he
Casa dei Vettii and turn our footsteps westward; and issuing out of the
Gate of Herculaneum, let us traverse the famous Street of Tombs, that
extends along the road leading to the sister buried city. In ancient times
this was the Via Domitiana, a branch road of the Appian Way, and it formed
the most frequented entrance into Pompeii. To Roman ideas, therefore, it
was but natural that tombs should be erected alongside its borders, whilst
the spirits of the passing and repassing crowds were in no wise affected
by the memorials of death attending their exits and entrances. And with
the surging human tide that was ever flowing in this thoroughfare the
funeral processions must constantly have mingled, the wailing of the hired
mourners rising sharply above the din of harsh voices, the creaking of
clumsy wooden wheels and the braying of the heavily laden asses. Now over
all reigns a decorous silence, such as we moderns deem fitting for a
cemetery; only the hum of insects breaks the deep quiet of the atmosphere,
nor are there any living creatures visible at this late hour save the bats
which flit restlessly in and out of the weed-grown piles of brick or stone
that once were stately monuments of wealth or piety. Above our heads the
tall sombre cypresses shoot upward like gigantic spear-heads into the
crystal-clear air, pointing heavenward like our own church spires in a
rural English landscape. This Street of the Dead in the City of the Dead
is in truth a solemn and a soothing spot; nor can we find its precincts
melancholy, when we stand in the midst of such glorious scenery. For Monte
Sant' Angelo towers to our left against the mellow evening sky, flecked
with lines of peach-blossom cloud, whilst in front of us the dark form of
Capri seems to float in a golden haze between firmament and ocean. Behind
us the dark mass of the Mountain with its breath of ascending smoke seems
like an eternal funeral pyre in honour of the Dead, who were spared the
horrors of that fearful disaster which overwhelmed the living. Upon the
broken tombs and altars the light from the setting sun falls with warm
cheerful radiance, flushing stone and brick-work with a ruddy glow like
jasper; whilst, high in the heavens above the cypress tops, the crescent
moon prepares to turn to gold from silver.

_Beati sunt mortui_: here rest, we know, the priestess Mammia, the
decemvir Aricius, Libella the aedile, and a host of other citizens with
whose names the stude