The Wonders of Pompeii | Page 4

and the Oscan inscriptions
disappeared. From all this there sprang great blunders in an artistic
point of view, but a uniformity and consistency that please those who
are fond of monuments and cities of one continuous derivation. Taste
loses, but harmony gains thereby, and you pass in review a collective
totality of edifices that bear their age upon their fronts, and give a very
exact and vivid idea of what a municeps a Roman colony must have
been in the time of Vespasian.
They went to work, then, to rebuild the city, and the undertaking was
pushed on quite vigorously, thanks to the contributions of the
Pompeians, especially of the functionaries. The temples of Jupiter and

of Venus--we adopt the consecrated names--and those of Isis and of
Fortune, were already up; the theatres were rising again; the handsome
columns of the Forum were ranging themselves under their porticoes;
the residences were gay with brilliant paintings; work and pleasure had
both resumed their activity; life hurried to and fro through the streets,
and crowds thronged the amphitheatre, when, all at once, burst forth the
terrible eruption of 79. I will describe it further on; but here simply
recall the fact that it buried Pompeii under a deluge of stones and ashes.
This re-awakening of the volcano destroyed three cities, without
counting the villages, and depopulated the country in the twinkling of
an eye.
After the catastrophe, however, the inhabitants returned, and made the
first excavations in order to recover their valuables; and robbers,
too--we shall surprise them in the very act--crept into the subterranean
city. It is a fact that the Emperor Titus for a moment entertained the
idea of clearing and restoring it, and with that view sent two Senators to
the spot, intrusted with the mission of making the first study of the
ground; but it would appear that the magnitude of the work appalled
those dignitaries, and that the restoration in question never got beyond
the condition of a mere project. Rome soon had more serious cares to
occupy her than the fate of a petty city that ere long disappeared
beneath vineyards, orchards, and gardens, and under a thick growth of
woodland--remark this latter circumstance--until, at length, centuries
accumulated, and with them the forgetfulness that buries all things.
Pompeii was then, so to speak, lost, and the few learned men who knew
it by name could not point out its site. When, at the close of the
sixteenth century, the architect Fontana was constructing a subterranean
canal to convey the waters of the Sarno to Torre dell' Annunziata, the
conduit passed through Pompeii, from one end to the other, piercing the
walls, following the old streets, and coming upon sub structures and
inscriptions; but no one bethought him that they had discovered the
place of the buried city. However, the amphitheatre, which, roofed in
by a layer of the soil, formed a regular excavation, indicated an ancient
edifice, and the neighboring peasantry, with better information than the
learned, designated by the half-Latin name of Civita, which dim
tradition had handed down, the soil and debris that had accumulated

above Pompeii.
It was only in 1748, under the reign of Charles III, when the discovery
of Herculaneum had attracted the attention of the world to the
antiquities thus buried, that, some vine-dressers having struck upon
some old walls with their picks and spades, and in so doing unearthed
statues, a colonel of engineers named Don Rocco Alcubierra asked
permission of the king to make excavations in the vicinity. The king
consented and placed a dozen of galley-slaves at the colonel's
disposition. Thus it was that by a lucky chance a military engineer
discovered the city that we are about to visit. Still, eight years more had
to roll away before any one suspected that it was Pompeii which they
were thus exhuming. Learned folks thought they were dealing with
Stabiæ.
Shall I relate the history of these underground researches, "badly
conducted, frequently abandoned, and resumed in obedience to the
same capriciousness that had led to their suspension," as they were?
Such are the words of the opinion Barthelemy expressed when writing,
in 1755, to the Count de Caylus. Winkelmann, who was present at
these excavations a few years later, sharply criticised the tardiness of
the galley-slaves to whom the work had been confided. "At this rate,"
he wrote, "our descendants of the fourth generation will still have
digging to do among these ruins." The illustrious German hardly
suspected that he was making so accurate a prediction as it has turned
out to be. The descendants of the fourth generation are our
contemporaries, and the third part of Pompeii is not yet unearthed.
The Emperor Joseph II. visited the excavations on the 6th of April,
1796, and complained bitterly to King