The Wonders of Pompeii

by Marc Monnier

However that may be, these mural decorations were nevertheless a feast for the eyes, and are so still. They divided the walls into five or six panels, developing themselves between a socle and a frieze; the socle being deeper, the frieze clearer in tint, the interspace of a more vivid red and yellow, for instance, while the frieze was white and the socle black. In plain houses these single panels were divided by simple lines; then gradually, as the house selected became more opulent, these lines were replaced by ornamental frames, garlands, pilasters, and, ere long, fantastic pavilions, in which the fancy of the decorative artist disported at will. However, the socles became covered with foliage, the friezes with arabesques, and the panels with paintings, the latter quite simple at first, such as a flower, a fruit, a landscape; pretty soon a figure, then a group, then at last great historical or religious subjects that sometimes covered a whole piece of wall and to which the socle and the frieze served as a sort of showy and majestic framework. Thus, the fancy of the decorator could rise even to the height of epic art.

Those paintings will be eternally studied: they give us precious data, not only on art, but concerning everything that relates to antiquity,—its manners and customs, its ceremonies, its costumes, the homes of those days, the elements and nature as they then appeared. Pompeii is not a gallery of pictures; it is rather an illustrated journal of the first century. One there sees odd landscapes; a little island on the edge of the water; a bank of the Nile where an ass, stooping to drink, bends toward the open jaws of a crocodile which he does not see, while his master frantically but vainly endeavors to pull him back by the tail. These pieces nearly always consist of rocks on the edge of the water, sometimes interspersed with trees, sometimes covered with ranges of temples, sometimes stretching away in rugged solitudes, where some shepherd wanders astray with his flock, or from time to time, enlivened with a historical scene (Andromeda and Perseus). Then come little pictures of inanimate nature,—baskets of fruit, vases of flowers, household utensils, bunches of vegetables, the collection of office-furniture painted in the house of Lucretius (the inkstand, the stylus, the paper-knife, the tablets, and a letter folded in the shape of a napkin with the address, "To Marcus Aurelius, flamen of Mars, and decurion of Pompeii"). Sometimes these paintings have a smack of humor; there are two that go together on the same wall. One of them shows a cock and a hen strolling about full of life, while upon the other the cock is in durance vile, with his legs tied and looking most doleful indeed: his hour has come!

I say nothing of the bouquets in which lilies, the iris, and roses predominate, nor of the festoons, the garlands, nay, the whole thickets that adorn, the walls of Sallust's garden. Let me here merely point out the pictures of animals, the hunting scenes, and the combats of wild beasts, treated with such astonishing vigor and raciness. There is one, especially, still quite fresh and still in its place, in one of the houses recently discovered. It represents a wild boar rushing headlong upon a bear, in the presence of a lion, who looks on at him with the most superb indifference. It is divined, as the Neapolitans say; that is, the painter has intuitively conceived the feelings of the two animals; the one blind with reckless fury, the other supremely confident in his own agility and superior strength.

And now I come to the human form. Here we have endless variety; and all kinds, from the caricature to the epic effort, are attempted and exhausted,—the wagon laden with an enormous goat-skin full of wine, which slaves are busily putting into amphoræ; a child making an ape dance; a painter copying a Hermes of Bacchus; a pensive damsel probably about to dispatch a secret message by the buxom servant-maid waiting there for it; a vendor of Cupids opening his cage full of little winged gods, who, as they escape, tease a sad and pensive woman standing near, in a thousand ways,—how many different subjects! But I have said nothing yet. The Pompeians especially excelled in fancy pictures. Everybody has seen those swarms of little genii that, fluttering down upon the walls of their houses, wove crowns or garlands, angled with the rod and line, chased birds, sawed planks, planed tables, raced in chariots, or danced on the tight-rope, holding up thyrses for balancing poles; one bent over, another kneeling, a third making a jet of wine spirt forth from a horn into a vase, a fourth playing on the lyre, and a fifth on the double flute, without leaving the tight-rope that bends beneath their nimble feet. But more beautiful than these divine rope-dancers were the female dancers, who floated about, perfect prodigies of self-possession and buoyancy, rising of themselves from the ground and sustained without an effort in the voluptuous air that cradled them. You may see these all at the museum in Naples,—the nymph who clashes the cymbals, and one who drums the tambourine; another who holds aloft a branch of cedar and a golden sceptre; one who is handing a plate of figs; and her, too who has a basket on her head and a thyrsis in her hand. Another in dancing uncovers her neck and her shoulders, and a third, with her head thrown back, and her eyes uplifted to heaven, inflates her veil as though to fly away. Here is one dropping bunches of flowers in a fold of her robe, and there another who holds a golden plate in this hand, while with that she covers her brows with an undulating pallium, like a bird putting its head under its wing.

There are some almost nude, and some that drape themselves in tissues quite transparent and woven of the air. Some again wrap themselves in thick mantles which cover them completely, but which are about to fall; two of them holding each other by the hand are going to float upward together. As many dancing nymphs as there are, so many are the different dances, attitudes, movements, undulations, characteristics, and dissimilar ways of removing and putting on veils; infinite variations, in fine, upon two notes that vibrate with voluptuous luxuriance, and in a thousand ways.

Let us continue: We are sweeping into the full tide of mythology. All the ancient divinities will pass before us,—now isolated (like the fine, nay, truly imposing Ceres in the house of Castor and Pollux), now grouped in well-known scenes, some of which often recur on the Pompeian walls. Thus, the education of Bacchus, his relations with Silenus; the romantic story of Ariadne; the loves of Jupiter, Apollo, and Daphne; Mars and Venus; Adonis dying; Zephyr and Flora; but, above all, the heroes of renown, Theseus and Andromeda, Meleager, Jason, heads of Hercules; his twelve labors, his combat with the Nemæan lion, his weaknesses,—such are the episodes most in favor with the decorative artists of the little city. Sometimes they take their subjects from the poems of Virgil, but oftener from those of Homer. I might cite a whole house, viz., that of the Poet, also styled the Homeric House, the interior court of which was a complete Iliad illustrated. There you could see the parting of Agamemnon and Chryseis, and also that of Briseis and Achilles, who, seated on a throne, with a look of angry resignation, is requesting the young girl to return to Agamemnon—a fine picture, of deserved celebrity. There, too, was beheld the lovely Venus which Gell has not hesitated to compare, as to form, with the Medicean statue, or for color, to Titian's painting. It will be remembered that she plays a conspicuous part in the poem. A little further on we see Jupiter and Juno meeting on Mount Ida.

"At length" says Nicolini, in his sumptuous work on Pompeii, "in the natural sequence of these episodes, appears Thetis reclining on the Triton, and holding forth to her afflicted son the arms that Vulcan had forged for him in her presence."

It was in the peristyle of this house that the copy of the famous picture by Timanthius of the sacrifice of Iphigenia was found. "Having represented her standing near the altar on which she is to perish, the artist depicts profound grief on the faces of those who are present, especially of Menelaus; then, having exhausted all the symbols of sorrow, he veils the father's countenance, finding it impossible to give a befitting expression." This was, according to Pliny, the work of Timanthus, and such is exactly the reproduction of it as it was found in the house of the poet at Pompeii.