Appendix 2
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This work had, in part, been already despatched to England, when a publication by the learned Canonico Iorio, called «Plan de Pompei, et Remarques sur ses Edifices», appeared. There are many things which, from the constant practice of transporting them to Naples the moment they are found, leave no traces of their existence on the spot. The Canonico, being employed in the museum, and having every opportunity of obtaining exact information, lias given some details of which the author was previously ignorant. The following remarks are derived chiefly from that source. |
In the street of the tombs was found
EX AVCTORITATE
IMP. CAESARIS
VESPASIANI. AVG.
LOCA. PVBLICA. A. PRIVATIS
POSSESSA. T. SVEDIVS. CLEMENS
TRIBVNVS. CAVSIS. COGNITIS. ET
MENSVRIS. FACTIS. REI
PVBLICAE. POMPEIANORVM
RESTITVIT.
Close to the gate of Herculaneum is a sort of niche, which some have taken for a sentry-box : the reports of the excavations of 1763 say that, at the extremity, in a smaller niche six palms high, was originally a statue, or an urn. The inscription was
M. CERRINIVS RESTITVTVS
AUGVSTALIS.
LOCO. D.D.D.
There was also before it a stone altar with the same
inscription.
In the street between the Temple of Fortune and the Forum was
found, together with 215 little unguentaria, commonly
called lachrymatories, a lamp for twenty-four lights
in the shape of a ship, a coin of Otho, and a pair of steel
scissors, also a cogged wheel, which must have belonged to
some species of machine.
The Temple of Jupiter, discovered in 1817 and 1818, and which
has since passed by so many names, although, probably, by
none more correct than that which it first received,
contained many objects, some of which were found in the
vaults underneath, some in the pronaos and cell, and others
around it, as if prepared for reerection after the first
earthquake.
Many fingers of bronze were discovered, together with a oust
fastened to the wall, a group representing an old man in a
Phrygian cap taking a child by the band, half a foot high ; a
woman carrying lier infant, supposed, like the other, to be
an Ex Voto ; further a hand, a finger, and part of a foot, in
marble ; two feet with sandals ; an arm, and many other
colossal fragments. A torso, also of good work and of great
size, was found with a statue sketched on its back, and
intended to have been cut out of it. There were, besides,
other fragments of drapery and a statue, the figure of a
female and this inscription :
SP. TVRRANIVS. L. F. SP. N. L. PRON. FAB.
PROCVLVS. CELLIANVS
PRAIF. FABR. II. PRAIF. CVRATORVM. ALFEI
TII3ERIS. PRAIF. PRO. PR. I. DIN. VRBE. LAFINIO
PATER. PATRATVS. POPVLI. LAVRENTIS. FOEDERIS
EX. LIBRIS. SIBVLLINIS. PERCVTIENDL CVM. P. R
SACRORVM. PRINCIPIORVM. P. R QVIRIT. NOMINISQVE
LATINI. AVAL. APVD. LAVRENTIS. COLVNTVR. FLAM
DIALIS. FLAM. MARI. SALIVS PRAISVL. AVGVR. PONT
PRAIF. COHORT. GAITVL. TR. MIL. LEG. X.
LOC. D. D. D.
This inscription, which speaks of such ancient history and
events connected with the earliest times of Rome, and the
Sibyline oracles, is of some importance. Besides all there
curiosities, there was a colossal head of Jupiter, whence the
temple was named.
A column was found to have fallen upon an unhappy Pompeian,
and to have divided bis body in the middle. Near this were
another skeleton, a bronze helmet, a patera, a plate, a long
pin, and seventeen coins of silver. In the vaults were
Corinthian capitals, with many architectural fragments, some
not belonging to the temple, and a colossal hand with gilded
Bars of corn.
Whatever has a date is always interesting. In the Temple of
Venus, on a marble pedestal, was inscribed
INVENTVS. DENTAT. DAP.
FEUX. MELISSAEI. FAVST.
