Ruins of Ancient Cities (Vol. 2 of 2)

The Mausoleo Adriano was erected by Adrian, in the gardens of Domitian. It is two stories high; the lower square, the upper round. It was formerly covered with Parian marble, and encircled by a concentric portico, and surmounted by a cupola. The Pons Ælius was the approach to it; during the middle ages, it was used as a fortress; and the upper works, of brick, were added to it by Alexander VI.; when it became the citadel of Rome. This castle was of great service to Pope Clement VII., when the city was surprised (A. D. 1527) by the imperial army. The castle was formerly the burial-place of the Roman emperors, which, after Augustus’s mausoleum on the side of the Tiber was filled with arms, Adrian built for himself and his successors; hence it acquired the name of Moles Hadriani. The large round tower in the centre of the edifice was formerly adorned with a considerable number of small pillars and statues; but most of them were broken to pieces by the Romans themselves, who made use of them to defend themselves against the Goths, when they assaulted the city; as may be read at large in Procopius and Baronius. On the top of it stood the Pigna, since in the Belvidere Gardens. It received its name of St. Angelo, from the supposed appearance of an angel, at the time of a pestilence, during the reign of Gregory the Great. It was fortified by Pope Urban VII., with five regular bastions, ramparts, moats, &c. The hall is adorned with gildings, fine paintings, and Adrian’s statue, whose bust, with that of Augustus, is to be seen on the castle wall.

The Mamertine prisons[157 - Chambers.] are supposed to be the oldest monuments of antiquity in Rome. Livy speaks of them as the work of Ancus Martius. “The state having undergone a vast increase,” says the historian, “and secret villanies being perpetrated, from the distinction between right and wrong being confounded, in so great a multitude of men, a prison was built in the middle of the city, overhanging the Forum, as a terror to the increasing boldness. These prisons are supposed to be called after their founder, Martius. They were enlarged by Servius Tullus; and the part which he added bore the name of Tullian. The front of this prison is open to the street; but above, and resting on it, is built the church of San Giuseppe Falegnani. It has an appearance of great solidity, being composed of immense masses of stone, put together without cement; almost every one of the blocks is upwards of nine feet long, and in height nearly three feet. The length of the front is forty-three feet; but its height does not exceed seventeen; along the upper part runs an inscription, intimating, that Caius Vibius Rufinus and Marcus Cocceius Nerva (who were consuls in the year 23), by a decree of the senate, repaired, enlarged, or did something to the prison. The traveller descends, by the aid of stairs, into the upper cell. Nearly in the middle of the vaulted roof he may perceive an aperture large enough to admit the passage of a man’s body; and directly under it, in the floor of the cell, he will see another opening of a similar character. This affords a direct communication with the lower prison; but he descends at another point by a second flight of steps, modern like the former. The second cell is of much smaller dimensions than the other, being only nineteen feet in length, by nine in breadth, and about six in height.” “It is faced,” says the Rev. Mr. Burgess, “with the same material as the upper one; and it is worthy of remark, as a proof of its high antiquity, that the stones are not disposed with that regularity which the rules of good masonry require; the joinings often coincide, or nearly so, instead of reposing over the middle of the interior block respectively.”

Dr. Burton says, “that a more horrible place for the confinement of a human being than these prisons, can scarcely be imagined. Their condition in ancient times must have been still worse than it now is. The expressions ‘cell of groans,’ ‘house of sadness,’ ‘black prison,’ ‘cave of darkness,’ ‘place darkened with perpetual night;’ and many others, which are to be met with in the pages of the later Latin writers, sufficiently attest the character they bore in ancient times.”

