Pausilypon, the imperial villa near Naples, with a description of the submerged foreshore and with observations on the tomb of Virgil and on other Roman antiquities on Posilipo

Front matter

IPe?

I’rel. Acad. Oxon. et imp.

:he in the imperial villa.

Preface

The primary object of this work is to provide students of Archaeology with a comprehensive description, as complete as possible, of the extant remains of the Imperial Villa on Posilipo. With this aim the site was surveyed, an inventory of the antiquities taken and the results of researches, carried on in vacations between the years 1893 and 1907, combined with an account of what little may be gleaned from ancient writers and with the records of previous investigators. To all this I have added a resume of my discoveries of the nearer submarine antiquities, previously described in Earth-movements in the Bay of Naples , both because they formed an integral part of the Imperial Villa and because that book, now nearly out of print, is likely to become rare. Those studies are still the only ones in the domain of submarine archaeology that have been published, but the recent rumour of the finding of a submerged Greek town on Pharos Bank off the Island of Lemnos in the Afgean seems to indicate that there may be other and wider areas for research.

No description of the Pausilypon has yet appeared in English, nor indeed are the Italian accounts much more than meagre reports on the early excavations of di Pietro. It has been our good fortune to find there a classical site of first-rate importance almost untouched by modern scientific archaeologists. To many it is less attractive because the portable antiquities have been pilfered : the local scholars and antiquaries are so fully taken up with the amount of work still to be done in Pompeii and on other Campanian sites, that they cannot extend their operations ; yet in point of importance the site of Pausilypon is second to none in all that classic region, and is worthy of the closest and most scientific study and investigation.

Some apology may be thought necessary for the amount of constructional detail and for the numerous measurements with which the text bristles, but in a first investigation it is impossible to judge what detail may prove to be important and what may not ; and in this case much will assuredly be destroyed before the next survey is ever made. My chief aim throughout has been truth and accuracy, and many of the measurements have been verified on subsequent visits, but I am only too well aware that many errors must have remained undetected, and now I am no longer in a position to check any of the statements.

My opportunities for the prosecution of these studies were very

VI

PREFACE exceptional for an Englishman in Italy. The most important of the sites were in the possession of friends and fellow countrymen. I had the advantage of being able to make my home on the spot, to have the use of boats of good construction, to secure the ready advice of experts, and to preserve amicable relations with the Neapolitan fishermen, a jealous class of men who might otherwise have viewed our proceedings with a lively suspicion.

I gladly take this opportunity of paying a tribute of gratitude to all those who afforded these facilities, particularly to my father-in-law the late Mr. Neville-Rolfe, H.B.M. Consul-General for South Italy, and to the Earl of Rosebery in whose beautiful villa on Posilipo we lived, and whose Neapolitan library, put at my disposal, was of the greatest help; but, when looking out over the sunken foreshore of the Villa, what wouldn’t we have given for five minutes’ chat with one of Lord Rosebery’s Struldbrugs1 whose undimmed memory might bridge the abyss of time and reconstruct for us the scene as Virgil might have seen it ! I must also express my obligations to my kind friend the late Mr. Nelson Foley and to Signor Acampora, the proprietors of the Gaiola Islands and of the buildings of the Imperial Villa on the mainland, to Master Innes Foley for showing me several interesting fragments of terra-cotta or marble that his quick eye had perceived in the heaps of debris and which he had hoarded under the appropriate name of ‘keeping-stuff’, and to my wife for wading through the proof-sheets.

The plans, maps, photographs and drawings have mostly been made by myself, but those which have been borrowed from others are acknowledged in the text. Thanks are due to the Council of the Society ot Antiquaries for permitting me to borrow the illustrations to my previous papers published in Archacologia in 1903 and 1912 respectively. The expenses of part of the investigation, including that of the Baths, were met by a grant from the Craven Fund of Oxford University in 1907, while the President and Fellows of Magdalen College very generously contributed towards the cost of reproduction of the illustrations : indeed without their assistance this work would not have been completed. Nor while acknowledging various sources of assistance must those friends be forgotten who have promised to subscribe for copies of this volume, without their help I should fare but sorrowfully.

Magdalen College, Oxford.

1 ‘ The Struldbrug. A Rectorial Address delivered to the Students of St. Andrews, September 14, 1911, on the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the University’ by Lord Rosebery. Privately printed 1911.

