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From The Edinburgh Review.
THE PAINTINGS OF POMPEII.*

that an impassable gulf separates that old world from the world of to-day, and that we live in a wholly different order of ideas.

Everything at Pompeii is beautiful, even the commonest kitchen utensil. The genius of Greece had pervaded every in

THE first visit to Pompeii is an event in life. Nothing in nature or art surprises and fascinates like this close glimpse of Greco-Roman life unfolded as if by enchantment in all its details. To the clas-dustry. sical scholar it is a vivid illustration; to those whose minds are a blank page on the subject it opens a new horizon, it imparts a new enthusiasm which has all the freshness of first love. In Théophile Gautier's pretty story, "Arria Marcella," the hero, Octavien, who visits Pompeii, falls into a trance, and dreams that the lovely form of which he has seen the impress on the hardened ashes in the Naples museum, has come to life again and loves him. When he clasps her in his arms, she turns into a handful of ashes; but the lovely vision clings to him all the rest of his days. He marries. His wife finds she is not his only love. She ransacks every secret drawer in vain. Could she be jealous of Arria Marcella, the daughter of Diomed, the freedman of Tiberius? So it is with us when we visit Pompeii. We cannot at first believe that we are in a dead city-dead since eighteen centuries so fresh does everything seem; the carriage-ruts on the stones, the inscriptions on the walls, the paintings in the houses.

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"Unter allen Völkerschaften haben die Griechen den Traum des Lebens am schönsten geträumt." Pompeii, though not a Greek colony, had been early under Greek influence. It was probably founded by the Ausonians, an old Italic race, sometimes called Oscans; but its oldest temple-which was in ruins long before the eruption was a Greek temple of about the same date as the great Poseidon temple at Pæstum, the sixth century B.C.; and it shows that at that time Pompeii was occupied by Greek settlers. The close proximity of the Ionian colonies Cyme (Cumæ), Dicæarchia (Pozzuoli), Parthenope, and the adjoining Neapolis - must have necessarily had an important effect. The Samnites, who subsequently invaded Campania, adopted the Greek civilization, and Pompeii was influenced by Hellenism earlier than Rome. In industry and luxury, says Nissen, it was probably much in advance of Rome, where the conservative tendency of State instiThe tutions retarded their progress. Oscan, the language of all the Samnite people, bore the traces of this culture. It

Frisch noch erglänzt die Wand von heiter is only known to us in a fragmentary way

brennenden Farben.

Wo ist der Künstler?

Pinsel hinweg!

But we soon wake out of the dream, to find

1. Pompeji in seinen Gebäuden, Alterthümern und Kunstwerken dargestellt. Von J. Overbeck. Vierte im Vereine mit A. Mau durchgearbeitete und

vermehrte Auflage. Leipzig: 1884.

through inscriptions on coins and stone. Er warf eben den The former were struck soon after the Samnite invasion, the latter are of a later were found in considerable date and numbers at Pompeii. At first mixed with Greek, Oscan developed into an independent language; and at the time when the Romans penetrated into Campania, about the middle of the fourth century B.C., it was superior in some respects to the Latin of the same period. Like Etruscan and early Greek, it was written from right to left; but, while Etruscan has not yet been deciphered, the Oscan language has presented no such difficulty. It was closely related to Latin, and easily understood by the Romans, with whom the Oscan plays called the Atellanæ became so popular that they transplanted them in a Latin form to Rome. The poet Ennius prided

2. Untersuchungen über die campanische Wandmalerei. Von W. Helbig. Leipzig: 1873. Vesuv verschütteten 3. Wandgemälde der vom Städte Campaniens. Von W. Helbig. Nebst einer Abhandlung über die antiken Wandmalereien in technischer Beziehung, von Otto Donner. Leipzig:

1869.

4. Die Landschaft in der Kunst der alten Völker.

Von K. Woermann. München: 1876.

5. Choix de Peintures de Pompéi. Par Raoul Rochette. Paris: 1844-51.

6. Die schönsten Ornamente und merkwürdigsten Gemälde aus Pompeji, Herculanum und Stabiae. Von W. Zahn. Berlin: 1829-52.

7. Pompeji: die neuesten A usgrabungen von 18741881. Von E. Presuhn. Leipzig: 1881.

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himself on having three souls because he | account of the eruption, in which his uncle, knew three languages - Greek, Latin, and the great Pliny, found his death. As in the Oscan - which, translated into modern Krakatoa eruption of 1883, the ashes were phraseology, means that to learn a new scattered far and wide. They "ascended language is to become a new man. Under so high in the air," writes Dion Cassius the Roman influence the Oscan decayed, about a hundred and twenty years after the and, when the Romans finally conquered event, "that they darkened the sun, and the Samnites in the Social War, it gave were transported by the wind into Africa, way to Latin, and, after having been abol- Syria, Egypt, and Rome. When they apished officially, gradually went out of use. peared in this city, before the news of the One or two inscriptions, of a date not long combustion in Campania had been reanterior to the destruction of Pompeii, ceived, the people could not imagine show that it was remembered by at least whence they came, nor judge it to be anya few. The Pompeians learnt Greek at thing else but an effect of a general an early age. There is every reason for destruction of the world." Titus's good believing that the letters of the Greek intention of rebuilding the Campanian alphabet found on the walls two or three towns probably met with too many difficulfeet from the ground, were written there ties, for it was not executed; but another by the children on their way to and from smaller Pompeii rose not far from the old school. one, and underwent the same fate in the fifth century. There are traces that the inhabitants of the old town returned to it, soon after the disaster, to try to exhume their portable valuables; but by degrees Pompeii was forgotten, though the site was more or less remembered, and its name was found in maps and historical records with that of Herculaneum and Stabiæ.

