J^aCtS about ompei: ^mm, anti $ortratt0. a complete List of all the Masons' Marks cut in the Stones. BY H. P. Fitzgerald Marriott. ILLUSTRATED. HA2ELL, WATSON, & VINEY, Ld., i, CREED LANE, LUDGATE HILL, S.C. To BE HAD ALSO OF F. FuRCHHEIM, ENGLISH BOOKSELLER, NAPLES. 56 Masons' Marks.— Marriott (H. P. F.) Facts about Pompei, its Masons' Marks, Town Walls, Houses and Portraits, with a complete List of all the Masons' Marks cut in the Stones, n.d. Ilkis., 4to, wrapper. Facts about Pompei: ITS MASONS' MARKS, TOWN WALLS, HOUSES, AND PORTRAITS. ILLUSTRATED. Being a small Contrihttion of Notes to the LiterattLre on the Stibjecty and a Sttpplement to Rnglish Authorities, WITH A COMPLETE LIST OF ALL THE MASONS' MARKS CUT IN THE STONES. BY H. P. FitzGerald Marriott. Xont)on : HAZELL, WATSON, & VINEY, Ld., i, CREED LANE, LUDGATE HILL, E.C. To BE HAD ALSO OF F. FuRCHHEIM, ENGLISH BoOKSELLER, NaPLES. HAZELL, WATSON, AND VINEY, PRINTERS, LONDON AND AYLESBURY, ENGLAND. We have preferred the form " Pompei," as it is used universally in France and Italy and by distinguished writers in Germany {e.g. Richter ; " Antike Steinmetzzeichen ") ; the Oscan of it might have been Pumpaia, there being on the stone near the gate of Stabia the adjectival form Piimpaiiana ; the Greek v^as TlofMirela, and an adjectival form nofiwaia; and the Latin — Pompeii, though we believe that the word " Pompei" has been found in the place itself; "Pompei" when found in the classics (Cicero, Sat. ii. 3) is, however, a genitive, the accusative and dative being respectively Pompeios and Pompeiis. 9.— THE FORUM AND VESUVIUS. Sotnmei; Naples. Co7ne and see The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and temples , ye I Whose agonies are evils of a day — A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay!* Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/factsaboutpompeiOOmarr INDEX. PAGE PAGE Amphitheatre 29 Mosaics ... 19, 20 Apollo, Temple of IS Oscan Marks ... 10, II Basilica 14, 15 Portraits 16, 17 Baths 14,21 Prehistoric fascinum worship lit Cemetery ... 31 XXlVCi OuillUO ... ... 26 Egyptians ... 16 bamnites 10 Frescoes ... 18, 19 vj^ates ... ••. ••• i *t JD) J^> j/ Skeletons 32 Glass 20 Styles of decoration ... 18, 19, and Appendix. Herculaneum 9 Temples 15 Houses, roofs of . . . 21, 22 Towers on walls 27, 29, 34 „ five-storied 24, 25, 26 Tufa 15, and Appendix. „ general description of 18, 20, 21 Vesuvius 14, 30 Isis, Temple of ... 15, 16 Walls 27 Masonic marks on walls ... .. IT, 12, 13 Wells 26 and Appendix. Index to Appendices. Casa del Centenario ••• 53 Five-storied Houses ... 48-51 „ di Epidio Rufo (dei Diaduaneni) ... 52 Four Styles of Mural Decoration 38 „ di Epidio Sabino ... ... 52 Hats 51 „ di Giuseppe II, ... 51 Inscriptions in Tower III 35, 89 „ delle Nozze d'Argento ... 56 Masons' Marks, list of 62, etc. „ della Regina Margherita ... ••• 55 Palaestra, the ... 50 „ di Sirico ... 58 Picture of Daedalus and Icarus 55 Caupona ... ••• 53 „ Narcissus and Hylas 56 Cliff Houses ...48-si „ Triptolemus scattering the Egyptian, figure of, in painting in Casa corn to Earth 53 del Orfeo ••• 39 Wharf 37, 48, 50 List of Illustrations. PAGE The Forum and Vesuvius ... ... ... ... ... 3 Mercury of Herculaneum ... . , ... ... ... 9 Portrait of young woman ... ... ... ... ... 14 Portrait of Paquius Proculus and his wife ... ... ... 16 Portrait of a mother and child ... ... ... ... ... 18 Ground plan of house of the gens Cassius ... ... ... 21 Picture of country house ... ... ... ... ... 22 Picture of part of a house ... ... ... ... ... 24 The five-storied houses ... ... ... ... ... ... 26 House of Giuseppe II. ... ... ... ... ... ... 26 Cast of dog ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 26 Towers on the wall ... ... ... ... ... ... 28 Sketch of an arch ... ... ... ... ... ... 33 Section of tower on the wall ... ... ... ... ... 34 Portrait of a brother and sister 54 PREFACE. — N offering this monograph to the public I must thank all those who have so kindly enabled me to produce these results of my five years' labour. Though the text is short, yet it has taken me several months' residence at a time, and many visits to Pompei, to accumulate the contents of a few pages. I have not assumed to write a book on Pompei ; that has been already ably done by both German, English, French, and Italian writers. I have attempted in this sketch to give but a brief description of the impressions left on the mind by seeing the ruins of the ancient town, and to describe certain features that have till now escaped special notice. I specially give my warm thanks to Herr Reinicke, of Hannover, who has rendered me considerable assistance with regard to the towers and marks on stones in the town, and who most kindly copied for me the round picture from the house of the Centenario ; and also to Mr. Frederick Vango Burridge, who kindly copied for me the picture from Regione IX., Insula 7, and to Professor Mau for much that he has most kindly told me with regard to the mural decoration, I have equally to thank certain kind friends who advised me to produce my notes in the form of a monograph, since I should not otherwise have ventured to rush into independent print, and I trust, therefore, that my effort to give an idea of Pompei, and an account of what has interested me, will meet with indulgence from critics who are outside the number of those who count themselves as my friends. H. F G. M. By kind pei iiiission of Signor Biogi, Photographer, Naples &' Florence, THE RUINS OF POMPEI. ■Illllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll !• HE ruined remains of Pompei, as the Italians name f the ancient nofiyrs/a, or Pompert', in southern Italy, ' are left to us much as they were when the city's inhabitants deserted them nearly two thousand • years ago ; and from their walls and the arrange- ment of their houses, with their ornamentations and pictures and household utensils, we can form an estimate of what was the life of the people in an age when the Greek and Italian races were but just united, and in which there was already a fair sprinking of the still more ancient Egyptian race. The ruins of Herculaneum, and those of the large villas on the Palatine Hill at Rome, are scarce either sufficiently extensive or various to enable us to judge of the Romans and Greeks in their private lives, far less of the daily life of an average town, although indeed at Herculaneum there is left just enough to show that a slight difference exists in the character of the designs on the walls, it being more Greek, and that across the portion of the street uncovered there were no stepping stones as in Pompei,* and though, moreover, from its ruins have come the finest bronze statues of antiquity,t from which and the great number of valuable objects found within merely the small space that has been already excavated we are enabled to infer that it was probably a more wealthy town than the latter, which it certainly surpassed in age. Herculaneum is now deep underground, with its magnificent * The stepping stones were necessary for the constant flow of water in the streets ; this flow of water was probably one of the causes of the depth of the ruts worn by cart wheels, and in many cases the apparent cartwheel lies in a transverse direction to that in which a wheel would have moved, the probability being that softer parts of the stone were often worn away by the stream of running water. t We reprint a photograph of the Herculaneum Mercury as an example ; it has been thought unnecessary to give illustrations of any of the Pompeian statues, since they have been reproduced so frequently elsewhere. 