i^^" " UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES (>i^ /i-^Vt'"^/^^ WALKS IN EOME VOL. I. B, Showin]^ tLc more important rtrcets and buildinj^s . WALKS IN ROME AUGUSTUS J. a HARE AUTHOR OF 'WALKS IN LONDON,' 'CITIES OF NORTHERN AND CENTRAL ITALY, 'DAYS NEAR ROME,' ETC. FIFTEENTH EDITION (REVISED) IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I. NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN 1902 1 4 7 R 4 ^ TO HIS DEAR MOTHER THE CONSTANT COMPANION OP MANY ROMAN WINTERS THESE PAGES ARE DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME INTEODUCTORY. PAGE The Arrival in Rome 1 CHAPTER I. ' ' Dull-Useful Information 17 CHAPTER II. t-^. The Corso and its Neighbourhood 24 CHAPTER III. The Capitoline . . 72 CHAPTER IV. The Forums and the Coliseum 108 CHAPTER V. The Velabrum and the Ghetto 161 CHAPTER VI. The Palatine 192 viii CONTENTS OF THE FIEST VOLUME CHAPTER VII. PAGE The Coelian 222 CHAPTER VIII. The Aventine 243 CHAPTER IX. The Via Appia 260 CHAPTER X. The Quirinal and Viminai 302 INDEX 331 WALKS IN EOME INTRODUCTORY THE ARRIVAL IN ROME 'AGAIN this date of Rome; the most solemn and interesting ■^^ that my hand can ever write, and even now more interesting than when I saw it last,' wrote Dr. Arnold to his wife in 1840, — and how many thousands before and since have experienced the same feeling, who have looked forward to a visit to Rome as one of the great events of their lives, as the realisation of the dreams and longings of many years ! An arrival in Rome is very different to that in any other town in Europe. It is coming to a place new and yet most familiar, strange and yet so well known. When travellers arrive at Verona, for instance, or at Aries, they generally go to the amphitheatres with a curiosity to know what they are like ; but when they arrive at Rome and go to the Coliseum, it is to visit an object whose appear- ance has been familiar to them from childhood, and, long ere it is reached, from the heights of the distant Capitol they can recog- nise the well-known form ; — and as regards S. Peter's, who is not familiar with the aspect of the dome, of the wide-spreading piazza, and the foaming fountains, for long years before they come to gaze upon the reality ? ' My presentiment of the emotions with which I should behold the Roman ruins has proved quite correct,' wrote Niebuhr. 'Nothing about them is new to me ; as a child I lay so often, for hours to- gether, before their pictures, that their images were, even at that early age, as distinctly impressed upon my mind as if I had actually seen them.' ' Je ne'saurais revoir,' says Montaigne, 'si souvent le tombeau de cette ville si grande et si puissante, que je ne I'admire et revere. J'ai eu connaissance des affaires de Rome long temps avant que j'aie eu connaissance de ma maison. Je savais le Capitole et son plan avant que je susse le Louvre, et le Tibre avant la Seine.' What Madame Swetchine says of life, that you find in it exactly what you put into it, is also true of Rome, and those who come to VOL. I. A 2 Walks in Rome it with least mental preparatiou arc those least fitted to enjoy it. That preparation, however, is not so easy as it used to be. In the old days, the happy old days of vetturino travelling:, there were many quiet hours, when the country was not too beautiful and the towns not too interesting, in whicli Gibbon and Merivale and Mil- man were tlie pleasantest of travelling companions, and when books on Italian art and poetry served to illustrate and illuminate the graver studies which were gradually making Italy, not only a beautiful panorama, but a country filled with forms which were daily growing into more familiar acquaintance. Perugia and Spoieto, Terni and Civita Castellana, led fitly then up to the greater interests of Rome, as courtiers to a king. But now there are no such opportunities of preparation, and, in spite of old landmarks, travellers who pay a hurried visit to Rome are bewildered by the vast mass of interest before them, by the endless labyrinth of minor objects which they desire, ir, still oftener, feel it a duty to visit. The natives are unable to assist them, for it is still as true as in the days of Petrarch, that ' nowhere is Rome less known than in Rome itself.' * Their Muiray, their Baedeker, and their Bradshaw indicate appalling lists of churches, temples, and villas which ought to be seen, but do not distribute them in a manner which will render their inspection more easy. The promised pleasure seems rapidly to change into an endless vista of labour to be fulfilled and of fatigue to be gone through ; henceforward the hours spent at Rome are rather hours of endurance than of pleasure : his cicerone drags the traveller in one direction ; his antiquarian friend, his artistic acquaintance, would fain drag him in others ; he is confused by accumulated misty glimmerings from historical facts once learnt at school, but long .since forgotten — of artistic information, which he feels that he ought to have gleaned from years of social intercourse, but which, from want of use, has never made any depth of impres- sion — by shadowy ideas as to the story of this king and that emperor, of this pope and that saint, which, from insufficient time, and the absence of books of reference, he has no opportunity of clearing up. It is therefore in the hope of aiding some of these bewildered ones, and of rendering their walks in Rome more easy and more interesting, that the following chapters are written. They aim at nothing original, and are only a gathering up of the information of others, and a gleaning from what has been already given to the world in a far better and fuller, but less portable form ; while, in their plan, they attempt to guide the traveller in his daily wander- ings through the city and its suburbs. There is one point which cannot be sufficiently impressed upon those who wish to take away more than a mere surface impression of Rome ; it is, never to see too much ; never try to ' do ' Rome. Nothing can be more depressing to those who really value Rome than to meet two Englishmen hunting in couples through the Vatican galleries, one looking for the number of the statue in the 1 Letters to Cardinal Giovanni Colonna. , Introductory 3 guide-book, the other finding it ; than to hear Americans describe the Forum as the dustiest heap of old ruins tliey had ever looked upon ; or say, when asked their opinion of the Venus de' Medici, that they ' guess they were not particular gone on stone gals ; ' than to encounter a husband who boasts of having seen everything in Rome in three days, while the wife laments that, in recollection, she cannot distinguish the Vatican from the Capitol, or S. Peter's from S. Paul's. Better far to leave half the ruins and nine-tenths of the churches unseen and to see well the rest ; to see them not once, but again and often agaip ; to watch them, to learn them, to live with them, to love them, till they have become a part of life and life's recollections. And it is the same in the galleries : for what can be carried away by those who wander over the whole Vatican at once but a hopeless chaos of marble limbs? — at best a nightmare in which Venus and Mercury, Jupiter and Juno, play the principal parts. But, if the traveller will benefit by the Vatican, he must make friends with a few of the statues, and pay them visits, and grow constantly into greater intimacy ; then the purity of their outlines and the majestic serenity of their god-like grace will have jjower over him, raising his spirit to a perception of beauty of which he had no idea before, and enabling him to discern the traces of genius in humbler works of those who may be struggling and striving after the best, but who, while they have found the right path which leads to the great end, are still very far ofi". In any case, however, it must not be supposed that one short residence at Rome will be sufficient to make a foreigner acquainted with all its varied treasures ; or even, in most cases, that its attrac- tions will become apparent to the passing stranger. The squalid ap- pearance of its modern streets, and still more the hideous mutilations and additions of the Sardinian occupation, will go far to neutralise the effect of its ancient buildings and the grandeur of its historic recollections. It is only by returning again and again, by allowing the feeling of Rome to gain upon you, when you have constantly revisited the same view, the same ruin, the same picture, under varying circumstances, that Rome engraves itself upon your heart, and changes from a disagreeable, unwholesome acquaintance, into a dear and intimate friend seldom long absent from your thoughts. ' Whoever,' said Chateaubriand, ' has nothing else left in life, should come to live in Rome ; there he will find for society a land which will nourish his reflections, walks which will always tell him some- thing new. The stone which crumbles under his feet will speak to him, and even the dust which the wind raises under his footsteps will seem to bear with it something of human grandeur.' 'When we have once known Rome,' wrote Hawthorne, 'and left her where she lies, like a long-decaying corpse, retaining a trace of the noble shape it was, but with accumulated dust and a fungous growth overspreading all its more admirable features — left her in utter weariness, no doubt, of her narrow, crooked, intricate streets, so uncomfortably paved with little squares of lava that to tread over them is a penitential pilgrimage ; so indescribably ugly, moreover, 4 Walks in Borne so cold, so alley-like, into which the sun never falls, and where a chill wind forces its deadly breath into our lungs — left her, tired of the sight of tliose immense seven-storied, yellow-washed hovels, or call them palaces, where all that is dreary in domestic life seems magnified and multiplied, and weary of climbing those staircases which ascend from a ground-floor of cook-shops, cobblers'-stalls, stables, and regiments of cavalry, to a middle region of princes, cardinals, and ambassadors, and an uppertier of artists, just beneath the unattainable sky — left her, worn out with shivering at the cheer- less and smoky fireside by day, and feasting with our own substance the ravenous population of a Roman bed at night — left her, sick at heart of Italian trickery, which has uprooted whatever faith in man's integrity had endured till now, and sick at stomach of sour bread, sour wine, rancid butter, and bad cookery, needlessly bestowed on evil meats— left her, disgusted with the pretence of holiness and the reality of nastiness, each eqially omnipresent — left her, half lifeless from the languid atmosphere, the vital principle of which has been used up long ago or corrupted by myriads of slaughters — left her, crushed down in spirit by the desolation of her ruin and the hope- lessness of her future — left her, in short, hating her with all our might, and adding our individual curse to the infinite anathema which her old crimes have unmistakably brought down ; — when we have left Rome in such a mood as this, we are astonished by the discovery, by-and-by, that our heartstrings have mysteriously attached themselves to the Eternal City, and are drawing us thither- ward again, as if it were more familiar, more intimately our home, than even the spot where we were born.' This is the attractive and sympathetic power of Rome which Byron so fully appreciated — ' Oh Rome ! my country ! city of the soul ! Tlie orphans of the lieart must turn to thee, T.one mother of dead empires ! and controul In tlieir sliiit breasts their petty misery. Wliat are our woes and sufferance ? Come and see The cypress, hear tlie owl, and plod your way o'er steps of broken thrones and temples. Ye Whose agf>nies are evils of a day — A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. The Niobe of nations ! there she stands Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe An empty urn within her withered hands. Whose sacred dust was scattered long ago ; The .Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; The very sepulchres lie tenantless Of their heroic dwellers : dost thou flow, Old Tiber 1 through a marble wilderness ? Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress ! ' The impressiveness of an arrival at the Eternal City was formerly enhanced by the solemn singularity of the country through which it was slowly approached. ' Those who arrive at Rome now by the railway,' says Mrs. Craven in her 'Anne Severin,' 'and rush like a whirlwind into a station, cannot imagine the effect which the words Introductory 5 " Ecco Roma" formerly produced when, on arriving at the point in the road from which the Eternal City could be descried for the first time, the postillion stopped his horses, and, pointing it out to the traveller in the distance, pronounced them with that Roman accent which is grave and sonorous as the name of Rome itself.' 'How pleasing,' says Cardinal Wiseman, 'was the usual indica- tion to early travellers, by voice and outstretched whip, embodied in the well-known exclamation of every vetturino, "Ecco Roma." To one "lasso maris et viarum," like Horace, these words brought the first promise of approaching rest. A few more miles of weary hills, every one of which, from its summit, gave a more swelling and majestic outline to what so far constituted "Roma," that is, the great cupola, not of the church, but of the city, its only discernible part, cutting, like a huge peak, into the clear wintry sky, and the long journey was ended, and ended by the full realisa- tion of well-cherished hopes.' Most travellers, perhaps, in the old days, came by sea from Marseilles and arrived from Civita Vecchia, by the dreary road which leads through Palo, and near the base of the hills upon which stands Cervetri, the ancient Caere, from the junction of whose name and customs the word ' ceremony ' has arisen, — so especially useful in the great neighbouring city. 'This road from Civita Vecchia,' writes Miss Edwards, ' lies among shapeless hillocks, shaggy with bush and briar. Far away on one side gleams a line of soft blue sea — on the other lie mountains as blue, but not more distant. Not a sound stirs the stagnant air. Not a tree, not a housetop, breaks the wide monotony. The dust lies beneath, the wheels like a carpet, and follows like a cloud. The grass is yellow, the weeds are parched; and where there have been wayside pools, the ground is cracked and dry. Now we pass a crumbling fragment of some- thing that may have been a tomb or temple centuries ago. Now we come upon a little wide-eyed peasant boy keeping goats among the ruins, like Giotto of old. Presently a bufi'alo lifts his black mane above the neighbouring hillock, and rushes away before we can do more than point to the spot on which we saw it. Thus the day attains its noon, and the sun hangs overhead like a brazen shield, brilliant but cold. Thus, too, we reach the brow of a long and steep ascent, where our driver pulls up to rest his weary beasts. "The sea has now faded almost out of sight; the mountains look larger and nearer, with streaks of snow upon their summits, the Campagna reaches on and on and shows no sign of limit or of verdure ; while, in the midst of the clear air, half way, so it would seem, between you and the purple Sabine range, rises one solemn solitary dome. Can it be the dome of S. Peter's ? ' The great feature of the Civita Vecchia route was that, after all the utter desolation and dreariness of many miles of the least interesting part of the Campagna, the traveller was almost stunned by the transition, when, on suddenly passing the Porta Cavalleg- gieri, he found himself in the piazza of S. Peter's, with its wide- spreading colonnades and high-springing fountains ; indeed, the 6 Walks in Rome first building he saw was S. Peter's, the first house that of the Pope, the pahice of the Vatican. But the more gradual approach by land from Vitcrbo and Tuscany possessed equal, if not superior, interest. ' When we turned the summit above Viterbo,' wrote Dr. Arnold, 'and opened on the view on the other side, it might be called the first approach to Rome. At the distance of more than forty miles, it was, of course, impossible to see the town, and, besides, the distance was hazy ; but we were looking on the scene of the Roman history ; we were standing on the outward edge of the frame of the great "picture ; and though the features of it were not to be traced distinctly, yet we had the consciousness that they were before us. Here, too, we first saw the Mediterranean, the Alban hills, I think, in the remote distance, and just beneath us, on the left, Soracte, an outlier of the Apennines, which has got to the right bank of the Tiber, and stands out by itself most magnificently. Close under us, in front, was the Ciminian 'ake, the crater of an extinct volcano, surrounded, as they all are, with their basin of wooded hills, and lying like a beautiful mirror stretched out before us. Then there was the grand beauty of Italian scenery, the depth of the valleys, the endless variety of the mountain outline, and the towns perched upon the mountain summits, and this now seen under a mottled sky, which threw an ever-varying light and shadow over the valley beneath, and all the freshness of the young spring. We descended along one of the rims of this lake to Ronciglione, and from thence, still descending on the whole, to Monterosi. Here the famous Carapagna begins, and it certainly is one of the most striking tracts of country I ever beheld. It is by no means a perfect flat, except between Rome and the sea ; but rather like the Bagshot Heath country, ridges of hills, with intermediate valleys, and the road often running between high, steep banks, and sometimes crossing sluggish streams sunk in a deep bed. All these banks are overgrown with broom, now in full flower ; and the same plant was luxuriant everywhere. There seemed no apparent reason why the country should be so desolate ; the grass was growing richly everywhere. There was no marsh anywhere visible, but all looked as fresh and healthy as any of our chalk downs in England. But it is a wide wilderness ; no villages, scarcely any houses, and here and there a lonely ruin of a single square tower, which I suppose used to serve as strongholds for men and cattle in the plundering warfare in the Middle Ages. It was after crowning the top of one of these lines of hills, a little on the Roman side of Baccano, at five ininutes after six, according to my watch, that we had the first view of Rome itself. I expected to see S. Peter's rising above the line of the horizon, as York Minster does ; but instead of that, it was within the horizon, and so was much less conspicuous, and from the nature of the ground, it looked mean and stumpy. Nothing else marked the site of the city, but the trees of the gardens, and a number of white villas specking the opposite bank of the Tiber for some little distance above the town, and then suddenly ceasing. But the whole scene that burst upon our view, when taken in all its parts, was most interesting. Introductory 7 Full in front rose the Alban hills, the white villas on their sides distinctly visible, even at that distance, which was more than thirty miles. On the left were the Apennines, and Tivoli was distinctly to be seen on the summit of its mountain, on one of the lowest and nearest parts of the chain. On the rioht, and all before us, lay the Campagna, whose perfectly level outline was succeeded by that of the sea, which was scarcely more so. It began now to get dark, and as there i.s hardly any twilight, it was dark soon after we left La Storta, the last post. before you enter Rome. The air blew fresh and coo], and we had a pleasant drive over the remaining part of the Campagna, till we descended into the valley of the Tiber, and crossed it by the Milvian bridge. About two miles farther on we reached the walls of Rome, and entered it by the Porta del Popolo.' Niebuhr, coming the same way, says : ' It was with solemn feelings that this morning, from the barren heights of the moory Campagna, I first caught sight of the cupola of S. Peter's, and then of the city from the bridge, where all the majesty of her buildings and her history seem to lie spread out before the eye of the stranger ; and afterwards entered by the Porta del Popolo.' Madame de Stael gives us the impression which the same subject would produce on a different type of character : — 'Le Corate d'Erfeuil faisait de comiques lamentations sur les environs de Rome. "Quoi," disait-il, "point de maison de cam- pagne, point de voiture, rien qui annonce le voisinage d'une grande ville ! Ah ! bon Dieu, quelle tristesse ! " En approchant de Rome, les postilions s'ecrierent avec transport : " Voyez, voyez, c'est la coupole de Saint-Pierre ! " Les Napolitains montrent aussi le Vesuve ; et la mer fait de meme I'orgueil des habitans des cotes. " On croirait voir le dome des Invalides," s'ecria le Comte d'Erfeuil.' It was by this approach that most of its distinguished pilgrims have entered the capital of the Catholic world : monks, who came hither to obtain the foundation of their Orders ; saints, who thirsted to worship at the shrines of their predecessors, or who came to receive the crown of martyrdom ; priests and bishops from distant lands — many coming in turn to receive here the highest dignity which Christendom could offer ; kings and emperors, to ask coronation at the hands of the reigning pontiff ; and, among all these, came by this road, in the full fervour of Catholic enthusiasm, Martin Luther, the future enemy of Rome, then its devoted adherent. ' When Luther came to Rome,' says Ampere, in his ' Portraits de Rome h divers ages,' 'the future reformer was a young monk, obscure and fervent ; he had no presentiment, when he set foot in the great Babylon, that ten years later he would burn the bull of the Pope in the public square of Wittenberg. His heart experienced nothing but pious emotions ; he addressed to Rome in salutation the ancient hymn of the pilgrims ; he cried, " I salute thee, O holy Rome, Rome venerable through the blood and the tombs of the martyrs." But after having prostrated on the threshold, he raised himself, he entered into the temple, he did not find the God he looked for ; the 8 Walks in Rome city of the saints and martyrs was a city of murderers and prostitutes. The arts which marked this corruption were powerless over the .stolid senses, and scandalised the austere spirit of the German monk ; he scarcely gave a passing glance at the ruins of pagan Hume, and, inwardly horrified by all that he saw, he quitted Home in a frame of mind very different from that which he brought with liim ; he knelt then with the devotion of the pilgrims, now he returned in a disjjosition like that of the frondcurs of the Middle Ages, but more serious than theirs. This Rome of which he had been the dupe, and concerning which he was disabused, should hear of him again ; the day would come when, amid the merry toasts at his table, he would cry three times, " 1 would not have missed going to Home for a thousand florins, for I should always have been uneasy lest I should have been rendering injustice to the Pope.'" Till late years life in Rome seemed to be free from many of the petty troubles which beset it in other places ; and there are still few foreign towns which offer so many comforts and advantages to its English visitors. The hotels, indeed, are expensive, and the rent of apartments is high ; but when the latter is once paid, living is rather cheap than otherwise, especially for those who do not object to dine from a trattoria and to drive in hackney-carriages. Prices, liowever, are enormously raised since the end of the last century, when Alfieri only paid ten scudi a month for the whole Strozzi palace, furnished, with the stables, and the use of the villa. The climate of Rome is very variable. If the scirocco blows, it is mild and very relaxing ; but the winters are more apt to be subject to the severe cold of the tramontana, which requires even greater precaution and care than that of an English winter. Nothing can be more mistaken than the im[)ression that those who go to Italy are sure to find there a mild and congenial temperature. The climate of Rome has been subject to severity, even from the earliest times of its history. Dionysius speaks of one year in the time of the Republic when the snow at Rome lay seven feet deep, and many men and cattle died of the cold.' Another year the snow lay for forty days, trees perished, and cattle died of hunger.^ Present times are a great improvement on these : snow seldom lies upon the ground for many hours together, and the beautiful fountains of the city are only hung with icicles long enough to allow the photo- graphers to represent them thus ; but still the climate is not to be trifled with, and violent transitions from the hot sunshine to the cool shade of the street often prove fatal. ' No one but dogs and Englishmen,' say the Romans, 'ever walk in the sun.' Even under Tiberius, three temples of Fever were in existence, but the malaria, which is so much dreaded by the natives, generally lies dormant during the winter months, and seldom affects strangers unle.ss they live in some of the new quarters of the city near recent excavations, or are inordinately imprudent in sitting out in the sunset. With the heats of the late summer this in.sidious 1 Dionysius, xii. 8. 2 Livy, v. 13. Introductory 9 ague-fever is apt to follow on the slightest exertion, and jiar- ticularly to overwhelm those who are employed in field labour. From June to November the Villa Borghese and the Villa Doria are uninhabitable, and the more deserted hills — the ("oelian, the Aventine, and part of the Esquiline — are a constant prey to fever. The malaria, however, flies before a crowd of human life, and the Ghetto, teeming with inhabitants, was always perfectly free from it. The theory now generally accepted by the medical profession, and due to the researches of Professor Klebs and Pro- fessor Tommaso Crudeli, establishes that malaria is due to a specific microscopic plant which exists in the soil of certain districts, and floats in the atmosphere above it. This plant, when inhaled and absorbed, finds in the human body conditions favourable for its growth and reproduction, and it prospers and multiplies at the expense of the organism in which it dwells. In the Campagna, rendered unhealthy by the cessation of volcanic action — with the exception of Porto d'Anzio, which has always been healthy — no town or village is safe after the month of August, and to this cau.se the utter desolation of so many formerly populous sites (especially those of Veil and Galera) may be attributed : — 'Roma, vorax hominuni, donat ardua colla viroruin ; Roma, ferax febrium, necis est uberrima fugum : Romanae febres stabili sunt jure fideles.' Thus wrote Peter Damian in the tenth century, and those who refuse to be on their guard will find it so still. The greatest risk at Kome is incurred by those who, coming out of the hot sunshine, spend long hours in the Vatican and the other galleries, especially those of the Lateran palace (so fatal to the Popes of the Middle Ages), which are filled with a deadly chill during the winter months. As March comes on this chill wears away, and in April and May the temperature of the galleries (except those of the Lateran) is delightful, and it is impossible to find a more agreeable retreat. It is in the hope of inducing strangers to spend more time in the study of these wonderful museums, and of giving additional interest to the hours which are passed there, that so much is said about their contents in these volumes. As far as possible it has been desired to evade any mere catalogue of their collections — so that no mention has been made of objects which possess inferior artistic or historical interest ; while by introducing anecdotes connected with those to which attention is drawn, or by quoting the opinion of some good authority concerning them, an endeavour has been made to fix them in the recollection. The immense extent of Rome, and the wide distances to be traversed between its different ruins and churches, is in itself a suflScient reason for devoting more time to it than to the other cities of Italy. Surprise will doubtless be felt that so few pagan ruins remain, considering the enormous number which are known to have existed even down to a comparatively late period. A monumental record of a.d. 540, published by Cardinal Mai, mentions 324 streets, 10 Walks in Rome 2 Capitols— the Tarpeian and that on the Quirinal— 80 gilt statues of the gods (only the Hercules remains), 66 ivory statues of the gods, 46, COS houses, 17,0117 palaces, 13,052 fountains, 3785 statues of emperors and generals in bronze, 22 great equestrian statues of bronze (onlv Marcus Aureliiis remains), 2 colossi (Marcus Aurelius and Trajan), y02(i baths, 31 theatres, and H amphitheatres ! It was Nicliolas V. who lirst tried to make Rome the city of the Popes, not of the Emperors, because ' only the learned could understand the grounds of the papal authority," the unlearned needed the testimony of their eves, the sight of the magnificent memorials which em- bodied the history of papal greatness.' That so many classical remains still exist as we now see is due in part to the interference of KaiYaelle, who implored Julius II. to 'protect the few relics left to ti'stify to the power and greatness of that divine love of antiquity whose memory was inspiration to all who were capable of higher t hings.' But the preservation of so many ancient buildings is above all due to the fact, that in the early years of Christianity every pagan building capable of containing a congregation was converted into a church or chapel. ' Rome, acionling to an old saying, contains as many churches as there are ilays in ttie year. This statement is too modest ; the " fireat catalogue " published by Cardinal Mai mentions over a thousand places of worship, while nine hun- dred and eighteen are registered in Professor Armellini's "Chiese di Roma." A great many have disaitpeared since the first institution, and are known only from ruins, or inscriptions and chronicles. Others have been disfigured by "restorations." Without denying the fact that tlie sacred buildings of Rome excel in (piantity rather than (piality, theie is no doubt that as a whole they form the best artistic and historic collection in the world. Every age, from the apostidic to the present, every school, every style has its representatives in the chiu-ches of Rome. Let students, archaiologists, and architects provide them- selves with a chronological talile of its sacred buildings, and select the best specimens for every iiuartcr of a century, begiiniing with the oratory of Aquila and Priscilla, mentioned in the Kpistles, and ending with the latest contemporary i-reations, they cannot find a better subject for their education in art and history.' Lanciani. Thirty years of Sardinian rule— 1870-1900 — have done more for the destruction of Rome than all the invasions of the Goths and Vandals. If the Government, the Municipality, and, it must be con- fessed, the Roman aristocracy, had been united together since 1870, with the Hole object of annihilating the beauty and interest of Rome, t hey could not have done it more effectually. The old charm is gone for ever, the whole aspect of the city is changed, and the picturesque- ness of former days must now be sought in such obscure corners as have escaped the hands of the spoilor. The glorious gardens of the Villa Negroni, Villa Corsini, and Villa Ludovisi have been anni- hilated : many precious street memorials of mediaeval history have been swept away ; the sacred Promenade of the Sun has been desecrated ; ancient convents have been levelled with the ground or turned into barracks ; historic churches have been yellow-washed or modernised ; every tree of imj)ortance in the city — including the noble ilexes of Christina of Sweden — has been cut down ; the pagan ruins have been denuded of all that gave them picturesqueness or Introductory 1 1 beauty ; and several of the finest fountains have been pulled down or bereaved of Jialf their waters. The Palace of the Cffisars is stripped of all the flowers and shrubs which formerly adorned it. The glorious view from the Pincio has been destroyed by the hideous barrack-like houses built between the Tiber and S. Peter's. The Tiber itself has been diverted from its exquisitely picturesque course, to the destruction, amongst many other interesting memorials, of the Island, of most of the bridges, of the lovely Farnesina gardens, and to the fatal injury of the inestimable frescoes in the palace. The hideous new bridges block out the best views on the river-banks. The Baths of Caracalla, which, till 1870, were one of the most beautiful spots in the world, are now scarcely more attractive than the ruins of a London warehouse. Many of the most interesting temples have been dwarfed by the vulgarest and tallest of modern buildings. Even the Coliseum has been rendered a centre for fever by aimless excavations, and has been deprived not only of its shrines, but of its marvellous flora, though in dragging out the roots of its shrubs more of the building was destroyed than would have fallen naturally in five centuries. ' These are the acts of a stupid and l)rutal ignorance, or of a venal and shameful speculation ; without excuse or palliation, and inflicting on the city thus sacri- ficed an injury and an outrage as gross as it is pitiful. The plea of utility or necessity caiuiot hold for a moment here ; these gasworivs, these factories, these new streets, could, with equal ease and usefulness, have been erected on waste grounds, where there was little or nothing of natural or architectural beauty to be destroyed. Instead of this, a perversity which amounts to malignity, places them invariably on sites where either some architectural treasure-house of art is swept away to give room for them, or else some ex(iuisite view of water or land is ruined by their deformity and stench.' — Ouida. 