Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/464

444 P M P M becran to weary of her, she remembered her talent for acting and her private theatricals at Etioles, and estab lished the theatre des petits cabinets," in which she acted with the greatest lords about the court for the king s pleasure in tragedies and comedies, operas and ballets. By this means and the " concerts spirituals " she kept in favour for a time ; but at last she found a surer way, by encouraging the king in his debaucheries, and Louis wept over her kindness to his various mistresses. Only once, when the king was wounded by Damiens in 1757, did she receive a serious shock, and momentarily left the court ; but on his recovery she returned more powerful than ever. She even ingratiated herself with the queen, after the example of Madame de Maintenon, and was made a lady- in-waiting ; but the end was soon to come. " Ma vie est un combat," she said, and so it was, with business and pleasure ; she gradually grew weaker and weaker, and when told that death was at hand she dressed herself in full court costume, and met it bravely on 15th April 1764 at the age of forty-two. See Cnpefiirue, Madame In Marquise <!e Pompadour, 18.5S; E. and J. de Gon- court, f.<-s Maitrestei de Louis XV., vol. ii., 18<>0; and Camparclon, Madame de Pompadour et In Com- df Louis XV. an niiliru ilu di.r-huitieme siecle, 18fi7. Far more valuable are Malassis s two recently published volumes of correspondence, Correspomlance de Madame de Pompadour arec son pert M. Poisson, et sonfrere M. de Vandieres, <fec., 187S, and Bonhomme, Madame de Pompadour, general d armi- e. l&so. containing her letters to the Comte de Clermont. For her artistic and theatrical tastes see particularly J. F. Leturcq, Xvtire ./ Jacques Guaii, Gravtur tur pier rex flnet du Rci Louis XV.: Documents inedits emanant de Guay ft notes stir les oeurret de yrarure en faille douce et en pitrres dnrs de hi Marquise de Pompadour, 1873; and Adolptie Jullien, Ilistoire du Theatre de Madame de Pompadour, dit Theatre des Petits Cabinets, 1874. POMPEII, an ancient town of Campania, situated on the shore of the Bay of Naples, almost immediately at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. To its proximity to that volcano it owes its celebrity, the peculiar circumstances of its destruction by the great volcanic outburst of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., and of its rediscovery in modern times, having converted that which would otherwise have been known only as- an obscure country town into a place of world- wide fame, as one of the most interesting relics preserved to us from antiquity. Of its previous history comparatively little is recorded, but it appears that, like most other towns in the beautiful region in which it was situated, it had a population of a very mixed character, and it passed succes sively into the hands of several different nations, each of which probably contributed an additional element to its composition. Though its foundation was ascribed by Greek tradition to Heracles, in common with the neigh bouring city of Herculaneum, no value can be attached to these mythological or etymological fables ; it is certain that it was not a Greek colony, in the proper sense of the term, as we know to have been the case with the more important cities of Cumae and Neapolis. Strabo, in whose time it was a populous and flourishing place, tells us that it was first occupied by the Oscans, afterwards by the Tyrrhenians (i.e., Etruscans) and Pelasgians, and lastly, by the Samnites. The conquest of Campania by the last-mentioned people is an undoubted historical fact, and there can be no doubt that Pompeii shared the fate of the neighbouring cities on this occasion, and afterwards passed in common with them under the yoke of Rome. But its name is only once mentioned during the wars of the Romans with the Samnites and Campanians in this region of Italy, and then only incidentally (Liv., ix. 38). At a later period, however, it took a prominent part in the outbreak of the nations of central Italy known as the .Social War (91-89 B.C.), when it withstood a long siege by Sulla, and was one of the last cities of Campania that was reduced by the Roman arms. After that event the inhabitants were admitted to the Roman franchise, but a military colony was settled in their territory by the dictator Sulla, and there can be no doubt that the whole popula tion became rapidly Romanized. Before the close of the republic it became a favourite resort of the leading nobles of Rome, many of whom acquired villas in the neighbour hood. Among the most prominent of these was Cicero, whose letters abound with allusions to his Pompeian villa, which was one of his favourite places of occasional resid ence. The same fashion continued under the Roman empire, and there can be no doubt that during the first century after the Christian era, Pompeii, without rising above the rank of an ordinary provincial town, had become a flourishing place with a considerable population, for which it was indebted in part to its position at the mouth of the river Sarnus, which rendered it the port of the neighbouring towns in the interior. But two events only are recorded of its history during this period. In 59 A.D. a tumult took place in the amphitheatre of Pompeii between the citizens of the place and the visitors from the neighbouring colony of Nuceria, which led to a violent affray, in which many persons were killed and wounded on both sides. The Pompeians were punished for this violent outbreak by the prohibition of all gladiatorial and theatrical exhibitions for ten years (Tacitus, Ann. xiv. 17). A characteristic, though rude, painting, found on the walls of one of the houses, gives a representation of this untoward event. Only four years afterwards (63 A.D.) a much more serious disaster befell the city. An earthquake, which affected all the neighbouring towns, vented its force especially upon Pompeii, a large part of which, including most of the public buildings, was either destroyed or so seriously damaged as to require to be rebuilt rather than repaired (Tacit., Ann., xv. 21 ; Seneca, Q. N., vi. 1). The actual amount of the injuries sustained, which is intimated in general terms by Tacitus and Seneca, is more accurately known to us from the existing remains. For the inhabi tants were still actively engaged in repairing and restoring the ruined edifices when the whole city was overwhelmed by a much more appalling catastrophe. In 79 A.D. the neighbouring mountain of Vesuvius, the volcanic forces of which had been slumbering for unknown ages, suddenly burst into a violent eruption, which, while it carried devastation all around the beautiful gulf, buried the two cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii under dense beds of cinders and ashes. It is singular that, while we possess a detailed description of this famous eruption in two well- known letters of the younger Pliny (Epist. vi. 16, 20), he does not even notice the destruction of Pompeii or Herculaneum, though his uncle perished in the immediate neighbourhood of the former city. But their unhappy fate is noticed by Dion Cassius, and its circumstances may be gathered with certainty from the condition in which it has been found. These were such as eminently to conduce to its preservation and interest as a relic of antiquity. Pompeii, was not, like Herculaneum, buried in a solid mass of volcanic tuff, but merely covered with a bed of lighter substances, cinders, small stones, and ashes, thrown out by the volcano, and falling from above on the devoted city. It is clearly established that the whole of this superincumbent mass, though attaining to an average thickness of from 18 to 20 feet, was the product of one eruption, though the materials may be divided generally j into two distinct strata, the one consisting principally of cinders and small volcanic stones (called in Italian I " lapilli"), and the other and uppermost layer of fine white 1 ash, often consolidated by the action of water from above, so as to take the moulds of objects contained in it like clay or plaster of Paris. So completely was the unfortunate city buried under this overwhelming mass that its very site was forgotten, and even the celebrated topographer Cluverius in the 17th

century was unable to fix it with certainty. This difficulty