of our contemporaries covered with salt water, there were one day
discovered the vestiges of old structures, and it is now conceded that
Pompeii, like many other seaside places, had its harbor at a distance.
Our little city made no great noise in history. Tacitus and Seneca speak
of it as celebrated, but the Italians of all periods have been fond of
superlatives. You will find some very old buildings in it, proclaiming
an ancient origin, and Oscan inscriptions recalling the antique language
of the country. When the Samnites invaded the whole of Campania, as
though to deliver it over more easily to Rome, they probably occupied
Pompeii, which figured in the second Samnite war, B.C. 310, and which,
revolting along with the entire valley of the Sarno from Nocera to
Stabiæ, repulsed an incursion of the Romans and drove them back to their
vessels. The third Samnite war was, as is well known, a bloody vengeance
for this, and Pompeii became Roman. Although the yoke of the conquerors
was not very heavy--the _municipii_, retaining their Senate, their
magistrates, their _comitiæ_ or councils, and paying a tribute of men
only in case of war--the Samnite populations, clinging frantically to
the idea of a separate and independent existence, rose twice again in
revolt; once just after the battle of Cannæ, when they threw themselves
into the arms of Hannibal, and then against Sylla, one hundred and
twenty-four years later--facts that prove the tenacity of their
resistance. On both occasions Pompeii was retaken, and the second time
partly dismantled and occupied by a detachment of soldiers, who did not
long remain there. And thus we have the whole history of this little
city. The Romans were fond of living there, and Cicero had a residence
in the place, to which he frequently refers in his letters. Augustus
sent thither a colony which founded the suburb of Augustus Felix,
administered by a mayor. The Emperor Claudius also had a villa at
Pompeii, and there lost one of his children, who perished by a singular
mishap. The imperial lad was amusing himself, as the Neapolitan boys do