Continuing to uncover the Covered Theatre, there was found in the Orchestra, which is entirely decorated with slabs and strips of a variety of marbles, above a strip of cipollino marble, which takes up the whole diameter of the Orchestra, the following inscription in bronze letters: M. OCVLATIVS. M. F. VERVS. II. VIR. PRO LVDIS. This is being kept covered in the same place, until the Director La Vega issues instructions.
J27 15 April 1809
Last week between 12 and 15 soldiers came to Pompeii, of those who are stationed at Torre Annunziata. They did not want to be escorted by anyone, and among their fooling about and drunkenness they knocked over some pilasters at the entrance to the Theatre, and they tore out and seized two bronze letters of the inscription, which remains on the paving of the Odeion, an R and an O. The veterans assigned to this part of the site did not believe in worrying themselves about them; the curators were afraid of their sabres.
J28 25 May 1815
On the 24th, at 8 o’clock Italian time, some officers from the Austrian troops, who are passing, came to the excavations of Pompeii. Having gone to look at the Theatre, they removed from it some bronze letters, which had been fixed in the paving there; but when the sergeant of veterans informed their general, who joined them there a few moments later, he summoned them and forced them to return to the curators what they had removed.
The perils of reconstruction: funerary inscription of Umbricius Scaurus (J29)
(PAH I, Addenda from manuscript of Ribau, pp. 258-9)
The funerary inscription of Umbricius Scaurus (F91), which was found in pieces on the Street of Tombs outside the Herculaneum Gate, is still displayed today on the wrong tomb (see D31), following a mistaken restoration.
J29 23 January 1813
The inscription of Scaurus has been placed on the tomb decorated with bas-reliefs in stucco on the above-mentioned street. A. L. Millin, in his pamphlet entitled Description des tombeaux qui ont ete decouverts a Pompei dans I’annee 1812 (Naples 1813, p. 51ff), doubts that this inscription belonged to the monument on which it has been set, and gives the following reasons for this. {Summary of the reasons: ancient stucco covering brickwork had to be removed to allow the inscription to be attached; there was no sign of the ancient clamping to hold the inscription; the inscription does not fit properly; the lettering is out of proportion to the monument; the style of lettering on the inscription is later in date than the style of the stucco bas-relief.}
World History
