Pompeii

The beautiful town of Pompeii was in its full glory at the commencement of the Christian era, and was a city of wealth and refinement, having thirty-five thousand inhabitants.

The town was beautifully located at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, on the bay of Naples.

The whole district is volcanic; and a few years before the final catastrophe (A. D. 63), an earthquake had shaken Pompeii to its foundations.

On Aug. 24, A. D. 79, occurred that terrific eruption of Mount Vesuvius which in one day overwhelmed the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae.

For more than sixteen hundred years Pompeii lay undisturbed in its bed of ashes and hardened mud from twenty to seventy feet deep. In 1689 some antique bronzes and utensils were discovered there by a peasant, but it was not until 1755 that excavations were begun. These have been assiduously prosecuted, until to-day three hundred and sixty houses, temples, theatres, schools, stores, factories, etc., have been thrown open before us with their treasured contents, thereby giving us a perfect picture of a city of eighteen hundred years ago.

The remains found are in a remarkable state of preservation, owing to the fact that the city was destroyed, not by lava, but by showers of ashes, sand, and cinders, which penetrated into every nook, and, as it were, hermetically sealed up the town.

The excavations were commenced in 1785 by order of Charles III., and have been carried on by the Neo-politan Government ever since.

In 1816 Ferdinand I. appropriated the museum at Naples for the reception of the spoils from Pompeii and Herculaneum.

A number of halls, entirely occupied by frescoes and mosaics chiefly found at Pompeii, are called the Pompeian Halls. Bulwer's "Last Days of Pompeii" contains a fine description of the eruption which destroyed the city, and of its present appearance.

"Nearly seventeen centuries had rolled away when the city of Pompeii was disinterred from its silent tomb, all vivid with undimmed hues; its walls fresh as if painted yesterday, not a line faded on the rich mosaic of its floors, in the forum the half-finished columns as left by the workmen's hand, in its gardens the sacrificial tripod, in its halls the chest of treasure, in its baths the strigil, in its theatre the counter of admission, in its saloons the furniture and the lamp, in its triclinia the fragments of the last feast, in its cubicula the perfumes and the rouge of fated beauty, and everywhere the bones and skeletons of those who once moved the springs of that minute yet gorgeous machine of luxury and life."