The Last Days of Pompeii Page 7

  Chapter VII

  THE GAY LIFE OF THE POMPEIAN LOUNGER. A MINIATURE LIKENESS OF THE ROMANBATHS.

  WHEN Glaucus left Ione, he felt as if he trod upon air. In theinterview with which he had just been blessed, he had for the first timegathered from her distinctly that his love was not unwelcome to, andwould not be unrewarded by, her. This hope filled him with a rapturefor which earth and heaven seemed too narrow to afford a vent.Unconscious of the sudden enemy he had left behind, and forgetting notonly his taunts but his very existence, Glaucus passed through the gaystreets, repeating to himself, in the wantonness of joy, the music ofthe soft air to which Ione had listened with such intentness; and now heentered the Street of Fortune, with its raised footpath--its housespainted without, and the open doors admitting the view of the glowingfrescoes within. Each end of the street was adorned with a triumphalarch: and as Glaucus now came before the Temple of Fortune, the juttingportico of that beautiful fane (which is supposed to have been built byone of the family of Cicero, perhaps by the orator himself) imparted adignified and venerable feature to a scene otherwise more brilliant thanlofty in its character. That temple was one of the most gracefulspecimens of Roman architecture. It was raised on a somewhat loftypodium; and between two flights of steps ascending to a platform stoodthe altar of the goddess. From this platform another flight of broadstairs led to the portico, from the height of whose fluted columns hungfestoons of the richest flowers. On either side the extremities of thetemple were placed statues of Grecian workmanship; and at a littledistance from the temple rose the triumphal arch crowned with anequestrian statue of Caligula, which was flanked by trophies of bronze.In the space before the temple a lively throng were assembled--someseated on benches and discussing the politics of the empire, someconversing on the approaching spectacle of the amphitheatre. One knotof young men were lauding a new beauty, another discussing the merits ofthe last play; a third group, more stricken in age, were speculating onthe chance of the trade with Alexandria, and amidst these were manymerchants in the Eastern costume, whose loose and peculiar robes,painted and gemmed slippers, and composed and serious countenances,formed a striking contrast to the tunicked forms and animated gesturesof the Italians. For that impatient and lively people had, as now, alanguage distinct from speech--a language of signs and motions,inexpressibly significant and vivacious: their descendants retain it,and the learned Jorio hath written a most entertaining work upon thatspecies of hieroglyphical gesticulation.

  Sauntering through the crowd, Glaucus soon found himself amidst a groupof his merry and dissipated friends.

  'Ah!' said Sallust, 'it is a lustrum since I saw you.'

  'And how have you spent the lustrum? What new dishes have youdiscovered?'

  'I have been scientific,' returned Sallust, 'and have made someexperiments in the feeding of lampreys: I confess I despair of bringingthem to the perfection which our Roman ancestors attained.'

  'Miserable man! and why?'

  'Because,' returned Sallust, with a sigh, 'it is no longer lawful togive them a slave to eat. I am very often tempted to make away with avery fat carptor (butler) whom I possess, and pop him slily into thereservoir. He would give the fish a most oleaginous flavor! But slavesare not slaves nowadays, and have no sympathy with their masters'interest--or Davus would destroy himself to oblige me!'

  'What news from Rome?' said Lepidus, as he languidly joined the group.

  'The emperor has been giving a splendid supper to the senators,'answered Sallust.

  'He is a good creature,' quoth Lepidus; 'they say he never sends a manaway without granting his request.'

  'Perhaps he would let me kill a slave for my reservoir?' returnedSallust, eagerly.

  'Not unlikely,' said Glaucus; 'for he who grants a favor to one Roman,must always do it at the expense of another. Be sure, that for everysmile Titus has caused, a hundred eyes have wept.'

  'Long live Titus!' cried Pansa, overhearing the emperor's name, as heswept patronizingly through the crowd; 'he has promised my brother aquaestorship, because he had run through his fortune.'

  'And wishes now to enrich himself among the people, my Pansa,' saidGlaucus.

  'Exactly so,' said Pansa.

  'That is putting the people to some use,' said Glaucus.

  'To be sure, returned Pansa. 'Well, I must go and look after theaerarium--it is a little out of repair'; and followed by a long train ofclients, distinguished from the rest of the throng by the togas theywore (for togas, once the sign of freedom in a citizen, were now thebadge of servility to a patron), the aedile fidgeted fussily away.

  'Poor Pansa!' said Lepidus: 'he never has time for pleasure. ThankHeaven I am not an aedile!'

  'Ah, Glaucus! how are you? gay as ever?' said Clodius, joining thegroup.

