Naples, Past and Present

by Arthur H. Norway

Among this darkness and these sights the sense of tragedy tightens on the imagination. The cruelty of the ruin stands before one and is not to be set aside. There are remains of frescoes here and there; but they are almost destroyed, and serve only to increase the pity that a theatre which once rang with laughter and glowed so richly with soft light and colour should lie wet, buried and forsaken in the darkness.

It is sometimes said that Herculaneum was destroyed by lava—the guides use the word to this day. But Vesuvius threw out no lava in the great eruption which destroyed the cities. It ejected much in prehistoric times. Pompeii itself is built upon a lava ridge, which in the old days was quarried for millstones, thus giving rise to an important industry. But in historic times lava did not flow—if we may trust geologists—till the year 1036 A.D.

Herculaneum was destroyed by fragments of pumice stone and ashes, scarcely distinguishable from those which one may see raked away from the half-uncovered walls of some new house at Pompeii. With this storm of falling cinders—how dense and thick one may picture dimly by remembering once more that all the seaward wall of the vast old crater was being blown away—with this crushing, choking shower, came torrents of rain, enough to turn the falling ashes to a sort of mud, which hardened into tufa. Indeed, just as the yellow tufa of Posilipo is composed of volcanic ash ejected underneath the sea, and is thus formed of ash and water, such precisely is the crust which hardened over Herculaneum, and holds the city in its clutch unto this hour. Perhaps the mud formed on the mountain slopes, and came rolling down upon the town. Professor Phillips thought it formed within the crater. Some obvious warning of great peril there must have been, and that quite early on the fatal 24th of August; for it was not long past noon when a message reached Pliny at Misenum, begging for his ships, since escape was even then impossible except by sea. Already Pliny, looking from Misenum, saw the mountain topped by that vast and awful cloud shaped like a pine tree, out of which ashes were raining down on the three cities. His ships, approaching the coast towards evening, ran into a hail of pumice stone. The ashes fell hotter and hotter on the decks, and in continually larger masses. The sea ebbed suddenly. Ruins were tumbling from the mountain. There was no possibility of giving help to the doomed city, and Pliny gave orders to steer off the coast. No eye has seen Herculaneum from that day to this. What became of the citizens is not known. Comparatively few bodies have been found; but the excavations were too imperfect to prove that somewhere in the city bounds they do not lie in heaps.

Such was the end of Herculaneum, by ashes, not by lava. It is true that lava beds lie above the city now. Probably the lava of 1631 passed over it. Sir William Hamilton distinguished the débris of no less than six eruptions besides that which destroyed it. Sir Charles Lyell also thought that a large part of the covering of the city was subsequent to its first destruction.

At Herculaneum all that is most interesting lies underground, and nearly all is still invisible. But little effort has been made at any time to disinter the city. The searchers who dug there at the command of Charles of Bourbon between the years 1750 and 1761—to which period we must refer nearly all the most precious discoveries—contented themselves with sinking shafts in likely spots, from which they mined and tunnelled as far as seemed possible to them, and then filled up the shaft again and sank another. Thus the notices of what they found, and still more of how they found it, are imperfect. They have, moreover, been carelessly preserved. Some were even wantonly destroyed in the last century by men who did not appreciate their value. Yet enough has been retained to stimulate the highest interest in Herculaneum, if not indeed to justify the belief that whenever it shall be possible to overcome the obvious difficulties of excavation, treasures will be found which may far exceed in quantity and beauty those which Pompeii has yielded.

This will be better understood by considering what has been written by Signor Comparetti and Signor de Petra concerning a single villa of Herculaneum, now, alas! buried up once more in darkness. It stood between the "new diggings" and the royal palace of Portici. I will preface my abstract of the treatise of the two scholars by some passages taken from the letters of Camillo Paderni, director of the excavations, to Mr. Thomas Hollis, in 1754.

