Chapter 2 The Destruction of Southern Italy

one This is the second time I have been to the ruins of Pompeii.Oddly enough, both times felt deeply exhausted.An ordinary road, a small city, but tired of trekking through mountains and rivers, unexpectedly. At first I didn't pay much attention to it, but later, when my legs and feet became heavier and heavier, I stopped looking for a place to sit down, and suddenly remembered that I had looked for it here last time.Not only here, looking forward, sections of the road are full of the most tired images, swaying in the sunshine of the year before and this year. After much deliberation, the only reason is that I am tired.

The heart is tired, not tired in the ruins, nor tired in death.The ancient city of Pompeii was buried by volcanic ash, which happened on August 24, AD 79, and it has been more than 1,900 years.After 1,900 years, even cities that have never encountered volcanic eruptions have been turned into ruins, so it is difficult for us to worry about and feel tired. However, there is a shock that has reached us directly through more than 1,900 years, and will obviously continue to shock, that is, the collective death and instantaneous destruction of human groups without warning. Every single death and gradual destruction in everyday life has specific causes, but Pompeii cleanly washes away all specific causes.Whether this man has a heart attack or not, whether that building has cracks, or whether the owner of this bathroom has a century-old feud with his neighbors, those two athletic teams' mutual grievances are wiped out and never left. Engrams, without disease, without hatred, without anger, are drawn into the net of death and destruction, and cannot escape.Therefore, walking among the ruins of Pompeii, every step involves the purest death and destruction, no more confusion, no more decomposition, no evasion, no luck.Any tourist who is both a bystander and not a bystander is secretly imagining and empathizing.

There are also other scenarios of collective death and instant destruction in the world, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and the sudden atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, Japan, which I visited just before my departure.In this kind of scene, the destruction is too thorough, making it difficult for people to make a direct comparison before and after the destruction.The destruction of Pompeii was solely due to the accumulation of volcanic ash, and even the volcanic lava had never been there, so it was excavated more than a thousand years later, and it turned out that streets, shops, courtyards, and sculptures are all available.Not only that, the rutted ditches between the street stones, the various utensils in the bakery, the obscene calligraphy and paintings in the brothel, and the weird secret rooms in the private houses all indicate that people have just left and will return immediately.Unexpectedly, it was us who came back, it was like a fairy cave for thousands of years, a dream of Huang Liang.

Borges wrote in a poem: It is an illusion The common human fear of darkness imposes it on space, and it stops suddenly when we perceive its falsity It is like the shattering of a dream, the shattering when the dreamer understands himself In the moment of dreaming.Borges wasn't writing about Pompeii, he was just writing about the dusk when the darkness approached. Compared with the daylight just now and the morning, it is hard to tell when the dream is broken. It is the experience and reflection of all this that makes us tired. two What made me stop for a long time were those two theaters, one big and one small.The big theater has open-air seats. I calculated that it can accommodate four to five thousand spectators; the small theater has a roof and can accommodate more than a thousand spectators.The two theaters and a temple form a compact complex with squares and colonnades on the outside.The trees on the square have grown so big now that they are so green that people forget that the destruction has ever happened. They just think that there is a play in the theater and the audience has gone in.

In the history of European drama, I don’t think highly of Roman drama. I always contrast Greek drama with Roman drama in class to illustrate the many characteristics of a great art after its decline.But standing in the theater of Pompeii, I couldn't bear to think so.What they performed here at that time included Seneca's Roman tragedies and Menander's Greek comedies;Today I walked over the circular seats of the two theaters separately, knowing that there was no performance here on the day of the accident. It was noon when the disaster happened.In the era of lack of safe light sources, there are not many performances at night, but more in the afternoon.Then if the disaster comes later, there may be a real tragedy where the stage and the audience are mixed together.Judging from the remains of the pillars supporting the awning on the auditorium of the Grand Theater, the audience sitting here watching the theater will notice the change of cloud color and the flying of the gray tide a little later than the citizens on the street, so they will perceive the disaster one step later is coming.But once discovered and sensed, the situation will be even more dire.

So maybe there's a bit of symbolism here?Art and culture are powerless to resist disasters, but they can allow people to obtain temporary spiritual escape or psychological blindness, and then wake up immediately, tearing the liver and gallbladder.Whether it is art or culture, sometimes it has to be temporarily separated from the street for complete presentation, but how far and how long can it be separated?I don’t know if there were a few lonely elites in Pompeii who claimed not to be with the world. Unfortunately, even if there were, they had already been completely in the same boat, and no one could find them.

