Pompeii and its Remains 1

Abstract

THE city of Pompeii is one which will ever maintain a hold upon the imagination of cultured man, as much for what it represented in the history of civilisation, as for being the victim of one of the most awful visitations of the powers of nature which have ever befallen the abiding place of a great society of men. It is not the place here to descant upon the wealth and luxury of its inhabitants, on the bright and reckless lives which they led, on the splendour of its buildings, or even the fancied security wherein men and women lulled themselves, not-withstanding the violent shock of earthquake which shook the city to its very foundations on February 5, A.D. 63, for all these things are the commonplaces of history; but we are concerned with the remains left by the awful catastrophe which took place on August 24, A.D. 79, and buried the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii in a layer of mingled mud, lava, pumice stone, dust and wet ashes. In less than thirty-six hours Vesuvius had completely blotted out these towns and had covered the ground around for miles with pumice stones, barely as large as walnuts, to the depth of ten feet. Of the twenty thousand people who are estimated to have been in Pompeii when destruction came upon the doomed country, about two thousand perished, the rest saved themselves by flight; but fortunately for the people of our own time they were compelled to leave behind them most of the things which describe to the student and antiquary the manner of their lives, and reveal the high standard in luxury and artistic civilisation to which they had attained. The blow fell so suddenly, and the overwhelming of the city was so swiftly and effectively performed, that men and animals had no time to die in the usual manner, and the ashes which caked round them have preserved forms and scenes which, though belonging to the dead and dying, are replete with unerring suggestions of life.