f the twentieth century? The reply will
be that it would give a very good idea of the average provincial town, but
that it would hardly serve as a fair criterion to judge of the life
pursued in the capital, or in the really large cities. Such a comparison
will afford us a certain clue to the unveiling of the mysteries of
Pompeii.

For the city at the mouth of the Sarno was an ancient Campanian
settlement, founded long before the days wherein Greek adventurers beached
their triremes on the shores of the Siren. It was a native community of
Oscans, deriving its name from the Oscan word _pompe_ (five), and, unlike
Paestum, it appears to have retained its original appellation under all
its successive masters. Its primitive inhabitants seem to have
intermingled with their Hellenic victors, and to have grown civilized by
intercourse with them. Temples of heavy Doric architecture were raised;
walls and watch-towers were built; and by the time the city fell into the
hands of the encroaching Romans, it had become a flourishing place with
some twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants, owing its prosperity to its
excellent situation at the mouth of the river, which made Pompeii a
convenient port to serve the rich district of Campania that lies eastward
of Vesuvius. Nuceria (the modern Nocera) and the larger city of Nola were
both dependent on it, for the Sarno was in those days navigable, so that
ships bringing Egyptian corn and Eastern merchandise frequently left the
Pompeian harbour and sailed up stream to unload their cargoes at these
cities. Let us picture then to ourselves a compact town, an irregular oval
in form, surrounded by walls pierced by eight gates and embellished with
twelve towers; its eastern extremity towards Nocera containing the
Amphitheatre, and its most westerly point marked by the Herculaneum gate
leading to the Street of Tombs. Southward, we must imagine the sea much
closer to its walls than at the present day, for the alluvial deposits
have in the course of nearly two thousand years added many acres of solid
ground to the shores of the Bay. Behind the city to the north rose the
mountain side, not seared with the traces of lava as in these days, nor
surmounted by a smoking cone, but radiant with vineyards and gardens which
extended unbroken up to the very rim of the ancient crater. Amidst the
greenery of the luxuriant slopes peeped forth innumerable farms and villas
of wealthy Romans, for this exquisite spot had