Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae (Complete)

VESUVIUS

So a living city was buried in a few hours. Wooded hills and green fields lay covered under great ash heaps. Ever since that terrible eruption Vesuvius has been restless. Sometimes she has been quiet for a hundred years or more and men have almost forgotten that she ever thundered and spouted and buried cities. But all at once she would move again. She would shoot steam and ashes into the sky. At night fire would leap out of her top. A few times she sent out dust and lava and destroyed houses and fields. A man who lived five hundred years after Pompeii was destroyed described Vesuvius as she was in his time. He said:

“This mountain is steep and thick with woods below. Above, it is very craggy and wild. At the top is a deep cave. It seems to reach the bottom of the mountain. If you peep in you can see fire. But this ordinarily keeps in and does not trouble the people. But sometimes the mountain bellows like an ox. Soon after it casts out huge masses of cinders. If these catch a man, he hath no way to save his life. If they fall upon houses, the roofs are crushed by the weight. If the wind blow stiff, the ashes rise out of sight and are carried to far countries. But this bellowing comes only every hundred years or thereabout. And the air around the mountain is pure. None is more healthy. Physicians send thither sick men to get well.”

The ashes that had covered Pompeii changed to rich soil. Green vines and shrubs and trees sprang up and covered it, and flowers made it gay. Therefore people said to themselves:

“After all, she is a good old mountain. There will never be another eruption while we are alive.”

So villages grew up around her feet. Farmers came and built little houses and planted crops and were happy working the fertile soil. They did not dream that they were living above a buried city, that the roots of their vines sucked water from an old Roman house, that buried statues lay gazing up toward them as they worked.

About three hundred years ago came another terrible eruption. Again there were earthquakes. Again the mountain bellowed. Again black clouds turned day into night. Lightning flashed from cloud to cloud. Tempests of hot rain fell. The sea rushed back and forth on the shore. The whole top of the mountain was blown out or sank into the melting pot. Seven rivers of red-hot lava poured down the slopes. They flowed for five miles and fell into the sea. On the way they set fire to forests and covered five little villages. Thousands of people were killed.

Since that time Vesuvius has been very active. Almost every year there have been eruptions with thunder and earthquakes and showers and lava. A few of these have done much damage. [Footnote: In this year, 1922, Vesuvius has been very active for the first time since 1906. It has been causing considerable alarm in Naples. A new cone, 230 feet high, has developed.—Ed.] And even on her calmest days a cloud has always hung above the mountain top. Sometimes it has been thin and white—a cloud of steam. Sometimes it has been black and curling—a cloud of dust.

Vesuvius is a dangerous thing, but very beautiful. It stands tall and pointed and graceful against a lovely sky. Its little cloud waves from it like a plume. At night the mountain is swallowed by the dark. But the red rivers down its slopes glare in the sky. It is beautiful and terrible like a tiger. Thousands of people have loved it. They have climbed it and looked down its crater. It is like looking into the heart of the earth. One of these travelers wrote of his visit in 1793. He said:

“For many days Vesuvius has been in action. I have watched it from Naples. It is wonderfully beautiful and always changing. On one day huge clouds poured out of the top. They hung in the sky far above, white as snow. Suddenly a cloud of smoke rushed out of another mouth. It was as black as ink. The black column rose tall and curling beside the snowy clouds. That was a picture in black and white. But at another time I saw one in bright colors.

“On a certain night there were towers and curls and waves and spires of flames leaping from the top of the mountain. Millions of red-hot stones were shot into the sky. They sailed upward for hundreds of feet, then curved and fell like skyrockets. I looked through my telescope and saw liquid lava boiling and bubbling over the crater’s edge. I could see it splash upon the rocks and glide slowly down the sides of the cone. The whole top of the mountain was red with melted rock. And above it waved the changing flames of red, orange, yellow, blue.

