ANCIENT POMPEII

Taranaki Daily News, 14 February 1931, Page 13 (Supplement)

ANCIENT POMPEII

WHEN YEARS FALL AWAY

.(By

“Senex.”)

For the archaeologist Pompeii, where one of the most important archaelogical discoveries of modern days is said to have been made recently, has been a veritable treasure house from the day that excavations were first begun. It has furnished the student of the civilisation of ancient Rome with a wealth of first hand knowledge which, coupled with that drawn from the well-preserved literature of the people, allows him a deep insight into the life of a community that has had a great influence in several directions upon our own. Not only is Pompeii interesting to, the learned student. A visit to the ruins provides a most thrilling day for even the casual observer. Naples is a port of call for the ships of many lines passing through the Mediterranean and Suez to Australia, and scarcely a passenger misses ah opportunity of the drive along the newly constructed motor-road that passes by the foot of Vesuvius and affords splendid panoramas of Castellamniare and Torre del Greco .nestling below it on the shores of the famous bay. “You wanta go Pompeii. I take-a you cheap,” greets one from half-a-dozen taxi-men stationed on the wharf ready to extort as large a sum as possible as the price of the fare. They are cunning bargainers and adepts at bluffing, so that.after reducing the sum first asked by about half they still collect a substantial [profit. . Once out of a maze of dirty back streets in the poorer, quarter of Naples one reaches the motor road where a toll is levied upon each car. The road should soon be paid for. For a car occupied by a driver and four passengers the charge was 26 lire, rather more than five shillings. Vineyards lie on either side of the road, their rich fruits born of the once death-dealing deposits from the volcano towering above them. The dark, almost black, slopes of Vesuvius contrast vividly with' the enormous volume of white smoke rolling ceaselessly from the lips of its crater. At intervals the white turns to yellow, orange and almost red as bursts of flame belch forth from the furnace within the crater. Heedless of tlie quiescent giant, who has slumbered for centuries, brown skinned Neapolitans gather from its lower slopes the rich harvest, for the wine-press. A second toll-house announces the end of the much advertised motor road. The visitors are not allowed to see Pompeii immediately, however. Carefully _ shepherded by guides they are herded into a curio shop where hundreds of antiques, models of. those found during the excavation of Pompeii, are on sale at exorbitant prices. Here and there a suave Italian whispers into the ear of someone whom his trained eye has singled out as a suitable victim that “these pieces in the show case, madam, are of course only replicas. But we have some genuine pieces here which would interest you.” He produces a ponderous key, with which he unlocks and swings open a heavy door of an impressive looking safe.' A few shapeless greenish pieces of bronze are produced and the victim is asked to pay several hundred lire for an antique that appears to, and almost certainly does, have the’same origin as the admitted replicas selling for a few shillings. Outside half a dozen ragged urchins attempt to sell for two or three shillings apiece strings of beads which can be ■bought anywhere in England at sixpence each. On the path to the gate of Pompeii, after one has escaped the clutches of the -endors of “genuine antiques,” two or three pairs of unshaven, unwashed brigands bearing armchairs on poles try to frighten any elderly members of the party into accepting their services by telling of the numerous hills that have to.be climbed,to see Pompeii. One begins to realise that the sentence “Tourists are well catered for at — which appears so often in the pamphlets of every tourist agency, means no less than that the unsuspecting visitor is fleeced and robbed at every point. After these adventures Pompeii needs to be interesting not to pall. Its interest is of a different nature. One passes through the Porta Marina, or Marine Gate, and in a moment slips back through nineteen centuries to the first century of imperial Rome, when her grandeur was ever-increasing. Following the Strada della Marina one passes the Temple of Venus and the Basilica and enters the forum, the wide open space which was the hub of all Roman towns and cities.

Temples and public offieds surround the forum and in one of the temples the guide demonstrates with great relish a cunning speaking tube so contrived that the words of a concealed priest issued from the lips of the God to whom the supplicants prayed. A continuation of the Strada della Marina, the Strada dell’Abbondanza, where the recent discoveries were made, leads from the opposite side, of the forum, wide (for Pompeii) and straight. One is led, however, along a much narrower' back street until suddenly the guide stops before a barred doorway of a roofless house, murmuring something about a dog. There is no need for explanation. One sees a mosaic representing a bristling, fierce, angry-looking dog with the words “cave canein.” Every visitor knows the mosaic and the thoughts of most go back to childhood days when in almost any book for children was a reproduction of the wellknown mosaic which they all once hoped to see.

These are far more interesting than public-buildings, these houses and shops, wherein the ordinary people lived and worked. Huge wine-jars stand, long empty, in the wine-shops. And in the bakers’ shops are the mill-stones between which was ground the corn for the daily bread. These homely scenes help to put one in closer touch with the people. It is not difficult to imagine Romans, clothed in their togas, thronging the narrow footway before these shops, while a chariot moves along the wheel-ruts in the narrow paved street where the stepping stones for pedestrians still stand; or leaning to drink from a beautifully carved fountain whose series are worn into hollows with the rubbing of countless hands; or sitting to meals or reclining in the frescoed rooms and amid the statuary of their gardens; or doing any one of the thousand and one tasks of the day. A complete and full life, exactly as it was being fulfilled when it was stopped on that fateful day of the year 79, is disclosed to marvelling eyes. It is with no small wonder and many disturbing thoughts- that will fill many days of quiet shipboard life that one suddenly leaps' back up the ladder of the centuries at the close of an exciting day.