From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People

by Sven Anders Hedin

Many rich and eminent Romans loved Pompeii, and built costly villas in the town or its beautiful environs. One of these was the famous orator and author, Cicero, whose villa was situated near the north-eastern town gate. Again and again he went to Pompeii to rest after the noise and tumult of Rome, and the last time he is certainly known to have sojourned there was in the year 44 B.C., shortly after the murder of the great Cæsar.

From the vicinity of Cicero's villa ran north-west the Street of Tombs, bordered with innumerable monuments like the Appian Way outside Rome. Some were quite simple, others resembled costly altars and temples, and all contained urns with the bones and ashes of the dead.

Some streets were lined entirely with shops and stores. Most of the streets were straight and regular, some broad, others quite small; they were paved with flags of lava and had raised footpaths. Here and there stones were laid in a row across the street, whereon foot passengers could cross over dryshod after the heavy torrential rains, which then, as now, repeatedly converted these lanes into rivers and canals.

Pompeii had several bath-houses, luxuriously and comfortably furnished, built of stone, dark and cool, and very attractive during the warm, sultry summer. In the apodyterium the visitor took off his clothes, and then repaired to the various rooms for warm air, warm baths, and cold baths. The walls in the frigidarium were decorated with paintings representing shady groves and dark forests; the vaulted roof was painted blue and strewn with stars, and through a small round opening the sunlight poured in. The basin itself was therefore like a small forest pool under the open sky. The bather was thoroughly scraped and shampooed by the attendants, and last of all smeared with odorous oils.

The houses of wealthy citizens were decorated with exquisite taste and artistic skill. Towards the streets the houses showed little besides bare plain walls, for the old Romans did not like the private sanctity of their homes to be disturbed at all by the noise of the streets and the inquisitiveness of people on the public roads. So it is still, if not in Italy and Greece, at any rate over all the Asiatic East. Pomp and state were only displayed in the interior. There were seen statues and busts, flourishing flower-beds under open colonnades, and in the midst of the principal apartment, called the atrium, was a marble basin sunk in the mosaic pavement, and through a quadrangular opening in the roof above the sun and moon looked in and the rain often mingled its drops with the jets of the constantly playing fountain. When the master of the house gave an entertainment, tables were carried in by slaves, and the guests took their luxurious meal lying on long couches. They ate, and drank, and jested, listening from time to time to the tones of flutes, harps, and cymbals, and watched the lithe movements of dancers with eyes dull and heavy with wine.

Happy days were spent in Pompeii in undisturbed peacefulness. People enjoyed the treasures of the forests, gardens, and sea, transacted their business or the duties of their posts, and assembled for discussion in the Forum, where the columns cast cool shadows over the stone flags. No one thought of Vesuvius. The volcano was supposed to have become for ever extinct ages ago. On the ancient lava-streams old trees grew, the most luscious grapes ripened on the flanks of the mountain, and from their descendants is pressed out at the present day a wine called Lachryma Christi. A legend relates that when the Saviour once went up Vesuvius and stood in mute astonishment at the beautiful landscape surrounding the Bay of Naples, He also wept from grief over this home of sin and vanity; and where His tears moistened the ground there grew up a tendril which has not its like on earth.

The year before the burning of Rome, Pompeii was devastated by a fearful earthquake. The inhabitants soon took heart again, however, and built up their town better and more beautiful than ever. Sixteen years passed, and then the blow came, the most crushing and annihilating blow that ever befell any town since Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire from heaven.

The elder Pliny, who left to the world an immortal work, was then in command of a Roman fleet anchored in the Bay of Naples, and lived with his family in a place not far from Pompeii. His adopted son, the younger Pliny, a youth of eighteen, spirited, quick, and talented, was also with him. Vesuvius broke into eruption on August 24 in the year 79, and in a few hours Pompeii and two other towns were buried under a downpour of pumice and ashes, and streams of lava and mud. Among the victims was the elder Pliny.

Several years afterwards, the Roman historian Tacitus wrote to the younger Pliny and asked him for information about the manner of his uncle's death. The two letters containing answers to this question are still extant. Pliny describes how his uncle was suffocated by ashes and sulphurous vapour on the shore. He had himself seen flames of fire shoot up out of the crater, which also vomited forth a black cloud spreading out above like the crown of a pine-tree. He went out with his mother to the forecourt of the house, but when the ground trembled and the air became full of ashes they hurried off, followed by a crowd of people. His mother, who was old, begged him to save himself by rapid flight, but he would not desert her. And he writes: "I looked round; a thick smoky darkness rolled threateningly over us from behind; it spread over the earth like an advancing flood and followed us. 'Let us move to one side while we can see,' I said,' so that we may not fall down on the road and be trampled down in the darkness by those behind.' We had scarcely got out of the crowd when we were involved in darkness, not such as when there is no moon or the sky is overcast, but such as prevails in a closed room when the lights are out." And he tells how the fugitives tied cushions over their heads so as not to be bruised by falling stones, and how they had repeatedly to shake off the ashes lest they should be weighed down by them. He was quite composed himself, and thought that the whole world was passing away.