Senate hesitated a long time before they allowed the city to be rebuilt
and the deserted district to be re-peopled. The Pompeians at last
returned; but the decurions wished to make the restoration of the place
a complete rejuvenation. The columns of the Forum speedily reappeared,
but with capitals in the fashion of the day; the Corinthian-Roman order,
adopted almost everywhere, changed the style of the monuments; the old
shafts covered with stucco were patched up for the new topwork they were
to receive, and the Oscan inscriptions disappeared. From all this there
sprang great blunders in an artistic point of view, but a uniformity
and consistency that please those who are fond of monuments and cities
of one continuous derivation. Taste loses, but harmony gains thereby,
and you pass in review a collective totality of edifices that bear their
age upon their fronts, and give a very exact and vivid idea of what a
_municeps_ a Roman colony must have been in the time of Vespasian.

They went to work, then, to rebuild the city, and the undertaking was
pushed on quite vigorously, thanks to the contributions of the
Pompeians, especially of the functionaries. The temples of Jupiter and
of Venus--we adopt the consecrated names--and those of Isis and of
Fortune, were already up; the theatres were rising again; the handsome
columns of the Forum were ranging themselves under their porticoes; the
residences were gay with brilliant paintings; work and pleasure had both
resumed their activity; life hurried to and fro through the streets, and
crowds thronged the amphitheatre, when, all at once, burst forth the
terrible eruption of 79. I will describe it further on; but here simply
recall the fact that it buried Pompeii under a deluge of stones and
ashes. This re-awakening of the volcano destroyed three cities, without
counting the villages, and depopulated the country in the twinkling of
an eye.