Quintus Pleminius, who had done good service to the republic in the second Punic war, but who afterwards had been sent in chains to Rome, on account of the enormities which he had practised in the government of the town of Locri, was incarcerated in this prison. In the year 194 B. C. certain games were being performed in the city; and while the minds of all were taken up with the sight of them, Quintus Pleminius procured persons to agree to set the city on fire, at night, in several places at once, so that in the consternation of a nocturnal tumult, the prison might be broken open. The matter, however, was disclosed by persons privy thereto, and communicated to the senate; and Pleminius was immediately put to death in the lower cell. The accomplices of Catiline, too, expiated their guilt in this prison. The celebrated African king, Jugurtha, also, in the same place closed his last days. His melancholy end is thus described by Plutarch: —

“Marius, bringing back his army from Africa into Italy, took possession of the consulship the first day of January, and also entered Rome in triumph, showing the Romans what they had never expected to see; this was the king Jugurtha prisoner, who was a man so wary, and who knew so well to accommodate himself to fortune, and who united so much courage to his craft and cunning, that none of his enemies ever thought that they would have him alive. When he had been led in the procession he became deranged, as they say, in his understanding; and, after the triumph, he was thrown into prison; when, as they were stripping him of his tunic by force, and striving in eager haste to take from him his golden ear-ring, they tore it off, together with the lower part of his ear. Being then thrust naked into the deep cavern, he said, full of trouble, and smiling bitterly, ‘Hercules! how cold is this bath of yours!’ Having struggled, however, for six days, with hunger, waiting in suspense till the last hour, from his passionate desire to live, he met with the just rewards of his wicked deeds.” In this prison, also, Perseus, the captive king of Macedonia, lingered many years in hopeless misery; and in one of its cells, also, St. Peter was imprisoned nine years.

Next to the Mamertine prisons, in point of antiquity, but greatly above them as a work of labour and art, was the Cloaca Maxima. The first sewers in Rome were constructed by Tarquinius Priscus. The Cloaca Maxima was the work of Tarquin the Proud.

Pliny says that Agrippa, in his ædileship, made no less than seven streams meet together underground in one main channel, with such a rapid current as to carry all before them that they met with in their passage. Sometimes when they are violently swoln with immoderate rains, they beat with excessive fury against the paving at the bottom and the sides. Sometimes in a flood the Tiber waters oppose them in their course; and then the two streams encounter with great fury; and yet the works preserve their ancient strength, without any sensible damage. Sometimes huge pieces of stone and timber, or such-like materials, are carried down the channel; and yet the fabric receives no detriment. Sometimes the ruin of whole buildings, destroyed by fire or other casualties, presses heavily upon the frame. Sometimes terrible earthquakes shake the very foundations, and yet they still continue impregnable. Such is the testimony of Pliny the Elder.

The Cloaca Maxima still exists. At its outlet in the Tiber, it is said to be thirteen feet high, and as many in breadth. The ancients always regarded this work as a great wonder. Livy speaks of it in terms of admiration; and Pliny equally so; and Dionysius says that the sewers having been once so greatly neglected that sufficient passage was not afforded for the waters, it cost no less a sum than 225,000l. to put them in repair.

The Pyramid of Cestius, one of the most ancient remains, is the only specimen of a pyramid in Rome. It was erected daring the republic, to the memory of Caius Cestius, one of the priests that provided feasts for the gods. It is of great size, being ninety-seven feet in the base, and one hundred and twenty-four in height; and was erected, according to the inscription, in three hundred and thirty days.

This ancient monument remains entire[158 - Eustace.]. It is formed, externally, of white marble. At each corner on the outside was a pillar, once surmounted with a statue. Its form is graceful, and its appearance very picturesque; supported on either side by the ancient wall of Rome, with their towers and galleries venerable in decay, half shaded by a few scattered trees; and, looking down upon a hundred humble tents interspersed in the neighbouring groves, it rises in lonely pomp, and seems to preside over these fields of silence and mortality.

This structure was repaired by order of Pope Alexander VII. in 1663; it having been greatly dilapidated; no less than fifteen feet of rubbish have accumulated above the base. “It is curious,” says Simond, “to see how Nature, disappointed of her usual means of destruction by the pyramidal shape, goes to work another way. That very shape affording a better hold for plants, their roots have penetrated between the stones, and acting like wedges, have lifted and thrown wide large blocks, in such a manner, as to threaten the disjoined assemblage with entire destruction. In Egypt, the extreme heat and want of moisture, during a certain part of the year, hinder the growth of plants in such situations; and in Africa alone are pyramids eternal.” – Close to this is the Protestant burial-ground. “When I am inclined to be serious,” says Mr. Rogers, “I love to wander up and down before the tomb of Caius Cestius. The Protestant burial-ground is there; and most of the little monuments are erected to the young; young men of promise, cut off when on their travels, full of enthusiasm, full of enjoyment; brides in the bloom of their beauty, on their first journey; or children borne from home in search of health. This stone was placed by his fellow-travellers, young as himself, who will return to the house of his parents without him; that by a husband or a father, now in his native country. His heart is buried in that grave. It is a quiet and sheltered nook, covered in the winter with violets; and the pyramid that overshadows it gives a classical and singularly solemn air. You feel an interest there, a sympathy you were not prepared for. You are yourself in a foreign land; and they are for the most part your countrymen. They call upon you in your mother tongue – in English – in words unknown to a native; known only to yourselves: and the tomb of Cestius, that old majestic pile has this also in common with them, – it is itself a stranger among strangers. It has stood there till the language, spoken round about it, has changed; and the shepherd, born at the foot, can read its inscription no longer.”

