The Last Days of Pompeii ... Second copyright edition

Front matter

BY SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, BART. " Such Is Vesuvius ! and these things take place in it everyyear. Bat aU eruptions which have happened since would be trifling, even if aU summed into one, compared to what occurred at the period we refer to " Day was turned into night, and light into darkness ;— an inexpressible quantity of dust and ashes was poured out, deluging land, sea, and air, and burying two entire cities, Herculaneum and Pompeii, wliile the people were sitting in the theatre."— Dion Cassius, lib. Ixvi. LONDON : W. ROPER & Co., THE KILBURN BON MARCHE, N.W.

Preface

. On visiting those disinterred remains of an ancient City, which, more perhaps than either the delicious breeze or the cloudless sun, the violet valleys and orange groves of the South, attract the traveller to the neighbor hood of Naples ; on viewing, still fresh and vivid, the houses, the streets the temples, the theatres of a place existing in the haughtiest age of the Roman empire — it was not unnatural, perhaps, that a writer who had before labored, however unworthily, in the art to revive and to create, should feel a keen desire to people once more those deserted streets, to repair those graceful ruins, to reanimate the bones which were yet spared to his sur vey ; to traverse the gulf of eighteen centuries, and to wake to a second existence — the City of the Dead ! And the reader will easily imagine how sensibly this desire grew upon one whose task was undertaken in the immediate neighborhood of Pompeii — the sea that once bore her commerce, and received her fugitives, at his feet — and the fatal mountain of Vesuvius, still breathing forth smoke and fire, constantly before his eyes ! * * * Nearly the whole of this work was written at Naples last winter (1832-3).

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. I was aware from the first, however, of the great diffi culties with which I had to contend. To paint the man ners, and exhibit the life, of the Middle Ages, required the hand of a master genius ; yet, perhaps, that task was slight and. easy in comparison with the attempt to por tray a far earlier and more unfamiliar period. With the men and customs of the feudal time we have a natural sympathy and bond of alliance; those men were our own ancestors — from those customs we received our own — the creed of our chivalric fathers is still ours — their tombs yet consecrate our churches — the ruins of their castles yet frown over our valleys. We trace in their struggles for liberty and for justice our present institu tions; and in the elements of their social state we behold the origin of our own.

But with the classical age we have no household and familiar associations. The creed of that departed religion, the customs of that past civilization, present little that is sacred or attractive to our northern imaginations ; they are rendered yet more trite to us by the scholastic pedantries which first acquainted us with their nature, and are linked with the recollection of studies which were imposed as a labor, and not cultivated as a delight. Yet the enterprize, though arduous, seemed to me worth attempting ; and in the time and the scene I have chosen, much may be found to arouse the curiosity of the reader, and enlist his interest in the descriptions of the author. It was the first century of our religion ; it was the most civilized period of Rome ; the conduct of the story lies amidst places whose relics we yet trace ; the catastrophe is among the most awful which the trage dies of Ancient History present to our survey.

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. 7 From the ample materials before me, my endeavor has been to select those which would be most attractive to a modern reader ;— the customs and superstitions least unfamiliar to him — the shadows that, when reanimated, would present to him such images as, while they represented the past, might be least uninteresting to the speculations of the present. It did, indeed, require a greater self-control than the reader may at first imagine, to reject much that was most inviting in itself; but which, while it might have added attraction to parts of the work, would have been injurious to the symmetry of the whole. Thus, for instance, the date of my story is that of the short reign of Titus, when Rome was at its proudest and most gigantic eminence of luxury and power. It was, therefore, a most inviting temptation to the Author to conduct the characters of his tale, during the progress of its incidents, from Pompeii to Rome.

