[Footnote F:  See note on page 198. (The Footnote J of this book.—­Transcriber.)]

[Footnote G:  The learned Minervini has remarked certain differences in the washes put on the Pompeian walls.  He has indicated finer ones with which, according to him, the ancients painted in fresco their more studied compositions, landscapes, and figures, while ordinary decorations were painted dry by inferior painters.  I recall the fact, as I pass on, that several paintings, particularly the most important, were detached, but secured to the wall with iron clamps.  It has ever been noticed that the back of these pictures did not adhere to the walls—­an excellent precaution against dampness.  This custom of sawing off and shifting mural paintings was very ancient.  It is known that the wealthy Romans adorned their houses with works of art borrowed or stolen from Greece, and all will remember the famous contract of Mummius, who, in arranging with some merchants to convey to Rome the masterpieces of Zeuxis and Apelles, stipulated that if they should be lost or damaged on the way, the merchants should replace them at their own expense.]

[Footnote H:  “And how the ancients, even the most unskilful, understood the right treatment of nude subjects!” said an eminent critic to me, one day, as he was with me admiring these pictures; “and,” he added, “we know nothing more about it now; our statues are not nude, but undressed.”]

[Footnote I:  Recently, Signor Fiorelli has found another bronze statuette of a bent and crooked Silenus worth both the others.]

[Footnote J:  A badly interpreted inscription on the gate of Nola had led, for a moment, to the belief that the importation of this singular worship dated back to the early days of the little city; but we now know that it was introduced by Sylla into the Roman world.  Isis was Nature, the patroness of the Pompeians, who venerated her equally in their physical Venus.  This form of religion, mysterious, symbolical, full of secrets hidden from the people, as it was; these goddesses with heads of dogs, wolves, oxen, hawks; the god Onion, the god Garlic, the god Leek; all that Apuleius tells about it, besides the data furnished by the Pompeian excavations, the recovered bottle-brushes, the basins, the knives, the tripods, the cymbals, the citherae, etc.,—­were worth the trouble of examination and study.

Upon the door of the temple, a strange inscription announced that Numerius Popidius, the son of Numerius, had, at his own expense, rebuilt the temple of Isis, thrown down by an earthquake, and that, in reward for his liberality, the decurions had admitted him gratuitously to their college at the age of six years.  The antiquaries, or some of them, at least, finding this age improbable, have read it sixty instead of six, forgetting that there then existed two kinds of decurions, the ornamentarii and praetextati—­the honorary and the active officials.  The former might be associated with the Pompeian Senate in recompense for services rendered by their fathers.  An inscription found at Misenum confirms this fact. (See the Memorie del l’Academia Ercolanese, anno 1833)—­The minutes of the Herculaneum Academy, for the year 1833.]