'The works have gone on without harmony, order, or governing principles. Palaces and small villas have been permitted to be built within the limits of the works of the Tilier, which it has been found necessary to expropriate ; walls have been erected which have had to be demolished to make room for the piers of the new bridges ; the Tiber is shut In by adyke without any sluices having been made ; ... in a word, tens of millions have been squandered by the municipality and the State without any plain or co-ordinate idea.' — Popolo Romano. 'A will, with a genius, might have grasped the idea embodied, or hidden, in medireval Rome.iand unfolded it, beautified and dignified, over the vacant spaces of the Seven Hills. Italy was ready, within generous limits, to be paymaster. Italians longed for Rome as Rome was. The Roman Town Council had be- stowed upon them for their royal capital a paltry and spurious copy of Paris boulevards. Nothing so pretentious, commonplace, unspiritual and dull has ever been produced as neo-regal Rome. In addition to a display of poverty of artistic ideas almost amounting to genius, the Roman municipality is, moreover, acknowledged to have set at defiance all the rules of recent sanitary science in a manner incomparably its own.' — The Times (leading article), January 10, 1888. ' The blame must be cast especially on the members of the Roman aristocracy. . . . We have seen three of them sell the very gardens which surrounded their city mansions, allowing these mansions to be contaminated by the contact of ignoble tenement houses. We have seen every single one of the patrician villas — the Patrizi, the Sciarra, the Massimo, the Lucernari, the Mirafiori, the Wolkonsky, the Giustiniani, the Torlonia, the Campana, the San Kaustino— destroyed, their casinos dismantled, and their beautiful old trees burnt into charcoal. '—2/a«acwu. 12 Walks in Rome Ndtliiiitrcan po.ssil)ly be more revoltingly hideous or vulgar than the buildings of modern Rome since the change of government, 'when Home, poorest of cities, has been trying to appear rich.' ' The construction of houses in tlie new part of the city, and especially in those sections wliich have been demolislied and relniilt, has been carried on under regulations so bad, or so easily evaded, that the new ([uarter is the most dis- unueful apiieudix to a i.'reat city to be found in all Europe. The liouses are liuKf tasteless stucco palaces, so hisih as to shut off the sunlight— necessary alM)ve all things in Rome— from the lower storeys of the houses opposite. They are ill-constructed, so that in more than one case they have fallen into the spaces in front of them, and llinisy and ill-contrived, so that one hears the common dmnestic sounds from apartment to apartment, and from storey to storey. There is the least possible attention to the sanitary recjuisites which decency would i)ermit— in short, the (juarter is a hu<;e congeries of "jerry" dwellings, built on speculation, and in which no person who regards personal comfort would continue to reside, except on compulsion, and it is, in general, a;sthetically and economically a disgrace to Home.'— The, Times, June 15, 18S7. 'The municipal authorities of Rome, when it became the national capital, had the most si)lendir Keynaud, 73 Via Due Macelli, gives lectures on the lines laid down by Lanciani, and will arrange for excursions in the neighbourhood. Foxhounds meet twice a week in the Campagna. The meets are posted at Plate's Library. Throw oft at 11. Society for Prevention of Crxielty to Animals.— 12 Via S. Giacomo. Post Office.— Tiazza. S. Silvestro, close to the Corso, open from 8 A.M. to 9.30 P.M. Letters for England or America (on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, via Havre, at 9 p.m.) should be posted at the head office before 1 p.m. or i) p.m. Telegraph Office.— 'Piazza, S. Silvestro. Branch Offices, 20 Piazza Barberini ; 35 Piazza Rusticucci ; 123 Via Venti Settembre ; and "in the Piazza delle Terme. British Embassy. — At Porta Pia, Via Venti Settemlire. British Consulate. — 96 Piazza S. Clandio. American Legation. — Palazzo Amici, 16 Piazza S. Bernardo. American Consulate. — 16 Piazza S. Bernardo. Bankers. — Cook & Son, 1 Piazza di Spagna ; Sebaste & Reale, 20 Piazza di Spagna ; Nast-Kolb & Schumacher, 87 Via S. Claudio ; Plowden, 166 Piazza S. Claudio ; Franz Pioesler, 96 Piazza S. Claudio. Customs. — Everything in regard to Custom duties is now arranged in Rome for the minimum of profit to the State and the maximum of annoyance to travellers. The Italian theory that works of art belong of inherent right to the country where they were created is carried to an excess which is ridiculous. A permis- sion from the Museo is necessary for every article of vertu which a foreigner who has been residing in Rome wishes to remove to his own country ; and a heavy duty is charged, even on every broken cup or plate taken out of Italy, to the ruin of the Antiquarii., who formerly drove such a flourishing trade in Rome. For sending Boxes to England.— Li:mou, Piazza di Spagna; Franz Roesler, 6A Via Condotti. For sending out Boxes to Borne. — Pitt & Scott, 23 Cannon Street, London. Physicians.— Brs. Munthe, 26 Piazza di Spagna ; Baccelli, 2 Piazza Campi- telli ; Erhardt, 23 Piazza di Spagna ; Spurway, 22 Bocca di Leone ; Charles, 72 Via S. Nicolo da Tolentino. Homoeopathic. — Dr. Liberali, 101 Corso Vittorio Emanuele. Oculist. — Giuiseppe Norsa, 237 Via Nazionale ; Krahnstover, 5 Via Venti Settembre. Sick Nxirses are to be heard of at St. Paul's Home, Via Palestro, where also patients (without infectious disorders) are received and nursed, — a great boon to those taken ill in hotels. Dentists. — Dr. Curtis, 93 Piazza di Spagna ; Dr. Chamberlain, 114 Via Babuino. Chemists. — Roberts, 36 Piazza Lucina ; Sininlierghi, 65 Via Condotti, and Borioni, 98 Via Babuino, are usually employed by English visitors ; but the Italian chemists' shops in the Corso are as good, and much less expensive. Homoeopathic. — Aleori, S Via Frattina. House Agents. — Contini, 6 Via Condotti ; Toti, 54 Piazza di Spagna. Orders for Sketching in the Forum, Piilace of Cscsars, and other ruins must be obtained (free) at the office of the Ministero, Piazza della Minerva, on the left of the church. Circulating Library. — Piale, 1 and 2 Piazza di Spagna, has a well-managed 20 Walks in Rome liliiiiry of 20,000 volumes, aiul a lar>re assortment of Ma^cazincs ami Reviews in ilitfereiit lansuanes. All important new works are ailded on publication. The latest English teleirrams are posted, and noti.es of the ' fnnziom' are always to be found here. Miss Wilson, 22 Pia/./.a.di Sjiii-na, has a small well-managed library. iloneii-Changer.—Carhncci, 88 Piazza di .Spa!,'na. Agencies.— Cook, 2 Piazza di Spagna ; Gaze, 10 Piazza di Spagna. J5oo**eH«cx.— Piale, Piazza di Spagna ; Spithoever, Piazza di Spagna ; Loescher, 308 Corso ; Bocca, 210 Corso ; Paravia, 56 Piazza SS. Apostoli. Teachers of Italian.— Vroiessor Rosa Yagnozzi, 294 Via Cavour ; Mademoiselle Pauloni, Via Aurelia ; Signer Genzardi, 16 Via dei Pontetici. IJveni Stables.— GASv^rim, Piazza Barberini ; Fenini, outside Porta del Popolo ; Pieretti" (riding-master), Palazzo Rospigliosi. Plwtogiaphers.—For Portraits: Snseipi, 7 Via del Quirinale ; Le Lieure, 19 Via del Jlortaro ; Sehemboche, .54 Via Mercede ; Alinari, 89 Corso. For Views and Architectural Details : Moscioni, 76 Via Condotti. Drawing Materials.— \)ov\ic\\\, 136 Via Babuino ; Corteselli, 150 Via Sistlna. For commoner articles and stati-mery, Ricci, Piazza S. Claudio. Engravings.— Xi the Stamperia J^azionale (fixed prices), 6 Via dellaStamperia, near the fountain of Trevi. Antiquities.— A\esss.\\Ai-o Castellani, Via de' Poll; Giacomini, IC Via Sistina ; Noci, 29 Via Fontanella Borghese ; Coivisieri, 86 Via Due Macelli ; Alserigo, 78 Via Due Macelli. i?ron2cs.— Rainaldi, 8.3 Via Babuino ; Nelli, 111 Via Babuino ; Boschetti, 73 Via Condotti ; Kohrich, 62 Via Due Macelli. Ca7H«os.— Ciapponi (portraits), 9 Via S. Sebastianello ; Saulini, 96 Via Babuino ; Neri, 133 Via Babuino ; Galant, 9 Piazza di Spagna. Jfosarcs.— Rinaldi, 125 Via Babuino ; Boschetti, 14 Via Condotti ; Roccheggiani, 14 Via Condotti. Jewellers.— C&?,te\\».\\\, Piazza Fontana di Trevi (closed from 12 to 1), very beautiful and very expensive ; Tombini, 74 Piazza di Spagna ; Negri, 59 Piazza di Spagna ; Fasoli, 94 Piazza di Spagna ; Tanfani, 166 Corso. Roman Pearls.— Hey, 122 Via Babuino ; Lacchini, 69 Piazza di Spagna. Engraver (for visiting cards, &c.). — Ricci, 214 Corso. Tailors.— Sef^re, 88 Piazza di Trevi ; Reanda, 61 Piazza SS. Apostoli ; Carpineto, 101 Corso. All indifferent. Shoemakers. — .Tesi, 130 Corso ; Berardi, 59 Via della Fontanella Borghese ; Baldelli, 102 Corso ; Mazzocchi, 48 Via Due Macelli (none good). Shops for Ladies' Dress. — Bocconi, Corso ; Agostini, 207 Via Frattina and 176 Via Xazionale ; Pontecorvo, 170 Corso; Mezzi, 91 Via Frattina; Delfina Coda, 155 Corso; Sebastianini, 61 Via Condotti ; Giovannetti, 50 to 53 Campo-Marzo ; 'Old England,' entrance of Via Nazionale from Piazza Venezia. Hairdressers. — Lancia, 138 Via Nazionale; Giardinieri, 234 Corso; Pasquali, 11 Via Condotti. Roman Ribbons and Shaivls. — Bianchi, 82 Via della Minerva ; Fontana, 117 Via Babuino ; 69 Piazza di Spagna. Gloves. — Ugolini, 56 Piazza S. Lorenzo in Lucina ; Nerola, 142 Corso. Carpets and small Household Articles. — Cagiati, 250 Corso. German B«i-er.— Valan, 98 Via Babuino ; Colalucci, 94 Via Babuino. Grocers (also for Oil and Wood, *(f-i(/ff?/.— Morning : Palazzo Spada, the Temple of Vesta, cross the Tiber to S. Cecilia -."and end in the afternoon at S. Pietio in Montorio and the Villa Dorm (or on Monday). Saturday.— Vi-a.sca.ti and Albano. Drive to Frascati early, take donkeys, by Rocca di Papa, to Monte Cavo ; take luncheon at the Temple, and return by Palazzuolo and the upper and lower Galleries to Albano, whither the carriage should be sent on to wait at the Hotel de la Poste. Drive back to Rome in the evening. Si(ndai/.— Morning: S. Maria del Popolo after English Church. Afternoon : S. Peter's again ; drive to Monte Mario (Villa Madama), or in the Villa Borghese, and end with the Pincio and Trinitu de' Monti. 2»id Monday.— Go to Tivoli (the Cascades, Cascatelle, and Villa d'Este). 2nd Tuesday.— },lommg : \'atican Sculptures. Afternoon : S. Gregorio, S. Stefano Rotondo, S. Clemente, S. Pietro in Vincoli, S. Maria degli Angeli, S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura, and drive out to the Torre del Schiavi, returning by the Porta Maggiore. 2nd Tre(/;iCJ*f7(i»/.— Morning : Palazzo Barberini, Palazzo Rogpigliod, and Colonna Gardens. Afternoon : Forum in detail, SS. Cosmo e Damiano, and ascend the Coliseum. 2?irf Thursday. — Morning : The .Sistine Chapel, S. Onofrio, and the Passeggiata Margherita. Afternoon : i'he Pictures at the Villa Borghese. The following list may be useful as a guide to some of the best subjects for artists who wish to draw at Rome, and have not much time to search for themselves. Many of these spr)ts, however, have lost the great beauty which distinguished them before the Sardinian occupation. Many, mentioned in earlier editions of these volumes, are utterly destroyed. Morning Light: Arch of Constantine from the Coliseum (early). Coliseum from behiiul S. Francesca Romana (early). Views from the Palace of .Severus. Arch of Septimius Severus, Foro Romano. In the Garden of SS. Giovanni e Paolo. In the Garden of S. Buonaventura. In the Colonna Gardens. i>om the door of the Villa Medici. Courtyard behind the Tor di Nona. At S. Cosimato (much spoilt). Sight-Seeing 23 The back entrance of Ara Coeli (early). From the back entrance of Ara Coeli. Fountain, Piazza S. Pietro. Courtyaril near the Fontana Tartarushe. Looking to the Arch of Titus up the Via Sacra. In the Cloister of the Lateran. At S. Cesareo. Porta S. Sebastiano (inner view). Porta Latin a. Near the Temple of Bacchus. On the Via .\ppia, beyond Cecilia Metella. Torre Jlezza Stiaila, on the Via Appia. Ponte Nonuntaiio, looking to the !^Ion.s Sacer (injured). Torre dei Schiavi, looking towards Tivoli. Aqueducts at Tavolato. Evening Light : From the Terrace of the Villa Doria (S. Peter's). On the Palace of Domitian— looking to S. Balbina (injured). On the Palace of Caligula— looking to the Coliseum (injured). Apse of SS. Giovanni e Paolo. Garden of the Villa Mattel. Garden of the Priorato. In the Villa Borghese — several subjects. Cloister, S. Cosimato. Torre dei Schiavi, looking towards Rome. Via Latina, looking towards the Aqueducts. Via Latina, looking towards Rome. Towers of Cerbara and Cervaletto. On Via Appia, beyond Cecilia Metella. The months of November and December are the best for drawing. The colouring is then magnificent ; it is enhanced by the tints of the decaying vegetation, and the shadows are strong and clear. January is generally cold for sitting out, and February wet : and before the end of March the vegetation is often so far advanced that the Alban Hills, which have retained glorious sapphire and amethyst tints all winter, change into commonplace green English downs ; while the Campatina, from the crimson and gold of its dying thistles and finochii, becomes a lovely green plain waving with flowers. Foreigners are much too apt to follow the native custom of driving constantly in the Villa Borghese, the Villa Doria, and on the Pincio, and getting out to walk there during their drives. For those who do not care always to see the human world, a delightful variety of drives can be found ; and it is a most agreeable plan for invalids, without carriages of their own, to take a 'course' to the Parco di San Gregorio, or the Passeggiata Margherita, and walk there instead of on the Pincio. A carriage for the return may always be found at the Coliseum or in the Trastevere. CHAPTER II THE CORSO AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD The Pia/za del Popolo— Obelisk— S. Maria del Popolo— (The Piiicio— Villa Medici — Triuitii de' Monti)— (Via Babuino— Via Margutta— Piazza di Spagna— Propafjanda)- (Via Kipetta— SS. Roeco e Maitino— S. Girolanio degli Schia- voni)— S. Giacomo degli Incurabili— Via Vittoria-Mausoleum of Augustus — S. Carlo in Corso— Via Con iotti— Palazzo Borgliese— Palazzo Ptuspoli— S. Lorenzo in Lucina— S. Silvestro in Capite— S. Andrea delle Fratte— Palazzo Chigi— Piazza Colonna— Palace and Obelisk of Monte Citorio— Temple of Neptune— Fountain of Trevi— Palazzo Poli— Palazzo Sciarra— The Caravita — S. Ignazio— S. Marcello— S. Maria in Via Lata— Palazzo Doria Pamflli— Palazzo Salviati— Palazzo Odescalchi- Palazzo Colonna— Church of SS. Apos- toli— Palazzo Savorelli— Palazzo Bonaparte— Palazzo di Venezia— Palazzo Torlonia— Ripresa de Barberl— S. Marco— Church of II Gesii— Palazzo Altleri. THE first object of every traveller will naturally be to reach the Capitol, and look down thence upon ancient Rome ; but as he will go down the Corso to do this, and must daily pass most of its surrounding buildings, we will first speak of those objects which will, ere long, become the most familiar. A stranger's first lesson in Roman topography should be learnt standing in the Piazza del Popolo, whence three streets branch off — the Corso, in the centre, leading towards the Capitol, beyond which lies ancient Rome ; the Babuino, on the left, leading to the Piazza di Spagna and the English quarter ; the Ripetta, on the right, leading to the Castle of >S. Angelo and S. Peter's. The scene is one well known from pictures and engravings. The space between the streets is occupied by twin churches, erected by Cardinal Gastaldi. ' Les deux eglises elevees h la Place du Peuple par le Cardinal Gastaldi k I'entree du'Corso, sont d'un effet mediocre. Comment mi cardinal n'a-t-il pas senti (|u'il ne faut pas elever une cglise poure /aire pendant ^ quelque chose? Cost ravaler la niajeste (\i\ine.'—Ste7uihal, i. 172. The.se churches are believed to occupy the site of the magnificent tomb of Sulla, who died at Puteoli B.C. 82, but was honoured at R(jme with a public funeral, at which the patrician ladies burnt masses of incense and perfumes on his funeral pyre. The Obelisk of the Piazza del Popolo was placed on this site by Sixtus V. in 1589, but was originally brought to Rome and erected in honour of Apollo by the Emperor Augustus. 'Apollo was the patron of the spot which had given a name to the great victory of Actiuni ; Apollo himself, it was proclaimed, had fought for Rome and for Octavius on that auspicious day ; the same Apollo, the Sun-god, had shud- 24 S. Maria del Popolo 25 dered in his bright career at the murder of the Dictator, and terrified the nations by the eclipse of his divine countenance.' . . . Therefore, 'besides Imildinn a temple to Apollo on the Palatine hill, the Emperor Augustus soujiht to honour him by transplanting to tlie Circus Maximus, the sports of which wi're under liis special protection, an obelisk from Ilcliopolis, in Egypt. This flame-shaped column was a symbol of the sun, and (iriniiially bore a blazing or!) upon its summit. It is interesting to trace an iiitellinil)k' motive for the first introduction into Europe of these grotesque and unsigiitly monuments of Eastern supersti- tion.' — Merivale, 'Hist, of the Romans.' ' This red granite obelisk, oldest of things, even in Kome, rises in the centre of the piazza, with a fourfold fountain at its base. All Roman works and ruins (whether of the empire, the far-off republic, or the still more distant kings) assume a transient, a visionary and impalpable character when we think that this indestructible monument supplied one of the recollections which Moses and the Israelites bore from Egypt into the desert. Perchance, on beholding the cloudy pillar and fiery column, they whispered awe-stricken to one another, " In its shape it is like that old obelisk which we and our fathers have so often seen on the borders of the Nile." And now that very obelisk, with liardly a trace of decay upon it, is the first thing that the modern traveller sees after entering the Flaminian Gate.' — Hawthorne's ' Transformation.' It was on the left of the piazza, at the foot of what was even then called 'the Hill of Gardens,' that Nero was buried (a.d. 68). ' When Nero was dead, his nurse Ecloge, with Alexandra and Acte, the famous concubine, having wrapped his remains in rich white stuff, eniliroidered with gold, deposited them in the Domitian monument, which is seen in the Campus Martins, under the Hill of Gardens. The tomlj was of porpliyry, having an altar of Luna marble, surrounded by a balustrade of Thasos maxhle.'— Suetonius. Church tradition tells that from the tomb of Nero afterwards grew a gigantic walnut-tree, which became the resort of innumerable crows — so numerous as to become quite a pest to the neighbourhood. In the eleventh century, Pope Paschal II. dreamt that these crows were demons, and that the Blessed Virgin commanded him to cut down and burn the tree ('albero malnato'), and build a sanctuary to her honour in its place. A church was then built by means of a collection amongst the common people; hence the name which it still retains of ' S. Mary of the People.' S. Maria del Popolo was rebuilt by Baccio Pintelli for Sixtus IV. in 1480. As the favourite buriabplace of the Rovere family, it be- came a museum of renaissance art. It was modernised by Bernini for Alexander VII. (Fabio Chigi, 1655-B7), of whom it was the family burial-place, but it still retains many fragments of beautiful fifteenth-century work (the principal door of the nave is a fine example of this) ; and its interior is a perfect museum of sculpture and painting. Here Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI., returned public thanks, at the age of twenty-two, for her betrothal to her third husband, Alfonso d'Este. Entering the church by the west door, and following the right aisle, the first chapel (Venuti, formerly della Rovere^) is adorned with exquisite paintings by Pinturicchio. Over the altar is the Nativity (one of the most beautiful frescoes in the city) ; in the 1 Observe here and elsewhere the arms of the Della Rovere— an oak tree. Robur, an oak, — hence Rovere. 26 Walks in Rome lunettes are scenes from the life of S. Jerome. Cardinal Cristoforo (Iflla Rdvere, who built this chajiel and dedicated it to 'the Virgin :ind 8. Jerome,' is buried on the left, in a grand fifteenth-century tomb ; on the right is the monument of Cardinal di Castro. Both of those tombs and nianv others in this church have interesting and greatly varied lunettes of the Virgin and Child. The second chapel, of the Cibo family, rich in pillars of nero- antico and jasper, has an altar-piece representing the Assumption of the Virgin, by Carlo M/iratta. In the cupola is the Almighty, surrounded by the heavenly host.' The third chapel is the oratory erected by Giovanni della Rovcre, Duke of Sora and Siniuaglia, for his burial-place, and decorated after his death by Pinturicchio, for his brother Domenico. Over the altar are the Madoima and four saints ; above, God the Father, surrounded by angels. In the other lunettes, scenes in the life of the Virgin : that of the Virgin studying in the Temple, a very rare subject, is especially beautiful. In a frieze round the lower part of the wall is a series of martyrdoms in grisaille. On the right is the tomb of Giovanni della Rovere, ob. 1485. On the left is a fine sleeping bronze figure of a bishop, unknown. The fourth chapel has a fine fifteenth-century altar-relief of S. Catherine between S. Anthony of Padua and S. Vincent. On the right is the tomb of Marc-Antonio Albertoni, ob. 1485 ; on the left, that of Cardinal Costa, of Lisbon, ob. 1508, erected in his lifetime. In this tomb is an especially beautiful lunette of the Virgin adored by angels. Entering the right transept, on the right is the tomb of Cardinal Podocantharus of Cyprus, a very fine specimen of fifteenth-century work. A door near this leads into a cloister, where is preserved, over a door, the gothic altar-piece of the church of Sixtus IV., representing the Coronation of the Virgin, and two fine tombs — Archbishop Rocca, ob. 1482, and Bishop Gomiel. The choir (shown when there is no service) has a ceiling by Phitnricchio, painted for Giuliano della Rovere. In the centre are the Virgin and Saviour, surrounded by the Evangelists and Sibyls ; in the corners, the Fathers of the Church — Gregory, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. Beneath are the tombs of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza and Cardinal Girolamo Basso, nephews of Sixtus IV. (Francesco della Rovere), beautiful works of Andrea di Sansovino. These tombs were erected at the expense of Julius II., himself a Della Rovere, who also gave the windows, painted by Claude and Guillaume de Marseilles, the only good specimens of stained glass in Rome. Vasari regards the figure of Temperance, over one of the tombs, as ' something quite divine, and possessing to perfection the spirit of the antique.' The high-altar is surmounted by a miraculous image of the Virgin, J The beautiful fifteenth-century tomb of Cardinal Cibo, adorned with statuettes of four virgin saints, and used as the reredos of an altar at S. Cosimato in Trastevere, was brought from this chapel. S. Maria del Popolo 27 inscribed, ' Tu lionorificentia popnli nostri,' which was placed in this church by Gregory IX., and wliich, having been 'successfully invoked' by Gregory XIII., in the great plague of 1.578, was, till 1870, annually adored by the Pope of the period, who prostrated himself before it upon the 8th of September. The chapel on the left of this has an Assumption, by Annihulc Caracci. In the left transept is the tomb of Cardinal Bernardino Lonati, with a fine fifteenth-century relief of the Resurrection. Returning by the left aisle, the last chapel but one is that of the Chigi famil}^ in which the famous banker, Agostino Chigi (who built the Farnesina), is buried, and in which RiiffaeVe is represented at once as an architect, a painter, and a sculptor. He planned the chapel itself ; he drew the strange design of the mosaic on the ceiling (carried out by Aloisio dclla Pace), which lepresentsan extra- ordinary mixture of Paganism and Christianity — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn (as the planets), conducted by angels, being represented with and surrounding Jehovah ; and he modelled the beautiful statue of Jonah seated on the whale, which was sculp- tured in the marble by Lorcnzctto. The same artist sculptured the figure of Elijah — those of Daniel and Habbakuk being by Bernini. It is interesting to mark that, in the figure of Jonah, Raffaelle departed from the prophetic ideal of a be?irded figure in a mantle, and took as his model the beautiful nude figure of the youthful Antinous, who gave himself up to a voluntary death by water for his master and the State, as Jonah for the ves.sel and its crew. ^ The figure was sculptured from marble plundered from the temple of Castor and Pollux. The altar-piece of the chapel, representing the Nativity of the Virgin, is a fine work of Scbastiano del Piomho, who is buried in this church, near which he lived, and died of a fever, June 1,547. He (Sebastiano Luciani) had received the sinecure office of the Piombi from Clement VII. in 1531. On the pier ad- joining this chapel is the strange monument by Posi (1771) of a Princess Odescalchi Chigi, who died in childbirth, at the age of twenty, erected by her husband, who describes himself 'in solitu- dine et luctu superstes.' The last chapel contains two fine fifteenth-century ciboria, and the tomb of Cardinal Antonio Pallavicini, 1507. On the left of the principal entrance is the remarkable monu- ment of Gio. Batt. Gislenus, the companion and friend of Casimir I. of Poland (ob. 1670). At the top is his portrait while living, in- scribed ' Neque hie vivus ; ' then a medallion of a chrysalis, ' In nidulo meo moriar ; ' opposite to which is a medallion of a butterfly emerging, ' Ut Phoenix multiplicabo dies ; ' below is a hideous skeleton of giallo antico in a white marble winding-sheet, ' Neque hie mortuus. ' ' Non v' accorgete voi che noi siam vernii Natl a forniar 1' angelica farfalla Che vola alia giustizia senza schermi ? ' — Dante, Purg. x. 124. 1 See Viktor Rydberg's Roman Days. 28 Walks in Rome Mnrtiii Luther ' often spoke of death as the Christian's true birtli, :ukI tliis life as but a prowiiiR into the chrysalis-shell, in which the spirit lives till its beinj; is developeil, ami it Imrsts the shell, casts off the web, struggles into life, spreads its wind's, and soars uj) to God.' The Augustine Convent adjoinino; this church was the residence of Luther while he was in Rome. Here he celebrated mass imme- diately on his arrival, after he had prostrated himself upon the earth, sayincr, 'Hail, sacred Rome I thrice sacred for the blood of the martyrs shed here!' Here, also, he celebrated mass for the last time before he departed from Rome, to become the most terrible of her enemies. ' Lni, pauvre 6colier, i\ev6 si durenient, qui souvent, pendant son enfance, n'avait pour oreiller qu'une dalle froide, il passe devant des temples tout de niarbre, ilevant des colonnes d'albatre, de giKaiitcsfpies ob61isques de granite, des fontainus jaillissantes, des villas fraiches el embellies de jardins, de fleurs, de cascades et de grottes. Veut-il prier' il entru dans une eglise qui lui semble un monde vc-ritable, oil les diamants sciiitillent sur lautcl, For aux sotlites, le marbre aux colonnes, la niosaique aux cliapelles, an lieu d'un de ces temples rustiqiies qui n'ont dans sa patrie pour tout ornement (jue quelques roses qu'une main ]iieuse va dLi)oser sur I'autel le jour du dinianche. Est-il fatigu6 de la route ? il trouve sur son chemin, non plus ini modeste l)anc de bois, mais un si6ge d'albatre antiqui" riJcemment deterre. Cherchc-t-il inie sainte image? il napergoit que clis faiitaisits iiaiennes, des divinites olynipiques, Apollon, Venus, Mais, Jupiter, .lUMimlks Iravaillent inille mains de sculi)teurs. i)e toutes ces merveilles, il lie coniprit rieii, il ne vit rien. Aucun rayon de la couronne de Raphael, de Michel Ange, n'eblouit ses regards; il resta froid et must devant tons les tr^sors de peinture et de sculpture rassembl6s dans les 6glises ; son oreille fut fermee aux chants du Dante, que le peuple r^p6tait autour de lui. II etait entr6 a Kome 111 pcJlerin, il en sort comme Coriolan, et s'ecrie avec Bembo : "Adieu, Kome, line doit fuir quiconque veut vivre saintenient ! Adieu, ville oil tout est permis, excepte d'etre homme de bien." ' — Audin, ' Histoire de Luther,' c. ii. It was in front of this church that the cardinals and magnates of Rome met to receive the apostate Christina of Sweden upon her entrance into the city. On the left side of the piazza rises the Pincio, which derives its name from the Pinci family, who had a magnificent palace there. The terraces are adorned with rostral-columns, statues, and marble bas-reliefs, interspersed with cypresses and pines. A winding road, lined with mimosas and other flowering shrubs, leads to the upper platform, now laid out in public drives and gardens, but, till c. 1840, a deserted waste, where the ghost of Nero was believed to wander in the Middle Ages. From the platform of the Pincio terrace the Eternal City is seen spread at our feet, and beyond it the wide- spreading Campagna, till a silver line marks the sea melting into the horizon beyond Ostia. All these churches and tall palace roofs become more" than mere names in the course of the winter, but at first all is bewilderment. Two great buildings alone arrest the attention. ' Westward beyond the Tiber is the Castle of S. Aiigelo, the immense tomb of I pagan emperor, with the archansjtel on its summit. . . . Still farther off, a mighty pile of buildings, surrounded by a vast dome, which all of us have shaped S. Maria del Popolo 29 and swelled outward, like a huge bubble, to the utmost scope of our imaginations long before we see it floating: over the worship of the city. At any nearer view the grandeur of S. Peter's hides itself liehind the immensity of its separate parts, so that we only see the front, only the sides, only the pillared length and lofti- ness of the portico, and not the mighty whole. But at this distance the entire outline of the world's cathedral, as well as that of the palace of the world's chief priest, is taken in at once. In such remoteness, moreover, the imagina- tion is not del)arred from rendering its assistance, even while we have the reality before our eyes, and helping the weakness of human sense to do justice to so grand an object. It requires liotli faith and fancy to enable us to feel, what is nevertheless so true, that yonder, in front of the purple outline of the hills, is the grandest edifice ever built by man, painted against God's loveliest sky.'