Assuredly, after reading this inscription, we cannot reproach the fair Pompeians with concealing their affections from the public.  Nevoleia certainly was not the wife of Munatius; nevertheless, she loved him well, since she made a trysting with him even in the tomb.  It was Queen Caroline Murat who, accompanied by Canova, was the first to penetrate to the inside of this dovecote (January 14, 1813).  There were opened in her presence several glass urns with leaden cases, on the bottom of which still floated some ashes in a liquid not yet dried up, a mixture of water, wine, and oil.  Other urns contained only some bones and the small coin which has been taken for Charon’s obolus.

I have many other tombs left to mention.  There are three, which are sarcophagi, still complete, never open, and proving that the ancients buried their dead even before Christianity prohibited the use of the funeral pyre.  Families had their choice between the two systems, and burned neither men who had been struck by lightning (they thought the bodies of such to be incorruptible), nor new-born infants who had not yet cut their teeth.  Thus it was that the remains of Diomed’s youngest children could not be found, while those of the elder ones were preserved in a glass urn contained in a vase of lead.

A tomb that looks like a sentry-box, and stands as though on duty in front of the Herculaneum gate, had, during the eruption, been the refuge of a soldier, whose skeleton was found in it.  Another strangely-decorated monument forms a covered hemicycle turned toward the south, fronting the sea, as though to offer a shelter for the fatigued and heated passers-by.  Another, of rounded shape, presents inside a vault bestrewn with small flowers and decorated with bas-reliefs, one of which represents a female laying a fillet on the bones of her child.  Other monuments are adorned with garlands.  One of the least curious contained the magnificent blue and white glass vase, of which I shall have to speak further on.  That of the priestess Mamia, ornamented with a superb inscription, forms a large circular bench terminating in a lion’s claw.  Visitors are fond of resting there to look out upon the landscape and the sea.  Let us not forget the funereal triclinium, a simply-decorated dining-hall, where still are seen three beds of masonry, used at the banquets given in honor of the dead.  These feasts, at which nothing was eaten but shell-fish (poor fare, remarks Juvenal), were celebrated nine days after the death.  Hence came their title, novendialia.  They were also called silicernia; and the guests conversed at them about the exploits and benevolent deeds of the man who had ceased to live.  Polybius boasts greatly of these last honors paid to illustrious citizens.  Thence it was, he says, that Roman greatness took its rise.