POMPEII
ITS LIFE AND ART

PLATE I.—VIEW OF THE FORUM, LOOKING TOWARD VESUVIUS

POMPEII

ITS LIFE AND ART

BY
AUGUST MAU
GERMAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE IN ROME

Translated into English
BY FRANCIS W. KELSEY
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ORIGINAL
DRAWINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS

NEW EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1902

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1899, 1902,
By FRANCIS W. KELSEY.

First Edition, October, 1899.
New Revised Edition, with additions, November, 1902.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

For twenty-five years Professor Mau has devoted himself to the study of Pompeii, spending his summers among the ruins and his winters in Rome, working up the new material. He holds a unique place among the scholars who have given attention to Pompeian antiquities, and his contributions to the literature of the subject have been numerous in both German and Italian. The present volume, however, is not a translation of one previously issued, but a new work first published in English, the liberality of the publishers having made it possible to secure assistance for the preparation of certain restorations and other drawings which Professor Mau desired to have made as illustrating his interpretation of the ruins.

In one respect there is an essential difference between the remains of Pompeii and those of the large and famous cities of antiquity, as Rome or Athens, which have associated with them the familiar names of historical characters. Mars' Hill is clothed with human interest, if for no other reason, because of its relation to the work of the Apostle Paul; while the Roman Forum and the Palatine, barren as they seem to-day, teem with life as there rise before the mind's eye the scenes presented in the pages of classical writers. But the Campanian city played an unimportant part in contemporary history; the name of not a single great Pompeian is recorded. The ruins, deprived of the interest arising from historical associations, must be interpreted with little help from literary sources, and repeopled with aggregate rather than individual life.

A few Pompeians, whose features have survived in herms or statues and whose names are known from the inscriptions, seem near to us,—such are Caecilius Jucundus and the generous priestess Eumachia; but the characters most commonly associated with the city are those of fiction. Here, in a greater degree than in most places, the work of reconstruction involves the handling of countless bits of evidence, which, when viewed by themselves, often seem too minute to be of importance; the blending of these into a complete and faithful picture is a task of infinite painstaking, the difficulty of which will best be appreciated by one who has worked in