INEXHAUSTIBLE ITALY 



293 



into solid stone and made excavations 

 almost impossible. The town is a rich 

 and tempting bait to the archaeologists, 

 however, for from a single one of the 

 ruins came most of those exquisite 

 bronzes in the Naples Museum, and 3,000 

 rolls of papyrus, part of the owner's pri- 

 vate library. 



What a contrast is Pompeii, destroyed 

 at the same time, but by ashes ! Though 

 these gradually hardened into something 

 like cement, they are much more easily 

 removed than the stone at Herculaneum, 

 and most of what we know of the details 

 of ancient Latin life we have learned 

 from the stark, scarred, roofless lower 

 stories spread out before us in deathly 

 panorama within the old city walls. Six- 

 teen years before the eruption Pompeii 

 was badly damaged by an earthquake and 

 practically rebuilt in the new Roman 

 style, the town laid out four-square, with 

 streets crossing at right angles. 



Architecturally, therefore, Pompeii 

 represents one definite epoch of antiquity. 

 It had the usual Roman forum, with its 

 temples, baths, colonnades, etc. ; but far 

 greater interest attaches to the private 

 houses and shops because of the intimate 

 knowledge they give us of the domestic 

 life of an ancient people. 



UNCHANGING COMMERCE 



We see their bakeries, in whose ovens 

 quantities of bread were discovered ; 

 their wine shops, with casks labeled as 

 holding different qualities — all connected 

 by one pipe ; a bank, with its waxen rec- 

 ords of loans, receipts, and the like ; 

 shops of dyers, jewelers, sporting-goods 

 dealers, potters, and so on indefinitely. 

 Spirited frescoes decorate stuccoed walls, 

 intricate mosaics make handsome pave- 

 ments, and houses and courts yield up 

 statuettes, images, jewelry, and all the 

 impedimenta of a rich and varied culture. 

 And in the little museum, inside the old 

 Sea Gate, we see even casts of the bodies 

 of the luckless inhabitants as they were 

 found, after eighteen centuries of ashen 

 interment. 



Where the pretty little modern water- 

 ing place of Castellammare di Stabia, 

 with its cooling sea baths and strong min- 

 eral waters, lies snugly in a little bight 



on the neck of the Sorrentine peninsula, 

 Stabiae once stood. It is one of the very 

 loveliest parts of Italy, a region of tum- 

 bled hills clothed with luxuriant groves 

 of orange and lemon, whose golden fruit 

 adds luster to the gleaming foliage. En- 

 ticing roads of milky white wind and 

 wind, now between high-walled grove and 

 vineyard ; now along open, skyey heights, 

 with the blue sea as a background hun- 

 dreds of feet below, and the beetling cliff 

 rising straight behind ; now beside villa 

 gardens, where every brilliant color on 

 Nature's palette seems to have been 

 poured out with prodigal fullness. 



The air is perfumed, the skies are soft 

 and balmy, the roads superb. 



BEAUTIFUL CAPRI 



Capri, a great, twin-humped camel of 

 an island, kneels in the blue just off the 

 tip of the peninsula. From the sway- 

 backed huddle of white, pink, blue, cream, 

 and drab houses along the large harbor, 

 up the breakneck road to the fascinating 

 town nestling among the hills, white- 

 roofed and Moorish, and on, still higher, 

 by the winding road or up the nearly per- 

 pendicular flights of rock stairs, which 

 furrow the frowning crag with their 

 sharp, zigzag outlines, to Anacapri, 500 

 feet or so above, every step of the way 

 breathes the pride and splendor and deg- 

 radation of the island's greater days. 



Here a cyclopean mass of shattered 

 masonry in the warm emerald water 

 tells of a Roman emperor's bath ; yonder 

 on a chimney-like cliff the sinister ruins 

 of a stout castle keep whispers of ancient 

 garrisons and pirates, not armed with 

 automatic rifles or high-powered artill- 

 ery ; and here, overlooking the sea, the 

 vast ruins of a villa recall "that hairy 

 old goat" Tiberius and his wastrel vol- 

 uptuousness that turned fair Capri into 

 satyrdom. 



Capri today is richly dowered for 

 sightseer, artist, historian, antiquary, and 

 geologist. On every hand are shaded 

 walks and sequestered bowers in the 

 thick groves of orange and lemon, laurel 

 and myrtle ; wild backgrounds of tumbled 

 rock ; titanic rifts in the coast, into which 

 the sea has thrust long, insidious blue 

 finders. 



