The Roman Empire to the Triumph of Christianity 297 for that man may be healed by thee is proved by many a picture in thy temples," Tibullus and his fiancee belonged to the most cultivated class, but they had taken refuge in the faith of the Egyptian Isis. What these two had done, was being done under Fig. 128. A View across the Forum of Pompeii to Vesuvius The little provincial city of Pompeii near Naples, having twenty thousand to thirty thousand inhabitants, was destroyed by fire and over- whelmed with showers of ashes from the neighboring volcano of Vesu- vius in 79 A.D. Some two thousand of the inhabitants perished. At prese"nt the accumulations from successive eruptions are about twenty feet deep. The excavation of the town is still going on, and will prob- ably continue some twenty-five years longer before the whole place is uncovered. The place is a great treasure house of Roman life in the smaller cities under the early Empire, for all the streets and the first floors of the houses are preserved, often with many things of value which they contained (see Figs. 99 and 129) the early Empire by multitudes, and the temples of Isis were to be found in all the larger cities. The Isis temple at Pompeii (Fig. 128) has survived to illustrate the power of the foreign goddess and Osiris her husband (p. 27), who were now dis- placing the gods of the Greeks and Romans.