NYMPHODOTVS. HELVI.
SPERATVS. CAESIAEMVS
MIN. AVG. D. D. IVSSV
M. HOLCONI. CELLI. L. AELITVBER. D. D. D.
C. VERGILI. SALINATORIS. GN. LVCRETI.
DECENTIS. V. A. S P. P.
C. ASINIO. C. ANTISTIO. CONS.
In the portico of Eumachia, or the chalcidicum, a second statue was found, with a cornucopia. The robes were bordered with a pattern in gold : the figure was much mutilated. Upon a Hermes, without the head, was written
C. NORBANI AVG.
FELICIS
SORICIS SVBVRBANI
SECVNDARVM EX. D. D.
MAG. PAGI LOC. D.
Near the entrance was found, according to Iorio
M. LVCRETIVS. RVFVS
LEGAVIT
IVSSV
M. ALLEI. LVCCI. LIBELL
M. STLABORI. FRONTON
II. VIR. I. D. QVINQ
Q. POMPEI. MACVLAT
M. FULMINI. SILVA
D. V. V. A. S. PP.
C. CALVSIO. CAV
COS.
In the street called Dei Mercanti, and the house
called Del Cinghiale, is the pavement with the
representations of walls given in plate XLVIII.
The house of the Graces, in the same street, is called by De
Goro the Pharmacy, because five surgical instruments, four
cases with others of the same nature, pincers, and more
particularly one called by Iorio the «speculum
matricis», were found there. The last seems likely to
prove of utility in parturition, and Iorio says a foreigner
has published it incorrectly. He forgot to add, that probably
the stranger was prevented from drawing it, as they have yet
to learn at Naples, that the only use or glory in the
possession of these antiquities and curiosities would consist
in the promulgation of them to the world.
The portico, sometimes called the school, near the Temple of
Isis, and the reservoir of water at the theatre, also called
the saloon, and the tribunal, and by Bonucci the Curia
Isiaca, contained, according to the reports presented at
its excavation in 1797, the statue of a naked youth, which
had fallen from the pedestal, supposed to be the
pulpitum. On a marble near it was found an
inscription, making it probable that Marcus Lucretius
Decidius was the person represented. An inscription given by
Iorio probably belongs to this person.
M. LVCRETIVS. DECID
RVFVS II VIR. III. QVINQ
PONTIF. TRIB. MIL.
A. POPVLO PRAEF. FAB.
M. DECIDIVS. PILONIVS
RVFVS. REPOSVIT.
In consequence of this, Iorio says, that the supposed
pulpitum, notwithstanding its steps, was only a pedestal with
an altar before it.
The great Oscan inscription, which it appears was found here,
according to Iorio, bas been explained by the learned
Cavaliere Carelli, secretary of the Royal Academy at Naples,
who is not only highly endowed with knowledge himself, but is
ready to forward the studies of his acquaintance. He has
favoured the author, in conversation, with a general idea of
the sense of the inscription, which, however, he will give in
detail in his own work on the Temple of Isis.
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Velius, Adiranus, etc. gave this portico and dedicated it
to Isis. The inscription implies that it was to be used in
feasting, which at once settles the question as to the
destination of the colonnade. It is quite astonishing that
the modern Neapolitans still use the R, for the D, as in this
inscription RERER for DEDIT. Thus they say MARONNA for
MADONNA, etc ; but we must not forestal the work of the
Cavaliere Carelli.
Since the publication of the first series of
Pompeiana, the discoveries in hieroglyphics, begun by
Dr. Young in 1814, and so ably pursued by M. Champollion in
1822, have enabled us to pronounce that the hieroglyphical
tablet found in the Temple of Isis had nothing whatever to do
with that divinity, and was, probably, only placed there as a
mysterious and outlandish object, coming from the country of
the goddess. It is, in fast, an Egyptian calcareous stone,
and has been sawn off from a thicker block, as may be seen by
the remaining hieroglyphics on the side. On the top thirteen
deities are seen reverencing the god NOUM. The inscription
begins thus : «A public Commemoration of the Priest of
Horus, Lord of the Region of Heb, Priest of the Gods, and
Priest of the Benefactors of the upper and lover
Regions», etc etc ; and contains, though it is full of
an abstruse and unintelligible history of the gods and the
regions they governed, nothing whatever relating to Isis or
ber temple at Pompeii, and consequently nothing of interest
to the present work.
