Excavating a Buried City.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 7731, 6 February 1905, Page 4

Excavating a Buried City.

Recently Professor ,'Waldstein delivered an important lecture at the Royal Academy, London, regarding a projected international enterprise at Herculaneum. it being intended as soon as funds permit, to start fresh excavations at this historic spot. On August 24, 79 A.1)., or considerably more than 1800 years ago, the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried after an eruption of Vesuvius. We know the details of this appalling disaster from Pliny's vivid description. The cloud, shaped like a pine tree ; the broad sheets of flame, all the more brilliant from the blackness of the night ; the Mazing and empty villas ; the shocks of eartiupiake ,- and the fatal rain of ashes are all familiar to us. Nor are we ignorant of the ruined Pompeii, from which' *e have been able to reconstruct a blurred picture of the life of a middle-class commercial town. But Herculaneum still remains buried and unknown, a wealthy, cultured city, arrcs-ted at the highest j point of its development. That it still holds the greatest treasures of Greek art and literature

there can be little doubt, for the inhabitants of Herculaneum belonged to the great families of Rome. Here the Fabri-, the Balbi, the famous Agrippina, ,and Lucius Calpurnius Piso, the father-in-law of the mighty Caesar, had their villas. Wealthy and cultivated, they collected works of art and gathered together in their libraries the priceless masterpieces of Greek and Roman literature. And all that they acquired wrth care and intelligence still remains unharmed and untouched. On this point the geologists are agreed. 'At Pompeii there was little of value to find, not merely because the inhabitants of. this town were not connoisseurs, but because the mosi of the paitr.v documents and indifferent sculpture which existed there were burnt up by hot ashes and pumice stones. Hut Herculaneum, lying lower than Pompeii, escaped the burning deluge, and was neither consumed by fire nor covered by lava. It was memely . buried beneath a s-tream of mud and ashes, which speedily hardened and preserved intact the treasures which the city contained. Beneath this shelter wood was not burnt, marble [Was not calcined, glass was not i)iolten ; and, best of all, papyri were not, effaced. And to make this opinion good we need not rely merely upon the geologists. The one villa, said to be that of Piso, which was excavated in IToO-TO, yielded a finer collection of works of art in marble and bronze than the whole of Greece has disclosed, if we except the great masterpieces found at ()]- ympia, Delphi, and Athens. What enterprise, then, could l>e better worth undertaking than the excavation of iferculaneum ? For once geologists and antiquaries are in perfect agreement. While the mer of science assure us that the villas of Rome's wealthiest residents arc still intact, the archaeologists hav< little doubt' as to what 'they will find there. Already King lOdwnrel has given l)r Waidslpin ment. The King of Italy not onlj permits the site to be excavated, lAm has shown a keen interest in th< project. (•"ranee, Germany, Austria, and* the United States are all ready to play their part, and nothing i< lacking save the money, which is al ways forthcoming in the cause o science.