Vesuvius by Alwyn Scarth

Author:Alwyn Scarth [Scarth, Alwyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780691143903
Publisher: Princeton UP
Published: 2022-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

The Vesuvius gate at Pompeii, to the left of which lie some of the very thick layers of pumice and ash that had to be removed before the buildings were revealed. Vesuvius forms the horizon on the right. After young Ferdinand was designated King of Naples in 1759, the regent Tanucci continued the excavations. The publication of their early results had an enormous influence on European fashion and taste. In 1763, Tanucci ordered that the excavations should be concentrated on Pompeii, where the treasures could be unearthed more easily. The gems of Pompeii soon began to emerge. In 1764, the Odeon and the Temple of Isis were revealed; in 1767 it was the turn of the barracks of the gladiators; and in 1771, the Diomedes Villa was exposed. However, although the excavations became rather more methodical, anarchic digging, pilfering, looting and wanton destruction predominated. Walls were knocked down, and statues and jewellery were stolen and sold off to anyone who fancied a piece of Roman history. For instance, when Goethe went to Herculaneum on 18 March 1787, he complained that it was “a thousand pities that the site was not being excavated methodically by German miners, instead of casually being ransacked, as if by brigands, because many noble works of antiquity must have been thereby lost or ruined”. Goethe also recognized the extraordinary importance of the buried cities. “There have been”, he wrote, “many disasters in this world, but few that have given so much delight to posterity, and I have seldom seen anything so interesting”.

The revelations from Pompeii and Herculaneum helped to popularize the art of the ancient world; and classical art flourished and reached the height of fashion for the first time in 1250 years. After William Hamilton’s appointment as British envoy in 1764, he became one of those who did most to spread knowledge of the extraordinary revelations from the ancient towns, and he diligently educated the increasing number of visitors to his Neapolitan residence. Hamilton also bought up vases and pieces of ancient statuary, and sold them to collectors on the Grand Tour and even to the British Museum.

The excavations received a further spur during the Napoleonic occupation of Naples from 1806 to 1815, when the new French King of Naples and Sicily (Joachim Murat) and his wife Caroline Bonaparte actually paid for the work with their own money, and took an active interest in the results. The excavations continued when Ferdinand returned from his Sicilian exile in 1815. His successor Francesco i followed the work closely and he was responsible for the reopening of the diggings at Herculaneum, which had been more or less abandoned since 1763. Each new revelation stimulated further excavations, and none more so than the discovery of the superb House of the Faun in Pompeii in 1830.

Charles Dickens saw Pompeii in a rather different light. On his visit in February 1845, he was naturally most fascinated by the ordinary aspects of life revealed in Pompeii:

Stand at the bottom of the great

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