But suddenly the volcano burst forth, the artist
dropped his chisel and mallet, and here we have found his unfinished
work--a statue within a statue."
Behind the roofless porches of the forum are other ruined
buildings--where the officers of the city did business, where the
citizens met to vote, where tailors spread out their cloth and sold
robes and cloaks. One large market building is particularly interesting.
You will enter a courtyard with walls all around it and signs of lost
porches. Broken partitions show where little stalls used to open upon
the court. Other stalls opened upon the street. In some of these the
excavators found, buried in the ashes and charred by the fire, figs,
chestnuts, plums, grapes, glass dishes of fruit, loaves of bread, and
little cakes. Were customers buying the night's dessert when Vesuvius
frightened them away? In a cool corner of the building is a fish market
with sloping marble counter. Near it in the middle of the courtyard are
the bases of columns arranged in a circle around a deep basin in the
floor. In the bottom of this basin the excavators found a thick layer
of fish scales. Evidently the masters used to buy their fish from the
market in the corner. Then the slaves carried them here to the shaded
pool of water and cleaned them and scaled them and washed them.
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