in Ancient Geography, a city on the sea coast of Campania, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, about five miles S.E. of Naples. Its name recalls the tradition that ascribes its foundation to Hercules, which, though of course fabulous, yet indicates a very ancient origin for the town. It is most likely that Herculaneum was founded by the Pelasgi, and that at the time when it fell under the Samnite dominion, its inhabitants were a mixed Pelasgic and Oscan race, with a considerable infusion of Greek blood from the neighbouring Greek colonies of Naples and Cumae. Under the Romans it never became a place of any great importance, and plays almost no part in history. It sided with the allies during the Social War, but was easily reduced. Its healthy situation, and the beauty of its environs, attracted many rich Romans to its neighbourhood; but even at the moment of the terrible catastrophe which has invested it with such a tragic interest, it appears to have been only a second-rate municipal town. The eruption of Vesuvius, which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii, took place A.D. 79; but 16 years before that date, both cities had been nearly destroyed by an earthquake so terrible as to have attracted special attention from the historians of Rome. In the great eruption, Herculaneum, being at the very foot of the mountain, seems to have been the first sufferer; and though the destruction of Pompeii was complete, yet that of its fellow-sufferer was undoubtedly more overwhelming. The depth of scoriae and ashes under which Pompeii is buried is nowhere more than 12 or 14 feet, whereas Herculaneum lies at the depth of from 70 to 100 feet beneath the actual surface of the ground. The enveloping crust of the latter town seems to have been subjected to the action of water as it fell in molten shower on the place; for it is a hard well-compacted mass, very difficult to penetrate, and quite different from the loose scoriae and ashes that form the grave of Pompeii. An accident led to the discovery of Herculaneum in modern times. In 1706, a peasant, in digging a well for the Prince d'Elboeuf, who had a villa in the neighbourhood, came upon some remains of antiquity, and prosecuting his researches, was rewarded with still greater success. But the matter reached the ears of the Neapolitan government, and all further excavation was prohibited. Matters remained in this state till 1738, when the search was recommenced by Don Carlos of Spain, who had succeeded to the throne of the Two Sicilies. The work was entrusted to a Spanish engineer, who carried it on with the ignorant recklessness of a Vandal, and allowed the destruction of many priceless monuments of ancient art. Since his day, however, considerable progress has been made, though the process of excavation has often been stopped from time to time from the ruin which it threatens to the towns of Portici and Resina, which stand immediately above the ruins of the buried city. Yet the whole extent of the explored parts is calculated to amount to no more than six hundred yards in length, and three hundred in breadth; but as we have al- ready stated, many of the excavations have been again filled up with the rubbish from other parts, which could not be removed to the surface of the earth without great labour and expense.

Of the buildings as yet laid bare, the most interesting is the theatre, which seems to have possessed accommodation for 8000 spectators. It seems to have had two principal entrances, from twenty to thirty long rows of seats, and seven passages called comitioria, for the entrance and exit of the people. The whole building was embellished with the varied ornaments of architecture. The flooring and pillars were of fine marble of different hues. The walls were adorned with paintings; within the precincts of the theatre were found many statues; and over the main entrance stood a triumphal car of gilt bronze with horses attached to it.

Near the theatre stood a splendid basilica, from the inner walls of which were taken the largest pieces of painting, engraved in the first volume of the Antichità d'Ercolano, published by order of his Sicilian Majesty. It was erected, according to an inscription, at the expense of the same Nonius Balbus who rebuilt the walls and gates of the town.

Besides this basilica, another temple has been discovered, and also the forum, some public buildings, and a number of private dwelling-houses. The forum had a colonnade, and the walls partly consisted in marble and partly painted. The private houses were small, irregular, for the most part built of brick, and one storey high. Their walls were generally covered with paintings, many of which have been cut out and removed to the royal museum at Naples. The streets that have been cleared were straight and paved with lava, like the streets of Naples at the present day. One of these was above thirty feet in width, with raised foot-paths on each side, on which were found broken columns which had evidently formed part of a colonnade. In another part of the excavations the workmen came to a vault with niches, in each of which was found a vase containing ashes, and over every niche, the name of some person coarsely painted in red letters. The vault, which was twelve feet by nine, was destitute of all decoration, and was probably the private burying-place of a family.

