BOOK THE THIRD
Chapter I
THE FORUM OF THE POMPEIANS. THE FIRST RUDE MACHINERY BY WHICH THE NEW ERA
OF THE WORLD WAS WROUGHT.
IT was early noon, and the forum was crowded alike with the busy and the
idle. As at Paris at this day, so at that time in the cities of Italy, men
lived almost wholly out of doors: the public buildings, the forum, the
porticoes, the baths, the temples themselves, might be considered their real
homes; it was no wonder that they decorated so gorgeously these favorite
places of resort--they felt for them a sort of domestic affection as well as
a public pride. And animated was, indeed, the aspect of the forum of
Pompeii at that time! Along its broad pavement, composed of large flags of
marble, were assembled various groups, conversing in that energetic fashion
which appropriates a gesture to every word, and which is still the
characteristic of the people of the south. Here, in seven stalls on one
side the colonnade, sat the money-changers, with their glittering heaps
before them, and merchants and seamen in various costumes crowding round
their stalls. On one side, several men in long togas were seen bustling
rapidly up to a stately edifice, where the magistrates administered
justice--these were the lawyers, active, chattering, joking, and punning, as
you may find them at this day in Westminster. In the centre of the space,
pedestals supported various statues, of which the most remarkable was the
stately form of Cicero. Around the court ran a regular and symmetrical
colonnade of Doric architecture; and there several, whose business drew them
early to the place, were taking the slight morning repast which made an
Italian breakfast, talking vehemently on the earthquake of the preceding
night as they dipped pieces of bread in their cups of diluted wine. In the
open space, too, you might perceive various petty traders exercising the
arts of their calling. Here one man was holding out ribands to a fair dame
from the country; another man was vaunting to a stout farmer the excellence
of his shoes; a third, a kind of stall-restaurateur, still so common in the
Italian cities, was supplying many a hungry mouth with hot messes from his
small and itinerant stove, while--contrast strongly typical of the mingled
bustle and intellect of the time--close by, a schoolmaster was expounding to
his puzzled pupils the elements of the Latin grammar.' A gallery above the
portico, which was ascended by small wooden staircases, had also its throng;
though, as here the immediate business of the place was mainly carried on,
its groups wore a more quiet and serious air.
Every now and then the crowd below respectfully gave way as some senator
swept along to the Temple of Jupiter (which filled up one side of the forum,
and was the senators' hall of meeting), nodding with ostentatious
condescension to such of his friends or clients as he distinguished amongst
the throng. Mingling amidst the gay dresses of the better orders you saw
the hardy forms of the neighboring farmers, as they made their way to the
public granaries. Hard by the temple you caught a view of the triumphal
arch, and the long street beyond swarming with inhabitants; in one of the
niches of the arch a fountain played, cheerily sparkling in the sunbeams;
and above its cornice rose the bronzed and equestrian statue of Caligula,
strongly contrasting the gay summer skies. Behind the stalls of the
money-changers was that building now called the Pantheon; and a crowd of the
poorer Pompeians passed through the small vestibule which admitted to the
interior, with panniers under their arms, pressing on towards a platform,
placed between two columns, where such provisions as the priests had rescued
from sacrifice were exposed for sale.
At one of the public edifices appropriated to the business of the city,
workmen were employed upon the columns, and you heard the noise of their
labor every now and then rising above the hum of the multitude: the columns
are unfinished to this day!
All, then, united, nothing could exceed in variety the costumes, the ranks,
the manners, the occupations of the crowd--nothing could exceed the bustle,
the gaiety, the animation--where pleasure and commerce, idleness and labor,
avarice and ambition, mingled in one gulf their motley rushing, yet
harmonius, streams.
Facing the steps of the Temple of Jupiter, with folded arms, and a knit and
contemptuous brow, stood a man of about fifty years of age. His dress was
remarkably plain--not so much from its material, as from the absence of all
those ornaments which were worn by the Pompeians of every rank--partly from
the love of show, partly, also, because they were chiefly wrought into those
shapes deemed most efficacious in resisting the assaults of magic and the
influence of the evil eye. His forehead was high and bald; the few locks
that remained at the back of the head were concealed by a sort of cowl,
which made a part of his cloak, to be raised or lowered at pleasure, and was
now drawn half-way over the head, as a protection from the rays of the sun.
The color of his garments was brown, no popular hue with the Pompeians; all
the usual admixtures of scarlet or purple seemed carefully excluded. His
belt, or girdle, contained a small receptacle for ink, which hooked on to
the girdle, a stilus (or implement of writing), and tablets of no ordinary
size. What was rather remarkable, the cincture held no purse, which was the
almost indispensable appurtenance of the girdle, even when that purse had
the misfortune to be empty!
It was not often that the gay and egotistical Pompeians busied themselves
with observing the countenances and actions of their neighbors; but there
was that in the lip and eye of this bystander so remarkably bitter and
disdainful, as he surveyed the religious procession sweeping up the stairs
of the temple, that it could not fail to arrest the notice of many.
