Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae (Complete)

There lived in this house two men by the name of Vettius. We know this because the excavators found here two seals. In those days men fastened their letters and receipts and bills with wax. While the wax was soft they stamped their names in it with a metal seal. On the stamps that were found in this house were carved Aulus Vettius Restitutus and Aulus Vettius Conviva. Perhaps they were freedmen who once had been slaves of Aulus Vettius. But they must have earned a fortune for themselves, for there were two money chests in the house. And they must have had slaves of their own to take care of their twenty rooms and more. In the tiny kitchen the excavators found a good store of charcoal and the ashes of a little fire on top of the stone stove. And on its three little legs a bronze dish was sitting over the dead fire. A slave must have been cooking his master’s dinner when the volcano frightened him away.

Vettius’ dining room is empty of its wooden tables and couches. But some houses had stone ones built in their gardens for pleasant summer days. These the ashes did not crush, and they are still in place. Columns stood about the tables and vines climbed up them and across to make cool shade. The tables were always long and narrow and built around three sides of a rectangle. Low couches stand along the outside edges. Here guests used to lie propped up on their left elbows with pretty cushions to make them comfortable. In the open space in the middle of the square servants came and went and passed the dishes across the narrow tables. Children used to have little wooden stools and sit in this middle space opposite their elders. But in one old ruined garden dining room you will see a little stone bench for the children, built along the end of the table. It must have been pleasant to have supper there with the sunset coloring the sky, behind old Vesuvius, the cool breeze shaking the leaves of the garden shrubs, and the fountain tinkling, and a bird chirping in a corner, and the shadows beginning to creep under the long porches, and the tiny flames of lamps fluttering in the dusky rooms behind.

After you leave the house of Vettius and walk down the street, you will come to a certain door. In the sidewalk before it you will see “Have” spelled with bits of colored marble. It is the old Latin word for “Welcome.” It is too pleasant an invitation to refuse. Go in through the high doorway and down the narrow passage to the atrium. Every Roman house had this atrium. It is like a large reception hall with many rooms opening off it—bedrooms, dining rooms, sitting rooms. Beautiful hangings instead of doors used to shut these rooms in. The atrium had an opening in the roof where the sun shone in and softly lighted the big room. Here the master used to receive his guests. In the house of Vettius the two money chests were found in the atrium. In this same room in the house of “Welcome,” there was found on the floor a little bronze statue, a dancing faun, one of the gay friends of Dionysus. It is a tiny thing only two feet high, but so pretty that the excavators named the house after it—The House of the Faun. Evidently the old owner loved beautiful things and had money to buy them. Even the floors of some of his rooms are made in mosaic pictures. There are doves at play, and ducks and fish and shells all laid under your feet in bright bits of colored marble. And beyond the pleasant court with its porches and garden is a large sitting room. In the floor of this the excavators found the most wonderful mosaic picture of all, a picture of a battle, with waving spears and prancing horses and fallen men. Two kings are facing each other to fight—Darius, king of Persia, standing in his chariot, and Alexander, king of Greece, riding his war horse. The bits of stone are so small and of such perfect color that the mosaic looks like a beautiful painting. Imagine how the excavators’ hearts leaped when the spades took the gray ashes off this bright picture. It was too precious a thing to leave here in the rain and wind. So the excavators carefully took it up and put it into the museum of Naples where there are other valuable things from Pompeii.