12 FACTS ABOUT POMPEL were certainly made by Pelasgic, Oscan, or Roman workmen, and are probably of different periods ; those on the worn rough Sarnus stone, or travertine, being the oldest. They were probably made by the under- workmen in order that the overseers might with more facility correct the work. Each kind of stonecutter and mason had his separate labour to used in the same way in our days ; and amongst carpenters in France, so a French architect has informed us, a regular alphabet is in use. But the old masonic marks, we believe, are no longer to be seen on either stone, iron, or wood. However, these signs, represented by the marks in Pompei, may be nearly as old as the human race, or at any rate as old as the commencement of building ; some of them are undoubtedly excessively old, i.e., those that are still used by freemasons. The abatement of the use of these signs as marks in European architecture is fairly easy to note. The Chinese, who with many Asiatic races are for the most part freemasons of some variety or other, say that Noah was a freemason. However that may be. Freemasonry is probably older coupled with some of the signs that are usually supposed to be merely masonic, and that are upon the stones in these ruins. With regard to fascinu'm worship, a still more curious link between pre-historic man and his descendants may be noticed in a necklace formed of bone, glass-paste, bronze, glass, agate, amber and crystal, that according to Dyer's " Pompeii," page 447, was found near a female skeleton in the atrium of the House of Holconius in January 1 861. In the words of Breton, " Pompeia et Herculanum, 1869," page 461, "Aupres d'elle etait une petite cassette de bois, /yjc/'s, contenant tous les objets a son usage, son mundiis mnliebris. Le plus curieux de tous est un collier de pate de verre tout compose d'amulettes." The " Giornale degli Scavi di Pompei " mentions it in No. I of 1 861, at page 17, and in No. 2 gives a large illustration, even clearer than that of Dyer. This contains a little figure of Isis, one of Silenus or Osiris, a jackal the attribute of Anubis, "a hand making an obscene gesture against the evil eye " the manus impudica, various other objects, to under- stand which we would refer the reader to Dyer's work itself; but a curious crystal orna- ment to which Dyer does not even refer but which is given in his illustration unites the two ends of the necklace and from it depends a cicada, or sort of tree locust very common in hot countries. Dyer adds, " It will be observed" that these" are all attributes of Isis and her attendant Anubis, or of her husband Osiris, here considered as Bacchus," but he does not say whether the ornament above mentioned refers to Osiris. Considering the other signs on the necklace, we cannot help thinking that it probably does do so ; those who remember the legend of the death of Osiris, and the collecting of his remains by Isis, will probably agree with us. If this is the case it is still more interesting to note the form of the Httle bone ornaments that were found on the palaeoHthic skeletons discovered in the caves near Mentone in 1872, 1884, 1892, and 1894; on the heads of these were circlets of shells, or deer's-teeth, whose ends were united by a little bone ornament varying in length from two to three inches. This bone ornament hung over the forehead of the dead, but in life we may presume that these circlets were used as necklaces on ordinary occasions ; in either case the ornament in question occupied a conspicuous place on the forehead or neck. The piece of bone is exactly the same in form though not in finish, as the piece of crystal discovered on the Pompeian necklace. To those who are acquainted with the origin and meaning of the simple plain piece of coral as worn by modern Neapolitans against the lettatura, or evil eye of another, this will not appear to be an overdrawn or exaggerated comparison of facts. THE RUINS OF POMP EL than the Temple of Solomon. Take it for granted that Noah was a freemason, his predecessors must have been so also, and, whether the Chinese are descended from Noah or otherwise, this would account for the wide extent of Freemasonry. It is not unnatural, therefore, that masonic signs should be found all over the world mingled with others of less importance, or of local value only to the master-masons and the labourers employed by them, as signs that the stones or houses were cut or built by them and their particular guild, " house," or family. Free- masonry in its present form probably grew on some of these societies and easily adopted some of these signs. For the most part wealthy personages, or at any rate people of known character, have ever formed the body of freemasons ; amongst such the poor unknown fishermen the first apostles of Christianity certainly had no part, and it is well known that, in the reigns of the Emperors, early Christianity was held in contempt by the upper classes. The Masonic signs were unknown amongst them, and it can therefore be easily understood that with the increase of Christianity they were gradually neglected. A revival seems to have taken place, however, in Germany, when they were used in public buildings of the middle ages. Thus, owing to the poor origin of Christianity, the constant use of such signs in the stones of houses, public buildings, and other constructions has quite died out in Europe. With this brief introduction we will now sketch the ruins of Pompei as they impress themselves upon us at the present moment. The town as a whole has a very melancholy appearance. Below us, as we stand on the edge of the unexcavated land, is a mossy, yellowish green court ; dark grey ruined walls, spreading in all directions, rise from six to twenty feet and stretch out far in front ; the rooms of the houses are cramped together, and many of them built partly within the lines of one house, partly within those of another after the manner of a puzzle. Red and yellow frescoes, or columns with rusty crimson bases and fluted yellowish shafts appear here and there ; twisting streets wind this way or that ; solitary pillars, higher than others, overtop the deso- late, close-packed ruins ; while mossy courts and atria of ruined mansions, remains of temples and public buildings show their topmost walls and arches above the irregular grey stone walls of the narrow streets and small-roomed houses, backed in the distance by long bluish mountains running down into the sea, that lies only a couple of miles off, and bordered by the unexcavated land extending within the area of the walls, brown and overgrown with rank grass. This monotony is only broken by three or four tumuli of earth raised from the excavations, while here and there appear an occasional clump of pale, green aloes D FACTS ABOUT POM PEL and a few shrubs; and yonder two or three tall dark stone pines stand gloomily against the blue Italian sky overlooking this desolate and drear waste that reaches to the neighbouring stunted copses and scattered pines skirting the lava and ash clad base of Vesuvius, " Dusky and huge enlarging on the sight Nature's volcanic amphitheatre," which rises not far off, strangely grand and beautiful as ever. Still the mountain pours out a great cloud of smoke, that stretches in a long white and grey line some twenty miles or more away ; and still the people build beneath its lovely gloom their villages and hamlets in all directions. The inhabitants of Pompei must have been very much like those of many a little Neapolitan town nowadays ; they made much the same sort of bread, and probably lived on vermicelli and macaroni, since instruments for making the long, thin threads have been found. Their type of face, too, has been retained, as we shall show later on. But their outdoor recreations and official lives are no longer in existence ; churches there are, but few so majestic, at least in this part of Italy, as the beautiful temples of the ancients ; sea-bathing there is, but no athletic exercises or elaborate bathing establishments such