Contents

PAGE

Introductory ...... i

The Grotta di Sejano 21

Appendix

Inscriptions Architecture .

Columns and Bases Capitals Mouldings .

Architraves Building Construction Bricks and Tiles Pavements .

Mural Decorations Mural Paintings Sculpture Stone Utensils Terra-cotta Glass

Uranium Glass Objects of Metal and Bone Coins Index

PAGE 21 1

253 257 273 277 287

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR

Roman Glass Mosaic Wall Painting in the House of Pollio Details of Borders of Mural Paintings Ceiling Decoration ....

Mural Painting ....

Frontispiece Facing p. 69 Page 70 » 74

»» 255

LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS AND DRAWINGS

Fig. 1. The Western Cliffs of Posilipo

3. The Ridge of Posilipo and Island of Nisida from the West

4. Grotta di Posilipo

5. Grotta di Sejano, Western Entrance

7. „ ,, Eastern Entrance

9. View from above the Odeon, looking North ....

10. The Theatre .

12. „ Steps leading up from the Precinctio

13. ,, Eastern Side

14. „ Mural Decorations

15. The Odeon

16. „ Imperial Box and Passage

17. ,, Western Stairway

19. „ Restoration of Stage

20. A Corner of the Peristyle in a Pompeian House

21. The Odeon. Walls

24. Nymphaeum. Hemicycle

29. „ South-west Corner

30. ,, Substructions

31. Ruins on the Cliff over Trentaremi Bay

32. Gaiola Valley, Western Side

36. House of Pollio. Room F

37. ,, Room A

38. „ Painted Borders

39. „ Fresco

42. ,, Ceiling Decoration

43. Tunnel, Upper End

44. ,, South End

53. „ Suspensura

55. The Upper Baths. Lower Storey

56. „ From the West ......

59. ,, Corridor

62. „ The Old Caldarium

63. Frigidarium of Baths at Pompeii

66. Upper Baths. Heated Bath

PAGE

36 38

46 52 54

60 62 66 67 70 in

X

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 67. Upper Baths. Heated Bath

68. „ Furnace Room .

70. Roman Baths

71. Upper Baths. Stokehole of Furnace

76. Hill-side below the ‘ Belvedere ’ .

78. Lead Water-Pipe ....

79. Vineyard Site. North Side

81. ,, South Side.

85. Scoglio di Virgilio. Stucco Columns

86. ,, and Grotta dei Tuoni

87. Quarry Caves in Trentaremi Bay

88. Tufa Quarries „ .

89. Gaiola Channel

90, 91. >> ,, ....

92. Statue of S. Francesco

93. „ a Roman Seaside Divinity

94. Building No. XXIX, below Mr. Foley’s House

96. Scuola di Virgilio in 1768 .

97. „ „ 1894 .

98. ,, „ 1907 .

99. The Gaiola Island

100. ,, Eastern Caves

101. Isolotto di Gaiola

102. Shore of Pausilypon Harbour 104. A Roman Harbour

105. „ „ ....

106. Pausilypon Harbour ....

107. House with the Three Buttresses

109. Casa degli Spiriti ....

112. Marechiano Harbour ....

113. The Old Baths at Marechiano .

115. Site XVI

116. The Temple of Fortune

117. Artificial Caves at Villa Rosebery

119. Wall Painting of Seaside Constructions

The Cavalcanti Tunnel for the Coast Road Catacombs near Rampe del Coroglio Tomb with Amphoras Interior of Catacombs A Sepulchral Chamber Sepulchral Niches The ‘ Tomb of Virgil ’

,, ,, North Wal

55 *

Brick Stamps

138. Carved Marble Fragments

139. Corinthian Capitals

140. ,, ,, . .

142. Pilaster Capitals

148. Ornamented Mouldings

150. Panel Ornament

151. Tiles, Suspensura brick, &c.

153. Mosaic Pavements 155. Plaster Reliefs 156-7. Mural Paintings

PAGE

117 122 124 129 134 138

144 146 146 148

!52

*53

174 176 176

198 198

200 200 212

216 218

229 236 238

254-5

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi

Fig. 158-9. Bearded Dionysos

160. Foot and Arm

161. Fragments

162. Head of Aphrodite (?) .

163. Draped Figure

164. The Nereid

165. Candelabrum Base

166. Table Supports

167. Sarcophagus

168. Pedestal

169. Thyrsus-Head

170. Ring and Knotted Rope .

171. Woman and Steer

172. Battle Frieze

173. Sacrificial Relief

174-5. Reet °f Carnivore and Bull

176-80. Stone Utensils

178. Marble Patera

181. Pedestals

182. Terra-cotta Statuettes and Mural Reliefs

183. Mural Relief

184. Antefix

185-7. Antefixal Tiles

188-9. Miscellaneous Pottery .

