Pompeii, Its Life and Art

by August Mau

The mythological paintings rarely present rapid movement. To the few exceptions belong the two familiar pictures placed opposite each other in the tablinum of the house of Castor and Pollux, Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes on the island of Scyros, and the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon. Only part of the latter painting is preserved, but both are strong compositions, and are repeated on other walls.

Scenes of combat, the interest of which lies in the display of physical force, are still more infrequently met with, and seem out of harmony with the prevailing taste. Two pictures from Herculaneum represent Hercules putting forth his strength; in one he is struggling with the Nemean lion, in the other carrying the Erymanthian boar. The few paintings of this kind at Pompeii are badly preserved. In two of them Meleager appears, engaged in combat with the boar; in another we see Achilles before the walls of Troy with drawn sword in one hand, with the other grasping by the hair Troilus, an effeminate Trojan youth, attired in Oriental fashion, who mounted on his horse is vainly trying to escape; a fourth represents a combat between a heavy-armed warrior and an Amazon. But such paintings are the more conspicuous by reason of their rarity, and those that have thus far been discovered are all found upon walls of the third style.

A much larger number of mythological compositions represent a moment of dramatic interest, the artist relying for his effect upon the bearing and facial expression of the persons appearing in the scene. The interest is purely psychological, and several of the pictures that have been preserved give us an exceedingly favorable idea of the ability of ancient painters to express emotion, especially when we remember that these paintings are merely decorative copies of masterpieces the originals of which in most cases had probably never been seen by the workmen who painted the copies on the walls.

Among the more familiar examples is the face of Orestes in the painting found in the house of the Citharist ([Fig. 182]), and that of Io, watched by Argus, in the Macellum. Emotion is expressed with even greater skill in the face of Io in a painting of the temple of Isis. The goddess welcomes the wanderer to Egypt after her long season of suffering; the traces of the suffering are clearly seen, yet are illumined by the ineffable and serene joy of final deliverance.

One of the most beautiful specimens of ancient painting is a fragment, badly preserved, in the tablinum of the house of Caecilius Jucundus. The composition probably represented Priam turning back toward Troy with the body of Hector, which he had just ransomed. In the fragment, shown in [Fig. 270], we see the aged Hecuba, together with a daughter or maidservant, looking with unutterable anguish from an upper window down upon the scene. The gray-haired queen, whose features still retain much of their youthful beauty, gazes upon the dust-stained body of her son with grief too deep for tears.

Fig. 270.—Hecuba with a younger companion looking from an upper window as Priam brings back the body of Hector.

In the majority of paintings the subjects of which are taken from myths the characters are represented either in a relation of rest, not suggestive of intense emotion, or in a lasting situation of dramatic interest, which is devoid of momentary excitement and does not suggest the display of evanescent feeling. The situation is sometimes cheerful, sometimes calculated to arouse sympathy; if the characters were not mythological, the scenes might pass for those of everyday life. Thus we see Narcissus looking at the reflection of his face in a clear spring in the forest; Polyphemus, on the seashore, receiving from the hands of a Cupid a letter sent by Galatea; and Apollo playing on the lyre for Admetus, while the herd grazes around him.

To the same series of cheerful or idyllic pictures belong the Selene hovering over the sleeping Endymion; Paris and Oenone on Mt. Ida, Paris cutting the name of his sweetheart in the bark of a tree; and Perseus with Andromeda looking at the reflection of the head of Medusa in a pool. With these we may class also the representations of Bacchus as he moves along with his rollicking band and suddenly comes upon the sleeping Ariadne; and Hercules with Omphale, sometimes sitting in woman's attire beside her and spinning, sometimes staggering in his cups or lying drunk upon the ground while she stands or sits near him.