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In the house of Livia, the mother of Augustus, on the Palatine Hill at Rome, and in various houses at Pompeii such as those of the Vettii, of "Sallust," of the "Faun," or of "The Tragic Poet" there will be found much diversity in the number and arrangement of the rooms, halls, and courts.
As freedmen, the two Vettii would naturally belong to a class which was not remarkable for culture; nevertheless, they seem to have had the good sense to leave intact some of their predecessor’s most cherished works of decoration, and for this exhibition of restraint we must feel duly grateful towards our dead-and-gone hosts, the maligned Vettii.
Since then every decade has seen some progress in the work of excavation, and among other buildings brought to light are the "House of Pansa," the "House of the Tragic Poet," the "House of Sallustius," the "Castor and Pollux," a double house, and the "House of the Vettii" the last, a recent discovery, being left with all its furnishings as found.
Of the many houses which have been excavated of recent years under the truly admirable superintendence of Signor Fiorelli, none is better calculated to give us a striking impression of the working details of an upper-class Roman household than the private dwelling which is known equally under the two names of the Casa Nuova and the House of the Vettii;—perhaps the former name has now ceased to own any significance, since the buildings were laid bare as far back as the winter of 1894-5.
A man who afterwards lived with actors and gladiators on such terms that the former ministered to his lust, the latter to his crimes who never approached a place so sacred or holy as not to leave there, even if no actual crime were committed, some suspicion of dishonour founded on his abandoned character a man whose closest friends in the senate were the Curii and the Annii, in the auction rooms the Sapalæ and Carrilii, in the equestrian order the Pompilii and Vettii a man of such consummate impudence, such abandoned profligacy, in fine, such cunning and success in lasciviousness, that he corrupted young boys when almost in the bosoms of their parents?
It is not difficult to distinguish between the truly artistic design and colouring of wall-pictures in the House of Vettii or of the "Tragic Poet" and the crude journeyman work in sundry other Pompeian houses which must have belonged to anything but connoisseurs. Paintings, it must be remembered, were the ancient wall-papers, as well as the ancient pictures.
Here are we, the living men of to-day, watching the corpse of a departed world upon which the mystic symbol of Psyche has just alighted. Tempus breve est is the simple little truism that rises to our reflecting minds. Eighteen centuries between the Vettii and ourselves!
Still brilliant in their strong prevailing tints of black, yellow and vermilion are the decorative schemes which make a visit to the house of the Vettii of such supreme importance for those who wish to understand fully the artistic tastes of the Romans, and also their artistic limitations.
As the spring evening softly steals over the city and the shadows of the colonnades lengthen, let us leave the silent halls and chambers of the Casa dei Vettii and turn our footsteps westward; and issuing out of the Gate of Herculaneum, let us traverse the famous Street of Tombs, that extends along the road leading to the sister buried city.
The peristyle of the Vettii, with its gaudily tinted pillars of stucco, is highly ornate; perhaps it passes the limits of good taste in certain points of colour and æsthetic decoration, yet the general effect is undoubtedly pleasing to the eye.
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