190. Lamp

191. Glass Vessel by Ennion . . . .

192-3. Glass Vessels

194. Bronze Hinge and Iron Hook .

195. Bone Veneer

. 261

. 262

• 263

. 269

. 272

• 274

• 275

■ 275

. 276 . 278

• 279 280-2

284-5

. 286 . 287

. 288

. 291

. 292

LIST OF MAPS AND PLANS

2. Campanian Roads

8. A Water Reservoir

11. Theatre, Viridarium and Odeon .... 18. Odeon, Western Stairway

22. Chambers beneath the House of Signor Acampora

25. „ Vertical Section ....

34- >> ........

35- ».

40. ,, North Wall

41. ,, South Wall

45. Tunnel and Vaults

46. Walls near Mosaic Niche

47. Eastern Substructions

48- „

49. Mural Frescoes near Mosaic Niche.

51. Walls on Gaiola Beach

54. Thermae of Caracalla, method of heating

57. Upper Baths. Lower Storey

58. Walls to East of Upper Baths

60. Upper Baths. Middle Storey

61. ,, Steps

64. Pleated Basin of Upper Baths

65. 1, ,, .....

32-3

65 65

85 87

101 103 106 108 1 12 112

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xii

Fig. 69. Restoration of Building over the Furnace Room 72. Building to North of Upper Baths .

Chamber X to West of Upper Baths Room with Four Niches .

Belvedere and Water Reservoir 80. Vineyard Site. Western Side 82. „ South Side

,, West Side

Scoglio di Virgilio Building No. XXIX .

Pausilypon and Marechiano Flarbours 108. Water Reservoir near Casa Marotta hi. Casa degli Spiriti Baths at Marechiano The Rosebery Region

74- 77-

114. 1 18. 128.

The

The Gaiola and Marechiano Regions in 1775

134. Bases of Columns

135. Fluted Columns

Stucco Column on the Scoglio di Virgilio

Stucco Columns, &c. .

Fluted Pilaster Shafts

Cornices, Mouldings and Bracket

146. Architraves ....

147. Ornamented Mouldings .

149. Plaster Cornices and Mouldings 154. Marble Pavements Sketch-Map of the Principal Buildings of the Imperial

PAGE

. 116 . 118

. 119

. 120

. 127

• 137

• 139

• 139

. 142

• 154

• 165

. 172

• 175

. 178

. 197 . 200

. 208 . 219 . 221

• 223

. 224

. 227

. 230 . 232

• 234

• 235

• 237

• 247 Villa and of the

At Ena

The sweep of the coast of the Bay of Naples between the promontories of Misenum and Minerva is interrupted by but one important headland, which still retains the ancient name of Pausilypon or Posilipo. Without going so far as to accept a Greek name as conclusive evidence of the site of a Greek settlement, it may fairly be urged that the position of this headland, situate as it is so far to the windward of the head of the ba}r, is a very favourable one geographically, and would certainly not have been overlooked by the early Greek colonists when they were selecting sites for their townships. There are reasons for the view that the early colony of Parthenope or Palaepolis, the predecessor of Naples, may have been established here.

Tradition takes us further back still, to cave-dwelling Cumaei, remembered for their tunnellings ; but we have no definite record of antiquities on Posilipo belonging to that hazy past.

The principal Roman buildings date from imperial times, and are connected b}^ history and tradition with Vedius Pollio, Virgil, Augustus, and also with Hadrian. In recent years the fame of the antiquities of Posilipo has been obscured by the discoveries of the more perfectly preserved treasures of Pompeii and Herculaneum, yet it should be borne in mind that while the name of Pompeii is known to us from Roman literature only as a name in a bald list of Campanian villages, that of Pausilypon is associated with the greatest of Roman emperors and poets.

In our survey of the principal antiquities on Posilipo we shall include the buildings of the adjoining Regions of Gaiola and Marechiano, now partly beneath the sea, the submerged buildings of the Rosebery Region, the roadways and tunnels of Sejanus and Posilipo, the tombs, the stone quarries, and the harbour and its buildings.

