Pompeii
（
Πομπήϊοι). A city in Campania, founded towards the sixth
century B.C. by an Italic tribe, which left its native haunts in the Apennines to seek a
happier home on the shores of Campania. They settled on a hill of volcanic origin between the
river Sarno and the sea, and divided the land so that each
paterfamilias should have a share of two
iugera (57,600 square
feet). The number of settlers is estimated by Fiorelli at 150 families. The city was
inaugurated with the same political and religious rites which had been observed in the
foundation of Rome; it was crossed by two main streets, the
cardo running
from south to north, the
decumanus running from east to west. Two lanes
parallel, one with the
cardo, one with the
decumanus, were added in course of time, by means of which the city was finally divided
into nine quarters or wards (
regiones), and each ward subdivided into
blocks (
insulae). The same division is maintained to-day. Thus the house
of Lucius Popidius Secundus is marked house n. v., fourth insula, first region; that of Marius
Epidius Rufus is n. xx., first insula, ninth region, and so on.
Towards B.C. 424 the city fell a prey to the Samnites. The new-comers, under the influence
of Hellenic art and civilization, transformed the smoky huts of the conquered tribesmen into
gay and commodious dwellings, levelled and paved the streets, and raised public and sacred
edifices in the choicest forms of Doric architecture.
Towards the end of the Marsic War the Pompeians were defeated in the plains of Nola; their
city and their territory were given up to a colony of veterans; the name was changed into that
of Colonia Veneria Cornelia Pompeii. Under the benevolent rule of Augustus, Pompeii became the
Newport of ancient Rome, and continued to enjoy the favour of the rich and pleasure-seeking
patricians for more than a century. In A.D. 63, on
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Specimen of House Decorations of the Time of Augustus. The Mosaic-work is lined with
Cornices of Shells, Pumice-stones, and Enamels. (From house, reg. vii. ins. ii. n.
38.)
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February 5th, the
felix Campania was shaken by an earthquake.
Pompeii, Nuceria, Herculaneum, and Naples were seriously damaged; a flock of six hundred sheep
disappeared in a fissure of the earth; statues fell from their pedestals; public edifices
collapsed, and when the work of repairing the damages was nearly completed, and the
recollections of the earthquake had almost died away, another by far more horrible catastrophe
took place by which Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabia, as living cities, were wiped forever
from the face of the earth.
The account of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 is given by Pliny the Younger in
two well-known letters (vi. 16 and 20) to Tacitus. Other particulars are supplied by Dio
Cassius, lxvi. 21; Suetonius,
Titus, viii; Marcus Aurelius, iv. 48; and
Tertullian,
Apol. 40.The history of those eventful days has therefore been
reconstructed in all the leading details. (See Dyer's chapter “History of
Vesuvius,” pp. 10-29.) Still there are a great many others, revealed by late
excavations, which are less known to the general public. Thus, for instance, the year in which
the eruption took place is well known (A.D. 79); not so the month and the day, as the text of
Pliny which mentions them is undoubtedly corrupt. The Neapolitan scholars have favoured autumn
(November) rather than summer (August), alleging the discoveries of carpets drawn over the
mosaic and marble floors, of braziers placed in exposed corners, of dried figs and grapes, of
chestnuts, pine-nuts, and other fruit belonging to the late autumn. On the other hand, it was
alleged that in the hundred and fifty houses excavated since 1870, no carpet has been found,
only a piece of matting which, however, seems to have been rolled, and not extended on the
floor; that the braziers collected both from Pompeii and Herculaneum number scarcely fifty,
and that they were used not for warming but for cooking purposes; and lastly that in Southern
climates the fruit mentioned above ripens in
The controversy about the precise date of the destruction of Pompeii was settled on October
11th, 1889. While excavating a bed of volcanic ashes, a few steps outside the Porta Stabiana,
Signor Ruggero discovered and moulded in plaster two human forms, and that of a trunk of a
tree, 3.40 metres long, 0.40 m. in diameter. One of the human casts belonged to a middle-aged
man clothed in an overcoat, and lying on his back with drawn-up legs, and arms outstretched,
as if trying to protect his chest from the shower of burning ashes by which he was suffocated.
