Chapter VIII: Part 8

In 472 the city was sacked by Ricimer, who enjoyed power under cover of the name of the Emperor Libius Severus. His victorious troops, breaking down every barrier, rushed with irresistible violence into the heart of the city, and Rome was subverted. The unfortunate emperor (Anthemius) was dragged from his concealment, and inhumanly massacred by the command of Ricimer his son-in-law; who thus added a third, or perhaps a fourth, emperor to the number of his victims. The soldiers, who united the rage of factious citizens with the savage manners of barbarians, were indulged, without control, in the licence of rapine and murder; the crowd of slaves and plebeians, who were unconcerned in the event, could only gain by the indiscriminate pillage; and the face of the city exhibited the strange contrast of stern cruelty and dissolute intemperance. The sack of Rome by Ricimer is generally overlooked by the apologists of the early invaders; but it must not be forgotten, that they were indulged in the plunder of all but two regions of the city.

To Vitiges (about A. D. 540) must be ascribed the destruction of the aqueducts, which rendered the thermæ useless; and as these appear never to have been frequented afterwards, their dilapidation must be partially, but only partially, ascribed to the Goths.

Vitiges burned every thing without the walls, and commenced the desolation of the Campagna.

The last emperor of Rome was Augustulus. Odoacer, king of the Heruli, entered Italy with a vast multitude of barbarians, and having ravaged it, at length approached Rome itself. The city made no resistance; he therefore deposed Augustulus, and took the dignity of empire on himself. From this period the Romans lost all command in Italy.

A. D. 479. Five centuries elapsed from the age of Trajan and the Antonines, to the total extinction of the Roman empire in the west. At that unhappy period, the Saxons fiercely struggled with the natives for the possession of Britain. Gaul and Spain were divided between the powerful monarchies of the Franks and Visigoths; and the dependent kingdoms of the Suevi and Burgundians in Africa were exposed to the cruel persecution of the Vandals, and the savage insults of the Moors. Rome and Italy, as far as the banks of the Danube, were afflicted by an army of barbarian mercenaries, whose lawless tyranny was succeeded by the reign of Theodoric, the Ostrogoth. All the subjects of the empire, who, by the use of the Latin language, more particularly deserved the name and privileges of Romans, were oppressed by the disgrace and calamities of foreign conquest; and the victorious nations of Germany established a new system of manners and government in the western countries of Europe.

That Rome, however, did not always suffer from the Goths, is evident from a passage in one of the letters written by Cassiodorus, at one time minister to Theodoric:—“The care of the Roman city is a subject to which our thoughts are ever awake. For what is there which it behoves us to provide for, more worthy than the keeping up the repair of a city which, it is evident, contains the ornaments of our republic? therefore, let your illustrious highness know, that we have appointed a notable person, on account of its splendid Cloacæ, which are productive of so much astonishment to beholders, that they may well be said to surpass the wonders of other cities. There thou mayest see flowing rivers, inclosed, as it were, in hollow mountains. There thou mayest see the rapid waters navigated by vessels, not without some anxiety lest they should suffer shipwreck in the precipitate torrent. Hence, O matchless Rome! it may be inferred what greatness is in thee. For what city may dare to contend with thy lofty superstructures, when even thy lowest recesses can find no parallel?”

In 546, Rome was besieged by Totila the Goth. Having reduced, by force or treaty, the towns of inferior note in the midland provinces of Italy, Totila proceeded to besiege Rome. He took it December 17th of the same year. On the loss of the city, several persons,—some say five hundred,—took, refuge in the church of St. Peter. As soon as the daylight had displayed the victory of the Goths, their monarch visited the tomb of the prince of the apostles; but while he prayed at the altar, twenty-five soldiers and sixty citizens were put to the sword in the vestibule of the temple. The arch-deacon Pelagius stood before him with the gospels in his hand.—“O Lord, be merciful to your servant.” “Pelagius,” said Totila, with an insulting smile, “your pride now condescends to become a suppliant.” “I am a suppliant,” replied the prudent arch-deacon; “God has now made us your subjects, and, as your subjects, we are entitled to your clemency.” At his humble prayer, the lives of the Romans were spared; and the chastity of the maids and matrons was preserved inviolate from the passions of the hungry soldiers. But they were rewarded by the freedom of pillage. The houses of the senators were plentifully stored with gold and silver. The sons and daughters of Roman consuls tasted the misery which they had spurned or relieved, wandered in tattered garments through the streets of the city, and begged their bread before the gates of their hereditary mansions.

Against the city he appeared inexorable. One third of the walls was demolished by his command; fire and engines prepared to consume or subvert the most stately works of antiquity; and the world was astonished by the fatal decree, that Rome should be changed into “a pasture for cattle!” Belisarius, hearing of this, wrote him a letter, in which he observed, “That if Totila conquered, he ought, for his own sake, to preserve a city, which would then be his own by right of conquest, and would, at the same time, be the most beautiful city in his dominions. That it would be his own loss, if he destroyed it, and redound to his utter dishonour. For Rome, having been raised to so great a grandeur and majesty by the virtue and industry of former ages, posterity would consider him as a common enemy of mankind, in depriving them of an example and living representation of their ancestors.”

