Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/406

416 beyond the grave furnished a dark question, even to such minds as that of Cicero.

One mosaic picture from the splendid dwelling of Diomedes—the only two-storied house in Pompeii—seems to me to express the moral of the Pompeian life. It represents death under the form of a skeleton, with a wine-flask in each hand. The moral is evidently this: “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” The most remarkable collection of vases found here and in the graves of the cities, amounting to nearly thirty-six thousand, do not appear to me to prove a higher view of life. The pictures upon them, often of great art and beauty, represent forms and scenes from the ancient mythology, or half-historical antiquity, scenes which the poets sung; sometimes also sacrifices and other ceremonies of the temple. These vases, I have been told, were usually presents which the dead received during their lifetime, as tokens of esteem, honorary presents, and so on, which were then placed in the grave, as memories which appertained to the dead. The dead took with them into the grave, pictures of the whole of their earthly life. Whether with this were united a longing or a hope which extended beyond the grave is not, however, clearly exhibited in the pictured language of the funereal urns. But I speak of this from my own impression and without any certain knowledge.

The statues of the Consul Balbo, and the members of his family, found in Herculaneum, prove their great skill in plastic portraiture, and the esteem in which the merits of the citizen were held. For these