IN HERCULANEUM

Hokitika Guardian, 8 March 1929, Page 8

IN HERCULANEUM

REPLANTING THE CJARDENS OF 2000 YEARS AGO. LONDON, Jan. 10. Tlie world lias long been waiting for accurate new.s of the results obtained in the excavations at Herculaneum. That news we are able to give in a short series of articles by our Special Correspondent, Sir Percival Phillips, the first of which is printed below reports the “Daily Mail.” Sir Percival has been granted special facilities by the Italian authorities. He is able thus to show how the methods of excavation have been transformed, by modern science, and How rich the yield promises to be. Herculaneum, like Pompeii, was built on the lower slopes of Vesusvius on the Bay of Naples. It was overwhelmed in the great eruption which brought the elder Pliny’s death, but it was buried deeper and with more resistant volcanic material than Pompeii and on the surface of the soil above it arose the modern towns of Portland Resina.

Nothing is! more marvellous than the picture of life nearly two thousand years ago as it is recovered from buried sites. Streets and houses are there; artistic treasures on which no eye has gazed since a.d. 79, the lead pipes, with valves, tha tsupplied water the shops; the furniture; and even through all these ages fragments of clothing, remains of foods. GARDENS LrVE AGAIN. FLOWERS AND FOUNTAINS. HERCULANEUM Jan. 9. This “City of the Dead” is being transformed rapidly into a city of living flowers shrubs and babbling fountains. It is not as difficult as it may sound to ‘reconstruct’ an ancient garden ii: Herculaneum exactly as it was in tin days of Pliny the Younger. The ear lionised trunks of trees and large shrubs, held in position by the mud which swamped the city, may be easily recognised and replanted. The exart. speeies and position of smaller plants can be determined by running liquid plaster into the boles left by the roots thus obtained, the plants can be recogliised. After all the trees and shrubs have been replanted the work is completed by laying down new pipes and leading water again to the ancient fountain.

This labour of love is now being performed in what, or want of a better name, is called the “House of the Garden.” It is a medium-sized bouse nnd at the back, running along the “clecumanus minor” of Herculaneum, it had a large fruit garden. Soon this . garden, which delighted its Roman owners 20 centuries ago, will be delighting tourists who daily visit the ruins of the buried city. PROF. VENTIMIGLIA. EXPLORER WITH ELECTRIC DRILLS. NAPLES, Jan. 10. On the lower seaward slope of Mt. Vesuvius where the lovely mediaeval town of Resina ends abruptly in waste land, I found a shy, rather, dusty little man, hidden in a wooden shed on the edge of a kind of quarry, who is to be envied by all archaeologists. He lives Hike a hermit, surrounded by absorbed workmen with sieves and probes, a light railway and electric drills. His work—and it is the work of a lifetime—is the disinterment inch by inch, of the buried town of Herculaneum. He is Pro. Ventimiglia, assistant to Prof. Maiuri, director-general of national monuments in the province of Naples. Fifteen months ago he began the systematic excavation on modern scientific lines of this rich Roman residential town which, like its neighbours, Pompeii and Stabiae, was destroyed by the great volcanic eruption of A.D. 79. No archaeologist lias ever had a more difficult task. Compared to it the resurrection of Pompeii ten miles away on the other side of the mountain has lieen child’ splay. Herculaneum was buried by a deluge of hot mud, after which came lava ashes, and sand. The mixture covered the town to a depth of 40ft. to 110 ft. and solidified in places almost to the consistency of rock. On this enduring mass was erected Resina.

The theatre, forum, and other public buildings of Herculaneum lie a hundred feet below the principal street of the later town. Even the outer fringe of shops and dwellings nearest the sea where Prof. Ventimiglia has begun excavating, is separted from, the twentieth century by a blanket of volcanic matter -10 ft deep. Pompeii was Roman Brighton wiih a dash of Southampton. Herculaneum may be conceived as a kind of superior Eastbourne,' inhabited by retired military and naval folk, and Civil Servants, with a substantial roiun.u'n'inent of bookish gentlemen pos- .■/; a lofty contempt for “trade,” a;; . a colony of artists, scientist*, sculptors, and even archaeologists.

Their villas displayed every indicaiiou of wealth and discriminating . taste. They contained furniture in bronze, ivory, and carved wood revealing the highest development of crat I tsma,nship. Some of them held libraries of papyri—one was discovered during the first casual explorations in the middle of the eighteenth century—art collections gathered from all parts of the then civilised world in which Greek influence predominated, and much fine statury. The size and population of .Herculaneum are not definitely known, hut it is believed to have been smaller than Pompeii, which had 20,000 inhabitants at the time of the eruption. Like Pompeii, it was laid out symmetrically, with streets at right angles: the prinicpal thoroughfares meetat the forum.

DISCOVERED BY ACCIDENT. The town sloped upwards from the Marine Gate—still buried—which was at that time much nearer the sea. The streets were steep, they were payed roughly with blocks of lava as at Pompeii, with large stepping stones at frequent intervals for crossing them; there were narrow footways skirting the open-fronted shops and dwellings. Even in the lower quarter many of the houses were two and three stones in height, some with projecting balconies, most of them having carved and ornamented facades, and all of them containing suites of rooms covered will vivid l'escoes, the predominating colours of which were red and yellow. l<or nearly 1,700 years Herculaneum was no more than a tradition. Then quite by accident, a builder probing the bed of tufa for new foundations, struck a cavity. The explorer who had himself lowered into this pit discovered that he was standing in he ancient theatre. Thus was Herculaneum found again.

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