The treasures discovered at Herculaneum were originally deposited in the Royal Museum at Portici, but have been now removed to the Museo Borbonico of Naples. They comprise specimens of every department of art, domestic articles, and literary remains. The greatest interest, however, centres in the library containing nearly 2000 MSS., amongst which it was hoped might be found some of the lost manuscripts of ancient genius. A careful scrutiny by the most eminent scientific men of the day, however, proved that it contained nothing of any material consequence. The process by which this unprofitable result was established is described in the following terms by Sir Humphrey Davy, who contributed to establish it:

"The appearances of different rolls were extremely various. They were of all shades of colours, from a light chestnut-brown to a deep black; some externally were of a glossy black-like jet, which the superintendents called varnished; several contained the umbilicus, or rolling stick, in the middle, converted into dense charcoal. I saw two or three specimens of papyri which had the appearance of characters on both sides, but in general only side one was written upon. In their texture they were as porous as in their colours; the pale brownish ones generally presented only a kind of skeleton of a leaf, in which the earthy matter was nearly in as large a proportion as the vegetable matter; and they were light, and the layers easily separated from each other. A number of darker brown ones, which, from a few characters discovered in opening them, appeared to be Latin manuscripts, were agglutinated, as it were, into one mass; and when they were opened by introducing a needle between the layers, spots or lines of charcoal appeared, where the folds had been, as if the letters had been washed out by water, and the matter of which they were composed deposited on the folds. Among the black manuscripts a very few fragments presented leaves which separated from each other with considerable facility, and such had been for the most part operated upon; but in general, the manuscripts of this class were hard, heavy, and coherent, and contained fine volcanic dust within their folds. Some few of the black and darkish brown manuscripts, which were loose in their texture, were Herculanum almost entirely decayed, and exhibited on their surface a quantity of brown powder." These venerable volumes were of a cylindrical shape, more or less perfect,—generally about a foot long,—and made up of the thin leaves of the papyrus plant, which were gummed together at the ends, and when thus joined formed one continuous sheet, which extended sometimes to a length of forty feet and upwards. These leaves seem to have been rarely inscribed on more than one side. The manuscript was written in a succession of parallel columns of from two to four inches in breadth, and at a distance of about an inch from each other. When completed, the entire sheet or volume was generally attached to an umbilicus or wooden cylinder, round which it was rolled.

Having got possession of this literary treasure, the next inquiry was how it was to be unsealed and opened up so as to be accessible to the learned. This was found to be a work of the greatest delicacy and difficulty; and the earlier attempts were attended with no success, but issued only in the injury or entire destruction of a considerable number of manuscripts. Among other methods tried was one suggested by Mazocchi, an Italian of great learning, who was afterwards employed in endeavouring to supply the defects found in these recovered volumes, and in preparing them for publication. He proposed that the papyri should be placed under a glass bell, and exposed to the sun, in the hope that when the moisture which was still contained was dissipated by the evaporation, they would open up of themselves. But the experiment was a failure. The heat of the sun did indeed evaporate the moisture, but at the same time it either obliterated the writing, or caused the ink to spread so much that the letters became quite illegible. When thus perplexed with difficulties which they knew not how to vanquish, the work was next entrusted to Antonio Piaggi, a man of experience in the handling of ancient manuscripts, and a very skilful copyist, who was employed at the Vatican, and under his superintendence and direction the experiments were carried on with much success.

With the greatest ingenuity, and the most laudable patience and perseverance, Piaggi applied himself to the task assigned him; and as he knew of no existing apparatus that would serve his purpose, he constructed a suitable machine for himself, which was found well adapted for the end in view, and enabled him to unfold many of the rolls.

The difficulties encountered in carrying on this work were immense; and the progress made was so slow, that one is astonished that it was not soon given up in despair. Some of the manuscripts were so brittle, that they fell to pieces in the hands of the operator. The leaves of others adhered so tenaciously, that in separating the upper coil of the roll from that beneath it, so many breaks were often made in the disengaged leaf that it had the appearance of a tattered rag full of holes, and was so much destroyed, that after much care and labour had been expended, it was considered useless to proceed with it. And yet when all seemed well, the unrolling of a single portion of a manuscript was often the work of days. Yet amid these and other difficulties Piaggi persevered with unwearied patience and skill, till he had succeeded in opening up a large number of the manuscripts. And as each successive part was unrolled, he took a copy of it most accurately and beautifully, with all its lacunae and defects just as he found them, and these facsimiles were sent to Mazocchi and his learned associates, that they might restore them as nearly as they could to their original completeness, and present them to the public. But the zeal of Piaggi was not met by a corresponding zeal on the part of his conjurors and the Neapolitan government. His part of the work was soon accomplished; but it was not till after a wearisome delay of forty years that a specimen of these Herculanean manuscripts was published at Naples in 1793. And the work when received was little fitted to reward the patience or satisfy the expectations of the learners. It was a dull miscellany on music, by Philodemon, an epicurean, in which he endeavours to show that music exercises an injurious influence on a nation, and ought therefore to be discouraged.