The other belongs to an old woman suffocated and buried while attempting to raise herself from
the ground by the joint action of hands and knees. By far more important is the cast of the
trunk of the tree. The tree was still in its upright position, and must have been twenty-five
or thirty feet high. The lower portion, embedded in pumice-stone, does not appear in the
mould; the top also has disappeared, because, projecting above the bed of ashes, it must have
been burned or cut away. The middle section of the trunk is wonderfully well preserved,
together with many leaves and berries. Trunk, leaves, and berries belong undoubtedly to a
species of
Laurus Nobilis, the fruit of which comes to maturity towards the end
of autumn. Prof. Pasquale, in a paper published in the
Notizie degli Scavi for
1889, p. 408, proves that the berries discovered on October 11th were perfectly ripe. This
Laurus Nobilis, therefore, so ingeniously brought back to life after a lapse of one thousand
eight hundred and ten years, settles the controversy concerning the date
of the eruption: it took place in the month of November, on November 23, A.D. 79. The
catastrophe took the gay and thoughtless people by surprise. All over the town we find
evidence of a sudden panic—of a wild rush for life. The writer has often noticed one
of these striking examples in a corner of the Forum opposite to the temple of Iupiter. Some
masons were engaged in raising an enclosure round a new altar of white marble; the mortar just
dashed against the side of the wall was but half spread out; one can see the long sliding
stroke of the trowel about to return and obliterate its own track; but it never did return:
the hand of the workman was suddenly arrested. The city was not buried entirely, and concealed
from the eyes of survivors. The top of the walls of private buildings, the colonnades of
public edifices emerged from the
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Showing the thickness of the bed of pumice-stones and ashes under which Pompeii was
buried, in comparison with the height of buildings. The view is taken from near the Gate to
Herculaneum. In the almost perpendicular cutting of volcanic strata back of Hexedra on the
left, the various layers of lapilli and ceneri
are distinctly visible.
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dreary waste, so that it was easy for the survivors to dig out the valuables left
behind, and even the statues, marbles, fountains, and bronzes. Later eruptions and the work of
nature and man obliterated the last traces of the city; a vague recollection of its site
survived in the name of
Cività, given to the hill in which it lay
buried. The peasants of the Cività have searched for hidden treasure since time
immemorial; to save the trouble and expense of an open excavation they tunnelled the bed of
lapilli and scoriae, sometimes paying for their imprudence with their life. The skeletons of
four men buried alive by the collapse of the
cuniculus they were actually
digging have been found in a house near the Via dell' Abbondanza. That of Papidius Priscus was
searched likewise in the Byzantine period, as proved by the words
Dumnos
Pertusa scratched above a hole cut through one of its walls to obtain a passage from
room to room. The house of L. Caecilius Iucundus was found ransacked; its searching-party had
left in one of the holes a lantern of the shape still in use among the Neapolitan peasantry.
Yet there are a great many exceptions to the rule. Many wealthy houses have never been
explored, and their valuable contents fall occasionally our prey, under the form of a
treasure-trove. The writer remembers one which took place in 1881. While Michele Ruggero was
excavating half-way between the Porta Stabiana and the coast, a building was
found—perhaps a bathing establishment—comprising some twenty rooms gayly
decorated with frescoes. Here a band of thirty-six Pompeians took refuge from the fury of the
eruption, hoping to take to the boats; the fury of the sea, however, deprived the fugitives of
their last chance of salvation. They were all buried alive; their skeletons were found mingled
together, as they fell in their last struggle for a breath of air. They were wealthy people.
Together with their bones the following objects lay scattered on the floor: five bracelets,
six pairs of earrings, two necklaces, one chain, one brooch, seventeen finger-rings, fourteen
pieces of gold, two hundred and eight of silver, besides engraved stones, pearls, mirrors,
cameos, and copper coins.
In the following year (1882, October) a Lararium, or domestic chapel, was found in a house
of the Via dell' Abbondanza in a wonderful state of preservation. On the steps of the altar
there were seven statuettes of delicate workmanship. One had been taken away at the moment of
the catastrophe by the fugitives, perhaps because it was the best or the
most venerated of the group. The six others were found in their proper places. One represents
Apollo Citharoedus, the figure being of bronze, the accessories of silver. The second, made of
bronze, silver, and ivory, has undergone a curious transformation. At first it was made to
represent Mercury, then, with the addition of proper clothing and attributes, it was turned
into an Aesculapius. The others represent Mercury, Hercules, and two Lares.