In consequence of this letter, Totila permitting his resolution to be diverted, signified to the ambassadors of Belisarius, that he should spare the city; and he stationed his army at the distance of one hundred and twenty furlongs, to observe the motions of the Roman general. With the remainder of his forces, he occupied, on the summit of Gargarus, one of the camps of Hannibal. The senators were dragged in his train, and afterwards confined in the fortresses of Campagna. The citizens, with their wives and children, were dispersed in exile; and, during forty days, Rome was abandoned to desolate and dreary solitude.

Totila is known to have destroyed a third part of the walls; and although he desisted from his meditated destruction of every monument, the extent of the injury inflicted by that conqueror may have been greater than is usually supposed. Procopius affirms, that he did burn “not a small portion of the city,” especially beyond the Tiber. One of the authors of the Chronicles records a fire, and the total abandonment of the city for more than forty days; and it must be mentioned, that there is no certain trace of the palace of the Cæsars having survived the irruption of Totila.

With Totila, the dilapidation of Rome by the barbarians is generally allowed to terminate.

The incursion of the Lombards in 578 and 593 completed the desolation of the Campagna; but did not affect the city itself.

Their king Luitprand (in 741) has been absolved from a supposed violence; but Astolphus (in 754) did assault the city violently; and whatever structures were near the walls must be supposed to have suffered from the attack.

From that period, Rome was not forcibly entered, that is not after a siege, until the fall of the Carlovingian race, when it was defended in the name of the emperor Lambert; and assaulted and taken by barbarians, commanded by Arnulphus, son of Carloman of Bavaria (A. D. 896).

It would exceed our limits were we to enter into a detail of the various causes, which were so long at work in effecting the ruin of the ancient monuments of Rome. If we except the Pantheon, the ancient remains have been so mutilated and destroyed, that even the name is, in many cases, doubtful. If a person, says Dr. Burton, expects to find at Rome such magnificent remains, as he has read of in Athens, he will be grievously disappointed. It is highly necessary to know, that whatever exists at Rome as a monument of ancient times has suffered from various calamities.

Gibbon states four causes of decay:—The injuries of time and nature; the hostile attacks of the barbarians and christians; the use and abuse of the materials; and the domestic quarrels of the Romans. There is great truth in Pope’s remark—

Some felt the silent strokes of mouldering age;
Some hostile fury; some religious rage;
Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire,
And Papal piety, and Gothic fire.

The injuries done by the Christian clergy to the architectural beauty of Rome, may be divided into two kinds: those, which were commanded, or connived at, by the Romans, for useful repairs or constructions; and those, which were encouraged or permitted from motives of fanaticism.

In the year 426, during the reign of Theodosius the Younger, there was a great destruction of the temples and fanes. “The destruction of the idolatrous fanes,” says an ecclesiastical writer, “was from the foundation; and so complete, that we cannot perceive a vestige of the former superstition. Their temples are so destroyed, that the appearance of their form no longer remains; nor can those of our times recognise the shape of their altars. As for their materials, they are dedicated to the fanes of the martyrs. Temples are not found among the wonders admired by Theodoric, except the half-stripped Capitoline fane is to be enumerated; and Procopius confines his notices to the Temple of Peace, and to the Temple of Janus. In the reign of Justinian, the temples were partly in private hands, and, therefore, not universally protected as public edifices. Pagan structures would naturally suffer more at the first triumph of Christianity than afterwards, when the rage and the merit of destruction must have diminished. It is not then rash to believe, that many temples were destroyed or despoiled, and the materials employed to the honour of the new religion. Du Barga asserts that there were marks on the obelisks of their having been all overthrown, with the exception of one, which was not dedicated to any of the false gods of antiquity.”

The destruction of the baths are attributed to the same piety, and those of Diocletian and Caracalla showed, in the eighth century, evident marks of human violence. Pope Gregory III. employed nine columns of some ancient building for the church of St. Peter. The rebuilding of the city walls by four popes, in the same century, was a useful but a destructive operation. Pope Hadrian I. threw down an immense structure of Tiburtine stone to enlarge the church of St. Maria in Cosmedin. Donus I. had before (A. D. 676) stripped the marble from a large pyramid, generally known by the name of Scipio’s Tomb. Paul II. employed the stones of the Coliseum to build a palace. Sixtus IV. took down the Temple of Hercules, and destroyed the remains of an ancient bridge to make four hundred cannon-balls for the castle of St. Angelo. Paul III. and his nephews laboured incessantly at the quarry of the Coliseum. He devastated, also, many other buildings. Sixtus V. threw down several statues still remaining in the capital. Urban VIII. took off the bronze from the portico of the Pantheon, and some of the base of the sepulchre of Cecilia Metella; and Paul V. removed the entablature and pediment of a structure in the Forum of Nerva, and also the remaining column of the Temple of Peace. Lastly, Alexander VII. took down the arch called “di Portogallo,” in order to widen the Corso. The inferior clergy, too, were great depredators; insomuch that a volume of no inconsiderable size has been composed by one of their own order to enumerate the Pagan materials applied to the use of the church.

It is difficult to say where this system of depredation would have stopped, had not Benedict XIV. erected a cross in the centre of the arena, and declared the place sacred, out of respect to the blood of the many martyrs who had been butchered there during the persecution. This declaration, if issued two or three centuries before, would have preserved the Coliseum entire; it can now only protect its remains, and transmit them in their present state to posterity.

Conflagrations, also, contributed to the destruction of the city. In 312 the temple of Fortuna was burned down. The palaces of Symmachus and Lampadius, with the baths of Constantine, suffered by the same cause.

