'After all, you do right to enjoy the hour while it smiles for you; the
rose soon withers, the perfume soon exhales. And we, O Glaucus!
strangers in the land and far from our fathers' ashes, what is there
left for us but pleasure or regret!--for you the first, perhaps for me
the last.'
The bright eyes of the Greek were suddenly suffused with tears. 'Ah,
speak not, Arbaces,' he cried--'speak not of our ancestors. Let us
forget that there were ever other liberties than those of Rome! And
Glory!--oh, vainly would we call her ghost from the fields of Marathon
and Thermopylae!'
'Thy heart rebukes thee while thou speakest,' said the Egyptian; 'and in
thy gaieties this night, thou wilt be more mindful of Leoena than of
Lais. Vale!'
Thus saying, he gathered his robe around him, and slowly swept away.
'I breathe more freely,' said Clodius. 'Imitating the Egyptians, we
sometimes introduce a skeleton at our feasts. In truth, the presence of
such an Egyptian as yon gliding shadow were spectre enough to sour the
richest grape of the Falernian.'
'Strange man! said Glaucus, musingly; 'yet dead though he seem to
pleasure, and cold to the objects of the world, scandal belies him, or
his house and his heart could tell a different tale.'
'Ah! there are whispers of other orgies than those of Osiris in his
gloomy mansion. He is rich, too, they say. Can we not get him amongst
us, and teach him the charms of dice? Pleasure of pleasures! hot fever
of hope and fear! inexpressible unjaded passion! how fiercely beautiful
thou art, O Gaming!'
'Inspired--inspired!' cried Glaucus, laughing; 'the oracle speaks poetry
in Clodius. What miracle next!'
Chapter III
PARENTAGE OF GLAUCUS. DESCRIPTION OF THE HOUSES OF POMPEII. CLASSIC
REVEL.
HEAVEN had given to Glaucus every blessing but one: it had given him
beauty, health, fortune, genius, illustrious descent, a heart of fire, a
mind of poetry; but it had denied him the heritage of freedom. He was
born in Athens, the subject of Rome. Succeeding early to an ample
inheritance, he had indulged that inclination for travel so natural to
the young, and had drunk deep of the intoxicating draught of pleasure
amidst the gorgeous luxuries of the imperial court.
He was an Alcibiades without ambition. He was what a man of
imagination, youth, fortune, and talents, readily becomes when you
deprive him of the inspiration of glory. His house at Rome was the
theme of the debauchees, but also of the lovers of art; and the
sculptors of Greece delighted to task their skill in adorning the
porticoes and exedrae of an Athenian. His retreat in Pompeii--alas! the
colors are faded now, the walls stripped of their paintings!--its main
beauty, its elaborate finish of grace and ornament, is gone; yet when
first given once more to the day, what eulogies, what wonder, did its
minute and glowing decorations create--its paintings--its mosaics!
Passionately enamoured of poetry and the drama, which recalled to
Glaucus the wit and the heroism of his race, that fairy mansion was
adorned with representations of AEschylus and Homer. And antiquaries,
who resolve taste to a trade, have turned the patron to the professor,
and still (though the error is now acknowledged) they style in custom,
as they first named in mistake, the disburied house of the Athenian
Glaucus 'THE HOUSE OF THE DRAMATIC POET'.
Previous to our description of this house, it may be as well to convey
to the reader a general notion of the houses of Pompeii, which he will
find to resemble strongly the plans of Vitruvius; but with all those
differences in detail, of caprice and taste, which being natural to
mankind, have always puzzled antiquaries. We shall endeavor to make
this description as clear and unpedantic as possible.