There is a stern, round tower of other days,
Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone,
Such as an army’s baffled strength decays,
Standing with half its battlements alone.
And with two thousand years of ivy grown,
The garland of eternity, where wave
The green leaves over all by Time o’erthrown;
What was this tower of strength? within its cave
What treasure lay so hid? – a Woman’s grave.

A little beyond the Circus of Caracalla[159 - Eustace.] rises the mausoleum of Cecilia Metella, a beautiful edifice, built by Crassus, in honour of his wife. It is of considerable height and great thickness: in the centre is a hollow space reaching from the pavement to the top of the building. In the concavity was deposited the body in a marble sarcophagus, which in the time of Paul III. was removed to the court of the Farnesian palace. The solidity and simplicity of this monument are worthy of the republican era in which it was erected, and have enabled it to resist the incidents and survive the lapse of two thousand years.

“At the end of the Velabrum,” says Dupaty, “I found myself on the Appian way, and walked along it for some time. I there found the tomb of Cecilia Metella, the daughter of that Crassus whose wealth was a counterpoise to the name of Pompey and the fortune of Cæsar. I entered the tomb, and set myself down on the grass. The flowers which displayed their brilliant colours in the corner of the tomb, and as I may say amid the shades of death; the noise of a swarm of bees who were depositing their honey between two rows of bricks, while the surrounding silence rendered their pleasing humming more audible; the azure of the sky forming over my head a magnificent dome, decorated alternately by flying clouds of silver and of purple; the name Cecilia Metella, who perhaps was beautiful, and possessed of the tenderest sensibility, and who most certainly was unfortunate; the memory of Crassus; the image of a distracted father who strives by piling up stones to immortalize his sorrow; the soldiers, whom my imagination still behold combating from the height of this tower; – all these and a thousand other impressions gradually plunged my soul into a delicious reverie, and it was with difficulty I could leave the place.”

The portico of Octavia stood upon the Flaminian Circus and the theatre of Marcellus; it was erected by Augustus, in honour of his sister Octavia. This portico formed a parallelogram, composed of a double row of two hundred and seventy Corinthian columns of white marble, adorned with statues, enclosing a court, in which were two temples, dedicated to Jupiter and Juno, a library, and a large hall for the exhibition of paintings. A small portion of the portico, being one of the entrances, is all that now remains. Many of the pillars are, however, supposed to be built up in the neighbouring houses.

The general use, porticoes were put to, was the pleasure of walking or riding in them; in the shade in summer, and in winter in the day; like the present piazzas in Italy. Velleius Paterculus, when he deplores the extreme corruption of manners that had crept into Rome upon the conclusion of the Carthaginian war, mentions particularly the vanity of the noblemen, in endeavouring to outshine one another in the magnificence of their porticoes, as a great instance of their extraordinary luxury. Juvenal thus alludes to them: —

On sumptuous baths the rich their wealth bestow,
Or some expensive airy portico;
Where safe from showers they may be borne in state;
And, free from tempests, for fair weather wait:
Or rather not expect the clearing sun;
Through thick and thin their equipage must run:
Or staying, ‘tis not for their servants’ sake,
But that their mules no prejudice may take.