On September 20, 1888, another remarkable discovery of silver-plate and other valuables took
place in regio viii. insula ii. house xxiii. It seems that the owners of the house, having
made a bundle of their plate, had put it on a stool, waiting, perhaps, for a lull in the
shower of burning ashes
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View of Pompeii. Island of Revigliano (Petra Herculis). Present line of coast. Ancient
line of shore.
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in order to remove it to a safer place. However, in the hurry of flight, the bundle
was left behind. Besides pieces of the stool on which it was laid, and of the coarse cloth in
which it was enveloped, an exquisite silver set for four was found—viz., four large
and four small cups and saucers, four egg-cups, one filter, and one jug, weighing nine pounds
in all. There was also broken silverware and table-utensils, such as spoons, salt-cellars,
etc. More important still was the discovery of three
libelli (of wood
coated with wax) containing family documents. The deeds, drawn up in A.D. 61, eighteen years
before the eruption, belonged to two women—a Decidia Margaris and a Poppaea
Noté. In the first deed Poppaea sells to Margaris two young slaves named Simplex
and Petrinus. In the second she declares herself a debtor to Margaris for the sum of
1450 sestertii. The third document cannot be interpreted with certainty.
The question whether Pompeii was a sea-port town in the strict sense of the word, or whether
it was separated from the sea by a strip of land more or less broad, has been fully discussed
by Michele Ruggero in the volume published on the eighteenth centenary of the destruction of
the ill-fated town. He declares the story of the discovery of a large three-masted ship
(believed to be the flag-ship of Pliny ) near the farm of Messigna, in 1833, to be devoid of
foundation, because the would-be masts, seen by the naval engineer Giuseppe Negri, were but
trunks of cypresses. Many such trees have been found since 1833: they are planted in quincunx,
with the roots in the ancient vegetable soil, and the trunks buried in pumice-stone of the
fatal eruption of 79. The average size of one hundred trees, measured by Palmieri and Scacchi,
was 1.42 m. in circumference, 0.47 m. in diameter, which is the average size of cypresses
thirty-six years old. Following the line of trees and of antique farmhouses, Ruggero was able
to trace the line of the sea-coast before the eruption. It starts from Torre Annunziata, bends
inland between the Salerno railway and the high-load to Castellamare, and crosses the river
Sarno near the “molino di Rosa.” The island of Revigliano, the
petra Herculis of the Pompeians, which, before the eruption, was separated
from the mainland by a channel 1.550 metres wide, comes now within 420 m. of the shore.
The foregoing view, taken from the north end of the excavations, shows the belt of land
created by the shower of ashes and lapilli between the walls of the city and the Petra
Herculis.
Of the inhabitants of Pompeii, whom Fiorelli puts down as about 12,000, the greater part
fled on foot, on horseback, or in chariots. This is proved by the fact that, although the city
contained many stables, two coaches only have been found—one in the court-yard of
the house of Papidius Priscus and the other in the stables regio i. insula iv. n. 28. Eight
skeletons of horses have been found in the space of eighteen years. In the same period of time
150 human bodies were discovered within the walls, the total number of victims being about
550, less than one in twelve. Many died in their own houses while waiting for the cessation of
the shower of ashes; some were crushed by the fall of the roofs; some asphyxiated by the
sulphuric vapours or by the fine dust; some starved to death or were buried alive in places
from which there was no escape. The skeletons are generally found with a lamp close by,
darkness, even in the day-time, having been dense; and they are seldom alone. The Pompeians
died in family groups, as shown by the eighteen bodies discovered in the cellar of Diomede's
villa; by the twelve in the atrium of house reg. i. ins. ii. n. 28. The fate of these last
could not be explained at first, because it seemed so easy for them to have made an escape
through the opening of the
impluvium. On closer examination it was
ascertained that a heavy iron grating had been laid across the
impluvium,
and that the unfortunate crowd had tried to force it without success.