Soon after the publication of this volume, proposals were made by King George IV., then Prince of Wales, to bear the expense of opening and publishing some of the manuscripts. For this end he gave large sums from his private purse, procured grants from Parliament, and made all the arrangements that seemed to him most fitted to promote the success of this literary enterprise. In 1800, the Rev. John Hayter, the chaplain of the prince, was appointed to proceed to Naples, and devote himself to this work; and from the beginning of 1802 till the French invasion of Italy, when he withdrew to Sicily, it was singularly and successfully carried on. Before the French arrival over eighteen manuscripts had been unrolled, but in the Report which he makes to his Royal Highness of the progress made by him before leaving Naples, he says—"More than two hundred papyri had been opened wholly or in part during my stay at Naples. The experience of every day had added infinite facility and skill, with accurate and secure but rapid dexterity, to Herculaneum.

Each unrolled and copyist. Hence, with these increasing advantages, every one of the remaining fifteen hundred, or as many of them as could be opened would be opened and copied; it was reasonably and universally calculated, within the space of six years at the most." Of the manuscripts that were unrolled, facsimile copies of ninety-four were sent to the Prince of Wales, who presented them to the University of Oxford. They are both in Greek and Latin, but many of them consist only of two or three pages, and are by unknown authors. Even when they are of greater extent, they are treatises of little value, and by authors of no distinction. In 1824-25, two volumes of these issued from the Clarendon Press at Oxford. They contain partly several works by Philodemus, On Vices, On Poets, On Eloquence, and another fragment of Opposite Virtues; a work of Demetrius On Forms, and another On Animals without the author's name. These are all Greek manuscripts, and are printed exactly as they appeared when they were unrolled, with all their imperfections, and without note or comment.

Other gentlemen besides Mr Hayter were employed under the prince's patronage in experimenting on the Herculaneum papyri, and among these Dr Sieckler of Hildburghausen. This individual pretended to be skilful in opening them, and without sufficient inquiry into his qualifications, he and his family were brought to London, and this delicate task was intrusted to one who proved himself far unfit for it. The experiments were an entire failure, and resulted in the loss of several hundred pounds and the complete destruction of some finely-preserved papyrus which his royal highness had procured and put at his disposal. The prince was not easily discouraged; and it is much to his honour that after a long series of years, in the face of many difficulties, and at great personal expense, he prosecuted this undertaking with unfailing zeal. At length he succeeded in securing the active co-operation of a gentleman who was very zealous in the cause, and at the same time of great eminence both in regard to talent and scientific attainments. In 1818 Sir Humphrey Davy was commissioned by the Prince to go to Naples, and try what his knowledge of science could accomplish in devising new and more successful methods of unrolling and bringing to light the literary remains of the Herculaneum library. Previous to his departure from England on this mission, Sir Humphrey had examined such portions of the papyri as he could obtain, and after subjecting them to various chemical experiments and tests, was led to form a judgment regarding them quite different from what had been hitherto generally entertained. The usual opinion was, that the charred appearance of the papyri was to be ascribed to the action of fire. From this view Sir Humphrey dissented on scientific grounds. But as the supply of papyri in England was insufficient to allow him to carry on his investigations to a satisfactory extent, he readily acceded to the proposal now made to him by the Prince of Wales to proceed to Naples, and complete his experiments on this more ample field.

In the report which, on his return, was read to the Royal Society of London, and published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1821, Sir Humphrey gives a narrative of what he saw and did at Naples in carrying out the details of his mission. Amongst persons," he says, "who have the care of the manuscripts found at Herculaneum, I state that their original number was 1696, and that 431 have been operated upon, or presented to foreign governments, so that 1265 ought to remain; but amongst these, by far the larger proportion are small fragments, or specimens so injured and mutilated that there is not the least chance of recovering any portion of their contents; and when I first examined the rolls in detail in January 1819, it did not appear to me that more than from 80 to 120 offered proper subjects for experiments; and this estimate, as my researches proceeded, appeared much too high. These manuscripts had been objects of interest for seventy years; the best had long ago been operated upon, and those remaining had not only undergone injuries from time, but likewise from other causes, such as transport, rude examination, and mutilations, for the purpose of determining if they contained characters."