Nor must the destruction be confined to one element. The Tiber rose, not unfrequently, to the walls, and many inundations are recorded. Indeed, even so early as the second siege of the city by Totila, there was so much uncultivated land within the walls, that Diogenes, the governor, thought the corn, he had sown, would be sufficient to supply the garrison and citizens in a protracted defence.

It is impossible to assign a precise date to the total destruction of the greater portion of the ancient site; but the calamities of the seventh and eighth centuries must have contributed to, if they did not complete, the change. A scarcity in the year 604, a violent earthquake a few years afterwards, a pestilence in or about the year 678, five great inundations of the Tiber from 680 to 797, a second famine in the pontificate of Pope Constantine, which lasted thirty-six months, a pestilence in the last year of the seventh century, and the assault of the Lombards for three months in 755;—these are the events which compose the Roman history of this unhappy period.

Added to all this, the importance of the new city accelerated the ruin of the old; and great was the destruction during the periods in which separate parties fought their battles in the public streets, after the restoration of the empire of the West; in which we must record the ruin, caused by Robert Guiscard, which proved more injurious to the remains of Rome, from 1082 to 1084, than all the preceding barbarians of every age: for the Normans and Saracens of his army, with the papal faction, burned the town from the Flaminian gate to the Antonine column, and laid waste the sides of the Esquiline to the Lateran; thence he set fire to the region from that church to the Coliseum and the Capitol. He attacked the Coliseum for several days, and finished the ruin of the Capitol.

A cotemporary writer says, that all the regions of the city were ruined; and another spectator, who was in Rome twelve years afterwards, laments that although what remained could not be equalled—what was ruined, could never be repaired.

Thou stranger which for Rome in Rome here seekest,
And nought of Rome in Rome perceiv’st at all,
These same old walls, old arches, which thou seest,
Old palaces, is that which Rome men call.
Behold what wreck, what ruin, and what waste,
And how that she which with her mighty power
Tamed all the world, hath tamed herself at last,
The prey of Time, which all things doth devour.
Rome now of Rome is the only funeral,
And only Rome, of Rome hath victory;
Ne ought save Tyber, hastening to his fall
Remains of all: O World’s inconstancy!
That which is firm, doth flit and fall away;
And that is flitting, doth abide and stay.

SPENSER’S _Ruins of Rome_.

In the annals for 1167, we find that the German Barbarossa assaulted the Vatican for a week, and that the Pope saved himself in the Capitol. The Colonna were driven from the mausoleum of Augustus. After the Popes had begun to yield in the unequal contest with the senators and people, and had ceased to be constantly in the capital, the field was left open for the wars of the senators; that is, of the nobles themselves. The Colonna and Ursini then appear among the destroyers of the city. In 1291, a civil war occurred, which lasted six months; the issue of which was, according to a spectator, that Rome was reduced to the condition of a town “besieged, bombarded and burned.”

At the period in which Henry VII. was crowned Emperor, battles were fought in every quarter of the city. The fall of houses, indeed, the fire, the slaughter, the ringing of the bells from the churches, the shouts of the combatants, and the clanging of arms, the Roman people rushing from all quarters towards the Capitol; this universal uproar attended the coronation of the new Cæsar, and the Cardinals apprehended the total destruction of the city.

The absence of the Popes, also, from the year 1360 to 1376, has been esteemed peculiarly calamitous to the ancient fabrics. Petrarch was overwhelmed with regret. He complained that the ruins were in danger of perishing; that the nobles were the rivals of time and the ancient Barbarians; and that the columns and precious marbles of Rome were devoted to the decoration of the slothful metropolis of their Neapolitan rivals. Yet, it appears that these columns and marbles were taken from palaces comparatively modern, from the thresholds of churches, from the shrines of sepulchres, from structures to which they had been conveyed from their original state, and finally, from ruins actually fallen. The solid masses of antiquity are not said to have suffered from this spoliation; and the edifices, whose impending ruin affected Petrarch, were the sacred basilicas, then converted into fortresses.

The great earthquake of 1349 operated, also, in a very destructive manner; several ancient ornaments being thrown down; and an inundation of the Tiber is recorded among the afflictions of the times. The summits of the hills alone were above the water; and the lower grounds were for eight days converted into a lake.

The return of the Popes was the signal of renewed violence. The Colonna and Ursini, the people and the church, fought for the Capitol and towers; and the forces of the Popes repeatedly bombarded the town.

During the great schism of the West, the hostile entries of Ladislaus of Naples, and the tumultuous government of the famous Perugian, Braccio Montone, despoiled the tomb of Hadrian, and doubtless other monuments. Yet that violence is supposed to have been less pernicious than the peaceful spoliation which succeeded the extinction of the schism of Martin V, in 1417; and the suppression of the last revolt of the Romans by his successor Eugenius IV, in 1434: for from that epoch is dated the consumption of such marble or travertine, as might either be stripped with facility from the stone monuments, or be found in isolated fragments.

