yellow tufa was thrown out in an earlier period, when the Sarno plain was still a part of the sea, and so hardened in salt water; it is more friable than the gray tufa, and not so durable.
The lava, which came originally from Vesuvius, was quarried 36 at Pompeii. ”

“ The only important building wholly new is the large bathing establishment, the Central Baths, at the corner of Stabian and Nola streets. For the rest, effort seems to have been directed toward restoring the ruined buildings as nearly as possible to their original condition. The wall decoration throughout is of the Intricate Style.
The measurements of buildings in the Roman Period conform to the scale of the Roman foot, while the dimensions of structures antedating the Roman colony in most cases reduce to the scale of the Oscan or old Italic foot. The Roman foot (296 mm.) ”

“ The eight gates are known by the modern names given on our plan. Two of them, the Herculaneum and Capua gates, lie at the points where the wall comes to the edge of the lava bed on either side; the streets that led from them descended to the plain. At the Herculaneum Gate the much travelled highway from Naples, passing through Herculaneum, entered the city; the Capua Gate does not seem to have been built to accommodate a large traffic. Between these two lay the Vesuvius Gate, through which the Pompeians passed out upon the ridge toward Vesuvius. ”

“ Apart from commerce, an important source of income for the Pompeians lay in the fertility of the soil. In antiquity, as now, grapes were cultivated extensively on the ridge projecting from the foot of Vesuvius toward the south. The evidence afforded by the great number of wine jars, amphorae (Fig. 5) , that have been brought to light would warrant this conclusion; and lately wine presses also have been discovered near Boscoreale, above Pompeii. Pliny makes mention of the Pompeian wine, but remarks that indulgence in it brings a headache that will last till noon of the following day. ”

“ The wind blows till just before sunset. The early hours of the evening are still; the pavements and the walls of the houses give out the heat which they have absorbed during the day. But soon—perhaps by nine o'clock—the tree tops again begin to murmur, and all night long, from the mountains of the interior, a gentle, refreshing stream of air 5 flows down through the gardens, the roomy atriums and colonnades of the houses, the silent streets, and the buildings about the Forum, with an effect indescribably soothing.
Fig. 3.—View from Pompeii, looking south. ”

“ The remains of a lead pipe, which brought the water to it, show that it must have been connected with an aqueduct. At the further end of the main hall was an equestrian statue of which no trace has been found.
The arrangement of the roof is a problem of much difficulty. Without wearying the reader by presenting various possibilities, it will be sufficient for our purposes to suggest the explanation which, on the whole, has the most in its favor. As assumed in our restoration, the roof of the main hall was carried by the entablature of the twenty-eight large columns. ”

“ The line of the ancient coast can still be traced by means of a clearly marked depression, beyond which the stratification of the volcanic deposits thrown out in 79 does not reach. The Sarno, too, now flows nearly two thirds of a mile from Pompeii; in antiquity, according to all indications, it was not more than half so far away.
In point of climate and outlook, a fairer site for a city could scarcely have been chosen. The Pompeian, living in clear air, could look down upon the fogs which in the wet season frequently rose from the river and spread over the plain. ”

“ The pedestal in the middle, which is in the form of an arch almost square at the base, is much the oldest. Upon it was probably placed a colossal statue of Augustus. It is incredible that during the long and successful reign of the first emperor no statue in his honor should have been erected in Pompeii; and this is the most suitable place. The other three pedestals are similar in construction, and clearly belong together. ”

“ In the Social War, when, in the summer of 90 B.C., the Samnite army marched into Campania, Pompeii allied itself with the insurgents; as a consequence, in 89, it was besieged by Sulla, but without success. Two years later, Sulla went to Asia to conduct the war against Mithridates. Returning victorious in the spring of 83 B.C., he led his army into Campania, where he spent the winter of 83-82; his soldiers, grown brutal in the Asiatic war and accustomed to every kind of license, may have proved unwelcome guests for the Pompeians. ”

“ It is keenly to be regretted that in this way the effect of the decorative system as a whole has been destroyed, for the picture forms the centre of a carefully elaborated scheme of decoration which needs to be viewed as an artistic whole in order to be fully appreciated; and the removal of a painting can hardly be accomplished without some damage to the parts of the wall immediately in contact with it. ”

“ From the number of skeletons discovered in the past few decades, since an accurate record has been kept, it has been estimated that in Pompeii itself, about two thousand persons perished. As the city contained a population of twenty thousand or more, it is evident that the majority of the inhabitants fled; since the eruption commenced in the morning, while the hail of pumice stone did not begin till afternoon, those who appreciated the greatness of the danger had time to escape. ”

“ The use of several brick-shaped blocks of stone,—such blocks are not found in other buildings of the pre-Roman time,—the lack of any trace of the wall decoration of the first style, the form of the egg-and-dart moulding on the capitals of the Ionic columns in the cella, and the correspondence of certain dimensions with the Roman scale of measurements may be alleged in favor of this hypothesis. The evidence at present does not warrant a positive decision against it. ”

“ To meet this difficulty a line of thick planks was placed in old Italic fashion above the capitals of the columns, and on these were laid short tufa blocks. Thus in our illustration (Fig. 14) , while the upper of the two bands of the architrave is seen to be of stone, the lower shows the modern timber supplied in the place of the ancient. That the planks were in reality no thicker than has been assumed in the reconstruction is proved beyond question by the later colonnade on the west side, which, although entirely of stone, corresponds throughout in its proportions with the older one ”

“ And while in winter Stabiae, lying on the northwest side of Monte Sant' Angelo, enjoyed the sun for only a few hours, the elevation on which Pompeii stood, sloping gently toward the east and south, more sharply toward the west, was bathed in sunlight during the entire day.
Winter at Pompeii is mild and short; spring and autumn are long. The heat of summer, moreover, is not extreme. In the early morning, it is true, the heat is at times oppressive. ”