Another circumstance imparts a peculiar interest to Pompeii.  That city, which seemed to have no good luck, had been violently shaken by earthquake in the year B.C. 63.  Several temples had toppled down along with the colonnade of the Forum, the great Basilica, and the theatres, without counting the tombs and houses.  Nearly every family fled from the place, taking with them their furniture and their statuary; and the 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.

After the catastrophe, however, the inhabitants returned, and made the first excavations in order to recover their valuables; and robbers, too—­we shall surprise them in the very act—­crept into the subterranean city.  It is a fact that the Emperor Titus for a moment entertained the idea of clearing and restoring it, and with that view sent two Senators to the spot, intrusted with the mission of making the first study of the ground; but it would appear that the magnitude of the work appalled those dignitaries, and that the restoration in question never got beyond the condition of a mere project.  Rome soon had more serious cares to occupy her than the