We now give place to a description of what remained in the time of Poggio Bracciolini. Besides a bridge, an arch, a sepulchre, and the pyramid of Cestius, he could discern, of the age of the republic, 1, a double row of vaults, in the salt-office of the Capitol, which were inscribed with the name and munificence of Catullus. 2, Eleven temples were visible, in some degree, from the perfect form of the Pantheon to the three arches and a marble column of the temple of Peace, which Vespasian erected after the civil wars and the Jewish triumph. 3, Of the public baths, none were sufficiently entire to represent the use and distribution of the several parts; but those of Diocletian and Caracalla still retained the titles of the founders, and astonished the curious spectator; who, in observing their solidity and extent, the variety of marbles, the size and multitude of the columns, compared the labour and expense with the use and the importance. Of the baths of Constantine, of Alexander, of Domitian, or rather of Titus, some vestige might yet be found. 4, The triumphal arches of Titus, Severus, and Constantine were entire, both the structures and the inscriptions; a falling fragment was honoured with the name of Trajan; and two arches were still extant in the Flaminian way. 5, After the wonder, of the Coliseum, Poggio might have overlooked a small amphitheatre of brick, most probably for the use of the Prætorian camp: the theatres of Marcellus and Pompey were occupied, in a great measure, by public and private buildings; and in the Circus Agonalis and Maximus, little more than the situation and the form could be investigated. 6, The columns of Trajan and Antonine were still erect; but the Egyptian obelisks were broken or buried. A people of gods and heroes, the workmanship of art, was reduced to one equestrian figure of gilt brass, and to five marble statues, of which the most conspicuous were the two horses of Phidias and Praxiteles. 7, The two mausoleums or sepulchres of Augustus and Hadrian could not totally be lost; but the former was visible only as a mound of earth; and the latter, the castle of St. Angelo, had acquired the name and appearance of a modern fortress. With the addition of some separate and nameless columns, such were the remains of the ancient city.

In the intervals between the two visits of Poggio to Rome, the cell, and part of the Temple of Concord, and the base of the tomb of Metella, were ground to lime; also a portico near the Minerva. Poggio’s description of the ruins, it may be observed, is not sufficiently minute or correct to supply the deficiency of his contemporary Blondus; but we may distinctly mark, that the site of ancient Rome had arrived at the desolation in which it is seen at the present day. The Rome of the lower and middle ages was a mass of irregular lanes, built upon or amongst ruins, and surmounted by brick towers, many of them on ancient basements. The streets were so narrow, that two horsemen could ride abreast. Two hundred houses, three towers, and three churches, choked up the forum of Trajan. The reformation of Sixtus IV., and the embellishments of his successors, have obliterated this town, and that which is now seen is a capital, which can only date from the end of the fifteenth century.

Not long before the imperialists carried Rome, the Colonnas, in 1526, sacked it, as it were; and that was followed by that of the Abate di Farfa, and the peasantry of the Orsini family[151].

Rome was assaulted by the Bourbon, May 5, 1527; and the imperialists left it February 17, 1528.

No sooner was the Bourbon in sight of Rome, than he harangued his troops, and pointed to the end of all their sufferings. Being destitute of artillery, with which he might batter the walls, he instantly made his dispositions for an assault; and having discovered a breach, he planted, with his own hands, a ladder against the rampart, and prepared to mount it, followed by his German bands. But, at that instant, a shot, discharged from the first arquebuse which was fired, terminated at once his life and his misfortunes. Much fruitless inquiry has been made to ascertain the author of his death, which is commonly attributed to a priest; but Benvenuto Cellini, so well known by his extraordinary adventures and writings, lays claim to the merit of killing this hero. By whatever hand he fell he preserved, even in the act of expiring, all his presence as well as greatness of mind. He no sooner felt himself wounded, than he ordered a Gascon captain, named Jonas, to cover him with a cloak, in order to conceal his death, lest it should damp the courage of his soldiers. Jonas executed his commands with punctuality. The Constable still continued to breathe when the city was taken. He was, therefore, carried thither, and there expired, May 5, 1527, at thirty-eight years of age.

Philipart, prince of Orange, contrived to keep the troops in ignorance of their commander’s death, till they were masters of Rome; and then, to render them inaccessible to pity, he revealed to them the fate of Bourbon. No language can express the fury with which they were animated at this sad intelligence. They rent the air with the cries of “Carné, carné! Sangre, sangre! Bourbon, Bourbon!”

The imagination is appalled at the bare recital of the wanton outrages on human nature, which were committed by Bourbon’s army, during the time that they remained masters of Rome. The pillage lasted, without any interruption, for two months.

Never had that proud city suffered from her barbarian conquerors, in the decline of the Roman empire,—from Alaric, from Genseric, or from Odoacer,—the same merciless treatment as she underwent from the rage of the imperial troops;—the subjects, or the soldiers of a Catholic king! Rapacity, lust, and impiety, were exhausted by these men. Roman ladies of the noblest extraction were submitted to the basest and vilest prostitution. The sacred ornaments of the sacerdotal, and even of the pontifical dignity, were converted to purposes of ridicule and buffoonery. Priests, nay even bishops and cardinals, were degraded to the brutal passions of the soldiery; and after having suffered every ignominy of blows, mutilation, and personal contumely, were massacred in pastime. Exorbitant ransoms were exacted repeatedly from the same persons; and when they had no longer wherewithal to purchase life, they were butchered without mercy. Nuns, virgins, matrons, were publicly devoted to the infamous appetites of the soldiers; who first violated, and then stabbed, the victims of their pleasures. The streets were strewed with the dead; and it is said that eight thousand young women, of all ranks and conditions, were found to be pregnant within five months from the sack of the unfortunate city.