  'Are you come to sacrifice to Fortune?' said Sallust.

  'I sacrifice to her every night,' returned the gamester.

  'I do not doubt it. No man has made more victims!'

  'By Hercules, a biting speech!' cried Glaucus, laughing.

  'The dog's letter is never out of your mouth, Sallust,' said Clodius,angrily: 'you are always snarling.'

  'I may well have the dog's letter in my mouth, since, whenever I playwith you, I have the dog's throw in my hand,' returned Sallust.

  'Hist!' said Glaucus, taking a rose from a flower-girl, who stoodbeside.

  'The rose is the token of silence,' replied Sallust, 'but I love only tosee it at the supper-table.'

  'Talking of that, Diomed gives a grand feast next week,' said Sallust:'are you invited, Glaucus?'

  'Yes, I received an invitation this morning.'

  'And I, too,' said Sallust, drawing a square piece of papyrus from hisgirdle: 'I see that he asks us an hour earlier than usual: an earnest ofsomething sumptuous.'

  'Oh! he is rich as Croesus,' said Clodius; 'and his bill of fare is aslong as an epic.'

  'Well, let us to the baths,' said Glaucus: 'this is the time when allthe world is there; and Fulvius, whom you admire so much, is going toread us his last ode.'

  The young men assented readily to the proposal, and they strolled to thebaths.

  Although the public thermae, or baths, were instituted rather for thepoorer citizens than the wealthy (for the last had baths in their ownhouses), yet, to the crowds of all ranks who resorted to them, it was afavorite place for conversation, and for that indolent lounging so dearto a gay and thoughtless people. The baths at Pompeii differed, ofcourse, in plan and construction from the vast and complicated thermaeof Rome; and, indeed, it seems that in each city of the empire there wasalways some slight modification of arrangement in the generalarchitecture of the public baths. This mightily puzzles the learned--asif architects and fashion were not capricious before the nineteenthcentury! Our party entered by the principal porch in the Street ofFortune. At the wing of the portico sat the keeper of the baths, withhis two boxes before him, one for the money he received, one for thetickets he dispensed. Round the walls of the portico were seats crowdedwith persons of all ranks; while others, as the regimen of thephysicians prescribed, were walking briskly to and fro the portico,stopping every now and then to gaze on the innumerable notices of shows,games, sales, exhibitions, which were painted or inscribed upon thewalls. The general subject of conversation was, however, the spectacleannounced in the amphitheatre; and each new-comer was fastened upon by agroup eager to know if Pompeii had been so fortunate as to produce somemonstrous criminal, some happy case of sacrilege or of murder, whichwould allow the aediles to provide a man for the jaws of the lion: allother more common exhibitions seemed dull and tame, when compared withthe possibility of this fortunate occurrence.

  'For my part,' said one jolly-looking man, who was a goldsmith, 'I thinkthe emperor, if he is as good as they say, might have sent us a Jew.'

  'Why not take one of the new sect of Nazarenes?' said a philosopher. 'Iam not cruel: but an atheist, one who denies Jupiter himself, deservesno mercy.'

  'I care not how
many gods a man likes to believe in,' said thegoldsmith; 'but to deny all gods is something monstrous.'

  'Yet I fancy,' said Glaucus, 'that these people are not absolutelyatheists. I am told that they believe in a God--nay, in a future state.'

  'Quite a mistake, my dear Glaucus,' said the philosopher. 'I haveconferred with them--they laughed in my face when I talked of Pluto andHades.'

  'O ye gods!' exclaimed the goldsmith, in horror; 'are there any of thesewretches in Pompeii?'

  'I know there are a few: but they meet so privately that it isimpossible to discover who they are.'

  As Glaucus turned away, a sculptor, who was a great enthusiast in hisart, looked after him admiringly.

  'Ah!' said he, 'if we could get him on the arena--there would be a modelfor you! What limbs! what a head! he ought to have been a gladiator! Asubject--a subject--worthy of our art! Why don't they give him to thelion?'

  Meanwhile Fulvius, the Roman poet, whom his contemporaries declaredimmortal, and who, but for this history, would never have been heard ofin our neglectful age, came eagerly up to Glaucus. 'Oh, my Athenian, myGlaucus, you have come to hear my ode! That is indeed an honour; you, aGreek--to whom the very language of common life is poetry. How I thankyou. It is but a trifle; but if I secure your approbation, perhaps I mayget an introduction to Titus. Oh, Glaucus! a poet without a patron isan amphora without a label; the wine may be good, but nobody will laudit! And what says Pythagoras?--"Frankincense to the gods, but praise toman." A patron, then, is the poet's priest: he procures him the incense,and obtains him his believers.'