as old Pompeians had. These balnece are arranged with the most beautiful architectural grace and simplicity; their frescoed and often elaborately embossed ceilings, their decorations, the caryatides and atlantes employed in dividing the niches that held the clothing of the bathers, their different hot baths and tepidaria, their cold plunge baths, round, well built, clean, and refreshing in appearance ; all these, if restored and fitted up now, would be considered, though small, most delightful. The old Roman bath was nothing more nor less than what we moderns call a Turkish bath and consider a luxury. This is not the place in which to describe the ruined splendours of the temples and the forum and the many other public buildings. There is only sufficient space to enable us to mention a few traits in the city that have not received sufficient notice from the pens of others, and that the reader may verify for himself when he goes to Pompei. Yet we must refer to the Basilica, that fine public buildijsjg on the right after passing up the street from the marine gate. It was a large edifice, once roofed in all over so as to form magnificent aisles below, which supported a gallery above, the stone framework for the windows of which can be seen lying about at the sides against the walls. English authorities say just the reverse, namely, that it was hypa^thral or left open in the centre, while the German school maintains what we have stated above. The roof, according to Sir William Gell, was 4— Portrait of a young woman, with her stylus and tablets; irom the wall of a house in Herculaneum. Now in the Naples Museum. Soiituier, Photographer, Naples, THE RUINS OF POM PEL 15 supported only by the great columns of the peristylium, while the roofs over the galleries were lower and rested against their gigantic shafts ; yet we see no reason why these side roofs should not have been flat or even sloping away from the centre one, and thus forming the roof called by Vitruvius " Testudinatumr It is now a ruin, with only portions of imper- fect columns remaining, and their magnificent tufa capitals strewn about. Strike one of the curving volutes of those Ionic capitals with a stick, it will give out a clear sound, as metal, like a small sharp-toned gong ; this is a peculiar property of tufa in its hardest state.* This curious material, which is formed of volcanic ashes cemented together by the weight of ages, is to be seen in all its stages of formation in and near Pompei. The paths leading to Vesuvius are covered with it in its first stage — ash, or fine sand ; in the banks it is forming into a soft, crumbling rock beneath the mould above it — this is the second stage ; in the loosely built up walls at the side of the paths we see it in the third stage, already stone, but still somewhat friable ; and so on in different degrees of hardness we find it, till, owing to its firmness, yet not over-hardness, and owing to its good grey neutral tint, it has been used for the delicate carving of Corinthian capitals, as well as for the Ionic order, with its large curving volutes. t Near the Basilica rises the Temple of Apollo, with its columns, its sun-dial, and its omphalos ; a temple probably shared with the Pompeian Venus, who apparently had some celebrity. In another street further away is the beautiful Temple of Fortune, to which the many brought offerings, in the earnest hope of receiving more in return ; and yonder, in another part of the city, lies the once fashionable temple of the cult of Isis, a delicate-looking little building, which even to this day looks like an intruder in the city, relying on its wealth, brilliancy, and popularity to maintain its successful existence against all attempts of suppression. Who cannot but call to mind the sturdy little temple of the early Greeks, nearer the city walls (those who have seen the Paestum temples can in their minds rebuild it anew), a temple of a purer and a * When, however, it is formed with water such as is the lava-tuff (see note to Appendix Masons' Marks) of Herculaneum, it gives out no more sound than an ordinary stone (unless, of course, cut in very thin slabs), being in a very much more compact and far harder state than the tufa above mentioned. The word tuff is the name of a formation, but the word tufa has come to signify specially a tuff whose composition is volcanic ash ; for this reason the word " lava-tuff" as applied to certain stones in Pompei that resemble the hard tufa of Herculaneum is not quite correct, but we have retained it as being a convenient expression. t It must be remembered that these tufa columns and capitals were covered with a stucco of finely powdered marble, which when dry took a good polish. Brick and terracotta work seem also to have been covered and thus refined in the same manner, so that the common gargoyle must have been transformed into a beautiful roof ornament apparently of shining marble. i6 FACTS ABOUT POM PEL stronger age ; and, thinking of the additions built by blind pagans throughout this city — temples in other and lighter forms, and to other gods less bold, less noble — compare at last the over-luxurious age of lightness in which the curious and almost obsolete worship of Isis was revived and became the great attraction ? Thus it is that, in wandering after truth, pagans now and in all ages, with human ignorance and folly, have allowed themselves to be deceived. Thus they have altered, and still alter, truth according to the customs and civiliza- tion of the time, and the necessities of their own lives, and the events of that period of the world's history in which they have lived. This worship of Isis * in Pompei indicates the natural proclivity of a cultured age, in its luxurious decline, to assume, for fashion's sake, the customs, philosophies, and ornamentations of a former epoch. But beyond this instance of the Roman empire, already creeping past its zenith, patronizing the rites of an ancient Egyptian deity, there seems also to be indicated the existence of Egyptians themselves, or at least of their descendants in Pompei, instilling their ancient creed into the minds of the frivolous world of that day, who took up this worship as the latest and most artistic fashion ; and that this is probable is seen by the way in which many of the houses are decorated with ornamentation in the fresco work essentially Egyptian — birds like the ibis, and peculiar shapes in the borders not characteristic of any other country.! The general character of the decoration naturally cannot be otherwise than Greek, for from the Greeks the Romans and earlier" inhabitants must have derived their first knowledge of it ; it is Greek, with an Egyptian tone influencing portions of it. There is, too, perhaps, another reason why we might suspect the existence of those of Egyptian race in Pompei. In all the houses, more especially in some particular room in each, there are small round frescoes from six to twelve inches in diameter, like medallions, painted on the walls, and portraying the faces of people who were probably the inmates of the house. They are different to the stereotyped style of fresco representing a Homeric or mythological scene ; and the faces, as a rule one only in each circle, are those of ordinary and every-day individuals, various in expression and character, and of every age and state, and evidently nothing more nor less than family portraits. A few of these are exactly like some of the coarse brown peasants to be seen about the vineyards at the base of Vesuvius. * In the Naples Museum, Third Hall, compartments XXI., XXII., Numbers 8919, etc., are frescoes representing the rites of Isis and Osiris ; and other paintings relating to the Egyptian Cult in Italy, in which can be seen the sacred cat and the jackal-headed Anubis. t Professor Mau calls this the third style of decoration in Pompei. THE RUINS OF POMPEI. 