iS2 Introduction. 



his purse, upwards of iooo gold coins, together with 117 pieces of silver- 

 ware which he had carried wrapped up in a cloth or sack. This is the 

 famous Treasure of Boscoreale, the greater part of which was purchased 

 by Baron Edmond de Rothschild l and presented to the Museum of the 

 Louvre in Paris. 



Another villa of similar plan was discovered in 1895 and excavated 

 in 1897. Several interesting wall-paintings were found in it. From a 

 third villa, found within the village of Boscoreale, came the fresco rep- 

 resenting a sacrifice. 2 A fourth villa, discovered in 1900, was decorated 

 with wall-paintings of great interest and importance, now in the Metro- 

 politan Museum in New York. Besides these villas in or near Bosco- 

 reale, mention may be made of a villa at the neighboring Boscotrecase, 

 excavated in 1899, and of another at Scafati, near Pompeii, which 

 yielded a number of fine bronze vases, most of which are now in Berlin. 3 



The art represented by the objects found in these villas, particularly 

 the metal vases and utensils and the wall-paintings, is mainly that of 

 Pompeii and Herculaneum in the latest stage of their development, the 

 quarter century immediately preceding the eruption. Like all the 

 ancient art on Italic soil, it is a product of foreign influences combined 

 with native elements, which were themselves in great part of foreign 

 derivation. In Campania the imported ideas came mainly from the 

 Greeks, whose colony of Cumae became politically and artistically 

 paramount as early as the eighth century B.C. 4 Political predominance 

 passed, after a time, to others, Etruscans, Samnites and Romans, in 

 their turn, but the civilization and art of the district, though influenced 

 and at times modified by the nation in power, remained for the most 

 part Hellenic or Hellenistic throughout antiquity. This Hellenism 

 was not, however, left to an unsupported colonial development, but 

 through direct and indirect communications with the mother-country 

 was constantly freshened and renewed. In consequence of this contin- 

 uous contact the growth and changing tendencies of the art of Greece 

 were reflected in the productions of the colony and its neighbors. This 

 is especially true of the major artistic movements, the influence of which 

 flooded Campania in successive waves. The last of these movements 

 had been that wider Hellenism that came about through the conquests 

 of Alexander, which brought the Greek civilization into contact with 

 the older cultures of Egypt and the East. It was characterized by. 



1 The price paid was 500,000 francs, nearly equivalent to $100,000. 



2 No. 24658. 



3 For a summary of the villas found in and near Boscoreale and in the neighborhood of Pompeii 

 cf. the tabular list, p. 154, in which those mentioned above are Nos. I, II, III, IV, VI and VIII, re- 

 spectively. 



* Cf. Von Duhn, La necropoli di Suessula, Rom. Mitteil. II (1887), pp. 235 ff; Pellegrini, Tombe 

 greche arcaiche e tomba greco-sannitica a tholosdella necropoli di Cuma, Mon. Ant. Line. 1903, pp. 205 ff.; 

 Karo, Tombe arcaiche di Cuma, Bull, di Paletnologia Italiana, XXX (1904), pp. I ff. 