The Naumachiæ, or places for the shows of sea engagements[160 - Kennett.], are nowhere particularly described; but we may suppose them to be very little different from the circus or amphitheatres; since those sort of shows, for which they were designed, were often exhibited. The Naumachiæ owed their original to the time of the first Punic war, when the Romans first initiated their men in the knowledge of sea-affairs. After the improvement of many years, they were designed as well for gratifying the sight, as for increasing their naval experience and discipline; and therefore composed one of the solemn shows by which the magistrates or emperors, or any affecters of popularity, so often made their court to the people.

The usual accounts we have of these exercises seem to represent them as nothing else but the image of a naval fight. But it is probable that sometimes they did not engage in any hostile manner, but only rowed fairly for the victory. This conjecture may be confirmed by the authority of Virgil, who is acknowledged by all the critics, in his descriptions of the games and exercises to have had an eye always to his own country, and to have drawn them after the manner of the Roman sports. Now the sea contention, which he presents us with, is barely a trial of swiftness in the vessels, and of skill in managing the oars, as is most admirably delivered in his fifth book[161 - Prima pares ineunt gravibus certamina remisQuatuor ex omni delecta classe carinæ, &c.].

Warm baths were first introduced into Rome by Mæcenas. There cannot be a greater instance of the magnificence of the Romans than their bagnios. Ammianus Marcellinus observes, that they were built “in modum provinciarum,” as large as provinces; but the great Valesius judges the word provinciarum to be a corruption of piscinarum. And though this emendation does in some measure extenuate one part of the vanity which has been so often alleged against them, from the authority of that passage of the historian, yet the prodigious accounts we have of their ornaments and furniture, will bring them, perhaps, under a censure no more favourable than the former. Seneca, speaking of the luxury of his countrymen in this respect, complains that they were arrived to such a pitch of niceness and delicacy, as to scorn to set their feet on any thing but precious stones. And Pliny wishes good old Fabricius were but alive to see the degeneracy of his posterity, when the very women must have their seats in the baths of solid silver. Of the luxury and magnificence of the Roman bath, we have an interesting account in Seneca; we borrow the old translation, it being somewhat of a curiosity: —

“Of the countrie-house of Africanus, and bath:

“Lying in the verie towne (villa) of Scipio Africanus, I write these things unto thee, having adored the spirit of him and the altar, which I suppose to be the sepulcher of so great a man. * * I saw that towne builded of four-square stone, a wall compassing about a wood, towers also set under both sides of the towne for a defence. A cisterne laid under the buildings, and green places, which was able to serve even an armie of men. A little narrow bathe, somewhat darke, as the olde fashion was. None seemed warme for our ancestors except it were obscure. Great pleasure entered into me, beholding the manners of Scipio and of us. In this corner that horrour of Carthage, to whom Rome is in debt that it was taken but once, washed his bodie, wearied with the labours of the countrie: for he exercised himselfe in worke, and he himself tilled the earth, as the fashion of the ancients was. He stood upon this so base a roofe, – this so mean a floore sustained him. But now who is he that can sustaine to be bathed thus? Poore and base seemeth he to himself, except the walls have shined with great and precious rounds, except Alexandrian marbles be distinguished with Numidian roofe-caste, except the chamber be covered over with glasse, except stone of the Ile Thassus, once a rare gazing-stocke in some church (temple), have compassed about our ponds into which we let down our bodies exhausted by much labour; except silver cocks have poured out water unto us. And as yet I speake of the conduits of the common sort; what when I shall come to the bathes of freedmen? What profusion of statues is there; what profusion of columns holding nothing up, but placed for ornament, merely on account of the expense? What quantity of waters sliding downe upon staires with a great noise? To that delicacie are we come, that men will not tread but upon precious stones. In this bathe of Scipio, there be verie small chinckes, rather than windowes, cut out in the stone wall, that without hurt of the fense they should let the light in. But now they are called the bathes of moths, if any be not framed so as to receive, with most large windows, the sunne all the day long, except they be bathed and coloured (sunburnt) at the same time, except from the bathing vessel they look upon both land and sea. But in old time there were few bathes, neither were they adorned with any trimming up. For why should a thing of a farthing worth be adorned, and which is invented for use, and not for delight? Water was not poured in, neither did it alwaies, as from a warm fountain, runne fresh. But, O the good gods! how delightful it was to enter into those bathes, somewhat darke and covered with plaster of the common sort, which thou diddest know that Cato, the overseer of the buildings (ædile), or Fabius Maximus, or some one of the Cornelii, had tempered for you with his own hand! For the most noble ædiles performed this duty also of going into those places which received the people, and of exacting cleanliness, and an useful and healthie temperature; not this which is lately found out, like unto a setting on fire, so that it is meet indeed to be washed alive, as a slave convicted of some crime. It seemeth to me now to be of no difference, whether the bathe be scalding hot or be but warme. Of how great rusticity do some now condemn Scipio, because into his warm bathe he did not with large windowes (of transparent stone) let in the light? O miserable man! He knew not how to live; he was not washed in strained water, but oftentimes in turbid, and, when more vehemently it did rain, in almost muddy water.”