17 And as even now one still occasionally observes in this part of Italy very Moorish types of face, owing to the Moorish raids in Europe, so in these frescoes one notices very Egyptian features that, with the physio- gnomy of the Moors, not forgetting other nations, have probably gone far to form those of this southern people, since the characteristics belonging to the oldest races eventually prevail in the formation of a mixed nation. And the Egyptian, being the oldest of these, has left its impress, not only in parts of Italy to the present time, but here, in their frescoes, can be recognised without much difficulty. These family portraits are very interesting, as may be supposed. There are two houses in Pompei where they are unusually large, that, unfortunately, are not on the line of those shown to visitors by the guides. A fashion existed among the Pompeians of sometimes having themselves taken in the character of some divinity ; thus, among a number of other portraits of mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, a mother and her child, military men, and so on, there are, perhaps, one or two taken as Athena, or as Plermes * ; just as people nowadays, after private theatricals or a fancy-dress ball, have sometimes had themselves photographed in the characters that they have for the time assumed. These are to be seen, in house No. 18, Insula I. of Regione V.; here they are 16 inches in diameter. Some fine square portraits, one foot high, and containing two people, are to be seen in Regione VI I Insula IV., house No. 4.t We went especially to see the former lately, after * People of late have fallen too much into the habit of giving everything a classical name. In the catalogue of the Naples Museum by Monaco and Rolfe is to be seen "The days of the Week ; " these two sets of seven small round frescoes, very like those which are portraits and repre- senting different gods and goddesses, are in the Sixth Hall, compartment LXVIII., Nos. 9519 and 952 1; These seem unlikely to be the days of the week, since neither the Greeks nor Romans divided it into a period of seven days ; however, the Sabines even till the end of the Republic used a seven day week, while the Romans had introduced the eight letters in the third century b.c. See " Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities," Vol. II., on the word Nundina; and the note in Rolfe's catalogue, above quoted, for mention of a Greek ten-day division of the month. See also in the Naples Museum the fresco portraits in the fourth, fifth, and sixth halls, Compartments LXVIII., Nos. 9518,9520; XXXVIII., 9080, 9081, 9082, 9084, 9086,9087; 9058,9073,9074,9076,9091, 9092; LII., 9281; XXVIII., 8985, 8989% 8989^ 8988. These four may also possibly be portraits represented in the characters of Venus and Cupid. t Dyer's description of these eight pictures follows on the tracks of Fiorelli and others. It is really too good to be omitted. " In each compartment are eight small pictures " (he means to say that in each of eight compartments there is a small picture) " representing the heads and busts of Bacchic personages, in a very good state of preservation. On the left is Bacchus crowned with ivy, his head covered with the mitra, a sort of veil of fine texture which descends upon his left shoulder. This ornament, as well as the cast of his features, reveals the half feminine nature of the deity. Opposite to him is the picture of Ariadne, also crowned with ivy, clothed in a green chiton and a violet himation. She presses to her bosom the infant lacchus, crowned with the eternal ivy, and bearing in his hand the thyrsus. Then follow Bacchic or i8 FACTS ABOUT POMPEI. an interval of two years, and found that they had been nearly washed out by the rain. For though the paintings in Pompei are generally called fresco work, yet all but the ground or foundation, and often that too, is merely a species of thick paint cleverly laid on, many kinds of which easily peel off from the effects of exposure to the weather. Pompeian houses are not built so thoroughly on the same plan as is popularly imagined that they afford no variety. On the contraiy, there is as much as there is between one house and another in London. It is true that in the same row are often to be found some that are exactly alike, as houses on the same side of a square in London are also very often identical in size and plan ; but the greatest differences are noticeable when a set of houses in one quarter of the city are compared with those in another. There are distinct gradations in the style of the mural fresco work, and distinct periods can be assigned to each style.* This is true to a certain extent ; and yet it is worth considering that people then as now had their houses painted very much as they could afford to pay the necessary expenses. For although a very elaborate painting of heavy receding architecture, vines, grapes, cupids, birds, and figures spread over the whole wall may indicate the meridian and decline of their art, Panic figures, some conversing, some drinking together, some moving apparently in the mazes of the dance. Paris, with the Phrygian cap and crook, seems to preside over this voluptuous scene, and to listen to a little Cupid seated on his shoulder." All this is so thoroughly and innocently English, even outdoing the simple classic names that Fiorelli gave to these little pictures, which consist merely of the head and shoulders of people that according to Dyer " are moving in the mazes of the dance," that its style is really worthy of being adapted to some modern subject as a parody ! The characters represented are all that they say (except those that they cannot name), but this over-classicalness of diction has led them to ignore that when the gods, heroes and others are reproduced in the pictures of Pompei they are always represented in conjunction with the performance of some act in their history or in the lives of those in whom mythology relates that they were associated. The faces figuring in the eight little pictures in question represent no definite act or event, though they possess several symbolic adjuncts such as the ivy and the thyrsus. Nothing more likely then can be their history than that they were portraits of a family who wished to see their likenesses reproduced as bacchic characters. One of these we have copied, the "Ariadne pressing to her bosom the infant lacchus ; " the weather has unfortunately washed away the ivy, but that does not alter the value of the portrait. Another portrait here published is that from Reg. ix., Ins. 5, No. 1 1, where there are several others of the same type as those in the house of Holconius just described. There are also portraits to be seen in the house of Paquius Proculus; the large one of himself and his wife, now in the Naples Museum, we have reprinted. An excellent portrait of a child (not even painted with pointed ears as a faun) is to be seen in the house of Siricus, in the little room to the right of the first garden. See also the portraits in VI., 7, 21 ; the two fine female portraits, unfortunately rather damaged, in VIII., 6, 39; and some large round portraits, one of which is very fine, in V., i, 26. No one has thought it worth while to copy or photograph these ; the authorities and professional photographers think more of what is more easily appreciated by the general public, and of what appears large and conspicuous. * See Supplement at ihe end of this monograph : " The Four Styles of Mural Decoration." 12.