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Updated: September 1, 2025
Johnny Starleigh, then a student at San Jose, one morning found a newspaper clipping in a letter from Miss Amelia Stryker. It read as follows: "The excavators in the new tunnel in Heavystone Ridge lately discovered the skeletons of two unknown men, who had evidently been crushed and entombed some years previously, by the falling of a large tree over the mouth of their temporary refuge.
"It is the Hermes of Praxiteles," the excavators whispered among themselves. In his day Praxiteles had been almost as famous as Phidias. The old Greek world had rung with his praises. Modern men had dreamed of what his statues must have been and had longed to see them. How did he shape the head? How did his bodies curve? What expression was on his faces? All these things they had wished to know.
With those two exceptions, Miletus and Ephesus, the sites of the elder Hellenic cities on or near the Anatolian coast still await excavators who will go to the bottom of all things and dig systematically over a large area; while some sites await any excavation whatsoever, except such as is practised by plundering peasants.
The buildings in this town, for it is much more than a military station, have been large and imposing, as is shown by each successive revelation made by the excavators' spades. The portion of the Watling Street leading from Corstopitum to the river has also been laid bare.
Within the walls are lined with the characteristic reticulated Roman masonry, broken chambers and doorways on either side are blocked by débris, and two semicircular platforms rise one within the other to a niche in the furthest recess of the cave where the bas-relief of the Eastern deity which is now deposited in the Museum at Naples was found by the excavators.
Pieces of fluted columns, carved capitals, broken pedestals, blocks from the temple of Zeus all were cemented together to make these walls. The workmen pulled and chipped and lifted out piece after piece. The excavators studied each scrap to see whether it was valuable. And at last they found a baby's body. They carefully broke off the mortar. It was of creamy marble, beautifully carved.
Schliemann on that famous site. Notably so, it seems to me, are the traces of the final fire, which are to be seen at Cnossos as at Troy, and the huge jars, which may be compared with the receptacles the Trojan excavators unearthed, and found still to contain dried peas and other things that the Trojans left behind when they fled from their sacked and burning city.
The wages of the excavators of the tunnels were fifteen shillings a week regularly, sunshine or rain; but the men thought their rich employer could afford them an increase, so they struck. "You can strike as long as you like," was the message sent by the Duke, "it does not matter to me if the work is never done."
There are many other houses almost as pleasant and beautiful as this House of the Faun. Every one has its atrium and its sunny court and its fountains and statues and its painted walls. But Pompeii was a city of business, too, and had many workshops. There is a dye shop where the excavators found large lead pots and glass bottles still full of dye.
Of the many thousands of inscribed clay tablets which were found in the course of the expeditions, some were kept at Constantinople, while others were presented by the Sultan Abdul Hamid to the excavators, who had them conveyed to America. Since that time a large number have been published.
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