himself, but encouraged them in others, and a population of
foreigners caught at the lucrative occupation, both for home
consumption and for exportation. Their cloth and other textures for
dress and furniture, and their hardware--for instance, armor--were in
great request. Labor was cheap; stone and marble in plenty; and the
taste and skill, which at first were devoted to public buildings, as
temples and porticoes, were in course of time applied to the mansions
of public men. If nature did much for Athens, it is undeniable that
art did much more.

EDWARD BULWER LYTTON

Born in 1803, died in 1873; educated at Cambridge; member of
Parliament in 1831-41, and 1852-66; Colonial Secretary in
1858; raised to the peerage in 1866; his first work,
"Falkland," published in 1827; "Last Days of Pompeii" in
1834; besides many other novels, wrote volumes of verse,
made translations and wrote dramas, including "The Lady of
Lyons" (1838), and "Richelieu" (1839).

THE DESCENT OF VESUVIUS ON POMPEII[10]

On the upper tier (but apart from the male spectators) sat the women,
their gay dresses resembling some gaudy flower-bed; it is needless to
add that they were the most talkative part of the assembly; and many
were the looks directed up to them, especially from the benches
appropriated to the young and the unmarried men. On the lower seats
round the arena sat the more high-born and wealthy visitors--the
magistrates and those of senatorial or equestrian dignity: the
passages which, by corridors at the right and left, gave access to
these seats, at either end of the oval arena, were also the entrances
for the combatants. Strong palings at these passages prevented any
unwelcome eccentricity in the movements of the beasts, and confined
them to their appointed prey. Around the parapet which was raised
above the arena, and from which the seats gradually rose, were
gladiatorial inscriptions, and paintings wrought in fresco, typical of
the entertainments for which the place was designed. Throughout the
whole building wound invisible pipes, from which, as the day advanced,
cooling and fragrant showers were to be sprinkled over the spectators.

[Footnote 10: From "The Last Days of Pompeii." The great theater at
Pompeii, built in the time of Augustus, was semi-circular in form,
with a diameter of 322 feet.]

The officers of the amphitheater were still employed in the task of
fixing the vast a