There are many other houses almost as pleasant and beautiful as this House of the Faun. Every one has its atrium and its sunny court and its fountains and statues and its painted walls. But Pompeii was a city of business, too, and had many workshops. There is a dye shop where the excavators found large lead pots and glass bottles still full of dye. There are cleaners’ shops where the slaves used to take their masters’ robes to be cleaned. Here the excavators found vats and white clay for cleaning, and pictures on the wall showing men at work. There are tanneries where leather was made. The rusted tools were found which the men had thrown down so long ago. There is a pottery shop with two ovens for baking the vases. On a certain street corner you will see an old wine shop. It is a little room cut into the corner wall of a great house. Its two sides are open upon the street with broad marble counters. Below the counters are big, deep jars. Their open tops thrust themselves through the slab. You can look into their mouths where the shopkeeper used to dip out the wine. On the walls of the room are marks that show where shelves hung in ancient days to hold cups and glasses. In the outer edge of the sidewalk before the shop are two round holes cut into the stone. Long ago poles were thrust into them to hold an awning that shaded the walk in front of the counters. We can imagine men stopping in this pleasant shade as they passed. The busy slave inside the shop whips out a cup and a graceful, long-handled ladle and dips out the sweet-smelling wine from the wide-mouthed jar. And we can imagine how the cups fell clattering from the men’s hands when Vesuvius thundered. In one shop, indeed, the excavators found an overturned cup on the counter and a wine stain on the marble. But the most interesting shops are the bakeries. There were twenty of them in Pompeii. You will see the ovens in the courtyard. They are big beehives built of stone or brick. The baker made a fire inside and let the walls become hot. Then he raked out the coals and cleaned the floor and put in his bread. The hot walls baked the loaves. In one oven the excavators found a burned loaf eighteen hundred years old. When the earthquake shook his house, did the baker snatch out the rest of the ovenful to feed his hungry family as they groped about for safety in the terrible darkness? In several bakeries you will see, also, the mills. They are great mortar-shaped things standing taller than a man. The heavy stone above turned around upon the stone below. A man poured wheat in at the top. It fell down and was ground between the two stones and dropped out at the bottom as flour. A horse or donkey was hitched to the mill to turn it. Around and around he walked all day. He was blindfolded to prevent his becoming dizzy. You will see on the stone floor in one bakery the path that was made by years of this walking. In the old days this silent empty court must have been an interesting place. The donkey’s hoofs beat lazy time on the stone floor. Now and then a slave lifted up a bag of wheat and poured it into the mill or scooped out the white flour from the trough at the bottom. Another man sifted the flour and the breeze blew the white dust over his bare arms. Some of the ovens were smoking and glowing with fresh fire. Others were shut, with the browning bread inside, and a good smell hung in the air. And out in front was a little shop where the master sold the thin loaves and the fancy little cakes.

In the hundreds of houses and shops of this little town the excavators have found bronze tables and lamps and lamp stands and wine jars and kitchen pots and pans and spoons and glass vases and silver cups and gold hairpins and jewelry and ivory combs and bronze strigils and mirrors and several statues of bronze and marble. But where they had hoped to find thousands of precious things they have found only hundreds. Many pedestals are empty of their statues. Here and there the very paintings have been cut from the walls. Those are the pictures we should most like to see. How beautiful could they have been?

“Evidently men came back soon after the eruption,” say the excavators. “The tops of their ruined houses must have stood up above the ashes. They dug down and rescued their most precious things. We have even found broken places in walls where we think men dug tunnels from one house to another. That is why the temple and market place have so few statues. That is why we find so little jewelry and money and dishes. But we have enough. The city is our treasure.”

One rich find they did make, however. There was a pleasant farmhouse out of town on the slope of Vesuvius. Evidently the man who owned it had a vineyard and an olive grove and grain fields. For there are olive presses and wine presses and a great court full of vats for making wine and a floor for threshing wheat and a mill for grinding flour and a stable and a wide courtyard that must have held many carts. And there are bathrooms and many pleasant rooms besides. In the room with the wine presses was a stone cistern for storing the fresh grape juice. Here the excavators found a treasure and a mystery. In this cistern lay the skeleton of a man. With him were a thousand pieces of gold money, some gold jewelry, and a wonderful dinner set of silver dishes. There are a hundred and three pieces—plates, platters, cups, bowls. And every one has beaten up from it beautiful designs of flowers and people. An artist must have made them, and a rich man must have bought them. How did they come here in this farmhouse? They must have been meant for a nobleman’s table. Had some thief stolen them and hidden here, only to be caught by the volcano? Did some rich lady of the city have this farm for her country place? And had she sent her treasure here to escape when the volcano burst forth? At any rate here it lay for eighteen hundred years. And now it is in a museum in Paris, far from its old owner’s home.