“On another night, as I was getting into bed, I felt an earthquake. I looked out of my window toward Vesuvius. All the top was glowing with red-hot matter. A terrible roaring came from the mountain. In an instant fire shot high into the air. The red column curved and showered the whole cone. In half a minute came another earthquake shock. My doors and windows rattled. Things were shaken from my table to the floor. Then came the thunder of an explosion from the mountain and another shower of fire. After a few seconds there were noises like the trampling of horses’ hoofs. It was, of course, the noise of the shot-out stones falling upon the rocks of the mountainsides eight miles away.

“I decided to ascend the volcano and see the crater from which all these interesting things came. A few friends went with me. For most of the way we traveled on horses. After two or three hours we reached the bottom of the cone of rocks and ashes. From there we had to go on foot. We went over to the river of red-hot lava. We planned to walk up along its edge. But the hot rock was smoking, and the wind blew the smoke into our faces. A thick mist of fine ashes from the crater almost suffocated us. Sulphur fumes blew toward us and choked us. I said,

“‘We must cross the stream of lava. On the other side the wind will not trouble us.’

“‘Cross that melted rock?’ my friends cried out. ‘We should sink into it and be burned alive.’

“But as we stood talking great stones were thrown out of the volcano. They rolled down the mountainside close to us. If they had struck us it would have been death. There was only one way to save ourselves. I covered my face with my hat and rushed across the stream of lava. The melted rock was so thick and heavy that I did not sink in. I only burned my boots and scorched my hands. My friends followed me. On that side we were safe. We climbed for half an hour. Then we came to the head of our red river. It did not flow over the edge of the crater. Many feet down from the top it had torn a hole through the cone. I shall never forget the sight as long as I live. There was a vast arch in the black rock. From this arch rushed a clear torrent of lava. It flowed smoothly like honey. It glowed with all the splendor of the sun. It looked thin like golden water.

“‘I could stir it with a stick,’ said one of my friends.

“‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘See how slowly it flows. It must be very thick and heavy.’

“To test it we threw pebbles into it. They did not sink, but floated on like corks. We rolled in heavier stones of seventy or eighty pounds. They only made shallow dents in the stream and floated down with the current. A great rock of three hundred pounds lay near. I raised it upon end and let it fall into the lava. Very slowly it sank and disappeared.

“As the stream flowed on it spread out wider over the mountain. Farther down the slope it grew darker and harder. It started from the arch like melted gold. Then it changed to orange, to bright red, to dark red, to brown, as it cooled. At the lower end it was black and hard and broken like cinders.

“We climbed a little higher above the arch. There was a kind of chimney in the rock. Smoke and stream were coming out of it. I went close. The fumes of sulphur choked me. I reached out and picked some lumps of pure sulphur from the edge of the rock. For one moment the smoke ceased. I held my breath and looked down the hole. I saw the glare of red-hot lava flowing beneath. The mountain was a pot, full of boiling rock.”

Another man writes of a visit in 1868, a quieter year.

“At first we climbed gentle slopes through vineyards and fields and villages. Sometimes we came suddenly upon a black line in a green meadow. A few years before it had flowed down red-hot. Further up we reached large stretches of rock. Here wild vines and lupines were growing in patches where the lava had decayed into soil. Then came bare slopes with dark hollow and sharp ridges. We walked on old stiff lava-streams. Sometimes we had to plod through piles of coarse, porous cinders. Sometimes we climbed over tangled, lumpy beds of twisted, shiny rock. Sometimes we looked into dark arched tunnels. Red streams had once flowed out of them. A few times we passed near fresh cracks in the mountain. Here steam puffed out.

“At last we reached a broad, hot piece of ground. Here were smoking holes. The night before I had looked at them with a telescope from the foot of the mountain. I had seen red rivers flowing from them. Now they were empty. Last night’s lava lay on the slope, cooled and black. I was standing on it. My feet grew hot. I had to keep moving. The air I breathed was warm and smelled like that of an iron foundry. I pushed my pole into a crack in the rock. The wood caught fire. I was standing on a thin crust. What was below? I broke out a piece of the hard lava. A red spot glared up at me. Under the crust red-hot lava was still flowing. I knew that it would be several years before it would be perfectly cool.”