What could afford such materials for description, or such field for the van ity of display, as that gorgeous city of the world, whose grandeur could lend so bright an inspiration to fancy — so favorable and so solemn a dignity to research ? But, in choosing for my subject — my catastrophe, the De struction of Pompeii, it required but little insight into the higher principles of art to perceive that to Pompeii the story should be rigidly confined. Placed in contrast with the mighty pomp of Eome, the luxuries and gaud of the vivid Campanian city would have sunk into insignificance. Her awful fate would have seemed but a petty and isolated wreck in the vast seas of the imperial sway ; and the auxiliary I should have summoned to the interest of my story, would only have destroyed and overpowered the cause it was in-

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. voked to support. I was therefore compelled to re linquish an episodical excursion so alluring in itself, and, confining my story strictly to Pompeii, to leave to others the honor of delineating the hollow but majestic civilization of Rome. The city, whose fate supplied me with so superb and awful a catastrophe, supplied easily, from the first survey of its remains, the characters most suited to the subject and the scene : the .half-Grecian colony of Hercules, mingling with the manners of Italy so much of the costumes of Hellas, suggested of itself the characters of Glaucus and Ione. The worship of Isis, its existent fane, with its false oracles unveiled — the trade of Pompeii with Alexandria — the associations of the Sarnus with the Nile, — called forth the Egyptian Arbaces, the base Calenus, and the fervent Apæcides.

The early struggles of Christianity with the heathen superstition suggested the creation of Olinthus ; and the burnt fields of Campania, long celebrated for the spells of the sorceress, naturally produced the Saga of Vesuvius. For the existence of the Blind Girl, I am indebted to a casual conversation with a gentleman, well known amongst the English at Naples for his general knowledge of the many paths of life. Speaking of the utter darkness which accompanied the first recorded eruption of Vesuvius, and the additional obstacle it presented to the escape of the inhabitants, he observed that the blind would be the most favored in such a moment, and find the easiest deliverance. In this remark originated the creation of Nydia. The characters, therefore, are the natural offspring of the scene and time. The incidents of the tale are

PREFACE.

. 9 equally consonant, perhaps, to the then existent society ; for it is not only the ordinary habits of life, the feasts and the -forum, the baths and the amphitheatre, the common-place routine of the classic luxury, -which we recall the past to behold; — equally important, and more deeply interesting, are the passions, the crimes, the misfortunes, and reverses that might have chanced to the shades we thus summon to life ! We understand any epoch of the world but ill if we do not examine its romance. There is as much truth in the poetry of life as in its prose. As the greatest difficulty in treating of an unfamiliar and distant period is to make the characters introduced "live and move " before the eye of the reader, so such should doubtless be the first object of a work of the present description ; and all attempts at the display of learning should be considered but as means subservient to this, the main requisite of fiction.

The first art of the Poet (the creator) is to breathe the breath of life into his creatures — the next is to make their words and actions appropriate to the era in which they are to speak and act. This last art is, perhaps the better effected by not bringing the art itself constantly before the reader — by not crowding the page with quotations, and the margin with notes. The intuitive spirit which infuses antiquity into ancient images, is, perhaps the true learning which a work of this nature requires ; without it, pedantry is offensive — with it, useless. No man who is thoroughly aware of what Prose Fiction has now become — of its dignity, of its influence, of the manner in which it has gradually absorbed all similar departments of literature, of its power in teaching as

PREFACE.

. well as amusing — can so far forget its connection with History, with Philosophy, with Politics — its utter harmony with Poetry and obedience to Truth — as to debase its nature to the level of scholastic frivolities : he raises scholarship to the creative, and does not bow the creative to the scholastic. With respect to the language used by the characters introduced, I have studied carefully to avoid what has always seemed to me a fatal error in those who have attempted, in modern times, to introduce the beings of a classical age.* Authors have mostly given to them the stilted sentences, the cold and didactic solemnities of language which they find in the more admired of the * What the strong common sense of Sir Walter Scott has expressed so well in the Preface to " Ivanhoe " (1st edition), appears to me at least as applicable to a writer who draws from classical as to one who borrows from feudal antiquity.

