We next saw the temples. Of the temple of Æsculapius little remains but an altar of black stone, adorned with a cornice imitating the scales of a serpent. His statue in terra-cotta was found in the cell. The temple of Isis is more perfect. It is surrounded by a portico of fluted columns, and in the area around it are two altars, and many ceppi for statues; and a little chapel of white stucco, as hard as stone, of the most exquisite proportions; its panels are adorned with figures in bas-relief, slightly indicated, but of workmanship the most delicate that can be conceived. They are Egyptian subjects executed by a Greek artist, who has humanized all the unnatural extravagance of the original conception into the supernatural loveliness of his country's genius. They scarcely touch the ground with their feet, and their wind uplifted robes seem in the place of wings. The temple in the midst, raised on a high platform and approached by steps, was decorated with exquisite paintings, some of which we saw in the museum at Porticai. It is small, of the same materials as the chapel, with a pavement of mosaic, and fluted Ionic columns of white stucco, so white that it dazzles you to look at it.
Thence through other porticoes and labyrinths of walls and columns, some broken, some entire, their entablatures strewed under them. The temple of Jupiter, of Venus, and another temple, the Tribunal, and the hall of public justice with the forests of lofty columns, surround the Forum. Two pedestals or altars of an enormous size (for whether they were the altars of the temple of Venus before which they stand the guide could not tell) occupy the lower end of the Forum. At the upper end, supported on an elevated platform, stands the temple of Jupiter. Under the colonnade of its portico we sat and pulled out our oranges and figs and bread (sorry fare, you will say) and started to eat. Here was a magnificent spectacle. Above and between the multitudinous shafts of the sunshiny columns was seen the sea, reflecting the purple heaven of noon above it, and supporting, as it were, on its lips the dark lofty mountains of Sorrento, of a blue indescribably deep, and tinged toward their summits with streaks of new fallen snow. Between was one small green island. To the right was Capreæ, Inarnine, Prochyta, and Misenum. Behind was the single summit of Vesuvius, rolling forth volumes of thick white smoke, whose foam-like column was sometimes darted into the clear dark sky and fell in little streaks along the wind. Between Vesuvius and the nearer mountains, as through a chasm, was seen the main line of the loftiest Apenines to the east. The day was radiated and warm. Every now and then we heard the subterranean thunder of Vesuvius; its distant and deep peals seem to shake the very air and light of day, which interpenetrated our frames with a sudden and tremendous sound. The scene was what the Greeks beheld (Pompeii, you know, was a Greek city). They lived in harmony with nature, and the interstices of their incomparable columns were portals, as it were, to admit the spirit of beauty which animates this glorious universe to visit those whom it inspired. If such is Pompeii, what was Athens? What scene was exhibited from the Acropolis, the Parthenon, and the temples of Hercules, and Theseus and the Winds? The islands and the Ægean Sea, the mountains of Argolis, and the peaks of Pindus and Olympus, with the darkness of the Bœotian forests interspersed?
From the Forum we went to another public place, a triangular portico half enclosing the ruins of an enormous temple. It is built on the edge of the hill overlooking the sea. The black point is the temple. In the apex of the triangle stand an altar and a fountain, and before the altar once stood the statue of the builder of the portico.
Returning hence and following the consular road, we came to the eastern gate of the city. The walls are of enormous strength and inclose a space of three miles. On each side of the wall beyond the gate are built the tombs. How unlike ours! They seem not so much hiding-places for that which must decay as voluptuous chambers of immortal spirits. They are of marble radiantly white; and two especially beautiful are loaded with exquisite bas-relief. On the stucco wall that encloses them are little emblematic figures, of a relief exceedingly low, of dead and dying animals and little winged genii, and female forms bending in groups in some funereal office. The higher reliefs represent, one a nautical and the other a Bacchanalian one. Within the cell stand the crematory urns, sometimes one, sometimes more. It is said that paintings were found within; which are now, as has been everything movable in Pompeii, removed and scattered about in royal museums. These tombs were the most impressive things of all. The wild woods surround them on either side; and along the broad stones of the paved road which divides them, you hear the late leaves of autumn shiver and rustle in the stream of the inconstant wind, as it were like the steps of ghosts. The radiance and magnificence of these dwellings of the dead, the white freshness of the scarcely finished marble, the impassioned or imaginative life of the figures which adorn them, contrast strangely with the simplicity of the houses of those who were living when Vesuvius overwhelmed them.
I have forgotten the amphitheater, which is of great magnitude tho inferior to the Coliseum.
I now understand why the Greeks were such great poets; and above all, I can account, it seems to me, for the harmony, the unity, the perfection, the uniform excellence of all their works of art. They lived in a perpetual commerce with external nature, and nourished themselves upon the spirits of its forms. Their theaters were all open to the mountains of the sky. Their columns, the ideal type of a sacred forest, with its roof of interwoven tracery, admitted the light and wind. The odor and the freshness of the country penetrated the cities. Their temples were mostly unparthaic; and the flying clouds, the stars and the deep sky were seen above. Oh, but for that series of wretched wars which terminated in the Roman conquest of the world; but for the Christian religion which put the finishing stroke on the ancient system; but for those changes that conducted Athens to its ruin—to what an eminence might not humanity have arrived!
FOOTNOTES:
[37] From an essay written sometime in 1820-21, and suggested by an article on poetry which his friend, Thomas Love Peacock, had contributed to the Literary Miscellany. John Addington Symonds, one of Shelley's biographers, cites this paper as containing some of the finest prose writing of Shelley.
[38] One of Shelley's many letters to his friend, Thomas Love Peacock, of which Symonds says: "Taken altogether, they are the most perfect specimens of descriptive prose on the English language; never overcharged with color, vibrating with emotions excited by the stimulating scenes of Italy, frank in criticisms, and exquisitely delicate in observation. Their transparent sincerity and unpremeditated grace, combined with natural finish of expression, make them masterpieces of a style at once familiar and elevated." It was among the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla that Shelley wrote his poem "Prometheus Unbound." Of this poem Shelley wrote from Florence on December 26, 1819, a letter the original of which is now owned in New York by Louis V. Ledoux: "My 'Prometheus' is the best thing I ever wrote."
[39] A letter to Thomas Love Peacock, dated "Naples, Jan. 26, 1819."