Mark Twain - The Innocents Abroad - Volume 04

The Buried City of PompeiiHow Dwellings Appear that have been Unoccupied for Eighteen hundred yearsThe Judgment SeatDesolationThe Footprints of the Departed"No Women Admitted"Theatres, Bakeshops, SchoolsSkeletons preserved by the Ashes and CindersThe Brave Martyr to DutyRip Van WinkleThe Perishable Nature of Fame

At Sea Once MoreThe Pilgrims all WellSuperb StromboliSicily by MoonlightScylla and CharybdisThe "Oracle" at FaultSkirting the Isles of Greece Ancient AthensBlockaded by Quarantine and Refused Permission to EnterRunning the BlockadeA Bloodless Midnight AdventureTurning Robbers from NecessityAttempt to Carry the Acropolis by StormWe FailAmong the Glories of the PastA World of Ruined SculptureA Fairy VisionFamous LocalitiesRetreating in Good OrderCaptured by the GuardsTravelling in Military StateSafe on Board Again

Modern GreeceFallen GreatnessSailing Through the Archipelago and the DardanellesFootprints of HistoryThe First Shoddy Contractor of whom History gives any AccountAnchored Before ConstantinopleFantastic FashionsThe Ingenious Goose-RancherMarvelous CripplesThe Great MosqueThe Thousand and One ColumnsThe Grand Bazaar of Stamboul

Scarcity of Morals and WhiskeySlave-Girl Market ReportCommercial Morality at a DiscountThe Slandered Dogs of ConstantinopleQuestionable Delights of Newspaperdom in TurkeyIngenious Italian JournalismNo More Turkish Lunches DesiredThe Turkish Bath FraudThe Narghileh FraudJackplaned by a NativeThe Turkish Coffee Fraud

Sailing Through the Bosporus and the Black Sea"Far-Away Moses"Melancholy SebastopolHospitably Received in RussiaPleasant English PeopleDesperate FightingRelic HuntingHow Travellers Form "Cabinets"

Nine Thousand Miles EastImitation American Town in RussiaGratitude that Came Too LateTo Visit the Autocrat of All the Russias

Summer Home of RoyaltyPractising for the Dread OrdealCommittee on Imperial AddressReception by the Emperor and FamilyDresses of the Imperial PartyConcentrated PowerCounting the SpoonsAt the Grand Duke'sA Charming VillaA Knightly FigureThe Grand DuchessA Grand Ducal BreakfastBaker's Boy, the Famine-BreederTheatrical Monarchs a FraudSaved as by FireThe GovernorGeneral's Visit to the ShipOfficial "Style"Aristocratic Visitors"Munchausenizing" with ThemClosing Ceremonies

Return to ConstantinopleWe Sail for AsiaThe Sailors Burlesque the Imperial VisitorsAncient SmyrnaThe "Oriental Splendor" FraudThe "Biblical Crown of Life"Pilgrim Prophecy-SavansSociable Armenian GirlsA Sweet Reminiscence"The Camels are Coming, Ha-ha!"

Smyrna's LionsThe Martyr PolycarpThe "Seven Churches"Remains of the Six SmyrnasMysterious Oyster Mine OystersSeeking SceneryA Millerite TraditionA Railroad Out of its Sphere

Journeying Toward Ancient EphesusAncient AyassalookThe Villanous DonkeyA Fantastic ProcessionBygone MagnificenceFragments of HistoryThe Legend of the Seven Sleepers

They pronounce it Pom-pay-e. I always had an idea that you went down into Pompeii with torches, by the way of damp, dark stairways, just as you do in silver mines, and traversed gloomy tunnels with lava overhead and something on either hand like dilapidated prisons gouged out of the solid earth, that faintly resembled houses. But you do nothing the kind. Fully one-half of the buried city, perhaps, is completely exhumed and thrown open freely to the light of day; and there stand the long rows of solidly-built brick houses (roofless) just as they stood eighteen hundred years ago, hot with the flaming sun; and there lie their floors, clean-swept, and not a bright fragment tarnished or waiting of the labored mosaics that pictured them with the beasts, and birds, and flowers which we copy in perishable carpets to-day; and here are the Venuses, and Bacchuses, and Adonises, making love and getting drunk in many-hued frescoes on the walls of saloon and bed-chamber; and there are the narrow streets and narrower sidewalks, paved with flags of good hard lava, the one deeply rutted with the chariot-wheels, and the other with the passing feet of the Pompeiians of by-gone centuries; and there are the bake-shops, the temples, the halls of justice, the baths, the theatresall clean-scraped and neat, and suggesting nothing of the nature of a silver mine away down in the bowels of the earth. The broken pillars lying about, the doorless doorways and the crumbled tops of the wilderness of walls, were wonderfully suggestive of the "burnt district" in one of our cities, and if there had been any charred timbers, shattered windows, heaps of debris, and general blackness and smokiness about the place, the resemblance would have been perfect. But nothe sun shines as brightly down on old Pompeii to-day as it did when Christ was born in Bethlehem, and its streets are cleaner a hundred times than ever Pompeiian saw them in her prime. I know whereof I speakfor in the great, chief thoroughfares (Merchant street and the Street of Fortune) have I not seen with my own eyes how for two hundred years at least the pavements were not repaired!how ruts five and even ten inches deep were worn into the thick flagstones by the chariot-wheels of generations of swindled tax-payers? And do I not know by these signs that Street Commissioners of Pompeii never attended to their business, and that if they never mended the pavements they never cleaned them? And, besides, is it not the inborn nature of Street Commissioners to avoid their duty whenever they get a chance? I wish I knew the name of the last one that held office in Pompeii so that I could give him a blast. I speak with feeling on this subject, because I caught my foot in one of those ruts, and the sadness that came over me when I saw the first poor skeleton, with ashes and lava sticking to it, was tempered by the reflection that may be that party was the Street Commissioner.

NoPompeii is no longer a buried city. It is a city of hundreds and hundreds of roofless houses, and a tangled maze of streets where one could easily get lost, without a guide, and have to sleep in some ghostly palace that had known no living tenant since that awful November night of eighteen centuries ago.

We passed through the gate which faces the Mediterranean, (called the "Marine Gate,") and by the rusty, broken image of Minerva, still keeping tireless watch and ward over the possessions it was powerless to save, and went up a long street and stood in the broad court of the Forum of Justice. The floor was level and clean, and up and down either side was a noble colonnade of broken pillars, with their beautiful Ionic and Corinthian columns scattered about them. At the upper end were the vacant seats of the Judges, and behind them we descended into a dungeon where the ashes and cinders had found two prisoners chained on that memorable November night, and tortured them to death. How they must have tugged at the pitiless fetters as the fierce fires surged around them!