Pagan and Christian Rome

Obelisk of Rameses the Great.

The second work, discovered June 17, was an obelisk which was wonderfully well preserved to the very top of the pinnacle, and covered with hieroglyphics. It was quarried at Assuan, from a richly colored vein of red granite, and was brought to Rome, probably under Domitian, together with the obelisk now in the Piazza del Pantheon. The two monoliths are almost identical in size and workmanship, and are inscribed with the same cartouches of Rameses the Great. The one which I discovered was set up, in 1887, to the memory of our brave soldiers who fell at the battle of Dogali. The site selected for the monument, the square between the railway station and the Baths of Diocletian, is too large for such a comparatively small shaft.

Two days later, on the 19th, we discovered two kynokephaloi or kerkopithekoi, five feet high, carved in black porphyry. The monsters are sitting on their hind legs, with the paws of the forearms resting on the knees. Their bases contain finely-cut hieroglyphics, with the cartouche of King Necthor-heb, of the thirtieth Sebennitic dynasty. One of these kynokephaloi, and also the obelisk, were certainly seen in 1719 by the masons who built the foundations of the Biblioteca Casanatense. For some reason unknown to us, they kept their discovery a secret. Many other works of art were discovered before the close of the excavations, in the last days of June. Among them were a crocodile in red granite, the pedestal of a candelabrum, triangular in shape, with sphinxes at the corners; a column of the temple, with reliefs representing an Isiac procession; and a portion of a capital. From an architectural point of view, the most curious discovery was that the temple itself, with its colonnades and double cella, had been brought over, piece by piece, from the banks of the Nile to those of the Tiber. It is not an imitation; it is a purely original Egyptian structure, shaded first by the palm-trees of Saïs, and later by the pines of the Campus Martius.

The earliest trustworthy account we have of its existence is given by Flavius Josephus. He relates how Tiberius, after the assault of Mundus against Paulina,53 condemned the priests to crucifixion, burned the shrine, and threw the statue of the goddess into the Tiber. Nero restored the sanctuary; it was, however, destroyed again in the great conflagration, a. d. 80. Domitian was the second restorer; Hadrian, Commodus, Caracalla, and Alexander Severus improved and beautified the group, from time to time. At the beginning of the fourth century of our era it contained the propylaia, or pyramidal towers with a gateway, at each end of the dromos; one near the present church of S. Stefano del Cacco, one near the church of S. Macuto. They were flanked by one or more pairs of obelisks, of which six have been recovered up to the present time, namely, one now in the Piazza della Rotonda, a second in the Piazza della Minerva, a third in the Villa Mattei, a fourth in the Piazza della Stazione, a fifth in the Sphæristerion at Urbino, and fragments of a sixth in the Albani collection.

From the propylaia, a dromos, or sacred avenue, led to the double temple. To the dromos belong the two lions in the Museo Etrusco Gregoriano, the two lions in the Capitoline Museum, the sphinx of Queen Hathsèpu in the Barracco collection, the sphinx of Amasis and the Tranquilli sphinx in the Capitol, the cow Hathor and the statue of Uahábra in the Museo Archeologico in Florence, the kynokephaloi of Necthor-heb, the kynokephalos which gave the popular name of Cacco (ape) to the church of S. Stefano, the statue formerly in the Ludovisi Gallery, the Nile of the Braccio Nuovo, the Tiber of the Louvre, the Oceanus at Naples, the River-God buried in 1440, the Isiac altars of the Capitol and of the Louvre, the tripod, the crocodile and sundry other fragments which were found in 1883. Of the temple itself we possess two columns covered with mystic bas-reliefs, seven capitals,—one in the Capitol, the others in the Vatican,—and two blocks of granite from the walls of the cella, one in the Barberini gardens, one in the Palazzo Galitzin.

