Resurrecting Pompeii Read Online Free PDF Page B

in 1834 41 and Edward John Poynter’s painting Faithful unto Death in 1865 (Figure 1.4). This illustration by Lancelot Speed from an 1897 edition of The Last Days of Pompeii 42 is clearly based on Poynter’s painting. The latter became one of the best-recognized images in Victorian painting. This image had particular resonance in England where it was used both as an exemplary case of unyielding dedication to duty and as a metaphor for the support due to the British Empire. 43 The political potential of this tale was also exploited by Fiorelli. He invoked the story of the soldier who had considered death a better option than desertion in a letter of support for King Ferdinand II’s Constitution to the newspaper Il Tempo in March 1848. 44
    In the second half of the nineteenth century, Dyer dismissed this story as fiction. 45 He not only doubted the veracity of the interpretation; he also questioned whether a skeleton was even found at this location as he could not find evidence of such in the excavation journals. Moreover, he pointed out that the structure in question was not a sentry box, but the funeral monument of M. Cerinius Restitutus , as evidenced by an inscription. This account was supported in other nineteenth-century publications but that did not put an end to literary and other references to this tragic scene. 46
    Scholars who have grappled with the possibility that this often-reported skeleton may have existed have suggested that instead of an interpretation of a loyal soldier, it was probably that of a victim seeking shelter in a tomb. 47
    There is no argument that skeletons were found in and around the Temple of Isis (VIII, vii, 27–28), though their interpretation has been somewhat fantastic. The temple was excavated by Francesco la Vega between 1764 and 1766. Two victims were found in the temple and one nearby with a quantity of precious goods, presumably from the temple. The popular myth that was woven about these victims is thought to date to the first decades of the nineteenth century. As the remains of eggs, fish and bread were found on a table in a room behind the temple, it was thought that the priests’ meal was interrupted by the violence of the onset of the eruption. Some of the priests fled with treasure from the temple; the one carrying the sack being toppled by the collapse of the colonnade in the Triangular Forum. The priests who remained inside the temple became trapped by the pumice build-up and could not escape, eventually succumbing to asphyxiation. Before he was overcome, one of the priests took up an axe and attempted to create an escape route by hacking through walls but was defeated by a very solid piece of masonry. It was claimed that he was discovered with the axe still in his hands. 48 Bulwer-Lytton included this fable in his novel The Last Days of Pompeii (Figure 1.5). 49
    A recent description of the human finds from the temple is far more conservative. It merely states that one skeleton was found in the kitchen of the residential complex and the other was found in the ekklesiasterion . There are insufficient associated artefacts to further indicate the part they played in the functioning of the temple, though it has been suggested that one may have been a priest and the other a servant. 50
Perhaps the most famous skeleton to become part of the mythology of Pompeii is that of the supposed woman in the gladiators’ barracks. The
     
Figure 1.4 Illustration by Lancelot Speed from an 1897 edition of The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (opposite p. 374)
     
Figure 1.5 Illustration by Lancelot Speed of a priest from the Temple of Isis from an 1897 edition of The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (opposite p. 372) quadroporticus of the theatres (VIII, vii, 16 –17) was sporadically excavated over thirty years from 1766. It was thought that this space originally served as a foyer for the theatres but was transformed into gladiators’ barracks in the last years of