HERCULANEUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 154, 2 July 1927, Page 25

HERCULANEUM.

THE NEW EXCAVATIONS. SEVEN-TIMES-BURIED CZTT. A RICHER QUARRY THAN POMPEII TREASURES ALREADY RECOVERED.

Keen interest is being taken in Italy in the opening of tbc new excavations on the site of Hcrculancuin, which now lies buried under the debris of seven eruptions from Vesuvius, and beneath the populous town of Kesiua. There are many reasons which make Hercuianeum a far more exciting quarry ground than Pompeii. First of all, Hercuianeum was too much under the cone of the volcano for the inhabitants to tarry on that terrible day, and they could not return to search for their belongings like their neighbours at Pompeii, where far more lives were lost just because of these return journeys. But if at Hercuianeum property was lost to the owners, it was left for posterity in the safe custody of mother earth. Furthermore, the mud and ashes, mixing with the torrents which flowed on either side of the town, formed a kind of matrix, and preserved the works of art in a wonderful way. The marble excavated is not calcined, the glass is not melted, and not only is the outline of every bronze statue unimpaired, but its delicate surface patina is almost as fresh as when the artist left his work. Lastly, while Pompeii was essentially a prosperous commercial town, Hercuianeum was the museum of Greco-Roman art, as the wealthy patricians, scholars and war profiteers, who built palaces and country houses here, were all patrons and lovers of Hellenistic culture. Citizens of Hercuianeum. Hercuianeum seems to have been treasured in' this sense by her inhabitants, and each one" who could added to -her delights, conveniences and beauty. A wide street bordered with columned porticoes leads from the theatre, which Annius Ruus built and adorned with equestrian statues and bronze chariots, to the Forum, where a basilica stood, built by M. Nonius Balbus. Batbns was praetor and proconsul, and a room in the Naples Museum is full of the statues, busts and equestrian portraits of members of the family. There were fine-paintings in the Temple of Hercules, and other temples adorned the town. - On the opposite side of a. amall ravine an enthusiast for Epicurean philosophy, and fortunately also of Hellenistic art, built the famous Villa Suburbana, and laid out. a formal garden round an impluvium, which he filled with some 90 Works of art, statues and busts, dancing fauna and wrestlers. The inlaid presses of his library were filled with nearly two thousand papyri. No one wants to read them, but the sight of them in the museum- fires every scholar .with hopes of future finds. If, instead of a one author-reader, and he an Epicurean, the library of a Benedetto Croce of the period could be discovered, there might be. a chance of opening the lost books of Livy. The Villa Suburbana has, never been fully excavated. The .Great Eruption. The history of the little town suddenly ceased'one August day in 79 A.D. The theatre had'just been built, Vespasianl had rebuilt the temple dedicated to the mother of-all the gods, and the patriotic Batbus had barely completed the'repairs to the city walls and towers, all of which had suffered from the bad earthquake of 63 A.D. The terror and the pity of those days, when Vesuvius poured out the full vials of wrath on Hercuianeum and Pompeii, are revealed to us in the letters of Pliny, who was a youth' of eighteen at the time. He was staying at Miseno, where his uncle, the elder Pliny, was in command of the fleet. Few characters in far-away history are so vividly alive as Pliny, the 1 uncle with a passion for taking notes, who, while he is scrubbed and lathered in the bath, dictates notes about phenomena! On the day of the disaster Pliny the elder is distracted between his desire to help his friend Pomponianus and the wretched fugitives, and his longing,to study the strange workings of Vesuvius. His sailors try to detain him. "Fortune favours the brave," quotes the learned Pliny, and sails to Staibiae, the modern Castellamare. He dies on the shore, suffocated by the fumes, while his companions are put to flight'by the onrushihg flames. For nearly seven centuries oblivion fell, on Hercuianeum. Then, in 1709, Prince d'Elboeuf, an Austrian general, drawn to its shores like many another weary celebrity, built a villa and wanted antMoea. A friendly merchant of Naples <!|ivised him to dig in the neighbourhood, and the happy ' prince -found* a* splendid quarry. While sinking a shaft he penetrated into passages which, led him into the orchestra of the Greco-Roman theatre of Hercuianeum. His villa was filled with statues and marbles, a wonder on earth, it is said. A little later, under Charles HI. of Bourbon, excavations were continued, and the chief glories, now in the Naples Museum, chiefly from Villa Suburbana, were discoycredt a