The last historical mention we possess of this admirable Egyptian museum of ancient Rome was found by Delille in the "Cod. Parisin." 8064, in which the attempt by Nicomachus Flavianus to revive the pagan religion in 394 a. d. is minutely described.54 The reaction caused by this final outburst of fanaticism must have been fatal to the temple. The masterpieces of the dromos were upset, and otherwise damaged, the faces of the kynokephaloi and the noses and paws of the sphinxes were knocked off, and statues of Pharaohs, gods, priests, dignitaries, and Pastophoroi were hurled from their pedestals, and broken to pieces. When this wholesale destruction took place, the pavement of the temple was still clear of the rubbish and loose soil. The sphinx of Amasis, found June 14, was lying on its left side on the bare pavement; the two apes had fallen on their backs. No attempt, however, was made to overthrow the obelisks, at least the one which I discovered. When the monolith fell, in the eighth or ninth century, the floor of the Iseum was already covered with a bed of rubbish five feet thick. To this fact we owe the wonderful preservation of the obelisk, the soft, muddy condition of the soil having eased the weight of the fall.

Students have wondered at the existence, in our time, of such a mine of antiquities in this quarter of the Campus Martius, where it appears as if, in spite of the feverish search for ancient marbles, this spot had escaped the attention of the excavators of the past four or five centuries. It did not escape their attention. The whole area of the Iseum, save a few recesses, has been explored since the Middle Ages, but the search was made to secure marble, which could be burnt into lime, or turned into new shapes. Of what use would porphyry, or granite, or basalt be for such purposes? These materials are useless for the lime-kiln, and too hard to be worked anew, and accordingly they were left alone. In the excavations of 1883 I found the best evidence that such was the case. The obelisk is of granite; its pedestal of white marble. The obelisk escaped destruction, but the pedestal was split, and made ready for the lime-kiln.

The Temple of Neptune. The discoveries made in 1878 in the Piazza di Pietra, on the site of the Temple of Neptune, rank next in importance to those just described. In repairing a drain which runs through the Via de' Bergamaschi to the Piazza di Pietra, the foundations of an early mediæval church, dedicated to S. Stephen (Santo Stefano del Trullo) were unearthed, together with historical inscriptions, pieces of columns of giallo antico, and other architectural fragments. On a closer examination of the discoveries, I was able to ascertain that the whole church had been built with spoils from the triumphal arch of Claudius in the Piazza di Sciarra, and from the Temple of Neptune in the Piazza di Pietra. To enable the reader to appreciate the value of the discovery, I must begin with a short description of the temple itself.

One of the Provinces from the Temple of Neptune.

Dio Cassius (liii. 27) states that, in 26 b. c., Marcus Agrippa built the Portico of the Argonauts, with a temple in the middle of it, called the Poseidonion (ΠΟΣΕΙΔΩΝΙΟΝ), in token of his gratitude to the god of the seas for the naval victories he had gained over the foes of the commonwealth; but the beautiful ruins still existing in the Piazza di Pietra do not belong to Agrippa's work, nor to the golden age of Roman art. They belong to the restoration of the temple which was made by Hadrian after the great fire of a. d. 80, by which the Neptunium, or Poseidonion, was nearly destroyed. The characteristic feature of the temple was a set of thirty-six bas-reliefs representing the thirty-six provinces of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the Christian era. These reliefs were set into the basement of the temple, so as to form the pedestals of the thirty-six columns of the peristyle, while the intercolumniations, or spaces between the pedestals, were occupied by another set of bas-reliefs representing the military uniforms, flags and weapons which were peculiar to each of the provinces. The fifteen provinces and fourteen trophies belonging to the colonnade of the Piazza di Pietra, that is, to the north side of the temple, have all been accounted for. Four provinces were found during the pontificate of Paul III. (1534-50), two during that of Innocent X. (1644-55), two during that of Alexander VII. (1655-1667), three in our excavations of 1878, and four either are still in the ground or have perished in a lime-kiln. Here again we have an instance of the shameful dispersion of the spoils of ancient Rome. We have this wing of the temple still standing in all its glory, in the Piazza di Pietra; we have eleven pedestals out of fifteen, and as many panels for the intercolumniations; the others are probably within our reach, and we have beautiful pieces of the entablature with its rich carvings. The temple, entablature, and nearly all the trophies and provinces are public property; nothing would be easier than to restore each piece to its proper place, and make this wing of the Neptunium one of the most perfect relics of ancient Rome. Alas! three provinces and two trophies have emigrated to Naples with the rest of the Farnese marbles, one has been left behind in the portico of the Farnese palace in Rome, five provinces and four trophies are in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, two are in the Palazzo Odescalchi, one is in the Palazzo Altieri, two pieces of the entablature are used as a rustic seat in the Giardino delle Tre Pile on the Capitol, and another has been used in the restoration of the Arch of Constantine.