Let me avail myself of the words I refer to, and humbly and reverently appropriate them for the moment : — " It is true that I neither can, nor do pretend, to the observation [observance ? ] of complete accuracy even in matters of outward costume, much less in the more important points of language and manners. But the same motive which prevents my writing the dialogue of the piece in Anglo-Saxon, or in Norman-French [in Latin or in Greek], and which prohibits my send ing forth this essay printed with the types of Caxton or Wynken de Worde [written with a reed upon five rolls of parchment, fastened to a cylinder, and adorned with a boss], prevents my attempting to confine myself within the limits of the period to which my story is laid. It is necessary, for exciting interest of any kind, that the subject assumed should be, as it were, translated into the manners as well as the language of the age we live in. ********* " In point of justice, therefore, to the multitudes who will, I trust, devour this book with avidity [hem,!], I have so far explained ancient manners in modern language, and so far detailed the characters and sentiments of my persons, that the modern reader will not find himself, I should hope, much trammelled by the repulsive dryness of mere antiquity.

In this, I respectfully contend, I have in no respect exceeded the fair license due to the author of a fictitious composition. * * * # * * * .■• * "It is true," proceedes my authority, " that this license is confined within legitimate bounds ; the author must introduce nothing inconsis tent with the manners of the age." — Preface to "Ivanhoe." I can add nothing to these judicious and discriminating remarks : they form the canons of true criticism, by which all fiction that portrays the past should be judged.

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. 11 classical writers. It is an error as absurd to make Romans in common life talk in the periods of Cicero, as it would be in a novelist to endow his English personages with the long-drawn sentences of Johnson or Burke. The fault is the greater, because while it pretends to learning, it betrays in reality the ignorance of just criticism — it fatigues, it wearies, it revolts — and we have not the satisfaction, in yawning, to think that we yawn eruditely. To impart anything like fidelity to the dialogues of classic actors, we must beware (to use a university phrase) how we " cram" for the occasion ! Nothing can give to a writer a more stiff and uneasy gait than the sudden and hasty adoption of the toga. We must bring to our task the familiarized knowledge of many years ; the allusions, the phraseology, the lan guage generally must flow from a stream that has long been full ; the flowers must be transplanted from a living soil, and not bought second-hand at the nearest market-place.

This advantage — which is, in fact, only that of familiarity with our subject — is one derived rather from accident than merit, and depends upon the degree in which the classics have entered into the education of our youth and the studies of our maturity. Yet, even did a writer possess the utmost advantage of this nature which education and study can bestow, it might be scarcely possible so entirely to transport* him self to an age so different from his own, but that he would incur some inaccuracies, some errors of inadvert ence or forgetfulness. And when, in works upon the manners of the Ancients — works even of the gravest character, composed by the profoundest scholars — some such imperfections will often be discovered, even by a

PREFACE.

. critic in comparison but superficially informed, it would be far too presumptuous in me to hope that I have been more fortunate than men infinitely more learned, in a work in which learning is infinitely less required. It is for this reason that I venture to believe that scholars themselves will be the most lenient of my judges. Enough if this book, whatever its imperfections, should be found a portrait — unskilful, perhaps, in coloring, faulty in drawing, but not altogether unfaithful to the features and the custom of the age which I have at tempted to paint. May it be (what is far more important) a just representation of the human passions and the human heart, whose elements in all ages are the same ! THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. BOOK THE FIRST.

Chapter I

The two gentlemen of Pompeii. " Ho, Diomed, well met ! Do you sup with Glaucus to night ? " said a young man of small stature, who wore his tunic in those loose and effeminate folds which proved him to be a gentleman and a coxcomb. " Alas, no ! dear Clodius ; he has not invited me," replied Diomed, a man of portly frame and of middle age. " By Pollux, a scurvy trick! for they say hissuppersare the best in Pompeii." ". Pretty well — though there is never enough of wine for me. It is not the old Greek blood that flows in his veins, for he pre tends that wine makes him dull the next morning." " There may be another reason for that thrift," said Diomed, raising his brows. " With all his conceit and extravagance he is not so rich, I fancy, as he affects to be, and perhaps loves to save his amphoræ better than his wit."