— Copy of a fresco portrait of a mother and her child. The child's leg is painted hanging over the frame. In house No. 4, Isola IV, Regione VIII : Pompei. THE RUINS OF POM PEL 19 yet at the same time it must be acknowledged that this would probably be the most expensive way of having a house decorated ; also that simple methods, as long as their period lasted, continued long after they had first been introduced ; and that the simplest form of decoration is therefore no sure sign of the age of the dwelling. Their plain walls, though probably dating from an earlier period, were as probably continued, long after the refinement of the art, amongst those who could not afford greater expense. There are walls painted in mezzo-relievo stucco blocks, alternately red, yellow, or green, which generally have dentil moulding near the ceiling ; this is the earliest style, and is never used later except for repairing one of its own walls. The heavy architectural studies of the last period, often exhibiting much faultiness in the perspective, and too elaborately executed, are certainly a decadence from their finer and more delicately painted mural work of the III. period. Yet some of the black walls of the IV. period adorned with beautiful foliage, delicate lines and curves and pendant purple grapes are unique, and would be worthy of the most beautiful modern dining-room ; and how beautiful fair faces appear thrown out by a glossy black background is well known to the possessors of tall straight-backed, old black chairs in an old oak dining-hall. But there are white walls also covered in the same way with delicate outline architecture, turning vine-stems, grapes hanging in tempting bunches, beautiful birds and flying children. Again the great and beautiful frescoes in some of the more luxurious houses must have been show pictures, such as that of the wounded Adonis ; but they have been so often discussed that we will not say more than that many of them shame our modern attempts at fresco work both in colouring and in expression. Of some of the smaller pictures, curiously enough, there are replicas in two or three different houses ; these, how- ever, are rare, and are nearly all Homeric or mythological subjects. Other small pictures, however, portray amusing social scenes, and there are some paintings that contain very curious caricatures of the military and judicial element of that period. Apart from beautiful vases, rare gold and silver ornaments, pottery and costly stuffs, the marbles and mosaics were another source of orna- mentation. Pure white or grey marble or granite tables with finely-carved legs whose bases were shaped like tigers' paws and whose tops curved over into strange grinning tigers' or griffins' heads, on which the slab rested, stood in the centre of their atrium, near the imphiviitm, in courts whose polished floors were wonderful patterns of the rarest coloured marbles, in which dark speckled green, shaded pink, yellow and black, violet and every other variety of colour mingled in exquisite confusion. 20 FACTS ABOUT POM PEL In the poorer houses and in the more ordinary rooms these floors were of common white marble, or of white and black mosaic or of plain concrete. Many in the richer mansions, especially in those rooms that were larger and more important and used for receiving guests, were still further beautified by wonderful mosaic pictures laid in them that are world-famed in their power of expression, minuteness of design, and exquisite colouring. Many of these represent fishes, marine animals, game-birds, or bacchic subjects. The best have been removed to the Naples Museum, such as that of the Battle of Issus in which Alexander defeats Darius ; they are older than the pictures in fresco, and even more won- derful if not so beautiful. Nearly all the rooms and courtyards whose floors were not of marble had them formed of plain white mosaic cubes, often with some pattern in black ornamenting the border, more or less elaborately designed and in various degrees of fineness according to the size of the cube used. The centre of the room was often laid with a small square or circular pattern formed of small pieces of beautiful and irregularly placed coloured marbles. On the threshold of the street door was frequently some simple picture in black and white mosaic — a bear, a dog, a couple of wrestlers, a dolphin, an anchor, or merely a salutation, such as Salve, Have, or Salve hicru. In some of the houses were found columns encrusted from capital to base with the richest mosaics.* Once these houses were hung with curtains and had strong doors like ours and comfortable furniture. Fountains sprang within their courts, and beds of flowers decked their gardens. The small windows, generally round, and either inside the house between rooms and courtyards, or if in the outer wall high up out of danger of the street, had glass, a fact that appears to have been generally from want of careful observation denied by modern writers, though, of course, only the coarsest specimens have survived to our day. Some large glass window-panes are to be seen in the collection in the Naples Museum, as also some fine slabs of talc ; the local museum at Pompei possesses three panes of glass, one of which is at least i| feet by feet. On entering a house t by its principal means of ingress, the first * A very beautiful mosaic fountain is to be seen from the path running round the excava- tions near the farmhouse of Aquila and behind the unnumbered houses to the east of the Vico di Tesmo. The colour is pale blue, exquisitely designed with figures, panthers, goats, ibis, etc., in pale yellows and browns. t It would be an excellent thing to rebuild one of the most perfect houses in Pompei according to the pictures on the walls, and to roof it in its own original style, to furnish it as it used to be furnished, and to restore to it all the mosaics, lamps, and ornaments that were found in it. The directors could then charge a couple of francs extra entrance to see it, which \yould be willingly given, and they could thus collect twice as much money to enable them to con- tinue the excavations in other parts of the city. 1 I i \ Ground plan of Domus gentis Cassii, the so-called House of the Faun. Regione VI., Isola 12. The only palace occupying a whole insula by itself without outhouses. Dating from Republican era, second century b.c. a. Ostium, with two door-sills, leading into an | columns. It was in the oecus of this house Atrium Tuscanicum, with a large impluvium that the fine mosaic pavement of the Battle of in the centre. , Issus was found. 0. Tablinum. i //. Tepidarium and Laconicum. ft. Ostium leading into an Atrium Tetrastylum, with t. Kitchen (?) and heating apparatus. four columns round the impluvium. 6. Xystus, with small rooms at the end ; and a door 7. Peristyliuni, with piscina in the centre. into the street, near which is a staircase e. Oecus ; according to Vitruvius this would be that ascending to an upper floor or terrace. called Corinthian, i.e., with only one row of 1 \ THE RUINS OF POM PEL 21 little passage we pass through is the ostium with one or more doors ; it opens straight into the atrium, a place that now in ruins looks more like a garden, but which two thousand years ago was surrounded with curtain-hung rooms, very many of which possessed doors, the holes for whose supports, and the iron swivels of which, together with the lines cut in the stone or marble threshold, can still be seen. It possesses a shallow place in the centre called the impluvium, to catch the water that dropped from the compluviuin, the space between the surrounding roofs that was open to the sky ; for the house was built round, not over, these courts. Beyond the atrium, pass- ing through another short passage like the vestibule, one comes to the peristylium or inner courtyard of the house, built in the same form as the atrium, but usually much bigger ; in the centre was the piscina, or pond for fish, round which were beautiful painted columns that supported the roof of the peristylitim, which sloped inwards as far as their entabla- ture, leaving open a space