Pompeii, its life and art
Di
August Mau (1840-1909), Kelsey, Francis W. (Francis Willey) (1858-1927)
New York
1902
… Another interesting bit of evidence is a wall painting, which appears to have as its subject the Judgment of Solomon (Fig. 6). On a tribunal at the right sits the king with two advisers ; the pavilion is well guarded with soldiers. In front of the tribunal a soldier is about to cut a child in two with a cleaver. Two women are represented, one of whom stands at the block and is already taking hold of the half of the child assigned to her, while the other casts herself on her knees as a suppliant before the judges. It is not certain that the reference here is to Solomon ; such tales pass from one country to another, and a somewhat similar story is told of the Egyptian king Bocchoris. The balance of probability is in favor of the view that we have here the Jewish version of the story, because this is consistent with other facts that point to the existence of a Jewish colony at Pompeii …
https://archive.org/stream/pompeiiitslifear01maua#page/n9/mode/2up