The Wonders of Pompeii | Page 8

things that took place on these same pavements, under this
same sky, in those miraculous times, the most interesting in history,
viz.: the eighth century of Rome and the first of the Christian era.
[Footnote A: The money accruing from this sale is applied to the
Pompeian library mentioned elsewhere.]

II.
THE FORUM.

DIOMED'S INN.--THE NICHE OF MINERVA.--THE
APPEARANCE AND THE MONUMENTS OF THE FORUM.--THE
ANTIQUE TEMPLE.--THE PAGAN EX-VOTO OFFERINGS.--THE
MERCHANTS' CITY EXCHANGE AND THE PETTY
EXCHANGE.--THE PANTHEON, OR WAS IT A TEMPLE, A
SLAUGHTER-HOUSE, OR A TAVERN?--THE STYLE OF
COOKING AND THE FORM OF RELIGION.--THE TEMPLE OF
VENUS.--- THE BASILICA.--THE INSCRIPTIONS OF
PASSERS-BY UPON THE WALLS.--THE FORUM REBUILT.
As you alight at the station, in the first place breakfast at the popina of
Diomed. It is a tavern of our own day, which has assumed an antique
title to please travellers. You may there drink Falernian wine
manufactured by Scala, the Neapolitan chemist, and, should you ask for
some jentaculum in the Roman style--aliquid scitamentorum,
glandionidum suillam taridum, pernonidem, sinciput aut omenta
porcina, _aut aliquid ad eum modum_--they will serve you a beefsteak
and potatoes. Your strength refreshed, you will scale the sloping hillock
of ashes and rubbish that conceals the ruins from your view; you will
pay your two francs at the office and you will pass the gate-keeper's
turnstile, astonished, as it is, to find itself in such a place. These
formalities once concluded you have nothing more that is modern to go
through unless it be the companionship of a guide in military uniform
who escorts you, in reality to watch, you (especially if you belong to
the country of Lord Elgin), but not to mulct you in the least. Placards in
all the known languages forbid you to offer him so much as an obolus.
You make your _entrée_, in a word, into the antique life, and you are as
free as a Pompeian.
The first thing one sees is an arcade and such a niche as might serve for
an image of the Madonna; but be reassured, for the niche contains a
Minerva. It is no longer the superstition of our own time that strikes our
gaze. Under the arcade open extensive store-houses that probably
served as a place of deposit for merchandise. You then enter an
ascending paved street, pass by the temple of Venus and the Basilica,
and arrive at the Forum. There, one should pause.

At first glance, the observer distinguishes nothing but a long square
space closed at the further extremity by a regular-shaped mound rising
between two arcades; lateral alleys extend lengthwise on the right and
the left between shafts of columns and dilapidated architectural work.
Here and there some compound masses of stone-work indicate altars or
the pedestals of statues no longer seen. Vesuvius, still threatening,
smokes away at the extremity of the picture.
[Illustration: Plan of Vesuvius.]
Look more closely and you will perceive that the fluted columns are of
Caserta stone, of tufa, or of brick, coated with stucco and raised two
steps above the level of the square. Under the lower step runs the
kennel. These columns sustained a gallery upon which one mounted by
narrow and abrupt steps that time has spared. This upper gallery must
have been covered. The women walked in it. A second story of
columns, most likely interrupted in front of the monuments, rested
upon the other one. Mazois has reconstructed this colonnade in two
superior orders--Doric below and Ionic above--with exquisite elegance.
The pavement of the square, on which you may still walk, was of
travertine. Thus we see the Forum rising again, as it were, in our
presence.
Let us glance at the ruins that surround it. That mound at the other end
was the foundation of a temple, the diminutive size of which strikes the
newcomer at first sight. Every one is not aware that the temple, far
from being a place of assemblage for devout multitudes, was, with the
ancients, in reality, but a larger niche inclosing the statue of the deity to
be worshipped. The consecrated building received only a small number
of the elect after they had been befittingly purified, and the crowd
remained outside. It was not the palace, but the mere cell of the god.
This cell (_cella_) was, at first, the whole temple, and was just large
enough to hold the statue and the altar. By degrees it came to be
ornamented with a front portico, then with a rear portico, and then with
side colonnades, thus attaining by embellishment after embellishment
the rich elegance of the Madeleine at Paris. But the proportions of our
cathedrals were never adopted by the ancients. Thus, Christianity rarely

appropriates the Greek or Roman temples for its worship. It has
preferred the vast basilicas, the royal name