The Last Days of Pompeii | Page 9

he said, in a soft and melancholy voice:
'After all, you do right to enjoy the hour while it smiles for you; the
rose soon withers, the perfume soon exhales. And we, O Glaucus!
strangers in the land and far from our fathers' ashes, what is there left
for us but pleasure or regret!--for you the first, perhaps for me the last.'
The bright eyes of the Greek were suddenly suffused with tears. 'Ah,
speak not, Arbaces,' he cried--'speak not of our ancestors. Let us forget
that there were ever other liberties than those of Rome! And Glory!--oh,
vainly would we call her ghost from the fields of Marathon and
Thermopylae!'
'Thy heart rebukes thee while thou speakest,' said the Egyptian; 'and in
thy gaieties this night, thou wilt be more mindful of Leoena than of
Lais. Vale!'

Thus saying, he gathered his robe around him, and slowly swept away.
'I breathe more freely,' said Clodius. 'Imitating the Egyptians, we
sometimes introduce a skeleton at our feasts. In truth, the presence of
such an Egyptian as yon gliding shadow were spectre enough to sour
the richest grape of the Falernian.'
'Strange man! said Glaucus, musingly; 'yet dead though he seem to
pleasure, and cold to the objects of the world, scandal belies him, or his
house and his heart could tell a different tale.'
'Ah! there are whispers of other orgies than those of Osiris in his
gloomy mansion. He is rich, too, they say. Can we not get him amongst
us, and teach him the charms of dice? Pleasure of pleasures! hot fever
of hope and fear! inexpressible unjaded passion! how fiercely beautiful
thou art, O Gaming!'
'Inspired--inspired!' cried Glaucus, laughing; 'the oracle speaks poetry
in Clodius. What miracle next!'
Chapter III
PARENTAGE OF GLAUCUS. DESCRIPTION OF THE HOUSES
OF POMPEII. CLASSIC REVEL.
HEAVEN had given to Glaucus every blessing but one: it had given
him beauty, health, fortune, genius, illustrious descent, a heart of fire, a
mind of poetry; but it had denied him the heritage of freedom. He was
born in Athens, the subject of Rome. Succeeding early to an ample
inheritance, he had indulged that inclination for travel so natural to the
young, and had drunk deep of the intoxicating draught of pleasure
amidst the gorgeous luxuries of the imperial court.
He was an Alcibiades without ambition. He was what a man of
imagination, youth, fortune, and talents, readily becomes when you
deprive him of the inspiration of glory. His house at Rome was the
theme of the debauchees, but also of the lovers of art; and the sculptors
of Greece delighted to task their skill in adorning the porticoes and

exedrae of an Athenian. His retreat in Pompeii--alas! the colors are
faded now, the walls stripped of their paintings!--its main beauty, its
elaborate finish of grace and ornament, is gone; yet when first given
once more to the day, what eulogies, what wonder, did its minute and
glowing decorations create--its paintings--its mosaics! Passionately
enamoured of poetry and the drama, which recalled to Glaucus the wit
and the heroism of his race, that fairy mansion was adorned with
representations of AEschylus and Homer. And antiquaries, who resolve
taste to a trade, have turned the patron to the professor, and still
(though the error is now acknowledged) they style in custom, as they
first named in mistake, the disburied house of the Athenian Glaucus
'THE HOUSE OF THE DRAMATIC POET'.
Previous to our description of this house, it may be as well to convey to
the reader a general notion of the houses of Pompeii, which he will find
to resemble strongly the plans of Vitruvius; but with all those
differences in detail, of caprice and taste, which being natural to
mankind, have always puzzled antiquaries. We shall endeavor to make
this description as clear and unpedantic as possible.
You enter then, usually, by a small entrance-passage (called
cestibulum), into a hall, sometimes with (but more frequently without)
the ornament of columns; around three sides of this hall are doors
communicating with several bedchambers (among which is the porter's),
the best of these being usually appropriated to country visitors. At the
extremity of the hall, on either side to the right and left, if the house is
large, there are two small recesses, rather than chambers, generally
devoted to the ladies of the mansion; and in the centre of the tessellated
pavement of the hall is invariably a square, shallow reservoir for rain
water (classically termed impluvium), which was admitted by an
aperture in the roof above; the said aperture being covered at will by an
awning. Near this impluvium, which had a peculiar sanctity in the eyes
of the ancients, were sometimes (but at Pompeii more rarely than at
Rome) placed images of the household gods--the hospitable hearth,