Treasure at Paestum

The Greek temples of Paestum are surrounded by umbrella pines and artichoke fields, and until recently artichokes were the main preoccupation of Farmer Luigi Franco and his son Francesco. Not any more. Last July Francesco broke a plow on what turned out to be the limestone roof of an ancient Lucanian tomb. Such tombs, decorated with the crude paintings of the local tribesmen who made them, have been found before in southern Italy. But this one was different. When excavated by Archaeologist Mario Napoli, superintendent of antiquities for the district of Salerno, the walls of the tomb were found to be covered with accomplished paintings that to Napoli's trained eye, seemed unmistakably Greek.

In the next five months, Professor Napoli unearthed 109 individual tombs with 212 painted panels. Many Greek vase paintings have survived from antiquity, and much Roman wall painting is copied from Greek originals. But the Paestum frescoes, in the opinion of many experts, are the only examples of classical Greek wall painting that have yet been found.

Race Problems. Dated by Napoli as belonging to the period 340-320 B.C., the frescoes are elegant compositions of great vitality in the early classical style. Figures seen in profile are enclosed in lines of exquisite purity, then colored with a few flat shades of red, black, green, yellow ochre and terracotta. Professor Napoli believes Greek artists painted them for their Lucanian overlords, who conquered Paestum around 400 B.C. and then fell under the spell of its culture.

Rather than the more familiar mythological subjects of Greek art, the panels depict what appear to be scenes from the lives, deaths and funeral rites of the occupants of the tombs. One, for instance, shows a helmeted warrior seated on a powerful black horse and grasping a banner. He is met by a heavily rouged woman holding a mirror to his face to capture the image of his soul. Another shows a white man with a carefully trimmed beard boxing with a Negro. The black man is getting the worst of the fight, and there is blood on his back. ("The ancients must have had race problems, too," says Napoli.) Six serving women, each with one breast exposed, dance around the bier of their richly dressed mistress--celebrating rather than lamenting her death. In still another panel, two professional soldiers engage in mock combat, flourishing shields and spears.

Saved by Swamp. Oddly enough, Farmer Franco's artichokes helped preserve the 2,300-year-old frescoes from the destruction that has overtaken other Greek mural painting. The Paestum paintings were preserved because its river silted up and turned the area into a malarial swamp. For centuries, moisture seeping into the tombs from the swampy waters kept the paint from drying up and flaking off the stone walls. When the swamps were filled in 1944, the roots of the artichokes continued to keep the tombs moist.

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