B

The movements of the land which brought many of these buildings under water appear to have taken place between the fifth and the twelfth centuries. They affected a wide area, including, as we have been able to show, the whole of the coast of Campania and Lucania, and, in the Bay of Naples at any rate, have involved a change of level

Fig. i. The Western Cliffs of Posilipo.

of 40 feet in a downward direction, followed by one of 20 feet in an upward direction.

The Imperial Villa of Augustus, the Pausilypum, the principal subject of this memoir, is situated on a spot the charms of which are hardly surpassed anywhere in this locality, though its beauty is so famed that it has passed into proverb.

It was placed at the south-west extremity of Posilipo, the long green promontory which seems, when viewed from the city of Naples, to mark the end of the bay, so completely does it shut out the promontories and islands beyond. The hill-ridge of Posilipo constitutes a natural boundary between the town and that region of burnt rocks whose soils testify to the battle-fields of the giants of subterranean fire and water, the Phlegraean Fields.

Along the shore of the eastern or Naples side of Posilipo the sea ripples upon the grey sands of tiny coves and at the foot of the intervening headlands of tufa rock which slope gently, verdure clad ; and the same gentle features continue where the coastline, bending at the point or ‘capo’, trends south-west for a mile; then at the Gaiola there is an abrupt change, and the coast, running due west, is exposed to the full onslaught of the scirocco : it meets the enemy with serried front, falling deep and precipitous as a buttressed wall into the sea. Here, where the character of the coast changes, the buildings of the Villa stood, sloping down to the sea on the one side, dominating the cliff on the other. A cluster of ruins crowns a prominent rock still associated with the name of Virgil, the ‘ Scoglio di Virgilio’. His rock overhangs the islets of the ‘Gaiola’ ( = caveola ), which in Roman times were one with the mainland and part of a low promontory extending for a quarter of a mile out into the sea. These, together with the wider foreshore, were all covered with numerous buildings.

The space occupied is not large, hardly more than 16 acres, yet few ancient sites have more natural beauties than the Pausilypon ; on one side of the hill the giddy precipices fall sheer into the rippling waters of the cliff-bound Bay of Trentaremi ; on the other, is the luxuriant fertility of the smiling valley of Gaiola. Here, untilled ridges clad in wild copse oak ; there, neat rows of carefully tended vines, and beyond all, the more distant views over the blue sea : strung out in an unrivalled sweep are Vesuvius and the hills of Sorrento, Capri, Nisida, Misenum, and Ischia. Sometimes in clear weather against the sunset sky may be seen the rock isle of Ponza.

It is by no means easy to reconstruct with accuracy a picture of the landscape as the Romans saw it, or of the complex of buildings with which they crowned the heights. On the western side the buildings have shared the fate of the cliffs on which they stood, have crumbled with them and slid with landslips into the sea : a few remaining ruins are in constant peril on walls of rock undermined by quarry-caves of mysterious interest, in which the sea ebbs and flows with hollow gurgles far into the heart of the hill.

Inland to the east the ancient valley-bed has been filled up with

B 2 soil washed down from higher grounds and is now cultivated. On level sites the fallen debris of buildings may be found lying by their foundations ; ot those which have fallen into the sea no trace remains.

But if we miss in these ruins the precision of outline to be found in Pompeii, we have on the other hand natural beauties with which Pompeii cannot compare.

1 he scenery is lovely, every ten yards gives a new landscape, rocks mingle with foliage on the hill slopes, a charming chaos of crags and trees ; crumbling walls half draped with ivy, capped with genista and lentiscus, and linked with long, twining wreaths of bryony ; in spring orchids and anemones are bright like jewels among the grasses: the vegetation is luxuriant and lovely at all seasons. The tufa cliffs though high and barren have a beauty of their own in the variety of shading that time has laid on their surface, in their rugged height, and in the tints of water of varied depths at their feet.

