The Mining of Herculaneum Splendid Opportunity for the Archeologist a by Professor Alfred Emerson, Art Institute of Chicago
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SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN November 420 16, ]912 The Mining of Herculaneum Splendid Opportunity for the Archeologist A By Professor Alfred Emerson, Art Institute of Chicago American explorer of large experience and fine ski has christened the virgin soil of art history-to A long and singular oblivion overtook Herculaneum Nspirit, Dr. Charles Waldstein, has advocated a com Asia Minor. Herculaneum will please stay dead ! and Pompeii after their volcanic burial in the reign of plete,A final disinterment of Herculaneum, the buri�d The mysterious underground city somehow refuses Titus, A.D. 79. The refugees from the nearer suburb Roman city at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, by inter to do this. Its strange rediscovery is too closely inter obtained the freedom of Neapolis. the Grreco-Roman national subscription. The Italian government has lent woven with the rebirth of intelligence, and of modern Naples. Posterity forgot the buried towns, although a favorable ear to part of the Cambridge professor's history itself. Let us see if this is not so. the Greek and Latin writers who relate their history proposal. It has decided to employ capable mining The resurrection of Herculaneum and Pompeii in the were easy of access and both places lay close to a busy engineers on that enterprise, who will conduct it with eighteenth century took the imagination of all Europe highway. One stroke of the pick was enough to be pneumatic rock-cutters by electric light, instead of captive. The dead occupants of the two Vesuvian ports tray the secret of Pompeii's underground survival. Its elbow-grease and torchlight. But it has rejected the conquered the modern heart. To be exact, all the new old hilltop temple of Hercules and Its tall amphitheater co-operative feature. Short of cataclysms like the and near glimpses of classical antiquity that were were, in fact, never buried at all by the cloud of light Ruggiero's plan of Herculaneum theater. Note scene and proscenium walls. and Prince d'Elbeuf's open well mouth. llSlOO. Scaleof Palm8 From \Valdstien-Shoobrid&e. Beloch's plan. Reduction 0.28. Note obliteration of antique shoreline by modern lava flow, the royal palace and park. the underground Bites. baths casaand thedei papiri,recent theatrum,excavations templum, basilica, (thermre) (scaDi nuoDi) Photo. Giorgio Sommer. Model of Herculaneum theater on view at Resina. Reassembled bronze horse from peak of theater. THE MINING OF HERCULANEUM Messina earthquake, Italy prefers not to pass the hat. thrown open toward 1750 and after worked together. pumice stone which fell on that section of the shore. A'nd Italy holds all the dice in the proposed arche Stuart surveyed the antiquities of Athens. Rome gave Farther west, a deluge of volcanic mud filled every ological game. So far so good. Unfortunately, the up oR harvest of statues. A great Italian engraver cranny.. of the sister city. This blanket of wet volcanic problem has only been navigated back to the starting portrayed the majestic ruins of the imperial city in a cinders hardened to a stratum of solid rock, and is point. No sooner had the national government given thousand noble etchings. "The glory that was Greece crossed only on top by lava streams of much later a new twist to the comatose underground exploration and the splendor that was Rome" penetrated philoso ongm. The resultant condition is a sixty-five-foot 1908 1909, in and than litigation arose over the com phy, letters, the arts of design and even costume. stratum of very hard natural concrete and lava between pensation of real estate holders in the modern cities Watteau's courtly gallants and powdered belles ceased the antique and the modern street levels, as against of Portici and Resina, which crown the lava beds above to please. This convulsion of Europe's taste fore eighteen feet of loose, light gravel at Pompeii, with ancient Herculaneum. Courts are slow and timid. shadowed the later social and political revolution. upper stories of submerged constructions outcropping. Resina will . not relent. First Alfieri's "Brutus" and Chenier's "Messenian In spite of all this, Herculaneum was tapped first. Prince d'Elbeuf discovered the remains of the buried Odes"; then Goddess Reason, the Consulate and the princely foreign resident of Portici sank a well on his A Campanian town by accident in 1719, under his coun Corsican Cresar. grounds, as we have seen. As luck would have it, try seat at Portici. The impending bicentenary of that A clever Frenchman has described the beginnings of ·his men penetrated through recent lavas to the heart event promises to be a sorry celebration, with nothing modern neo-Greek and neo-Roman