We say that there was no performance on the day of the accident because nineteenth-century archaeologists did not see a large number of human-shaped molds here that could be identified as spectators when they cleaned up the volcanic ash condensation.What is a humanoid mold shell?The people who were buried by the volcanic ash at that time left their struggling bodies before death, and when the volcanic ash cooled and solidified, it became the hard shell of these shapes.The human body decomposes quickly, but the hard shell of the casting mold is still there. Once archaeologists in the 19th century found this kind of humanoid mold shell, they used a pipe to slowly inject gypsum slurry, and the mold shell was peeled off. When it comes to living people, even the most subtle skin wrinkles and blood vessels are clearly displayed.This method was invented by G. Fiorelli, who was in charge of the excavation work in the ancient city of Pompeii at that time, so that we can see the final state of a group of life and death.

Most of the human remains I saw were lying on the ground or struggling on the couches in pain, and only a few stood against the wall.To be able to stand and die in such a disaster is awe-inspiring.In a pot-making factory, the human body of a worker crouches with his shoulders folded, apparently suffering from a suffocation stun.He didn't fall to the ground, he just wanted to squat down and get up after a while.Unexpectedly, this squatting has been squatting for more than a thousand years.What surprised him even more was that when he saw the light of day again, he found that his body had turned into his own work, a hard rock.

Therefore, the worker in the ruins of Pompeii squatting on the ground seems to be another sculpture of "The Thinker", thinking about how human beings are alienated into objects of labor, and then setting an example. I remember that Mark Twain said in an article that he was very moved when he saw a Pompeii corpse standing upright here.It was a soldier, wearing armor and standing on the post at the gate of the city, and he would not move until he died.I have not seen the mannequin of this soldier, but when Mark Twain came to Pompeii, only a small half of the ancient city had been excavated, and Fiorelli had not yet invented the method of injecting plaster for the formwork, so he saw should be a skeleton.

In addition to being moved, Mark Twain also had moments of anger.There were deep ruts in the stone roads of Pompeii, and he sank his foot in while walking and tripped.He became angry because of this, and asserted that the road had not been repaired for a long time, and the responsibility lay with the city's road management department. This inference made him not sad to see the remains of the dead, because any dead person might be a road management personnel. I think Mark Twain's extrapolation is reckless.Stone roads are generally not replaced immediately because of ruts, and experienced drivers are not afraid of these ruts.Judging from the overall condition of the roads in the ancient city of Pompeii, the relevant management personnel are fairly conscientious.Mark Twain blamed them the reason for his accidental footfall, and then went on infinitely, until he didn't forgive them even when they died tragically, which is too much.Even humor should not go beyond the most basic boundaries of humanity.

