EXCAVATING HERCULANEUM

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 552, 3 January 1929, Page 13

EXCAVATING HERCULANEUM

VERGE OF NEW DISCOVERIES FINDING OF PUBLIC BATHS A year has passed since excavations •were resumed at Herculaneum, Rome. The results of the -work done are considered very satisfactory. They have led. not so much to dramatic discoveries of priceless objects of ancient art, as to the acquirement of much additional knowledge about the city itself; its standard of civilisation; its shops and houses and the public and private life led by the inhabitants until that fatal August day in 79 A.D. The system of excavation is by no means solely directed, as in Bourbon times, to the discovery and prompt removal of portable property; it aims at preserving the outlines of streets and buildings on the spot, by shoring up crumbling walls, carefully securing carbonised remains within sheets of plate glass, and repairing fragments of stucco decoration and flaking-off frescoes. All this takes time and patience, and no smail archaeological knowledge, but it is having its reward. The most recent excavations have been made following the line of a cardo—street running from north to south —leading to the port. Here a.n insula, or group of houses, has been laid bare, which obviously belonged io simple people. There is no luxury here, only the ordinary decorations of! a decent middle-class house and pathetic traces of domestic life, such as a child's bed in an upper room, and a little cupboard containing cup. 3 and plates and the carbonised remains of fruit and biscuits. One hoase in this insula is unique in revealiDg traces of two floors above the upper ground floor. Houses at Pompeii with one upper floor are very rare; a two-storeyed house seems like an ancient skyscraper. It has. an atrium and a peristyle decorated with simple frescoes on a red background, some o? which represent gardens laid out in geometrical patterns. The upper rooms are small bedrooms separated by decorated partitions. The red walls are enlivened with designs of rampant animals and fantastic architecture. Besides the child's bed already mentioned, remains of other beds have been foupd here, and partially carbonised articles of furniture, such as a small wardrobe.

Important Discovery? It seems likely that the excavators of Herculaneum will soon have the satisfaction of announcing a really important discovery which should yield a rich store of artistic objects. In following the course of a decumanus, or principal street running from east to they have come upon unmistakable traces of the Thermae, or public baths of Herculaneum, the very exist cure of which was unknown. There is no mention of them in any of the Bourbon reports, nor are they indicated in any of the maps made by previous excavators. For the moment things are at a standstill, for the Thermae extend under that portion of the little hill-town of Besint. which it is proposed to demolish, the inhabitants being removed elsewhere.