“_Porta della Marina!_ _Via della Marina!_” said our guide, then, translating into French the information that we had entered Pompeii by the Gate and the Street of the Sea—the highway of city-traffic before the imprisoned demons of the mountain broke bounds.
The streets are all alleys, like this first, laid with heavy polygonal blocks of tufa, and grooved—most deeply and sharply at the corners—by wheels. The ruts of Glaucus’ chariot-wheels! But what were the dimensions of the bronze vehicle “of the most fastidious and graceful fashion,” drawn by _two_ horses of Parthian breed that “glided rapidly” by others of the same build between these blocks of buildings? Or was there a Pompeian law requiring those who went in a certain direction to proceed by specified streets?
We were not prepared for the difficulty of ascertaining which was the West End of the town which Glaucus tells Clodius, “had the brilliancy of luxury without the lassitude of its pomp.” Nearly every house has a shop attached to it. “Stalls” we would style them, in which the brick counter, formerly covered with marble, takes up at least half the room. The shops were closed at night by wooden doors or shutters filling up the entire width of the front. These, having decayed or burned away, the visitor steps from the street into the cell walled in on three sides, and roofless. The entrance to the dwelling had no connection whatever with the stall built on to it. If this was the proprietor’s abode, he, in genuine Epicurean fashion, “sank the shop” out of work-hours. It is supposed that the wealthier citizens rented their street-fronts at a high rate, to tradespeople, without the consequent depreciation of gentility that would befall a member of New York uppertendom, were he to “live over” or back of a “store.” Another surprise was the band-box tenements in which people who made more account of ease and beauty than of their own immortality, contrived to live. The vestibule, running beside the shop-wall from the street into the Lilliputian mansion, is scarcely five feet wide in some of the best houses. The court-yard behind is not larger than a square table-cloth; the fountain-basin in the middle resembles a big punch-bowl. Beyond this, separated now by a marble or paved walk, formerly, also, by a curtain that could be raised or lowered, is a larger court. This part of the building was devoted to such public dealings as the owner might have with the outer world. Here he received office-seekers, beggars and book-agents; paid bills and gave orders. The family court—the _peristylium_—was still further back, and usually raised by the height of a marble step above the second. This was enclosed by pillars, painted red, a quarter of the way up,—the rest white. Another curtain shut in this sanctum from the general gaze. In the middle of the court was a flower-bed, its centre a fountain. About these three courts were built dining-room, kitchen, dressing- and bed-rooms and other family apartments. The upper stories were of wood and usually occupied as servants’ dormitories. These have slowly mouldered away, having been, some think, calcined by the hot ashes. There are, of course, variations upon this plan, and some mansions of respectable size without the commercial attachment, but the above may serve as an outline draught of the typical Pompeian dwelling, even of the richer classes.