So for three centuries people have watched Vesuvius at work. But she is much older than that—thousands of years older—older than any city or country or people in the world. In all that time she has poured out millions of tons of matter—lava, huge glassy boulders, little pebbles of pumice stone, long shining hairs, fine dust or ashes. All these things are different forms of melted rock. Sometimes the steam blows the liquid into fine dust; sometimes it breaks it into little pieces and fills them with bubbles. At another time the steam is not so strong and only pushes the stuff out gently over the crater’s edge. Many different minerals are found in these rocks—iron, copper, lead, mica, zinc, sulphur. Some pieces are beautiful in color—blue, green, red, yellow. Precious stones have sometimes been found—garnets, topaz, quartz, tourmaline, lapis lazuli. But most of the stone is dull black or brown or gray.

All this heavy matter drops close to the mountain. And on calm days the ashes, also, fall near at home. Indeed, the volcano has built up its own mountain. But a heavy wind often carries the fine dust for hundreds of miles. Once it was blown as far as Constantinople and it darkened the sun and frightened people there. Some of the ashes fall into the sea. For years the currents carry them about from shore to shore. At last they settle to the bottom and make clay or sand or mud. The material lies there for thousands of years and is hard packed into a soft fine grained rock, called tufa. The city of Naples to-day is built of such stone that once lay under the sea. An earthquake long ago lifted the ocean bottom and turned it into dry land. Now men live upon it and cut streets in it and grow crops on it.

So for many miles about, Vesuvius has been making earth. Her ashes lie hundreds of feet deep. Men dig wells and still find only material that has been thrown out of the volcano. When this matter grows old and lies under the sun and rain it turns to good soil. The acids of water and air and plants eat into it. Rain wears it away. Plant roots crack the rocks open. The top layer becomes powdered and rotted and mixed with vegetable loam and is fertile soil. So the country all around the volcano is a rich garden. Tomatoes, melons, grapes, olives, figs, cover the land.

But Vesuvius alone has not made all this ground. She is in a nest of volcanoes. They have all been at work like her, spouting ashes and pumice and rocks and lava. Ten miles away is a wide stretch of country where there are more than a dozen old craters. Twenty miles out in the blue bay a volcano stands up out of the water. A hundred miles south is a group of small volcanic islands. They have hot springs. One has a volcano that spouts every five or six minutes. At night it is like a lighthouse for sailors. One of these Islands is only two thousand years old. The men of Pompeii saw it pushed up out of the sea during an earthquake. A little farther south is Mt. Aetna in Sicily. It is a greater mountain than Vesuvius and has done more work than she has done. So all the southern part of Italy seems to be the home of volcanoes and earthquakes.

There are many other such places scattered over the world—Iceland, Mexico, South America, Japan, the Sandwich Islands. Here the same terrible play is going on—thunder, clouds, falling ashes, scalding rain, flowing lava. The earth is being turned inside out, and men are learning what she is made of.

Bronze lampholder: Five lamps hung from the branches of this bronze tree. It was twenty inches high.

POMPEII TO-DAY

Years came and went and changed the world. The old gods died, and the new religion of Christ grew strong. The old temples fell into ruins, and new churches were built in their places. Instead of the old Roman in his white toga came merchants in crimson velvet and knights in steel armor and gentlemen in ruffles and modern men in plain clothes.

Among all these changes, Pompeii was almost forgotten. But after a long while people began to be much interested in ancient Italy. They read old Roman books, and learned of her wonderful cities. They began to dig here and there and find beautiful statues and vases and jewels. They read the story of Pompeii in an old Roman book—a whole city suddenly buried just as her people had left her!