'Who is yon cynic?' asked a merchant of his companion, a jeweller.
'It is Olinthus,' replied the jeweller; 'a reputed Nazarene.'
The merchant shuddered. 'A dread sect!' said he, in a whispered and fearful
voice. 'It is said. that when they meet at nights they always commence
their ceremonies by the murder of a new-born babe; they profess a community
of goods, too--the wretches! A community of goods! What would become of
merchants, or jewellers either, if such notions were in fashion?'
'That is very true,' said the jeweller; 'besides, they wear no jewels--they
mutter imprecations when they see a serpent; and at Pompeii all our
ornaments are serpentine.'
'Do but observe,' said a third, who was a fabricant of bronze, 'how yon
Nazarene scowls at the piety of the sacrificial procession. He is murmuring
curses on the temple, be sure. Do you know, Celcinus, that this fellow,
passing by my shop the other day, and seeing me employed on a statue of
Minerva, told me with a frown that, had it been marble, he would have broken
it; but the bronze was too strong for him. "Break a goddess!" said I. "A
goddess!" answered the atheist; "it is a demon--an evil spirit!" Then he
passed on his way cursing. Are such things to be borne? What marvel that
the earth heaved so fearfully last night, anxious to reject the atheist from
her bosom?--An atheist, do I say? worse still--a scorner of the Fine Arts!
Woe to us fabricants of bronze, if such fellows as this give the law to
society!'
'These are the incendiaries that burnt Rome under Nero,' groaned the
jeweller.
While such were the friendly remarks provoked by the air and faith of the
Nazarene, Olinthus himself became sensible of the effect he was producing;
he turned his eyes round, and observed the intent faces of the accumulating
throng, whispering as they gazed; and surveying them for a moment with an
expression, first of defiance and afterwards of compassion, he gathered his
cloak round him and passed on, muttering audibly, 'Deluded idolaters!--did
not last night's convulsion warn ye? Alas! how will ye meet the last day?'
The crowd that heard these boding words gave them different interpretations,
according to their different shades of ignorance and of fear; all, however,
concurred in imagining them to convey some awful imprecation. They regarded
the Christian as the enemy of mankind; the epithets they lavished upon him,
of which 'Atheist' was the most favored and frequent, may serve, perhaps, to
warn us, believers of that same creed now triumphant, how we indulge the
persecution of opinion Olinthus then underwent, and how we apply to those
whose notions differ from our own the terms at that day lavished on the
fathers of our faith.
As Olinthus stalked through the crowd, and gained one of the more private
places of egress from the forum, he perceived gazing upon him a pale and
earnest countenance, which he was not slow to recognize.
Wrapped in a pallium that partially concealed his sacred robes, the young
Apaecides surveyed the disciple of that new and mysterious creed, to which
at one time he had been half a convert.
'Is he, too, an impostor? Does this man, so plain and simple in life, in
garb, in mien--does he too, like Arbaces, make austerity the robe of the
sensualist? Does the veil of Vesta hide the vices of the prostitute?'
Olinthus, accustomed to men of all classes, and combining with the
enthusiasm of his faith a profound experience of his kind, guessed, perhaps,
by the index of the countenance, something of what passed within the breast
of the priest. He met the survey of Apaecides with a steady eye, and a brow
of serene and open candour.
'Peace be with thee!' said he, saluting Apaecides.
'Peace!' echoed the priest, in so hollow a tone that it went at once to the
heart of the Nazarene.
'In that wish,' continued Olinthus, 'all good things are combined--without
virtue thou canst not have peace. Like the rainbow, Peace rests upon the
earth, but its arch is lost in heaven. Heaven bathes it in hues of
light--it springs up amidst tears and clouds--it is a reflection of the
Eternal Sun--it is an assurance of calm--it is the sign of a great covenant
between Man and God. Such peace, O young man! is the smile of the soul; it
is an emanation from the distant orb of immortal light. PEACE be with you!'
'Alas!' began Apaecides, when he caught the gaze of the curious loiterers,
inquisitive to know what could possibly be the theme of conversation between
a reputed Nazarene and a priest of Isis. He stopped short, and then added
in a low tone: 'We cannot converse here, I will follow thee to the banks of
the river; there is a walk which at this time is usually deserted and
solitary.'
Olinthus bowed assent. He passed through the streets with a hasty step, but
a quick and observant eye. Every now and then he exchanged a significant
glance, a slight sign, with some passenger, whose garb usually betokened the
wearer to belong to the humbler classes; for Christianity was in this the
type of all other and less mighty revolutions--the grain of mustard-seed was
in the heart of the lowly. Amidst the huts of poverty and labor, the vast
stream which afterwards poured its broad waters beside the cities and
palaces of earth took its neglected source.
