Pompeii, Its Life and Art

by August Mau

Fig. 102.—View of Abbondanza Street, looking east.
At the left, fountain of Concordia Augusta, and side entrance of the Eumachia building.
In the pavement, three stepping stones.

The streets of Pompeii vary greatly in width. The widest is Mercury Street, the continuation of which near the Forum has a breadth of nearly 32 feet. Next come Abbondanza and Nola streets, the greatest width of which is about 28 feet; the other streets and thoroughfares vary from 10 to 20 feet. With unimportant exceptions, broad and narrow streets alike are paved with polygonal blocks of basalt, which in laying were fitted to one another with great care; on both sides are raised sidewalks, with basalt or tufa curbing. The sidewalks in some places are paved with small stones, elsewhere are laid with concrete, or left with a surface of beaten earth. As there is no uniformity, the sidewalk varying in front of adjoining houses, it is clear that the choice of materials was left to individual owners of abutting property. The limits of ownership are often designated by boundary stones, laid in the surface of the walk.

Broad ruts, worn by wheels, are seen in the pavement, shallower in places where the basalt flags, cut from the lowest stratum of the stream of lava, are particularly hard; deeper wherever there are blocks quarried nearer the surface. Only the principal streets were wide enough to allow wagons to meet and pass; elsewhere drivers must have waited at a corner for a coming team to go by. It seems likely that driving on the streets of the city was forbidden, wheeled vehicles being used only for traffic; people who wished to ride availed themselves of litters.

At various places along the thoroughfares, but particularly at the corners, large oblong stepping stones with rounded corners were set in the pavement at convenient distances for those wishing to cross, the surface being on a level with the sidewalk. The number varied according to the width of the pavement; in the broadest streets as many as five were used. They were arranged always in such a way as to leave places for the wagon wheels. It is not difficult to understand how Pompeian drivers guided their teams past them; draft animals were attached to the wagon by means of a yoke fastened to the end of the pole, and, as there were no tugs or whippletrees, they had a greater freedom of movement than is allowed to modern teams.

It is not to be supposed that so complete a system of paving existed from the beginning of the city. Some light is thrown on the period of its laying by two inscriptions,—one, EX · K · QUI, cut in the edge of the sidewalk west of Insula IX. iv.; the other, K · Q, in the pavement between the second and fourth Insulae of Region VII. Both are evidently dates, and in full would read ex Kalendis Quinctilibus, 'from the first day of July,' and Kalendis Quinctilibus, 'July 1.' Apparently they relate to the laying of the pavement; this was in place, even in the unimportant side street of Region VII, when the inscriptions were cut, and so must go back to the time before the name of the month Quinctilis was changed to Iulius, our July. Pompeii was paved, therefore, before 44 B.C.

The stepping stones were particularly useful when there was a heavy rain; for the water then flowed in torrents down the streets, as it does to-day in Catania, where the inhabitants have light bridges which they throw over the crossings after a storm. There were covered conduits to carry off the surface drainage of the Forum, one of which runs under the Strada delle Scuole to the south, the other under the Via Marina to the west. Elsewhere the water rushed down the streets till it came near the city walls, where it was collected and carried off by large storm sewers. These are still in successful operation, as are also the conduits at the Forum. One is at the west end of the Vico dei Soprastanti, another at the west end of Nola Street; and a third leads from Abbondanza Street, where it is crossed by Stabian Street, toward the south.

There were other sewers in the city, but they were of small dimensions and have not been fully investigated. They seem generally to have been under sidewalks. They were not designed to receive surface water, but the drainage of houses. They cannot have served this purpose fully, however, for most of the closets were connected, not with the sewers, but with cesspools.

After the lapse of more than eighteen centuries, the visitor at Pompeii will distinguish at a glance the business streets from those less frequented. The sides of the former are lined with shops; along the latter are blank walls, broken only by house doors, with now and then a small window high above the pavement. The greatest volume of business was transacted on the two main thoroughfares, Stabian and Nola streets; next in importance were Abbondanza Street, leading from the Forum toward the Sarno Gate, and the continuation of Augustales Street from the north end of the Forum toward the east. First in the list of quiet thoroughfares is the broad Mercury Street, along which were many homes of wealth; the north end of it is closed by the city wall.

There were many fountains along the streets of Pompeii, most of them at the corners. They were fed by pipes connecting with the water system of the city. The construction is simple. A deep basin was made by placing on their edges four large slabs of basalt, held together at the corners by iron clamps. Above one of the longer sides, usually near the middle, is a short, thick standard, of the same stone, pierced for the lead feed pipe, which threw a jet of water forward into the basin below; on the opposite side is a depression through which the superfluous water ran off into the street. Most of these standards are ornamented with reliefs, roughly carved but effective,—an eagle with a hare in its beak, a calf's head, a bust of Mercury, a head of Medusa, a drunken Silenus ([Fig. 103]), or some other suitable design, arranged so that the water would spurt from the mouth of the figure or from an amphora.

Occasionally we find a fountain of finer material. That of Concordia Augusta, of limestone, has already been mentioned ([p. 117]). In the neighborhood of the Porta Marina there is a fountain of white marble with a relief showing a cock that has tipped over a jar, from the mouth of which the water flowed. Both these more costly fountains were probably the gift of private individuals, one presented to the city by Eumachia, the other by the owner of the nearest house, at VII. xv. 1-2. All the fountains bear witness to long use by the depressions worn in the stone by the hands of those leaning forward to drink.