the hard work entailed causing his breakdown in health, so that in July 1861, having been created a baron, he had to resign office, and died on the 2nd of August 1861. His statue was placed in front of the War Office in Pall Mall. He was succeeded in the title by his eldest son, who later became 13th earl of Pembroke, and the barony is now merged in that earldom; his second son became 14th earl. Another son, the Hon. Michael Herbert (1857–1904), was British Ambassador at Washington in succession to Lord Pauncefote.
A life of Lord Herbert by Lord Stanmore was published in 1906.
HERBERTON, a mining town of Cardwell county, Queensland,
Australia, 55 m. S.W. of Cairns. Pop. (1901) 2806. Tin was
discovered in the locality in 1879, and to this mineral the town
chiefly owes its prosperity, though copper, bismuth and some
silver and gold are also found. Atherton, 12 m. from the town,
is served by rail from Cairns, which is the port for the Herberton
district.
HERCULANEUM, an ancient city of Italy, situated about
two-thirds of a mile from the Portici station of the railway from
Naples to Pompeii. The ruins are less frequently visited than
those of Pompeii, not only because they are smaller in extent
and of less obvious interest, but also because they are more
difficult of access. The history of their discovery and exploration,
and the artistic and literary relics which they have yielded,
are worthy, however, of particular notice. The small part of
the city, which was investigated at the spot called Gli scavi
nuovi (the new excavations) was discovered in the 19th century.
But the more important works were executed in the 18th century;
and of the buildings then explored at a great depth, by means of
tunnels, none is visible except the theatre, the orchestra of
which lies 85 ft. below the surface.
The brief notices of the classical writers inform us that Herculaneum[1] was a small city of Campania between Neapolis and Pompeii, that it was situated between two streams at the foot of Vesuvius on a hill overlooking the sea, and that its harbour was at all seasons safe. With regard to its earlier history nothing is known. The account given by Dionysius repeats a tradition which was most natural for a city bearing the name of Hercules. Strabo follows up the topographical data with a few brief historical statements—Ὄσκοι εἶχον καὶ ταύτην καὶ τὴν ἐφεξῆς Πομπηίαν . . . εἶτα Τυῤῥηνοὶ καὶ Πελασγοί, μετὰ ταῦτα Σαυνῖται. But leaving the questions suggested by these names (see Etruria, &c.),[2] as well as those which relate to the origin of Pompeii (q.v.), it is sufficient here to say that the first historical record about Herculaneum has been handed down by Livy (viii. 25), where he relates how the city fell under the power of Rome during the Samnite wars. It remained faithful to Rome for a long time, but it joined the Italian allies in the Social War. Having submitted anew in June of the year 665 (88 B.C.), it appears to have been less severely treated than Pompeii, and to have escaped the imposition of a colony of Sulla’s veterans, although Zumpt has suspected the contrary (Comm. epigr. i. 259). It afterwards became a municipium, and enjoyed great prosperity towards the close of the republic and in the earlier times of the empire, since many noble families of Rome selected this pleasant spot for the construction of splendid villas, one of which indeed belonged to the imperial house (Seneca, De ira, iii.), and another to the family of Calpurnius Piso. By means of the Via Campana it had easy communication north-westward with Neapolis, Puteoli and Capua, and thence by the Via Appia with Rome; and southwards with Pompeii and Nuceria, and thence with Lucania and the Bruttii. In the year A.D. 63 it suffered terribly from the earthquake which, according to Seneca, “Campaniam nunquam securam huius mali, indemnem tamen, et toties defunctam metu magna strage vastavit. Nam et Herculanensis oppidi pars ruit dubieque stant etiam quae relicta sunt” (Nat. quaest. vi. 1). Hardly had Herculaneum completed the restoration of some of its principal buildings (cf. Mommsen, I.N. n. 2384; Catalogo del Museo Nazionale di Napoli, n. 1151) when it fell beneath the great eruption of the year 79, described by Pliny the younger (Ep. vi. 16, 20), in which Pompeii also was destroyed, with other flourishing cities of Campania. According to the commonest account, on the 23rd of August of that year Pliny the elder, who had command of the Roman fleet at Misenum, set out to render assistance to a young lady of noble family named Rectina and