— Hawthorne. Since 1880 the long lines and tender green of the Prati Cincin- nati, which up to that time extended from S. Peter's to the then noble cypresses of the Porta del Popolo, have been effaced, and the most interesting view in the world has been spoilt by the erection of a succession of hideous stuccoed buildings in the worst style of Chicago, and a straight road of unparalleled ugliness. Every afternoon, except Friday, the band plays on the Pincio, when immense crowds often collect, showing every phase of Roman life. It is on Sunday especially that the terrace may be seen in what Miss Thackeray calls ' a fashionable halo of sunset and pink para- sols;' but all begin to disperse as the Ave-Maria bell rings from the churches, either to descend into the city, or to hear Benediction sung by the nuns in the Trinita de' Monti. ' When the fashionable hour of rendezvous arrives, the same spot, which a few minutes before was immersed in silence and solitude, changes as it were with the rapidity of a scene in a pantomime to an animated panorama. The scene is rendered not a little ludicrous by the miniature repie^ientation of the Ring in Hyde Park in a small compass. An entire revolution nf tlie carriage-drive is performed in the short period of three minutes as near as may be, and the per- petual occurrence of the same physiognomies and the same carriages trotting round and round for two successive hours, necessarily reminds one of the pro- ceedings of a country fair, and children whirling in a roundabout.' — Sir G. Ueail's Tom?' in Rome.' ' "The Pincian Hill" is the favourite promenade of the Roman aristocracy. At the present day, however, like most other Roman possessions, it belongs less to the native inhabitants than to the barbarians from Gaul, Great Britain, and beyond the sea, who have established a peaceful usurpation over all that is enjoyable or memorable in the Eternal City. These foreign guests are indeed ungrateful if they do not breathe a prayer for Pope Clement, or whatever Holy Father it may have been, who levelled the summit of the mount so skilfully, and bounded it with the parapet of the city wall ; who laid out those broad walks and drives, and overhung them with the shade of many kinds of trees ; who scattered the flowers of all seasons, and of every clime, abundantly over those smooth central lawns ; who scooped out hollows in fit places, and, setting great basons of marble in them, caused ever-gushing fountains to fill them to the brim ; who reared up the imnieumrial obelisk out of the soil that had long hidden it ; who placed pedestals along the borders of the avenues, and covered them with busts of that multitude of worthies— statesmen, heroes, artists, men of letters and of song— whom the whole world claims as its chief ornaments though Italy has pi'oduced them all. In a word, the Pincian garden is one of the things that reconcile the stranger (since he fully appreciates the enjoyment, and feels nothing of the cost) to the rule of an irresponsible dynasty of Holy Fathers, who seem to have arrived at making life as agreeable an aft'air as it could well be. 30 Walks in Rome ' Ill-re sits (tlroiiiiiiijj ii])ve to nerve her resolution to a voluntary death. "Life," she urged, "is over ; nought remains but to look for a decent e.xit from it." But the soul of the reju'obate was corrupted by her vices : she retained no sense of honour ; she continued to weep and groan as if hope still existed ; when suddenly the doors were burst open, the tribune and his swordsmen appeared before her, anil Euodus assailed her, dumb-stricken as she lay, with contumelious and brutal reproaches. Roused at last to the consciousness of her desperate condi- tion, she took a weapon from one of the men's hands and pressed it trembling against her throat and bosom. Still she wanted resolution to give the thrust, and it was liy a blow of the tribune's falchion that the horrid deed was finally accomplished. The death of Asiaticus was avenged on the very spot ; the hot blood of the wanton smoked on the pavement of his gardens, and stained with a deeper hue the variegated marlilesof LwcnWus.' ^Merivale, 'Hist, of the liornann under the Empire.' From the garden of the Pincio a terraced road (beneath which are the long-closed catacombs of S. Felix) lead.s to the Villa Medici, built for Cardinal Kicci da Montepulciano by Annibale Lippi in 1540, -with material taken, in great measure, from the temple of Jupiter Capitolinns. Shortly afterwards it passed into the hands The Villa Medici 33 of the Medici family, and was greatly enlarged by Cardinal Ales- sandro de' Medici, afterwards Leo XI. In 1801 the Academy for French Art Students, founded by Louis XIV., was established here. The villa contains a fine collection of casts, open every day except Sunday. Behind the villa, occupying the site of the gardens of the Anicii, is a beautiful Garden (which can be visited on Wednesdays and Saturdays by application to the porter). The terrace, which looks down upon the Villa Borghese, is bordered by ancient sarcophagi, and has a colossal statue of Rome. The garden side of the villa has sometimes been ascribed to Michelangelo. Amongst the statues at the back of the villa is one — between two pillars — to which a head recalling that of the Meleager, of very great beauty and Greek workmanship, has been added. It has been attributed to Scopas, of 4 B.C. ' La plus grande coquetterie de la maison, c'est la fagade posterieure. EUe tient son rang parmi les cliefs-d'cBuvre de la Renaissance. On dirait que I'archi- tecte a 6puis6 une mine de bas-reliefs grecs et remains pour en tapisser son palais. Le jardin est de la meme 6poque : il date du temps ou I'aristocratie romaine professait le plus profond dedain pour les fleurs. On n'y voit que des massifs de verdure, aligiies avec un soin scrupuleux. Six pelouses, entourees de haies a hauteur d'appui, s'^tendent devant la villa et laissent courir la vue jusqu'au mont Soracte, qui fernie I'horizon. A gauche, quatre fois quatre carr6s de gazon s'encadrent dans de hautes murailles de lauriers, de buis gigantesques et de chiines verts. Les murailles se rejoignent au-dessus des allees et les enve- loppent d'uue ombre fraiche et mysttTieuse. A droite, une terrasse d'un style noble encadre un bois du chenes verts, tordus et eventres par le temps. J'y vais quelquefois travailler k I'ombre ; et le merle rivalise avec le rossignol au-dessus de ma tete, comme un beau chantre de village pent rivaliser avec Mario ou Roger. Un peu plus loin, une vigne toute rustique s'etend jusqn't\ la porte Pinciana, ou Belisaire a mendie, dit-ou. Les jardins petits et grands sont seni^s de statues d'Herm6s, et de marbres de toute sorte. L'eau coule dans des sarcophages antiques ou jaillit dans des vasques de marbre : le marbre et l'eau sont les deux luxes de Rome.' — About, ' Rome Contemporaine.' ' The grounds of the Villa Medici are laid out in the old fashion of straight paths, with liorders of box, which form hedges of great height and density, and are shorn and trimmed to the evenness of a wall of stone at the top and sides. There are green alleys, with long vistas, overshadowed by ilex-trees ; and at each intersection of the paths the visitor finds seats of lichen-covered stone to repose upon, and marble statues that look forlornly at him, regretful of their lost noses. In the more open portions of the garden, before the sculptured front of the villa, you see fountains and flower-beds ; and in their season, a profusion of roses, from which the genial sun of Italy distils a fragrance to be scattered abroad by the no less genial breeze.' — Hawthorne. The clipped walks give a good idea of an ancient Roman garden, in which no tree was allowed to grow in its own way, but was forced by the topiarius into a prescribed form, and walls of green bay or box were made with niches, doors, or windows, as in archi- tectural designs. ' Quel merveilleux jardin encore, avec ses buis, ses pins, ses alli^es de magni- ficence et de charme ! quel refuge de reverie antique que le tres vieux et tr6s noir bois de chenes verts, oii, dans le bronze luisant des feuilles, le soleil a, son d6clin jette des lueurs brasillantes d'or rouge 1 II y faut monter par lui escalier interminable, et de lii-haut, du belvtidfere qui domine, on possede Rome enti^re d'un regard, comme si, en 61argissant les bras, on allait la prendre toute.' — Zola, ' Home.' VOL. I. C 34 Walks in Rome A second door will admit to the higher terrace of the Boschetto ; a tiny wood of ancient ilexes, from which a steep Hight of steps loadsup II Pamaso or the ' Belvidcre,' an artificial mound formed on an ancient nympheum by Cardinal Ricci, whence, till the recent destruction of the Villa Ludovisi, a most exquisite view might be obtained. 'They asked the porter for the key of the Kosco, which was pi veil, and they entereii a trrove of ilexes, wliose ftlooniy sliade effectually shut out the radiant sun- shine that still illuminated the western sky. They then ascended a long and exceedingly steep llitrht of steps, leading up to a hifrh mound covered with ilexes. Here both stood still, side hy side, gazing silently on the city, where dome and bell-tower stood out against a sky of gold ; the desolate Monte Mario and its stone pines rising dark to the right. Behind, close at hand, were sombre ilex woods, amid which rose here and there the spire of a cypress or a ruined arch, and on the highest point, the white Villa Ludovisi ; beyond stretched the bainpagna, girdled by hills melting into light under the evening sky.'— ' itadeinuisellc 3lori.' From the door of the Vilk'. Medici is the scene familiar to artists, of a fountain shaded by ilexes, which frame a distant view of S. Peter's. ' Je vois (de la Villa Medici) les quatre cinquifemes de la villa ; je compte les sept collines, je parcours les rues reguliferes ((ui s'etendent entre le cours et la place d'Espagne, je fais le d^nombrement des palais, des eglises, des domes, et des clocheis ; je m'egare dans le Ghetto et dans le Trastevere. Je ne vois pas des ruines autant que j'en voudrais : elles sont ramassees la-bas, sur nia gauche, aux environs du Forum. Cependant nous avons tout pres de nous la colonne Antonine et le mausolt-e d'Adrien. La vue est fermee agi'eablement par les pins de la villa Pamphili, qui reunissent leurs larges parasols et font comnie nne table a mille pieds pour un repas de geants. L'horizon fuit a gauche a des distances inflnies ; la plaine est nue, onduleuse et bleue comme la mer. Mais si je vous mettais en presence d'uii spectacle si ^tendu et si divers, un seul objet attirerait vos regards, un seul frapperait votre attention : vous n'auriez desyeux que pour Saint-Pierre. Son dome est moiti6 dans la ville, moiti^ dans le ciel. Quand j'ouvre ma feniitre, vers cinq heures du matin, je vois Eome noy^e dans les brouillards de la flevre : seul, le dome de Saint-Pierre est colore par la lumiere rose du soleil levant.' — Abcmt. The terrace ('La Passeggiata') ends at the Obelisk^ of the Trinita de' Monti, erected here in 1789 by Pius VI. ' When the Ave Maria sounds, it is time to go to the church of Trinity de' Monti, where French nuns sing ; and it is charming to hear them. I declare to heaven that I am become quite tolerant, and listen to bad music with edification ; but what can I do? The composition is perfectly ridiculous, the organ-playing even more absurd : but it is twilight, and the whole of the small bright church is filled with persons kneeling, lit up by the sinking sun each time that the door is opened; both the singing nuns have the sweetest voices in the world, (luite tender and touching, more especially when one of them sings the responses in her melodious voice, which we are accustomed to hear chaunted by priests in a loud, harsh, monotonous tone. The impression is very singular ; nif ireover, it is well known that no one is permitted to see the fair singers, so this caused me to form a strange resolution. I have composed something to suit their voices, which I have observed very minutely, and I mean to send it to them. It will be pleasant 1 The obelisk was formerly in the gardens of Sallust on the Quirinal. Fauna in 1548 (DeW Antichita di lioma), and Pyrrho Ligori in 1553, saw it lying there. Thence it was removed by Clement XTI., in 1735, to the small quadrangle near S. John Lateran, where it was seen still prostrate in 1771 (Rossini, II Mernuio Errante). Pius VL employed the architect Antinori to erect it in its present position. Its socle remains neglected in the Piazza del Maccao. The Church of the Trinity de' Monti 35 to hear my chaunt performed by persons 1 never saw, especially as they must in turn sing it to the " barbaro Tedesco," whom they also never heheld-'—iMendeh- sohn's Letters. ' In the evenings people go to the Trinitil to hear tlie nuns sing from the oi'gan- gallery. It sounds like the singing of angels. One sees in the choir troops of young scholars, moving with slow and measured steps, with their long white veils, like a Hock of spirits.' — Frederika Bremer. The Church of the Trinita de' Monti was built by Charles VIII. of France in 1495, at the request of S. Francesco di Paola. In the time of the French Eevolution it was plundered, but was restored by Louis XVIII. in 1817. It contained several interesting paintings. In the second chapel on the left is the Descent from the Cross the masterpiece of Danide da Volterra, declared by Nicholas Poussin to be the third picture in the world, but terribly injured by the French in their attempts to remove it. 'We might almost fancy ourselves spectators of the mournful scene,— the Redeemer, while being removed from the cross, gradually sinking down with all that relaxation of limb and utter helplessness which belongs to a dead body ; the assistants engaged in their various duties, and thrown into different and con- trasted attitudes, intently occupied with the sacred remains which they so reverently gaze upon ; the mother of the Lord in a swoon amidst her afflicted companions ; the disciple whom He loved standing with outstretched arms, absorbed in contemplating the mysterious spectacle. The truth in the repre- sentation of the exposed parts of the body appears to be nature itself. The colouring of the heads and of the whole picture accords precisely with the subject, displaying strength rather than delicacy, a harmony, and in short a degree of skill, of which jSIichelangelo himself might have been proud, if the picture had been inscribed with his name. And to this I believe the author alluded, when he painted his friend with a looking-glass near, as if to intimate that he might recognise in the picture a reflection of himself.' —Latizi. ' Daniele da Volterra's Descent from the Cross is one of the celebrated pictures of the world, and has very grand features. The body is not skilfully sustained ; nevertheless the number of strong men employed about it makes up in sheer muscle for the absence of skill. Here are four ladders against the cross, stalwart figures standing, ascending, and descending upon each, so that the space between the cross and the ground is absolutely alive with magniflcent lines. The Virgin lies on one side, and is like a grand creature struck down by a sudden death-blow. She has fallen, like Ananias in Raffaelle's cartoon, with her head bent backwards, and her arm under her. The crown of thorns has been taken from the dead brow, and rests on the end of one of the ladders.' — Lady Eastlake. The third chapel on the ricrht contains an Assumption of the Virgin, another work of Daniele da Volterra. The fifth chapel is adorned with frescoes of his school. The sixth has frescoes of the school of Perugino. The frescoes in the right transept are by F. Zuccaro and Pierino del Vaga ; in that of the procession of S. Gregory the mausoleum of Hadrian is represented as it appeared in the time of Leo X. The adjoining Convent of the Sacre Coeur is much frequented as a place of education. The nuns are all persons of rank. When a lady takes the veil, her nearest relations inherit her property, except about £1000, which goes to the convent. The nuns — Dames du Sacre Coeur — are allowed to retain no personal property, but if they still wish to have the use of their books, they give them to the con- vent library. They receive visitors every afternoon, and quantities of people go to them from curiosity, on the plea of seeking advice. 36 Walks in Rome From the Trinita the two popular streets — Sistina and Gregoriana — branch off ; the former leading in a direct line (though the name changes) to !S. Maria Maggiore, and thence to S. John Lateran and S. Croce in Gerusalenime. The house adjoining the Trinitii was that of Nicholas Toussin ; that at the angle of the two streets, called the Tempietto, was once inhabited by Claude Lorraine. At the back of it, towards Via Gregoriana, is a curious porch formed by a monster. The adjoining house (04 Sistina) — formerly known as Palazzo della Regina di Polonia, from Maria Casimira, Queen of Poland, who re- sided there for some years — was inhabited by the Zuccari family, and lias paintings on the ground floor by Fcdcrigo Zuccaro. One of the rooH'.s on the second tloor was adorned with frescoes by modern German artists (Overbeck, Schadow, Cornelius, Veit) at the expense of the Prussian Consul Bartholdy, but they were all removed to Germany in 1880. At No. 138 a tablet marks the house where Rossini (1790-1857) lived ana wrote. Behind the Via Sistina is the Villa Malta, where, in 1789, the famous Cagliostro held his meetings and practised his so-called miracles of increasing the size of precious stones and turning water into wine. On the left of the Piazza del Popolo, the Via Babuino branches off, deriving its name from a mutilated figure on a fountain half- way down, removed since the fall of the Papal Government, one of the" many robberies of street interest to be deplored. On the right is the English Church, a feeble work of Street, chiefly erected by the generous exertions of Mrs. Henry Walpole. A few steps farther is the Greek Church of S. Atanasio, attached to a college founded by Gregorv XIII. in 1.580. In No. 14i John Gibson, the sculptor, died, January 27, 1860. Behind this street is the Via Margutta, almost entirely inhabited by artists and sculptors, and which till recently contained the Costume Academy of ' Gigi,' well known through many generations of artists, but recently destroyed. Models are now obtained at the Circolo degli Artisti. ' The Via Margutta is a street of studios and stables, crossed at the upper end Ijy a little roofed gallery with a single window, like a shaliby Bridge of Sighs. Horses are continually being washed and currycombed outside their stable doors ; frequent heaps of immondezzajo make the air unfragrant ; and the perspective is fre(iuently damaged by rows of linen suspended across the road from window to window. Utisightly as they are, however, these obstacles in no wise affect the popularity of the Via ifargutta, either as a residence for the artist or a lounge for the amateur. Fashionable patrons leave their carriages at the corner, and pick their way daintily among the gutters and dust-heaps. A boar-hunt by Vallatti compensates for an unluckysplash; and a Campagna sunset of Desoulavey glows all the richer for the sciualor tluough which it is approached.' — Barbara'^ nistor;i. The Vicolo d'Aliberti, which unites the Via Margutta to the BaVjuino, derives its name from having contained the celebrated Teatro dclle Dame, built by M. d'Alibert, equerry to Queen Christina. This was the principal theatre of the eighteenth century, for which The Piazza di Spagna 37 Metastasio wrote his plays, and where the compositions of Porpora, Leo, Durante, Galuppi, Jomelli, &c. , were first given to the public. The Balbuino ends in the ngly but central square of the Piazza di Spagna, where many of the best hotels and shops are situated. Every house is let to foreigners. Even in 1580 Montaigne writes of Rome as 'rappieccie d'estrangiers, une ville ou chacun prant sa part de I'oisifvetd ecclesiastique.' Hence the Trinita is reached by a magnificent flight of steps, which was built by Alessandro Specchi at the expense of a private individual, M. Guettier, secretary to the French embassy at Rome under Innocent XIII. ' No art-loving visitor to Rome can ever liave passed the noble flight of steps which leads from the Piazza di Spagna to the Church of the Triniti de' Monti without longing to transfer to his sketch-book the picturesque groups of models who there spend their day, basking in the beams of the wintry sun, and eating those little boiled beans whose yellow husks bestrew every place where the lower-class Romans congregate — practising, in short, the dolcefar niente. Beppo, the celebrated lame beggar, is no longer to be seen there, having been banished to the steps of the church of S. Agostino ; but there is old Felice, with conical hat, brown cloak, and bagpipes, father of half the models on the steps. He has l)een seen in an artist's studio in Paris, and is reported to have performed on foot the double journey between Rome and that capital. There are two or three younger men in blue jackets and goatskin breeches ; as many women in folded linen head-dresses and red or blue skirts ; and a sprinkling of children of both sexes, in costumes the miniature fac-similes of their elders. All these speedily learn to recognise a visitor who is interested in that especial branch of art which is embodied in models, and at every turn in the street such a one is met by the flash of white teeth and the gracious sweetness of an Italian smile.' — //. M. B. ' Among what maj' be called the cubs or minor lions of Rome, there was one that amused me mightily. It is always to be found there ; and its den is on the great flight of steps that lead from the Piazza di Spagna to. the church of the Trinita de' Monti. In plainer words, these steps are the great place of resort for the artists' " models," and there they are constantly waiting to be hired. The first time I went up there I could not conceive why the faces seemed so familiar to me ; why they appeared to have beset me, for years, in every possible variety of action and costume ; and how it came to pass that they started up before me, in Rome, in the broad day, like so many saddled and bridled nightmares. I soou found that we had made acquaintance, and improved it, for several years on the walls of various Exhibition Galleries. There is one old gentleman with long white hair and an immense beard, who, to my knowledge, has gone half through the catalogues of the Royal Academy. This is the venerable or patriarchal model. He carries a long staff ; and every knob and twist in that staft' I have seen, faithfully delineated, inniunerable times. There is another man in a blue cloak, who always pretends to lie asleep in the sun (when there is any), and who, I need not say, is always very wide awake, and very attentive to the disposition of his legs. This is the dolcefar niente model. There is another man in a brown cloak, who leans against a wall, with his arms folded in his mantle, and looks out of the corners of his eyes, which are just visible beneath his broad slouched hat. This is the assassin model. There is another man, who constantly looks over his own shoulder, and is always going away, but never goes. This is the haughty or scornful model. As to Domestic Happiness and Holy Families, they should come very cheap, for there are heaps of them, all up the steps ; and the cream of the thing is, that they are all the falsest vagabonds in the world, especially made up for the purpose, and having no counterparts in Rome or any other part of the habitable globe.' — Dickens. ' Climb these steps when the sun is setting. From a hundred belfries the bells ring for Ave Maria, and there, across the town, and in a blaze of golden glory, stands the great dome of S. Peter's ; and from the terrace of the Villa Aledici you can see the whole wonderful view, faintly pencilled Soracte far to your right, and below you and around you the City and the Seven Hills.' — Vera. 1 47H4^ 38 Walks in Rome The house on the right of the steps, marked by an inscription, is that in which the poet Keats died, February 24, 1821. The Barcaccia (restored), the fountain at the foot of the steps, executed by Jiirnini, is a stone boat commemorating the naumachia of Domitian — naval battles which took i)lace in an artificial lake surrounded by a kind of theatre, wliich once occupied the site of this piazza. In from of the Palazzo di Spagna (the residence of the iSpanish ambassador to the Pope, and where Alfieri triumphed in a magnificent representation of his ' Antigone ' under Pius VI.), which gives its name to the square, stands a Column of cipollino, support- ing a statue of the Virgin, erected by Pius IX. in 185i, in honour of his new dogma of the Immaculate Conception. At the base are figures of Moses, David, Isaiah, and Ezekiel. The Piazza di Spagna may be considered as the centre of what is called the ' English quarter ' of Rome, of which the Corso forms the boundary. ' Every winter there is a gay and pleasant English colony in Rome, of course more or less remarkable for rank, fashion and agreeability, with every varying year. Thrown together evei-j' day, and night after night ; flocking to the same picture galleries, statue galleries, Pincian drives, and church functions, the English colonists at Rome perforce l)ecome intimate, in many cases friendly. They have an Englisli library, where the various meets for the week are placarded: on such a day the Vatican galleries are open ; the next is the feast of Saint so- and-so ; on AVednesday there will be music and vespers in the .Sistine Chapel ; on 'J'hursday the Pope will bless the animals — sheep, horses, and what not ; and flocks of English accordingly rush to witness the benediction of droves of donkeys. In a word, the ancient city of the Caesars, the august fanes of the Popes, with their sidendour and ceremony, are all mapped out and arranged for English diversion. '—Thackeray. The Piazza is closed by the CoUegio di Propaganda Fede, founded in 1G22 by Gregory XV., but enlarged by Urban VIII., who built the present edifice from plans of Bernini. Like all the buildings erected by this Pope, its chief decorations are the bees of the Barberini. The object of the College is the education of youths of all nations as missionaries. ' The origin of the Propaganda is properly to be sought in an edict of Gregory XIII., by which the direction of Eastern missions was confided to a certain number of cardinals, who were commanded to promote the printing of catechisms in the less known tongues. But the institution was not firmly established ; it was unprovided with the requisite means, and was l)y no means comprehensive in its views. It was at the suggestion of the great preacher Girolami da Narni that the idea was first conceived of extending the above-named institution. At his suggestion a congregation was established in all due form, and by this body regular meetings were to be held for the guidance and conduct of missions in every part of the world. The first funds were advanced liy Gregory ; his nephew contributed from his private property ; and since this institution was in fact adapted to a want, the pressure of which was then felt, it increased in prosperity and splendour. Who does not know the services performed by the Propaganda for the diffusion of philosophical studies ? and not this only : the institution has generally laboured (in its earliest years, most successfully, perhaps) to fulfil its vocation in a liberal and noble spirit.'— iia7!/kc, ' Hint, of the Popes.' ' On y re(;oit des jeimes gens nds dans les pays ultramontains et orientaux, oil sonl les intldeles et les heretiiiues ; ils y font leur education religieuse et civile, et retournent dans leur pays comme missionnaires pour propager la foi.'—A. Du Pays. The Via Ripetta 39 ' Le college dii Propaganda Fede, oil Ton engraisse des niissionnaires pour donner i manger aiix cannibales. C'est, ma foi, uii cxcelloiit rii;;out pour eux, que deux p6res franciscains ;i la sauce rousse. Lc tapucliiii en d;iube se mange aussi comme le renard, quaud il a ute gele. II y a ii la I'ropagaiida une biblio- tlieque, une imprimerie fournie de toutes sortes de caracteres des langues (irientales, et de petits Chinois ((u'on y 6lu\e ainsi ((ue desalouettes chanterelles, pour en attraper d'autres.' — De liraxscs. In January a festival is held here, when speeches are recited hy the pupils in all their different languages. The public is admitted by tickets. The printing-office for foreign languages — TijDografia Poliglotta — has long been celebrated. The Borgia Museum, on the second floor, is shown free on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It is like many provincial museums in England, and scarcely worth a visit. An interesting relic, however, is the map of the world, with the line which Alexander VI. drew to mark the division of Spain and Portugal in the Indian discoveries. In the opposite Piazza Miguanelli, Joseph Mallord Turner spent the winter of 1828-29 at No. 12, and painted there his view of Orvieto and several other pictures — a good-tempered, funny little gentleman, continuously sketching at his window. The Via Ripetta leaves the Piazza del Popolo on the right. A semicircular space on the right of the street presents a lively scene every Saturday at noon, during the drawing of the Roman lottery. ' In the middle of the lialcony, on the rail, is fixed a glass barrel, with a handle to turn it round. Behind it stand three or four officials, who have been just now ushered in with a blast from two trumpeters, also stationed in the balcony. Immediately behind the glass barrel itself stands a boy of some twelve or thirteen years, dressed in the white uniform of one of the orphan establish- ments, with a huge white shovel hat. Some time is occupied by the folding, and putting into the barrel, pieces of paper, inscribed with the numbers, from one upwards. Each of these is proclaimed, as folded and put in, by one of the officials who acts as spokesman or crier. At last, after eighty-seven, eighty- eight, and eighty-nine have been given out, he raises his voice to a chant, and sings forth, Nuinero novanta, "number ninety," this completing the number put in. ' And now, or before this, appears on the balcony another character — no less a person than a Monsignore, who appears, not in his ordinary, but in his more solemn official costume ; and this connects the ceremonial directly with the spiritual authority of the realm. And now commences the drawing. The barrel having been for some time turned rapidly round to shuffle the ninnbers, the orphan takes off his hat, makes the sign of the cross, and having waved his open hand in the air to show that it is empty, inserts it into the barrel, and draws out a number, giving it to the Monsignore, who opens it and hands it to the crier. This latter then proclaims it — " Prima estratta, mnnero venti cinque." Then the trumpets blow their blast, and the same is repeated four times more, the pro- clamation each time, Seconda estratta, Terza, Qtiarta, Quinta, &c., five nmnbers being thus the whole drawn, out of ninety put in. This done, with various ex- pressions of surprise, delight, or disappointment from the crowd below, the officials disappear, the square empties itself, and all is as usual till the next Saturday at the same time. . . . ' In almost every street in Rome are shops devoted to the purchase of lottery tickets. Two numbers purchased with the double chance of those two numbers turning up are called an ambo, and three purchased with the treble chance of those three turning up are called a terno, and, of course, the higher and more perilous the stake, the richer the prize, if obtained.'— ^lyorU's Letters from Abroad. 40 Walks in Rome ' Les ctrangers (lui vkiiiu-iit :i Koine cnniniencent par l)lainer seviMcment la Intcrie. An Iwut ile fnieli(iie temps, I'esprit de toKraiice (jui est lians I'.iir penutre peu-ii-peu JHSiiu'au foiul de leur cerveau ; ils excuseiit uii jcu philaiithiopique iiui I'uurnit an pauvre peui)le six jours li'esperaiices pour liiiq sous. BieiitOt, pour se remire conipte du niecanisnie de la loterie, ils entreiit eux-uKines dans un bureau, en evitant de se laisser voir. Trois mois apres, ils poursuivent ouvertenient une conibinai.son savante ; ils ont une thuorie inath .sjieiik the wont without fear. ICvuii in thu palace of Xero, the most noxious atmosphere, as we should liave concluded, for the growth of divine truth, his bonds were manifest, the Lord Jesus was preached, and, more than this, was received to the saving of many souls ; for we find the apostle writing: to his Pliilippian converts : "All the saints salute you, chiefly they which are of Caesar's household." ' — lilimt's ' Lectures on S. Paul.' 'In writing to Philemon, Paul chooses to speak of himself as the captive of Jesus Christ. Yet he went whither he would, and was free to receive those who came to him. It is interesting to remember, amid these solemn vaults, the different events of .S. Paul's apostolate during the two years that he lived here. It was here that he cfinverted Onesimus, that he received the presents of the Philippians, brought by Kpaphroditus ; it was hence that he wrote to Philemon, to Titus, to the inhabitants of Pliilippi and of Colosse ; it was here that he preached devotion to the cross with that glowing eagerness, with that startling eloquence, which gained fresh power from contest, and which inspiration ren- dered sublime. ' Peter addressed himself to the uncircumcised : Paul to the Gentiles '—to their silence that he might confound it, to their reason that he might humble it. Had he not already converted the proconsul Sergius Pauhis, and Dionysius the AreopagiteV At Kome his worj is equally powerful, and among the courtiers of Nero, perhaps even amongst his relations, are Miose who yield to the power of God, who reveals Himself in each of the teachings of His servant.'- Around the Apostle his eager disciples group themselves — Onesiphorus of Ephesus, who was not ashamed of his chain;-' Epaphras of Colosse, who was captive with him, concaptivus menu ; ^ Timothy, who was one with his master in a holy imlon of every thought, and who was attached to him like a son, siciU patrifllius ;^ Her- nias, Aristarchus, Marcus, Demas, and Luke the physician, the faithful com- panion of the Apostle, his well-beloved disciple — " Lucas medicus carissimiis." ' — From Gotinierie, ' Jiome Chrefienne.' ' I honour Rome for this reason ; for though I could celebrate her praises on many other accounts — for her greatness, for her beauty, for her power, for her wealth, and for her warlike exploits — yet, passing over all these things, I glorify her on this account, that Paul in his lifetime wrote to the Romans, and loved them, and was present with and conversed with them, and ended his life amongst them. Wherefore the city is on this account renowned more than on all others — on this account I admire her, not on account of her gold, her columns, or her other splendid decorations." — .S'. John Chrysostom, ' Homily on the Ep. to the JiOhians.' ' The Roman Jews expressed a wish to hear from S. Paul himself a statement of his religious sentiments, adding that the Christian sect was everywhere spoken against. ... A day was fixed for the meeting at his private lodging. ' The Jews came ill great numbers at the appointed time. Then followed an impressive scene, like that of Troas (Acts xxi.)— the Apostle pleading long and earnestly — bearing testimony concerning the kingdom of God — and endeavouring to persuade them liy arguments drawn from their own Scriptures — "from morning till evening." The result was a division among the auditors — " not peace, liut a sword" — the division which has resulted ever since, when the Truth of God has encountered, side by side, earnest conviction with worldly indifference, honest investigation with bigoted prejudice, trustful faith with the pride of scepticism. After a long and stormy discussion, the unbelieving portion departed ; but not until S. Paul had warneil them, in one last address, that they were bringing upon themselves that awful doom of judicial blindness which was denounced in their own Scriptures against obstinate unbelievers ; that the salvation which they rejected would be withdrawn from them, and the inheritance they renounced would be given to the Gentiles. The sentence with which he gave emphasis to this solemn w arning was that passage in Isaiah which, recurring thus with solemn force at the very close of the Apostolic history, seems to bring very strikingly together the Old Dispensation and the New, and to connect the ministry of our Lord with that of His Apostles : " Go unto this people and say : Hearing ye shall i Gal. ii. 7. 