Three years after the sack by Bourbon, that is in 1530, an inundation of the Tiber ruined a multitude of edifices both public and private, and was almost equally calamitous with the sack of Rome. Simond, writing from Rome in January 1818, says: “The Tiber has been very high, and the lower parts of the town under water; yet this is nothing compared with the inundations recorded on two pillars at the port of Ripetta, a sort of landing-place. The mark on one of them is full eighteen feet above the level of the adjoining streets; and, considering the rapidity of the stream, a great part of the city must then have been in imminent danger of being swept away.” In 1819 the Pantheon was flooded; but this is not an uncommon event, as it stands near the river, and the drain, which should carry off the rain-water that falls through the aperture in the top, communicates with the stream. The inundations of the Tiber, indeed, are one of the causes, which combined to destroy so many of the monuments of Rome during the middle ages. There is one recorded in 1345, among the afflictions of the times, when only the summits of the hills were above the water, and the lower grounds were converted into a lake for the space of eight days. Several floods are mentioned by the ancient writers; and Tacitus speaks of a project which was debated in the senate, A. D. 15, for diverting some of the streams running into the Tiber, but which was not carried into execution in consequence of the petitions of various towns, who sent deputies to oppose it; partly on the ground of their local interests being affected, and partly from a feeling of superstition, which emboldened them to urge that “Nature had assigned to rivers their proper courses,” and other reasons of a similar nature.

Aurelian endeavoured to put an effectual stop to the calamities which sprang from the lawless river, by raising its banks and clearing its channel. However, the deposits resulting from these frequent inundations have contributed greatly to that vast accumulation of soil, which has raised the surface of modern Rome so many feet above the ancient level; and thus the evil itself has occasioned a remedy to a partial extent.

We must now close this portion of our imperfect account, and proceed to give our readers some idea in respect to the present condition of Rome’s ancient remains; gleaned, for the most part, from the pages of writers who have recently been sojourners in “the Eternal City:” but in doing this we by no means wish our readers to expect the full and minute particulars, which they may find in works entirely dedicated to the subject; for Rome, even in its antiquities, would require a volume for itself.

When Poggio Bracciolini visited Rome in the fifteenth century, he complained that nothing of old Rome subsisted entire, and that few monuments of the free city remained; and many writers of more recent times have made the same complaint. “The artist,” says Sir John Hobhouse, “may be comparatively indifferent to the date and history, and regard chiefly the architectural merit of a structure; but the Rome which the Florentine republican regretted, and which an Englishman would wish to find, is not that of Augustus and his successors, but of those greater and better men, of whose heroic actions his earliest impressions are composed.” To which, however, may be added what Dr. Burton questions, viz., Whether, in his expectations, the traveller may not betray his ignorance of real history. “The works of the Romans, in the early ages of their nation, were remarkable for their solidity and strength; but there seems no reason to suppose that much taste or elegance was displayed in them. But then, again, if we wish to confine ourselves to the republic, there is surely no need of monuments of brick and stone to awaken our recollections of such a period. If we must have visible objects on which to fix our attention, we have the ground itself on which the Romans trod; we have the Seven Hills; we have the Campus Martius, the Forum,—all places familiar to us from history, and in which we can assign the precise spot where some memorable action was performed. Those who feel a gratification, by placing their footsteps where Cicero or Cæsar did before them, in the consciousness of standing upon the same hill which Manlius defended, and in all those associations which bring the actors themselves upon the scene, may have all their enthusiasm satisfied, and need not complain that there are no monuments of the time of the republic.”

The remains of ancient Rome may be classed in three different periods. Of the first, the works of the kings, embracing a period of two hundred and forty-four years, from the foundation of the city by Romulus to the expulsion of Tarquin, very little have escaped the ravages of time; the Tullian walls and prison, with the Cloaca Maxima, being the only identified remains. Of the works of the republic, which lasted four hundred and sixty-one years, although the city, during that period, was more than once besieged, burned, and sacked, many works are yet extant:—the military ways and aqueducts, and some small temples and tombs. But it was during the third period, that of the emperors, that Rome attained the meridian of her glory. For three centuries all the known world was either subject to her, or bound by commercial treaties; and the taste and magnificence of the Romans were displayed in the erection of temples to the gods, triumphal arches and pillars to conquerors, amphitheatres, palaces, and other works of ostentation and luxury, for which architecture was made to exhaust her treasures, and no expense was spared to decorate.

Architecture was unknown to the Romans until Tarquin came down from Etruria. Hence the few works of the kings, which still remain, were built in the Etruscan style, with large uncemented, but regular blocks. In the gardens of the convent Giovanni a S. Paolo is a ruin of the Curia Hostilia, called the Rostrum of Cicero; and some few fragments, also, remain of a bridge, erected by Ancus Martius. On this bridge (Pons Sublicius) Horatius Cocles opposed singly the army of Porsenna; and from it, in subsequent times, the bodies of Commodus and Heliogabalus were thrown into the Tiber. In the pontificate of Nicholas V. it was destroyed by an inundation. There are also the remains of a large brick edifice, supposed to have been the Curia, erected by Tullus Hostilius, which was destroyed by fire when the populace burned in it the corpse of Clodius. Julius Cæsar commenced its restoration; and Augustus finished it, and gave it the name of Curia Julia, in honour of his father by adoption.

