Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/758

Rh 724 HERCULANEUM found in the lowest part of the city towards the sea in front of the few houses that have been discovered ; and in the very high banks that surround them, as also in the lowest part of the theatre, there are plainly to be seen earth, sand, ashes, fragments of lava and pumice, with little distinction of strata, almost always confused and mingled together, and varying from spot to spot in degree of compactness. It is clear that this immense congeries of earth and stones could not flow in a dry state over those 5 miles of country (in the beginning very steep, and at intervals almost level), where certainly it would have been arrested and all accumulated in a mound ; but it must have been borne along by a great quantity of water, the effects of which may be distinctly recognized, not only in the filling and choking up even of the most narrow, intricate, and remote parts of the buildings, but also in the formation of the tuff, in which water has so great a share ; for it cannot be supposed that enough of it has filtered through so great a depth of earth. The torrent ran in a few hours to the sea, and formed that shallow or lagoon called by Pliny /Subitum Vadum, which prevented tha ships approaching the shores.&quot; Hence it is that, while many made their escape from Pompeii (which was overwhelmed by the fall of the small stones and afterwards by the rain of ashes), comparatively few can have managed to escape from Herculaneum, and these, according to the interpretation given to the inscription preserved in the National Museum (Mornmsen, 7. JY., n. 2455), found shelter in the neighbouring city of Neapolis, where they inhabited a quarter called that of the buried city (Suetonius, Titus, 8). The name of Herculaneum, which for some time remained attached to the site of the disaster, is mentioned in the later itineraries ; but in the course of the Middle Ages all recollection of it perished. In 1709, wLile Prince Elbeuf of the house of Lorraine, in com mand of the armies of Charles VI., was seeking crushed marble to make plaster for his new villa near Portici, lie learned from the peasants that there were in the vicinity some pits from which they not only quarried excellent marble, but had extracted many statues in the course of years (see Jorio, Notizia dcgli scavi cPErcolano, Naples, 1827). In 1738, while Colonel D. Rocco de Alcubierre was directing the works for the construction of the &quot;Eeali Delizie&quot; at Portici, he received orders from Charles III. to begin excavations on the spot where it had been reported to the king that the Elbeuf statues had been found. At first it was believed that a temple was being explored, bxit afterwards the inscriptions proved that the building was a theatre. This discovery excited the greatest com motion among the scholars of all nations ; and many of them hastened to Naples to see the marvellous statues of the Balbi and the paintings on the walls. But everything was kept private, as the Government wished to reserve to itself the right of illustrating the monuments. First of all Monsignor Bayardi was brought from Rome and commissioned to write about the antiquities which were being collected in the museum at Portici under the care of Camillo Paderni, and when it was recognized that the prelate had not suffi cient learning, and by the progress of the excavations other most abundant material was accumulated, about which at once scholars and courtiers were anxious to be informed, Bernardo Tanucci, having become secretary of state in 1755, founded the Accademia Ercolanese, which published the principal works on Herculaneum (Le Pitturc cd i Bronzi d Ercolano, 8 vols., 1757, 1792 ; Disscrta- tionis Isayogicce ad Herculanensium roluminum explanationctn pars prima, 1797). The criterion which guided the studies of the academicians was far from being worthy of unqualified praise, and consequently their work did not always meet the approval of the best scholars who had the opportunity of seeing the monuments. Among these was Winckelmann, who in his letters gave ample notices of the excavations and the antiquities which he was able to visit on several occasions. Other notices were furnished by Gori, Symbolce littcrarice Florentine, 1748, 1751, by Marcello Venuti, Dcscrizione delle prime scoperte d Ercolano, Rome, 1748, and Scipione Maffei, Tre letlere intorno alle scoperte d Ercolano, Verona, 1748. The excavations, which continued for more than forty years (1738- 1780), were executed at first under the immediate direction of Alcubierre (1738-1741), and then with the assistance of the engineers Rorro and Bardet (1741-1745), Carl Weber (1750-1764), and Francesco La Vega. After the death of Alcubierre (1780), the last-named was appointed director-in-chief of the excavations ; but from that time the investigations at Herculaneum were intermitted, and the researches at Pompeii were vigorously carried on. Resumed in 1827, the excavations at Herculaneum were shortly after sus pended, nor were the new attempts made in 1866 with the money bestowed by King Victor Emmanuel attended with success, being impeded by the many dangers arising from the houses built over head. The meagreness of the