Maria Amalia Christine, the lively young Queen, who was of artistic bent, explored the spacious precincts of her palace gardens and discovered there a wealth of statuary and other carved works. Delighted by the beauty of these antiquities, she begged her royal husband to let her look for new pieces. The king gave in because Vesuvius had been quite for a year and a half since the great outbreak of May 1737. A Spaniard organized a labor force and equipped it with tools and blasting powder.
The difficulties were formidable, for at the outset the diggers had to penetrate 49.5 feet of stony-hard lava deposit. Working outward from a well-shaft discoverd by d'Elboeuf, the crew cut passages and bored blast-holes. At last the men's picks struck on metal making it ring like a bell. The first find consisted of three fragments of bronze equestrian statues sculptured on heroic scale.
Finally, an expert was brought into the enterprise Marchese, to supervise and to handle the disposition of further discoveries. Three marble sculptures of Roman figures in togas, some painted columns, and broze torso of a horse were next unearthed. Marchese had himself lowered down the shaft on a rope, and discovered a flight of stairs. Its construction gave him some clue of what sort of edifice it was into which they were tunneling. Several weeks later, on December 11, 1738, an inscription was found indicating that a certain Rufus had built, with money of his own, the "Theatrum Herculanense".
It now appeared that a buried city had been revealed, for almost certainly a theater could only have been in an inhabited place. By luck, it seemed d'Elboeuf, the first excavator, had struck the very middle of the stage. This stage was littered with statuary. It was the one spot on the whole site where it was possible to find sculpture piled up literally one piece on top of another. The enormous stream of lava had rolled against the back wall of the theater, which had been richly decorated with carved works, and toppled it down upon the stage. For seventeen hundred years the stone figures had lain undisturbed.
The inscription gave the name of the city as "Herculaneum".
Lava, a liquidly flowing stone, is a mixture of several kinds of minerals, which hardens as it cools into glass and new kinds of rock. Herculaneum was covered to a depth of 65 feet by this material.
Lapilli, on the other hand, consist of small fragments of glassy volvanic rock. When spewed out of a volcanic togather with greasy ashes, these little stones descend as a relatively light rain, and form a loose cover not too resistant to light tools. Pompeii lay under a blanket of this kind and, moreover, was not nearly so deeply buired as its sister city, Herculaneum.
In history, as in the life of the individual, it often happens that the difficult course is chosen in preference to the easier one, and the longest way mistaken for the shortest. Thirty-five years passed after d'Elboeuf's inital efforts at Herculaneum before the first space-cut was made which ultimately led to uncovering of Pompeii.
Lapilli, on the other hand, consist of small fragments of glassy volvanic rock. When spewed out of a volcanic togather with greasy ashes, these little stones descend as a relatively light rain, and form a loose cover not too resistant to light tools. Pompeii lay under a blanket of this kind and, moreover, was not nearly so deeply buired as its sister city, Herculaneum.
In history, as in the life of the individual, it often happens that the difficult course is chosen in preference to the easier one, and the longest way mistaken for the shortest. Thirty-five years passed after d'Elboeuf's inital efforts at Herculaneum before the first space-cut was made which ultimately led to uncovering of Pompeii.
Pictures of Herculaneum:
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