In regard to the form and size of the city, we must follow the direction of the seven hills upon which it was built. 1. Of these MONS PALATINUS has always had the preference. It was in this place that Romulus laid the foundation of the city, in a quadrangular form; and here the same king and Tullus Hostilius kept their courts, as did Augustus afterwards, and all the succeeding emperors. This hill was in compass 1200 paces. 2. MONS TARPEIUS, took its name from Tarpeia, a Roman virgin, who in this place betrayed the city to the Sabines. It had afterwards the denomination of Capitolinus, from the head of a man, casually found here in digging for the foundation of the temple of Jupiter. This hill was added to the city by Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines; when, having been first overcome in the field by Romulus, he and his subjects were permitted to incorporate with the Romans. 3. MONS ESQUILINUS was taken in by Servius Tullius, who had here his royal seat. 4. MONS VIMINALIS derived its name from the osiers that grew very plentifully upon it. This hill was taken in by Servius Tullus. 5. MONS CŒLIUS owes its name to Cœlius, or Cœles, a Tuscan general greatly celebrated in his time, who pitched his tents here when he came to the assistance of Romulus against the Sabines. Its having been taken into the city is attributed to Tullus Hostilius, by Livy and Dionysius; but by Strabo, to Ancus Martius. 6. COLLIS QUIRINALIS was so called from the temple of Quirinus, another name of Romulus; or from the Curetes, a people that removed hither from a Sabine city, called Cures. It afterwards changed its name to Caballus, Mons Caballi, and Caballinus, from the two marble horses, with each a man holding him, which are set up here. They are still standing, and, if the inscription on the pilasters be true, were the work of Phidias and Praxiteles; made by those masters to represent Alexander and his horse Bucephalus, and sent to Nero as a present by Tiridates king of Armenia. 7. MONS AVENTINUS derived its name from Aventinus, an Alban king, from the river Avens, or from (ab Avibus) the birds, that used to flock there from the Tiber. Gellius affirms, that this hill was not enclosed within the bounds of the city, till the time of Claudius; but Eutropius expressly states that it was taken into it even so early as that of Ancus Martius.

As to the extent of the whole city, the greatest, recorded in history, was in the reign of Valerian, who enlarged the walls to such a degree, as to surround a space of fifty miles. The number of inhabitants, in its flourishing state, is computed by Lipsius at four millions. The present extent of the walls is about thirteen miles. Sir John Hobhouse walked round them in three hours, thirty-three minutes and three quarters; and Dr. Burton did the same in three hours and ten minutes.

This circuit will bring into view specimens of every construction, from the days of Servius Tullius down to the present. Aurelian took into his walls whatever he found standing in their line, and they now include some remains of the Tullian walls, the walls of the Prætorian barracks, the facing of a tank, aqueducts, sepulchral monuments, a menagerie, an amphitheatre, a pyramid, &c. Thus do they exhibit the uncemented blocks of the Etruscan style, the reticular work of the republic, the travertine preferred by the first emperors, the alternate tufa and bricks employed by their successors, and that poverty of materials which marks the declining empire. Since the first breach, made by Totila, the walls have been often and variously repaired; sometimes by a case of brick-work, filled up with shattered marbles, rubble, shard, and mortar. In some parts, the cementitious work is unfaced; here you find stones and tufa mixed; there tufa alone, laid in the Saracenic manner: the latter repairs have the brick revêtement of modern fortification.

The gates of Rome, at the present day, are sixteen in number, of which only twelve are open. The wall of Romulus had but three or four; and there has been much discussion among antiquaries, as to their position. That of Servius had seven; but in the time of Pliny, (in the middle of the first century) there were no less than thirty-seven gates to the city. The twelve gates at present in use correspond to some of the principal gates of former times.

Modern Rome, however, can scarcely be said to rest upon the ancient base. Scarcely two-thirds of the space within the walls are now inhabited, and the most thickly peopled district is comprised within what was anciently the open plain of the Campus Martius. On the other hand the most populous part of the ancient Rome is now but a landscape; it would almost seem, indeed, as if the city had slipped off its seven hills into the plain beneath. A remarkable change, too, has taken place in the surface of the site itself. In the valleys the ground has been raised not less than fourteen or fifteen feet. This is strikingly observable in the Forum, where there has been a great rise above the ancient level, owing partly to the accumulation of soil and rubbish brought down by the rains; but chiefly, as there is reason to believe, to that occasioned by the demolition of ancient buildings, and the practice which prevailed of erecting new structures upon the prostrate ruins.

The Tiber, too, still remains; but its present appearance has been variously estimated. “The Tiber,” says Dr. Burton, “is a stream of which classical recollections are apt to raise too favourable anticipations. When we think of the fleets of the capital of the world sailing up it, and pouring in their treasures of tributary kingdoms, we are likely to attach to it ideas of grandeur and magnificence. But if we come to the Tiber with such expectations, our disappointment will be great.”

