. Pompeii : its life and art . at theirleisure. The walls aredecorated with a seriesof paintings presentingrealistic scenes fromthe life of such see the guests eat-ing, drinking, and play-ing with dice. Someare standing, others sit-ting on stools ; it is thekind of public house that Martial calls a stool-ridden cookshop,in which couches were not provided, but only seats withoutbacks. In one of the scenes (Fig. 224) four men are drinking, abouta round table, while a boy waits on them ; two of the figures have pointed hoods like thoseseen to-day in Sicily and someparts of Italy. String
. Pompeii : its life and art . at theirleisure. The walls aredecorated with a seriesof paintings presentingrealistic scenes fromthe life of such see the guests eat-ing, drinking, and play-ing with dice. Someare standing, others sit-ting on stools ; it is thekind of public house that Martial calls a stool-ridden cookshop,in which couches were not provided, but only seats withoutbacks. In one of the scenes (Fig. 224) four men are drinking, abouta round table, while a boy waits on them ; two of the figures have pointed hoods like thoseseen to-day in Sicily and someparts of Italy. Strings ofsausage, hams, and other eat-ables hang from a pole sus-pended under the ceiling. Some of the figures in the pictures are accompanied by inscriptions. Thus by the side of a guest for whom a waiter is pouring out a glass of wine is written : Da fri- dam pusillum, Add cold water — just a little. In a similar connection we read, Addc caliccm Setinum, Another cup of Setian ! The Setian wine came from a town in Latium at the. Fig. 225. — Delivery of wine. Wall paintinj 396 POMPEII foot of the hills bordering the Pontine Marshes, now Sezze; weinfer that our wineshop sold not merely the products of neigh-boring vineyards, but choice brands from other regions as from the locality were probably brought to town in am-phorae ; the delivery of a consignment from a distance is shownin a separate scene ( 225), in which amphorae are beingfilled from a large skin on a wagon; the team of mules is mean-while resting, unharnessed, the yoke hanging on the end of thepole. The pictures present the life of a tavern from the point ofview of the landlord; but occasionally we have a suggestionof the other side, as in the following couplet, the faulty spellingof which we can forgive on account of its pithiness: Talia tefaI lant utinam mc\ii\dacia, copo, Tu ve~\des acuam et bibes ipse merum,— Landlord, may your lies malign Bring destruction on your head !You yourself drink unmixe
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookpublishernewyorkmacmillan
