United States or Saint Lucia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Another advantage, too, is that, in the present case, the glorious scenery around is not shut out, and that, unlike the inhabitants of the Cimmerian ravines of modern cities, the ancient Pompeiians could contemplate the clouds and the lamps of heaven; could see the moon rise high behind Vesuvius, and the sun set in the sea, tremulous with an atmosphere of golden vapor, between Inarime and Misenum.
Those Pompeiians were very luxurious in their tastes and habits.
Always a strange place, however often the guide-books beat their iterations upon it, a place that leaps at imagination, peering into other days through the mists that lie between, and blinds it with a rush of light the place where they have gathered together what was left of the dead Pompeiians and their world.
At the gate of Herculaneum, the guardian of the little museum left Ferragut to examine in peace the excavations of the various corpses, petrified Pompeiians of plaster still in the attitudes of terror in which death had surprised them. He did not abandon his post in order to trouble the captain with his explanations; he scarcely raised his eyes from the newspaper that he had before him.
"You shall see the relics that were taken from the ruins and are now in the museum at Naples," her mother told her. "The life of the old Pompeiians has been studied from those relics and a guide can tell you just how they did their housekeeping and what their life was like."
A great many of the wall paintings in the interiors of rich men's homes have been preserved and some of them are fairly spicy as to subject and text. It would seem that in these matters the ancient Pompeiians were pretty nearly as broad-minded and liberal as the modern Parisians are.
Those Pompeiians were very luxurious in their tastes and habits.
Marie Antoinette staked thousands of louis at a time at Versailles. She was so wrapped up in gambling she could not see that her neck was in danger. When the lava came down from Vesuvius it buried Pompeiians who were gambling. The men who dig up the old monuments in Africa find gambling instruments crumbling away side by side with appliances for taking human life.
And truly, my dear madam, I dare say the Pompeiians did not take Vesuvius very seriously; it was merely an eligible spot for a fete champetre. And when gaunt fishermen first preached Christ about the highways, depend upon it, that was not taken very seriously, either.
The sunshine entered through an aperture in the roof, and shone on the waters of the impluvium, the mosaic floor, the altar of the household gods and the flowers around the fountain. "As the life of the Pompeiians was all outdoors, their pretty homes stood open always. There was indeed a curtain betwixt the atrium and the peristyle, but it was drawn only when the master gave a banquet.
Word Of The Day