Bodies crushed by falling ruins or buried in lapilli cannot be cast in plaster, being
reduced to a shapeless heap of bones. Those buried in fine dust (hardened by water) are
marvellously well preserved, and can be reproduced in plaster to perfection. Nothing is more
impressive than the study of the various kinds of agonies suffered by these poor victims at
the last moment of the struggle.
The first cast belongs to a man dashed against the pavement by the fall of the wooden
ceiling of his shop-room. His fingers are clenched and his elbows drawn, as if trying to lift
the weight under which he had fallen.
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Cast of man from Pompeii.
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The following cast belongs to a workman of the Tanneries (Concia), who was left behind or
forgotten by his comrades, as he was lying ill in bed.
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Cast of workman from Pompeii.
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The poor wretch, whose legs and body appear emaciated, dragged himself as far as the
courtyard of the establishment, and, perceiving no chance of deliverance or help, laid himself
down to die quietly on the bare floor.
Women also seem to have died with resignation; they are generally found lying on the left
side, with the
tunica drawn over the face, as a
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Cast of woman from Pompeii.
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shelter from the ashes. The attitude of most of the men conveys the idea of
energetic despair. Far from showing the abandonment of death, they fight to the last against
their fate, raising hands and knees in a supreme effort, as shown by the following casts.
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Cast of man from Pompeii.
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We must not forget the sad fate of a watch-dog, the casting of whose form is the most
difficult and delicate yet accomplished in Pompeii, owing to the thinness of the legs and the
extraordinary contortion of the body. The faithful animal was forgotten by his ungrateful
master, L. Vesonius Prinius. He was left tied to a chain behind the street-door of the house,
reg. vi. ins. xiv. n. 20. As the lapilli, pouring in from the door, began to fill the
vestibule, the dog tried his best to break the ties. He was overtaken by death while lying on
his back with outstretched legs.
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Watch-dog. Cast from nature. Discovered at the entrance of the prothyrum of the house
of L. Vesonius Prinius.
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Among the manifestations of Pompeian art which strike the visitor most forcibly, the
wall-decorations in fresco or encaustic painting come first. There are many publications on
this subject, one of the earliest being
Le Antichità di Ercolano e
Pompei, 9 fol. vols.
(Napoli, 1755-1792). See also
Herculaneum et Pompei: Recueil général de peintures, bronzes,
mosaïques, etc., découverts jusqu'à ce jour …
gravé du trait sur cuivre par M. Roux aîné, et
accompagné d'un texte explicatif par M. L. Barre, 8 large 8vo vols.
(Paris, Didot); Raoul Rochette,
Choix de peintures de
Pompéi, la plupart du sujet historique, etc., with coloured plates, large
fol.
(Paris, 1844); E. O. Müller,
Wandgemälde aus
Pompei und Herculanum, mit einem erlaüternden Texte (Berlin, 1844);
Wolfgang Helbig,
Wandgemälde der vom Vesuv verschütteten
Städte Campaniens (Leipzig, 1868). See Dilthey's criticism in the
Bullettino dell' Istituto (1869), pp. 147-160. Professor Mau, of
the German Institute, has been illustrating year by year the latest finds in this department,
both in the
Bullettino and the
Mittheilungen of the German
Institute.
The frescoes of Pompeian houses afford the best illustration that could be desired of
ancient mythology, but they offer little of historical interest.
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Specimen of Pompeian fresco-paintings (The Wounded Adonis), showing the way they are
cared for after their discovery. The cracks of the plaster are first filled with gluten, and
then fastened with brass clasps shaped like a T. Sometimes the whole
surface of the fresco is washed with a solution of wax.
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Their value, as works of art, has been slightly exaggerated; at all events, they
cannot bear comparison with the frescoes discovered in Rome, in Livia's Palatine house, in
Livia's villa
ad Gallinas albas (Prima Porta), in the Roman palace by la
Farnesina, in Lamia's gardens (the Nozze Aldobrandine), in Nero's Golden House, etc. Among the
few Pompeian frescoes connected with history the one discovered in the autumn of 1882 between
the Via dell' Abbondanza, dei Teatri, e de xii. Dei, representing the Judgment of Solomon,
took everybody by surprise. Who would ever have conceived that a scene inspired by the Bible
should have been discovered on the walls of this purely pagan, dissolute, materialistic town?