2 phii. h-. 22. ■'' 2 Tim. i. 16. •4 Phileni. 23. 5 Phil. ii. 22. S. Maria in Via Lata 59 hear and shall not understand, and seeing ye shall see and shall not perceive : for the heart of this people is waxed gross, and tlieir ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed ; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them." ' . . . During the long delay of his trial S. Paul was not reduced, as he had been at Caesarea, to a forced inactivity. On the contrary, he was permitted the freest intercourse with his friends, and was allowed to reside in a house of sufficient size to accommodate the congregation which flocked together to listen to his teaching. The freest scope was given to his labours, consistent with the military custody under which he was placed. We are told, in language peculiarly emphatic, that his preaching was subjected to no restraint whatever. And that which seemed at first to impede, must really have deepened the impression of his eloquence ; for who could see without emotion that venerable form subjected by iron links to the coarse control of the soldier who stood beside him V how often must the tears of the assembly have been called forth by the upraising of that fettered hand, and the clanking of the chain which checked its energetic action ! ' We shall see hereafter that these labours of the imprisoned Confessor were not fruitless ; in his own words, he "begot many children in his chains." Mean- while, he had a wider sphere of action than even the metropolis of the world. Xot only " the crowd which pressed upon him daily," but also "the care of all the churches," demanded his constant vigilance and e.xertion. ... To enable him to maintain this superintendence, he manifestly needed many faithful messengers ; men who (as he says of one of them) " rendered him profitable service ; " and by some of whom he seems to have been constantly accompanied wheresoever he went. Accordingly we find him, during this Roman imi)rison- ment, sm'rounded by many of his oldest and most valued attendants. Luke, his fellow-traveller, remained with him during his bondage ; Tiniotheus, his beloved son in the faith, ministered to him at Rome, as he had done in Asia, in Macedonia, and in Achaia. Tychicus, who had formerly borne him company from Corinth to Ephesus, is now at hand to carry his letters to the shores which they had visited together. But there are two names amongst his Roman companions which excite a peculiar interest, though from opposite reasons — the names of Demas and of Mark. The latter, when last we heard of him, was the unhappy cause of the separation of Barnabas and Paul. He was rejected by Paul, as un- worthy to attend him, because he had previously abandoned the work of the gospel out of timidity or indolence. It is delightful to find him now ministering obediently to the very Apostle who had then repudiated his services ; still more, to know that he persevered in this fidelity even to the end, and was sent for liy S. Paul to cheer his dying hours. Demas, on the other hand, is now a faithful "fellow-labourer" of the Apostle ; but in a few years we shall find that he had "forsaken" him, having "loved this present world." ' Amongst the rest of S. Paul's companions at this time there were two whom he distinguishes by the honourable title of his " fellow-prisoners." One of these is Aristarchus, the other Epaphras. With regard to the former, we know that he was a Macedonian of Thessalonica, one of "Paul's companions in travel," whose life was endangered by the mol) at Ephesus, and who embarked with S. Paul at Caesarea when he set sail for Rome. Thejother, Epaphras, was a Colossian, who must not be identified with the Philippian Epaphroditus, another of S. Paul's fellow-labourers during this time. It is not easy to say in what exact sense these two disciples were peculiarly /t^toio-jsmoncre of S. Paul. Perhaps it only implies that they dwelt in his house, which was also his prison. ' But of all the disciples now ministering to S. Paul at Rome, none has a greater interest than the fugitive Asiatic slave Onesimus. He belonged to a Christian named Philemon, a member of the Colossian Church. But he had robbed his master, and fled from Colosse, and at last found his way to Rome. Here he was converted to the faith of Christ, and had confessed to ,S. Paul his sins against his master.' — Conybeare and Uowson, 'Life of S. Paid.' j ' Rome contained on the same day within her walls such men as Sophonius Tigellinus, Nero, Seneca, Thrasea, Paetus, and Paul of Tarsus ; gradations of human nature, from the devilish worshipper of sensuality to the worshipjier of the Ideal in the crown of thorns. They might have trodden the pavement of the GO Walks in Rome J-'oriiiii at tlio same innnioiit. And while tliu coiiit Epicureans, who made beauty as independent of morality as a later age would have made religious faith inde- pendent of reason, lield their wild revels on the Palatine, in the Ghetto of that time walked the iioor tent-maker from Cilicia, looking comi)assionately on these orgies of the llesh— for lie felt tluir niiglit in his own frame— and aljsorbed in the great mystery of salvation, the annihilation of sin, and the reunion of erring mankind to a spiritual body in the true ideal of beauty, the First-born of the creation.' — I'iktur Utjdber'j. A fountain in the crypt is shown, as having miraculously sprung up in answer to the prayers of S. Paul, that he might have where- withal to baptize his disciples. At the end of the crypt are some large blocks of peperino, said to be remains of the arch erected by the senate in honour of the Emperor Gordian III., and destroyed by Innocent VIII. By some these remains, and others under the Palazzo Doria, are supposed to be remains of the Septa Julia, covered porticoes for the use of the Roman people, begun by Julius Caesar ' and finished by Agrippa in 27 B.C.- On the side of the Via Lata, opposite the church, is a quaint little fountain of a man with a barrel, whence pours the water ; removed from the Corso in 1872. Far along the right side of the Corso now extends the facade of the immense Palazzo Doria, built by Valvasori (the front towards the CoUegio Romano being by Pietro da Cortona, and that towards the Piazza Venezia by Amati). ' The Doria Palace is ahnost two-thirds of the size of S. Peter's, and within the ground plan of S. Peter's the Coliseum could stand. It used to be said that a thousand persons lived under the roof outside of the gallery and the private apartments, which alone surpass in extent the majority of royal residences. . . . One often hears foreign visitors, ignorant of the real size of palaces in Home, observe, with contempt, that the lloman princes let their palaces. It would be more reasonable to inquire what use could be made of such buildings if they were not let, or how any family could be expected to inhabit a thousand rooms.' — F. Marion Crawford. The Picture Gallery (open on Mondays and Fridays from 10 to 2 — on fasts the day following) is reached from the Piazza del Collegio Romano, at the back of the palace. It contains, amid a chaos of pictorial rubbish, a very few fine works, partly collected by Olympia Maldacchini, partly acquired in the time of the great Andrea Doria, and brought to Rome from Genoa. Amongst the gems of the collection, but removed to the private apartments, are — " Schastiano del Piomho. (Celebrated for his great power of making use of all the tints of the same colour, which is especially shown in this picture.) Portrait of Andrea Doria. A portrait by Bronzino is said to represent Glanetto Doria. The pictures are ill restored. Entering the galleries and turning to the left, we may notice — 1st Gallery — Algardi. Bust of Olympia Maldacchini Pamfili, the sister-in-law of Innocent X., who ruled Rome in his time, and built the Villa Doria Pamfili for her son. 1 Cicero, Ad Alt. v. 16. '-^ Dion. Cass. liii. 23. The Palazzo Doria 61 65. Holbein! Portrait of a man holiling ;i uaniatioii (1546). 66. Holbein? Female Portrait. *68. Claude Lorraine. Tlie Mill. 'The foreground of the picture of "The Mill" is a piece of very lovely aiul perfect forest scenery, with a dance of peasants by a brook-side ; quite enough subject to form, in the hands of a master, an impressive and complete idcture. On the other side of the brook, however, we have a piece of pastoral life ; a man with some bulls and goats tumbling head foremost into the water, owing to some sudden paralytic affection of all their legs. Even this group is one too many ; the shepherd had no l)usiness to drive his flock so near the dancers, and the dancers will certainly frighten the cattle. But when we look finther into the picture, our feelings receive a sudden and violent shock, by the unexiiected appearance, amidst things pastoral and musical, of the military ; a number of Roman soldiers riding in on hobby-horses, with a leader on foot, apparently encouraging them to make an immediate and decisive charge on the nnisicians. Beyond the soldiers is a circular temple, in exceedingly bad repair ; and close beside it, built against its very walls, a neat water-mill in full work ; l)y the mill flows a large river with a weir across it. . . . At an inconvenient distance from the water- side stands a city, composed of twenty -five round towers and a pyramid. Beyond the city is a handsome bridge ; beyond the bridge, part of the Campagna, with fragments of aqueducts ; beyond the Campagna the chain of the Alps ; on the left, the cascades of Tivoli. ' This is a fair example of what is commonly called an " ideal " landscape : i.e. a group of the artist's studies from nature, individually spoiled, selected with such opposition of character as may ensure their neutralising each otlier's effect, and united with sufficient unnaturalness and violence of association to ensure their jjroducing a general sensation of the impossible." — liuskin's 'Modern Painters.' ' Many painters take a particular spot, and sketch it to perfection ; but Claude was convinced that taking nature as he found it seldom produced beauty. Neither did he like exhibiting in his pictures accidents of nature. He professed to portray the style of general nature, and so his pictures were a composition of the various drafts which he had ijreviously nmde from beautiful scenes and prospects.' — Sir J. Reynolds. 76. Annibale Caracci. Pieti'i. | 79. Claude Lorraine. Landscape, with the Temple of Apollo. S8. Bosso Dosfii. Portrait, probably a heroine of the ' Orlando Furioso ' (said to represent Vanozza, mother of Lucretia and Cesare Borgia — who died before the birth of Dosso I) Cabinet — Bernini. Bust of Innocent X. (with whose ill-acquired wealth this palace was built), in rosso-antico, with a bronze head. '112. Raffaelle. ' Bartolo and Baldo'— the Venetians Beazzano and Xavagero, painted in Rome, April 151G.1 113. Velasquez. Portrait of Innocent X.— Gio. Battista Pamfili (1644-55)— 'I'uomo dair aspetto tetrice e saturnino,' as GJiovanni Giustiniani, the Venetian ambassador, wrote of him. ' Un Papa buono per Ic donne,' is the description of Cardinal Francesco Barberini. This stupendously magnificent picture is the finest portrait in Rome, and one of the finest in the world. 114. Titian ? Portrait, called, without reason, Marco Polo. 110. Ignoto. Xiccolaus Macciavellus, Ilistoriar Scriptor. 148. Vandyke? Portrait of a Widow. The 2nd Gallery is decorated with mirrors, and statues of no especial merit. Hence four rooms, with indifferent pictures, lead to a Cabinet containing busts of Philippo, Prince Doria, his wife 1 Letter of Bembo to Cardinal Dovizio da Bibbiena, referring to the presence of the two Venetians in Rome. 62 Walks in Rome (Lady Mary Talbot), and her sister Gwendolen, the saintly Princess Borghese. Returning we enter The 3rd GaUcry— 257. Sansoffrrato. lloly Family. 265. Titian. A Portrait. 27S. h'aro/alo (1519). The MeetiiiR of Mary and Elizabeth. 292. Saraceni. The Flii^ht into Kpypt. 296. iiuido Jieiil. Madonna and ^sleeping I'liikl. The Great Hall contains in the centre a Centaur in rosso-antico, found in the villa of Pompey at Albano. Round the walls are four fine .sarcoj)hagi, with reliefs of the Hunt of Meleager, the story of Marsyas, Endymion and Diana, and a Bacchic procession. Of two ancient circular altars, one serves as the pedestal of a bearded Dionysius. 'Noah's Sacrifice' is a large but feeble work of Pletro Ju Cortona. The ith Gallery— 387. Quentin Matsijs. The Misers. 4(18. Rvbeiu. Portrait of a Monk who was the confessor of the artist. 414. Titian (called Pariienone). The Daughter of Herodias. A grand bust of .Andrea Doria. 418. A feehle Flemish imitation of Leonardo da Vinci. Joanna of Arragon. 4'i-2. Garoj'alo (ascribed to L'Ortolano). The Nativity— a beautiful picture. ' In the whole immense range of rooms of the Palazzo Doria, I saw but a single fireplace, and that so deep in the wall that no amount of blaze would raise the atmiisphere of the room ten degrees. If the builder of the palace, or any of his successors, have committed crimes worthy of Tophet, it would be a still worse piniishinent to him to wander perpetually through this suite of rooms, on the cold tloora of polished brick tiles, or marble, or mosaic, growing a little chillier and chillier through every moment of eternity, or at least till the palace crumbles down upon him.' — Ilaivtiiurne, ' \otf's on liah/.' Opposite the Palazzo Doria is the Palazzo Salviati, where Cardinal de Bernis, the favourite of Madame du Earri, held his court ; and received 'Mesdames' — Tantes du Roi — when thej' fled from the Chateau de Bellevue at the Great Revolution. The next two streets on the left lead into the long narrow square, Piazza Santi Apostoli (where General Oudinot returned public thanks after the capture of Rome by the French, June 29, 1849), containing several handsome palaces. That on the riglit is the Palazzo Odescalchi, built by Bernini, in 1660, for Cardinal Fabio Chigi, to whose family it formerly belonged. It has some fine painted and carved wooden ceilings. This palace is supposed to be the scene of one of the latest miracles of the Roman Catholic Church. The Princess Odescalchi had long been bedridden, and was apparently dying of a hopeless disease, when, while her family were watching what they considered her last moments, the Pope (Pius IX.) sent, by the hands of a nun, a little loaf (panctcUo), which he desired her to swallow. With terrible effort the sick woman obeyed, and was immediately healed, and on the following day the astonished Romans saw her go in person to the Pope, at the Vatican, to return thanks for her restoration 1 The Palazzo Colonna 63 The building at the end of the square is the Palazzo Valentini, now the Prefettura, which once contained a collection of antiquities. In the courtyard were a number of curious heads of animals, now in the Museo delle Terme. Near this, on the left, but separated from the piazza by a court- yard, is the vast Palazzo Colonna, begun in the fifteenth century by Martin V., and continued at various later periods. Martin V. resided here with his kindred, considering the Colonna Palace more secure than the Vatican. The people tried to force his successor (Eugenius IV.) to live here also. Julius II. at one time made the palace his residence, and also Cardinal (afterwards San Carlo) Borromeo. Part of it is now a residence for French ambassadors. The palace is built very near the site of the ancient fortress of the Colonna family — so celebrated in times of mediaeval warfare with the Orsini — of which one lofty tower still remains in a street lead- ing up to the Quirinal. The GMery, shown from 11 to 3 on Tuesdays and Saturdays, can only now be entered at No. 17 Via della Pilotta — the pictur- esque street at the back of the palace. Hence you at once reach the Great Hall, a truly grand room, hung with mirrors and painted with flowers by Mario de' Fiori, and with genii by Maratta. The statues here are unimportant. The ceiling is adorned with paintings, by Coli and Gherardi, of the battle of Lepanto, Oct. 8, 1571, which Marc -Antonio Colonna assisted in gaining. The best pictures are the family portraits : Federigo Colonno, Suster- manns ; Don Carlo Colonna, Vandylce ; Card. Pompeio Colonna, Lorenzo Lotto ; Vittoria Colonna, Muziano ; Lucrezia Colonna, Vandyke (the best work of the artist in Rome) ; Pompeio Colonna, Agnstino Caracci ; Giacomo Sciarra Colonna, Gioryione. We may also notice an extraordinary picture of the Madonna rescuing a child from a demon, by Niccolo d' Aluymo, with two male figures by Tintoret. Near the entrance are some glorious old cabinets, inlaid with ivory and lapis-lazuli. On the steps leading to the upper end of the hall is a bomb left on the spot where it fell during the siege of Rome in 1848. 'The Galleria is itself too brilliant a picture for the pictures which it con- tains.'— i*'orsi/f/i. From the lower end of the Great Hall, on the right, we enter — The 1st Room. The ceiling has a fresco, by Battoni and lAiti, of the apotheosis of Martin V. (Oddone Colonna, 1417-24) — the Colonnas rise from the grave bearing the column, the heraldic emblem of their race. The pictures include — Paolo Veronese. A portrait. Holbein. Lorenzo Colonna. Ann. Caracci. Peasant dining. Titian. Onuphrio Pavinio. ^ Giov. Bellini? S. Bernard. The Srd Room has an interesting collection of the early schools, including Madonnas of Filippo Lippi, Luca Longhi, Botticelli, 64 Walks in Rome Gentile da Fubriano, Innoccnzo da J viola ; a curious Crucifixion, bv Jacopo d' Arati:o; and a portrait by Giovanni Sanzio, father of llallaelle. These lead into a fine, gloomy old hall, containing the family dais, and hung with decaying Colonna portraits. Then come three rooms covered with tapestries, the last containing a pretty statue of a girl, not often shown, sometimes called Niobe. (Through the palace access may be obtained to the beautiful Colonna Gardens ; but as they are generally visited from the Quiriual they will be noticed in the description of the hill.) ' On piirle d'un Pierre Colonna, depouillu de tons ses biens en 1100 par le pape Pascal II. 11 fallait nue la famille, fiit diija passablement ancienne, car les grandes fortunes ne sVlevent pas en un ]q\\v.'— About. ' Si'l n"etoit le different des Ursins et de Colonnois [Orsini and Colonna] la terrc de I'Eglise seroit la plus heureuse habitation pour les subjects, qui soit en tout le mowiXe.'—Phillippe de Comims, 1500. ' Gloriosa Colonna, in cui s' appoRgia Nostra speranza, e '1 gran nonie latino, Ch' ancor non torse dal vero taniniino L' ira di Giove per ventosa pioggia.' — Petrarca, Sonetto x. Adjoining the I'alazzo Colonna is the fine Chiirch of the Santi Apostoli, founded in the si.Kth century, rebuilt by Martin V. in 112ft, and modernised, c. 1602, by Fontana. The fac^ade is by Meo del Caprino. The portico contains a magnificent bas-relief of an eagle and an oak-wreath (frequently copied and introduced in architectural designs), brought from the Forum of Trajan. ' Entrez sous le portique de I'eglise des Saints-Apotres, et vous trouverez la, encadru par hasard dans le niur, un aigle qu'entoure una couronne dun magni- tlque travail. Vous reconnaitrez facilenient dans cet aigle et cette couronne la representation d'une enseigne roinaine, telle que les bas-reliefs de la colonne Trajane vous en ont niontre plusieurs ; seulement ce qui 6tait lii en petit est ici en grand.' — Ampere, Emp. ii. 108. Beneath the eagle is a quaint thirteenth-century lion — ' opus magistri Vassallecti ' — removed, since the change of Government, from the front of the church towards the piazza. The famous calix marmoreus — a vase mentioned in the Bull of John III., A.D. 570, by which the boundary-line of the parish was determined — has been removed to the Baths of Diocletian. Also in the portico is a DQonument, by Canova, to Volpato the engraver. The church is the stately burial-place of the bouse of Colonna. Over the sacristy door is also the tomb of Pope Clement XIV. (Giov. Antonio Ganganelli, 17G9-74), also by Canova, executed in his twenty-fifth year. Clement XIV. was the last Pope who took part in the public procession of the 'cavalcata' to the Lateran (Nov. 26, 1769), riding, as Popes had always done hitherto, upon a white palfrey, covered with a crimson velvet gold - embi'oidered saddle-cloth. He was supposed to have died from poison administered bv the Jesuits (Sept. 30, 1774). The Santi Apostoli 65 ' The nature of the Pope's illness, and all the circumstances of his death, make every one believe it could not be natural.' — Cardinal de Bernis. ' Mori Clemente, e il siio niorir fatale Fa iniprinierci nel cuore alto spavento Che nel trasse al lugubre funerale D' occulta man venetico ardimento.' — Contemporary Verses. 'La mort de Clement XIV. est du 22 Septembre 1774. A cette 6poque, Alphonse de Liguori etait eveque de Sainte-Agathe des Goths, au royaume de Naples. Le 22 Septembre, au matin, I'eveque tomba dans une espece de sommeil lethargique apres avoir dit la messe, et, pendant vingt-ciuatre heures, il demeura sans mouvement dans son fauteuil. Ses serviteurs s'etonnant de cet etat, le lendeniain, avec lui : " Vous ne savez pas," leur dit-il, " que j'ai assiste le pape que vient de mourir." Pen apres, la nouvelle du dices de Clement arriva k Sainte-Agathe.'— Gownierie, ' Chretienne,' ii. 362. In 1873 the traditional grave of S. Philip and S. James the Less, the ' Apostoli ' to whom this church is dedicated, was opened during its restoration. Two bodies were found, enclosed in a sarcophagus of beautiful transparent marble, and have been duly enshrined. In the choir are two beautiful monuments of the fifteenth century ; on the left is that with an admirable portrait-statue to Piero Riario, the profligate and luxurious nephew of Sixtus IV., made cardinal at twenty-five, who flaunted his mistresses in attire of such surpassing costliness that even their slippers were em- broidered with pearls. On the right is the monument, with a portrait, of Cardinal Raffaello Riario, and beneath it the tomb of Giraud Auseduno, who married a niece of Pope Julius II. and was maitre-d'hotel (' familiae praefectus ') to Charles VIII. and Louis XII. of France. The tomb of Cardinal Bessarion was re- moved from the church in 1702 to the cloisters of the adjoining Convent, which is the residence of the General of the Order of ' Minori Conventuali ' (Black Friars). The altarpiece, by Muratori, represents the martyrdom of SS. Philip and James. Against the second pillar on the right is the monument of the heart of Maria Clementina Sobieski (buried in S. Peter's), wife of James III., called the Old Pretender, as is shown by the inscription, ' Hie Clementinae remanent praecordia, nam cor coelestis fecit ne superesset amor.' ' Le roi d'Angleterre est diSvot a I'excfes ; sa matinee se passe en priferes aux Saints- Apfltres, pres du tombeau de sa femme.' — De Brasses, 1739. Here also the ' Old Pretender' (Chevalier de S. George) himself lay in state for five days, crowned, sceptred, and in royal robes, under a canopy inscribed — ■' Jacobus, Magnae Britanniae Rex, Anno MDCCLXVL' In 1552 the church was remarkable for the sermons of the monk Felix Peretti, afterwards Sixtus V. ' Suivant un manuscrit de la bibliotheque Alfieri, un jour, pendant qu'il (§taie dans la chaire des Saints-Apotres, un Ijillet cachete lui fut remis ; Fr6re Felix I'ouvre et y lit, en face d'un certain nombre de propositions que Ton disait etr. extraites de ses discours, ce mot ecrit en gros caractores : MENTIRIS (tu mens) VOL. I. E 6G Walks in Rome Le (ouKueux oriiUiur cut peine ii coiitunir son t-motion ; il terniiiia son sermon en (luehiuea piiroles, et courut an jmlais de llnquisition presenter le billet mysteri- fiix et (Icnianiler cin'on exaniinat sc-rupuleuseinent sa doctrine. Cet examen lui fut favoralile, et it lui valiit laniitie du grand in the value of 6000 scudi. The Sacred College and the Spanish coiu-t came with their liberal offerings of gold. He was baptized by the names of Charles Edward Louis Cashmr.'— Dublin Jieview, p. 245. Cardinal York used to drive hither from Albano with four horses, full gallop, attended by running footmen, who were so active and well-trained that they could tire out the fleetest horse.^ Sir Horace 1 Silvagni. Piazza di Venezia 67 Mann mentions in one of his letters (May 2, 1772) that the Romans used to call the wife of Charles Edward ' Regina apostolorum,' from the situation of her palace.^ The Palazzo Savorelli has buried the site of the central office of the Roman Vigiles or firemen. It was discovered under the Palace in 164i, and consisted of huge walls with mosaic pavements and statues. There were seven main stations (stationes) and fourteen offshoots (excubitoria) of the fire brigade in Rome. Returning to the Corso, we pass (right) Palazzo Bonaparte (for- merly D'Asti), built by Giovanni dei Rossi in 1660. There is a gigantic statue of Napoleon I. opposite the foot of the staircase. Here Laetitia Bonaparte — ' Madame Mere ' — the mother of Napoleon I., three kings and a queen, lived in dignified simplicity, and died February 2, 183G. When she was dying, the porter, for a fee of one scudo, used to let people in to look at her through the crevices of a screen.- The Roman Princes Bonaparte represent the fusion of the two lines of Joseph and Lucien, brothers of Napoleon I. The recent head of the family was Cardinal Lucien-Louis Bonaparte, son of Prince Charles (son of Lucien) and of Princess Zenaide, daughter of King Joseph of Spain. His only surviving brother is Prince Charles. This palace forms one corner of the Piazza di Venezia, which contains the ancient castellated Palace of the Republic of Venice, erected in 1468 by Meo del Caprino and Giacomo di Pietrasanta, with materials plundered from the Coliseum. It was built for the firm, sagacious, and merciful Pope Pius II., who was of Venetian birth. He built it as cardinal, and continued after his election to make it his chief residence in preference to the Vatican. The Capitoline Museum owes its best bronzes to the collection formed here by Pius II. On the ruin of the republic the palace fell into the hands of Austria, and is still the residence of the Austrian ambassador, to whom it was specially reserved on the cession of Venice to Italy. Opposite this, on a line with the Corso, is the Palazzo Torlonia (formerly Frangipani), built by Fontana in 1650 for the Bolognetti family. The family of Torlonia was founded by Giovanni, mercer and draper, born in 1754. He rose as a banker under Pius VI. and VII., was created marquis, duke, and prince, and united his sons and daughters with princely families. ' Nobility is certainly more the fruit of wealth in Italy than in England. Here, where a title and estate are sold together, a man who can buy the one secures the other. From the station of a lacquey, an Italian who can amass riches may rise to that of duke. Thus, Torlonia, the Roman banker, who purchased the title and estate of the Duca di Bracciano, fitted up the " Palazzo Nuovo di Tor- lonia" with all the magnificence that wealth commands, and a marble gallery, with its polished floors, modern statues, painted ceilings, and gilded furniture, 1 The proclamation of James III. exhibited at the market-cross of Edinburgh in '45, his shoe-buckles, and the communion plate of Cardinal York, are pre- served at the Scotch College in Via Quattro Fontane. '^ Dr. Wellesley's Reminiscences. G8 Walks in Rome far (lutshinea the fiideil siilciulour of the halls of ilie olil Koiiian nobility.'— ikiton'n ' Hiniie.' ' In anclen doinestlque de place, devenu spiculateur et bantiuier, achate un maniuisat, puis une principautt'. II crte un niujoiat pour son tils ain6 et une secomle giiiituie un faveur de I'autre. L'un epoiise une Sforza-Cesaiini et marie 808 deux ttls ii une Chici et une Rnsi)oli ; I'autre obtient pour fenime une Colonna- l><)riu. Cest ainsi que la famille Torlonia, par la puissance de I'argent et la faveur du salnt-pi;re, s'est 61evce pres. 14—' beaming with dignity and personal charm.' 'His featui'es were quiet and cheerful, whether he spoke or was silent,'— Suetonius, 3. Marcelhis, his nephew and son-in-law, son of Octavia, ob. B.C. 23, aged 20. 4. 5. Tiberius, Imp. A.D. 14-37. ' In spite of the curved nose— the Roman nose, so seldom seen in Rome — Tiberius has so strong a family likeness to his stepfather that many have sus- pected a nearer relationship between them.'— Tifctor Hydberg. 6. Drusus, his brother, son of Livia and Claudius Nero, ob. B.C. 10. 7. Drusus, son of Tiberius and Vipsania, ob. A.D. 23. 8. Anto!iia, daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia, wife of the elder Drusus, mother of Gennanicus and Claudius. 9. Germanicus, son of Urusus and Antonia, ob. A.D. 19. J.O. Agrippina, daughter of .Julia and Agrippa, grand-daughter of Augustus, wife of Germanicus. Died of starvation under Tiberius, A.D. 33. 'Colloquium ftlii e.\poscit, ubi nihil pro innocentia, quasi difftderet, nee beneflciis, quasi exprobaret di.ssernit, sed ultionem in delatores et praeniia amicis obtinuit.' — Tacitun, Ann. xiii. 21. 11. Caligula, Imp. A.D. 37-41, son of Germanicus and Agrippina. Murdered by the tribune Chaerea (a noble l)ust in basalt). ' That imperial maniac, whose portrait in green liasalt, with the stain of dire mental tension on the forehead, is still so beautiful that we are ai)le at this distance of time to pity more than loathe him.' — J. A. Symonds. 'The head is turned slightly aside, the brow thunders, the eyes lighten, the fine mouth is pressed wrathfully and scornfully tcjgether; but one can at once see that this look is counterfeited or i)ractiseil ; it is still only the theatre tyrant, with features according to rule. " His whole exterior," says Tacitus, "was an imitation of that which Tiberius had put on for the day, and he spoke almost with the words of the latter." ' — Viktor Rydberg. 12, Claudius, Imp. AD. 41-54, younger son of Drusus and Antonia. Poisoned by his wife Agrippina the younger. ' A well-formed head, against which, from the point of view of beauty, one can hardly note anything, but that the oval of the face is too compressed. 'The broad forehead is overcast with clouds of melancholy. The eyes disclose, with their unsteady, sad, and kindly look, a plodding and suffering spirit, that is conscious of its noble birth, but unable to maintain its freedom.' — Viktor Rydlcrtj. Hall of the Emperors 85 13. Messalina, third wife of Claudius. Put to death l)y Claudius, a.d. 48— the dressing of the hair characteristic and curious. ' Une grosse comrafere sensuelle, aux traits bouttis, u I'air assez conimun, niais qui pouvait plaire a Claude.' — Ampere, Emp. ii. 32. 14. Agrippina the younger, sixth wife of Claudius, daughter of Gernianicus and Agrippina the elder, great-grand-daughter of Augustus. Murdered by her son Nero, A.u. 60. ' Ce buste la niontre avec cette beaute plus grande (lue celle de sa ni6re, et qui 6tait po\ir elle un nioyen. Agrippine a les yeux lev^s vers le ciel ; on dirait qu'elle craint, et qu'elle attend.' — E»ip. ii. 34. 15. 16. Nero, Imp. A.D. 54-69, son of Agrippina the younger by her first husliand, Ahenobarltus. Died by his own hand. ' Suetonius says that the features of Nero were more handsome than engaging His hair, like that of all the Domitians, was liglit-brown, his eyes were bluish- grey.' — Viktor Rydherg. 17. Poppaea Saljina (?), the beautiful second wife of Nero. Killed by a kick from her husband, A.D. 62. I'he extravagance of Poppaea was so great that, when she travelled, she took with her 500 she-asses, that she might not fail to have her bath of milk every morning. ' Ce visage a la delicatesse presque enfantine que pouvait ofTrir celui de cette fenime, dont les moUes recherches et les soins curieux de toilette (Staient cel6bres, et dont Diderot a dit avec V(5rite, bien qu'avec un peu d'emphase, "C'etait une furie sous le visage des graces." ' — Emp. ii. 38. 18. Galba, Imp. A.D. 69. Murdered in the Forum— full of character. 19. Otho, Imp. A.D. 69. Died by his own hand. 20. Vitellius (?), Imp. A.D. 69. Murdered at the Scalae Gemoniae— a coarse, sensuous face. 21. Vespasian, Imp. A.D. 70-79. 22. Titus, Imp. A.D. 79-81, son of Vespasian and Domitilla. Supposed to have been poisoned hy his brother Domitian— a grand bust. ' With the Flavians, a coarser mould of features comes on ; "the urbane " gives way for a something rustic, the aesthetic for a something common. The honest, good-humoured, ))Ut stingy toll-officer, who was a father of this house, plainly has handed down his face to Vespasian and Titus.'— Viktor Rydherg. 23. Julia, daughter of Titus. 24. Domitian, Imp. A.D. 81-96, second son of Vespasian and Domitilla. Mur- dered in the Palace of the Caesars. ' Domitien est sans comparaison le plus beau des trois Flaviens ; niais c'est une beauts formidable, avec un air farouche et faux.' — Emp. ii. 12. 25. Doniitia Longina(?), wife of Domitian. 26. Nerva (?), Imp. A.D. 96. Elected by the people, after the murder of Domitian. 27. Trajan, Imp. A.D. 98-118. Adopted son of Nerva. 28. Plotina, wife of Trajan— one of the most striking portraitures in this collection. 29. Marciana, sister of Trajan. 30. Matidia, daughter of Marciana, niece of Trajan. 31. 32. Hadrian, Imp. A.D. 118-138, adopted son of Trajan. 33. Julia Sabina, wife of Hadrian, daugliter of Matidia — very regal. 34. Elius Verus, first adopted son of Hadrian. 