  'But all Pompeii is your patron, and every portico an altar in yourpraise.'

  'Ah! the poor Pompeians are very civil--they love to honour merit. Butthey are only the inhabitants of a petty town--spero meliora! Shall wewithin?'

  'Certainly; we lose time till we hear your poem.'

  At this instant there was a rush of some twenty persons from the bathsinto the portico; and a slave stationed at the door of a small corridornow admitted the poet, Glaucus, Clodius, and a troop of the bard's otherfriends, into the passage.

  'A poor place this, compared with the Roman thermae!' said Lepidus,disdainfully.

  'Yet is there some taste in the ceiling,' said Glaucus, who was in amood to be pleased with everything; pointing to the stars which studdedthe roof.

  Lepidus shrugged his shoulders, but was too languid to reply.

  They now entered a somewhat spacious chamber, which served for thepurposes of the apodyterium (that is, a place where the bathers preparedthemselves for their luxurious ablutions). The vaulted ceiling wasraised from a cornice, glowingly colored with motley and grotesquepaintings; the ceiling itself was paneled in white compartments borderedwith rich crimson; the unsullied and shining floor was paved with whitemosaics, and along the walls were ranged benches for the accommodationof the loiterers. This chamber did not possess the numerous andspacious windows which Vitruvius attributes to his more magnificentfrigidarium. The Pompeians, as all the southern Italians, were fond ofbanishing the light of their sultry skies, and combined in theirvoluptuous associations the idea of luxury with darkness. Two windowsof glass alone admitted the soft and shaded ray; and the compartment inwhich one of these casements was placed was adorned with a large reliefof the destruction of the Titans.

  In this apartment Fulvius seated himself with a magisterial air, and hisaudience gathering round him, encouraged him to commence his recital.

  The poet did not require much pressing. He drew forth from his vest aroll of papyrus, and after hemming three times, as much to commandsilence as to clear his voice, he began that wonderful ode, of which, tothe great mortification of the author of this history, no single versecan be discovered.

  By the plaudits he received, it was doubtless worthy of his fame; andGlaucus was the only listener who did not find it excel the best odes ofHorace.

  The poem concluded, those who took only the cold bath began to undress;they suspended their garments on hooks fastened in the wall, andreceiving, according to their condition, either from their own slaves orthose of the thermae, loose robes in exchange, withdrew into thatgraceful circular building which yet exists, to shame the unlavingposterity of the south.

  The more luxurious departed by another door to the tepidarium, a placewhich was heated to a voluptuous warmth, partly by a movable fireplace,principally by a suspended pavement, beneath which was conducted thecaloric of the laconicum.

  Here this portion of the intended bathers, after unrobing themselves,remained for some time enjoying the artificial warmth of the luxuriousair. And this room, as befitted its important rank in the long processof ablution, was more richly and elaborately decorated than the rest;the arched roof was beautifully carved and painted; the windows above,of ground glass, admitted but wandering and uncertain rays; below themassive cornices were rows of figures in massive and bold relief; thewalls glowed with crimson, the pavement was skillfully tessellated inwhite mosaics. Here the habituated bathers, men who bathed seven timesa day, would remain in a state of enervate and speechless lassitude,either before or (mostly) after the water-bath; and many of thesevictims of the pursuit of health turned their listless eyes on thenewcomers, recognizing their friends with a nod, but dreading thefatigue of conversation.

  From this place the party again diverged, according to their severalfancies, some to the sudatorium, which answered the purpose of ourvapor-baths, and thence to the warm-bath itself; those more accustomedto exercise, and capable of dispensing with so cheap a purchase offatigue, resorted at once to the calidarium, or water-bath.

  In order to complete this sketch, and give to the reader an adequatenotion of this, the main luxury of the ancients, we will accompanyLepidus, who regularly underwent the whole process, save only the coldbath, which had gone lately out of fashion. Being then gradually warmedin the tepidarium, which has just been described, the delicate steps ofthe Pompeian elegant were conducted to the sudatorium. Here let thereader depict to himself the gradual process of the vapor-bath,accompanied by an exhalation of spicy perfumes. After our bather hadundergone this operation, he was seized by his slaves, who alwaysawaited him at the baths, and the dews of heat were removed by a kind ofscraper, which (by the way) a modern traveler has gravely declared to beused only to remove the dirt, not one particle of which could eversettle on the polished skin of the practised bather. Thence, somewhatcooled, he passed into the water-bath, over which fresh perfumes wereprofusely scattered, and on emerging from the opposite part of the room,a cooling shower played over his head and form. Then wrapping himselfin a light robe, he returned once more to the tepidarium, where he foundGlaucus, who had not encountered the sudatorium; and now, the maindelight and extravagance of the bath commenced. Their slaves anointedthe bathers from vials of gold, of alabaster, or of crystal, studdedwith profusest gems, and containing the rarest unguents gathered fromall quarters of the world. The number of these smegmata used by thewealthy would fill a modern volume--especially if the volume wereprinted by a fashionable publisher; Amaracinum, Megalium, Nardum--omnequod exit in um--while soft music played in an adjacent chamber, andsuch as used the bath in moderation, refreshed and restored by thegrateful ceremony, conversed with all the zest and freshness ofrejuvenated life.

