541st ORDIXAEY GENERAL MEETING, 



HELD IN THE ROOMS OF THE INSTITUTE ON MONDAY 

 MARCH 3rd, 1913. 



Dr. Theophilus G. Pinchks occupied the Chair. 



The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read and signed. 



The Secretary announced the election of Mr. J. T. Burton and 

 Miss J. E. Williams as Associates, and the Rev. D. H. D. Wilkinson as 

 a Missionary Associate. 



The Chairman then called upon Mr. E. J. Sewell, Member of Council, 

 to read his Paper. 



POMPEII. Life in the First Century A.D. By E. J. 



Sewell, Esq. 



rjlO most travellers in Southern Italy the uncovered remains 

 JL of the town of Pompeii are an object of great and 

 striking interest. As one stands in the streets of the town, and 

 sees the ruts worn in the stone pavement by passing vehicles, 

 the last of which travelled there more than 1,800 years ago, or 

 spells out the inscriptions painted on the walls, such, e.g., as one 

 calling on the citizens to vote for Herennius Celsus for i^edile 

 at the coming election (an equally long time ago), one realizes 

 with great vividness the busy and varied life that once throbbed 

 in these streets now empty and deserted. 



And when one finds in a wine-shop a notice that goods can 

 only be had on cash-payment, or on examining some ivory dice 

 found in a house discovers that they are loaded so as always to 

 throw double-sixes,* it is brought home to one that human nature, 

 in many of its manifestations, was exactly the same in a.d. 70 

 as it is to-day. 



It is true that none of these things are absolutely new 

 discoveries. They might possibly, by diligent students of 

 ancient literature, be found mentioned or be infened with 

 practical certainty from what we can learn from Roman authors. 

 But Horace has told us — 



* I have been unable after a good deal of search to find any clear 

 allusion in Latin literature to loaded dice. They are clearly alluded to 

 in Aristotle's Frohlematlca, xvi, 12, and as Pompeii was, historically, 

 so closely connected with Greek writers and Greek customs, this might 

 have enabled us to infer with great probability that loaded dice would 

 be known there. But the finding of the actual dice themselves turns 

 this probability into certainty. 