" An additional reason for supping with him while the ses terces last. Next year, Diomed, we must find another Glaucus." " He is fond of the dice, too, I hear." " He is fond of every pleasure ; and while he likes the pleasure of giving suppers, we are all fond of him." " Ha, ha, Clodius, that is well said ! Have you ever seen my wine-cellars, by the bye ? " " I think not, my good Diomed." " Well, you must sup with me some evening ; I have toler able murænæ * in my reservoir, and I will ask Pansa the ædile to meet you." "0, no state with me ! — Persicos odi apparatus, I am easily contented. Well, the day wanes ; I am for the baths— and you " " To the quæstor — business of state — afterwards to the tem ple of Isis. Vale ! " " An ostentatious, bustling, ill-bred fellow," muttered Clo dius to himself, as he sauntered slowly away.

" He thinks with his feasts and his wine-cellars to make us forget that he is the son of a freedman : — and so we will, when we do him the honor of winning his money ; these rich plebeians are a harvest for us spendthrift nobles." Thus soliloquizing, Clodius arrived in the Via Domitiana, which was crowded with passengers and chariots, and exhibited all that gay and animated exuberance of life and motion which we find at this day in the streets of Naples. The bells of the cars as they rapidly glided by each other, jingled merrily on the ear, and Clodius with smiles or nods claimed familiar acquaintance with whatever equipage was most elegant or fantastic : in fact, no idler was better known in Pompeii. " What, Clodius ! and how have you slept on your good fortune?" cried, in a pleasant and musical voice, a young man, in a chariot of the most fastidious and graceful fashion.

Upon its surface of bronze were elaborately wrought, in the still ex quisite workmanship of Greece, reliefs of the Olympian games ; the two horses that drew the car were of the rarest breed of Parthia ; their slender limbs seemed to disdain the ground and court the air, and yet at the slightest touch of the charioteer, who stood behind the young owner of the equipage, they paused motionless, as if suddenly transformed into stone — lifeless, but life-like, as one of the breathing wonders of Praxiteles. The owner himself was of that slender and beautiful symmetry from which the sculptors of Athens drew their models ; his Grecian origin betrayed itself in his light but clustering locks, and the perfect harmony of his features. He wore no toga, which in the time of the emperors had indeed ceased to be the general distinction of the Romans, and was especially ridiculed by the pretenders to fashion ; but his tunic glowed in the richest hues of the Tyrian dye, and the fibulæ, or buckles, by which it was * Murœnœ — lampreys.

TBE LAST DA YS OF POMPEII. 15 fastened, sparkled with emeralds : around his neck was a chain of gold, which in the middle of his breast twisted itself into the form of a serpent's head, from the mouth of which hung pendent a large signet ring of elaborate and most exquisite.workmanship ; the sleeves of the tunic were loose, and fringed at the hand with gold : and across the waist a girdle wrought in ara besque designs, and of the same material as the fringe, served in lieu of pockets for the receptacle of the handkerchief and the purse, the stilus and the tablets. "My dear Glaucus !" said Clodius, " I rejoice to see that your losses have so little affected your mien. Why, you seem as if you had been inspired by Apollo, and your face shines with happiness like a glory ; any one might take you for the winner, and me for the loser."

" And what is there in the loss or gain of those dull pieces of metal that should change our spirit, my Clodius ? By Venus, while yet young, we can cover our full locks with chaplets — while yet the cithara sounds on unsated ears — while yet the smile of Lydia or of Chloe flashes over our veins in which the blood runs so swiftly, so long shall we find delight in the sunny air, and make bald timei itself but the treasurer of our joys. You sup with me to-night, you know." " Who ever forgets the invitation of Glaucus ! " " But which way go you now ? " " Why, I thought of visiting the baths ; but it wants an hour to the usual time." " Well, I will dismiss my chariot, and go with you. So so, my Phylias," stroking the horse nearest to him, which by a low neigh and with backward ears playfully acknowledged the courtesy : " a holiday for you to-day. Is he not handsome, Clodius ? " " Worthy of Phoebus," returned the noble parasite, — "or of Glaucus."