through which the rain would fall into the piscina ; some of the larger peristylia, however, have cloisters running round them enclosing a spacious garden, in the centre of which was the piscina with its columns, the piscina itself perhaps roofed in, in which case it was probably a fountain. Round the Tetrastyle and Corinthian atria* also were columns which supported the roof in the same manner as far as their entablature. These columns were more or less elaborate, smooth or fluted, according to the wealth of the house, and even now in their ruined condition give a most graceful appearance to their surroundings. Some of the wealthier houses had baths ; one large house in Insula 6, of Regione IX., that has been named the Casa del Centenario, has a cold- water bath of considerable size, and near it, up a little staircase, a well made laconicum (or hot room without hot- water bath), and ante-room. The following houses also have bath-rooms: — VII, 15, 2, with caldarium (or hot-water bath); VII, Isola Occidentale, 12; Laberinto, VI, 11, 10; Torello, V, i, 7, with caldarium', Citarista, I, 4, 5, with caldarium \ Nozze d Argento, V, 2, — ; Diomede ; Fauno, VI. 12, — ; Domus M., Caesar Blandi, VII,_i, 40 ; Vestali, VI, ij 7 ; the Cliff Houses, VIII, 2, numbers 39, 37, 23, 20, 16. Some of tlie houses had gardens, such as that of the House of Pansa, Diomede, or the atrium of the Casa di Arianna, in which flower beds were clearly marked out. There are, unfortunately, no houses that have their topmost ceilings or roofs preserved, though there are several ceilings in existence. It can, however, be seen what the roofs were like by studying the frescoes. Now, * The roof, in what Vitruvius calls the Atrium Ttiscaniaun, was supported not by columns, but by four cross beams, the open space in the centre of which formed the Compluvmm. 22 FACTS ABOUT POM PEL there is a kind of small fresco seen in nearly every house, in some room or another, representing a country-dwelling often close to a river, and built in a manner that suggests a Chinese house ; these are not unlikely to have been sketches of their summer retreats and farms, probably on the banks of the river Sarnus, at whose mouth Pompei once stood ; they have the same sort of cui-ved roof that the Chinese pagoda has, the like- 1 ness to which is still further carried out by the elaborate gargoils pro- jecting at each corner. They are painted roughly, and many of them are nearly obliterated by the rain, but they show a ground and a first floor, and attic rooms above that again ; thus at once disproving the assertion that the one above the ground floor was itself merely an attic, and only fit for the slaves. These two upper floors were probably built in great part of wood and rubble, and therefore have not survived to our day. There are many, however, who assert that these pictures are merely productions of the imagination fancifully rendered to ornament the walls ; that the curved roofs look impossible, that the houses are unevenly balanced on their foundations, etc. But it is not to be supposed that these are carefully executed copies of houses ; they are rough sketches, and as such must be taken en Jitasse, and judged from a general point of view. Thus we can hardly imagine even fanciful house- painters of that day drawing buildings with several stories if they were not accustomed to seeing such constructions around them ; or painting houses built on piles and columns, and with far-stretching roofs if these ivere not naturally in their mind's eye from their earliest recollections. It is possible that the slight curve of the roof seen in many of these pictures is only an effect of the hastily worked brush and of the extraordinary shadows therein employed. And the authors of l^ttes des Ruines de Pompei even say, " Si ces peintures, qui sont toutes de Xxhs petits tableaux, introduits comme accessoires, 9a et la, dans la decoration principale des parois d'un mur, offrent peu d'interet sous le rapport de I'exdcution, elles en presentent un trcs-grand sous celui des ddifices qu'on y a reproduits, et dont la forme et les diffdrents motifs ont un grand caracteve de verite.''* The additional plates relative to these pictures of houses at the end of this volume give on Plates XIV. and XVI. large houses with two and a half stories engraved from the paintings on the walls. And in the Naples Museum should be seen the pictures of houses in the Sixth Hall, compartments LXI.-LXVIL, No. 9409, a three-storied house on supports by a river ; No. 9408, a large house near a river; and 9,511, a house with two and a half stories. * "Vues des Ruines de Pompei," page 132. " D'apres I'ouvrage public a Londres en 1819. par Sir William Gell et J. P. Gandy, sous le litre de ' Pompeiana.' Paris, 1827." 13-— Picture of a country house, perhaps a farm, to which cattle are being driven. There are at least two stories; possibly three are intended, the lowest one of which would probably be used for stables or cowsheds. The roofs project to a considerable distance; the gargoils at the corners, together with an almost indistinguishable curve in the roof itself, give the house a very Chinese appear- ance. A house is seen to the right in the distance. In the locked-up room Casa del Centcnario, Isola^VI, Regione IX. \ T/V Draivn by Hcrr Rcinickc ; Koitigl. Rcg.-Baufuhver, architckt. I THE RUINS OF POM PEL 23 One picture of a house, a larger painting than usual, representing the inside view from the courtyard, perhaps the atrimn, shows a group of people looking over a wooden balcony running round the upper floor, and above that again there is the attic ; below them is the great door of the house. The houses behind the Curia Isiaca in Regione VIII., Ins. 4, show two stories distinctly by their height and the marks for the beams. In that of L. Popidi Secundi Augustiani in the third room from the little side entrance (No. 28) broad lines can be easily seen for two floors, and two distinct sets of frescoes very high up above the one on the ground floor, and holes for the beams that supported these two floors, running in lines tier above tier, thus showing three stories. In the Casa dei Diadumeni, IX, i, 20, can be seen a staircase that mounts to a perfect floor above, from which this stone staircase still continues, as if to another floor that no longer remains, and from which to the attics probably a staircase of wood existed.* The rooms opening on the atrium of this house afford a good example of the height to which they were often built ; from the ground to the top of the impost measures 4 metres, and to the crown of the vault itself is 60 or 80 centimetres more, making the total height about 15 or 16 feet. It is inconceivable how certain modern writers should have stated that the houses in Pompei never had other than very low rooms, and rarely possessed more than one floor. Those that are at present in their place are sup- ported by arched ceilings, but the holes that are to be seen in rows about the height of a low ceiling were evidently for the beams that supported the next floor, which in the richer mansions no doubt verified Virgil's words in yEneid I., 726, where he refers to the lamps * " A number of the best rooms — especially, there is reason to believe, the bedrooms and the women's apartments — were on the upper floors. The presence of stairs in apparently all the houses proves that one-storied buildings were practically unknown in Pompei. The few fragments of the upper storey which have been found standing show that in some cases at least the upper part of the house was partly constructed of wood, and was arranged so as to project beyond the line of the lower story, very like the half-timbered houses of England or France in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries." "The upper stories and separate rooms of the insula were called cenacula. This word properly signifies rooms to dine in, but after it became the fashion to dine in the upper part of the house, all the rooms above the ground floor were called cenacula^ " There were different flights of stairs connecting the upper stories with the lower part of the house, as we find to be the case in houses at Pompei. As the different stories could not all be lighted from openings in the roof, as in the domus " (or palace), " they had windows looking out into the street." "We find mention of a house three stories high in b.c. 218," but "we have no express mention of any houses more than four stories high." In Rome, " Augustus Hmited the height of houses to 70 feet, which implies that they had been built still higher." " The upper stories were of wood, and frequently fell down, while their material made them more liable to fires, which were very frequent in Rome." "In Trajan's reign the limit for street houses was fixed at 60 feet." — Smith's " Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities," Vol i., " Domus." 