35. Antoninus Pius, Imp. a.d. 138-101, second adopted son of Hadrian. ' Seldom does the quiet and gentle strength of moral will shine forth from the features of a Roman emperor as from the glorious face of Antoninus Pius.' — Viktor Rydherg. ' I saw a calm and Princely Presence come. Who, stately as tlie imperial jmrple, bore His robe, a saint in mien, mild, innocent. Perfect in manhood, with clear eye serene, And lofty port ; who from the sages took What lessons earth could give, but trod no less 86 Walks in Rome The toilsome patli of Duty to the end ; Ami as he i)assed I knew the kin^'ly ghost (If Aiitonius, who knew not Christ indeed, Yet not the less was His. I marked the calm And thonghtful face of him who ruled himself, And through himself the world.'— Leit'w Morris. 36. Faustina the elder, wife of Antoninus Pius and sister of Elius Verus. 37. Manus .\urelius. Imp. A. P. 161-180, son of Servianus by Paulina, sister of Hadrian, adopted hy Antoninus Pius, as a hoy. 38. Marcus Aurelius, in later life. 3!). Annia Faustina, wife of Marcus Aurelius, daughter of Antoninus Pius and Faustina the elder. 40. Galerius Antoninus, son of Antoninus Pius. 41. Lucius Verus, son-in-law of Marcus Aurelius. 42. Lucilla, wife of Lucius Verus, daughter of ^[arcus Aurelius and Faustina the younger. Put to death at Capri for a plot against her husband. 43. Conimodus. Imp. A.D. lSO-193, son of Marcus Aurelius and Faustina. Murdered in the Palace of the Caesars— handsome and sensuous. 44. Crispina, wife of Conimodus. Put to death by her husband at Capri. 4,'). Pertinax, Imp. A.D. 193, successor of Coramodus, reigned three months. Murdered in the Palace of the Caesars. 46. Didius .Tulianus. Imp. A.D. 193, successor of Pertinax. Murdered In the Palace of the Caesars. 47. Manila Scantilla (?), wife of Didius Julianus. .- _ ■ XT- ^ rivalcandidates(aftermurderof Didius .Julianus, A.D. 48. Pescennius JNiger ] ^^^^ ^ ^j^g Empire, which they failed to obtain, 49. Clodius Albinus \ ^J ,^g,.g ^^^^j^ pj.^ ^^ ^^^^^ 50. 51. Septimius Severus, Imp. A.D. 193-211, successor of Didius Julianus. 52. Julia Pia, wife of Septimius Severus — with a movable wig. 53. Caracalla, Imp. A.D. 211-217, son of Septimius Severus and Julia Pia. Murdered. The cruel shrewdness of this emperor is always marvellously por- trayed in his busts, which are of perhaps the best period of Roman portraiture. 54. Geta, brother of Caracalla. by whose order he was murdered in the arms of Julia Pia. 55. Macrinus, Imp. A.D. 217, murderer and successor of Caracalla. Murdered. 56. Diadunienianus, son of Macrinus. Murdered with his father. 57. Heliogabaius, Imp. A.D. 218-222, son of Julia Soemis, daughter of Julia Maesa, who was sister of Julia Pia. Murdered. 58. Annia Faustina, third wife of Heliogabaius, great-grand-daughter of Marcus Aurelius— with coloured marble drapery. 50. Julia Maesa, sister-in-law of Septimius Severus, aunt of Caracalla and grandmother of Alexander Severus. 60. Alexander Severus, Imp., son of Julia Mamaea, second daughter of Julia Maesa. Murdered at the age of 28. 61. Julia Mamaea, daughter of Julia Maesa, and mother of Alexander Severus. Murdered with her son. 62. Julius Maximinus, Imp. A.D. 235-238 ; elected by the army. Murdered. 63. Maximus. Murdered with his father at the age of 18 — a very fine bust. 64. Gordianus Africanus, Imp. A.D. 238 ; a descendant of Trajan. Died by his own hand. 65. (Antoninus) Gordianus, Junior, Imp. A.D. 238, son of Gordianus Africanus and Fabia Orestella, great-grand-daughter of Antoninus Pius. Died in battle. 66. Pupienus, Imp. A.D. 238 ) reigned together for four months and then were 67. Kalbinus, Imp. A.D. 238 J murdered. 68. Gordianus Pius, Imp. A.D. 238, grandson, through his mother, of Gordianus Africanus. Murdered. 69. Philip II., Imp. A.D. 244, son of, and co-emperor with Philip I. Murdered. 70. Decius (?), Imp. A.D. 249-251. Forcibly elected by the army. Killed in battle. 71. Quintus Herennius Etruscus, son of Decius and Herennia Etruscilla. Killed in battle with his father. 72. Hostilianus, son or son-in-law of Decius, Imp. a.d. 251, with Treb. Gallus. Murdered. 73. Trebonianus Gallus, Imp. A.D. 251-254. Murdered. Hall of Illustrious Men 87 74, 75. Volusianus, son of Trebonianus Gallus. Murdered. 76. Gallienus, Imp. a.d. 261-268. Murdered— a low type of bad face. 77. Salonina, wife of Gallienus. 78. Saloninus, son of Gallienus and Salonina. Put to death by Postumus, A.D. 259, at the age of 17. 79. Marcus Aurelius Carinus, Imp. A.D. 283, son of tlie Emperor Carus. Murdered. SO. Diocletian, Imp. A.D. 284-305 ; elected by the army. 81. Constantius Chlorus, Imp. A.D. 305-306, son of Eutropius and Claudia, niece of the Emperor Claudius II. and Quintilius ; father of Constantine the Great. ' Rude soldiers now change with dull stewards of the realm, and the peculi- arities of both kinds unite in a repulsive whole in Constantius Chlorus and Constantine. ' — Viktor Rydber/j. 82. Julian the Apostate, Imp. A.D. 361-363, son of Julius Constantius and nephew of Constantine the Great. Died in battle. 83. Magnus Decentius, brother of the Emperor Magnentius. Strangled him- self, A.D. 353 ;— with the characteristics of mediaeval sculpture. ' In their busts the lips of the Roman emperors are generally closed, indicating reserve and dignity, tree from human passions and emotions.' — Winckelmann. ' At Rome the emperors become as familiar as the popes. Who does not know the curly-headed Marcus Aurelius, with his lifted brow and projecting eyes— from the full round beauty of his youth to the more haggard look of his latest years ? Are there any modern portraits more familiar than the severe wedge-like head of Augustus, with his sharp-cut lips and nose,— or the dull phiz of Hadrian, with his hair combed down over his low forehead,— or the vain, perking face of Lucius Verus, with his thin nose, low Ijrow, and profusion of curls, — or the brutal bull head of Caracalla,— or the bestial bloated features of Vitellius? ' These men, who were but lay figures to us at school, mere pegs of names to hang historic robes upon, thus interpreted by the living history of their portraits, the incidental illustrations of the i)laces where they lived and moved and died, and the buildings and monuments they erected, become like men of yesterday. Art has made them our contemporaries. They are as near to us as Pius VII. and Napoleon.' — Story's ' Roba di Roma.' ' Nerva est le premier des bons, et Trajan le premier des grands empereurs romains ; apres lui il y en cut deux autres, les deux Antonins. Trois sur soix- ante-dix, tel est h, Rome le bilan des gloires morales de I'empire.'— ^mpt-re. Hist. Rom. liii. Among the reliefs round the upper walls of this room are two, of Endymion sleeping and of Perseus delivering Andromeda, which belongto the set in the Palazzo Spada, and are exceedingly beautiful. The Hall of Illustrious Men contains a seated statue called M. Claudius Marcellus (?), the conqueror of Syracuse, B.C. 212. Eound the room are ranged ninety-three busts of ancient philosophers, statesmen, and warriors. Among the more important are : — 4, 5, 6. Socrates. 48. Cneius Domitius Corbulo, general under Claudius and Nero. 49. Scipio Africanus. 52. Cato Minor. 54. Aspasia(?). 55. Cleopatra (?). 60. Thucydides(?). 9. Aristides the orator. 10. Seneca (?). 16. Marcus Agrippa, son-in-law of Augustus— a grand bust. 19. Theophrastus. 23. Thales. 25. Theon. 27. Pythagoras. 61. Aeschines 28. Alexander the Great (?). i 62, 64. Epicurus. 30. Aristophanes. ' 63. Epicurus and Metrodorus. 31. Demosthenes. ; 68, 69. Masinissa. 38. Aratus. : 71. Antisthenes. 39, 40. Democritus of Abdera. : 72, 73. Julian the Apostate. 42, 43. Euripides. ' 76. Cicero. 44, 45, 46. Homer. i 77. Terence. 47. Eumenides. I 83. Aeschylus (?). 88 Walks in Rome Amonpr the interestinf^ bas-reliefs in tliis room is one of a Roman interior with a lady trying to persuade her cat to dance to a lyre — the cat. meanwhile, snapping, on its hind-legs, at two dncks ; the detail of the room is given, even to the slippers under the bed. A relief of three dancing girls and a fawn is inscribed with the name of tlie Greek artist — Callimachus. The Saloon contains, down the centre — 1. Jupiter (in nero-antico), from Porto d'Aiizio, on an altar with figures of Meri'ury, Apollo, and Uiaiia. 2. 4. Centaurs (in bi>rio-niorato), by ArMeas and Papian (tlieir names are on tlie bases), from Hadrian's Villa. ' Both the youthful and the elder Centaur, we infer from copies, oriccinally carried a winged cupid. While, however, the youthful Centaur is enduring his teasing rider with laughing humour, the elder one, with fettered arms, is sighing over the pain which the tyrannical God of Love is preparing for him. This in- geiuous idea iinlicates an older Greek original, and the choice of black marble, as Well as the technical skill eviu jnced in its treatment, seem to infer that the artists worked after a bronze production.' — Liihke. 3. The young Hercules— in basalt, found in the Vigna irasslmi on the Aventine. It stands on an altar of .lupiter. '()n voit au Capitole une statue d'Hercule trfes-jeune, en basalte, qxxi frappe assez desagreablenient, d'abord, par le contraste, hal)ilement e.xpriine toutefois, des formes molles de I'eufance et de la vigueur caracteristique du heros. L'imita- tion de la Grece se montre mume dans la matieie que I'artiste a choisie ; c'est un basalte verditre, de couleur sombre. Tisagoras et Alcon avaient fait un Hercule en fer, pour exprimer la force, et, comme dit Pliue, pour signifier I'energie per- 8ev6rante du dieu.' — Ampere, flist. Horn. iii. 406. 5. Aesculapius (in nero-antico), on an altar, representing a sacrifice. Among the statues and busts round the room the more important are : — 6. A Faun— one of the s.ame type as that in rosso-antico. 9. Trajan— a colossal bust. 10. Augustus— a naked figure. 12. An athlete — the head most beautiful. 1.3 Hadrian— a 'naked figure, with the attribute of Mars— from Ceprano. 17. Minerva— of rigid archaic sculpture. 21. Beautiful male statue of the time of Hadrian— the lower part of the figure draped. 22. Hecuba. ' Nous avons le persoimage mfime d'Hdcube dans la Pleureuse du Capitole. Cette priitendue pleureuse est une Hecnbe furieuse et une H^cube en scene, car elle portc le co.stnine, elle a le geste et la vivacit6 du theatre, je dirais volontiers de la iiantominie. . . . Son regard est tourn6 vers le ciel, sa bouche lance des imprecations : on voit iiu'elle pourra faire entendre ces hurlenients, ces aboie- meiits de la douleur effren^e que I'antiquit^ voulut exprimer en supposant que la malheureuse Hecube avait 6te m6tamorphosee en chienne, une chienne 4 laquelle on a arrache ses petits.'—Aviphe, Hist. Rom. iii. 408. 25. Colossal bust of Antoninus Pius. The Hall of the Faun derives its name from the famous Faun of rosso-aiitico, holding a bunch of grapes to his mouth, found in Hadrian's Villa. It stands on an altar dedicated to Serapis. Against the right wall is a magnificent sarcophagus (No. 18), whose reliefs (much studied by Flaxman) represent the battle of Theseus Hall of the Dying Gladiator 89 and the Amazons. The opposite sarcopliagus (No. 3), found under the Church of S. Eustachio, has a relief of Diana and Endymion. We should also notice — S. A boy with a mask. 16. A boy with a goose (found near the Laturan). 21. A beautiful eyeless bust of Ariadne. Let into the wall is a black tablet — the Lex Regia or Senatus Consultum, conferring imperial powers upon Vespasian, being the very table upon which Rienzi declaimed in favour of the rights of the people. The Hall of the Dying Gladiator contains the three gems of the collection — 1. The Gladiator— from the jiavdens of Sallust. 10. The Kauii of Praxiteles— the best copy extant. 12. The Antinous of the Capitol — from the villa of Hadrian. ' The identity of the Capitoline Antinous may be reckoned more than doubtful. The head is almost certainly not his. How it came to be placed upon a body presenting so much resemblance to the type of Antinous, I do not know. Careful comparison of the toiso and the arms with an indubitaljle portrait will even raise the question whether this fine statue is not a Hermes or a hero of an earlier age. Its attitude suggests Narcissus or Adonis ; and under either of these forms Antinous may properly have been idealised.'— J^. A. Symonds. Besides these we should notice — 2. Majestic female statue — sometimes called Juno. 3. Head of Alexander the Great. 4. Amazon, from the Villa d'Este. 5. Head of Bacchus— magniflcent. 7. Apollo with the lyre. 9. Statuette of a little girl defending a bird from a snake. 16. Bust of M. Junius Brutus, the assassin of Julius Caesar. ' Tu quoque, Brute.' In the centre of the room is the grand statue of the wounded Gaul, generally known as the Dying Gladiator. ' I see before me the gladiator lie : He leans upon his hand— his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony, And his drooped head sinks gradually low, — And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, Like the first of a thunder-shower ; and now The arena swims around him — he is gone. Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won. He heard it, but he heeded not — his eyes Were with his heart, and that was far away ; He reck'd not of the life he lost, nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay. There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian mother — he, their sire, Butchered to make a Roman holiday. All this rushed with his blood — shall he expire, And unavenged ? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire ! ' — Byron, ' Childe Harold. It is delightful to read in this room the description in Trans- formation : — 00 Walks in Rome ' It was that room, in the centre of which reclines the noble and most pathetic llt;ure of the dying gladiator, jnst sinking into his v'as adorned with numerous statues, in which the figure of Trajan was frequently 108 Column of Trajan 109 repeated, and among its decorations were groups in bronze or marble, repre- senting liis most illustrious actions. The balustrades and cornices of the whole mass of buildings flamed with gilded images of arms and horses. Here stood the great eciuestrian statue of the emperor ; here was the triumphal arch decreed him by the senate, adorned with sculpture, which Constantine, two centuries later, transferred without a blush to his own, a barbarous act of this first Christian emperor, to which, however, we probably owe their preservation to this day from more barbarous spoliation.' — Menvale, '■Romans under the Umpire,' ch. Ixiii. The beautiful Column of Trajan, the best of Roman princes, called Columna Cochlis, from its winding stairs like the spiral of a shell, was erected by the senate and people of Rome a.d. 114, to show the height of the mound levelled by the emperor — ad dcclar- andum quantae altitiulinis mons et locus sit egestus. It is composed of thirty-four blocks of marble, and is covered with a spiral band of bas-reliefs illustrative of the Dacian wars, and increasing in size as it nearsthe top, so that it preserves throughout the same proportion when seen from below. It was formerly crowned by a statue of Trajan, holding a gilt globe, which latter is still preserved in the Hall of Bronzes in the Capitol. The statue had fallen from its pedestal long before Sixtus V. replaced it by the existing figure of S. Peter. At the foot of the column was a sepulchral chamber, intended to receive the imperial ashes, which were, however, pre- served in a golden urn, upon an altar in front of it.' ' Apostolic statues climb To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sul)lime.' — Childe Harold, ex. The triumphal Arch of Trajan, which formed the entrance to the forum, was destroyed in 1526. ' The forum of Trajan comprised seven different sections, namely, the pro- pylaia, or triumphal arch of the emperor ; the sijuare itself, with the equestrian statue in the middle ; the Basilica Ulpia ; the Bil)liotheca Ulpia ; the two hemi- cycles ; the monumental column ; and tlie temple of Trajan. The ensemble of these various sections was considered not only the masterpiece of Roman archi- tecture of the golden age, but one of the marvels of the world. Let me quote the words with which Ammianus Marcellinus (xvi. 10) describes the impression felt l)y the Emperor Constantine at the first sight of the group. "Having now entered the forum of Trajan, the most marvellous invention of human genius, — sinffularem sub omni coelo structuram, — he was struck with admiration, and looked round with amazement, without being able to utter a word, wondering at the gigantic structures, — giganteos contextus,— which no pen can describe, and which mankind can create and see only once in the course of centuries. Having consequently given up any hope of building himself anything which would approach, even at a respectful distance, the work of Trajan, he turned his atten- tion to the equestrian statue placed in the centre of the forum, and said to his attendants that he would have one like it in Constantinople." These words having been heard by Hemiisdas, a young Persian prince attached to his court, he turned quickly tovi^ards the emperor, and said, "If your Majesty wants to secure and keep such a horse, you must first provide him with a stable like this." ' — Lanciani, ' Ancient Home. ' It was while walking in this forum that Gregory the Great, observing one of the marble groups which told of a good and great 1 There are some who believe that the ashes of the emperor, in their golden urn, would even now be found buried in front of the column wliich was erected in his lifetime. 110 Walks in Rome action of Trajan, lamented bitterly that the soul of so noble a man should be lost, and prayed earnestly for the salvation of the heathen emperor. He was told" that the soul of Trajan should be saved, but thai to ensure this he must either himself undergo the pains of purgatory for three days, or suffer earthly pain and sickness for the rest of his life. He chose the latter, and never after was in health. This incident is narrated by his three biographers, John and Paul Diaconus, and John of Salisbury, and is most picturesquely told by Dante in the 10th canto of the ' Purgatorio.' The forum of Trajan was partly uncovered by Pope Paul III. in the sixteenth century, but excavated in its present form by the French in 1812. Behind the houses on the Quirinal side of the forum, remains of early-curved buildings, three storeys high, may be seen, opening on an ancient road paved with polygonal blocks of lava : they belong to one of the two hemicycles raised by Apollo- dorus on either side the forum. There is much still buried under the streets and neighbouring houses. ' All over the surface of what once was Rome it seems to be the effort of Time to bury up the ancient city, as if it were a corpse, and he the sexton ; so that, in eighteen centuries, the soil over its tjrave has grown very deep, by this slow scattering of dust, and the accumulation of more modern decay upon her older ruin. ' This was the fate, also, of Trajan's forum, until some papal antiquary, a few hundred years ago, began to hollow it out again, and disclosed the whole height of the gigantic cohunn, wreathed round with bas-reliefs of the old emperor's warlike deeds (rich sculpture, which, twining from the base to the capital, must be an ugly spectacle for his ghostly eyes, if he considers that this huge, storied shaft nmst be laid before the judgment-seat, as a piece of the evidence of what he did in the flesh). In the area before the column stands a grove of stone, consisting of the broken and unequal shafts of a vanished temple, still keeping a majestic order, and apparently incapable of further demolition. The modern edifices of the piazza (wliolly built, no doubt, out of the spoil of its old magnifi- cence) look down into the hollow space whence these pillars rise. 'One of the immense grey granite shafts lies in the piazza, on the verge of the area. It is a great, solid fact of the Past, making old Rome actually visible to the touch and eye ; and no study of history, nor force of thought, nor magic of song, can so vitally assure us that Rome once existed, as this sturdy specimen of what its rulers and people wrought. There is still a polish remaining on the hard substance of the pillar, the polish of eighteen centuries ago, as yet but half rubbed off.' — Uawthorne. On the north of this forum are two churches : that nearest to the Corso is S. Maria di Loreto (founded by the corporation of bakers in 1500), with a dome surmounted by a picturesque lantern by Giuliano di Sangallo, c. 1506. It contains a statue of S. Susanna (not the Susanna of the Elders) by Fiammingo (Fran9ois de Ques- noy), which is justly considered the c/ief-d'ceuvre of the Bernini school. The companion church is called S. Maria di Vienna or Nome di Maria, and (like S. Maria della Vittoria) commemorates the liberation of Vienna from the Turks in 1683 by Sobieski, king of Poland. It was built by Innocent XI. Leaving the forum at the opposite corner by the Via Alessandrina, and passing under the high wall of the Convent of the Nunziatina, a street, opening on the left, discloses several beautiful pillars, Temple of Mars Ultor 111 which, after having borne various names, are now declared to be the remains of the Temple of Mars Ultor, built by Augustus in his new forum, which was erected in order to provide accommodation for the crowds which overflowed the Forum Romanum and Forum Julium. 'The title of Ultor marked the war and the victory l)y which, agreeably to his vow, Augustus had avenged his luicle's death. ' "Mars, ades, et satia scelerato sanguine ferrum ; Stetque favor causa pro meliore tuus. Templa feres, et, me victore, vocaberis Ultor." ' ' The porticoes, which extended on each side of the temple with a gentle curve, contained statues of distinguished Roman generals. Tlie banquets of the Salii were transferred to the temple, a circumstance which led to its identiflca- tion, from the discovery of an inscription here recording the mansiones of these priests. Like the priesthood in general, they appear to have been fond of good living, and there is a well-known anecdote of the Emperor Claudius having been lured by the steams of their banquet from his judicial functions in the adjacent forum to come and take part in their feast. The temple was appropriated to meetings of the senate in which matters connected with wars and triumphs were debated. . . . Here, while Tiberius was building a temple to Augustus upon the Palatine, his golden statue reposed upon a couch.' — Dyer's ^ City of Rome.' ' Up to the time of Augustus, the god Mars, the reputed father of the Roman race, had never, it is said, enjoyed the distinction of a temple within the walls. He was then introduced into the city which he had saved from overthrow and ruin, and the aid he had lent in bringing the murderers of Caesar to justice was signalised by the title of avenger, by which he was now specially addressed. . . . The Temple of Mars Ultor, of gigantic proportions, "Et deus est ingens et opus," was erected in the new forum of Augustus at the foot of the Capitoline and Quirinal hills.' — Merivale, ' Rvriians under the Empire.' ' Ce temple 6tait particuliferement cher a Auguste. II voulut que les magis- trats en partissent pour aller dans leurs provinces ; que I'honneur du triomphe y fut d^cerne, et (jue les triomphateurs y flssant hommage h. Mars Vengeur de leur couronne et de leur sceptre ; que les drapeaux pris a I'ennemi y fussent conserves ; que les chefs de la cavalerie executassent des jeux en avant des marches de ce temple ; enfln que les censeurs, en sortant de leur charge, y plantassent le clou sacre, vieil usage etrusque jusque-la attache au Capitole. Auguste desirait que ce temple fonde par lui prit I'importance du Capitole. 'II fit d6dier le temple par ses petits-flls Caius et Lucius ; et son autre petit- flls, Agrippa, k la tete des plus nobles enfants de Rome, y celebra le jeu de Troie, qui rappelait I'origine pretendue troyenne de Cesar ; deux cent soixante lions furent egorg(5s dans le cirque, c'etait leur place ; deux troupes de gladia- teurs combattirent dans le Septa oii se faisaient les Elections au temps de la r6publique, comme si Auguste eut voulu, par ces combats qui se livraient en I'honneur des morts, celebrer les funerailles de la liberte romaine.' — Ampere, Emp. i. 224. The Temple of Mars stands at the north-eastern corner of the magnificent Forum of Augustus, which extended from here as far as the present Via Alessandrina, surpassing in size the Forum of Julius Caesar, to which it was adjoining. It was of sufficient size to be frequently used for fights of animals {venationes). Among its ornaments were statues of Augustus triumphant and of the subdued provinces, with inscriptions illustrative of the great deeds he had accomplished there ; also a picture by Apelles representing War 1 Ovid, Fasti, v. 575. 112 Walks in Rome with her liands bound behind her, seated upon a pile of arms. Part of the boundary wall exists, enclosing on two sides the remains of the temple of Mars Ultor, and is constructed of huge masses of peperino. 'J'lie arch in the wall close to the temple is known as Arco dei Pantani. It has voussoirs of travertine in the wall of peperino. The sudden turn in the wall here is interesting as commemorating a concession made to the wish of some pro- prietors, who were unwilling to part with their houses for the sake of the forum. 'C'est I'histoire du moulin uilt a part, and added the temple of Vespasian, and Antoninus that of Faustina.' — A. Dxi Pays. The Forum is open all day ; admission 1 fr. The excavations made in the Forum before 187G were for the most part due to the generosity of Elizabeth, Duchess of Devon- shire. About extending these the Papal Government always displayed the most extraordinary apathy, but they have been considerably increased since the fall of the Popes. While gaining in historic interest, the Forum has greatly lost in beauty since the recent discoveries. Artists will lament the beautiful trees which mingled with the temples, the groups of bovi and contadmi reposing in their shadow, and above all the lovely vegetation which imparted light and colour to the top of the ruins. As almost every vestige of verdure is carefully cleared away when it springs up, the appear- ance is that of a number of ruined sheds in a ploughed field, with some fine columns interspersed. As Forsyth truly observes, ' deep learning is generally the grave of taste.' If we stand in front of the Arch of Septimius Severus, and turn towards the Capitol, we look upon the Clivus Capitolinus. The Via Sacra, which ascended in zigzags, is now concealed by the modern causeway, but the hillside is perfectly crowded with historical sites and fragments, viz. : — 1. The modern Capitol, resting on the Tahularium. This is one of the earliest architectural relics in Kome, and is probably due to Q. Lutatius Catulus, to whom the rebuilding of the Capitol after the fire of 85 B.C. was intrusted. It is built in the Etruscan style, of huge blocks of tufa or peperino placed long and cross ways alternately. It was formerly composed of two stages called Camel- laria. Only the lower now remains. It contained the tables of the laws. The corridor which remains in the interior is used as a museum of architectural fragments. The Tabularium was the lower storey of the palace of public accounts, the Somerset House of Rome. Recent explorations have discovered chambers in which the clerks cast up the accounts in Roman figures. The Tabularium communicated by a staircase with the Aerarium in the Temple of Saturn, where the Government kept its ready money, in which pay- ment for both army and civil service was always made. 'The Tabularium is a grand edifice, one of the most considerable of the brightest epoch of the repuldic . . . which deserves our fullest admiration.'— Emil Braun. 2. On the right of the excavated space, and nearest the Tabu- larium, is the supposed site of the Tribune, in front of which were the earlier Rostra, removed by Julius Caesar to another site in 44 B.C. 3. Below, a little more to the right, is a site, sometimes sup- posed to be that of the Senaculum, where the senate met before 116 Walks in Rome entering the Curia, sometimes ol' the first Comitium, where the survivor of the Horatii was condemned to death, and saved by the voice of the people. Here would have been the trophied pillar which bore the arms of the Curiatii. 4. A little more to the left is the site of the Vulcanal, so called from an altar dedicated to Vulcan, a platform (still defined) where, in the earliest times, Romulus and Tatius' used to meet on inter- mediate ground and transact affairs common to both ; and where Brutus was seated when, without any change of countenance, he saw his two sons beaten and beheaded. Adjoining the Vulcanal was the Graecostasis, where foreign ambassadors waited before they were admitted to an audience of the senate. 5. Below the Vulcanal, and just behind the Arch of Severus, is the site of the Temple of Concord, founded by Camillus, B.C. 367, and rebuilt and dedicated with blasphemous inappropriateness, B.C. 121, by the consul Opimius, immediately after the murder of Caius Gracchus. The temple was again rebuilt under Augustus. Here Cicero pronounced his orations against Catiline before the senate. The cclla contained eleven niches, in which masterpieces of Greek art were placed. The podium, with a pavement of coloured marbles, remains ; a beautiful fragment of the cornice is preserved in the upper arcade of the Tabularium. The portico of the Temple of Concord was seen entire by Poggio Bracciolini in c. 1405, but was destroyed in his lifetime. At the base of the temple are still to be seen some small remains of the Colonna Maenia, which was sur- mounted by the statue of C. Maenius, who decorated the rostra with the iron beaks of vessels taken in war. ' Designed and executed by the cleverest masters of the golden age, built entirely of white marble, profusely enriched with the masterpieces of the Greek school, the Temple of Concord was one of the finest monuments in the valley of the Forum, and one of the richest museums of Rome. The cella contained one central and ten side niches, in which were placed the Apollo and Hera by Jiaton ; Latona nursing Apollo and Diana by Euphranor ; Asklepios and Hygeia by Nikeratos ; Ares and Hermes by Piston ; and Zeus, Athena, and Demeter by Sthenios. Pliny speaks also of a picture by Theodoros representing Cassandra ; of another by Zeuxis which portrayed Marsyas btjund to a tree ; of a third, Bacchus, by Kikias; of four elephants cut in obsidian, a miracle of skill and labour ; and of a collection of precious stones. Among these was the sardonyx set in the legendary ring of Polykrates of Samos. I may mention in the last place the statue of Hestia, which Tiberius had taken away almost by force from the inhabitants of Paros.' — Lanciani, ' The Ruins of Ancient Borne.' G. The three beautiful columns which are still standing were attributed to a temple of Jupiter Tonans, but are now decided to belong to the Temple of Vespasian, erected by Domitian to his deified father and brother. The engravings of Piranesi represent them as buried almost to their capitals, and they remained in this state until they were disinterred during the first French occupa- tion. The space was so limited in this part of Rome, that in order to prevent encroaching upon the street Clivus Capitolinus, which descends the hill between this temple and that of Saturn, the Temple of Saturn 117 Temple of Vespasian was raised on a kind of terrace, and the staircase which led to it was thrust in between the columns. This temple was restored by Septimius Severus, and to this the letters on the entablature refer, being part of the word Restitucre. Instruments of sacrifice are sculptured on the frieze. Close to these columns the curious little church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus existed from early in the eighth century till the time of Paul III., who destroyed it ; but the apse was visible till 1812. 7. On the left of the excavated space, close beneath the Tabu- larium, a low range of columns recently re-erected represents the Porticus Deorum Consentium, in front of a row of seven small rooms, called the School of Xanthus, chambers for the use of the scribes and persons in the service of the curule aediles, which derived their name from Xanthus, a freedman, by whom they were rebuilt. The pedestal of a statue of Stil'cho has been found here. 8. The eight Ionic columns (of lapis psaronius) still standing, are part of the Temple of Saturn — Aedes Saturni — the ancient god of the Capitol. It was consecrated in B.C. 497 by the consuls Sem- pronius and Minucius, and restored in B.C. 44 by Munatius Plancus. Before this temple Pompey sate surrounded by soldiers, listening to the orations which Cicero was delivering from the rostra, when he received the personal address, ' Te enim jam appello, et ea voce ut me exaudire possis.' Here the tribune Metellus Hung himself before the door and vainly attempted to defend the treasure of the Aerariiun in this temple against Julius Caesar. The present remains are those of an indifferent and late renovation by Diocletian of an earlier temple of the time of Augustus, being composed of columns which differ in diameter, and a frieze put together from fragments which do not belong to one another. The original temple was built by Tarquinius Superbus, and was supposed to mark the site of the ancient Sabine altar of the god and the limit of the wood of refuge mentioned by Virgil. The Temple of Saturn was the only temple in Rome where heads were uncovered : it was the first to inaugurate the use of burning wax tapers ; and its anniversary feast, or Saturnalia, was the origin of the Carnival.^ The Aerarium Saturni, in which the brass coinage was kept, with the archives of the quaestors, gave a name to the Church of S. Salvatore in Aerario. 