The Temple of Aesculapius seems now to be changing its name
for that of Priapus. Winkelman called two statues found there
by the mimes of Aesculapius and Hygeia. Bonucci (says Iorio)
calls these, which are seven and eight palms high, Jupiter
and Juno. A bust of Minerva was found there. In a tray were
found the sacred utensils : at one end of the tray was the
bust of an infant. This temple was excavated in 1766 and in
1798. In all this there seems to be no reason for dedicating
the temple to Priapus.
The reports on the theatre, and the great portico near it,
make the number of skeletons found there sixty-three, a
proportion so much exceeding that of other quarters of
Pompeii that it is thought to have been the station of
troops, who on no account were permitted to quit their
post.
It is extremely probable that there was a gate somewhere in
this direction, particularly as the traces of a number of
tombs were found near the little tavern on the great road
below Pompeii. It is by no means impossible, that either the
street which runs between the Basilica and the Temple of
Venus, or that which contains the altar of Jupiter, may have
terminated in a gate near the modern house of Vitellio. The
quantity of earth thrown out from the excavations renders it
diflicult to acquire the exact knowledge of this portion of
the fortifications.
Much has been said of the encroachments of the soil upon the
sea near Pompeii, and the author would have subjoined a map,
if he had not found that at present it would have been too
conjectural to have been satisfactory. If La Vega had dug
wells for the purpose of examining the soil, as he did at
Resina, more might have been known ; but, at present, it
cannot be well ascertained how near the sea approached the
walls of Pompeii.
There is, however, a church called the Madonna delle Grazie,
where the territory of Nuceria came down to the sea, for two
buildings were excavated which stood on the confines of the
Nucerians and Stabice, and they were probably near the toast.
One of these buildings was a little temple, and the other had
two altars, possibly of the two people concerned - one
Stabian, the other Nucerian. A broken inscription had
D. D.
M. CAESIVS. DAPHNVS
DVO. BIDENTAL. NVCERIAE. ET
VETVSTAM. AEDEM. GENI. STABIAR
LABANTIBUS. MARAIORIB. VEXATA
PROVIDE. RESTITVIT.
This is a fair proof that the Nucerian territory reached to this spot. A little below the church is the natural bank down to the ancient shore, the modern fine of toast being three times more distant. This fine of elevations runs inland in the direction of Scafati, and, after a short space, must have turned north toward Pompeii. There was, however, always a marsh, or Pompeia palus, at the mouth of the river Sarno, for Columella, De Agror. cultu, says, «Quae dulcis Pompeia palus vicina salinis». Here also the Salinienses, who invoked M. Cerrinius in the inscription, worked.
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Not far from the amphitheatre of Pompeii is a place called Valle Diruta, and here seems to have terminated the natural rising of the ground on the right bank of the Sarno. Without this supposition, Pliny the younger could scarcely have said, «Stabiis erat diremptus (a Vesuvio) sinu medio» ; and «Stabia a Pompeiis dirimerentur sinu medio nam sensim circumactis curvatisque litoribus mare infundebatur». In its present state no sea exists between the site of Stabia and Pompeii, scarcely indeed, as our general view, plate LXXXVIII, shows, between Castellamare and Pompeii. |
The quantity of matter thrown out by the volcano seems to
have been quite sufficient to have filled up a shallow bay at
so short a distance from the focus of eruption, as may he
proved by the ancient tombs behind the Studii at Naples,
which seem to have been buried by the same catastrophe, under
at least ten feet of liard and soit tufa and lapillae.
