iving the name from a Greek verb which signifies
_to send, to transport_, and hence they conclude that many of the
Pompeians were engaged in exportation, or perhaps, were emigrants sent
from a distance to form a colony. Yet these opinions are but
conjectures, and it is useless to dwell on them.

All that can be positively stated is that the city was the entrepot of
the trade of Nola, Nocera, and Atella. Its port was large enough to
receive a naval armament, for it sheltered the fleet of P. Cornelius.
This port, mentioned by certain authors, has led many to believe that
the sea washed the walls of Pompeii, and some guides have even thought
they could discover the rings that once held the cables of the galleys.
Unfortunately for this idea, at the place which the imagination of some
of our contemporaries covered with salt water, there were one day
discovered the vestiges of old structures, and it is now conceded that
Pompeii, like many other seaside places, had its harbor at a distance.
Our little city made no great noise in history. Tacitus and Seneca speak
of it as celebrated, but the Italians of all periods have been fond of
superlatives. You will find some very old buildings in it, proclaiming
an ancient origin, and Oscan inscriptions recalling the antique language
of the country. When the Samnites invaded the whole of Campania, as
though to deliver it over more easily to Rome, they probably occupied
Pompeii, which figured in the second Samnite war, B.C. 310, and which,
revolting along with the entire valley of the Sarno from Nocera to
Stabiae, repulsed an incursion of the Romans and drove them back to their
vessels. The third Samnite war was, as is well known, a bloody vengeance
for this, and Pompeii became Roman. Although the yoke of the conquerors
was not very heavy--the _municipii_, retaining their Senate, their
magistrates, their _comitiae_ or councils, and paying a tribute of men
only in case of war--the Samnite populations, clinging frantically to
the idea of a separate and independent existence, rose twice again in
revolt; once just after the battle of Cannae, when they threw themselves
into the arms of Hannibal, and then against Sylla, one hundred and
twenty-four years later--facts that prove the tenacity of their
resistance. On both occasions Pompeii was retaken, and the second time
partly dismantled and occupied by a detachment of soldiers, who did not
long remain there. And thus we have the whole history of