9. Just below the Temple of Saturn is the site of the Arch of Tiberius, erected, according to Tacitus, upon the recovery by Ger- manicus of the standards which Varus had lost. 10. The remains of the Milliarium Aureum, which formed the upper extremity of a wall faced with marbles, ending near the arch of Severus in a small gilt conical pyramid. The distances to the chief towns upon the roads radiating from the gates of Rome are supposed to have been inscribed upon the Milliarium Aureum, as 1 See Lanciani, ' Aiicient Rome.' 118 Walks in Rome distances within the walls were upon the pyramid (from which in this case they wore also measured) which bore the name of Umbilicus Romae. Others think that the Umbilicus was only a sort of copy of the famous Omphalos of Delphi, which was believed to mark the centre of the world. The Via Sacra, which is still visible with its ancient basalt pavement of republican date, de- scended from the Capitol between the temples of Saturn and Vespasian — being known here as the Clivus Capitolinus, and passed to the left of — 11. The Arch of Septimius Severus, which was erected by the senate A.d. 20.'), in honour of that emperor and his two sons, Cara- calla and Geta. It is adorned with bas-reliefs relating his victories in the East — his entry into Babylon, and the tower of the temple of Belus, are represented. A curious memorial of imperial history may be observed in the inscription, where we may still discern the erasure made by Caracslla after he had put his brother Geta to death in A.D. 213, "for the sake of obliterating his memory. The added words are OPTIMIS PORTISSIMISQVE PRINCIPIBUS — but the ancient inscription P. SEPT. LVC. PIL. GETAE. NOBLiss. CAESAEI, has been made out by painstaking decipherers. In one of the piers is a staircase leading to the top of the arch, which was formerly (as seen from coins of Severus and Caracalla) adorned by a car drawn by six horses abreast, and containing figures of Severus and his sons. In the Middle Ages the arch was surmounted by two towers, of which one was used as a belfry for the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, whence the name of Turris de Braccio, as applied to the building. It stood on the edge of the platform — Area Concordiae — which was six or seven feet above the level of the Forum, whence it was reached by steps. In front of the side arch on the right is the marble base of a statue of the Emperor Constantine. The street under the arch is only mediaeval, and dates from the fall of the empire. In the middle of the eighteenth century the side arches were walled in and let as shops. ' Les proportions de Tare de Septinie-Sbv6re sont encore belles. L' aspect en est imposant ; 11 est solide sans etre lourd. La grande inscription oii se lisent les upithc-tes victorieuses qui rappellent les succes militaires de I'empereur, Parthique, Dacique, Adiabenique, se diiploie sur une vaste surface et donne a I'entablement un air de majestu qn'adniirent les artistes. Cette inscription est doublement historique ; elle rappelle les campagnes de Severe et la trag(5die domestique qui apres lui ensanglanta sa famille, le meurtre d'un de ses tils imniold par I'autre, et I'acharnement de celui-ci ii poursuivre la m6moire du frere qn'il avait fait assassiner Le nom de Geta a ite visiblement efface par Caracalla. La miime chose se remarque dans luie inscription sur bronze qu'on voit an Capitole et sur le petit arc du Marche aux boeufs, oil I'iniage de Geta a 6ti effacee conime son noni. Caracalla ne permit pas monie k ce nom proscrit de se cacher parmi les hieroglyphes. En Egypte, ceux qui coniposaient le nom de G6ta ont etc grattes sur les monuments.'— .4 wi^tTC, Emp. ii. 278. Rather in front of the Arch of Severus, on the south side, in front of the curved platform which connects the Umbilicus Romae with the Milliarium Aureum, a rectangular platform seventy-eight feet long and eleven feet high has been unearthed, which has been The Rostra 119 identified with the Rostra of Julius Caesar, which was in itself a restoration of rostra dating from c. 450 B.C. Nothing remains of the marble facing, but the brick facing is of interest, as the earliest example in Rome of known date — 44: B.C. Along the top of the cornice runs a groove, with holes where the marble balustrades were fixed to prevent people being pushed from the platform. In one part the groove is discontinued, as there was no screen there, in order that the whole figure of the orator might be seen by the people below, as is seen in a relief on the Arch of Constantine, in which he is shown here addressing the people ; the different buildings of the forum being represented in the background, so as to show the exact position of the rostra. Holes and metal pins still exist, showing where the bronze beaks of ships {rostra) were affixed to the front of the platform, nineteen in the lower, twenty in the upper tier. Where the lower tiers are fixed are upright grooves, supposed to have been intended to hold bronze pilasters ; these grooves appear also on the end walls. The rostra affixed to the platform are said to have been the original beaks of the ships from Antium, transferred by Caesar from the earlier rostra. It was on this second rostra that the body of Julius Caesar was exhibited to the crowd by Antony, and here, on the scene of his former triumphs, that the head and hand of Cicero were hung up after his murder by Antony in 44 B.C., and Fulvia, the widow of Clodius, spat in his dead face. In front of the rostra were the statues of the three Sibyls called Tria Fata,^ and near the rostra were thrones for foreign ambassadors, who often had to sit there to hear the fate of their own countries decided. To the right of the Forum, from the foot of the Capitol, runs the Via della Consolazione, occupying part of the site of the ancient Vicus Juguarius, where Augustus erected an altar to Ceres, and another to Ops Augusta, the goddess of wealth, in which the seven hundred sesterces left by Julius Caesar at his death were stored. (In this street, on the left, is a good cinque-cento doorway.) Where the street leaves the Forum was the so-called Lacus Servilius, a basin which probably derived its name from Servilius Ahala (who slew the [jhilanthropist Sp. Maelius with a dagger near this very spot), and which was encircled with a ghastly row of heads in the massacres under Sulla. This fountain was adorned by M. Agrippa with the figure of a hydra. The right side of the Forum is now occupied for a considerable distance by the disinterred remains of the Basilica Julia, begun by Julius Caesar, and finished by Augustus, who dedicated it in honour of the sons of his daughter Julia. It was restored by Severus in 199 B.C., and again by Diocletian after a fire in 282 A.D., and was finally restored by the Praefect Gabinus Vetticus Probianus, as is recorded on a pedestal recently unearthed in the Vicus Juguarius. The basilica was a double portions, with two storeys of columns. It was open on three sides, but on the side away from the Forum opened into ranges of rooms, of which there are 1 See Mlddleton, 'Ancient Rome in 1855.' 120 Walks in Rome considerable remains. A basilica of this description was intended partly as a Law Court and partly as an Exchange. In this basilica the judges called Centumviri held their courts, which were four in number : ' Jam clamor, centnmqne viri, tleiisunique coronae Vulf;us, et infaiiti Julia teeta placent.' —Martial, Ep. vi. 38. Here Suetonius narrates that the mad Caligula used to stand upon the roof and throw money into the Forum for the people to scramble for. The Arch of Tiberius is supposed to have stood near the corner of this basilica. The south boundary of the republican forum is marked by the Basilica Julia. The northern vestibule of the basi- lica was converted into the Church of S. Maria de Foro, which was almost intact in 1S80, with its double row of columns, apse, presby- tery, transennae, and frescces ; only one column of the presbytery has been allowed to remain. The rest of the basilica was almost entirely demolished by the marble plunderers of the XI. c. Most of the steps, pavement, and brick arches which we now see are modern. All the travertine used in building the beautiful Palazzo Gira\id-Torlonia was taken from the Basilica Julia. Opposite the Basilica Julia the Via Sacra was fringed with a line of Columnae Honorariae, probably of the III. and IV. c. Seven large pedestals of travertine faced with brick bore columns of marble or granite, of which the fragments found were re-erected in 1899-1900, including a lofty Corinthian column of white marble. On one of the shafts are a number of square holes to which bronze ornaments were probably attached. Beyond the Basilica Julia are three beautiful columns which belong to a restoration of the Aedes Castorum or Temple of Castor and Pollux, dedicated by Postumius, B.C. 482. Here costly sacri- fices were always offered in the ides of July at the anniversary of the battle of the Lake Eegillus, after which the Roman knights, richly clothed, crowned with olive and bearing their trophies, rode past it in military procession, starting from the Temple of Mars outside the Porta Capena. ' Althoush named officially from both the Dioscuri, the temple went usually by that of Castor alone, as shown, among other documents, by a fragment of the marble i)lan discovered in 1822. Bibulus. whose name was never pronounced with that of Caesar, his more favoured colleasue in the aedileship, used to say that he shared the same fate as Tollux.'—Lanciani, ' Muins of Ancient Rome.' The existing columns are part of the temple as rebuilt by Tiberius and Drusus in 7 B.C., with the spoils taken in Germany. ^ The pedestal of the statue of Marcus Aurelius and the statue of Jonah in S. Maria del Popolo were formed from other columns. The entablature which the three columns support is of great richness, and the whole fragment is considered to be one of the finest existing 1 Suet. Tib. 20 ; Dion. Cass. iv. 8, 27. Temple of Vesta 121 specimens of the Corinthian order. None of the Roman ruins have given rise to more discussion than this. It has perpetually changed its name. Eunsen and many other authorities considered it to be- long to the Temple of Minerva Chalcidica ; but as it is known that the position of the now discovered Basilica Julia was exactly be- tween the Temple of Saturn and that of Castor, and a passage of Ovid describes the latter as being close to the site of the Temple of Vesta, which is also ascertained, it seems certain now tliat it belonged to the Temple of the Dioscuri. Dion Cassius mentions that Caligula made this temple a vestibule to his house on the Palatine. He used to appear himself for worship between the great twin brothers.^ The temple was also frequently used for meetings of the senate. Baldassare Peruzzi called these columns ' La piu belia e meglio lavorata opera di Roma.' The last spoliation of the temple was in 1773. In the Verrine orations Cicero accused Verres of having, in his greed of plunder, brought an action against those who were bound to keep the Temple of Castor and Pollux in order, asserting that its columns were not perpendicular, and that having forced them to be pulled down, he rebuilt them coarsely, and de- manded 300,000 sesterces for the work. In his oration Cicero pointed at the restored temple, but the existing pillars belong to a later reconstruction by Tiberius. Treaties were hung up in this temple. Between the Temple of Castor and Pollux and the Basilica Julia, the Vicus Tuscus or Etruscan quarter (see Chapter V.) ran from the Via Sacra towards the Circus Maximus. At its entrance was the bronze statue of Vertumnus, the god of Etruria, and patron of the quarter. Tlie long trougli-shaped fountain near the modern Via dei Fienili, at which such picturesque groups of oxen and buffaloes are constantly standing, is a memorial of the Lake of Juturna, the sister of Turnus, or, as she was sometimes described, the wife of Janus the Sabine war-god. This fountain (for such it must have been) was dried up by Paul V. : ' At quae ventnras praecedit sexta kalendas, Hac sunt Ledaeis templa dicata dels. Fratribus ilia dels fratres de geiite deorum Circa Juturnae composuere lacus.' —Ovid, Fast. i. 705. Close under the Palatine, near the line of the earliest Via Sacra, remains have been discovered of the famous Temple or Aedes Sacra of Vesta, in which the sacred fire was preserved (symbolising the centre of domestic life), with the palladium saved from Troy. On the altar of this temple blood was sprinkled annually from the tail of the horse which was sacrificed to Mars in the Campus Martins. The worship of Hestia, imported into Rome from Alba Longa — ' Alba oriundum sacerdotium ' — had its origin in the common fire — 'fvcus puhlicus' — which was preserved in a hut in the centre of every village, at a time when fire was not easily procured. Numa Pom- ' Suet. Cal. 22. 122 Walks in Rome pilius established one of these on the border of the Velabnim, between the Palatine and the Capitol. It was burnt by the Gauls in 390, when the vestals escaped to Caere ; and it was again burnt in 2-11 B.C., when the Pontifex Maximus Metellus lost his eyesight in saving the precious relics it contained. In the great fire under Nero it was again burnt, was rebuilt and again burnt down under Corn- modus, and restored for the last time by Julia Domna. Tlie temple, thus rebuilt, was perfect in 1489, but entirely demolished in 1549. The broken columns and fragments of architecture found around the temple have been as far as possible replaced, 1899-1900. In the centre of the base of the temple a little cella has been found, apparently under the altar on which the sacred fire burned. It is supposed by some authorities to be the Penus Vestae, the mysterious spot in which the most sacred treasures of Vesta, such as the Palladium, were preserved, into which man could never enter, and matrons, barefooted, only between the 5th and 15th of June. It was here, during the consulate of the young Marius, that the high priest Scaevola was murdered, splashing the image of Vesta with his blood ; and here (A.D. 68) Piso, the adopted son of Galba, was murdered in the sanctuary whither he had fled for refuge, and his head, being cut off, was affixed to the rostra. Behind the temple, along the lower ridge of the Palatine, stretched the sacred grove of Vesta. Here Numa Pompilius fixed his residence, hoping to conciliate both the Latins of the Palatine and the Sabines of the Capitoline by occupying a neutral ground between them. 'Quaeris iter? dicam : vicinum Castora canae Tiansibis Vestae, virgineamciiie domum ; Inde sacro veneranda petes palatia clivo.' —Martial, Ep. i. 71. ' Hie focus est Vestae, cjui Pallada servat et iguem. Hie fuit aiitiqui regia parva Nuniae.' —Ovid, Trist. iii. El. 1. 'Hie locus exiguus, qui sustiuet atria Vestae, Tunc erat intoiisi regia magna Numae. Forma tamen templi, quae nunc manet, ante fuisse Dicitur ; et formae causa probanda subest. Vesta eadem est et Terra ; subest vigil ignis utrique. Significant sedeni terra focusque suam. Terra, pilae similis, nullo fulciniine nixa, Aere subjecto tam grave pendet onus. Arce Syracosia suspensus in aiire clauso Stat globus, inimensi parva flgura poli : Et quantum a sunimis, tantum secessit ab imis Terra. Quod ut fiat, forma rotunda facit. Par faeies templi : nullus procurrit ab illo Angulus. A pluvio vindicat imbre tholus.' —Ovid, Fast. vi. 263. ' Servat et Alba, Lares, et quorum lucet in aris Ignis adhuc Phrygius, nuUique adspecta virorum Pallas, in abstruso piguus meraorabile templo.' — Lucan, ix. 992. Behind the Temple, on the right of the entrance to the cloisters, is a shrine — or sacellum — probably of Mercury. It had two Ionic The Atrium Vestae 123 columns on the front, supporting an architrave inscribed, ' Senatus Populusque Romanus pecunia pubblica faciendam curavit,' and it was probably restored under Trajan. There were 274 of these little chapels under Constantine. Just beyond the site of the Temple of Vesta, below the Via Nova, which ran between it and the Palatine, are the remains of the Atrium Vestae, the conventual abode of the Vestal Virgins, the 'virginea domus ' of Martial, and the prototype of all the nunneries in the world. ^ The original building on this site was the Regia, said to have been built by Numa, which became the residence of the Pontifex Maximus, who dwelt ' in radicibus Palatii finibusque Romani Fori."- This building was destroyed by the Gauls in 890 B.C., and again much injured by fire in 191 B.C. It was the resi- dence of Julius Caesar from the time of his election to the office of Pontifex Maximus, and was the place where his second wife Pompeia admitted her lover Clodius in the disguise of a woman to the mysteries of the Bona Dea. Hence also Caesar went forth to his death, and hence his last wife, Calpurnia, rushed forth with loud outcries to receive his dead body. The smallness of the space occupied by the Regia is described by Ovid. Augustus, who preferred a residence upon the Palatine, pre- sented the Regia to the Vestals, who soon pulled down the original building, and erected another of a more important character for their own residence. When Horace says, ' Ventum erat ad Vestae,' he means the atrium, not the Temple of Vesta. Under the Alban system, the care of the sacred fire had been entrusted to four virgins ; Servius Tullius raised the number to six, which number remained unchanged till the fourth century of the Christian era, when it was increased to seven. The Vestals had their origin in the village girls, who obtained fire by rubbing the wood of laurel and oak together. The sisterhood was managed by the oldest virgin — Virgo Vcstalis Maxima — but as vestals were admitted at between six and ten years old, they often became maxima whilst still very young. The vestals must always have had both parents living at the time of their election, and both of irreproachable character. They had also to be absolutely free from any physical imperfection. The term of legal service was thirty years ; after that the vestal might return home or marry. The abbess enjoyed one of the positions of highest consideration under the empire. Secrets of state and wills of emperors were entrusted to her, and in outbursts of revolution or civil war she was resorted to as a last hope of peace.'^ The Vestals had seats of honour in the amphitheatre, theatres, or circus, and the empress had to sit amongst them when she ap- peared in public. They had also the right of interment within the 1 Laiiciani. 2 Servius, Ad Aeii. viii. 363. s See Rudolfo Lanciani, in the Athenmum, Feb. 2, 1884. Tacitus, Ann. xi. 32 ; Hist. iii. 81. Suet. ntel. 16. 124 Walks in Rome city, though their burial-place is unknown. The requests of the Vestals were scarcely ever refused, and if one of them accidentally met a criminal on liis way to the scaffold, he was reprieved at once. When they entered the convent their hair was cut off, arranged in plaits bearing the names of their owners, and fastened to a lotus tree (Lotus capillata), which is supposed to have spread where a turfy space is now left : Pliny says that the tree lived five hundred years. The lower floor of the house was lined with cipollino, the upper with breccia-corallina. The rooms were warmed under the blue tiles of their floors, and the remains of the hypocaust which served the house may still be seen in a caverned room under the Palatine ; in the ne.xt room is a mill which was worked by slaves for making the unleavened bread of the Vestals. The Vestals had their own stables and horses. The remains of the house of the Vestals were discovered in the autumn of 1883. They are those of the house as it was rebuilt after the fire of a.d. 191 by Septimius Severus, though some of the pavements are of the republican period, and belonged to the ancient Regia. The principal entrance was near the Temple of Vesta ; and beside it, on the right, are remains of a small aedicula or shrine, whicli probably contained a statue of the goddess. It was built of brick, with a marble roof and entablature supported on marble columns. The frieze of the shrine is inscribed in letters of the time of Hadrian — Senatus populusque Romanus pecunia publica faciendam curavit. The peristyle, which was so large ^ as to give a name to the edifice, was surrounded by porticoes, paved either with mosaic or oriental marbles, and separated from the open space by forty-eight columns of cipollino, resting on low parapet walls, upon the ground floor, and, on the upper floor, by forty-eight columns of breccia-corallina, of which two have been found perfect. In the centre of the open space, which was paved with black mosaic, was a brick structure, a circle within an octagon, apparently surrounded by flower-beds, perhaps a minia- ture of the Lucus Vestae on the Palatine, adjoining the Via Nova,^ which was destroyed when Caligula extended his palace over the northern angle of the hill. Between the pillars of the peristyle stood the statues of Vir;/ines Vestales Muxiinae, resting upon pedestals. There are supposed to have been more than a hundred honorary pedestals, as many statues represented and manj' pedestals named the same lady. More than four-fifths of this series were destroyed in the Middle Ages : only thirty-six inscriptions bearing names of Vestales Maximae have been found in Rome, twenty-eight in the atrium itself, two on the Palatine, six in other parts of the town. The Vestals to whom commemorative inscriptions have been found are — Occia, 38 B.C.-19 a.d. ; Junia Torquata, daughter of Silanus, A.D. 19-48 ; Vibidia, the intercessor for Messalina; Cornelia Maxima, murdered by Domitian ; Praetextata ; Numisia Maximilla, A.D. 1 Sixty-seven metres long and twenty-four wide. 2 'Qui a Palatii radice in Novam Viam devexus est.' — Cicero, De Divin. i. 45. House of the Vestals 125 200 ; Terentia Flavola, A.D. 215 ; Campia Severina, A.D. 240 ; Flavia Mamilia, A.D. 242 ; Flavia Publicia, A.D. 247 (of whom there is a beautiful statue) ; Cloelia Claudiana, a.d. 2S6 ; Terentia Rufilla, A.D. 300 ; and Cloelia Concordia, the last but one of the Vestales Maximae. Besides these, an inscription from which the name has been erased, perhaps because she embraced Christianity,^ com- memorates a lady of A.D. 364 in the words — ' Ob meritum castitatis, pudicitiae, atque in sacris religionibusque docti'inae mirabilis . . . [name erased] virgini vestali maximae, pontilices viri clarissimi, pro magistro Macrinio Sossiano viro clarissimo, pro meritis ; dedicata quinto idus Junias, divo Joviano et Varroniano consulibus.' The statues in the atrium, which are of life size, range from complete figures to mere fragments. They are mostly of the third century, but one or two date from the second. The finest as a work of art, apparently of the time of Hadrian, is the upper half of a figure, important as giving the only known representation of the sacred suffihulum, worn by vestals whilst sacrificing— a hood of white woollen cloth with a purple border, fastened on the breast by a fibula. The other statues only show the stola, a long gown bound by a girdle or zona, usually without sleeves. Over this is worn the pallium, and round the head the sacred vittae — rope-like folds of linen. Though in some cases the hair is hidden by the pallium and vittae, yet in several statues enough hair is visible to show that it was allowed to grow long, though on entering the novitiate the hair of the child vestal was cut off. All the pedestals are inscribed to the Virgo Vestalis Maxima, a rank attained by seniority, but the inscriptions on two of tne six pedestals in honour of Flavia Publicia (c. A.D. 247) show that several grades were passed through before they reached the highest dignity. On one of the later statues a row of bronze pins on the breast shows where a metal monilc or necklace was fastened ; to a statue (now lost) which was found on the Esquiline in 1591, the necklace was still attached." Only one male statue was found in the Atrium Vestae, that of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, one of the last public defenders of the Ves- tals in the fourth century. The atrium was surrounded on the ground floor by state apart- ments (in some of which the state archives were probably kept), and on the upper floor by the private rooms of the vestals, all once lined with marble, and thoroughly warmed by hypocausts — hollow floors, through which the hot air from furnaces could circulate, and escape to the roof by flue-tiles covering the walls. The small pillars (pilae) which support the floors (suspcnsura) rests on the vaults of the lower rooms, which are made level by concrete. A bath-room, lined with precious marbles, was approached from the upper floor by a wooden bridge. 1 The conversion of a vestal to the new faith is mentioned by Prudentius, Peristeph. Hymn 2. 2 See the Saturday Review, No. 1554, August 8, 1885 ; also the Times, Nov. 19, 1879, May 8 and May 20, 1882. 126 Walks in Rome At the south-east end of the peristyle (towards the Arch of Titus) was the Tablinum, approached by four steps between columns, on either side of which were marble cancclli. The walls were panelled with coloured marbles. On either .side are three small vaulted rooms, those on the right (which suffered from damp by their position under the Palatine ') warmed by hot air. In the central room, the lloor rested upon large amphorae cut in half, between which the hot air circulated. The room behind these contained a marble bath, and six niches for statuettes above it. It has also an arched furnace, the top of which is paved with herring-bone work. The Atrium Vestae appears to have been left undisturbed till late in the fourth century, when the last of the vestals were dying out or abandoning the ancient faith. Zosimus- speaks of the last surviving vestal as an old woman living in the almost deserted house as late as A. D. 394, and cursing the Princess Serena, who took a necklace from the statue of the goddess and put it round her own neck ; before that time more than one vestal had become a Christian. After the worship of Vesta was extinguished, the atrium appears to have been inhabited for some centuries, and later additions can be traced. At the northern angle of the peristyle, several rooms of the seventh and eighth centuries were found in 1883, and soon after- wards destroyed. In one of these was discovered a large ripostiglia or hoard of English pennies — probably Peter's pence — of Alfred, Edward I., Athelstan, Edmund, and a few of Sitric and Anlaf, kings of Northumbria. In the same pot with these was a bronze fibula, inlaid with silver, bearing the name of Marinus II., who was Pope from 942 to 94(5. The Via Nova, in the fourth century B.C., ran along the west slope of the Palatine, turning the north corner of the hill, and continuing along the east slope of the Palatine till it reached ' Summa Velia.' In the reign of Augu.stusits course was changed, that it might pass the corner of the Temple of Castor, to join the Via Sacra near the Temple of Romulus. Thus Ovid saw it — 'Qua nova Romano nunc Via juncta Foro est.' —Fast. vi. 396. This famous lane, of which the name is connected with so many stirring events of the kingly period, has been traced for 120 feet at the foot of the palace of Caligula, midway between the Via Sacra and the Clivus Victoriae. On this side of the Forum, where the Cloaca Maxima is now laid 1 Its position made the Atrium Vestae very unhealthy ; l)ut, till the fourth centniy, no physician was allowed to enter it ; as soon as sickness made its appearance, the patient was removed to the house of her parents, or to that of some distinguished matron. But in their own homes, the Vestals were not allowed to speak to any one but their mothers. 2 v. 38. Column of Phocas 127 bare, was the famous Curtian Lake, so called from Mettus Curtius, a Sabine warrior, who with difficulty escaped from its quagmires to the Capitol after a battle between Romulus and Tatiu.s.i Tradi- tion declares that the quagmire afterwards became a gulf, which an oracle declared would never close until that which was most important to the Roman people was sacrificed to it. Then the young Marcus Curtius, equipped in full armour, leapt his horse into the abyss, exclaiming that nothing was more important to the Roman people than arms and courage : and the gulf was closed for ever ;- it is now believed to have been the crater of one of the hot springs mentioned by Varro.^ Two altars were afterwards erected on the site to the two heroes, and a vine and an olive tree grew there.* ' Hie, ubi nunc fora sunt, udae tenuere paludes : Annie redundatis fossa madebat aquis. Curtius ille lacus, siccas qui sustinet aras, Nune solida est tellus, sed lacus ante fuit.' —Ovid, Fast. vi. 401. Some fountain, like those of Servilins and Juturna, bearing the name of Lacus Curtius, must have existed on this site to imperial times, for the Emperor Galba was murdered there. ' A single cobort still surrounded Galba, wben the standard-bearer tore the emperor's image from his spear-head and dashed it on the ground. The soldiers were at once decided for Otho ; swords were drawn and every symptom of favour for Galba amongst the Ijystanders was repressed by menaces, till they dispersed and fled in horror from the Forum. At last the Ijearers of the emperor's litter overturned it at the Curtian pool beneath the Capitol. In a few moments enemies swarmed around his body. A few words he muttered, which have been diversely reported : some said that they were al)ject and unbecoming ; others affirm that he presented his neck to the assassin's sword, and baile him strike "if it were for the good of the republic;" but none listened, none perhaps heeded the words actually spoken ; Galba's throat was pierced, but even the author of his mortal wound was not ascertained, while, his breast being pro- tected by the cuirass, his legs and arms were hacked with repeated gashes.'— Merivale, vii. 73. Opposite the Basilica Julia is the Column of Phocas, a monument probably of the end of the fourth century, from the base of which the original inscription was evidently erased by the exarch Smaragdus in 608, and replaced by the inscription to Phocas dis- covered in 1813, which has given a name to the pillar. This is — ' The nameless column with a buried base,' of Byron, but is now neither nameless nor buried, its pedestal having been laid bare by the Duchess of Devonshire in 1813, and bearing an inscription which shows an intention that no one ever anticipated. 1 Statius, i. 6 ; Livy, vii. 6. 2 Livy, vii. 6 ; 'Varr. iv. 32. 3 V. 32. 4 Pliny, XV. 18. 128 Walks in Rome ' In the age of Pliocas (602-10), the art of erectiiiK a c-olunin like thiit of Trajan or M. Aurelius had bcun lost. A large and handsome Corintliian pillar, taken from some temple or hasilica, was therefore i)laeed in the Forum, on a hutre ])yrainiilal hasis iniite out of proportion to it, and was surmounted with a statue of I'hoeas in gilt lironze. It has so little the appearance of a monimiental column, that for a loni; while it was thought to lielonp to some ruined building, till, in 1813. the inscription was discovered. The name of Phocas liad, indeed, been erased ; but that it nnist have been dedicated to him is shown by the date. . . . The base of this column, discovered by the excavations of 1S16 to have rested on the ancient paven)ent of the Forum, proves that this former centre of Roman life was still, at the beginning of the seventh century, unencumbered with ruins.'— A'"'''« ' History of the City of Rome' 'Ce monument et I'inscription ([Ui I'accompagne sent precieux pour I'histoire, car ils niontrent le dernier terme de I'avilissement oi'i Kome devait toniher. Smaragdus est le premier magistral de Rome— mais ce magistrat est un prefet, rein du pouvoir imperial et non de ses concitoyens ; — il comniande, non, il est vrai. a la capitale du nionde, mais au chef-lieu du duche de Rome. Ce prefet, qui n'est connu de I'histoire que par ses laches menagements envers les Barbares, imagine de voler une colonne il un beau temple, au temple d'nn empereur de quelque merite, pour la dedier a nn execral)le tyran monte sur le trone par des assassinats, au raeurtrier de I'empereur Maurice, a I'igiioble Phocas, (jue tout le monde connait, grace a Corneille, ([ui la encore trop manage. Et le plat drole ose appeler trfes clement celui qui fit egorger sous les yeux de Maurice ses quatre flls avant de I'egorger lui-meme. II decerne le litre de triomphateur 5. Phocas, qui laissa conquerir par Chosro6s tine bonne part de I'enipire. II ose ecrire : " Pour les innombrables bienfaits de sa piete, pour le repos procure h I'ltalie et a la libertc. " Ainsi I'histoire monumentale de la Rome de I'empire flnit hon- teusement par iin hommage ridicule de la bassesse a la violence.'