Excavations were not begun till the middle of the eighteenth century, after previous attempts had been made at Her

The few allusions to Pompeii in Latin literature prove that it became a favorite resort of the Romans. Its lovely situation and climate, its fertility, its Greek traditions, combined to make it a little earthly paradise. Seneca spent his youth there; the emperor Claudius and Cicero had villas there. Nor was it without commercial importance. Built on an elevation formed by an ancient stream of lava, it was situated at the mouth of the Sarnus then a navigable river which, according to Strabo, constituted its harbor. The neigh-culaneum. In 1748 laborers, in digging boring towns - Nuceria, Nola, Acerræ — made use of it for exporting their produce; and Pompeii itself exported wine, oil, pumice-stone (Pumex Pompeianus), the fish-sauce called garum, and a special kind of cabbage. Nothing was feared from Vesuvius. The volcano had not been in activity within the memory of man; it was believed to be wholly extinct, and its green and woody slopes only spoke of fertility. Sixteen years before the eruption, however, a warning, in the form of an earthquake, disturbed the peace of the inhabitants. Both Seneca and Tacitus relate that Pompeii, a celebrated town in Campania, was destroyed by an earthquake.' The destruction, however, was only partial, and the inhabitants had not quite completed the restoration when the final catastrophe overtook them. Two remark. able letters of Pliny the Younger give an

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in a vineyard, came across a bronze statue, and it was found that it would be far easier to excavate Pompeii than Herculaneum, as, owing to its more elevated situation, Pompeii had not been reached by the lava stream, and was buried under ashes and lapilli only. For a long time the excava tions were conducted in a desultory and careless manner, with very few workmen and without a distinct plan, and in this way much was irreparably lost or de stroyed. The houses, apart from the treasures they contained, were then thought to be of no interest; they were frequently covered up again after the objects had been extricated, and many have now been disinterred for the second time. The excavation of the amphitheatre, begun in 1748, was not completed till 1816. The street of the tombs, the great and small theatres, the temples of Isis and

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removed for their preservation to the museum at Portici, which was incorporated into the Naples museum early in this century. Descriptions can hardly

Esculapius, the forum triangulare, the gladiators' barracks, and several private houses, were all begun between the years 1763 and 1769, frequently interrupted, and only finished many years afterwards. give an idea of the charm of these picWinckelmann mentions that in 1762 there were only eight men at work in Pompeii. In 1764 the number rose to fifty, chiefly convicts and Tunisian slaves.

tures, of their rich harmonious coloring,
which many art-critics have compared to
Titian, of the serene, joyous conceptions
of human life, of the grace and dignity of
the figures. Stately gods and goddesses,
sporting cupids, bacchantes, fauns, cen-
taurs, dolphins, arabesques, are multiplied
in infinite variety. Most of the subjects
are taken from Greek mythology; but
some represent scenes from the daily life
of the Pompeians, and throw much light
on their habits and occupations. With
few exceptions the subjects are treated
with taste and delicacy. In a civilization
where to the gods themselves were
ascribed the passions of mortal men, it is
not to be wondered that art sometimes
ministered to the licentious ideas of the
day, but those pictures which have been
removed from public view are few com-
pared with those which must delight even
the severest moralist.
To Helbig spe-
cially belongs the merit of having traced
these pictures to their origin. He divides
them into two groups those that have
an idealistic, and those that have a realistic
tendency. The former include the myth-
ological subjects and a certain number
of scenes from real life, such as female
figures in meditation, at their toilet, paint-
ing, or playing on musical instruments,
and frequently in company with Eros. A
few of the mythological subjects are dra-
matic, but most of them bear an idyllic
character, representing scenes full of se-

In the history of the excavation there is a characteristic account of a visit which the emperor Joseph II. paid to Pompeii in 1769, accompanied by his sister, Queen Marie Caroline, and Ferdinand, king of Naples, to whom she had been married the year before. The emperor, on hearing how the excavations were carried on, expressed his astonishment and dissatisfaction. When he asked the director, La Vega, how many men there were at work, and was told thirty, he asked the king how he could allow such a work to be performed so languidly, and said that there ought to be three thousand people engaged on it; that there was no work like it in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America; and that it reflected special honor on the kingdom. In the beginning of this century the excavations were suspended, but Joseph Bonaparte, and after him Joachim Murat, recommenced them with fresh vigor. In 1813 there were no less than six hundred and seventy-four men employed, and for the first time a regular system was adopted. On the return of the Bourbons there was another period of slackness, and it was not till 1861 that the excavations became thoroughly well or ganized under the direction of Signor Fiorelli, who has carried them on ever since in the most able manner, and accord-renity and repose which the eye dwells ing to the best methods.

Of all the remarkable things found at Pompeii none are more important than the pictures, on account of the light they throw on ancient painting. While many masterpieces of Greek sculpture and architecture have come down to us, the Greek paintings, from the fragility of their nature, have perished, and it is chiefly in the Roman ruins that we find some tradition of them left. At Pompeii every house and every room was decorated with frescoes. The best of these were at first

on with pleasure.

The realistic tendency is represented by a certain number of scenes from daily life, such as the flogging of a schoolboy, a baker's shop, the fullers at their work. These are inferior, both in composition and execution, and are for the most part found in shops, taverns and other places where little heed was paid to the decoration. They all bear a local character, each subject occurs only once, and they have undoubtedly been designed as well as executed on the spot, design and execution

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