Even more egregious accusations than Mark Twain's came from a whole host of hypocritical moralists whose voices we hear so often in the various articles and books on Pompeii.They may not have been here before. Based on what they heard, they imagined that life in this city was very luxurious and corrupt, so they were punished by God.Evidence of extravagance and corruption are public baths, private houses, brothels and a lot of erotic paintings.In fact, in my opinion, what is presented here is the ordinary ecology of ancient Roman cities, and there is no reason to be punished. It’s just that the other ruins seen by later generations have completely lost the signal of sensory life. .In all fairness, Pompeii appears relatively restrained on the whole, which contrasts with how the emperors of later generations expanded their ostentation step by step, and then supported the metropolis.Goethe arrived here on March 11, 1787. He wrote in his notes on the day: Pompeii is small and narrow, which is beyond the expectations of visitors.Although the streets are straight and have sidewalks, they are narrow.The houses are small and windowless, and the rooms are lit only by doors that open onto courtyards or outdoor corridors.Some of the public buildings, the gate-bench, the temple, and a nearby villa are so small that they are not buildings at all, but rather models or doll houses.But these rooms, passages, and corridors are all decorated with pictures, which are pleasing to the eye.There are murals on the walls, the paintings are very delicate, but unfortunately most of them have been damaged. We also have this feeling of Goethe in "A Journey to Italy", but there is some kind of delusion here.When we usually look at the foundation of a building under construction, we are also surprised why each room is so small. In fact, this is because the interior space has not yet been formed and decorated, and each room is only compared with the boundless world with a limited foundation area. It can only appear narrow.Most of the remains of private houses in the ruins of Pompeii also became this kind of open foundation, so Goethe was so surprised.Later, he felt different when he entered the rooms that were relatively complete and decorated with utensils. He said: Pompeii's houses and rooms seem narrow, but they seem to be very spacious. French historian Taine came more than 20 years earlier than Goethe, and concluded that their enjoyment of life was far less comfortable and colorful than ours.That is to say, almost all the moral critics who assert that Pompeii was punished by God for its extravagance and debauchery came after Taine, and even after Goethe, and of course they did not bother to read Taine and Goethe. It seems to me that Pompeii also had luxury and debauchery, but after the entire city has been destroyed so horribly, it is somewhat immoral for so many critics to say that it was just punished, even though they are moral critics.They dare not admit, as Taine did, that their lives are actually much more comfortable than the Pompeians. I despise all who mock the victims.I wonder what they will do when some disaster befalls them too.Of course they will never help others, because other people are morally flawed and are being punished, so they take advantage of the situation to rob, murder, and help accomplish that punishment.Afterwards, if they survived, they would talk endlessly and become a moralist who emerged from the mud and remained untouched. three When the disaster in Pompeii came, the light of humanity shone everywhere.In addition to the city gate guard mentioned by Mark Twain, in addition to the scenes of protecting children and the elderly shown by many human remains, the greatest human image in my mind is a person with a name and a surname. He is " Natural History by Gaius Plinius Secundus. He was called Pliny the Elder because there was another Pliny the Younger (Gaius Plinius Caecilius) who was his nephew and later adopted as his adopted son.This Pliny the Younger is a famous prose writer in the history of the Roman Empire.A large part of Roman prose is actually letters. This tradition was initiated by Marcus Tullius Cicero, and Pliny the Younger inherited this tradition and became a master at writing beautiful letters.I read the book "Roman Culture and Classical Tradition" written by Chinese scholar Professor Zhu Longhua a few years ago, and I was very interested in Professor Zhu's detailed analysis of literary expressions from Cicero to Pliny the Younger. It was in the letters of Pliny the Younger that he told a historian about the Pompeii disaster, which mentioned the process of Pliny the Elder's sacrifice.This is the only complete narrative of a live survivor that mankind has received from this disaster, not to mention that he happened to be an essayist, and its preciousness can be imagined. Pliny the Elder was an outstanding scientist and an important official in Italy at that time. When the Pompeii disaster occurred, he served as the commander of the west coast of Italy (also known as the commander of the Mediterranean Fleet).I really don’t know how he found time to complete his thirty-seven-volume masterpiece "Natural History" and other works with more than one hundred volumes. According to Pliny the Younger’s letter, at noon on the day when the accident happened, Pliny the Elder heard that a strange cloud appeared in the sky, so he put on his boots and climbed up to observe it. The boat sailed in the direction of the strange cloud in order to observe it closely. But as soon as he was about to go out, he received letters from residents near Mount Vesuvius asking for rescue.He resolutely gave up scientific observation and ordered all ships to rush to the disaster area to rescue people, and his own ship took the lead.Burning volcanic ash and burnt rocks fell on the ship more and more. The navigator suggested to go back, but Pliny the Elder said: "The brave will have good luck."He ordered to go again to save people.As the commander of the fleet, he mainly rescued those who fled at sea or hid on the shore.He hugged and comforted his trembling friends, and in order to calm them down, he smiled, bathed, ate, and explained the eruption of Mount Vesuvius as a fire caused by a furnace.He even slept soundly in the volcanic ash until someone, fearing he would be buried, woke him up.Finally, he called on everyone to go to the beach, because they could escape by boat at any time, but when they got to the beach, the volcanic eruption caused the sea to go crazy, and it was impossible to sail at all. Everyone sat on the beach with pillows strapped to their heads to protect them from the gravel.However, the flames became bigger and bigger, and the smell of sulfur became stronger and stronger. People began to flee in panic, but they didn't know where to go.At this moment, Pliny the Elder suddenly fell to the ground. He was suffocated by volcanic ash and thick smoke at the age of fifty-six. Therefore, the victims of the Pompeii disaster were not only ordinary citizens, but at least one, the most knowledgeable historian of science and technology in ancient Europe. Pliny the Younger was eighteen years old and escaped by chance.This letter was written twenty-five years later, when he was a middle-aged man in his forties. Four I am deeply concerned about this Pliny the Elder who closed his eyes due to suffocation. The very important reason is that he squinted his eyes and saw China earlier in Europe. I haven't read his "Natural History". According to the quotation of Professor Zhu Longhua in the book "Roman Culture and Classical Tradition", Pliny the Elder has already written that the Chinese people have good manners, but they have little contact with people.All trade is waiting for others to come, never for sale.At that time he called the Chinese people Seres. He said this so early, 1,200 years before Marco Polo came to China, and 1,500 years before Matteo Ricci came to China!How did he know these characteristics of the Chinese people?It was probably relayed several times, and he inquired about it.As a scientist, he would screen and analyze, and finally screened out the concept of good manners, including the basic characteristics of Confucianism and the non-essential expedition of farming civilization. When he wrote "Natural History", in China, Wang Chong was writing "Lunheng", and Ban Gu was writing "Han Shu".In the year when the Pompeii disaster occurred, Ban Gu participated in a meeting of Confucian scholars discussing the similarities and differences of the Five Classics at the White Tiger Temple, and later produced the famous "Baihu Tongyi".That is to say, although the Chinese nation already has the pre-Qin scholars, Qu Yuan, and Sima Qian, it is still building its own more systematic spiritual foundation. The kind-hearted Wang Chong and Ban Gu didn't know that someone in the very far west was paying attention.But that pair of eyes has been buried in the rumbling catastrophe, and the place of burial is called Pompeii.