— jljnpire, Emp. ii. 389. The pillar of Phocas was surmounted by a statue of gilt bronze, which belonged to an earlier date. The column may be regarded as the centre of the Forum Romanum. Near the east corner of its base, two low walls, or j^hitei, of white marble, evidently of the time of Trajan, were discovered in September 1873. Their inner surface is adorned with reliefs of the three sacrificial animals, the pig, ram, and bull,' which in their united names gave the title of SuovctfniriUa to the great lu-stral ceremony. On the outer side of the wall nearest the Capitol is a representation of the provision made by Trajan for the cliildren of poor citizens— 'alimenta ingenuorum puerorum et puellarum Italiae.' On the outside of the farther wall is repre.sented the burning of bonds on liis remission of debts due to the public treasury. On the background of these reliefs the build- ings existing on the north and west side of the Roman Forum in the time of Trajan are depicted. The Temple of Concord and Arch of Tiberius on the first, and the lower storey of the Basilica Julia on the second. Some imagine, from the sacrificial animals, that these walls were the approach to a statue and altar of the deified emperor ; others think that they marked the place where 1 Pigs, the earliest source of wealth to the first colonists of Rome, when the valleys between the hills were filled with quercus ilex and quercus robur, were regarded as an especially acceptable sacrifice. They are represented here with the woollen vittae or sacrificial belts. The sheep also has vittae and had gilded horns. The sacrifice of a sheep is the origin of the word ovation. The bull is seen crowned with laurel. It was always sacrificed to Jupiter Capitolinus, and was brought down the Via Sacra with gilded horns. The Comitium 129 citizens going to vote at elections had to show their tesserae of admission as they passed. A richly sculptured pedestal near this probably supported the statue of an emperor. On the left of the Forum, looking towards the Coliseum, stood the Tabernae Argentariae, the silversmiths' shops, and beyond them — probably in front of S. Adriano — were the Tabernae Novae, where Virginia was stabbed by her father with a butcher's knife, which he had seized from one of the stalls, saying, ' This, my child, is the only way to keep thee free,' as he plunged it into her heart.^ Near this also was the statue of Venus Cloacina." The front of the church of S. Adriano is the actual front of the Comitium or Senate House, as it was reconstructed in the reign of Domitian. Its bronze doors were taken to the Lateran. It is on the site of the cave and spring, where Tarpeia was drawing water when she first saw Tatius. TuUus Hostilius was the first to build the Curia Hostilia, a hall of stone for the meetings of the Patres Conscripti, and it was approached by the flight of steps down which the body of Servius Tullius was thrown by Tarquinius. ' Lk se reunit, pour la premiere fois sous un toit, le conseil des anciens rois que le savant Properce, avec un sentiment vrai des antiquites romaines, nous montre tel qu'il etait dans I'oriKine, se rassemblant an son de la trompe pastorale dans un pr6, comme le peiiple dans certains petits cantons de la Suisse.'— ^ inhere, Hist. Rom. ii. 310. The Curia was capable of containing six hundred senators, their number in the time of the Gracchi. It had no tribune — each speaker rose in turn and spoke in his place. Here was ' the hall of assembly in which the fate of the world was decided.' The Curia, in which Cicero addressed the Senate, was destroyed by fire, which it caught from the funeral pyre of Clodius. It was rebuilt by Faustus, son of Sulla, and again on the same site by Julius and Augustus Caesar as Curia Julia, which was rebuilt after a fire by Diocletian. It was in the Comitium that the Praetor Urbanus had his little platform whence he had to witness slaves being beaten to death. Around the Curia stood many statues of Romans who had rendered especial service to the state. Close by the old Curia was the Basilica Porcia, built by Cato the Censor, which was likewise burnt down at the funeral of Clodius. Near this the base of the rostral column, Colonna Duilia, raised in honour of the admiral who defeated the Carthaginian fleet, has been found. ^ On the right of the Curia was the Argiletum, which contained the Temple of Janus ; on the left a little square in which the Marforio of the Capitol adorned a fountain. Before it was the Comitium, a platform where, in the early days of the city, its civil and political affairs were transacted. In front 1 Livy, iii. 48. 2 Pliny, XV. 29. 3 Two reproductions of a similar column may be seen on the ascent to the Pincio. VOL. I. I 130 Walks in Rome of the Comitium were three pieces of marble, placed edgeways like a fence. Outside thorn a travertine basis and canal were dis- covered in 1S09, and, inside, an irregular square of Pvrenean marble — black veined with white. Festus speaks of it, saying : 'Niger lapis in comitia locum funestum significat ; ' Horace alludes to the bones of Romulus as shielded from sun and wind : 'Quaeque carent ventis et solibus ossa Quirini ; ' and Varro describes the grave of Romulus as ' post rostra.' The black stone which has been discovered has thus been often regarded as the tomb of Romulus, though some think it only commemorated his foster- father, Faustulus. There are those who think that the black stone marks a spot connected with the story of Tarquinius Priscus. Having had a dispute with Attus Navius, head of the College of Augurs, and questioning his power, the king bade the augur tell him what he was thinking of. 'You are questioning if I can cut through a wet stone witli a razor ; ' and he did it. Then Tarquinius was humbled, and the wet stone and the razor were buried by him in the Comitium, and a fig-tree was planted near the spot, which existed — then gigantic — in the time of Tacitus. Close to the fig- tree was a statue of Marsyas,i and this had a stone screen round its base. The fig-tree was called Ficus Navia. It had withered by the time of Pliny, who says that the priests had kept its memory alive on the spot by slips taken before it died. There are others who recall that all places stricken by lightning were regarded as holy — nothing could be built on them — and such a place was called ' fulgoritum.' It is possible that a black stone regarded as a thunderbolt may have been found here, and looked upon as a gift of the gods to be commemorated by a black marble pavement. This is a commonplace view. The stone itself is inscribed with letters belonging to the Chalci- dean alphabet, and ascribed to the sixth c. B.C. They are large, clear, and deeply cut. They read vertically up and down as oxen plough, and as the stone is broken to half its original size (probably in the sack by the Gauls), the beginning and the end of every alternate line are lost. As deciphered, it seems to be one of the sacred laws — a rex legia (royal law) 2500 years old. Partly beneath the Lapis Niger the base of an altar twelve feet long has been discovered. A number of vases and votive statuettes have been found near the stone with a quantity of bones, probably from the expiatory sacrifices after the profanation of the sacred places of Rome by the Gauls. It is thought that the Plutei already described were used ' Placed in the Comitium as a warnin. 858-87, during the pontificate of Nicholas I.) close the list of Roman Byzantine works. By their time it had become apparent that such figures as the art of the day was alone able to achieve could have no possible relation to each other, and therefore no longer constitute a 1 See the whole question of Simon Magus discussed in Waterworth's ' England and Rome. Temple of Venus and Rome 145 composition ; the artists accordingly separated the Madonna on the throne, and the four saints with uplifted hands, by graceful arcades. The ground is gold, the nimbuses blue. The faces cunsist only of feeble lines— the cheeks are only red blotches ; the folds merely dark strokes ; nevertheless a certain How and fulness in the forms, and the cliaracter of a few accessories (for instance, the exchange of a crown upon the Virgin's head for the invariable Byzantine veil), seem to indicate that we have not so much to do here with the decline of Byzantine art, as with a Northern antl probably Frankish influence.' — Kuyler. In the 1st chapel (left) is a Madonna with saints by Sinibaldo Ibi, 152-1. The convent attached to this church was the abode of Tasso during his first visit to Rome. S. Francesca Romana stands on some of the substructions of the Golden House of Nero, which he did not hesitate to build across the Via Sacra, and of which the Coliseum only occupies the site of the fishponds. Hadrian, with the idea of giving back to the people what Nero had taken away, built, a beautiful temple on the substructions of the palace, the Temple of Venus and Rome (Venus Felix and Roma Aeterna), (now sometimes called by objec- tors the 'Portico of Livia'), which, if this name is the correct one, was originally planned by the Emperor Hadrian to rival the Forum of Trajan, erected by the architect Apollodorus, and fini:^hed by Antoninus Pius. It was built upon a site previously occupied by the atrium of Nero's Golden House. Little remains standing of this, the largest of all the temples in Rome, except a cella facing the Coliseum, and another in the cloisters of the adjoining convent (these, perhaps, being restorations by Maxentius, c. 307, after a fire had destroyed most of the building of Hadrian), but the surround- ing grassy height is positively littered with fragments of the grey granite columns which once formed the grand portico (400 by 200 feet), or jieribolus, of the building : some marble steps near S. Fran- cesca Romana mark its fa9ade towards the Forum. The pedestals partly exist which supported colossal statues of Venus and Rome in the apses. A large mass of Corinthian cornice remains near the cella facing the Coliseum. This was the last pagan temple which remained in use in Rome. It was only closed by Theodosius in 391, and remained entiro till 625, when Pope Honorius carried off the bronze tiles of its roof to S. Peter's. ' Ac sacram resonare viam mugitibus, ante Delubrum Romae ; colittu' nam sanguine et ipsa More deae, nomenque loci, ceu numen, habetur. Atque Urbis Venerisque pari se culmine tollunt Templa, simul geminis adolentur thura deabus.' — Prudentius contr. Symm. v. 214. ' When about to construct his magnificent Temple of Venus and Rome, Hadrian produced a design of his own and showed it with proud satisfaction to the archi- tect Apollodorus. The creator of the Trajan column remarked with a sneer, that the deities, if they rose from their seats, must thrust their heads through the ceiling. The Emperor, we are assured, could not forgive this banter ; but we can hardly take to the letter the statement that he put his critic to death for it.'— iletivale, ch. Ixvi. VOL. I. K 146 Walks in Rome In front of this temple stood the bronze statue of Cloelia, mentioned by Livyand Seneca, and (till the sixth century) the bronze elephants mentioned by Cassiodorus. Nearer the Coliseum may still be seen the remains "of the foundation prepared by Hadrian for the Colossal Statue of Nero, executed in bronze by Zenodorus. This statue was twice moved, lirst by Vespasian, in A.u. 75, that it might face the chief entrance of his amphitheatre,^ whose plan had been already laid out. At the same time — though it was a striking likeness of Nero — its head was surrounded with rays that it might represent Apollo. In its second position it is described by Martial : ' Hie ubi sidereus propius videt astra colossus Et crescunt media pegmata celsa via, Invidiosa feri radiabant atria regis, Unaque jam tota stabat in urbe domus.' -De Sped. ii. It was again moved (with the aid of forty-two elephants) a few yards farther north, by Hadrian, when he built his Temple of Venus and Rome. Pliny describes the colossus as 110, Dion Cassius as 100 feet high. ' Hadrian employed an architect named Decrianus to remove the colossus of Kero, the face of which had been altered into a Sol. He does not seem to have accomplished the design of Apollodorus to erect a companion statue of Luna.' — Merivale, ch. Ixvi. Near the church of S. Francesca, the Via Sacra passes under the Arch of Titus, which, even in its restored condition, is the most beautiful monument of the kind remaining in Rome. Its Christian interest is unrivalled, from its having been erected by the senate to commemorate the taking of Jerusalem, and from its bas-reliefs of the seven-branched candlestick and other treasures of the Jewish Temple. In mediaeval times it was called the Arch of the Seven Candlesticks (Septem lucernarum) from the bas-relief of the candle- stick, concerning which Gregorovius remarks that the fantastic figures carved upon it prove that it was not an exact likeness of that which came from Jerusalem. The bas-reliefs are now greatly mutilated, but they are shown in their perfect state in a drawing of Giuliano di Sangallo. On the frieze is the sacred river Jordan, as an aged man, borne on a bier. The arch was engrafted into the fortress of the Frangipani, and so it remained, in a very ruinous condition, till the present century. Close by, on the side towards the Palatine, was the Turris Chartularia, to which, for the sake of security, the remains of the library and archives of Pope Damasus and other precious MSS. were removed from the Lateran in the X. c.^ The tower originally formed the entrance to the vast for- 1 Dion Cassius, Ixvi. 15. - Not a trace of these collections now remains ; it is supposed that they were destroyed by the imperial faction in 1244, out of spite and revenge towards the Pope and his faithful supxjorters, the Frangipani. Arch of Titus 147 tress of the powerful Frangipani family, which includerl the Coliseum and a great part of the Palatine and Coelian hills ; and here, above the gate, Pope Urban II. dwelt in 1093, under the protection of Giovanni Frangipani. The arch was repaiied by Pius VII., who replaced in travertine the lost marble portions at the top and sides. The composite capitals here are the earliest examples known. 'Standnig beneath the Arch of Titus, and amid so nmc.h ancient (hist, it is difficult to forbear theconimonplaces of enthusiasm, on which huncheds of tourists have ah'eady insisted. Over the half-worn pavement and beneath this arch, the Boman armies had trodden in their outward march, to fight liattles a world's width away. Returning victorious, with royal captives and inestimable spoil, a Roman triumph, that most gorgeous pageant of earthly pride, has streanieil and flaunted in hundredfold succession over these same flagstones, and through this yet stalwart archway. It is politic, however, to make few allusions to such a past ; uor is it wise to suggest how Cicero's feet may have stepped on yonder stone, or how Horace was wont to stroll near by, making his footsteps chime with the measure of the ode that was ringing in his mind. The very ghosts of that massive and stately epoch have so much density, that the people of to-day seem the thinner of the two, and stand more ghostlike by the arches and columns, letting the rich sculpture be discerned through their ill-compacted substance.'— Haivthonie. ' We passed on to the Arch of Titus. Amongst the reliefs there is a figure of a man bearing the golden candlestick from the Temple at Jerusalem, as one of the spoils of the triumph. Yet He who abandoned His visible and local temple to the hands of the heathen for the sins of His nominal worshippers, has taken to Him His great power, and has gotten Him glory by destroying the idols of Rome as He had done the idols of Babylon ; and the golden candlestick burns and shall burn with an everlasting liglit, while the enemies of His holy name, Babylon, Rome, or the carcass of sin in every land, which the eagles of His wrath will surely find out, perish for ever from before Him.' — Arnold's Journal. ' The Jewish trophies are sculptured in bas-relief on the inside of the arch beneath the vaulting. Opposite to these is another bas-relief representing Titus in the quadriga, the reins borne by the goddess Roma. In the centre of the arch Titus is borne to heaven by an eagle. It may be conjectured that these ornaments to his glory were designed after the death of Vespasian, and com- pleted after his own. . . . These witnesses to the truth of history are scanned at this day by Christians passing to and fro between the Coliseum and the Forum ; and at this day the Jew refuses to walk beneath them, and creeps stealthily by the side, with downcast eyes or countenance SL\evted.'—Mervvale, ' Jioinans under the Eminre,' vii. 250. ' On the inner compartment of the Arch of Titus is sculptured, in deep relief, the desolation of a city. On one side, the walls of the Temple, split by the fury of conflagrations, hang tottering in the act of ruin. The accompaniments of a town taken by assault, matrons and virgins and children and old men gathered into groups, and the rapine and licence of a barbarous and enraged soldiery are imaged in the distance. The foreground is occupied by a procession of the victors, bearing in their profane hands the holy candlestick and the table of shewbread, and the sacred instruments of the eternal worship of the Jews. On the opposite side, the reverse of this sad picture, Titils is represented standing in a chariot drawn by four horses, crowned with laurel and surrounded by the tumultuous numbers of his triumphant army, and the magistrates, and priests, and generals, and philosophers, dragged in chains beside his wheels. Behind him stands a Victory eagle-winged. ' The arch is now mouldering into ruins, and the imagery almost erased by the lapse of fifty generations. . . . The Flavian amphitheatre has lieconie a habita- tion for owls. The power of whose possession it was once the type, and of whose departure it is now the emblem, is become a dream and a memory. Rome is no more than Jerusalem.'— /S/ieiiei/. 148 Walks in Rome ' The restoration of the Arch of Titus reflects the greatest credit on the com- mission appointed by Pius VII. for tlie restoiation of ancient edifices. This not only beautiful, but precious monunuiit, had liecn made the nucleus of a hideous, castellated fort by the Fran','i])ani family. Its masonry, however, enilH'aced and held together, as well as crushed, the marble arch; so that on freeing it from its rude liuttresses there was fear of its collapsing, and it had first to be well bound together by props and bracing beams, a process in which the Roman architects are uniivalled. The simple expedient was then adopted by the architect Stern of coniiileting the arch in stone ; for its sides had been removed. Thus increased in solid structure, which continued all the archi- tectural lines and renewed its proportions to the mutilated centre, the arch was both completely secured and almost restored to its pristine elegance.' — Wiseman't; ' Life of Pius VII.' The procession of the Popes going to the Lateran for their solemn installation used to halt beside the Arch of Titus while a Jew pre- sented a copy of the Pentateuch, with a humble oath of fealty. This humiliating ceremony was omitted for the first time at the installation of Pius IX. The foundations used for the Turris Chartularia to the right, just beyond the arch — blocks of peperino — were probably first those of the Temple of Jupiter Stator, vowed by Romulus after his encounter with the Sabines, but only built in 296 by M. Atilius Kegulus. Its position here is seen in the bas-relief of the Haterii, now in the Lateran Museum. ' Inde petens dextram, Porta est, ait, ista Palati ; Hie Stator, hoc primiun condita Roma loco est.' —Ovid, Trist. iii. El. 1. 31. ' Tempus idem Stator aedis habet, quam Romulus olim Ante Palatini condidit ora jugi.' —Ovid, Fast. vi. 793. The temple of Jupiter Stator, which was burnt in the great fire under Nero, has an especial interest from its connection with the story of Cicero and Cataline. ' C'iceron rassembla le senat dans le temple de .Tupiter Stator. Le choix de lieu s'explique facilenient ; ce temple etait pres de la principale entree du Palatin, sur le V61ia, dominant, en cas d'emeute, le Forum, que Ciceron et les principaux senateurs, habitants du Palatin, n'avaient pas a traverser comnie s'il ent fallu se rendre a la Curie. D'ailleurs, Jupiter Stator, qui avait arrete les Sabines ii la porte de Romulus, arreterait ces nouveaux eimemis qui voulaient sa ruine. Lii Ciceron prononga la premiere Catilinaire. Ce discours eut 6, etre en grande partie improvise, car les evenements aussi iniprovisaient. Ciceron ne savait si Catilina oserait se presenter devant le senat ; en le voyant entrer, il congut son fameux exorde : " Jusqu'i quand^ Catilina, al)useras-tu de notre patience ! " ' Malgre la garde volontaire de chevaliers (|ui avait accompagne Ciceron et qui se tenait a la porte du temple, Catilina y entra et salua tranquillement I'as- sembl^e ; nul ne lui rendit son saint, a son approche on s'ecarta et les places restferent vides autour de lui. II 6couta les foudroyantes apostrophes de Ciceron, qui, apres I'avoir accabld des preuves de son crime, se bornait a lui dire : " Sors de Rome. Va-t'en ! " ' Catilina se leva et d'un air modeste pria le senat de ne pas croire le consul avant qu'une enquete eut 6te faite. " II n'est pas vraisemblable," ajouta-t-il, avec une hauteur toute aristocratique, "qu'un patricien, lequel, aussi bien que ses ancetres, a rendu quelques services a la republique, ne puisse exister que par Church of S. Buenaventura 149 sa ruine, et qu'on ait [besoin d'un stranger d'Arpinum pour la sauver." Tant d'orgueil et d'impudence r6volt6rent I'assembl^e ; on cria i Catilina : " Tu es un ennemi de la patrie, un nieurtrier." II sortit, rcunit encore ses amis, leur re- cominanda de se debarrasser de Cic^ron, prit avec lui une aigle d'argent qui avait appartenu a une legion de Marius, et k niinuit quitta Rome et partit par la voie Aur61ia pour aller rejoindre son a,rmee.'— Ampere, Hist. Mom. iv. 445. At this point it may not be inappropriate to notice two other buildings, which, though situated on the Palatine, are totally dis- connected with the other objects occupying that hill. A lane runs up to the right from the Arch of Titus. On the left is a gateway, surmounted by a faded fresco of S. Sebastian. Here is the entrance to a wild and beautiful garden, possessing most lovely views of the various ruins, occupying the probable site of the Gardens of Adonis, and at one time included in the Golden House of Nero. This garden is the place where S. Sebastian underwent his (so-called) martyrdom, and will call to mind the many fine pictures scattered over Europe of the youthful and beau- tiful saint, bound to a tree and pierced with arrows.^ The finest of these are the Domenichino in S. Maria degli Angeli, and the Sodoma at Florence. He is sometimes represented as bound to an orange tree, and sometimes, as in the Guido at Bologna, to a cypress, like those we still see on this spot. Here was an important fortified Benedictine convent, where Pope Boniface IV. was a monk before his election to the papacy, and where the famous abbots of Monte Cassino had their Eoman residence. Here, in 1118, fifty-one cardinals took refuge, and elected Gelasius II. as Pope. The only building remaining is the Church of S. Maria Pallara or S. Sebastiano, mentioned as early as the eleventh century, but restored in 1(J36. It contains some curious inscriptions re- lating to events which have occurred here, and, in the tribune, frescoes of the Saviour in benediction with four saints, and below, two other groups representing the Virgin with saints and angels, placed, as we learn by the inscription beneath, by one Benedict — probably an abbot. The name Pallara is probably derived from an ancient ' palladium palatinum ' mentioned in an inscription of the time of Constantine.'^ Farther up the lane, passing (left) what many believe to have been the site of the Temple of Apollo, built by Augustus (ch. vi.), a ' Via Crucis ' leads to the Church of S. Buenaventura, ' the seraphic doctor' (Cardinal and Bishop of Albano, ob. July 14, 1274), who in childhood was raised from the point of death (1221) by the prayers of S. Francis, who was so surprised when he came to life, that he involuntarily exclaimed 'O buona ventura '— (' what a 1 The Acts of Sebastian, of the fifth century, say that the saint suffered in hippodromo palatii, and this was the name given to the existing garden from the fall of the Empire to the tenth century, after which it was applied to the Stadium. 2 See De Rossi, ' Bull, de Arch. Christ; 1867. 150 Walks in Rome happy chance') — whence the name by which the saint was after- wards known. 1 The little church contains several good modern monuments. Beneath the altar is shown the body of the Blessed Leonardo of Porto-Maurizio (d. 1751), who arranged the recently destroyed Via Crucis in the Coliseum, and who is much revered by the ultra- Romanists for having prophesied the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The crucifix and the picture of the Madonna which he carried with him in his missions are pre- served in niches on either side of the tribune, and many other relics of him are shown in his cell in the adjoining convent of Minor Franciscans. Entered through the convent is a lovely little garden, whence there is a grand view of the Coliseum, and where a little fountain is shaded by two tall palm trees. The monks made their refectory in the reservoir for storing the water of the Aqua Claudia, which Severus bro'jght by an aqueduct to the Palatine. ' Oswald se rendit ati eouvent de Bonaventure, bail sur les ruines du palais de N6ron : lii, oii tant de crimes se soiit commis sans remords, de pauvres moines, touriiientes par des scrupules de conscience, s'iniposent des supplices cruels pour les plus leaeres fautes. " iV^OM.s espcrons seulement," disait un de ces religieux, "(pill ringtant de la mortnos pcches n'auront pas excede nos imiitences." Lord Nelvil, en entrant dans ce convent, heurta contre une trappe, et il en demanda 1 usa^'e. "C'estpar la qu'on 7ioits enterre," dii I'un des plus jeunes religieux, que la maladie du mauvais air avait dejk frapp6. Les habitants du Midi craignant l)eaucoup la mort. Ton s'^tonne d'y trouver des institutions qui la rappellent a ce point ; mais il est dans la nature d'aimer k se livrer a I'id^e ni(-me que Ton redoute. II y a conime un enivrement de tristesse, qui fait k I'ame le bien de la remplir tout entifere. Un antique sarcophage dun jeune enfant sert de fontaine k ce eouvent. Le beau palmier dont Rome se vante est le seul arbre du jardin de ces moines.' — Madame de Sta'cl, ' Corimfie.' The Arch of Titus is spoken of as being ' in summa Via Sacra,' as the street was called which led from the southern gate of Rome to the Capitol, and by which the victorious generals passed in their triumphant processions to the Temple of Jupiter. Between the Aixh of Titus and the Coliseum, the ancient pavement of this famous road, composed of huge polygonal blocks of lava, was allowed to remain till 1879. Here we may imagine Horace taking his favourite walk : ' Ibam forte Via Sacra, sicut meus est mos, Nescio quid meditans nugarum, totus in illis.' —Sat. i. 9. It appears to have been the favourite resort of the flaneurs of the day : ' Videsne, Sacram metiente te Viam Cum bis trium ulnarum toga, Ut era vertat hue et hue euntium Liberrima indignatio ?' — Horace, Epod. i. > S. Buonaventura is perhaps best known to the existing Christian world as the author of the beautiful hymn, ' Recordare sanctae crucis.' Arch of Constantine 151 The Via Sacra was originally bordered with shops. Ovid alludes frequently to the purchases which might be made there in his time. In this especial part of the Via was the market for fruit and honey : i ' Dum bene dives ager, dum rami pondere nutaiit ; Adferat in calatlio ruatica dona puer. Rule suburbano poteris tibi dicere missa, Ilia vel in Sacra sint licet empta Via.' —Ovid, Art. Ama7i. ii. 263. It is supposed that the first chapel of the Christian emperors stood amongst the buildings sometimes called the Baths of Helio- gabalus, on the right of the descent of the Via Sacra, from the Arch of Titus to the Coliseum. It was called Ecclesia S. Cesarii in Palatio, and is first mentioned in. 603. From an association with the name Caesar, it was dedicated to Caesarius, an African saint, martyred at Terracina. The images of the Byzantine emperors were preserved here under the care of Greek monks. The ruined chambers under the cliffs of the Palatine belong to the palace of Nero.^ At the foot of the hill are the remains of the basin and the brick cone of a fountain called Meta Sudans, erected or restored by Domitian for those who came to the spectacles of the Coliseum, to drink at.-* The round basin only dates from the time of Con- stantine. Seneca, who lived in this neighbourhood, complains'* of the noise which was made by a showman who blew his trumpet close to this fountain. On the right, the Via Triumphalis leads to the Via Appia, pass- ing under the Arch of Constantine. The lower bas-reliefs upon the arch, which are crude and ill-designed, refer to the deeds of Constantine ; but the upper, of fine workmanship, illustrate the life of Trajan, which has led some to imagine that the arch was originally erected in honour of Trajan, and afterwards appropriated by Constantine. They were, however, removed from an arch of Trajan — 'arcus divi Trajani' — on the Via Nova (whose ruins existed in 1430 ^), and were appropriated by Constantine for his own arch. ' Constantin a enlev6 & un arc de triomphe de Trajan les statues de prisonniers daces que I'on voit au sommet du sien. Ce vol a 6t6 puni an seizieme siecle, car, dans ce qui semble un acc6s de folic, Lorenzino, le bizarre assassin d'Alexandre de Medicis, a d^capite toutes les statues qui surmontaient I'arche Constantin, raoins une, la seule dont la tete soit antique. Heureusement on a dans les musees, a Rome et ailleurs, bon nombre de ces statues de captifs barbares avec le meme costume, c'est-^-dire le pantalon et le bonnet, souvent les mains liiSes, dans une attitude de soumission morne, quelquefois avec une expression de sombre fiert^ ; car I'art remain avait la noblesse de ne pas humilier les vaincus ; il ne les representait point k genoux, f oul6s aux pieds par leurs vainqueurs ; on ne donnait 1 Varro, Be R. Hust. i. 2, and iii. 16. 2 The Palace of Nero is described in Tac. Ann. xv. 42, and Suet. Ner. 31. 3 Lucio Fauno, Compendio di Roma Antica, 1552. ■* Epist. Ivi. 5 See Poggio, De Vanitate Fortunae. 152 Walks in Rome pas I'l leiirs traits etranpes un aspect (lu'on cut pu reiidre hideiix ; on les plagait sur le soininet des arcs de trioinphe, debout, la tete baissee, I'air triste. ' " Sunimus tristis captivus in arcu." ' — Ampere, Emp. il. 169. The arch was plundered by Clement VIII., who carried off one of its eight Corinthian columns to finish a chapel at the Lateran. Tiiey were formerly all of giallo-antico (marraor Numidicum). Clement XII. restored the arch with blocks taken from the Temple of Neptune. But this is still the most striking and beautiful of the Eoman arches, and there is something touching in its inscription — 'fundatori quietis.' ' L'inscription grav^e sur I'arc de Constantin est curieuse par le vague de I'expression en ce ciui touclie aux ideee leligleiises, par rindecision calculee des ternies dont se servalt un senat qui voulait eviter de se comproiuettre dans un sens conime dans, I'autre. L'inscription porte (ine cet arc a 616 dedii- .i 1 empereur parce iiu'il a delivre la r6pul)Ii(iHe d'un tyran (on (lit encore la ri imliliiine I) par la grandeur de son anie et une inspiration de la Divinit6 (ins/uic^/ (Urinitatis). . . . Ce monument, (ini c6Ubre le trioinphe de Constantin, ne proclaine done pas encore nettement le triomphe du christianisme. Comment s'en etonner, quand sur les monnaies de cet enipereur on voit d'un cote le monogramme du Christ et de I'autre I'effigie de E,ome, qui 6tait luie divinite pour les paiens?' — Ampere, Emp. ii. 355. ' The importance of this arch rests not on its sculptured panels or medallions — spoils taken at random from older structures, from which the arch has received the nickname of Aesop's crow (la cornacchia di Exopo), — but on the inscription engraved on each side of the attic. The s.l'.cj.R. have dedicated this triumphal arch to Constantine, because instiiictii (llriiiit((ti!< (liy the will of God) and by his own virtue, he has liberated the country from tlie tyrant (ilaxentius) and his faction — containing two memorable words, the first proclaiming officially the name of the true God in the face of imperial Rome.' — Lanciani. The heads of the statues on the arch, restored by Clement XII., were said to have been decapitated by Lorenzino de' Medici. The arch appears in several famous pictures, including the ' Dispute of S. Catherine,' by Pinturicchio, in the Apartamento Borgia, and the 'Castigo del fuoco celeste,' by Botticelli, in the Sistine Chapel. We now turn to the Coliseum, originally called the Flavian Amphitheatre. This vast building was begun in A.D. 72, upon the site of the reservoir of Nero : ' Hie ubi conspicui venerabilis amphitheatri Erigitur moles, stagna Neronis crant' — Martial, De Sped. EiJ. ii. 5. The Emperor Vespasian built as far as the third row of arches. His work was completed by Titus after his return from the conquest of Jerusalem. It is said that 12,000 captive Jews were employed in this work, as the Hebrews in building the Pyramids of Egypt, and that the external walls alone cost a sum equal to 17,000,000 francs. The material is travertine — lapis Tiburtinus. It consists of four storeys — the first Doric, the second Ionic, the third and fourtli Corinthian. The existing upper storey belongs to a rebuild- ing under Alexander Severus and Gordian III. after a fire caused by The Coliseum 153 lightning, and is composed in great measure of fragments taken from other buildings clumsil_v fitted together. The circumference of the ellipse externally is 1790 feet, its length is 620, its width 525, its height 157. The entrance for the emperor was between two arches facing the Esquiline, where there is no cornice. On the opposite side was a similar entrance from the Palatine. Towards S. Gregorio lias been discovered the subterranean passage in which the Emperor Oommodus was near being assassinated. The numerous holes visible all over the exterior of the building were made in the Middle Ages, to extract the iron cramps, at that time of great value. The arena was surrounded by a wall sufficiently high to protect the spectators from the wild beasts, who were introduced by subterranean passages closed by huge gates, from the side towards the Coelian. The podium contained the places of honour reserved for the Emperor and his family, the Senate, and the Vestal virgins. The places for the other spectators, who entered by openings called vomiforia, were arranged in three stages {cciveae), separated by a gallery (praecinctio). The first stage, for knights and tribunes, had 24 steps ; the second, for the common people, 16 ; the third, for the soldiery, 10. The women, by order of the emperor, sat apart from the men, and married and unmarried men were also divided. The epigrams of Martial show how jealously any particular order guarded the seats to which they were privileged. The whole building was said, probably with exaggeration, to be capable of containing 87,000 persons. At the top, on the exterior, may be seen the remains of the consoles which sustained the velarium which was drawn over the arena to shelter the spectators from the sun or rain. The arena could on occasions be filled with water for the sake of naval combats ; the podium was protected from it by a metal screen, over which the wild beasts were unable to climb. By the entrance towards the Esquiline are remains of stucco decorations of great beauty. The external charm of the Coliseum has recently been spoilt by the cutting down of all the trees and destruction of the beautiful pomegranate gardens on the lower slope of the Esquiline, and the erection in their place of the most hideous and gigantic houses, destroying all the effect of the grand building below them. Nothing is known with certainty as to the architect of the Coliseum, though a tradition of the "church (founded on an inscrip- tion now preserved in the crypt of S. Martina) ascribes it to Gaudentius, a Christian martyr, who afterwards suffered on the spot.