others dwelling on that coast, but, as there was no escape by sea, the little harbour having been on a sudden filled up so as to be inaccessible, he was obliged to abandon to their fate those people of Herculaneum who had managed to flee from their houses, overwhelmed in a moment by the material poured forth by Vesuvius. But the text of Pliny the younger, where this account is given, has been subjected to various interpretations; and from the comparison of other classical testimonies and the study of the excavations it has been concluded that it is impossible to determine the date of the catastrophe, though there are satisfactory arguments to justify the statement that the event took place in the autumn. The opinion that immediately after the first outbreak of Vesuvius a torrent of lava was ejected over Herculaneum was refuted by the scholars of the 18th century, and their refutation is confirmed by Beulé (Le Drame du Vésuve, p. 240 seq.). And the last recensions of the passage quoted from Pliny, aided by an inscription,[3] prove that Rectina cannot have been the name of the harbour described by Beulé (ib. pp. 122, 247), but the name of a lady who had implored succour, the wife of Caesius Bassus, or rather Tascius (cf. Pliny, ed. Keil, Leipzig, 1870; Aulus Persius, ed. Jahn, Sat. vi.). The shore, moreover, according to the accurate studies of the engineer Michele Ruggiero, director of the excavations, was not altered by the causes adduced by Beulé (p. 125), but by a simpler event. “It is certain,” he says (Pompei e la regione sotterrata dal Vesuvio l’anno 79, Naples, 1879, p. 21 seq.), “that the districts between the south and west, and those between the south and east, were overwhelmed in two quite different ways. From Torre Annunziata (which is believed to be the site of the ancient Oplontii) to San Giovanni a Teduccio, for a distance of about 9 m., there flowed a muddy eruption which in Herculaneum and the neighbouring places, where it was most abundant, raised the level of the country more than 65 ft. The matter transported consisted of soil of various kinds—sand, ashes, fragments of lava, pozzolana and whitish pumice, enclosing grains of uncalcined lime, similar in every respect to those of Pompeii. In the part of Herculaneum already excavated the corridors in the upper portions of the theatre are compactly filled, up to the head of the arches, with pozzolana and pumice transformed into tufa (which proves that the formation of this stone may take place in a comparatively short time). Tufa is also found in the lowest part of the city towards the sea in front of the few houses that have been discovered; and in the very high banks that surround them, as also in the lowest part of the theatre, there are plainly to be seen earth, sand, ashes, fragments
- ↑ A fragment of L. Sisenna calls it “Oppidum tumulo in excelso loco propter mare, parvis moenibus, inter duas fluvias, infra Vesuvium collocatum” (lib. iv., fragm. 53, Peters). Of one of these rivers this historian again makes mention in the passage where probably he related the capture of Herculaneum by Minatius Magius and T. Didius (Velleius Paterculus ii. 16). Further topographical details are supplied by Strabo, who, after speaking about Naples, continues—ἐχόμενον δὲ φρούριόν ἐστιν Ἡράκλειον ἐκκειμένην εἰς τὴν θάλατταν ἄκραν ἔχον, καταπνεόμενον Λιβὶ θαυμαστῶς ὤσθ᾿ ὑγιεινὴν ποιεῖν τὴν κατοικίαν. Dionysius of Halicarnassus relates that Heracles, in the place where he stopped with his fleet on the return voyage from Iberia, founded a little city (πολίχνην), to which he gave his own name; and he adds that this city was in his time inhabited by the Romans, and that, situated between Neapolis and Pompeii, it had λιμένας ἐν παντὶ καιρῷ βεβαἰους (i. 44).
- ↑ See also Niebuhr, Hist. of Rome, i. 76, and Mommsen, Die unteritalischen Dialekte (1850), p. 314; for later discussions see Osca Lingua, Pelasgians.
- ↑ C.I.L. ii. No. 3866. This Spanish inscription refers to a Rectina who died at the age of 18 and was the wife of Voconius Romanus. It is quite possible that she was the Rectina whom Pliny the elder wished to assist during the disaster of Vesuvius, for her husband, Voconius Romanus, was an intimate friend of Pliny the younger. The latter addressed four letters to Voconius (i. 5, ii. 1, iii. 13, ix. 28), in another letter commended him to the emperor Trajan (x. 3), and in another (ii. 13) says of him: “Hunc ego cum simul studere, mus arte familiariterque dilexi; ille meus in urbe, ille in secessu contubernalis; cum hoc seria et jocos miscui.”