You enter then, usually, by a small entrance-passage (called
cestibulum), into a hall, sometimes with (but more frequently without)
the ornament of columns; around three sides of this hall are doors
communicating with several bedchambers (among which is the porter's),
the best of these being usually appropriated to country visitors. At
the extremity of the hall, on either side to the right and left, if the
house is large, there are two small recesses, rather than chambers,
generally devoted to the ladies of the mansion; and in the centre of the
tessellated pavement of the hall is invariably a square, shallow
reservoir for rain water (classically termed impluvium), which was
admitted by an aperture in the roof above; the said aperture being
covered at will by an awning. Near this impluvium, which had a peculiar
sanctity in the eyes of the ancients, were sometimes (but at Pompeii
more rarely than at Rome) placed images of the household gods--the
hospitable hearth, often mentioned by the Roman poets, and consecrated
to the Lares, was at Pompeii almost invariably formed by a movable
brazier; while in some corner, often the most ostentatious place, was
deposited a huge wooden chest, ornamented and strengthened by bands of
bronze or iron, and secured by strong hooks upon a stone pedestal so
firmly as to defy the attempts of any robber to detach it from its
position. It is supposed that this chest was the money-box, or coffer,
of the master of the house; though as no money has been found in any of
the chests discovered at Pompeii, it is probable that it was sometimes
rather designed for ornament than use.
In this hall (or atrium, to speak classically) the clients and visitors
of inferior rank were usually received. In the houses of the more
'respectable', an atriensis, or slave peculiarly devoted to the service
of the hall, was invariably retained, and his rank among his
fellow-slaves was high and important. The reservoir in the centre must
have been rather a dangerous ornament, but the centre of the hall was
like the grass-plot of a college, and interdicted to the passers to and
fro, who found ample space in the margin. Right opposite the entrance,
at the other end of the hall, was an apartment (tablinum), in which the
pavement was usually adorned with rich mosaics, and the walls covered
with elaborate paintings. Here were usually kept the records of the
family, or those of any public office that had been filled by the owner:
on one side of this saloon, if we may so call it, was often a
dining-room, or triclinium; on the other side, perhaps, what we should
now term a cabinet of gems, containing whatever curiosities were deemed
most rare and costly; and invariably a small passage for the slaves to
cross to the further parts of the house, without passing the apartments
thus mentioned. These rooms all opened on a square or oblong colonnade,
technically termed peristyle. If the house was small, its boundary
ceased with this colonnade; and in that case its centre, however
diminutive, was ordinarily appropriated to the purpose of a garden, and
adorned with vases of flowers, placed upon pedestals: while, under the
colonnade, to the right and left, were doors admitting to bedrooms, to a
second triclinium, or eating-room (for the ancients generally
appropriated two rooms at least to that purpose, one for summer, and one
for winter--or, perhaps, one for ordinary, the other for festive,
occasions); and if the owner affected letters, a cabinet, dignified by
the name of library--for a very small room was sufficient to contain the
few rolls of papyrus which the ancients deemed a notable collection of
books.
At the end of the peristyle was generally the kitchen. Supposing the
house was large, it did not end with the peristyle, and the centre
thereof was not in that case a garden, but might be, perhaps, adorned
with a fountain, or basin for fish; and at its end, exactly opposite to
the tablinum, was generally another eating-room, on either side of which
were bedrooms, and, perhaps, a picture-saloon, or pinacotheca. These
apartments communicated again with a square or oblong space, usually
adorned on three sides with a colonnade like the peristyle, and very
much resembling the peristyle, only usually longer. This was the proper
viridarium, or garden, being commonly adorned with a fountain, or
statues, and a profusion of gay flowers: at its extreme end was the
gardener's house; on either side, beneath the colonnade, were sometimes,
if the size of the family required it, additional rooms.
At Pompeii, a second or third story was rarely of importance, being
built only above a small part of the house, and containing rooms for the
slaves; differing in this respect from the more magnificent edifices of
Rome, which generally contained the principal eating-room (or
caenaculum) on the second floor. The apartments themselves were
ordinarily of small size; for in those delightful climes they received
any extraordinary number of visitors in the peristyle (or portico), the
hall, or the garden; and even their banquet-rooms, however elaborately
adorned and carefully selected in point of aspect, were of diminutive
proportions; for the intellectual ancients, being fond of society, not
of crowds, rarely feasted more than nine at a time, so that large
dinner-rooms were not so necessary with them as with us. But the suite
of rooms seen at once from the entrance, must have had a very imposing
effect: you beheld at once the hall richly paved and painted--the
tablinum--the graceful peristyle, and (if the house extended farther)
the opposite banquet-room and the garden, which closed the view with
some gushing fount or marble statue.
