born in Athens, the subject of Rome. Succeeding early to an ample
inheritance, he had indulged that inclination for travel so natural to
the young, and had drunk deep of the intoxicating draught of pleasure
amidst the gorgeous luxuries of the imperial court.

He was an Alcibiades without ambition. He was what a man of
imagination, youth, fortune, and talents, readily becomes when you
deprive him of the inspiration of glory. His house at Rome was the
theme of the debauchees, but also of the lovers of art; and the
sculptors of Greece delighted to task their skill in adorning the
porticoes and exedrae of an Athenian. His retreat in Pompeii--alas! the
colors are faded now, the walls stripped of their paintings!--its main
beauty, its elaborate finish of grace and ornament, is gone; yet when
first given once more to the day, what eulogies, what wonder, did its
minute and glowing decorations create--its paintings--its mosaics!
Passionately enamoured of poetry and the drama, which recalled to
Glaucus the wit and the heroism of his race, that fairy mansion was
adorned with representations of AEschylus and Homer. And antiquaries,
who resolve taste to a trade, have turned the patron to the professor,
and still (though the error is now acknowledged) they style in custom,
as they first named in mistake, the disburied house of the Athenian
Glaucus 'THE HOUSE OF THE DRAMATIC POET'.

Previous to our description of this house, it may be as well to convey
to the reader a general notion of the houses of Pompeii, which he will
find to resemble strongly the plans of Vitruvius; but with all those
differences in detail, of caprice and taste, which being natural to
mankind, have always puzzled antiquaries. We shall endeavor to make
this description as clear and unpedantic as possible.