POMPEII (anc. geogr.) a town of Campania near Herculaneum, and destroyed along with it by the great eruption of Vesuvius in the time of Titus. See Herculaneum. It is about 15 miles from Naples, and six or seven from Portici—So much has been said and written on the discovery of this place, as makes it unnecessary for us to say much: we shall therefore only give a short extract on the subject from an anonymous work lately published, apparently of considerable merit. "On entering the city (says our author*), the first object is a pretty square, with arcades, after the present manner of Italy. This was, as it is imagined, the quarter of the soldiers; numbers of military weapons being found here. A narrow, but long street, with several shops on each side, is now perfectly cleared of its rubbish, and in good preservation. Each house has a court. In some of them are paintings al fresco, principally in chiaroscuro; and their colours not the least injured by time. The few colours which the ancients knew were extracted only from minerals; and this may be a sufficient reason for their freshness. The street is paved with irregular stones of a foot and a half or two feet long, like the Appian way.
"In discovering this city, it was at first doubted whether it were actually Pompeii: but the name inscribed over the gateway put it beyond all doubt. The skeletons found were innumerable. It is said that many had spades in their hands, endeavouring, probably at first, to clear away the torrent of ashes with which they were deluged. Indeed the satisfaction which is felt at the view of ancient habitations, is much allayed by inevitable reflections on this frightful scene of desolation, though at the distance of so many centuries.
"An ancient villa is also seen entire at a little distance from Pompeii. The house is really elegant and spacious, but only two stories high. The pavement of the chambers is composed of tessellated marble, and, when polished, displays the design perfectly well.—There is some at the museum of Portici brought from this place, which the eye would really mistake for painting. Under the house is a fine triangular cellar, of which each part is 100 feet long, well filled with amphora. The skeletons of 29 persons were found here, supposed to have fled to it for safety. Each house is filled with ashes: they have almost penetrated through every crevice; and it is incredible how such a volume of them could have been thrown out by Vesuvius with sufficient force to have reached so far." It has been observed by some travellers that spoons were found among the ruins of Pompeii, but no forks, from which it is concluded, that table utensils of the latter description were not known to the Romans at that period. Forks, it is supposed, were invented at Constantinople, and were not in use in Italy till about the year 1000 of the Christian era. In concluding our account of Herculaneum, it was stated that the means attempted for unrolling the manuscripts found among the ruins, had been unsuccessful, and that the plan had been dropped. It will not, we presume, be a little gratifying to the admirers of ancient literature, to be informed that this difficult labour has been resumed under the auspices of his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales; and that six volumes of Papyri presented to his Royal Highness by the king of Naples have reached London.
In the year 1800 the Rev. Mr Hayter, an excellent scholar, with a liberal provision from the prince, and with permission of the king of Naples, went to Italy for the purpose of unrolling and transcribing the Papyri. The following narrative extracted from a letter addressed to his royal patron by Mr Hayter, will, we doubt not, be interesting to our readers:
"The numerous settlements (says the author) of the Greeks in Italy received the name of Magna Graecia, because their mother country was of a size considerably less than that in which they were planted: among these were nearly all the cities in the province of Campania, including Naples, the capital of his Sicilian majesty, and also Herculaneum, and Pompeii, which are supposed to boast a foundation coeval with Hercules himself, three thousand and fifty years ago, or twelve hundred and fifty years before the Christian era. This province, more than any other part of Magna Graecia, was always celebrated for the studious and successful cultivation of the arts and sciences. The two cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii ranked next to that of Naples in every respect, as places of considerable note; they had their public theatres, with every other attendant of great population, splendour, opulence, and general prosperity. These, in common with all the rest of Campania, became the elegant and favourite resort of the Romans, for the different purposes of health, luxury, repose, and erudition.
"In the ninth year of Nero's reign, these two cities experienced a most formidable shock from an earthquake, which overthrew a great part of them. Nor had they recovered altogether from the effects of this calamity by their own exertions, and the aid of imperial munificence, when a second calamity, of a different nature, but equally unexpected, consigned them both at once to the most complete oblivion. This calamity was the great eruption of Vesuvius, which happened on the 24th day of August, two full months from the accession of the emperor Titus Vespasian. Herculaneum was buried under a mass of lava, and volcanic matter, to the depth of 24 feet. Pompeii, being more distant from the mountain, was overwhelmed principally with a shower of ashes, nor in any place more than half the depth of the other city. But the fate of both was sudden and inevitable; and yet it appears that almost all of the inhabitants, and, what is an equally surprising circumstance, more of the Herculaneans than the Pompeians, escaped. By the few skeletons which have been found in either place, the relation of Dio Cassius, who states the destruction of the people while assembled at the theatre, is proved to be totally erroneous. It may be proper to remark, that before this eruption the whole of Vesuvius was in a state of cultivation and fertility, from the top to the bottom; and though the form and soil of the mountain in one particular spot seemed to denote the traces of some former explosion, yet no extant memorial of any kind had recorded it.
"Neither of these two cities was discovered again till a long period of sixteen hundred and thirty-four years had elapsed. It was in the year 1713, that some labourers, in sinking a well, struck their tools against a statue, which was on a bench in the theatre of Herculaneum. Forty years afterwards Pompeii was excavated with much less difficulty, as the incumbent stratum was neither so hard nor so deep as that of the former city.
"The number of the manuscripts saved from both those cities is said to be about 500; but, if I am rightly informed by those whose official situation must give them a competent knowledge of the subject, your royal highness, by facilitating the development of these volumes, will probably be the means of further excavation, and of rescuing from their interment an infinite quantity of others. About thirty years ago, his Sicilian majesty ordered the development, the transcription, and the printing of the volumes which had then been saved, to be undertaken. This operation was accordingly begun, and has never been discontinued till the late invasion of the French. But its mode, however excellent, was extremely slow; it has been performed by a single person, with a single frame only, under the direction of the marquis del Vasto, chamberlain to the king, and president of the royal academy.
"The frame consists of several taper and oblong pieces of wood, with parallel threads of silk that run on each side, the length of each piece: when the frame is laid on any volume, each piece of wood must be fixed precisely over each line of the page, while the respective threads being worked beneath each line, and assisted by the corresponding piece of wood above, raise the line upwards, and disclose the characters to view.
"The operation seems ingenious, and well adapted to the purpose: it was, I believe, invented by a capuchin at Naples. The fruits of it are said to be two publications only; one on music, by the celebrated Philodemus, who was a cotemporary of Cicero: and the other on cookery. The first is in his majesty's library, at the queen's palace. Through the obliging politeness of Mr Barnard, the king's librarian, I have had the advantage of perusing it. Indeed I hope your royal highness will not disapprove my acknowledging in this place the very warm and respectful interest which both this gentleman and the right honourable the president of the Royal Society have expressed for the furtherance of your royal highness's great and good design. Meanwhile, by this specimen of Philodemus, I am convinced that, if the frames should be multiplied to the proposed extent, several pages of thirty different manuscripts might be disclosed and transcribed within the space of one week.
"But the very period at which the manuscripts were buried, serves to point out to your royal highness that you may expect the recovery of either the whole, or at least parts, of the best writers of antiquity, hitherto deemed irrecoverable. All of these, in truth, had written before that period, if we except Tacitus, whose estimable works were unfortunately not composed till twenty years afterwards, during the reign of Trajan.
"Nor can it be imagined for a moment, that among five or six hundred manuscripts, already excavated, and especially especially from the numberless ones which further excavations may supply, lost at such a period in two of the most capital cities, in the richest, most frequented, and most learned province in Italy, each of them an established seat of the arts and sciences, each of them the resort of the most distinguished Romans, not any part of those illustrious authors should be discovered.
"But the manuscript of Philodemus itself makes the reverse of such an idea appear much more probable. To the moderns, who have
"Untwisted all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony,"
his Treatise on Music cannot, indeed, be supposed to communicate much information; yet the subject is scientific, and scientifically treated. The author himself, too, was one of the most eminent men in his time for wit, learning, and philosophy. But in the rest of the arts and sciences, in history, in poetry, the discovery of any lost writer, either in whole or part, would be deemed a most valuable acquisition and treasure, and form a new era in literature.
"It is extremely fortunate that the characters of these manuscripts, whether they should be Greek or Latin, must be very obvious and legible. Before the year of our Lord 79, and some time after it, the Majuscule or Unciales Litterae, capital letters, were solely used. A page, therefore, in one of these manuscripts, would present to your royal highness an exact image of some mutilated inscription in those languages on an ancient column, statue, or sepulchre.
"There cannot remain a doubt, even omitting the assurances from men of official situation to that effect, that your royal highness's superintendent will receive every possible assistance from the marquis del Vasto; and in that case it seems improbable that the object of this mission can be altogether fruitless.
"With such a termination of it, however, your royal highness, by having proceeded to concur with His Sicilian majesty in the quicker and more effectual development, transcription, and publication of these manuscripts, will reap the satisfaction of having made a most princely attempt in behalf of knowledge and literature, on an occasion where their interests might be affected most materially, and in a manner of which no annals have afforded, or can hereafter afford, an example. Your very interposition will be your glory: your want of success will only make the learned world feel with gratitude what you would have done."
The interposition of his royal highness has had the happiest effect. The splendid encouragement which he gave to the work revived the drooping spirits of the Italian literati; and the consequence has been, that the business of unrolling and transcribing the manuscripts now proceeds with an alacrity which promises the most brilliant success. In forty-six years not more than eighteen rolls were developed before the interference of our prince. Under his encouragement, ninety have been recovered in two years! What new facilities may not now be expected when all the vigour of British intelligence is exerted on the subject!—See Swinburne's Travels in the Two Sicilies, vol. ii. p. 98, &c.; Lady Miller's Letters, or De la Lande; Captain Sutherland's Tour up the Straits, from Gibraltar to Constantinople, p. 75, &c.; Dr Smith's Sketch of a Tour on the Continent, in 1786 and 1787, vol. ii. p. 113, &c.; and Watkin's Tour through Switzerland, Italy, &c. See also Lemaître's Travels through France, Italy, &c.
POMPEY the GREAT, Cnælius Pompeius Magnus, the renowned rival of Julius Caesar. Being defeated by him at the battle of Pharsalia, owing to the defection of his cavalry, he fled to Egypt by sea, where he was basely assassinated by order of Theodotus, prime minister to Ptolemy the Younger, then a minor, 48 B.C. See Rome.