It is said that, in digging in the plain, the hard marine
sand soon appears ; and, in short, the probability seems that
the Sarno originally entered the sea not far from the Valle
Diruta and the road between the amphitheatre and Scafati,
where was the port of Pompeii and where the magazines of Nola
and Acerra, were situated ; the Sarno receiving and
transmitting their goods, as Strabo observes. Some have even
derived the name of Pompeii from PEMPW, mittere ; but
though the author has not the means of examining the passage,
he is persuaded that Demosthenes shows a pompeion to have
been a magazine of corn, and that Pollux, in Onomast. (IX, 5)
says, Peri twn kata qalattwn merwn thV polewV was a
pompeion, citing Demosthenes in Phormionem. The name,
being a plural, has been thought by some to have referred to
the city and citadel, and Mazois imagined the ancient temple
by the theatre was the acropolis. Nothing, however, has the
slightest resemblance to an acropolis, in that part or any
other as yet discovered.
Of the gates of the town it seems not impossible that some
may have been hastily named ; for, supposing the ancient gulf
to have extended nearly to the great road to Scafati, that
which is called the gate of Stabia could have opened only to
the marina and the salt-works ; the gate near the
amphitheatre would have been that of Nuceria ; that now
called the gate of Nola would have opened to Sarno and
Teglanum, supposed to have been at Palma ; and that called
the Vesuvian would have been more opposite the city of
Nola.
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It is probable that all these roads were flanked with the tombs of the patricians of Pompeii, and that, wherever the earth is sufficiently deep, they may yet remain in perfection. The interior of the gate of Nola, which, from the uncertainty before mentioned, would be better named the gate of Isis, not having been given in the first series of Pompeiana, and being one of the most striking features of the fortifications, is here represented in plate LXXXV. |
The preceding plate shows the method of mounting upon the wall and the interior of the rampant, when nearly perfect, and leaves, it is hoped, little to be desired on the subject of the circuit. The theory of Lippi, who maintained, in a work written with the purpose of proving that Pompeii had not suffered from the mountain fires, but only from inundation, seems to have been much disputed.
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Our plate LXXXVIII is given to explain, as well as can be done from such a distance, the real circumstances of the site of Pompeii. In it the whole eminence of the city will be seen, terminating at the amphitheatre on one side, and sinking on the west towards Vesuvius and La Torre. |
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A little right of the amphitheatre is seen a tower upon a
distant hill, not far from Nola. Palma is on the hill to the
right, and, under it, Scafati, to which a long fine of trees
points out the road from the amphitheatre, so that the
supposed depth of the ancient gulf may be traced. The idea
that a stream of water ever flowed from Vesuvius charged with
volcanic matter sufficient to bury Pompeii, must be
erroneous, as the ground rises again near Bosco Reale, at a
place called Civita, forming part of the eminence of Pompeii.
This eminence is formed by the termination of a bed of very
ancient lava upon which Pompeii was built ; and lava,
previously to its course being arrested by cooling, often
rises into knolls as in this case, which does not happen to
water ; but the knoll once formed of lava, a city planted on
its summit cannot suffer from water pursuing the same course.
A sight of the view which was taken by the camera
lucida, and therefore is not fiable to the defect of
exaggerating the heights, will be sufficient to show the
impossibility of so copious a deluge having taken place
without attracting the notice of historians, and particularly
of Pliny, who was present. That water, percolating through
the mass, forms, in time, a rock of tufa of more or less
consistency is well known, and this would account for all
that is observed at Pompeii. It was long supposed, from the
hard nature of the rock at Herculaneum, that the city was
buried by lava, and the obscurity of the subterraneous
passages had prevented the discovery of the truth. Now,
however, in the year 1828, one of the houses of that
unfortunate city has been laid open to the sun, and the whole
mass of liard rock is found to be nothing more than hard
tufa, which the natives on the spot, nevertheless, eall lava.