It is remarkable that a site with such varied beauties and interests should exist so near a large town and yet have remained completely out of the world. It is only within the last few years that new houses have sprung up, and that older ones have been again inhabited. A vivid picture of the former desolation of the place is given by the Duke of Buckingham, who visited Posilipo in April, 1828, ‘A lonely hermit is now the only inhabitant of the site of the luxurious Roman’s proud domain. Where millions were spent in enjoyment, a begging friar is the only specimen of mortality ; and on the spot where the festive shouts and the classic songs of thousands were raised in honour of their princely entertainer, a mendicant asks for alms to support a wretched existence. On the shelves of the lonely rocks on which stands the low-browed hermitage, with its simple cross and figures of Franciscan friars cut in stone before its door, we saw the hermit watching the passing vessel, and giving his solitary blessing to the fishermen as their barks glided by his abode.’

Since that date the hermit has disappeared, his hermitage has been turned into a cottage : ragged children play where he fasted and prayed, but a wooden effigy of St. Francis survives, and it will perhaps be long before modern ideas sweep this descendant of a Roman sea-god from his crag. Yet to this very isolation is due that it is possible to make out anything of the ancient buildings at all. Ground plans can for the most part be revealed by excavation, but the superficial treasures have been long removed not only by the systematic search of antiquity-hunters, but also by the incessant pilferings of the tenders of the woods and vineyards.

Still the ground is always worth looking over and especially after heavy rain, when films of moisture polish the fragments of precious marbles and once again revive their decorative colours.

1 But,’ some objector will ask, ‘ what evidence is there that this site is really that of the Augustan Pausilypum?’ Frankly, we have no proof: there are no inscriptions or boundary stones, but we have tradition. There is no other site in the vicinity with buildings of like importance, and, what is more, we were fortunate enough to find evidence that a part of the property was in the imperial possession at the time of Hadrian. The presumption is that he succeeded to it by inheritance. But we must not anticipate history by the conclusions of archaeology.

The Villa is known to us from a passage in Pliny,1 who praises it as ‘a faire house of retreat and pleasure called Pausilypum, in Campania not far from Naples’: but such are the unexpected turns in a reputation, that it has been remembered not for the supreme beauty of its position, nor for the luxurious perfection of its architecture, but as having been the scene of an inhuman display of callousness by the first owner, one Vedius Pollio, who with Mopsus the Lydian and with the grandfather of Agamemnon has often been held up as a monster of cruelty for having caused his slaves to be rent and torn by fish.

Vedius Pollio, a Roman freedman, was a courtier, and a great favourite of Augustus. ‘ He devised experiments of cruelty by means of this creature (muraena) ; for he caused certain slaves condemned to die, to be put into the stewes where these muraenes were kept, to be eaten and devoured by them : not that there were not wilde beasts ynow upon the land for this feat, but because he tooke pleasure to behold a man torne and pluckt in pieces all at once : which pleasant sight he could not see by any other beast upon the land.’ 2

On one occasion when Augustus was a guest at Pausilypum a crystallinum or glass vessel was broken by one of the slaves. The wretch would assuredly have paid the penalty had he not begged his

1 Nat. Hist. ix. 53.

2 Dr. Holland’s translation of Pliny ix. 23.

life of the Emperor, who not only granted the petition, but caused all his host’s glass vessels to be smashed and, instead of the culprit, to be thrown into the fish-tanks, where the fragments may still be lying for the joy of future archaeologists.

This story, which has perhaps as much foundation in fact as any other item of chronique scandaleusc, was current in Roman Society, and Seneca in a brochure, Dc dementia , intended for the perusal of Nero, asks, though not foreseeing the grim humour of addressing the question to that particular prince, ' Who could fail to execrate such a monster as this Vedius Pollio, beyond even the aversion felt by his ill-starred slaves, or to deem a wretch who could fatten fish upon living men, himself worthy of ten thousand deaths?’

But though no respecter of human life, Pollio would appear to have spared no trouble or expense for all that affected the welfare of his fish, and it is not likely that he would be behindhand in the knowledge of the art of pisciculture which was thriving exceedingly in his day.

Like many others, the fish-tanks of Pollio were probably divided by partitions so that such fish as lived in a state of enmity might be kept apart. Notorious among these were the mullet and the sea-pike which ‘ hate one another and be ever at deadly war ’, and the conger and the lamprey 1 which gnaw off one anothers taile ’. Special arrangements would have been made for the renewal, aeration, and cooling or warming of the water, and for the provision of shady grots in which the fish might lie when, in dog days, the direct rays of the sun beat strongly.

Lucullus is said to have been even more extravagant with his pisciculture at the neighbouring villa, the Neapolitanum, nearer Naples. He made a cutting through a mountain to let in an arm of the sea into his fish-pools, the doing whereof cost him more money than the house itself which he there had built. After his death his fish sold for three million sesterces, or about ^8,000.

We have no record that Pollio was as attached to any of his fish as Hortensius at Bauli, who ‘ could not hold but weep for love ’ of a lamprey which died in his pool, or that he decked his fish with golden ear-rings as did Antonia the wife of Drusus. These fish lovers, says Cicero, ‘deemed no moment of their lives more happy than when the creatures first came to eat out of their hands.’ But it is certain that in the Pausilypon aquaria, fish throve remarkably well, and some reached an age not often surpassed by fish living in captivity ; one of the fish dying sixty years after it had been put in by Vedius Pollio, and the fish-pools had become the property of Caesar : two more of the same age and same kind were left, which lived still longer.1

Pollio made a will by which at his death in 15 b.c. the Pausilypon estate passed to Augustus, who also appears to have acquired the Neapolitanum of Lucullus. And so during the first and second centuries most of the finest and largest villas round about Puteoli, Baiae, and Misenum passed into the possession of the Crown either by inheritance or by confiscation. Augustus himself appears to have resided for lengthy periods in or near Naples, and for part of the time at all events the Pausilypon property was in the hands of procuratores, the name of one of whom M. VLPIVS EVPHRATES is preserved to us in an inscription. That the property was still in the imperial possession in the second century a.d. is indicated by a leaden water-pipe, which was found in the upper baths, stamped with the name and title of Hadrian.

The associations of Virgil with Pausilypum are of a more legendary character. History throws no light upon his visits to the Augustan Villa, and any glimmer of recollection of the great poet which might have persisted through the Roman period has paled before the false lights of necromancy which have gathered round Virgil, the great magician of the Dark Ages.

It is foreign to our present purpose to discuss the various traditions concerning Virgil and his magical works, but it should be mentioned that many of the stories about him are believed at the present day as implicitly as ever. Not long ago an old fisherman is reported to have told the following story concerning the ruins commonly known as the ‘ Scuola di Virgilio ’. 1 Sit on that wall,’ said the old man ; ‘ that

is where Virgil used to sit. One often saw him there with his book in his hand, he was a handsome, fresh-looking man ; he knew how with his magic to preserve his youth, these walls were covered with circles and lines. He used to come here with Prince Marcellus and teach him the secrets of the spirit world. Often in the wildest storms, when no fisherman would have dared to go out, thejr used to put to sea in a boat. No rower was ever afraid when Virgil was with him ; the fiercer the storm, the better he liked to be there. Olten he sat up there on the mountain and looked out towards the gull. Many of his books he wrote there. No doubt they were prophecies which he wrote, for there was never a storm but he foretold its coming. Then he visited the gardeners and field labourers and gave

1 Pliny ix. 53.

them good advice,1 and taught them when to sow their corn. Often when cloud and storm were coming down from Vesuvius he would turn them back with a powerful spell, and often he would spend whole nights with his face towards the mountain when the lightnings were beginning to flash about its head, perhaps in silent converse with its spirits. There had long been talk of making a road from Naples over Posilipo ; he came to our aid, and in one night his spirits had built the road through the cave. Another time he helped us in a wonderful way ; the gnats had become as great a plague here as they were in Egypt in the days of Moses. So he made a great golden fly, which rose at his command into the air and drove all the gnats away. So too once all the wells and fountains had become infested with leeches ; he made a golden leech, threw it into a well and the plague was stayed.’ It is not easy to believe that a people to whom these stories have meant so much, should have forgotten the site of the grave of their hero, especially as at a later period the very presence of his grave was believed to be intimately connected with the welfare of the city. But the consideration of this subject as well as of his tunnelling must be reserved for the appropriate chapters.

We were not without hope of finding some graffito upon a wall which might have further corroborated what is already known concerning the extraordinary popularity of Virgil in the neighbourhood of Naples, witness the numerous quotations from the Aeneid on Pompeian walls, many of which were undoubtedly due to the fact that the works of Virgil were used as reading-books for schoolboys at an early date.2

Almost certain it is that his poems were recited,3 and the dramatized versions of parts of them were acted either in odeons or in theatres. We know, for instance, that a Virgilian pantomime, Turnus, had found such favour with Nero that he vowed he would perform it himself in the event of his escaping from his troubles.4