The picture belongs to the burlesque genre; and although the caricaturist has somewhat
exaggerated the conventional deformity of his personages, still every particular of the
Biblical account can be recognized. King Solomon, with the sceptre in his hand, sits on a
platform between two assessors. He has already told the officer to make two portions of the
infant; and while the pretended mother is waiting to receive her half in perfect indifference,
the real one falls in a fit of despair.
Many conjectures have been proposed to explain the appearance of such a picture at Pompeii;
the most satisfactory seems to be this: The Alexandrian School — after the
translation of the Bible by the LXX.—was well acquainted with Hebrew archaeology,
history, and tradition. The episode of Solomon's judgment may have become popular in
Alexandrian circles. At Pompeii a large contingent of Alexandrians met every summer. No wonder
if one of them chose to decorate his house with frescoes derived from legends so popular in
his mother country. What renders the conjecture all the more probable is that, in the same
apartment, there are other frescoes representing Egyptian scenes, such as crocodile-hunting,
the land of the pygmies, etc.
A wine-shop was discovered in 1877, in regio vi. ins. xiv. n. 36, with several
tableaux de genre painted on the white plastering of its walls. The first
scene on the left represents a young man kissing a woman, who appears dressed in yellow
garments with black shoes. She says, nolo! cvm
mvrtal—“I don't want to be kissed; go to your Myrtalis.”
The second scene represents the same woman talking to Myrtalis. They both point their fingers
at a third female, who brings in a great wine-jar and a cup, and says, qvi volt svmat ˙ oceane veni bibe—an invitation to partake of the
drink. The third scene represents two gamblers seated, with the chessboard on their knees, on
which several
latrunculi are disposed in lines of different
colours— yellow, white, and black. The one on the left throws the dice, and says,
exsi—“I am out.” His partner,
pointing to the dice, answers, non tria ˙ dvas
est—“You only made two points, not three!” Both fight in
the fourth scene. One says, non ita ˙ me tria ˙ ego
fvi—“You lie; I made three points; I am out.” The other
retorts, orte fellator ˙ ego fvi—“You .
. .! I have the game.” At this moment the shop-keeper interferes, and, pushing the
rioters outside, says, ite foras rixsatis—“Go
out in the street if you want to fight.”
Landscapes are an utter failure; there is no colouring, no perspective, no appreciation of
nature, no value of tones. Still, the study of the works of Pompeian landscape-painters is not
without interest. Prof. O. Comes has compiled from them a catalogue of flowers, shrubs,
ornamental and fruittrees known to the Pompeians. It comprises seventy varieties. See
Ruggero's
Pompei, pp. 177-250.
The name of Pompeii was never forgotten in the Middle Ages. A chronicler of the ninth
century, named Martinus Monachus, speaks of Sikkartol, prince of Benevento, having pitched his
tents in a spot
qui a Pompeia urbe Campaniae, nunc deserta, nomen accepit
(named from Pompeii, a city of Campania, now deserted). Martinus refers not to Pompeii
destroyed in A.D. 79, but to a village of the same name mentioned by the Tabula Pentingeriana
at the time of Theodosius, which had in its turn been destroyed by later eruptions.
In 1594 Muzio Tuttavilla, Count of Sarno, while boring an underground channel to convey the
waters of the Sarno itself to Torre dell' Annunziata, discovered remains of the amphitheatre,
of the temple of Isis, of the Forum, of the
strada delle Tombe, to which, however, no attention was paid. Two inscriptions, dug up in the
heart of the city, contained the name of Pompeii, of one of its prominent citizens (M.