As the result of his experiments, he gives his opinion that the idea that attributes these different appearances of the MSS. to the action of fire, more or less intense, is entirely erroneous, that part of Herculaneum being under a bed of tufa formed of sand, volcanic ashes, stones, and dust, cemented by the operation of water, probably in a boiling state. "And there is great reason to conclude," he says, "that the different states of the manuscripts depend upon a gradual process of decomposition; the loose chestnut ones probably not having been washed, but merely changed by the reaction of their elements, assisted by the operation of a small quantity of air; the black ones, which usually were, probably remained in a moist state without any percolation of water; and the dense ones, containing earthy matter, had probably been acted on by warm water, which not only carried into the fields earthly matter suspended in it, but likewise dissolved the starch and gluten used in preparing the papyrus, and the glue of the ink, and distributed them through the substance of the manuscripts; and some of these rolls had probably been strongly compressed when moist in different positions.

The operation of fire is not at all necessary for producing such an imperfect carbonization of vegetable matter as that displayed by the manuscripts; thus at Pompeii, which was covered by a shower of ashes that must have been cold, as they fell at a distance of seven or eight miles from the center of Vesuvius, the wood and the plants is uniformly found converted into charcoal; yet the colours on the walls, most of which would have been destroyed or altered by heat, are perfectly fresh; and where papyri have been found in these houses, they have appeared in the form of white ashes, as of burnt paper; an effect produced by the slow action of the air penetrating through the loose ashes, and which has been impeded or prevented in Herculaneum by the tufa, which, as it were, has hermetically sealed up the town and prevented any decay, except such as occurs in the spontaneous decomposition of vegetable substances, exposed to the limited operation of water and air, for instance, peat and Bovey coal. It will be seen that there is based upon the different specimens of the papyri, proved likewise that they had never before been exposed to any considerable degree of temperature."

The opinions of Sir Humphrey Davy has not been universally acquiesced. While he maintains that the papyri of Herculaneum are not carbonized, others maintain with equal confidence that they are now complete charcoal, such as is formed by heat only, and tell us that a fragment of their substance burns readily, like common charcoal, with a creeping combustion, without flame and with a slight vegetable smell, whereas Bovey coal exhibits a considerable flame.

During the two months that he was actively employed in experiments on the papyri at Naples, he succeeded in partially unrolling 23 manuscripts, from which fragments of writing were obtained, and in examining about 120 others, which, however, were too imperfect to afford hope of success.

From time to time volumes have appeared, giving to the world such relics of ancient philosophy and literature as were recovered from Herculaneum, but they were either so mutilated and fragmentary, or possessed of so little intrinsic merit, that their acquisition has afforded little satisfaction. In addition to the manuscripts published at Oxford, there have been printed some parts of a Latin poem, supposed to be by Rabirius; two books, the second and the eleventh of Epicurus, on Nature; some writings by Polystratus and Matraeas, and several other works of the same Philodemus, whose treatise on music was the first Herculaneum manuscript that was published.

These manuscripts, which, with the exception of the Latin poem just mentioned, are all in Greek, are contained in eight splendid folio volumes, that have issued from the Royal Press of Naples at irregular intervals, between the years 1793 and 1844. These volumes contain not only carefully executed fac-similes of the unrolled manuscripts, but also give the conjectural readings of the lacunae, with a translation and copious notes. As a specimen of the Roman characters, we take the following from Paterini:

N·ALTERIVS·DULC DEM·CRIS·CRUDE

The following from the last column of the Essay on Music, by Philodemus, will serve as a specimen of the Greek manuscripts:

ΦΙΛΟΔΗΜΟΥ ΠΕΡΙΜΟΥΣΙΚΗ

Δ ΡΑΙΝΩΝ ΤΑC ΤΟCΑΤΤΑΤΟΙ ΝΥΝΕΙΡΚΚΩΣΠΡΟΚΑΤΙΝ ΕΡΚΕΧΕΙΡΗΚΑΣΙΑΙΑΤΕΙΝΑΙ ΜΗΝΑΝΔΕΟΝΤΩΣΟ ΧΑΡΙΝ ΜΕΝΤΙΓΑΝΟΤΝ ΤΟCΑΤΤΩΝ

Besides these volumes devoted to the elucidation of the MSS., there is another series descriptive of the antiquities. They are entitled Le Antichità d'Ercolano, and, besides descriptive letterpress, give beautiful representations of the paintings, statues, busts, vases, and other works of art found within the buried city. Complete sets of these valuable works may now be found in the principal public libraries of Great Britain.