The Temple of Augustus. It is a remarkable fact that, at the beginning of archæological research in the Renaissance, there was great enthusiasm over a few strange monuments of little or no interest, the existence of which would have been altogether unknown but for an occasional mention in classical texts. As a rule, the cinquecento topographers give a prominent place in their books to the columna Mænia, the columna Lactaria, the senaculum mulierum, the pila Tiburtina, the pila Horatia and other equally unimportant works which, for reasons unknown to us, had forcibly struck their fancy. The fashion died out in course of time, but never entirely. Some of these more or less fanciful structures still live in our books, and in the imagination of the people. The place of honor, in this line, belongs to Caligula's bridge, which is supposed to have crossed the valley of the Forum at a prodigious height, so as to enable the young monarch to walk on a level from his Palatine house to the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. This bridge is not only mentioned in guide-books, and pointed out to strangers on their first visit to the Forum, but is also drawn and described in works of a higher standard,55 in which the bridge is represented from "remains concealed under a house, which have been carefully examined and measured, as well as drawn by architectural draughtsmen of much experience."

The bridge never existed. Caligula made use of the roofs of edifices which were already there, spanning only the gaps of the streets with temporary wooden passages. This is clearly stated by Suetonius in chapters xxii. and xxxvii. and by Flavius Josephus, "Antiq. Jud." xix. 1, 11. From the palace at the northeast corner of the Palatine, he crossed the roof of the templum divi Augusti, then the fastigium basilicæ Juliæ, and lastly the Temple of Saturn close to the Capitolium. The Street of Victory which divided the emperor's palace from the Temple of Augustus, the Street of the Tuscans which divided the temple from the basilica, and the Vicus Iugarius between the basilica and the Temple of Saturn, were but a few feet wide and could easily be crossed by means of a passerelle. We are told by Suetonius and Josephus how Caligula used sometimes to interrupt his aerial promenade midway, and throw handfuls of gold from the roof of the basilica to the crowd assembled below. I have mentioned this bridge because the words of Suetonius, supra templum divi Augusti ponte transmisso, gave me the first clew towards the identification of the splendid ruins which tower just behind the church of S. Maria Liberatrice, between it and the rotunda of S. Teodoro.

Plan of the Temple of Augustus.

The position of Caligula's palace at the northeast corner of the Palatine being well known, as also the site of the Basilica Julia, it is evident that the building which stands between the two must be the Temple of Augustus. This conclusion is so simple that I wonder that no one had mentioned it before my first announcement in 1881. The last nameless remains adjoining the Forum have thus regained their place and their identity in the topography of this classic quarter.

Remains of the Temple of Augustus, from a sketch by Ligorio.

The construction of a temple in honor of the deified founder of the empire was begun by his widow Livia, and Tiberius, his adopted son, and completed by Caligula. An inscription discovered in 1726, in the Columbaria of Livia on the Appian Way, mentions a C. Julius Bathyllus, sacristan or keeper of the temple. Pliny (xii. 19, 42) describes, among the curiosities of the place, a root of a cinnamon-tree, of extraordinary size, placed by Livia on a golden tray. The relic was destroyed by fire in the reign of Titus. Domitian must have restored the building, because the rear wall of the temple, the murus post templum divi Augusti ad Minervam, is mentioned in contemporary documents as the place on which state notices were posted. It has been excavated but once, in June, 1549, when the Forum, the Sacra Via and the Street of the Tuscans were ransacked to supply marbles and lime for the building of S. Peter's. Two documents show the wonderful state of preservation in which the temple was found. One is a sketch, taken in 1549, by Pirro Ligorio, which, through the kindness of Professor T. H. Middleton,56 I reproduce from the original, in the Bodleian Library; the other is a description of the discovery by Panvinius.57 The place was in such good condition that even the statue and altar of Vortumnus, described by Livy, Asconius, Varro and others, were found lying at the foot of the steps of the temple.