  'Blessed be he who invented baths!' said Glaucus, stretching himselfalong one of those bronze seats (then covered with soft cushions) whichthe visitor to Pompeii sees at this day in that same tepidarium.'Whether he were Hercules or Bacchus, he deserved deification.'

  'But tell me,' said a corpulent citizen, who was groaning and wheezingunder the operation of being rubbed down, 'tell me, O Glaucus!--evilchance to thy hands, O slave! why so rough?--tell me--ugh--ugh!--are thebaths at Rome really so magnificent?' Glaucus turned, and recognizedDiomed, though not without some difficulty, so red and so inflamed werethe good man's cheeks by the sudatory and the scraping he had so latelyundergone. 'I fancy they must be a great deal finer than these. Eh?'Suppressing a smile, Gla
ucus replied:

  'Imagine all Pompeii converted into baths, and you will then form anotion of the size of the imperial thermae of Rome. But a notion of thesize only. Imagine every entertainment for mind and body--enumerate allthe gymnastic games our fathers invented--repeat all the books Italy andGreece have produced--suppose places for all these games, admirers forall these works--add to this, baths of the vastest size, the mostcomplicated construction--intersperse the whole with gardens, withtheatres, with porticoes, with schools--suppose, in one word, a city ofthe gods, composed but of palaces and public edifices, and you may formsome faint idea of the glories of the great baths of Rome.'

  'By Hercules!' said Diomed, opening his eyes, 'why, it would take aman's whole life to bathe!'

  'At Rome, it often does so,' replied Glaucus, gravely. 'There are manywho live only at the baths. They repair there the first hour in whichthe doors are opened, and remain till that in which the doors areclosed. They seem as if they knew nothing of the rest of Rome, as ifthey despised all other existence.'

  'By Pollux! you amaze me.'

  'Even those who bathe only thrice a day contrive to consume their livesin this occupation. They take their exercise in the tennis-court or theporticoes, to prepare them for the first bath; they lounge into thetheatre, to refresh themselves after it. They take their prandium underthe trees, and think over their second bath. By the time it is prepared,the prandium is digested. From the second bath they stroll into one ofthe peristyles, to hear some new poet recite: or into the library, tosleep over an old one. Then comes the supper, which they still considerbut a part of the bath: and then a third time they bathe again, as thebest place to converse with their friends.'

  'Per Hercle! but we have their imitators at Pompeii.'

  'Yes, and without their excuse. The magnificent voluptuaries of theRoman baths are happy: they see nothing but gorgeousness and splendor;they visit not the squalid parts of the city; they know not that thereis poverty in the world. All Nature smiles for them, and her only frownis the last one which sends them to bathe in Cocytus. Believe me, theyare your only true philosophers.'

  While Glaucus was thus conversing, Lepidus, with closed eyes and scarceperceptible breath, was undergoing all the mystic operations, not one ofwhich he ever suffered his attendants to omit. After the perfumes andthe unguents, they scattered over him the luxurious powder whichprevented any further accession of heat: and this being rubbed away bythe smooth surface of the pumice, he began to indue, not the garments hehad put off, but those more festive ones termed 'the synthesis', withwhich the Romans marked their respect for the coming ceremony of supper,if rather, from its hour (three o'clock in our measurement of time), itmight not be more fitly denominated dinner. This done, he at lengthopened his eyes and gave signs of returning life.

  At the same time, too, Sallust betokened by a long yawn the evidence ofexistence.

  'It is supper time,' said the epicure; 'you, Glaucus and Lepidus, comeand sup with me.'

  'Recollect you are all three engaged to my house next week,' criedDiomed, who was mightily proud of the acquaintance of men of fashion.

  'Ah, ah! we recollect,' said Sallust; 'the seat of memory, my Diomed, iscertainly in the stomach.'

  Passing now once again into the cooler air, and so into the street, ourgallants of that day concluded the ceremony of a Pompeian bath.