Sir John Hobhouse speaks differently: “Arrived at the bank of the Tiber,” he says, speaking of the traveller’s approach to Rome from the north, across the Ponte Molle, “he does not find the muddy insignificant stream, which the disappointments of overheated imaginations have described it; but one of the finest rivers of Europe, now rolling through a vale of gardens, and now sweeping the base of swelling acclivities, clothed with wood, and crowned with villas, and their evergreen shrubberies.” Notwithstanding this, the Tiber can be by no means called a large river, and it is scarcely navigable even below Rome, owing to the frequent shoals which impede its course. A steam-boat, which plies between the capital and Fiumicino, a distance of about sixteen miles, is generally five or six hours in making the passage. Ordinary vessels are three days in making their way up the Tiber to Rome; being towed up always by buffaloes. The velocity of its current may be estimated from the fact, that it deposits its coarser gravel thirty miles from the city, and its finer at twelve; it hence pursues its course to the sea, charged only with a fine yellowish sand, imparting to its waters that peculiar colour, which poets call golden, and travellers muddy. Yet these waters enjoyed, at one time, a high reputation for sweetness and salubrious qualities. Pope Paul the Third invariably carried a supply of the water of the Tiber with him on his longest journeys; and his predecessor, Clement the Seventh, was similarly provided, by order of his physician, when he repaired to Marseilles, to celebrate the marriage of his niece, Catherine de Medici, with the brother of the Dauphin, afterwards Henry the Second of France.

Both within and without the walls of Rome, fragments of aqueducts may be seen. Of these “some,” says Mr. Woods, “are of stone, others of brick-work, but the former cannot be traced for any continuance; and while two or three are sometimes supported on a range of arches, in other places almost every one seems to have a range to itself. It is curious to trace these repairs, executed, perhaps, fifteen centuries ago. The execution of the brick-work, in most instances, or perhaps in all, shows them to be decidedly prior to the age of Constantine; and the principal restorations, in all probability, took place when the upper water-courses were added. They generally consist of brick arches, built within the ancient stone ones; sometimes resting on the old piers, but more often carried down to the ground; and, in some cases, the whole arch has been filled up, or only a mere door-way left at the bottom. Sometimes this internal work has been wholly, or partially, destroyed; and sometimes the original stone-work has disappeared, as the owner of the ground happened to want bricks, or squared stones. In one place the ancient piers have been entirely buried in the more recent brick-work; but the brick-work has been broken, and the original stone-work taken away: presenting a very singular, and, at first sight, wholly unaccountable appearance. In other parts, the whole has fallen, apparently without having had these brick additions; for a range of parallel mounds mark the situation of the prostrated piers.”

“I do not know any thing more striking,” says Simond, “than these endless arches of Roman aqueducts, pursuing, with great strides, their irregular course over the desert. They suggest the idea of immensity, of durability, of simplicity, of boundless power, reckless of cost and labour, all for a useful purpose, and regardless of beauty. A river in mid-air, which had been flowing on ceaselessly for fifteen or eighteen hundred, or two thousand years, poured its cataracts in the streets and public squares of Rome, when she was mistress, and also when she was the slave of nations; and quenched the thirst of Attila, and of Genseric, as it had before quenched that of Brutus and Cæsar, and as it has since quenched that of beggars and of popes. During those ages of desolation and darkness, when Rome had almost ceased to be a city, this artificial river ran to waste among the ruins; but now fills again the numerous and magnificent fountains of the modern city. Only three out of eleven of these ancient aqueducts remain entire, and in a state to conduct water; what, then, must have been the profusion of water to ancient Rome?”

The Tarpeian rock still exists; but has little in its appearance to gratify the associations of a classic traveller. Seneca describes it as it existed in his time thus:—“A lofty and precipitous mass rises up, rugged with many rocks, which either bruise the body to death, or hurry one down still more violently. The points projecting from the sides, and the gloomy prospect of its vast height, are truly horrid. This place is chosen in particular, that the criminals may not require to be thrown down more than once.”

Poggio Bracciolini gives a melancholy picture of what, in his time, was the state of this celebrated rock. “This Tarpeian rock was a savage and solitary thicket. In the time of the poet it was covered with the golden roofs of a temple; the temple is overthrown, the gold has been pillaged, the wheel of fortune has accomplished her revolution, and the sacred ground is again disfigured with thorns and brambles. The hill of the Capitol, on which we sit, was formerly the head of the Roman empire, the citadel of the earth, the terror of kings; illustrated by the footsteps of so many triumphs, enriched with the spoils and attributes of so many nations. This spectacle of the world, how is it fallen! how changed! how defaced! The path of victory is obliterated by vines, and the benches of the senators are concealed by a dunghill.”

“Like the modern Tiber, the modern Tarpeian,” says an elegant traveller, “is little able to bear the weight of its ancient reputation.” “The only precipice that remains,” says another traveller (Mathews) “is one about thirty feet from the point of a wall, where you might leap down on the dung, mixed in the fold below, without any fear of breaking your bones.”

The Aqueducts were, beyond all question, some of the noblest designs of the Romans. Frontinus, a Roman author, and a person of consular dignity, who compiled a treatise on this subject, affirms them to be the clearest token of the grandeur of the empire. The first invention of them is attributed to Appius Claudius, A. U. C. 441, who brought water into the city by a channel eleven miles in length. But this was very inconsiderable compared to those that were afterwards carried on by the emperors and other persons; several of which were cut through the mountains, and all other impediments, for above forty miles together; and of such height, that a man on horseback, as Procopius informs us, might ride through them without the least difficulty. This, however, is meant only of the constant course of the channel; for the vaults and arches were, in some places, 109 feet high.

Procopius makes the Aqueducts only fourteen; but Aurelius Victor has enlarged the number to twenty. The Claudian Aqueduct conveyed 800,000 tons of water each day into the city.

The Forums of Rome were of two kinds; one a place of popular assembly, both for business, and pleasure; serving at once the purposes of what we call an Exchange, certain courts of justice, and of hustings for the election of public functionaries: the other consisted of market-places. The chief forum was emphatically called the Roman, or the Great Forum.