Chapter II

The blind flower-girl, and the beauty of fashion. — The Athenian's confession. — The reader's introduction to Arbaces of Egypt. TALKING lightly on a thousand matters, the two young men sauntered through the streets : they were now in that quarter which was filled with the gayest shops, their open interiors all and each radiant with the gaudy yet harmonious colors of frescoes, inconceivably varied in fancy and design. The sparkling fountain s, that at every vista threw upwards their grateful spray in the summer air; the crowd of passengers, or rather loiterers, mostly clad in robes of the Tyrian dye ; the gay groups col lected round each more attractive shop ; the slaves passing to and fro with buckets of bronze, cast in the most graceful shapes, and borne upon their heads S the country girls stationed at frequent intervals with baskets of blushing fruit, and flowers more alluring to the ancient Italians than to their descendants (with whom, indeed, " latet anguis in herba," a disease seems lurking in every violet and rose),* the numerous haunts which fulfilled with that idle people the office of cafes and clubs at this day ; the shops, where on shelves of marble were ranged the vases of wine aud oil, and before whose thresholds, seats. protected from the sun by a purple awning, invited the weary to rest and the indolent to lounge — made a scene of such glow ing and vivacious excitement, as might well give the Athenian spirit of Glaucus an excuse for its susceptibility to joy.

" Talk to me no more of Rome," said he to Clodius. " Pleasure is too stately and ponderous in those mighty walls : even in the precincts of the court — even in the Golden House of Nero, and the incipient glories of the palace of Titus, there is a certain dulness of magnificence — the eye aches — the spirit is wearied ; besides, my Clodius, we are discontented when we compare the enormous luxury and wealth of others with the mediocrity of our own state. But here we surrender ourselves easily to pleasure, and we have the brilliancy of luxury with out the lassitude of its pomp." " It was from that feeling that you chose your summer re treat at Pompeii ? " " It was. I prefer it to Baiæ : I grant the charms of the latter, but I love not the pedants who resort there, and who seem to weigh out their pleasures by the drachm."

" Yet you are fond of the learned, too ; and as for poetry, why your house is literally eloquent with Æschylus and Homer, the epic and the drama." " Yes, but those Romans who mimic my Athenian ancestors do everything so heavily. Even in the chase they make their slaves carry Plato with them ; and whenever the boar is lost, out they take their books and their papyrus, in order not to lose their time too. When the dancing-girls swim before them in all the blandishment of Persian manners, some drone of a * See note (a) at the end of the volume. freedman, with a face of stone, reads them a section of Cicero " De Officiis." Unskilful pharmacists ! pleasure and study are not elements to be thus mixed together — they must be en joyed separately : the Romans lose both by this pragmatical affectation of refinement, and prove that they have no souls for either.

Oh, my Clodius, how little your countrymen know of the true versatility of a Pericles, of the true witcheries of an Aspasia ! It was but the other day that I paid a visit to Pliny : he was sitting in his summer-house writing, while an unfortunate slave played on the tibia. His nephew (oh ! whip me such philosophical coxcombs !) was reading Thucydides' description of the plague, and nodding his conceited little head in time to the music, while his lips, were repeating all the loathsome de tails of that terrible delineation. The puppy saw nothing in congruous in learning at the same time a ditty of love and a description of the plague." " Why they are much the same," said Clodius. " So I told him, in excuse for his coxcombry ; — but my youth stared me rebukingly in the face, without taking the jest, and answered, that it was only the insensate ear that the music pleased, whereas the book (the description of the plague, mind you !) elevated the heart. ' Ah 1 ' quoth the fat uncle, wheezing, ' my boy is quite an Athenian, always mixing the utile with the dulce! 0 Minerva, how I laughed in my sleeve !