art under the cap of a lofty antique structure which was embellished done to revive the torpid enterprise. Archeology will tion "Empire Art Under Louis XV." He proclaims with many statues of white marble. Prince d'Elbeuf not languish on account of Mr. Waldstein's disappoint Piranesi its founder. Other big stars in the new art extracted twenty columns of coloreo stone and ten or a ment. But Italy might cease to be its chief nursery firmament bear familiar names : Wedgwood and Flax dozen gracefully , draped female figures from the thea hereafter. The world will give its better attention, as man, David and Percier, Canova and Thorvaldsen. ter and contiguous ruins. Some o� these were after scholars are already doing, to French Africa and The classical wave reached America. From Maine to ward identified as the daughters of Nonius Balbus, the Egypt, to the isles of Greece, and above all to that Missouri, Grecian porticos still add dignity the builder of the municipal court-house. Elbeuf astutely to eastern half of the vast Roman empire which Strzygow- manse and majesty to the county magnate's mansion, presented three of his statues to Austria's popular mili- © 1912 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC November SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 16, 1912 421 tary hero, Prince Eugene. Austria ruled Naples at this horses they found in position on that architectural the new shafts. Unpropped rock ceilings and walls fell period. Its local authorities, however, confiscated the eminence. Their royal master proved equally brilliant. in and endangered the modern town overhead. Alcu ' remainder of Elbeuf's marble harvest, and stopped his Part of the crumpled bronze quadriga was idiotically bier's activity and petty jealousy were a burden to burrowing, without pursuing the work on government converted into bas relief portraits of the king and his abler Swiss and Italian subordinates until his account. The Elector of Saxony bought the Vienna queen, and church furniture, although the heads of death in 1780. But no trained expert was ever more figures of Eugene's estate, and they are at Dresden yet. these brazen steeds surpassed those of San Marco at fortunate in his digging, and the king stood by him Twenty years later, Naples is a Spanish secundo Venice ! The bronze fragments were allowed to lie in while the crusty old captain filled his palace with the geniture, and King Charles, who afterward became a corner of the palace yard, a prey to passers-by, for spoils of Herculaneum. A Roman basilica or court Charles of Spain, is laying out a summer palace many years, even after an able artist, who was sum house 250 feet long, close to the theater, yielded some III. on the site of Prince d'Elbeuf's old chateau. His archi moned from Rome, had managed to rebuild one com fine imperial portraits of the Augustan era, and two tect opened another well, or shaft, hoping to quarry posite animal with the remains of all. All Naples marble equestrian portraits of Herculanean noblemen. Photo. Sommer. From Waldsttin. Photo. Sommer. Metrodorus on the senses and Philode Marble Pallas Athena found in tablinum Wrestler or disk-thrower. One mus on signs, found in the villa of of villa, near 46 on plan. Greek style of a pair found at and 74 A the Papyrus Rolls. of about 490 B. C. on plan. � ... ' 1- . Q From W&ldstein. Outer peristyle or garden of the villa of the Papyrus Rolls. Capt. Alcubier's plan of his tunnels. Note passage to Inner peristyle at 46, Alcubier's main shaft at 2, 3, 4, 11, his refilled scoops at 48 to 70. Also, bronze statues In sites at A. B, C., etc., and the 220-foot fishpond. Nearly all the statuary of the was recovered this garden. vllla In THE MINING OF HERCULANEUM broken antique marble from it for the royal limekiln. laughed at the curious medical attentions this brazen A rectangular temple yielded several Greek mono Alcubier, the king's master of the works, was more of horse required. After every hard shower, the castle chromes on marble and four big mythologies in fresco. a soldier than a scrivener. His Spanish diary of the gates were closed for the king's steward to empty its In the fifties Alcubier Worm-holed a vast private dig is quaint reading. Naples, as Shakespeare would belly with a pump. mansion, a regular Roman palazzo, with horizontal have called Charles, was very lucky. The diggers hap The same incompetence governed the tunneling ope shafts. Comparetti and De Petra have almost proved, pened this time on the topmost pinnacle of the old rations. The royal excavator bored only for artistic in a recent monograph on this building and its contents, . theater, with a big Latin inscription on it that identi treasures of a portable nature, like statuary and fresco that its first owner was one of the illustrious Pisones, fied the building as a public monument of the long-lost paintings or mosaics.