Now, if these trivialities revolt your fastidious taste, you can picture to yourself the representation of some comedy of Plautus in the Odeon of Pompeii; that is, admitting, to begin with, that you can find a comedy by that author which in no wise shocks our susceptibilities. You can also fill the stage with mimes and pantomimists, for the favor accorded to that class of actors under the emperors is well known. The Cæsars—I am speaking of the Romans—somewhat feared spoken comedy, attributing political proclivities to it, as they did; and, hence, they encouraged to their utmost that mute comedy which, at the same time, in the Imperial Babel, had the advantage of being understood by all the conquered nations. In the provinces, this supreme art of gesticulation, "these talking fingers, these loquacious hands, this voluble silence, this unspoken explanation," as was once choicely said, were serviceable in advancing the great work of Roman unity. "The substitution of ballet pantomimes for comedy and tragedy resulted in causing the old masterpieces to be neglected, thereby enfeebling the practice of the national idioms and seconding the propagation, if not of the language, at least of the customs and ideas of the Romans." (Charles Magnin.)
If the mimes do not suffice, call into the Odeon the rope-dancers, the acrobats, the jugglers, the ventriloquists,—for all these lower orders of public performers existed among the ancients and swarmed in the Pompeian pictures,—or the flute-players enlivening the waits with their melody and accompanying the voice of the actors at moments of dramatic climax. "How can he feel afraid," asked Cicero, in this connection, "since he recites such fine verses while he accompanies himself on the flute?" What would the great orator have said had he been present at our melodramas?
We may then imagine what kind of play we please on the little Pompeian stage. For my part, I prefer the Atellan farces. They were the buffooneries of the locality, the coarse pleasantry of native growth, the hilarity of the vineyard and the grain-field, exuberant fancy, grotesque in solemn earnest; in a word, ideal sport and frolic without the least regard to reality—in fine, Punchinello's comedy. We prefer Moliere; but how many things there are in Moliere which come in a direct line from Maccus!
It is time to leave the theatre. I have said that the Odeon opened into the gladiators' barracks. These barracks form a spacious court—a sort of cloister—surrounded by seventy-four pillars, unfortunately spoiled by the Pompeians of the restoration period. They topped them with new capitals of stucco notoriously ill adapted to them. This gallery was surrounded with curious dwellings, among which was a prison where three skeletons were found, with their legs fastened in irons of ingeniously cruel device. The instrument in question may be seen at the museum. It looks like a prostrate ladder, in which the limbs of the prisoners were secured tightly between short and narrow rungs—four bars of iron. These poor wretches had to remain in a sitting or reclining posture, and perished thus, without the power to rise or turn over, on the day when Vesuvius swallowed up the city.
It was for a long time thought that these barracks were the quarters of the soldiery, because arms were found there; but the latter were too highly ornamented to belong to practical fighting troops, and were the very indications that suggested to Father Garrucci the firmly established idea, that the dwellings surrounding the gallery must have been occupied by gladiators. These habitations consist of some sixty cells: now there were sixty gladiators in Pompeii because an album programme announced thirty pair of them to fight in the amphitheatre.
The pillars of the gallery were covered with inscriptions scratched on their surface. Many of these graphites formed simple Greek names Pompaios, Arpokrates, Celsa, etc., or Latin names, or fragments of sentences, curate pecunias, fur es Torque, Rustico feliciter! etc. Others proved clearly that the place was inhabited by gladiators: inludus Velius (that is to say not in the game, out of the ring) bis victor libertus—leonibus, victor Veneri parmam feret. Other inscriptions designate families or troops of gladiators, of which there are a couple familiar to us already, that of N. Festus Ampliatus and that of N. Popidius Rufus; and a third, with which we are not acquainted, namely, that of Pomponius Faustinus.
What has not been written concerning the gladiators? The origin of their bloody sports; the immolations, voluntary at first, and soon afterward compulsory, that did honor to the ashes of the dead warriors; then the combats around the funeral pyres; then, ere long, the introduction of these funeral spectacles as part of the public festivals, especially in the triumphal parades of victorious generals; then into private pageants, and then into the banquets of tyrants who caused the heads of the proscribed to be brought to them at table. The skill of such and such an artist in decapitation (decollandi artifex) was the subject of remark and compliment. Ah, those were the grand ages!
As the reader also knows, the gladiators were at first prisoners of war, barbarians; then, prisoners not coming in sufficient number, condemned culprits and slaves were employed, ere long, in hosts so strong as, to revolt in Campania at the summons of Spartacus. Consular armies were vanquished and the Roman prisoners, transformed to gladiators, in their turn were compelled to butcher each other around the funeral pyres of their chiefs. However, these combats had gradually ceased to be penalties and punishments, and soon were nothing but barbarous spectacles, violent pantomimic performances, like those which England and Spain have not yet been able to suppress. The troops of mercenary fighters slaughtered each other in the arenas to amuse the Romans (not to render them warlike). Citizens took part in these tournaments, and among them even nobles, emperors, and women; and, at last, the Samnites, Gauls, and Thracians, who descended into the arena, were only Romans in disguise. These shows became more and more varied; they were diversified with hunts (venationes), in which wild beasts fought with each other or against bestiarii, or Christians; the amphitheatres, transformed to lakes, offered to the gaze of the delighted spectator real naval battles, and ten thousand gladiators were let loose against each other by the imperial caprice of Trajan. These entertainments lasted one hundred and twenty-three days. Imagine the carnage!
Part of the gladiators of Pompeii were Greeks, and part were real barbarians. The traces that they have left in the little city show that they got along quite merrily there. 'Tis true that they could not live, as they did at Rome, in close intimacy with emperors and empresses, but they were, none the less, the spoiled pets of the residents of Pompeii. Lodged in a sumptuous barrack, they must have been objects of envy to many of the population. The walls are full of inscriptions concerning them; the bathing establishments, the inns, and the disreputable haunts, transmit their names to posterity. The citizens, their wives, and even their children admired them. In the house of Proculus, at no great height above the ground, is a picture of a gladiator which must have been daubed there by the young lad of the house. The gladiator whose likeness was thus given dwelt in the house. His helmet was found there. So, then, he was the guest of the family, and Heaven knows how they feasted him, petted him, and listened to him.
In order to see the gladiators under arms, we must pass over the part of the city that has not yet been uncovered, and through vineyards and orchards, until, in a corner of Pompeii, as though down in the bottom of a ravine, we find the amphitheatre. It is a circus, surrounded by tiers of seats and abutting on the city ramparts. The exterior wall is not high, because the amphitheatre had to be hollowed out in the soil. One might fancy it to be a huge vessel deeply embedded in the sand. In this external wall there remain two large arcades and four flights of steps ascending to the top of the structure. The arena was so called because of the layer of sand which covered it and imbibed the blood.