The reader will now have a tolerable notion of the Pompeian houses,
which resembled in some respects the Grecian, but mostly the Roman
fashion of domestic architecture. In almost every house there is some
difference in detail from the rest, but the principal outline is the
same in all. In all you find the hall, the tablinum, and the peristyle,
communicating with each other; in all you find the walls richly painted;
and all the evidence of a people fond of the refining elegancies of
life. The purity of the taste of the Pompeians in decoration is,
however, questionable: they were fond of the gaudiest colors, of
fantastic designs; they often painted the lower half of their columns a
bright red, leaving the rest uncolored; and where the garden was small,
its wall was frequently tinted to deceive the eye as to its extent,
imitating trees, birds, temples, etc., in perspective--a meretricious
delusion which the graceful pedantry of Pliny himself adopted, with a
complacent pride in its ingenuity.
But the house of Glaucus was at once one of the smallest, and yet one of
the most adorned and finished of all the private mansions of Pompeii: it
would be a model at this day for the house of 'a single man in
Mayfair'--the envy and despair of the coelibian purchasers of buhl
and marquetry.
You enter by a long and narrow vestibule, on the floor of which is the
image of a dog in mosaic, with the well-known 'Cave canem'--or 'Beware
the dog'. On either side is a chamber of some size; for the interior
part of the house not being large enough to contain the two great
divisions of private and public apartments, these two rooms were set
apart for the reception of visitors who neither by rank nor familiarity
were entitled to admission in the penetralia of the mansion.
Advancing up the vestibule you enter an atrium, that when first
discovered was rich in paintings, which in point of expression would
scarcely disgrace a Rafaele. You may see them now transplanted to the
Neapolitan Museum: they are still the admiration of connoisseurs--they
depict the parting of Achilles and Briseis. Who does not acknowledge
the force, the vigour, the beauty, employed in delineating the forms and
faces of Achilles and the immortal slave!
On one side the atrium, a small staircase admitted to the apartments for
the slaves on the second floor; there also were two or three small
bedrooms, the walls of which portrayed the rape of Europa, the battle of
the Amazons, etc.
You now enter the tablinum, across which, at either end, hung rich
draperies of Tyrian purple, half withdrawn. On the walls was depicted a
poet reading his verses to his friends; and in the pavement was inserted
a small and most exquisite mosaic, typical of the instructions given by
the director of the stage to his comedians.
You passed through this saloon and entered the peristyle; and here (as I
have said before was usually the case with the smaller houses of
Pompeii) the mansion ended. From each of the seven columns that adorned
this court hung festoons of garlands: the centre, supplying the place of
a garden, bloomed with the rarest flowers placed in vases of white
marble, that were supported on pedestals. At the left hand of this
small garden was a diminutive fane, resembling one of those small
chapels placed at the side of roads in Catholic countries, and dedicated
to the Penates; before it stood a bronzed tripod: to the left of the
colonnade were two small cubicula, or bedrooms; to the right was the
triclinium, in which the guests were now assembled.
This room is usually termed by the antiquaries of Naples 'The Chamber of
Leda'; and in the beautiful work of Sir William Gell, the reader will
find an engraving from that most delicate and graceful painting of Leda
presenting her newborn to her husband, from which the room derives its
name. This charming apartment opened upon the fragrant garden. Round
the table of citrean wood, highly polished and delicately wrought with
silver arabesques, were placed the three couches, which were yet more
common at Pompeii than the semicircular seat that had grown lately into
fashion at Rome: and on these couches of bronze, studded with richer
metals, were laid thick quiltings covered with elaborate broidery, and
yielding luxuriously to the pressure.
'Well, I must own,' said the aedile Pansa, 'that your house, though
scarcely larger than a case for one's fibulae, is a gem of its kind.
