Resurrecting Pompeii (5 page)

quadroporticus of the theatres (VIII, vii, 16 –17) was sporadically excavated over thirty years from 1766. It was thought that this space originally served as a foyer for the theatres but was transformed into gladiators’ barracks in the last years of occupation, presumably after the
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62 earthquake. This interpretation was primarily based on finds of substantial numbers of weapons as well as bronze greaves, helmets, sword belts and shoulder guards. Numerous skeletons were found in this location but only one was really considered worthy of special attention. This skeleton was found in 1768 in one of the rooms in the
quadroporticus
and was adorned with armbands, earrings, rings and a very impressive necklace, which incorporated twelve emeralds. It was immediately assumed that this was the skeleton of a woman, purely on the basis of the associated artefacts. And not just any woman; this was clearly the skeleton of a wealthy matron who had made an unfortunately timed tryst with her gladiator lover and was caught in a compromising situation. A human skeleton near the bones of a horse that was found in the vicinity of the barracks was for some reason assumed to have been that of her servant, whose job was to protect her from harm. What isn’t usually mentioned is that the bejewelled skeleton was not found in a context that would have been conducive to intimacy as eighteen other skeletons were also found in the same room. In another version of the legend, this much-maligned individual was thought to have merely been at the barracks to service the inhabitants.
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A more recent interpretation is that this person was just one of a group of fugitives trying to make their escape from Pompeii via the gladiators’ barracks. It has been suggested that this individual was probably the last to enter the room as the skeleton was found near the entrance. It is unfortunate that we no longer have access to this and the other skeletons that were found at the barracks so that they could be identified using forensic techniques. It has spuriously been argued that some of the eighteen other skeletons that were reported to have been found in the room must have been children on the grounds that the room was far too small to hold that many adults.
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The casts of the impressions of human forms that were made from 1863 on inspired equally extravagant storytelling involving careers, status and the relationships between individuals in groups (see Chapter 10).

A whole genre of literature in the nineteenth century was inspired, either directly or indirectly, by the human remains that were found in Pompeii.
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A number of literary works were based on specific skeletal discoveries. The work that had the most profound influence on both the popular consciousness and interpretation of human skeletal finds from the sites destroyed by the
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79 eruption was Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel
The Last Days of Pompeii
.
The Last Days of Pompeii

The Last Days of Pompeii
was published in 1834 and has probably been the most widely read novel about Pompeii. It was hugely successful when it was first published and its popularity has been continuous and widespread, as evidenced by numerous editions, translation into many languages and various interpretations in different media. The novel provided the inspiration for many nineteenth-century paintings, including Lawrence Alma Tadema’s 1867 work
Glaucus and Nydia
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and Paul Falconer Poole’s
The Destruction of Pompeii
in 1835.
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It also spawned a number of film versions, including one in 1900, two in 1913, releases in 1926 and 1948, a stunning version in 1959 with Steve Reeves in the lead role and a mini-series that was made for television in 1984.
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While the story is compelling, Bulwer-Lytton’s writing style can be challenging and the poems that are littered through the novel are truly awful. He is justly famous for his purple prose,
⁵⁷
many examples of which can be seen in this novel, such as:

‘ Oh? is that you – is that Glaucus?’ exclaimed the flower-girl in a tone almost of transport; the tears stood arrested on her cheek; she smiled, she clung to his breast, she kissed his robe as she clung.
⁵⁸

It would be unkind to subject the reader to examples of his poetry.
The Last Days of Pompeii
is essentially a love story with the bonus of a volcanic eruption near the end. The setting and the knowledge that there will be a tragic outcome for a number of the characters are among the appealing aspects of the book. The story can be simplified by concentrating on the key characters.
Glaucus, the hero, is from Athens and resides in the house commonly known as the House of the Tragic Poet (VI, viii, 3), most famous for the mosaic of a dog accompanied by the words
Cave canem
(Beware of the dog) at the principal entrance. He is infatuated with Ione who lives in an unspecified house with her brother Apaecides. Her guardian is the evil Egyptian priest of the Isis cult, Arbaces, who wants Ione for himself and wishes to eliminate his rival. Conveniently for Arbaces, Glaucus is very handsome and has two other female admirers he can enlist, intentionally or otherwise, to help him achieve his goal. One of these is Julia, the wealthy and beautiful daughter of Diomedes, who inhabits the so-called Villa of Diomedes beyond the Herculaneum Gate. The other woman who loves Glaucus is a blind slave called Nydia. Arbaces obtains some poison from a witch who lives in a cave on the slopes of Mt Vesuvius. The witch is more than happy to supply this to Arbaces as she recently had the misfortune to offer shelter to Glaucus and Ione during a storm, during which Glaucus managed to wound her familiar. The witch also has a talent for prophecy and predicts the imminent destruction of Pompeii. Arbaces manages to pass the poison off as a love potion to Julia. He instructs her to administer it to Glaucus to make him more attentive to her. Nydia learns of this and steals the potion to give to

Glaucus herself. As it has neither colour nor odour, Glaucus is not aware that his water has been spiked. Instead of making him fall in love with Nydia, however, it temporarily turns him into a raving lunatic. He roams the streets in this state and is found ranting next to the lifeless body of Ione’s brother who has just been murdered by Arbaces. Apaecides had converted to Christianity and was attacked by the priest for having abandoned the cult of Isis. Arbaces merely transforms the stylus of the incoherent Glaucus into a blood soaked ‘murder weapon’, which he plants by the corpse. Glaucus is duly taken into custody. He recovers from the poison only to discover that he is incarcerated and is about to fight a lion that is being starved in anticipation of the forthcoming games in the amphitheatre. He denies having committed any crime but he is ignored. With only one exception, his circle of young male friends, with whom he regularly partied, offer no support and leave him to his fate.