24 FACTS ABOUT POMPEI. hanging from the gilded rafters.* But the five-storied dwellings are perhaps the most curious as demonstrating the above facts. These, though the remains of five, or even six floors, are usually called the three-storied houses. They are built against the south side"*" of the little table-land of lava and tufa on which the town stands, and thus are enabled to have two to three stories below the level of its plain, Vv^hich on that and on the west side is high above the surrounding country. Naturally, the existing top floor, which is on a level with the ground apartments of the rest of the town, had two more floors to bring its roof to the same level as that of the others ; this can be seen by the staircases still ascending from the highest remaining floor, where are situated the atrium and peristyliwn, they being on the same level as the atria and peristylia of other houses. But the lower floors were built irregularly, not always one beneath the other, and some of them, though on a lower level, are built out in front of the upper. In some instances the rooms are to one side, and only half below the level of those apparently above them ; this is owdng to the shape of the rock and to the irregular position of the staircases and sloping passages that descend to the lower floors. These houses must have been built after the fortifications of Pompei had been rendered useless, and on the south and west sides in all probability utterly destroyed and built over, and therefore they cannot be amongst the oldest. One of the last that the authorities have excavated has been much mutilated. It probably was a magnificent palace, according to its time and place, and is unique in its kind, from its being built out further from the rock than the rest of that line of houses, and also from its standing at and being continued round a corner of the clifif so that it has terraces facing both south and west. Like many other houses in Pompei, it is formed of several thrown into one, and connected by a passage or an additional stair- case. It is twice the size of any of the others, and in it were most beautiful and delicately executed frescoes, and carefully mosaiced pave- ments, most of which have either been removed or irreparably damaged. Out of the vaulted ceiling of one of its passages, from which led many corridors and inner subterranean rooms hid in darkness, was taken a beautiful stucco design in mezzo relievo of graceful fiorce and spreading * " In Rome and other parts of Italy, owing to the wonderful strength of the pozzolana, the upper floors of houses were very frequently made of concrete cast in one great slab on temporary boarding fixed at the required level. This set into one compact mass, like a piece of solid stone. Examples in Rome are to be seen where the upper floor had a span of 20 feet, and simply consisted of a slab of concrete about 14 inches thick. On this mosaic and other paving was laid as on the ground floors." — Smith's " Diet. Ant." t Also on the west side, but very badly preserved. I4-— Picture showing two floors and a room on the roof. Possibly this represents a section of an atrium; or it maybe that part of the house between the atrium and peristylium, where no proper tabhnum exists, and where instead a wide passage or door connects the two. From a room in Regione IX, Isola VII, in a small unnumbered house three houses distant from a house with a balcony. Copied by Frederick Vaiigo Biirridge, Esq. THE RUINS OF POMPEL 25 fruits on which the delicate colour was still to be traced in spite of the damp accumulated in the spot from which it had been removed ; this was put in a large frame, as is usual previous to removing the stucco and fresco works to the museum at Naples* ; but before this was accomplished, while it yet lay against the side of the passage, first one corner was broken, and then sundry bits came off here and there, so that by the time the frame was ready, to fit which it was again further chipped, much of its beauty was already lost. This stucco work was curved ; nearly all the passages have curved ceilings, as have most of the lower rooms — arched from side to side, not domed. The work of excavation, though well carried out by the Italian Government as far as their finances will enable them, is not always well executed by the workmen.t On one occasion while there we saw a room uncovered that owing to the immense amount of accumulated moisture began a couple of days after to give way, and by the time props had been put in was too far gone for restora- tion. The ofticials who superintended the workmen did not look after them sufficiently ; while few of them, officials or workmen, take enough interest in the work to do it with all the care that is needed, and which in our days is possible ; and in this particular instance it seemed to have been forgotten that houses built against the face of the cliff where moisture is continually oozing out are naturally damper, and require a different method of excavation to that employed for those situated on the level ground above, namely more immediate and perfect support as each fresh chamber and passage is unearthed, and a system of drainage and heating from behind before they can be successfully excavated. The lower terraces, as far as their general form could be recalled, were, however, carefully built up again with modern masonry ; but the position of many of the floors above was lost for ever. We do not deny the difficulty of the task ; yet we somewhat explain what we mean in referring to the wishes, that some of the most thorough officials have expressed, that the excavations could be carried out by an international archceological society with unlimited funds at its disposal.J The walls of this house, the rooms, the mosaiced floors, the terraces, stretching out one after the * See Appendix Notes on a few Houses with regard to VIII, 2, 18. t There are some mosaiced floors and other structures in different parts of the town very well restored by the workmen ; see Appendix Notes on a few Houses, VIII, 2, 16. % Besides funds inspectors are needed to see that the money is properly used, and that all the officials and men employed are competent to perform their duties, and occupy their posts not for the sake of payment alone, but for the love of archaeology ; the present inspector is an excellent example of what is needed, but our private opinion is that he has not sufficient powers of adminis- tration from the government ; several more like him as assistant inspectors are needed ; the assistant directors appear to be all that is needed as far as their powers lie. G 26 FACTS ABOUT POM PEL other far beyond the limit of the other cliff-houses, gave way con- secutively till not much more of it was left than