In this buried city we find the houses in which men lived, the pictures they loved, the food they ate, the jewels they wore, the cups they drank from. But what of the people themselves? Were they real men and women? How did they look? Did they all escape? Not all, for many skeletons have been found here and there through the city—in the market place, in the streets, in the houses. And sometimes the excavators have found still stranger, sadder things. Often as a man has been digging in the hard-packed ashes, his spade has struck into a hole. Then he has called the chief excavator.

“Let us see what it is,” the excavator has said, “Perhaps it will be something interesting.”

So they have mixed plaster and poured it into the hole. They have given it a little time to harden and then have dug away the ashes from around it. In that way they have made a plaster cast just the shape of the hole. And several times when they have uncovered their cast they have found it to be the form of a man or woman or child. Perhaps the person had been hurrying through the street and had stumbled and fallen. The gases had choked him, the ashes had slowly covered him. Under the moistening rain and the pressure of all the hundreds of years the ashes had hardened almost to stone. Meantime the body had decayed and had sunk down into a handful of dust. But the hardened ashes still stood firm around the space where the body had been. When this hole was filled with plaster, the cast took just the form of the one who had been buried there so long ago—the folds of his clothes, the ring on his finger, the girl’s knot of hair, the negro slave’s woolly head. So we can really look upon the faces of some of the ancient people of Pompeii. And in another way we can learn the names of many of them.

One of the streets that leads out from the wall is called the “Street of Tombs.” It is the ancient burying ground. You will walk along the paved street between rows of monuments. Some will be like great square altars of marble beautifully carved. Some will be tall platforms with steps leading up. There will be marble benches where you may sit and think of the old Pompeians who were twice buried in their beautiful tombs. And there on the marble monument you will see their names carved in old Latin letters, and kind things that their friends said about them. There are:

Marcus Cerrinius Restitutus; Aulus Veius, who was several times an officer of the city; Mamia, a priestess; Marcus Porcius; Numerius Istacidius and his wife and daughter and others of his family, all in a great tomb standing on a high platform; Titus Terentius Felix, whose wife, Fabia Sabina, built his tomb; Tyche, a slave; Aulus Umbricius Scaurus, whose statue was set up in the market place to do him honor; Gaius Calventius Quietus, who was given a seat of honor at the theater on account of his generosity; Nævoleia Tyche, who had once been a slave, but who had been freed, had married, and grown wealthy and had slaves of her own; Gnæus Vibius Saturninus, whose freedman built his tomb; Marcus Arrius Diomedes, a freedman; Numerius Velasius Gratus, twelve years old; Salvinus, six years old; and many another.

After seeing the tombs and houses and shops you will leave that little city, I think, feeling that the people of ancient times were much like us, that men and mountains have done wonderful things in this old world, that it is good to know how people of other times lived and worked and died.

PICTURES OF POMPEII

A ROMAN BOY

This statue, now in the Metropolitan Museum, was found at Pompeii. Probably Caius was dressed just like this, and carried such a stick when he played in his father’s courtyard.

THE CITY OF NAPLES, WITH MOUNT VESUVIUS ACROSS THE BAY

VESUVIUS IN ERUPTION, FROM AN AIRPLANE

Nowadays men know from history what may happen when Vesuvius wakes. But in 79 A.D., when Pompeii was buried, the mountain had slept for hundreds of years, and no man knew that an eruption might bury a city.

POMPEII FROM AN AIRPLANE

The roofs are all gone and all the partitions inside the houses show. That is why it all looks so crowded and confused. But if you study it carefully you can see some interesting things. The big open space is the forum. It is about five hundred feet long, running northeast and southwest. South of it is the temple of Apollo. North of it, where you see the bases of columns in a circle, was the market. Next to the market is the place where the gods of the city were worshipped. The broad street beside the forum running southeast is the one down which Ariston fled. Then he turned into the forum, ran out the gate near the lower end into the steep street that runs southwest and ends at a city gate near the sea. NOLA STREET AND THE TEMPLE OF FORTUNE.