The more extensive and best-preserved baths now remaining in Rome are those of Titus, Antoninus, Caracalla, and Dioclesian. In the time of Ammianus Marcellinus there were sixteen public baths. These were surrounded by extensive gardens; and the main buildings were used, some for bathing and swimming; some for athletic exercises; and others for lectures, recitation, and conversation. They were splendidly fitted up, and furnished with considerable libraries.

The ruins of what are called the baths of Titus extend to a great area. The site is, to a considerable extent, occupied by gardens; in various parts of which are to be seen fragments, all once belonging to the same edifice. This building seems to have consisted of two stories. Of the upper one little remains; but of the lower there are more than thirty rooms accessible.

“We passed,” says the author of ‘Rome in the Nineteenth Century,’ describing a visit to the baths, “the mouths of nine long corridors, converging together like the radii of the segment of a circle, divided from each other by dead walls, covered at the top, and closed at the end. They must always have been dark. Having passed these corridors, we entered the portal of what is called the house of Mæcenas. It is known that the house and gardens of Mæcenas stood in this part of the Esquiline-hill, which, before it was given him by Augustus, was the charnel-ground of the common people. The conflagration in Nero’s reign did not reach to them; and it is believed, that a part of them was taken by Nero into his buildings, and by Titus into his baths. Antiquaries think they can trace a difference in the brick-work and style of building, between what they consider as the erection of Augustus’s and that of Titus’s age: and on these grounds, the parts they point out as vestiges of the house of Mæcenas, are the entrance, which leads into a range of square and roofless chambers (called, on supposition, the public baths), and the wall on the right in passing through them, which is partially formed of reticulated building in patches. From these real or imaginary classic remains, we entered a damp and dark corridor, the ceiling of which is still adorned with some of the most beautiful specimens, that now remain, of the paintings of antiquity. Their colouring is fast fading away, and their very outline, I should fear, must be obliterated at no very distant period; so extreme is the humidity of the place, and so incessantly does the water-drop fall. By the light of a few trembling tapers elevated on the top of a long bending cane, we saw, at least twenty feet above our heads, paintings in arabesque, executed with a grace, a freedom, a correctness of design, and a masterly command of pencil, that awakened our highest admiration, in spite of all the disadvantages under which they were viewed. * * * Leaving the painted corridor, which is adorned with these beautiful specimens of ancient art, we entered halls, which, like it, must always have been dark, but are still magnificent. The bright colouring of the crimson stucco, the alcove still adorned with gilding, and the ceilings beautifully painted with fantastic designs, still remain in many parts of them; but how chill, how damp, how desolate are now these gloomy halls of imperial luxury! No sound is to be heard through them, but that of the slow water-drop. In one of these splendid dungeons, we saw the remains of a bath, supposed to have been for the private use of the emperor. In another we were shown the crimson-painted alcove, where the Laocöon was found in the reign of Leo the Tenth. The French, who cleared out a great many of these chambers, found nothing but the Pluto and Cerberus, now in the Capitol, a work of very indifferent sculpture.”