“There we should find treasures!” they said. “We should see houses, temples, shops, streets, as they were seventeen hundred years ago. We should find them full of statues and rich things. Perhaps we should find some of the people who lived in ancient days. But where to dig?”

Their question was answered by accident. At that time certain men were making a tunnel to carry spring water from the hills across the country to a little town near Naples. The tunnel happened to pass over buried Pompeii. They dug up some blocks of stone with Latin inscriptions carved on them. After that other people found little ancient relics near the same place.

“This must be where Pompeii lies buried,” the wise men said.

They began to excavate. That was about two hundred years ago. Ever since that time the work has gone on. Sometimes people have been discouraged and have given up. At other times six hundred men have been working busily. Kings have given money. Emperors and princes and queens have visited the excavations. Artists have made pictures of the ruins, and scholars have written books about them. But it is a great task to uncover a whole city that is buried ten or twelve feet deep. The excavation is not yet finished. Perhaps when you are old men and women the work will be completed, and a whole Roman city will be open to your eyes.

But even as it is to-day, that ghost of a city is among the world’s wonders. There is the thick stone wall that goes all about the town. On its wide top the soldiers used to stand to fight in ancient days. Now the stones are fallen; its towers are broken; its gates are open. Yet there the battered little giant stands at its task of protecting the town. Out of its eight gates stretch the paved streets.

Perhaps some day you will cross the ocean to visit this “dead city.” It lies on a slope at the foot of Vesuvius. Behind stands the tall, graceful volcano with its floating feather of steam and smoke. In front lies a little plain, and beyond it a long ridge of steep mountains. Off at the side shines the dark blue sea with island peaks rising out of it. On hillsides and plain are green vineyards and dark forests dotted with white farmhouses.

In some places there are high mounds of dirt outside the city wall. They are made by the ashes that have been dug out by the excavators and piled here. If you climb one of them you will be able to look over the city. You will find it a little place—less than a mile long and half a mile wide inside its ragged wall. And yet many thousand people used to live here. So the houses had to be crowded together. You will see no grassy lawns nor vacant lots nor playgrounds nor parks with pleasant trees. Many narrow streets cross one another and cut the city into solid blocks of buildings. You will be confused because you will see thousands of broken walls standing up, but no roofs. They are gone—crushed by the piling ashes long ago.

At last you will come down and go in at one of the gates through the rough, thick wall, past the empty watch towers. You will tread the very paving stones that men’s feet trampled nineteen hundred years ago as they fled from the volcano. You will climb a steep, narrow street. This is the street the fishermen and sailors used in olden times when they came in from the river or sea, carrying baskets of fish or leading mules loaded with goods from their ships. This is the street where people poured out to the sea on that terrible day of the eruption.

You will pass a ruined temple of Apollo with standing columns and lonely altar and steps that lead to a room that is gone. A little farther on you will come out into a large open paved space. It is the forum. This used to be the busiest place in all Pompeii. At certain hours of the day it was filled with little tables and with merchants calling out and with gentlemen and slaves buying good’s. But now it is empty and very still. Around the sides a few beautiful columns are yet standing with carved marble at the top connecting them. But others lie broken, and most of them are gone entirely. This is all that is left of the porches where men used to walk and talk of business and war and politics and gossip.

At one end of the forum is a high stone platform and wide stone steps leading up to a row of broken columns in front of a fallen wall. This is the ruin of the temple of Jupiter, the great Roman god. Daily, men used to come here to pray before a statue in a dim room. Here, in the ruins, the excavators found the head of that statue—a beautiful marble thing with long curling hair and beard, and calm face. They found, too, a great broken body of marble. And in that large body a smaller statue was partly carved. This was a puzzling thing, but the excavators studied it out at last. They said:

“Old Roman books tell us that sixteen years before the great eruption there had been another earthquake. It had shaken down many buildings and had cracked many walls. But the people loved their city, and when the earthquake was over, they began to rebuild and to make their houses and temples better than ever. We have found many signs of that earthquake. We have found uncarved blocks of marble in the forum. Evidently masons were at work there when the eruption stopped them. We have found rebuilt walls in some of the houses. And here is the temple of Jupiter being used as a marble shop. Probably the early earthquake had shaken down and broken the statue of the god. A sculptor was set to work to carve a new one from the ruin. But suddenly the volcano burst forth, the artist dropped his chisel and mallet, and here we have found his unfinished work—a statue within a statue.”

