ANCIENT CITY

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 209, 20 September 1937, Page 3

ANCIENT CITY

Encouraging Discoveries at Herculaneum EXCAVATORS> WORK Ten years have now passed since Signor Mussolini ordered the systematic excavation of Herculaneum. Eesults have been distinctly encouraging (says a writer in the Christian Science Moai- ■ tor). Achaeologists still hope that lost works of literature, Latin and Greek, may come to light. From the sea toward the Blls the city has been uncovered almost completely, and its plan is seen to resemble that of the Greek Heapolis. The buildings and villas show a harmonious dispositiop which permitted a splendid view of the gulf towards Capri and Ischia. The houses overlooking the sea rest upon massive bastions in which opens the lower gate of the town. Further back lies the panorama of the walls and streets, with columns, polychrome pavements, and gar-dens, some of which have been planted with flowers. Workmen in shirtsleeves continue to dig carefully in the stony mass and put aside the pieces of plaster, marble and the like that tliey unearth. On the extreme right of the uncovered city toward the east iises the highly important monument discovered last year. It takes the form of a large public building which bears comparison with the greatest works of imperial Rome, although its particular character has not yet been properly dcfined. Supported by massive walls, it is 'composed of numerous rooms aligned along a portico over 80 metres long. The entrance skows the remains of the stuccostarred vault. At the centre, between chambers of various dimensions, is a great hall'with a rich pavement, marble socle and marble table. Facing tho building was an immense closed gymnasium, with columns above which, to the north, was a loggia. Various conjectures have been mado as to the uss made of this monumental palace which contained on one side shops and small houses. Only further excavation work will solve- the mystery, but the discovery of the gradlose building conlirms the admirable vastness of Roman conception and the splendour which Herculaneum, a city of not more than five or six thousand inhabitants, attained in the Boipan world. The most recent excavations have also thrown not a few curious sidelights on the life of the town. Koteworthy among the shops annexed to the large building is that of the pastry cook, with its pans, vases and completo sct of 25 moulds for the cakes; the oven and the stable with traces of the manger. Kexi. comes'an etcher-'s shop with 20 or si worked gems and a magnificSnt marble head, of Greek workmanship, to which tho artisan at the time of the eruption was restoring the nose. Now, after a lapse of 2,000 years, this work kas been continued. In some of tke two-storey private dwellings recently excavated many objects have been found which have served to enrich the already ample documentation of the ancient minor arts: a bed of inlaid wood, pieces of cloth, gohl and silver ornaments and an instmment which seems to have been used for embroidery. Many of the villas towari ihe sea are surprisingly artistic in their walls and pavements composed of a variety of yellow, rose, brown, blue and purple marbles, consiituting polychrome ialaid work similar to tkat found in the beautiful Neapolitan churches oi tho seventeenth century. Each new discovery brings with it the breath of a far-distant epoch. It is a spark wkick illuminates tke vision of Herculaneum as it was in the pre Augustan age, a littje island of tio Greek thougkt and customs of the nascent Latin world, tho welcoming refuge of philosophers and poets, of rcfmerd patricians whom political agita tion drovo from Eome.