"This route," says Paderni, "led us towards a palace, which lay near the garden. But before they arrived at a palace they came to a square ... which was adorned throughout with columns of stucco. At the several angles of the square was a terminus of marble, and on every one of these stood a bust of bronze of Greek workmanship, one of which had on it the name of the artist. A small fountain was placed before each terminus, which was constructed in the following manner. Level with the pavement was a vase to receive the water which fell from above. In the middle of this vase was a stand of balustrade work, to support another marble vase. This second vase was square on the outside and circular within, where it had the appearance of a scallop shell; in the centre whereof was the spout which threw up the water that was supplied by leaden pipes within the balustrade. Among the columns ... were alternately placed a statue[1] of bronze and a bust of the same material, at the equal distance of a certain number of palms.... The statues taken out from April 15 to September 30 are in number seven, near the height of six Neapolitan palms, except one of them, which is much larger, and of excellent expression. This represents a faun lying down, who appears to be drunk, resting upon the goatskin in which they anciently put wine.... September 27.—I went myself to take out a head in bronze, which proved to be that of Seneca, and the finest that has hitherto appeared.... Our greatest hopes are from the palace itself, which is of a very large extent. As yet we have only entered into one room, the floor of which is formed of mosaic work, not inelegant. It appears to have been a library, adorned with presses inlaid with different sorts of wood, disposed in rows. I was buried in this spot more than twelve days, to carry off the volumes found there, many of which were so perished that it was impossible to remove them. Those which I took away amounted to the number of 337, all of them at present incapable of being opened. These are all in Greek characters. While I was busy in this work I observed a large bundle, which from the size I imagined must contain more than a single volume. I tried with the utmost care to get it out, but could not, from the damp and weight of it. However, I perceived that it consisted of about eighteen volumes.... They were wrapped about with the bark of a tree, and covered at each end with a piece of wood.

"November 27th.—We discovered the figure of an old faun, or rather a Silenus, represented as sitting on a bank, with a tiger lying on his left side, on which his hand rested. Both these figures served to adorn a fountain, and from the mouth of the tiger had flowed water. From the same spot were taken out, November 29th, three little boys of bronze of a good manner. Two of them are young fauns, having the horns and ears of a goat. They have likewise silver eyes, and each of them the goatskin on his shoulder, wherein anciently they put wine, and through which here the water issued. The third boy is also of bronze, has silver eyes, is of the same size with the two former, and in a standing posture like them, but is not a faun. On one side of this last stood a small column, upon the top of which was a comic mask that served as a capital to it and discharged water from its mouth. December 16th.—In the same place were discovered another boy with a mask and three other fauns.... Besides these we met with two little boys in bronze, somewhat less than the former. These likewise were in a standing posture, had silver eyes, and had each a vase upon his shoulder whence the water flowed. We also dug out an old faun, crowned with ivy, having a long beard, a hairy body, and sandals on his feet. He sat astride upon a goatskin, holding it at the feet with both his hands...."

Thus far Paderni; and I have made this long extract to little purpose if the reader has not already recognised some among the finest objects in the great museum at Naples. This villa, with its garden full of statues, its cool peristyle all humming with the plash of falling water, its shadowy colonnade sheltering the marvellous bronzes, must have been a place of wonderful beauty. He was a rare collector who dwelt there. He had twenty-three large bronze busts and eight small ones, thirteen large bronze statues and eighteen small ones. In his garden stood not less than nine marble statues, and of marble busts he had certainly seven and probably seven more. Among these not one is of mean workmanship. The greater part are famous all round the world for beauty. They are unsurpassed, and they all came from a single villa just beyond the walls of this buried city.

Who was the man who made himself a home so splendid? The style of the decorations points to the latter years of the Republic. It is in marked distinction from the more ornate style which prevailed under the Empire, and of great mythological pictures there was none. One thing only enables us to guess with something like assurance who among the patricians of those days owned the villa—namely the library. The mode of inference is curious.