While I was there, they came to tell the boy-sophist that his favorite freed man was just dead of a fever. ' Inexorable death ! ' cried he ; — ' get me my Horace. How beautifully the sweet poet con soles us for these misfortunes ! ' Oh, can these men love, my Clodius ? Scarcely even with the senses. How rarely a Roman has a heart 1 He is but the mechanism of genius — he wants its bones and flesh." Though Clodius was secretly a little sore at these remarks on his countrymen, he affected to sympathize with his friend, partly because he was by nature a parasite, and partly because it was the fashion among the dissolute young Romans to affect alittle contempt for the very birth which, in reality, made them so arrogant : it was the mode to imitate the Greeks, and yet to laugh at their own clumsy imitation.

Thus conversing, their steps were arrested by a crowd gathered round an open space where three streets met ; and, just where the porticos of a light and graceful temple threw their shade, there stood a young girl, with a flower-basket on her ri->*ht arm, and a small three-stringed instrument of music in the left hand, to whose low and soft tones she was modulating a wild and half-barbaric air. At every pause in the music she gracefully waved her flower-basket round, inviting the loiterers to buy ; and many a sesterce was showered into the basket, either in compliment to the music or in compassion to the songstress — for she was blind. " It is my poor Thessalian," said Glaucus, stopping ; " I have not seen her since my return to Pompeii. Hush ! her voice is sweet ; let us listen." THE BLIND FLOWER-GIRL'S SONG. i. " Buy my flowers — 0 buy — I pray !

The blind girl comes from afar ; If the earth be as fair as I hear them say, These flowers her children are ! Do they her beauty keep ? They are fresh from her lap, I know ; For I caught them fast asleep In her arms an hour ago With the air which is her breath — Her soft and delicate breath — Over them murmuring low ! On their lips her sweet kiss lingers yet, And their cheeks with her tender tears are wet. For she weeps — that gentle mother weeps — (As morn and night her watch she keeps, With a yearning heart and a passionate care) To see the young things grow so fair, She weeps — for love she weeps ; And the dews are the tears she weeps, From the well of a mother's love ! n. Ye have a world of light, Where love in the loved rejoices ; But the blind girl's home is the House of Night And its beings are empty voices.

As one in the realm below, I stand by the stream of woe ! I hear the vain shadows glide, I feel their soft breath at my side. And I thirst the loved forms to see, And I stretch my fond arms around, And I catch but a shapeless sound, For the living are ghosts to me. Come buy — come buy ! — Hark 1 how the sweet things sigh (For they have a voice like ours), ' The breath of the blind girl closes The leaves of the saddening roses — We are tender, we sons of light, We shrink from this child of night, From the grasp of the blind girl free us We yearn for the eyes that see us — We are for night too gay, In your eyes we behold the day — 0 buy — 0 buy the flowers ! ' " "I must have yon bunch of violets, sweet Nydia," said Glaucus, pressing through the crowd, and dropping a handful of small coins into the basket ; " your voice is more charming than ever."

The blind girl started forward as she heard the Athenian's voice ; then as suddenly paused, while the blood rushed violently over neck, cheek, and temples. " So you are returned ! " said she, in a low voice ; and then repeated half to herself, " Glaucus is returned ! " " Yes, child, I have not been at Pompeii above a few days. My garden wants your care, as before ; you will visit it, I trust, to-morrow. And mind, no garlands at my house shall be woven by any hands but those of the pretty Nydia." Nydia smiled joyously, but did not answer ; and Glaucus, placing in his breast the violets he had selected, turned gayly and carelessly from the crowd. " So, she is a sort of client of yours, this child ? " said Clodius. "Ay — does she not sing prettily? She interests me, the poor slave ! Besides, she is from the land of the God's hill — Olympus frowned upon her cradle — she is of Thessaly."