You must imagine this temple with an altar in front, a broad flight of steps, and a portico of beautiful columns. You can see the street paved with blocks of lava, the deep wheel ruts, and the stepping stones for rainy weather.

THE STABIAN GATE

Pompeii was surrounded by two high walls fifteen feet apart, with earth between. An embankment of earth was piled up inside also. This is one of the eight gates in the wall.

IN THE STREET OF TOMBS

On the tomb of Nævoleia Tyche was a carving of a ship gliding into port, the sailors furling the sails. Within this tomb is a chamber where funeral urns stand, containing the ashes of Tyche and her husband, and of the slaves they had freed. Pompeians always burned the bodies of the dead.

THE AMPHITHEATER

Like other Roman towns, Pompeii had an amphitheater. Here twenty thousand people could come and watch the gladiators fight in pairs till one was killed. Then the dead body was dragged off, and another pair appeared and fought. Sometimes the gladiators were prisoners captured in war, like the famous Spartacus; sometimes they were slaves; sometimes criminals condemned to death. Sometimes a man was pitted against a wild beast; sometimes two wild beasts fought each other. The amphitheater had no roof. Vesuvius, with its column of smoke, was in plain view from the seats. There was a great awning to protect the spectators. The lower seats were for officials and distinguished people; for the middle rows there was an admission fee; all the upper seats were free.

RUINS OF THE GREAT STABIAN BATHS

A few large houses had baths of their own, but most people went every day to a great public bath which was a very gay place. This open court which you see, was for games.

THE RUINED TEMPLE OF APOLLO

The temple was built on a high foundation. A broad flight of steps led up to it, with an altar at the foot. There was a porch all round it held up by a row of columns. Some of the columns have stood up through all the earthquakes and eruptions of two thousand years. Inside the porch was a small room for the statue of Apollo. In the paved court around this temple were many altars and statues of the gods. This was at one time the most important temple in Pompeii.

THE SCHOOL OF THE GLADIATORS

In this large open court the gladiators had their training and practice. In small cells around the court they lived. They were kept under close guard, for they were dangerous men. Sixty-three skeletons were found here, many of them in irons.

THE SMALLER THEATER

Pompeii had two theaters for plays and music, besides the amphitheater where the gladiators fought. The smaller theater, unlike the others, had a roof. It seated fifteen hundred people. We think perhaps contests in music were held here.

A SACRIFICE

A boar, a ram, and a bull are to be killed, and a part of the flesh is to be burned on the altar to please the gods.

A SCENE IN THE FORUM

On the walls of a room in a house in Pompeii men found this picture, showing how interesting the life of the forum was. At the left is a table where a man has kitchen utensils for sale. But he is dreaming and does not see a customer coming. So his friend is waking him up. Near him is a shoemaker selling sandals to some women.

IVORY HAIRPINS

Underneath are two ivory toilet boxes. One was probably for perfumed oil.

APPLIANCES FOR THE BATH

These were found hanging in a ring in one of the great public baths. You see a flask for oil, a saucer to pour the oil into, and four scrapers to scrape off the oil and dirt before a plunge.

PERISTYLE OF THE HOUSE OF THE VETTII

With the columns and tables and statues that were found, this court has been built on the site of an old ruined villa. Flowers bloom and the fountain plays in it to-day just as they did over two thousand years ago. There are wall paintings in the shadows at the back. The little boys holding the ducks must look very much like Caius when he was a little boy. When he went to the farm in the hills for a hot summer, he had ducks to play with; here are statues to remind him, in the winter time, of what fun that was.

A garden like this, not generally so large, was laid out inside every important house in Pompeii. The family rooms surrounded it. These rooms received most of their light and air from this garden. Caius was lying on a couch in a garden like this, when the shower of pebbles suddenly began. Ariston was painting the walls of a room that overlooked the garden.