Another critic (Knight) has estimated these paintings rather differently. “The paintings on the walls,” says he, “consist chiefly of what we now call arabesques; the figures are all very small, and arranged in patterns and borders. They consist of birds and beasts; among which some green parrots may be seen very distinctly; the ground is generally a rich dark red. At the end of one of these rooms is a large painting of some building, in which the perspective is said to be correctly given. This seems to disprove the charge which has been brought against the ancient painters, of not understanding the rules of perspective; none of these paintings can, however, be justly regarded as specimens of ancient art; they were intended solely as decorations to the apartments, and were doubtless the work of ordinary house-painters. To judge of the proficiency of the ancient painters from such remains as these would be as unfair, to use Dr. Burton’s remark, as to estimate the state of the arts in England from the sign-posts. Where the walls of the rooms are bare, the brick-work has a most singular appearance of freshness; the stucco also is very perfect in many parts; but the marble, of which there are evident traces on the walls of the floors, is gone.”

The ruins of the baths of Caracalla are so extensive, that they occupy a surface equal to one-sixteenth of a square mile. Next to the Coliseum, they present the greatest mass of ancient building in Rome. “At each end,” says Mr. Eustace, “were two temples; one dedicated to Apollo, and the other to Æsculapius, as the tutelary deities of the place, sacred to the improvement of the mind, and the care of the body: the two other temples were dedicated to the two protecting divinities of the Antonine family; Hercules and Bacchus. In the principal building were, in the first place, a grand circular vestibule, with four baths on each side, for cold, tepid, warm, and sea baths; in the centre was an immense square for exercise, when the weather was unfavourable for it in the open air: beyond it is a marble hall, where sixteen hundred marble seats were placed for the convenience of the bathers; at each end of this hall were libraries. This building terminated on both sides with a court, surrounded with porticoes, with an odeum for music, and in the middle a spacious basin for swimming. Round this edifice were walks shaded by rows of trees, particularly the plane; and in its front extended a gymnasium, for running, wrestling, &c., in fine weather. The whole was surrounded by a vast portico, opening into spacious halls, where the poets declaimed, and philosophers gave lectures to their auditors.”

The following account is from the author of Rome in the Nineteenth Century. “We passed through a long succession of immense halls, open to the sky, whose pavements of costly marbles, and rich mosaics, long since torn away, have been supplied by the soft green turf, that forms a carpet more in unison with their deserted state. The wind sighing through the branches of the aged trees, that have taken root in them, without rivalling their loftiness, was the only sound we heard; and the bird of prey, which burst through the thick ivy of the broken wall far above us, was the only living object we beheld. These immense halls formed part of the internal division of the Thermæ, which was entirely devoted to purposes of amusement. The first of the halls, or walled enclosures, that you enter, and several of the others, have been open in the centre. These were surrounded by covered porticos, supported by immense columns of granite, which have long since been carried away; chiefly by the popes, and princes of the Farnese family. In consequence of their loss the roofs fell with a concussion so tremendous, that it is said to have been felt even in Rome, like the distant shock of an earthquake. Fragments of this vaulted roof are still lying at the corners of the porticoes. The open part, in the centre, was probably designed for athletic sports. Many have been the doubts and disputes among the antiquaries, which of these halls have the best claims to be considered as the once wonderful Cella Solearis. All are roofless now; but the most eastern of them, that which is farthest to the left on entering, and which evidently had windows, seems generally to enjoy the reputation. Besides these enormous halls, there are, on the western side of these ruins, the remains of a large circular building, and a great number of small divisions, of all sizes and forms, in their purpose wholly incomprehensible; except that they belonged to that part of the Thermæ destined for purposes of amusement. Nothing can now be known; and though the immense extent of the baths may be traced, far from hence, by the wide-spreading ruins, it is equally difficult and unprofitable to explore them any further.”

In these baths were discovered (A. D. 1540), the celebrated Farnese Hercules; also the famous Flora (1540); and the Farnese Bull, in 1544. In those of Titus, the Belvidere Meleager; and the wonderful group, entitled the Laocöon; and not far from them the exquisite figure of Antinous.

Columns, or pillars,[162 - Knight.] were none of the meanest beauties of the city. They were at least converted to the same design as the arches; for the honourable memorial of some noble victory or exploit; after they had been a long time in use for the chief ornament of the sepulchres of great men.