The Sacellum Sanci, or Shrine of Sancus on the Quirinal.58 The worship of Semo Sancus Sanctus Dius Fidius was imported into Rome at a very early period, by the Sabines who first colonized the Quirinal Hill. He was considered the Genius of heavenly light, the son of Jupiter Diespiter or Lucetius, the avenger of dishonesty, the upholder of truth and good faith, whose mission upon earth was to secure the sanctity of agreements, of matrimony, and hospitality. Hence his various names and his identification with the Roman Hercules, who was likewise invoked as a guardian of the sanctity of oaths (me-Hercle, me-Dius Fidius). There were two shrines of Semo Sancus in ancient Rome, one built by the Sabines on the Quirinal, near the modern church of S. Silvestro, from which the Porta Sanqualis of the Servian walls was named, the other built by the Romans on the Island of the Tiber (S. Bartolomeo) near the Temple of Jupiter Jurarius. Justin, the apologist and martyr, laboring under the delusion that Semo Sancus and Simon the Magician were the same, describes the altar on the island of S. Bartolomeo as sacred to the latter.59 He must have glanced hurriedly at the first three names of the Sabine god,—SEMONI SANCO DEO,—and translated them ΣΙΜΩΝΙ ΔΕΩ ΣΑΓΚΤΩ. The altar on which these names were written, the very one seen and described by S. Justin, was discovered on the same island, in July, 1574, during the pontificate of Gregory XIII. The altar is preserved in the Galleria Lapidaria of the Vatican Museum, in the first compartment (Dii).

Statue of Semo Sancus.

The shrine on the Quirinal is minutely described by classical writers. It was hypæthral, that is, without a roof, so that the sky could be seen by the worshippers of the "Genius of heavenly light." The oath me-Dius Fidius could not be taken except in the open air. The chapel contained relics of the kingly period, the wool, distaff, spindle, and slippers of Tanaquil, and brass clypea or medallions, made of money confiscated from Vitruvius Vaccus.

Its foundations were discovered in March, 1881, under what was formerly the convent of S. Silvestro al Quirinale, now the headquarters of the Royal Engineers. The monument is a parallelogram in shape, thirty-five feet long by nineteen feet wide, with walls of travertine, and decorations of white marble; and it is surrounded by votive altars and pedestals of statues. I am not sure whether the remarkable work of art which I shall describe presently was found in this very place, but it is a strange coincidence that, during the progress of the excavations at S. Silvestro, a statue of Semo Sancus and a pedestal inscribed with his name should have appeared in the antiquarian market of the city.

The statue, reproduced here from a heliogravure, is life-sized, and represents a nude youth, of archaic type. His attitude may be compared to that of some early representations of Apollo, but the expression of the face and the modelling of some parts of the body are realistic rather than conventional. Both hands are missing, so that it is impossible to state what were the attributes of the god. Visconti thinks they may have been the avis Sanqualis or ossifraga, and the club of Hercules. The inscription on the pedestal is very much like that seen by S. Justin:—

SEMONI . SANCO . DEO . FIDIO . SACRUM . DECURIA . SACER-DOT[UM] BIDENTALIUM

According to Festus, bidentalia were small shrines of second-rate divinities, to whom bidentes, lambs two years old, were sacrificed. For this reason the priests of Semo were called sacerdotes bidentales. They were organized, like a lay corporation, in a decuria under the presidency of a magister quinquennalis. Their residence, adjoining the chapel, was ample and commodious, with an abundant supply of water. The lead pipe by which this was distributed through the establishment was discovered at the same time and in the same place with the bronze statues of athletes described in chapter xi. of my "Ancient Rome."

The pipe has been removed to the Capitoline Museum, the statue and its pedestal have been purchased by Pope Leo XIII. and placed in the Galleria dei Candelabri, and the foundations of the shrine have been destroyed.

CHAPTER III.