Behind the roofless porches of the forum are other ruined buildings—where the officers of the city did business, where the citizens met to vote, where tailors spread out their cloth and sold robes and cloaks. One large market building is particularly interesting. You will enter a courtyard with walls all around it and signs of lost porches. Broken partitions show where little stalls used to open upon the court. Other stalls opened upon the street. In some of these the excavators found, buried in the ashes and charred by the fire, figs, chestnuts, plums, grapes, glass dishes of fruit, loaves of bread, and little cakes. Were customers buying the night’s dessert when Vesuvius frightened them away? In a cool corner of the building is a fish market with sloping marble counter. Near it in the middle of the courtyard are the bases of columns arranged in a circle around a deep basin in the floor. In the bottom of this basin the excavators found a thick layer of fish scales. Evidently the masters used to buy their fish from the market in the corner. Then the slaves carried them here to the shaded pool of water and cleaned them and scaled them and washed them. In another corner the excavators found skeletons of sheep. Here was a pen for live animals which a man might buy for his banquet or for a sacrifice to his gods. His slave would lead the sheep away through the crowds. But on that terrible day when the volcano belched, the poor bleating animals were deserted. Their pen held them and the ashes covered them and to-day we can see their skeletons.

The walls around the market are still standing, though the top is broken and the roof is fallen. They are still covered with paintings. If you will look at them you can guess what used to be for sale here. There are game birds and fish and wine jars all pictured here in beautiful colors. There are cupids playing about a flour mill and cupids weaving garlands. There are also pictures of the gods and heroes and the deeds they did. Imagine this painted market full of chattering people, the little shops gay with piles of beautiful fruit and vegetables, the graceful columns and dark porches adding beauty. Imagine these people crying out and running and these columns swaying and falling when Vesuvius bellowed and shook the earth. And yet we can see the very fruits that men were buying and the pictures they were enjoying.

The forum with its markets and shops and offices and temples and statues was the very heart of the city. Many streets led into it. Perhaps you will walk down one of them, between broken walls, past open doorways. After several street corners you will come to a large building with high walls still standing and with tall, arched entrance. This also was one of the gay places in Pompeii, for it was a bathhouse. Every day all the ladies and gentlemen of the town came strolling toward it down the streets. The men went in at the wide doorway. The women turned and entered their own apartments around the corner. And as they walked toward the entrance they passed little shops built into the walls of the bathhouse. At every stall stood the shopkeeper, bowing, smiling, begging, calling. “Perfumes, sweet lady!”

“Rings, rings, beautiful madam, for your beautiful fingers!”

“Oil for your body, sir, after the bath!”

“A taste of sweets, madam, before you enter! Honey cakes of my own making!”

“Don’t forget to buy my dressing for your hair before you go in! You’ll get nothing like it in there.”

So they chattered and called and coaxed. Some of the people bought, and some went laughing by and entered the bathhouse. As the gentlemen went in, a large court opened before them. Here were men bowling or jumping or running or punching the bag or playing ball or taking some other kind of exercise before the bath. Others were resting in the shade of the porches. A poet sat in a cool corner reading his verses to a few listeners. Some men, after their games, were scraping their sweating bodies with the strigil. Others were splashing in the marble swimming tank. Here and there barbers were working over handsome gentlemen—smoothing their faces, perfuming their hair, polishing their nails. There was talk and laughter everywhere. Men were lazily coming and going through a door that led into the baths. There were large rooms with high ceilings and painted walls. In one we can still see the round marble basin. The walls are painted with trees and birds and swimming fish and statues. It was like bathing in a beautiful garden to bathe here. Another room was for the hot bath, with double walls and hot air circulating between to make the whole room warm. The bathhouse was a great building full of comforts. No wonder that all the idle Pompeians came here to bathe, to play, to visit, to tell and hear the news. It was a gay and noisy place. We have a letter that one of those old Romans wrote to a friend. He says:

“I am living near a bath. Sounds are heard on all sides. The men of strong muscle exercise and swing the heavy lead weights. I hear their groans as they strain, and the whistling of their breath. I hear the massagist slapping a lazy fellow who is being rubbed with ointment. A ball player begins to play and counts his throws. Perhaps there is a sudden quarrel, or a thief is caught, or some one is singing in the bath. And the bathers plunge into the swimming tank with loud splashes. Above all the din you hear the calls of the hair puller and the sellers of cakes and sweetmeats and sausages.”

After you leave the baths perhaps you will turn down Stabian Street. It has narrow sidewalks. The broken walls of houses fence it in closely on both sides and cast black shadows across it. It is paved with clean blocks of lava. You will see wheel ruts worn deep in the hard stone. Almost two thousand years old they are, made by the carts of the farmers, perhaps, who brought in vegetables for the market. At the street crossings you will see three or four big stone blocks standing up above the pavement. They are stepping-stones for rainy weather. Evidently floods used to pour down these sloping streets. You can imagine little Roman boys skipping across from block to block and trying to keep their sandals dry.

The street will lead you to the district of good houses where the wealthy men lived. Through open doorways you will get glimpses into the old ruined courtyards. It is hard guessing how the rooms used to look. But when you come to the door of the house of Vettius you will cry out with wonder. There is a lovely garden in the corner of the house. A long passage leads to it straight from the street. Around it runs a paved porch with pretty columns. Here you will walk in the shade and look out at the gay little garden, blooming in the sunshine. In every corner tiny streams of water spurt from little statues of bronze and marble and trickle into cool basins. Marble tables stand among the flowers. You will half expect a slave to bring out old drinking cups and wine bowls and set them here for his master’s pleasure, or tablets and stylus for him to write his letters. Everything is in order and beautiful. It was not quite so when the excavators uncovered this house. The statues were thrown down. The flowers were scorched and dead under the piled-up ashes. But it was easy for the modern excavators to tell from the ground where the flower beds had been and where the gravel paths. Even the lead water pipe that carried the stream to the fountain needed little repairing. So the excavators set up the statues, cleaned the marble tables and benches, planted shrubs and flowers, repaired the porch roof, and we have a garden such as the old Romans loved and such as many houses in Pompeii had.

Several rooms look out upon this garden. One of them is perhaps the most interesting place in all Pompeii. You will walk into it and look around and laugh with delight. The whole wall is painted with pictures, big and little—pictures of columns and roofs, of plants and animals, of men and gods. They are all framed in with wide spaces of beautiful red. And tucked away between them in narrow bands of black are the gayest little scenes in the world. They are worth going all the way across the ocean to see. Psyches—delicate little winged girls like fairies—are picking slender flowers and putting them into tall, graceful baskets. They are so light and so tiny that they seem to be flitting along the wall like bright butterflies. In other panels plump little cupids—winged boys—are playing at being men. They are picking grapes and working a wine press and selling wine. It is big work for tiny creatures, and they must kick up their dimpled legs and puff out their chubby cheeks to do it. They are melting gold and carrying gold dishes and selling jewelry and swinging a blacksmith’s hammer with their fat little arms. They are carrying roses to market on a ragged goat and weaving rose garlands and selling them to an elegant little lady. Everywhere these gay little creatures are skipping about at their play among the beautiful red spaces and large pictures. This was surely a charming dining room in the old days. The guests must have been merry every time their eyes lighted upon the bright wall. And if they looked out at the open side, there smiled the garden with its flowers and statues and splashing fountains and columns.