Fig. 107.—Large street altar.
Sometimes merely a pair of serpents are painted on a wall, in order to give a religious association to the place, as a means of protection. In one case (east side of Insula VII. xi. 12) an explicit warning was painted on the plaster beside them: Otiosis locus hic non est; discede, morator,—'No place for loafers here; move along!'
CHAPTER XXXII
THE DEFENCES OF THE CITY
From the military point of view, Pompeii at the time of the eruption did not possess a system of defences. For many years previously the city wall had been kept in repair only as a convenience in matters of civil administration, and the gates had long since lost all appearance of preparedness to resist attack. The fortifications are not, however, without interest. They form a massive and conspicuous portion of the ruins, and as a survival from an earlier period they have recorded many evidences of the successive changes through which the city passed.
The relation of the wall to the configuration of the height on which Pompeii stood was pointed out in connection with our general survey of the city ([p. 31]). Along the southwest side, at the time of the eruption, it had almost completely disappeared. Here, where the slope was steepest and the city best defended by nature, the wall had been removed, and its place occupied by houses, at a comparatively early date, probably in the second century B.C.; enough fragments remain, however, to enable us to determine its location with certainty. Elsewhere the greater part of the wall is in a fair state of preservation. The towers did not belong to the original structure, and one of the gates in its present form is of still more recent origin.
The construction of the wall will be readily understood with the help of the accompanying illustrations.
First, two parallel stone walls were built, about 15 feet apart and 28 inches thick; both walls were strengthened on the side toward the city by numerous buttresses, the inner wall being further supported by massive abutments projecting into the space between ([Fig. 108]). This space was filled with earth.
When the desired height, 26 or 28 feet, was reached, a breastwork of parapets was constructed on the outer wall; the inner wall was carried up about 16 feet above the broad passageway on the top ([Fig. 110]) as a shield against the weapons of the enemy, preventing the missiles from going over into the town and causing them to fall where the garrison could easily pick them up to hurl back again. Rain water falling on the top flowed toward the outside, and was carried beyond the face of the masonry by stone waterspouts.