There are three columns more celebrated than the rest. These are, the pillars of Trajan, of Antoninus, and of Phocas. The first of these was set up in the middle of Trajan’s Forum; being composed of twenty-four great stones of marble;[163 - Kennet.] but so curiously cemented, as to seem one entire natural stone. The height was one hundred and forty-four feet, according to Eutropius; though Marlian seems to make them but one hundred and twenty-eight: yet they are easily reconciled, if we suppose one of them to have begun the measure from the pillar itself, and the other from the basis. It is ascertained on the inside by one hundred and eighty-five winding stairs, and has forty little windows for the admission of light. The noblest ornament of this pillar was the statue of Trajan at the top, of a gigantic height; being no less than twenty-five feet high. He was represented in a coat of armour, proper to the general, holding in his left hand a sceptre; in his right a hollow globe of gold, in which his ashes were deposited after his death.

The subjects of the bas-reliefs, as we have already stated, are the victories of Trajan, in his Dacian campaign[164 - Parker.]. The whole number of figures sculptured is about 2,500; and the figure of Trajan himself is repeated more than fifty times. At the lower part of the column, the human figures are about two feet high; as they ascend, and thus become further removed from the eye, their size is increased, till, at the top of the column, they have nearly double the height that they have below. These bas-reliefs are executed with great delicacy and spirit; but they possess a higher value of a different kind. “The Roman dress and manners,” says Dr. Burton, “may receive a considerable light from them. We find the soldiers constantly carrying their swords on the right side. On a march they are generally bare-headed; some have no helmets at all; others wear them suspended to their right shoulder; each of them carries a stick over the left shoulder, which seems to have been for the purpose of carrying their provisions. We may observe also a wallet, a vessel for wine, and a machine for dressing meat.”

Their shields[165 - Parker.] were oblong, with different devices upon them; their standards of various kinds; pictures also were used; which were portraits of gods, or heroes. The soldiers wear upon their legs a kind of light pantaloons, reaching a little below the knee, and not buttoned. The Dacians have loose pantaloons, reaching to the ankle, and shoes; they also carry curved swords. The Sarmatian cavalry, allies of Decabalus (the Dacian king) wear plated armour, covering the men and horses. Their armour was a covering of thin circular plates, which were adapted to the movements of the body, and drawn over all their limbs; so that in whatever direction they wished to move, their clothing allowed them free play, by the close fitting of its joints. Some Roman soldiers have also plate-armour; but they are archers. The horses have saddles, or rather cloths, which are fastened by cords round the breast, and under the tail. The Dacian horses are without this covering; and the Germans, or some other allies, have neither saddles nor bridles to their horses. We might observe several other particulars, such as a bridge of boats over a river, and that the boats everywhere are without a rudder, but are guided by an oar, fastened with a thong on one side of the stern. The wall of the camp has battlements, and the heads of the Dacians are stuck to it. The Dacian women are represented burning the Roman prisoners. We may also see the testudo, formed by soldiers putting their shields together in a compact mass over their backs. Victory is represented as writing with a pen on a shield[166 - Ibid.].

The column of Antoninus was raised in imitation of this, which it exceeded in one respect; that it was one hundred and seventy-six feet high. The work was much inferior to that of Trajan’s, as being undertaken in the declining age of the empire. The ascent on the inside was by one hundred and six stairs, and the windows in the sides fifty-six. The sculpture and the other monuments were of the same nature as those of the first; and on the top stood a colossus of the emperor, naked, as appears from some of his coins. Both these columns are still standing; the former most entire. But Pope Sixtus V., instead of the statues of the emperors, set up St. Peter’s, on the column of Trajan, and St. Paul’s, on that of Antoninus.

The historical columns[167 - Forsyth.] are true to no order of architecture. Trajan’s has a Tuscan base and capital, and a pedestal with Corinthian mouldings. That of M. Aurelius repeats the same mixture; but its pedestal is restored: and though higher, both in proportion and in place, than Trajan’s, does not associate so well with its shaft. These are the only regular pedestals that are observed in Roman antiquity.

Next to these may be classed the column of Phocas[168 - Knight.]. So recently as twenty-four years ago, the whole of its base, and part of the shaft, were buried in the soil; and up to that time, the ingenuity of the learned was severely tried, in the attempt to find for it a name. One thought it a fragment of the Græcostasis; another adjudged it to a temple of Jupiter Custos; and a third urged the claim of Caligula’s bridge. At length, it was thought that, possibly, the column might originally have been isolated, and thus in itself a complete monument; that, consequently, if the earth at its foot were removed, a pedestal might be uncovered with some inscriptions thereon. The Duchess of Devonshire had recourse to this simple expedient, in the year 1813; the base of the column was laid open, and upon it an inscription was found, recording the fact, that a gilt statue was placed on the top of it in the year 608, in honour of the emperor Phocas, by Smaragdus, exarch of Italy.