It is fair to state, however, that this mass has reduced all
the timber with which it was in contact to the state of
common char-coal and with all its properties. Every beam was
found perfect as to shape, and in its proper position, and
one bas been left for inspection, forming the architrave
between two pillars, supported by the tufa.
Naturalists will account for this in the manner best suited
to the latest discoveries in science, but, at first sight, it
is not easy to account for the carbonization of large timbers
by means of ashes falling in small powder, and afterwards
becoming consolidated by water, still less for such an effect
produced by water, either hot or cold. A certain degree of
heat, and the exclusion of air, with the pressure on the
spot, would, however, produce the effect, and, perhaps, we
are ignorant of the intense heat to which the ashes, or the
water, might have been exposed, in the bowels of the mountain
under a pressure of which we can form no idea.
It has been often wondered how water was supplied to the
numerous aqueducts which are found even in the highest parts
of Pompeii. The question does not appear to the author to be
one of great difficulty, for the calcareous mountains behind
Sarno and Palma furnish beautiful and copious sources
throughout their whole extent. The modern water-course, which
some say exhibits traces of the ancient opus
reticulatum, is certainly too low for any but the parts
of the city on the Marina, but the great rapidity of its
current shows that a much higher level might have been
preserved. There can be no doubt, however, that, setting
aside the three beautiful springs at the town of Sarno, a
third to the north of them exists, and there was an aqueduct
which conveyed the water, from the neighbourhood of Palma and
Sarno, over the plain, and, by the Ponte Rossi at Naples, to
Pausilippo, and that another branch ran to Cumae and Baise,
and all the volcanic parts of the country, and the Cav.
Carelli will probably give an account of it. Some of the
arches of the aqueduct may be seen not far from Palma, and
the place is called Arci from the ruined arches. This is at a
much higher level than Sarno, and hence a branch ran across
the plain toward Vesuvius and Pompeii, which will probably be
discovered, at a future period, entering the city near the
gate called that of Vesuvius, at the highest part of Pompeii.
The Canonico Iorio, whose work is just arrived at Rome, where
these concluding observations are penned, has preserved a
remarkable passage, written, in the year 1560, by Antonio
Lettici, who had passed four years in examining the subject
of the sources near Palma and Sarno, for the purpose of
forming the modern aqueduct. Speaking of the aqueducts at
Arci and Torricelle, he says a branch ran to the ancient town
of Pompeii on a height opposite the town of Torre della
Nunziata «et in detto locho ne appareno multi
vestigii». He even says that the ancient aqueducts
might be repaired.
Iorio informs us also that the Abbate Cataldo Ianelli (a
person certainly of great learning) is preparing to prove
that the following Oscan inscription records the bringing of
the water of the Sarno by one of the magistrates to
Pompeii.
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This has been formerly translated with another sense. It
will be seen that the first word seems to be formed out of ex
and hue, and that Sarinu, in the beginning of the third line,
may have reference to the Sarno, though an idea exists that
another place called Serino was in the vicinity.
The house of Julia Felice, which was situated not far from
the amphitheatre, and nearly between that building and the
gate opening toward Nuceria, was opened in the year 1755, and
soon after closed again. Bonucci has given a description of
it from the reports made at the time, and it seems to have
been of such consequence that it ought not to be omitted.
«The form was square, with a portico on three sides ;
that in front had pilasters of marble, the others were of
brick. The wall of the front portico had niches, in which
were hollow statues to contain water». In a chamber was
found a shrine, now in the Museum. In this were pictures of
Isis, Osiris, Hygeia, Anubis, painted, and several talismans,
with a Priapus and Harpocrates. In the centre stood a bronze
tripod upon three satyrs. Upon a wall of the house was this
advertisement. «On the estate of Julia Felix, daughter
of Spurius, is to be hired, between the 6th and 8th of
August, a bath, a venereum, and 900 shops with pergole
(porticos shaded with verdure), and upper apartments for five
following years. He who exercises in his house the profession
of Pander will not be permitted to become tenant».
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