there is to be seen of the other most interesting five-storied houses. The lowest floor of these others is as a rule a series of cellars ; in one or two instances these appear to have been used as baths, with a caldarmm, an arrange- ment of raised bricks on the floor with hollow brick walls for con- ducting the hot air. The ceilings of several of these dark, damp, malaria-haunted rooms are now black with what at first sight appears to be a thick velvety fungus, but which gradually discloses itself to be a swarm of hanging bats, that presently, as the lighted candles continue to intrude, detach themselves and begin to fly round in circles, startled and angry at the unwonted glare. The next floor generally consisted of a terrace over the cellars or baths, two-thirds of which was covered by a double row of rooms sometimes divided by a passage. Above these came a mezzanino, or half floor, probably for servants, and a few feet higher within the rock and to one side of the descending staircases and passages below the peristylmm floor are to be seen small dark rooms probably used by slaves. Above this came the two and a half stories of an ordinary house, so that in one instance where it can be seen that room was built above room, as well as out in terraces, there must have been five or six rooms one above another. In some of the lower rooms, on the floor above the cellars, may be seen little altars mosaiced like the foun- tains in some of the houses in the town, but with bits of shell and coral, as well as opaque glass, which might be another proof of the nearer position of the sea at that time. Even the tradition in the surrounding plain and in the mountain villages above Gragnano is that the sea once extended over a great part of the land between Castellamare and Pompei. It probably, indeed, came very near to the sea gate of Pompei, though as yet we believe that no wharf has been discovered. The Sarnus, however, probably flowed close by. There are very deep wells * to be found in several of the houses, sunk even as deep as the sea-level. The first of these, down which we dropped a stone, the workmen say has excellent water. The stone that we dropped down took 2^ seconds to reach the water level. Measuring * These wells are in Reg. VII, 2, 18; VII, 2, 20, (permanently locked up); VII, 9, 46 (mentioned by Fiorelli but now filled up) ; VIII, 7, in the kitchen of an unnumbered house, whose entrance is the opposite side of the street to VIII, 2, 34; VIII, 2, 27 (permanently locked up) ; and in VII, 3, 25, where the round stone that covers the well is pierced by three holes ; the total depth of this well is 33.83 metres, or in feet, of which 7 metres is the depth of the water. Another of 16 metres in depth, i.e., 52^ feet, exists in a small house in the Strada di Nola near what was evidently a reservoir, for distributing water, we have measured it through a hole in the back wall of the house, which lies between the wooden bridge and a fountain of granite in the street. Specimen of houses situated on the edge of the cliff on the southern side of Pompei, in Regione VIII., Isola 2 : showing how the five or six floors were formed ; and showing how the upper part — that on the level of the town above the three floors built against the cliff — would appear if restored according to the drawings of houses to be found in Pompei ; supposing No. 20 to have had both peristylium and atrium, one behind the other in the usual order (the upper floors are therefore not a restoration of No. 20). The above sketch was taken at a corner with the double disadvantage of a bird's-eye view and the irregularity of the rooms and their floors. a as far as 5 is a sketch of the lower part of house No. 20. The ruined side x is merely a sketch of what the houses appear en masse, showing several dilferent peculiarities, the large vaulted rooms, tall, narrow passages, and long low arched recesses beneath the upper pavement, perhaps for storing various articles not in immediate use. The staircase between the two houses descends to the ruins of a laundry basin ; it enters the lower apartments of 21 by a door, and a corridor puts it in communication with a long passage which passes up to the atrium close to the street behind, as do several of these staircases farther away in the same isola ; a tall, dark arch to the right (with a little arch above it) marks the mouth of this passage ; the lower part of % represents roughly the lower part of house No. 21. a. Lowest floor (still underground), with a door that opens either on a terrace, another house, or perhaps even a path loading to the quay. a' Baths and rooms reached by an underground passage from the street behind ; but the passage possesses private entrances from the floors above. One end of a is built almost wholly on the ancient lava foundation of Pompei, which can be more clearly seen in the houses further to the east ; the other end of a, which is the oldest, and where are the baths, is raised entirely on the walls of the apartment a. p. Third floor from the ground and lowest floor of the in- habited house, showing foundations of ruined rooms : /3' points first to a staircase ascending to near the atrium of No. 20, and descending into a long passage that has an exit in the street at its upper end (No. 17, see Notes on Houses), and at its lower end enters a ; but opposite to where the staircase enters this passage is another passage /3" running behind the rooms ^ (to the middle of the sketch), into which an arch gives admittance ; the end of the passage ^" opens at the top of the staircase near the lower rooms of 21 ; /3" lias two rooms in darkness within it, and is lit by apertures for borrowed light from the passage above. 7. A passage above (3", constituting a second floor from the ground (as it is built further within the cliff than a, a', and /3) and a first floor, actually above rooms : this passage forms a mezzanine floor, and possesses three slaves' rooms behind it ; apertures for borrowed light are cut in the floor of the passage, and a staircase descends to the level o( S. Second floor actually above rooms that are built above rooms, showing foundations of ruined rooms : 5', lowest floor of house on the level of the ground-floors of the rest of the town of Pompei. In the original house. No. 20, the outer walls of a restoration of course would be on or nearer the edge of the cliff, and would hide the rooms here shown by their founda- tion walls only ; and moreover the area, plan, and shape of the house would be very different, in all except height ; this is a restoration of Pompeian houses in general, and placed here merely to show the effect of their height built at the edge of the cliff, as undoubtedly they were: if therefore the house were built to the edge of the cliff, 5 ' would form the second floor, e the third, and f the fourth above the foundation floor of that " perpendicular." £. Second floor of the house, being above the usual ground- floor. f. Attic floor. 0. Peristylium, not, however, always possessing the same number of floors as the atrium. (. Little summer-house, above Tablinum, dividing Atrium and Peristylium. K. Atrium. Sometimes a flat terrace ran part of the length of the house, not, however, being a necessary adjunct, although small towers, terraces, and various small roofs, sloping inwards, seem to have abounded ; thus the very long, curving, fantastic ends of the roofs of houses shown in the drawings on Pompeian walls may be accounted for by the line of edge of the roof-end running on to a horizontal surface, and the fact that the gargoyles at the corners add considerably to the curved impression that the roof presents, or above all, by the hastiness of the Pompeian painter's brush, from whose ancient sketches this idea of the upper part of a Pompeian house has been taken. i THE FIVE-STOKIKI' iii