CHRISTIAN CHURCHES

The large number of churches in Rome.—The six classes of the earliest of these.—I. Private oratories.—The houses of Pudens and Prisca.—The evolution of the church from the private house.—II. Scholæ.—The memorial services and banquets of the pagans.—Two extant specimens of early Christian scholæ.—That in the Cemetery of Callixtus.—III. Oratories and churches built over the tombs of martyrs and confessors.—How they came to be built.—These the originals of the greatest sanctuaries of modern Rome.—S. Peter's.—The origin of the church.—The question of S. Peter's residence and execution in Rome.—The place of his execution and burial.—The remarkable discovery of graves under the baldacchino of Urban VIII.—The basilica erected by Constantine.—Some of its monuments.—The chair and statue of S. Peter.—The destruction of the old basilica and the building of the new.—The vast dimensions of the latter.—Is S. Peter's body really still under the church?—The basilica of S. Paul's outside the walls.—The obstacles to its construction.—The fortified settlement of Johannipolis which grew up around it.—The grave of S. Paul.—IV. Houses of confessors and martyrs.—The discoveries of padre Germano on the Cælian.—The house of the martyrs John and Paul.—V. Pagan monuments converted into churches.—Every pagan building capable of holding a congregation was thus transformed at one time or another.—Examples of these in and near the Coliseum.—VI. Memorials of historical events.—The chapel erected to commemorate the victory of Constantine over Maxentius.—That of Santa Croce a Monte Mario.

Rome, according to an old saying, contains as many churches as there are days in the year. This statement is too modest; the "great catalogue" published by cardinal Mai60 mentions over a thousand places of worship, while nine hundred and eighteen are registered in Professor Armellini's "Chiese di Roma." A great many have disappeared since the first institution, and are known only from ruins, or inscriptions and chronicles. Others have been disfigured by "restorations." Without denying the fact that our sacred buildings excel in quantity rather than quality, there is no doubt that as a whole they form the best artistic and historic collection in the world. Every age, from the apostolic to the present, every school, every style has its representatives in the churches of Rome.

The assertion that the works of mediæval architects have been destroyed or modernized to such an extent as to leave a wide gap between the classic and Renaissance periods, must have been made by persons unacquainted with Rome; the churches and the cloisters of S. Saba on the Aventine, of SS. Quattro Coronati on the Cælian, of S. Giovanni a Porta Latina, of SS. Vincenzo e Anastasio alle Tre Fontane, of S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura, are excellent specimens of mediæval architecture. Let students, archæologists, and architects provide themselves with a chronological table of our sacred buildings, and select the best specimens for every quarter of a century, beginning with the oratory of Aquila and Prisca, mentioned in the Epistles, and ending with the latest contemporary creations; they cannot find a better subject for their education in art and history.

From the point of view of their origin and structure, the churches of Rome of the first six centuries may be divided into six classes:—

I. Rooms of private houses where the first prayer-meetings were held.

II. Scholæ (memorial or banqueting halls in public cemeteries), transformed into places of worship.

III. Oratories and churches built over the tombs of martyrs and confessors.

IV. Houses of confessors and martyrs.

V. Pagan monuments, especially temples, converted into churches.

VI. Memorials of historical events.

In treating this subject we must bear in mind that early Christian edifices in Rome were never named from a titular saint, but from their founder, or from the owner of the property on which they were established. The same rule applies to the suburban cemeteries, which were always named from the owner of the ground above them, not from the martyrs buried within. The statement is simple; but we are so accustomed to calling the Lateran basilica "S. Giovanni," or the oratory of Pudens "S. Pudentiana," that their original names (Basilica Salvatoris, and Ecclesia Pudentiana) have almost fallen into oblivion.

I shall select from each of the six classes such specimens as I believe will convey an impression of its type to the mind of the reader.

I. Private Oratories. "In the familiar record of the first days of the Christian church we read how the men of Galilee, who returned to Jerusalem after the ascension, 'went up into the upper chamber,' which was at once their dwelling-place and their house of prayer and of assembly. There, at the first common meal, the bread was broken and the cup passed around in remembrance of the last occasion on which they had sat at table with Christ. There too they assembled for their first act of church government, the election of a successor to the apostate Judas. All is simple and domestic, yet we have here the beginnings of what became in time the most wide-reaching and highly organized of human systems. An elaborate hierarchy, a complicated theology were to arise out of the informal conclave, the memorial meal; and in like manner, out of the homely meeting-place of the disciples would be developed the costly and beautiful forms of the Christian temple."61