Fig. 239.—Glass vase with vintage scene, found in the tomb of the Blue Glass Vase.
A bench of masonry runs along the inner wall of the semicircular niche (9), which is covered by a roof in the form of a half dome and opens upon the street as do the large unroofed monuments of Veius and Mamia. A blank marble tablet was placed in the gable; the builder of the monument, who was doubtless living at the time of the eruption, preferred to leave it to his heirs to add the memorial inscription, but the disaster interfered with the fulfilment of his wishes. It was probably intended to bury the cinerary urn either in the floor of the niche or in the ground at the rear. The effect of the double series of pilasters at the corners, placed one upon the other without an intervening entablature, and of the fantastic stucco decoration of the gable, is not unpleasing, although the designs are far from classical; the tiles shown in the illustration are modern. The inner wall is painted in red and black panels; the vaulted ceiling, from which the stucco has now fallen, was moulded to represent a shell.
Both the niche and the tomb of the Blue Glass Vase seem to have belonged to the adjoining villa. The stucco decoration of the villa in its main features is identical with that of the niche; and the plot of ground behind the tombs is connected by a gateway with a garden of the villa (12 on the plan), which was too richly adorned to have been intended for the use of the occupants of the inn. In the middle of the garden was a pavilion supported by four mosaic columns (now in the Naples Museum), similar to that in the garden of the villa of Diomedes, and to others belonging to city houses. A mosaic fountain niche was made in the rear wall facing the entrance from the street, and in two corners were short columns on which were placed small figures,—on one a boy with a hare, in marble, on the other a frog of glazed terra cotta.
Nevertheless, the garden seems to possess a distinctly sepulchral character. Besides the entrances from the tombs and from the street, there was a third, which led into a court of the villa, with which the peristyle and living rooms were connected by a passageway; in the corner of the court nearest the garden, and facing the entrance from the street (15), was an elaborate domestic shrine, dedicated, as shown by the symbolical decoration, to Apollo, Bacchus, Hercules, and Mercury. The relation of the garden with the living rooms of the villa was only indirect; and we conclude that it was intended for gatherings and sacred rites in honor of the dead. Relatives could partake of the sepulchral banquet under the pavilion.
The tombs of the third group, as may be seen from [Plate X], form a stately series. The prevailing type is that which was in vogue at the time of the destruction of the city—a high base, with marble steps at the top leading up to a massive superstructure in the form of an altar, faced with marble. The burial plot was enclosed by a low wall. In the base of the tomb was a sepulchral chamber, entered by a door in the rear or at one side; it was now the custom for relatives to enter the burial vault when they wished to pour libations on the ashes.
The first of the series (16 on the plan, seen in [Plate X] next to the cypress) was unfinished at the time of the eruption. Part of the marble veneering had not yet been added, the walls of the sepulchral chamber were in the rough, and there were no urns in the five niches designed for their reception. In the burial plot surrounding the tomb, however, a marble bust stone was found ([Fig. 240]) with the inscription, Iunoni Tyches Iuliae Augustae Vener[iae],—'To the Genius of Tyche, slave of Julia Augusta,—of the cult of Venus.'