Meanwhile, Arbaces has managed to trap and hold Ione and Nydia captive in his home, along with a priest from the Temple of Isis, Calenus, who witnessed the foul deed and has threatened to expose the true criminal. Confident that everything is going according to plan, Arbaces heads off to the amphitheatre to watch the demise of his rival but Nydia manages to get a message to Glaucus’ last remaining male friend, the loyal Sallust. He duly liberates Ione, Nydia and Calenus, who make their way to the amphitheatre to exonerate Glaucus and expose the actual culprit. Glaucus is saved just in the nick of time but the lion is still hungry. Arbaces is about to become an alternative meal when Mt Vesuvius erupts. Numerous characters and unnamed Pompeians die in the course of the following pages but Glaucus and his true love, Ione, have the perfect guide to lead them to safety through the unnaturally dark and chaotic streets in the form of the blind slave girl who has always operated in darkness and has learned to navigate her way through the town. After justice is meted out to Arbaces in the form of a large column that crushes him to death, the protagonists are led to the shore and escape on a boat. Nydia, feeling that she cannot compete with Ione, and indeed does not deserve Glaucus after giving him the poisonous draught, jumps overboard. Glaucus and Ione marry, convert to Christianity and live happily ever after.

Bulwer-Lytton based this book on extensive research at Pompeii in 1832 – 33. He was inspired to create the character of Nydia as a result of a conversation with an expert on the ruins, who suggested that a blind person who knew their way around Pompeii would have had the best chance to escape the eruption.
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One of the key devices employed by Bulwer-Lytton was the use of skeletons that he saw
in situ
or heard about when he was conducting his study as the basis for a number of the characters in the novel. He re-animated these skeletons and gave them characters of his own invention and interpreted their last moments from their positions and associated artefacts.
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The character of the foreign villain, Arbaces, was based on a victim whose body appeared to have been severed by a falling column. Under the influence of Spurzheim, one of the founders of the so-called science of phrenology, it was determined that the skull of this individual displayed remarkable intellectual properties, along with a propensity for evil.
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The character of Julia was inspired by the form of a woman that had been preserved in the ash in the so-called Villa of Diomedes. Her father, Diomed, was drawn from a skeleton found in the vicinity of a bag of coins in the portico of the garden. The skeleton was reported to have had an iron key in one hand and a gold ring on a finger. Burbo, a minor character, was created from the axe-wielding priest in the Temple of Isis myth and Calenus was based on the skeleton found near the sack full of treasures taken from the temple.
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It is notable that though Bulwer-Lytton employed the skeletons from a number of famous myths, including the faithful sentry near the Herculaneum Gate, he did not mention the salacious story of the woman in the gladiators’ barracks. The repopulation of the site with re-animated corpses and with purely imagined individuals, often inhabiting houses that could be identified by any visitor to the site, contributed to the success of the novel and had a long-reaching impact on the interpretation of human remains destroyed by the
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79 eruption.

Bulwer-Lytton was by no means the only author who used these devices in their reconstruction of Pompeian life and death. Shortly after his novel appeared, he was accused of plagiarism by Sumner Lincoln Fairfield, an American writer who had produced a lengthy poem called
The Last Night of Pompeii
in 1832.
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A better-known work that utilized the Bulwer-Lytton approach, and even some of the same bodies, was Theophile Gautier’s
Arria Marcella
, which was published in 1852. Though not as influential as
The Last Days of Pompeii
, Gautier’s piece is worth recounting.

The story opens with a visit to the finds from Pompeii in the Naples Museum by three French tourists, Octavian and his friends Fabio and Max. Octavian is smitten by the impression of a woman’s bosom and hip preserved in the compacted ash. This leads to a reverie about how entire ancient cultures had been lost, whilst the form of these mammaries had survived the millennia.
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The friends then continue on to Pompeii where they procure a guide. As part of the tour, the guide takes the visitors to the Villa of Diomedes and shows them the exact spot where the cast of the woman they had viewed in the museum was found. The guide’s description moves Octavian so that:

His breast heaved, his eyes were moist; the catastrophe effaced by twenty centuries of forgetfulness impressed him like quite a recent misfortune; the death of his mistress or of a friend would not have moved him more, and a tear, two thousand years late, fell … upon the spot where had perished, stifled by the hot ashes of the volcano, the woman for whom he felt himself filled with retrospective love.
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That night, the three men engage in a discussion of their ideal woman. Octavian confesses a preference for inaccessible women, usually in the form of statues, or dead or mythical individuals.
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He then went on to provide examples. On seeing the Venus de Milo in the Louvre, he was inspired to exclaim: ‘Oh who will give you back your arms, so that you may press me to your marble breasts.’
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On another occasion, he uses a medium to attempt to return the spirit of a woman, using a few head hairs he has obtained. The one thing that links his forays into love is that they are all marked by failure. Still, this does not deter him in his quest for love.