Popidius), of one of its prominent goddesses (Venus Physica Pompeiana); they were thrown aside
and probably made use of as building materials. Regular investigation began a century and a
half later, on April 1, 1748. I say regular, because the search was undertaken by the State;
but there was no order, no regularity, no system. Holes were dug at random, more for the sake
of official plunder in favour of the Naples museums than for topographical discovery. The
merit of having brought Pompeian excavations to their actual efficiency belongs to Giuseppe
Fiorelli, who was named superintendent in 1860. To him we are indebted for a thoroughly
scientific organization of the work; since to his ingenuity we owe the invention of the
casting in plaster the corpses of the Pompeians who lost their lives in that appalling
catastrophe. (See Dyer's
Pompeii, p. 475;
The Quarterly Review,
No. 230, p. 382.)
Bibliography.—Works of general interest: Mazois
(François),
Les Ruines de Pompéi dessinées et
mesurées pendant les années 1809-1811, 4 vols.
(Paris,
1812-38), containing nearly 200 plates, and embracing the results of excavations from
1757 to 1821; Sir William Gell,
Pompeiana, two series, each of two 8vo vols.
(London, 1824-30), giving an account of excavations down to the year 1819; T. L.
Donaldson,
Pompeii, illustrated with picturesque views, engraved by W. B.
Cooke, 2 fol. vols.
(London, 1827); Breton,
Pompeia Décrite et
Dessinée, 2d ed.
(Paris, 1855); Overbeck,
Pompeij in seinen Gebaüden, Alterthümern, und
Kunstwerken (Leipzig, 1856; 2d ed. in 2 vols. 1871); Fausto e Felice
Niccolini,
Le Case ed i Monumenti di Pompei Disegnati e Descritti
(Naples, 1864-92); Giuseppe Fiorelli,
Pompeianarum Antiquitatum
Historia (Naples, 1860), in two 8vo vols., containing the diaries of
excavations from their commencement in 1748 to 1860, with the reports printed verbatim in
Spanish down to July, 1764, after that date in Italian; id.
Giornale degli Scavi di
Pompei, begun in 1861; id.
Descrizione di Pompei, 4to
(Naples,
1875), with a good map; Dyer,
Pompeii: its History, Buildings, and
Antiquities, 3d ed.
(London, 1871), with nearly 300 engravings, maps, and
plans; Michele Ruggero,
Pompei e la Regione Sotterrata dal Vesuvio nell' Anno
LXXIX., a joint work of the directors of the Pompeian excavations, most excellent, and
copiously illustrated
(Naples, 1879); id.
Degli Scavi di Stabia dal
MDCCXLIX. al MDCCLXXXII. (Naples, 1881).
Besides these standard works many important accounts have appeared in archaeological
journals, signed by Guaranta, Niccolini, Avellino, Minervini, Monnier, Helbig, Mau, Fiorelli,
de Petra Sogliano. These contributions cannot be ignored by students wishing to obtain full
knowledge of the subject. See
Il Real Museo Borbonico, an illustrated serial of
Neapolitan antiquities, begun in 1824; the Italian edition numbers fourteen 4to vols.;
Memorie della Reale Accademia di Archeologia di Napoli; Annali e Bullettino
dell' Istituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica (Rome and Paris, 1829- 1885);
Jahrbuch und Mittheilungen des k. deutschen archäologischen
Instituts (Römische Abtheilung, 1886-92); Avellino and Minervini,
Bullettino Archeologico Napoletano; Giuseppe Fiorelli,
Notizie
degli Scavi di Antichità (Rome, 1876-92). The first archaeological
map of Pompeii was measured and designed by Antonio Bibent in 1827; the best is that of
G. Fiorelli, entitled
Tabula Coloniae Veneriae Corneliae Pompei. It is divided
into 42 sheets, which, put together, form a superficies of 140 square palms, being the 333.3
part of the true area.
Pompeian epigraphy has been admirably illustrated by Mommsen, Zangemeister, Fiorelli, and
others. See Theodor Mommsen,
Inscriptiones Regni Neapolitani, p. 112 foll.;
Raffaele Garrucci,
Graffiti di Pompei (Paris, 1856); Giuseppe
Fiorelli,
Monumenta Epigraphica Pompeiana, ad Fidem Archetyporum Expressa, part
first (Oscan inscriptions); Carl Zangemeister,
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum,
vol. iv. Inscriptiones Parietariae
(Berlin, 1871); Theodor Mommsen,
Corpus
Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. x. pars prior
(Berlin, 1883); and the
article
Graffiti.
