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 Forum152 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 Pollux153, 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 forum154. 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!
This scene155, though now so desolate and degraded, was once the great centre of all the business, power, and splendour of Rome. Here, as long as the Romans were a free people, all the affairs of the state were debated in the most public manner; and from the rostra, elevated in the midst of the square, and with their eyes fixed on the capitol, which immediately faced them, and which was suited to fill their minds with patriotism, whilst the Tarpeian rock reminded them of the fate reserved for treason and corruption, the noblest of orators “wielded at will” the fierce democracy, or filled the souls of gathered thousands with one object, one wish, one passion – the freedom and glory of the Roman race; – a freedom which would have been more enduring had the glory been less.
“Yes; in yon field below,
A thousand years of silenced factions sleep —
The Forum, where the immortal accents glow,
And still the eloquent air breathes, burns, of Cicero!
“The field of freedom, faction, fame, and blood.
Here a proud people’s passions were exhaled,
From the first hour of empire in the bud,
To that when further worlds to conquer fail’d;
But long before had Freedom’s face been veil’d,
And Anarchy assumed her attributes;
Till every lawless soldier who assail’d
Trod on the trembling senate’s slavish mutes,
Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes.”
Here the orators of the people brought their accusations against public men, or pronounced eulogies on such as had died for their country; and here, also, were exhibited the bleeding heads or lifeless bodies of traitors, or, as it but too often happened, of men unjustly deemed so by an overbearing faction. The Forum was the court of justice, and in homely days of the early republic, civil and criminal causes were tried and decided by simple laws in the open air, or in very plain sheds built in this square. The humble schools for the republican children (for even these old Romans had places of public instruction for the poor people) stood round the Forum, which seems to have been intermixed with shops, shambles, stalls, lowly temples, and altars.