Ruins of Ancient Cities (Vol. 2 of 2)

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 family151.

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.”