The material of the column is Greek marble, the capital is Corinthian, and the shaft is fluted. The height is forty-six feet, but as it stands upon a pyramid of eleven steps, its elevation is increased about eleven feet.

The seventh Basilica stands about two miles from the walls; the church itself is a fine building, restored in 1611; but the portico, of antique marble columns, is of the time of Constantine. Under the church are the openings to very extensive catacombs, originally formed no doubt by the ancient Romans, to procure pozzolana for their buildings; and enlarged by the early Christians, who used them as places of refuge during their persecutions, and as cemeteries, one hundred and seventy thousand of them having, it is said, been interred there. The passages are from two to three feet in width, and extend several miles in different directions.

A hall of immense size[169 - Eustace.] was discovered about the beginning of the last century, concealed under the ruins of its own massive roof. The pillars of verde antico that supported its vaults, the statues that ornamented its niches, and the rich marbles that formed its pavements, were found buried in rubbish, and were immediately carried away by the Farnesian family, the proprietors of the soil, to adorn their palaces and furnish their galleries. This hall is now cleared of its encumbrances, and presents to the eye a vast length of naked wall, and an area covered with weeds. “As we stood contemplating its extent and proportion,” continues Mr. Eustace, “a fox started from an aperture, once a window, at one end, and crossing the open space, scrambled up the ruins at the other, and disappeared in the rubbish. This scene of desolation reminded me of Ossian’s beautiful description: – ‘The thistle shook there its lonely head; the moss whistled to the gale; the fox looked out from the windows; the rank grass waved round his head.’”

There are twelve obelisks at Rome still standing erect, the oldest of which is that brought by Augustus, which is eighty feet in height, decorating the fine square called Piazza del Popolo.

Roman conquerors had successively enriched the capital of the world with the monuments of subdued nations, and with the spirit of art from Sicily, Greece, and Egypt. Among these, the emperor Augustus ordered two Egyptian obelisks to be carried to Rome. To this end, an immense vessel of a peculiar structure was built, and when, after a tedious and difficult voyage, it reached the Tiber with its freight, one of the columns was placed in the Grand Circus, and the other in the Campus Martius. Caligula adorned Rome with a third Egyptian obelisk, obtained in the like manner.

A fourth was added afterwards. The emperor Constantine, equally ambitious of these costly foreign ornaments, resolved to decorate his newly-founded capital of Constantinople with the largest of all the obelisks that stood on the ruins of Thebes. He succeeded in having it conveyed as far as Alexandria, but, dying at the time, its destination was changed, and an enormous raft, managed by three hundred rowers, transported the granite obelisk from Alexandria to Rome.

The Circi were places set apart for the celebration of several sorts of games. They were generally oblong, or almost in the shape of a bow, having a wall quite round, with ranges of seats for the convenience of the spectators. At the entrance of the circus stood the Carceres, or lists, whence they started, and just by them one of the Metæ, or marks, the other standing at the further end to conclude the race. “There were several of these Circi at Rome, as those of Flaminius, Nero, Caracalla, and Severus; but the most remarkable, as the very name imports, was Circus Maximus, first built by Tarquinius Priscus. The length of it was four furlongs, the breadth the like number of acres, with a trench of ten feet deep, and as many broad, to receive the water; and seats enough for one hundred and fifty thousand men. It was beautified and adorned by succeeding princes, particularly by Julius Cæsar, Augustus, Caligula, Domitian, Trajan, and Heliogabalus; and enlarged to such a prodigious extent as to be able to contain, in their proper seats, two hundred and sixty thousand spectators. In the time of Constantine it would hold three hundred and eighty-five thousand persons to view the combats, chariot races, &c.[170 - Kennet.]” The Circus Maximus stands on the spot where the games were celebrated when the Romans seized the Sabine women; and it was here also that the interesting scene took place between Androcles and the lion.