Sicilia, Napoli Roma: two months in Italy: Herculaneum

sabato 5 marzo 2011

Herculaneum

We travelled about a third of the distance from Naples to Herculaneum as we would have travelled to get to Pompeii, on the same local rail system (Circumvesuviana). Herculaneum (Ercolano today) is a smaller excavation of a more exclusive seaside retreat than Pompeii. Extraordinary to be able to look down into, then walk down into, streets of antiquity inside a modern town.

Alarming to be allowed to walk into rooms, over tiled floors 2000 years old, with rain puddles in them and shoes of every description scraping over them.

It was something of a puzzle, watching bricklayers at work restoring or recreating walls, to know which parts of fascinating wall building styles should be attributed to the original town builders.

We later visited the National Archaeological Museum where we saw spectacular mosaics from Herculaneum and Pompeii, very valuable to have been first to Herculaneum — having done which we felt no need to go to Pompeii. Here are photos from Herculaneum:

click to enlarge this photo below, the detail may otherwise escape you...

... use the BACK button to return

... and here, finally, down at the seaside as was in AD79.

If he was a gentleman guardian of the town, he was, like the guns of Singapore in 1941,

looking the wrong way.

click here to see some items from here and Pompeii in the

National Archaeological Museum in Naples

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TOP PHOTO

A seat on the cliff road at Positano just off the Amalfi Drive, south of Naples.

Just out there in the blue, the Sirens lived and tempted Ulysses. Ulysses' men, according to Homer's Odyssey, had their ears filled with wax, rowing furiously, deaf to the lure of the Sirens. Ulysses had lashed himself to the mast to avoid the Sirens' temptation. According to myth, Parthenope, one of the Sirens, fell in love with Ulysses but he ignored here. She came ashore and died of a broken heart near what is now Naples, a city founded as 'Neapolis' by the Greeks — and still Greek, luxurious and epicurean, through Roman imperial times. Parthenope and Neapolitan culture are synonymous.

Also, according to Greek myth, Persephone, daughter of Demeter, goddess of fertility and harvest, was abducted by Pluto and taken to Hades via the entrance to the underworld in the crater of the volcano at Avernus, near Naples. Not knowing of Pluto's action, Demeter charged three of the sirens, including Parthenope, to find her daughter, lighting the sea with the great volcanoes between Vesuvius which broods over Naples to Etna which occupies southeast Sicily. Demeter was angered when the Sirens could not find Persephone, changing them into birds with female faces or in later rendering creature more like mermaids. Demeter eventually came to terms with Pluto for sharing Persephone, each for half a year.(Gosh, how modern!) Persephone, from the Hades of death and sleeping plants, ascended to Demeter, near Naples, with its rich soils, as the bringer of harvests each year.

To travel in Italy from the south to the centre, from Sicily (occupied by Greeks, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Germans, French, Spanish and Americans in twists and turns) northwards to Rome, is to follow the heart a special way, through depths of culture and complexity of character very different from the better known worship from abroad of the world of Tuscany and Florence.