The Wonders of Pompeii | Page 2

Places of Amusement.--Entrance Tickets.--The Velarium, the Orchestra, the Stage.--The Odeon.--The Holconii.--The Side Scenes, the Masks.--The Atellan Farces.--The Mimes.--Jugglers, etc.--A Remark of Cicero on the Melodramas.--The Barrack of the Gladiators.--Scratched Inscriptions, Instruments of Torture.--The Pompeian Gladiators.--The Amphitheatre: Hunts, Combats, Butcheries, etc. 199
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. 232

DIALOGUE.
(IN A BOOKSTORE AT NAPLES.)
A TRAVELLER (_entering_).--Have you any work on Pompeii?
THE SALESMAN.--Yes; we have several. Here, for instance, is Bulwer's "Last Days of Pompeii."
TRAVELLER.--Too thoroughly romantic.
SALESMAN.--Well, here are the folios of Mazois.
TRAVELLER.--Too heavy.
SALESMAN.--Here's Dumas's "Corricolo."
TRAVELLER.--Too light.
SALESMAN.--How would Nicolini's magnificent work suit you?
TRAVELLER.--Oh! that's too dear.
SALESMAN.--Here's Commander Alo?'s "Guide."
TRAVELLER.--That's too dry.
SALESMAN.--Neither dry, nor romantic, nor light, nor heavy! What, then, would you have, sir?
TRAVELLER.--A small, portable work; accurate, conscientious, and within everybody's reach.
SALESMAN.--Ah, sir, we have nothing of that kind; besides, it is impossible to get up such a work.
THE AUTHOR (_aside_).--Who knows?

THE
WONDERS OF POMPEII.

I.
THE EXHUMED CITY.
THE ANTIQUE LANDSCAPE--THE HISTORY OF POMPEII BEFORE AND AFTER ITS DESTRUCTION.--HOW IT WAS BURIED AND EXHUMED.--WINKELMANN AS A PROPHET.--THE EXCAVATIONS IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES III., OF MURAT, AND OF FERDINAND.--THE EXCAVATIONS AS THEY NOW ARE.--SIGNOR FIORELLI.--APPEARANCE OF THE RUINS.--WHAT IS AND WHAT IS NOT FOUND THERE.
A railroad runs from Naples to Pompeii. Are you alone? The trip occupies one hour, and you have just time enough to read what follows, pausing once in a while to glance at Vesuvius and the sea; the clear, bright waters hemmed in by the gentle curve of the promontories; a bluish coast that approaches and becomes green; a green coast that withdraws into the distance and becomes blue; Castellamare looming up, and Naples receding. All these lines and colors existed too at the time when Pompeii was destroyed: the island of Prochyta, the cities of Bai?, of Bauli, of Neapolis, and of Surrentum bore the names that they retain. Portici was called Herculaneum; Torre dell'Annunziata was called Oplontes; Castellamare, Stabi?; Misenum and Minerva designated the two extremities of the gulf. However, Vesuvius was not what it has become; fertile and wooded almost to the summit, covered with orchards and vines, it must have resembled the picturesque heights of Monte San Angelo, toward which we are rolling. The summit alone, honeycombed with caverns and covered with black stones, betrayed to the learned a volcano "long extinct." It was to blaze out again, however, in a terrible eruption; and, since then, it has constantly flamed and smoked, menacing the ruins it has made and the new cities that brave it, calmly reposing at its feet.
What do you expect to find at Pompeii? At a distance, its antiquity seems enormous, and the word "ruins" awakens colossal conceptions in the excited fancy of the traveller. But, be not self-deceived; that is the first rule in knocking about over the world. Pompeii was a small city of only thirty thousand souls; something like what Geneva was thirty years ago. Like Geneva, too, it was marvellously situated--in the depth of a picturesque valley between mountains shutting in the horizon on one side, at a few steps from the sea and from a streamlet, once a river, which plunges into it--and by its charming site attracted personages of distinction, although it was peopled chiefly with merchants and others in easy circumstances; shrewd, prudent folk, and probably honest and clever enough, as well. The etymologists, after having exhausted, in their lexicons, all the words that chime in sound with Pompeii, have, at length, agreed in deriving the name from a Greek verb which signifies _to send, to transport_, and hence they conclude that many of the Pompeians were engaged in exportation, or perhaps, were emigrants sent from a distance to form a colony. Yet these opinions are but conjectures, and it is useless to dwell on them.
All that can be positively stated is that the city was the entrep?t of the trade of Nola, Nocera, and Atella. Its port was large enough to receive a naval armament, for it sheltered the fleet of P. Cornelius. This port, mentioned by certain authors, has led many to believe that the sea washed the walls of Pompeii, and some guides have even thought they could discover the rings that once held the cables of the galleys. Unfortunately for this idea, at the place which the imagination of some of our contemporaries covered with salt water, there were one day discovered the vestiges of old structures, and it is now conceded that Pompeii, like many other seaside places, had its harbor at a distance. Our little city made no great noise in history. Tacitus and Seneca speak of it as celebrated, but the