results obtained by the occasional works executed in the present century, and the fact that the in vestigators were unfortunate enough to strike upon places already explored, gave rise to the opinion that the whole area of the city had been crossed by tunnels in the time of Charles III. and in the beginning of the reign of Ferdinand IV. And although it is re cognized that the works had not been prosecuted with the caution that they required, yet in view of the serious difficulties that would attend the collection of the little that had been left by the first excavators, every proposal for new investigations has been aban doned. But in a memoir which Professor Barnabei read in the Reale Accademia dei Lincei (Attidella R. Ac., series iii., vol. ii. p. 751), ha undertook to prove that the researches made by the Government in the last century did not cover any great area. The antiquities excavated at Herculaneum in the last century form a collection of the highest scientific and artistic value. There are marble statues of astonishing art and perfect preservation, of which it is sufficient to mention the two equestrian statues of the Balbi (Museo Borbonico, vol. ii. pi. xxxviii.-ix. ) and the so-called statue of Aristides. With the exception of a few pieces, nearly all the great bronzes of the museum belong to Herculaneum. It is thence that we have ob tained the reposing Hermes, the drunken Silenus, the sleeping Faunus, the dancing girls, the bust called Plato s, that believed to be Seneca s, the two quoit-throwers or discoboli, and so many master-pieces more, figured by the academicians in their volume on the bronzes. Mural paintings of extraordinary beauty were also discovered, such as those that represent Theseus after the slaughter of the Minotaur (Helbig, Wandgemalde, Leipsic, 1878, No. 1214) and Chiron teaching Achilles the art of playing on the lyre (ibid., No. 1291). Notwithstanding the recent discoveries of the stupen dous paintings in the gardens of the Villa Farnesina on the banks of the Tiber, the monochromes of Herculaneum remain among our finest specimens of the exquisite taste and consummate skill dis played by the ancient artists. Among the best preserved is Leto and Niobe, which has been the subject of so many studies and so many publications (ibid., No. 1706). There is also a considerable number of lapidary inscriptions edited in vol. ii. of the epigraphic collection of the Cat. del Mus. Naz. di Napoli. But all these antiquities do not seem to afford adequate support for the opinion of those who, pointing out that those marvels were found for the most part in two or three buildings, conclude that similar riches would be found in other houses if the excavations were resumed. For their contention is that Herculaneum was not only a much greater city than Pompeii, but had attained a more exquisite Greek culture, because a large body of the Greek colonists expelled from the cities of Southern Italy had settled there either through their own numerical strength or through the favour of the Samnite confederation, whose conquests had placed it above all alarm at the advance of an already vanquished race. But in support of these assertions, more proof seems to be required than the fact that only two Samnite inscriptions have been found in Herculaneum (cf. Fabretti, Glossarium Italicum, No. 2784, 2784 Us), whilst at Pompeii they have been met with in great numbers ; since, if it is borne in mind that in a later age Herculaneum was a municipium as well as Pompeii, and had the same political life, we must seek another explanation of the circumstance that in Pompeii there are so many inscriptions relative to municipal affairs, while in Hercu laneum there are none. On the other hand, the classical tradition does not force us to believe that the city was so small as the academi cians held it to be. The plan published in the Dissertatio Isagogica represents nine insulce or blocks, each having the proportions of the sides of the Villa Suburbana or Villa Ercolanese discovered in the place called the wood of St Agostino. It was believed that this place was in the suburb, because it was divided from the rest of the inhabited area by a narrow valley formed by the washing of the rain (Diss. Isag., p. 30). If this was correctly determined, the same cannot be said of the circuit of the city, as the walls have not been discovered. Nor are the investigations sufficient to fix precisely the ancient shore line. The discovery of the Villa Suburbana contributed to magnify the greatness of Hercu laneum ; within its walls were collected statues of marble and of bronze, and the famous library, of which, counting both entire and fragmentary volumes, 1803 papyri have been preserved. Among the nations which took the greatest interest in the discovery of the Herculaneum library, the most honourable rank belongs to England, which sent Bishop Hayter and other scholars to Naples to solicit the publication of the volumes. Of the 341 papyri which have been unrolled, 195 have been published (Herculanensium voluminum quce supersunt, Naples, 1793-1809 ; Collcctio altera, 1862-1876). They contain works by Epicurus, Demetrius, Polistratus, Colotes, Chrysippus, Carniscus, and Philodemus. The names of the authors