The second forum, built in Rome, was erected by Julius Cæsar. The third was called sometimes the Augustan, from its having been formed by Augustus; and sometimes the Forum of Mars from the temple of that god, erected by him. Some remains are still in existence. The fourth forum was begun by Domitian, but being finished by Nerva, it was called after his name. A fifth forum was built by the emperor Trajan; said to have been the most celebrated work of the kind in the city. It was built with the spoils he had taken in his wars. The roof was of brass.

Ammianus Marcellinus, in his description of Constantine’s triumphal entrance into Rome, when he has brought him, with no ordinary admiration, by the Baths, the Pantheon, the Capitol, and other noble structures, as soon as ever he gives him a sight of the Forum of Trajan, he puts him into an ecstacy, and cannot forbear making a harangue upon the matter. We meet in the same place with a very smart repartee, which Constantine received at the time from Ormisdas, a Persian prince. The emperor, as he greatly admired everything belonging to this noble pile, so he had a particular fancy for the statue of Trajan’s horse, which stood on the top of it, and expressed his desire of doing as much for his own beast. “Pray, sir,” says the prince, “before you talk of getting such a horse, will you be pleased to build such a stable to put him in?”

Besides these there was another. This was situated not in the city, but in its neighbourhood. It was called the Forum Populi, which is frequently mentioned in the history of the republic; and which interests us as being the popular and commercial resort of a free people. At stated periods, the Romans, and their friends and allies, used to meet at that spot, and celebrate the Latinæ Feriæ; on which many holidays and religious ceremonies were accompanied by renewals of treaties of amity, by the interchange of commodities, and by manly sports and pastimes. While the Roman citizens came from the Tiber, the free confederates descended from their mountains, or wended their way from the fertile plains beyond the river. Sir William Gell thinks he can fix this interesting spot. The habitations around the temple of Jupiter Latialis, on Mont Albano, are supposed to have constituted the village called Forum Populi. It is probable that the meeting of the Latin confederates upon the mountain, and the fair held there, led to its erection. Here the consuls had a house where they sometimes lodged, which Dio Cassius (lib. iii.) says was struck with lightning.

We now return to the Great Forum.

... It was once,
And long the centre of their universe,
The Forum,—whence a mandate, eagle-winged,
Went to the ends of the earth. Let us descend
Slowly. At every step much may be lost.
The very dust we tread stirs as with life;
And not a breath but from the ground sends up
Something of human grandeur.

... We are come:—
And now where once the mightiest spirits met
In terrible conflict; this, while Rome was free,
The noblest theatre on this side heaven!—ROGERS.

The Forum[152] was an entirely open space; it had public buildings in it, as well as around it; we even read of streets passing through it. The Curia, or Senate-house, stood near the foot of the Palatine hill, in about the middle of the eastern side of the Forum. It was built originally by Tullus Hostilius, the third king of Rome; and, after having been repaired by Sylla, was destroyed by fire in the year 53 B. C., when the body of Clodius, who had been murdered by Milo, was carried into it by a tumultuous multitude, and there burnt on a funeral pile, formed of benches of the senators, the tables, the archives, and such other materials as the place afforded. Sylla’s son rebuilt it; but under the false pretence of erecting a temple to “Felicity.” It was again restored by Julius Cæsar.

Vitruvius says, that the Greek Forum was square, with ambulatories in the upper story; the Roman was oblong, with porticos, and shops for bankers, and with galleries in the upper floor, adapted for the management of the public revenues. The Roman forum also included many other edifices of a different nature; as the basilicæ, prison, curiæ, and were enriched with colonnades and sculpture. That of Trajan was entered by four triumphal arches, and had his magnificent column in the centre of it.

A few words will describe the present state of this celebrated spot:—

Now all is changed! and here, as in the wild,
The day is silent, dreary as the night;
None stirring, save the herdsman and his herd,
Savage alike; or they that would explore,
Discuss and learnedly; or they that come
(And there are many who have crossed the earth)
That they may give the hours to meditation,
And wander, often saying to themselves,
“This was the Roman Forum.”

The list of edifices in the Forum would be tedious; nor could even learned antiquaries now make it correct; but among them we may mention the temple of the Penates, or household gods, the temple of Concord, the temple of Jupiter Stator, the temple of Castor and Pollux[153], the temple of Vesta, the temple of Victory, the temple of Julius Cæsar, and the arches of Fabian, Tiberius, and Severus. All these, however, and in most cases even the traces of them, have disappeared,—the few objects remaining being a puzzle to such persons as take an interest in them, and examine the matters on the spot.

“The glories of the Forum are now fled forever,” says Mr. Eustace. Its temples are fallen; its sanctuaries are crumbled into dust; its colonnades encumber pavements, now buried under their remains. The walls of the rostra, stripped of their ornaments, and doomed to eternal silence; a few shattered porticos, and here and there an insulated column standing in the midst of broken shafts, vast fragments of marble capitals and cornices heaped together in masses, remind the traveller that the field which he now traverses was once the Roman forum[154]. It is reduced, indeed, not to the pasture-ground for cattle, which Virgil has described, but to the market-place for pigs, sheep, and oxen; being now the Smithfield of Rome. The hills, the rivers, the roads and bridges, in this mother of cities, mostly go by their ancient Latin names, slightly altered in Italian, but the Forum has not even retained its name; it is now called Campo Vaccino, or the Field of Cows!