^ 1 This inscription, found in the catacomb of S. Agnese, runs :— Sic praemia servas Vespasiane dive Premiatus es more Gaudenti letare Civitas ubi gloriae tue autori Promisit iata dat Kristus omnia tibi Qui alium paravit theatru in celo. This apparently addresses alternately Vespasian, Gaudentius, and Kome. It is not clear in what order the lines sliould be read. 154 Walks in Rome 'The name of the architect to whom the great work of the Colisewm was entrusted has not come down to us. The ancients seem themselves to have regarded tliis name as a matter of little interest ; nor, in fact, do they generally care to specify the authorship of their most illustrious buildings. The reason is obvious. The forms of ancient art in this department were almost wholly conventional, and the limits of design within wliicli they were executed gave little room for the display of original taste and special character. ... It is only in periods of eclecticism and renaissance, when the taste of the architect has wider scope, and may lead the eye instead fif following it, that interest attaches to his personal merit. Thus it is that the Coliseum, tlie most conspicuous type of Roman civilisation, the monument which divides the admiration of strangers in modern Rome with S. Peters itself, is nameless and parentless, while every stage in the construction of the great Christian temple, the creation of a modern revival, is appropriated with jealous care to its special claimants. ' The dedication of the Coliseum afforded to 1'itus an opportunity for a display i>f niagniticenee hitherto unrivalled. A ))attle of cranes with dwarfs repre- senting the pigmies was a fanciful novelty, and might afford diversion for a moment ; there were combats (jf gladiators, among whom women were included, though no noble matron was allowed to mingle in the fray ; and the capacity of the vast edifice was tested by the slaughter of five thousand animals in its circuit. The show was crowned with the immission of water into the arena, and with a sea-fight representing the contests of the Corinthians and Corcyreans, related by Thucydides. . . . When all was over, Titus himself was seen to weep, perhaps from fatigue, possibly from vexation and disgust ; but his tears were interpreted as a presentiment of his death, which was now impending, and it is now probable that he was already suffering from a decline of bodily strength. . . . He lamented effeminately the premature decease he too surely anticipated, and, looking wistfully at the heavens, exclaimed that he did not deserve to die. He expired on the 13th September 81, not having quite completed his fortieth year.' — Merivale, ch. Ix. ' Hadrian gave a series of entertainments in honour of his birthday, with the slaughter of a thousand beasts, including a hundred lions and as many lionesses. One magical scene was the representation of forests, when the whole arena became planted with living trees, shrubs, and flowers ; to complete which illusion the ground was made to open, and sent forth wild animals from yawning clefts, instantly re-covered with bushes. ' One may imagine the frantic excess to which the taste for gladiatorial combats was carried in Rome, from the preventive law of Augustus that gladiators should no more combat without permission of the senate ; that praetors should not give these spectacles more than once a year ; that more than sixty couples should not engage at the same time ; and that neither knights nor senators should ever contend in the arena. The gladiators were classified according to the national manner of fighting which they imitated. Thus were distinguished the Gothic, Dacian, Thracian, and Samnite conib;itants ; the Betiarii, who entangled their opponents in nets thrown with the left hand, defending themselves with tridents in the right ; the Secutores, whose special skill was in pursuit ; the Laqueatores, who threw slings against their adversaries ; the Dhiiachae, armed with a short sword in each hand ; the Hoplomaehi, armed at all points ; the Myrmillones, so called from the figure of a fish at the crest of the Gallic helmet they wore ; the Bustuarii, who fought at funeral games ; the Dextiarii, who only assailed animals ; other classes who fought on horseback, called Andabates ; and those combating in chariots drawn by two horses, Esse- darii. Gladiators were originally slaves or prisoners of war ; but the armies who contended on the Roman arena in later epochs were divided into com- pulsory and voluntary combatants, the former alone composed of slaves or condemned criminals. The latter went through a laborious education in their art, supported at the public cost, and instructed by masters called Lanistae, resident in colleges called Ludi. To the eternal disgrace of the morals of Imperial Rome, it is recorded that women sometimes fought in the arena, with- out more modesty than hired gladiators. The exhibition of himself in this character by Commodus was a degradation of the imperial dignity, perhaps more infamous, according to ancient Roman notions, than the theatrical per- formances of Nero.'— if emans' 'Story of Monuments in Rome.' The Coliseum 155 The Emperor Commodus (a.d. 180-82) frequently fought in the Coliseum himself, and killed both gladiators and wild beasts, calling himself Hercules, dressed in a lion's skin, with his hair sprinkled with gold-dust. The gladiatorial combats came to an end when, in 403 A.D., an oriental monk named Telemachus was so horrified at them, that he rushed into the midst of the arena and besought the spectators to renounce them ; but instead of listening to him, they stoned him to death. The first martyrdom here was that of S. Ignatius — said to have been the child especially blessed by our Saviour — the disciple of John and the companion of Polycarp — who was sent here from Antioch, where he was bishop. When brought into the arena he knelt down and exclaimed, ' Romans who are present, know that I have not been brought into this place for any crime, but in order that by this means I may merit the fruition of the glory of God, for love of whom I have been made prisoner. I am as the grain of the field, and must be ground by the teeth of the lions, that I may become bread fit for His table.' The lions were then let loose, and devoured him, except the larger bones, which the Christians collected during the night. ^ ' It is related of Ignatius that he grew up in such innocence of heart and purity of life, tliat to liim it was granted to hear tlie angels sing ; hence, when he became Bishop of Antioch, he introduced into the service of his church the practice of singing the praises of God in responses, as he had heard the choirs of angels answering each other. . . . His story and fate are so well attested, and so sublimely affecting, that it has always been to me a cause of surprise as well as regret to find so few representations of him.' — Jameson's 'Sacred Art,' 693. Soon after the death of Ignatius, 115 Christians were shot down here with arrows. Under Hadrian, 218 A.D., a patrician named Placidus, his wife Theophista, and his two sons, were first exposed here to the wild beasts, but when these refused to touch them, were shut up in a brazen bull and roasted by a fire lighted beneath. In 253, Abdon and Sennen, two rich citizens of Babylon, were exposed here to two lions and four bears, but as the beasts refused to attack them, they were killed by the swords of gladiators. In 259 A.D., Sempronius, Olympius, Theodulus, and Exuperia were burnt at the entrance of the Coliseum, before the statue of the Sun. In 272 A.D., S. Prisca was vainly exposed here to a lion, then starved for three days, then stretched on a rack to have her flesh torn by iron hooks, then put into a furnace, and — having survived all these torments — was finally beheaded. In 277 a.d., S. Martina, another noble Koman lady, was exposed in vain to the beasts, and afterwards beheaded in the Coliseum. S. Alexander under Antoninus ; S. Potitus, 168 ; S. Eleutherius, bishop of Illyria, under Hadrian ; S. Maximus, son of a senator, 284 ; and SS. Vitus, Crescentia, and Modesta, under Domitian, were also martyred here.^ 1 Under the Papal rule, his relics, preserved at S. Clemente, were carried round the Coliseum, with every circumstance of sacerdotal pomp, on his festival, February 1. '- See Hemans' ' Catholic Italy.' 156 Walks in Eome ' It is no ttction, but plain, sohcr, honest trnth, to say : so suggestive and distinct is it at this hour : tliat, for a moment— actually in passing in— they who will, may have the whole great pile before them, as it used to be, with thou- sands of eager faces staring down into the arena, and such a whirl of strife, and blood, and dust going on there, as no language can describe. Its solitude, its awful beauty, and its utter desolation, strike upon the stranger, the next moment, like a softened sorrow; and never in his life, perhaps, will he be so moved and overcome by any sight, not immediately connected with his own affections and afflictions. 'To see it crumbling there, an inch a year; its walls and arches overgrown with green, its corridors open to the day ; the long grass growing in its porches ; young trees of yesterday springing up on its rugged parapets, and bearing fruit : chance produce of the seeds dropped there by the birds who built their nests within its chinks and crannies ; to see its pit of tiiiht tilled up with earth, and the peaceful cross planted in the centre ; to clinil) into its upper halls, and look down on ruin, ruin, ruin, all about it; the triiiniplial arches of (,'onstantine, Septimius Severus, and Titus, the lloman Forum, the Palace of the Caesars, the temples of the old religion, fallen down and gone ; is to see the ghost of old Rome, wicked, wonderful old city, haunting the very ground on which its people trod. It is the most impressive, the most stately, the most solemn, grand, majestic, mournful sight conceivable. Never, in its bloodiest prime, can the sight of the gigantic Coliseum, full and rinming over with the lustiest life, have moved one heart as it must move all who look upon it now, a ruin. God be thanked : a ruin.' — Dickens. The spot where the Christian martyrs suffered was marked till 1872 by a tall cross, devoutly kissed by the faithful, — and all around the arena of the Coliseum were the small chapels or ' stations,' used in the Via Crucis, wliich was observed here at 4 P.M. every Friday, when a confraternity clothed in grey, with only the eyes visible, was followed by a crowd of worshippers who chaunted and prayed at each station in turn — a most picturesque and striking scene — after which a Capuchin monk preached from a pulpit on the left of the arena. These sermons were often very striking, being delivered in a familiar style, and upon popular subjects of the day, but they also often bordered on the burlesque. ' Oswald voulut aller au Colisee pour entendre le Capucin qui devait y precher en plein air au pied de I'un des autels qui diisignent, dans I'interieur de I'enceinte, ce qu'on appelle la route de la Croix. Quel plus beau sujet pour I'eloquence que I'aspect de ce monument, que cette arene oil les martyrs ont succed6 aux gladiateurs ! Mais il ne faut rien esperer a cet 6gard du pauvre Capucin, qui ne connait de I'histoire des hommes que sa propre vie. K6anmoins, si Ton parvient k ne pas ecouter son mauvais sermon, on se sent emu par les divers objets dont il est entoure. La plupart de ses auditeurs sont de la confrerie des Canialdules ; ils se revetent, pendant les exercices religieux, d'une espece de robe grise qui couvre entierenient latete et tout le corps, et ne laisse que deux petites ouver- tures pour les yeux ; c'est ainsi que les ombres pourraient etre representees. Ces hommes, ainsi caches sous leurs vetements, se prosternent la face contre terre, et se frappent la poitrine. Quand le predicateur se jette a genoux en criant r/mcri- corde et pitic .' le peuple qui I'environne se jette aussi a genoux, et repete ce menie cri, qui va se perdre sous les vieux portiques du Colisee. II est impossible de ne pas eprouver alors une emotion profond6ment religieuse ; cet appel de la douleur a la bonte, de la terre au ciel, reraue I'lime jusque dans son sanctuaire le plus intime.' — Madame de Stail. The pulpit of the Coliseum was used for the stormy sermons of Gavazzi, who called the people to arms from thence in the revolu- tion of March 18-48. In 1872, Signor Rosa obtained leave to remove the cross and all The Coliseum 157 the shrines in the Coliseum, which was done, to the great indigna- tion of the Roman people. The excavations made by Gregory XVI., and closed again on account of their unhealthiness, after careful plans had been made, which still exist in the Jjarberini Library, were then reopened. It has since been affirmed that the ancient level of the Coliseum was originally only a movable boarded floor, through which the hundred lions which were slain by Commodus sprang up by trap-doors. The excavations are of little interest, though they display the anatomy of the labyrinthine passages which underlie the whole of the arena, and the arrangements by which water could be supplied for the naval combats. These passages are frequently flooded, and cannot be inspected for long together without great danger of fever ; and the excavations which have laid them bare have annihilated the beauty of the Coliseum. Nothing remains of the exquisite scene of which Ampere wrote — 'Le Colosseum est uu nionde de mines; tons les accidents que peuvent y produire la lumifere, le vegt^tation, le temps, se trouvent lii. Rien n'est plus impossible ;i decrire que ces arceaux brises, ces escaliers ecioules, ce lierre, ces plantes, ces debris suspendus ; la couleur superbe de ce monument, les grandes lignes de la partie encore debout, tout cela varie de mille maniferes, selon le jour at I'ombre ; et pour achever le tableau, au milieu de I'arfene oii les martyrs ont verse leur sang se dresse une immense croix de bois que viennent baiser tous ceux qui passent. Non, rien ne pourra jamais donner une faible idee d'un pareil spectacle.' — Jean-Jacques Ampere. It is well worth while to ascend to the upper galleries (a guardian will open a locked door for the purpose near the entrance from the Forum), as then only is it possible to realise the vast size and grandeur of the building. ^ May 1827.— Lastly, we ascended to the top of the Coliseum, Bunsen leaving us at the door, to go home ; and I seated myself just above the main entrance, towards the Forum, and there took my farewell look over Rome. It was a delicious evening, and everything was looking to advantage : — the huge Coliseum just under me, the tufts of ilex and aliternus and other shrubs that fringe the walls everywhere in the lower part, while the outside wall, with its top of gigantic stones, lifts itself high above, and seems like a mountain barrier of bare rock, enclosing a green and varied valley. I sat and gazed upon the scene with an intense and mingled feeling. The world could show nothing grander; it was one which for years I had longed to see, and I was now looking at it for the last time. AA'lien I last see the dome of S. Peter's I shall seem to be parting from more than a mere town full of curiosities, where the eye has V)een amused and the intellect gratified. I never thought to have felt thus tenderly towards Rome ; but the inexplicable solemnity and beauty of her ruined condition has quite bewitched me, and to the latest hour of my life I shall remember the Forum, the surrounding hills, and the magnificent Coliseum.'— Arnold's Letters. The upper arches frame a series of views of the Aventine, the Capitoline, the Coelian, and the Campagna, like a succession of beautiful pictures. Those who visit the Coliseum by moonlight will realise the truth- fulness of the following description : — ' I do remember me, that in my youth. When I was wandering,— upon such a night I stood within the Coliseum's wall, 'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome ; 158 Walks in Rome The trees which grew along the broken arches Waved dark in the blue niidniKlit, and the stars Shone throujih tlio rents of rnin ; from afar The watch-dog bayed beyond tlie Tiber; and More near from out tlie Caesars' palace came The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly, Of distant sentinels the fitful song Began and died upon the gentle wind : — Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet tliey stood Within a bowshot where the Caesars dwelt. And dwell tlie tuneless liirds of night, amidst A grove which springs through levell'd battlements, And twines its roots witli tlie imiierial hearths ; Ivy usurps tlie laurel's place of growth ; — But the gladiators' bloody circus stands, A noble wreck in ruinous i)erfection ! While Caesar's chambers and the Augustan halls, Grovel on earth in indistinct decay. And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon All this, and casi a wide and tender light. Which softened down the hoar austerity Of rugged desolation, and fill'd up, As 't were anew, the gaps of centuries ; Leaving that beautiful which still was so, And making tliat which was not, till tlie place Became religion, and the heart ran o'er With silent worship of the great of old : — The dead Imt sceptred sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urns.' — Manfred. ' Arches on arches ! as it wore that Rome, Collecting the chief trophies of her line. Would build up all her triumphs in one dome, Her Coliseum stands ; the moonbeams shine As 't were its natural torches, for divine Should be the light which streams here, to illume The long-explored but still e.vhaustless mine Of contemplation ; and the azure gloom Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume ' Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven. Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument. And shadows forth its glory. There is given Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent, A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power And magic in the ruined battlement. For which the palace of the present hour Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower.' ^Childe Harold. ' No one can form any idea of full moonlight in Rome who has not seen it. Every individual object is swallowed in the huge masses of light and shadow, and only the marked and principal outlines remain visil)le. Tliree days ago (Feb. 2, 1787) we made good use of a light and most beautiful night. The Coliseum pre- sents a vision of beauty. It is closed at night ; a hermit lives inside in a little church, and beggars roost amid the ruined vaults. They had lighted a fire on the bare ground, and a gentle lireeze drove the smoke across the arena. The lower portion of the ruin was lost, while the enormous walls above stood forth into the darkness. We stood at the gates and gazed upon this phenomenon. The moon shone higli and bright. Gradually the smoke moved through the chinks and apertures in the walls, and the moon illuminated it like a mist. It was an exquisite moment ! ' — Goethe. The Coliseum 159 It is believed that the building of the Coliseum remained entire until the eighth century, and that its ruin dates from the invasion of Kobert Guiscard, who destroyed it to prevent its being used as a stronghold by the Romans. During the Middle Ages it served as a fortress, and became the cas^tle of the great family of Frangipani, who here gave refuge to Pope Innocent II. (Papareschi) and his family against the anti-pope Anacletus II., and afterwards in the same way protected Innocent III. (Conti) and his brothers against the anti-pope Paschal II. Constantly at war with the Frangipani were the Annibaldi, who possessed a neighbouring fortress, and obtained from Gregory IX. a grant of half the Coliseum, which was rescinded by Innocent IV. During the absence of the popes at Avignon the Annibaldi got possession of the whole of the Coliseum, but it was taken away again in 1312, and placed in the hands of the municipality, after which it was used for bull-fights, in which (as described by Monaldeschi) nobles of high rank took part and lost their lives. In 1381 the senate made over part of the ruins to the Canons of the Lateran, to be used as a hospital, and their occupation is still commemorated by the arms of the Chapter (our Saviour's head between two candelabra) sculptured in various parts of the building. Necromancers used to practise their arts in the enclosure, and Benvenuto Cellini, in his Memoirs, describes how he caused a magician to people the arena with devils. From the fourteenth cen- tury the Coliseum began to be looked upon as a stone quarry, and the palaces Farnese, Barberini, Venezia, with the Cancelleria, were built of materials plundered from its walls. It is said that the first of its destroyers, Cardinal Farnese, only extorted permission from his reluctant uncle, Paul III., to quarry as much stone as he could remove in twelve hours, and that he availed himself of this permis- sion to let loose four thousand workmen upon the building. An official document testifies that in 1452 Giovanni Foglia of Como was permitted to carry off 2522 cart-loads of travertine. Sixtus V. endeavoured to utilise the building by turning the arcades into shops, and establishing a woollen manufactory, and Clement XI. (1700-21) by a manufactory of saltpetre, but both happily failed. In the last century the tide of restoration began to set in. A Carmelite monk, Angelo Paoli, represented the iniquity of allowing a spot consecrated by such holy memories to be desecrated, and Clement XI. consecrated the arena to the memory of the martyrs who had suffered there, and erected in one of the archways the chapel of S. Maria della Pieta. The hermit appointed to take care of this chapel was stabbed in 1742, which caused Benedict XIV. to shut in the Coliseum with bars and gates. Under the six last popes destruction was made sacrilege, and they all contributed to strengthen and preserve the walls which remain ; but since the fall of the Papacy, the ruins have been cruelly injured by the tearing out, under Rosa, of all the shrubs and plants which adorned them, in the eradication of which more of the stones have given way than would have fallen in five hundred years of time. As late as fifty years ago, the interior of the Coliseum was (like that of an 160 Walks in Rome English abbey) an uneven grassy space littered with masses of ruin, amid which large trees grew and flourished.^ In the gaunt, bare, ugly interior of the Coliseum as it now is, it is difficult even to conjure up a recollection of the ruin so gloriously beautiful imtler the popes, where every turn was a picture. Among the ecclesiastical legends connected with the Coliseum, it is said that Gregory the Great presented some foreign ambassa- dors with a handful of earth from the arena as a relic for their sovereigns, and upon their receiving the gift with disrespect, he pressed it, when blood flowed from the soil. Pius V. urged those who wished for relics to gather up the dust of the Coliseum, wet with the blood of the martyrs. In 1744, ' the Blessed Leonardo di Porto Maurizio,' who is buried in S. Buonaventura, drew immense crowds to the Coliseum by his preaching, and obtained permission from Benedict XIV. to found the confraternity of ' Amanti di Gesu e Maria,' for whom the Via Crucis was established here, which was only destroyed in 1872. In later times the ruins have been associated with the holy beggar, Benoit Joseph Labrd (beatified by Pius IX. in LSGO and since canon- ised), who died at Kome in 1783, after a life spent in devotion. He was accustomed to beg in the Coliseum, to sleep at night under its arcades, and to pray for hours at its various shrines. Nothing remains of the seven churches of the Coliseum — S. Salvatore in Tellure, de Trasi, de Insula, de rota Colisei, S. James, S. Agatha, and that of SS. Abdon and Sennen, at the foot of the Colossus of the Sun, where the bodies of those saints were exposed after martyrdom. The name Coliseum is first found in the writings of the venerable Bede, who quotes a prophecy of Anglo-Saxon pilgrims — ' Wliile stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand ; When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall ; And when Rome falls, the world. '2 The name was probably derived from its size ; the amphitheatre of Capua was also called Colossus. Once or twice in the course of every Roman winter the Coliseum is illuminated with Bengal lights. ' Les etrangers se donnent parfois I'amusement d'eclairer le Colis^e avec des feux de Bengale. Cela ressemble lui pen trop a un final de melodrame, et on pent priferer comme Illumination un radieux soleil ou les douces lueurs de la lune. Cependant j'avoue que la premiere fois que le Colis^e m'apparut ainsi, embras6 de feux rougeatres, son histoire me revint vivement a la penste. Je trouvais qu'il avait en ce moment sa vraie couleur, la couleur du sang.' — Ampere, Emp. ii. 156. 1 A work on the extraordinary Flora of the Coliseum, 420 species, now, alas ! extinct, has been published by S. Deakin. 2 ' Quamdiu stat Colysaeus, stat et Roma ; quando cadet Colysaeus, cadet et Roma, cadet et mundus.' CHAPTER V THE VELABRUM AND THE GHETTO S. Teodoro— S. Anastasia— Circus Maxinms— S. Giorgio in Velabio— Arch of Septiniius Severus— Arch of Janus— Cloaca Maxima— S. Maria in Cosniedin —Temple of Vesta— Temple of Fortuna Virilis— House of Rienzi— Ponte Rotto— Ponte Sublicio— S. Nicolo in Carcere— Theatre of Marcellus— Portico of Octavia—Pescheria— Jewish Synagogue— Palazzo Cenci— Fontana Tar- tarughe — Palazzo Mattel— Palazzo Caetani— S. Caterina dei Funari— S. Maria Campitelli— Palazzo Margana— Convent of the Tor de' Specchi. THE second turn on the right of the Roman Forum is the Via del Fienili, formerly the Vicus Tuscus, so called from the Etruscan colony established there after the drying up of the marsh which occupied that site in the earliest periods of Roman history. During the empire, this street, leading from the Forum to the Circus Maxi- mus, was one of the most important. Martial speaks of its silk mercers : from an inscription on a tomb we know that the fashion- able tailors were to be found there ; and the perfumers' shops were of such abundance as to give to part of tlie street the name of Vicus Thurarius. At its entrance was the statue of the Etruscan god Vertumnus, the patron of the quarter.' This was the street by which the processions of the Circensian games passed from the Forum to the Circus Maximus. In one of the Verrine Orations, an accusation brought by Cicero against the patrician Verres was that from avaricious motives he had paved even this street — used for the pro- cessions of the Circus — in such a manner that he would not venture to use it himself. - All this valley was once a stagnant marsh, left by inundations of the Tiber, for in early times the river often overflowed the whole valley between the Palatine and the Capitoline hills, and even reached as far as the foot of the Quirinal, where the Goat's Pool, at which Romulus disappeared, is supposed to have formed part of the same swamp. Ovid, in describing the processions of the games, speaks of the willows and rushes which once covered this ground, and the marshy places which one could not pass over except with bare feet : — 1 .See Ampfere, Hist. Rom. ii. 289-92. 2 ' Quis a signo Vertumni in Circum Maximum venit, (juin is unoquoque gradu de avaritia tua commoneretur? quam tu viani tensarum atque porapae ejusmodi exegisti, ut tu ipse ilia ire non audeas.' — In Vcrrem, i. 59. VOL. I. 161 L 162 Walks in Rome ' Qua Velabra solent in Circuin ducere pompas, Nil praeter salices cassaque canna fuit. Saepe siiburbaiias redietis conviva per undas Oantat, et ad nautas ebria verba jacit. Nonduni conveniens diversis iste ttguris Xonieii al) averso ceperat anine dens. Ilic qiuique lucns erat, juncis et arundine densus, Et pede velato non adennda palus. Stagna recesserunt, et aquas sua ripa coL-rcet ; Siccaque nunc tellus. Mos tamen ille manet.' —Fast. vi. 405. We even know the price which was paid for being ferried across the Velabrum : ' it was a quadrans, three times as much as one paj's now for the boat at the Ripetta.' i The creation of the Cloaca Maxima had probably done much towards draining, but some frag- ments of the marsh remained to a late period. According to Varro, the name of the Velabrum was derived from vehcre, because of the boats which were employed to convey passen- gers from one hill to another.- Others derive the name from vela, also in reference to the mode of transit, or, according to another idea, in reference to the awnings which were stretched across the street to shelter the processions— though the name was in existence long before any processions were thought of. It was the water of the Velabrum which bore the cradle of Romulus and Remus from the Tiber, and deposited it under the famous fig-tree of the Palatine. On the left of the Via dei Fienili (shut in by a railing, generally closed, but which will be opened on appealing to the sacristan next door) is the round Church of S. Teodoro. The origin of this build- ing is unknown. This church formerly stood on a much higher level than the street, and it was so even in 1534 ; its present rela- tion to the street is evidence of the rapid rise of the soil in Rome. The church used to be called the Temple of Romulus, on the very sliglit foundation that the famous bronze wolf, mentioned by Dionysius as existing in the Temple of Romulus, was found near this spot. Dyer supposes that it may have been the Temple of Cybele ; this, however, was upon, and not under, the Palatine. Be they what they may, the remains were dedicated as a Christian church by Adrian I. in the eighth century, and some well-preserved mosaics in the tribune are of that time. The high altar, till 1703, was sup- ported by a Roman ara, on the rim of which was inscribed : ' On this marble of the Gentiles incense was offered to the gods.' ' It is curious to note in Rome how many a modern superstition has its root in an ancient one, and how tenaciously customs still cling to the old localities. On the Palatine hill the bronze she-wolf was once worshipped as the wooden Bamliino is now. It stood in the Temple of Romulus, and there the ancient ij Varro, De Ling. Lat. v. 44. See Ampfere, Hist. Rom. ii. 32. 2 Varro, De Ling. Lat. iv. 8. S. Anastasia 163 Romans used to carry children to be cured of their diseases by touching it On the supposed site of the temple now stands the church dedicated to S. Teodore or Santo Toto, as he is called in Rome. Thouarh names must have changed and the temple has vanished, and churcli after church has here decayed and been re- built, the old superstition remains, and the common people at certain periods still bring their sick children to Santo Toto, that he may heal them with his touch.' — Story's ' lioba di Roma.' i Farther on the left, still under the shadow of the Palatine Hill, is the large and ancient Church of S. Anastasia, completelv modernised in 1722 by Carlo Gimach, but containing, beneath the altar, a beautiful statue of the martyred saint reclining on a faggot. ' Notwithstanding her beautiful Greek name, and her fame as one of the great saints of the Greek Calendar, S. Anastasia is represented as a noble Roman lady, who perished during the persecution of Diocletian. She was persecuted by her husband and family for openly professing the Christian faith, but, l)eing sustained by the eloquent exhortations of S. Chrysogonus, she passed trium- phantly, receiving in due time the crown of martyrdom, being condemned to the flames. Chrysogonus was put to death with the sword and his body thrown into the sea. ' According to the best authorities, these two saints did not suffer in Rome, but in lUyria ; yet in Rome we are assured that Anastasia, after her martyrdom, was buried by her friend Apollina in the garden of her house under the Palatine Hill and close to the Circus Maximns. There stood the church dedicated in the fourth century, and there it now stands. It was one of the principal churches in Rome in the time of S. Jerome, who, according to ancient tradition, celebrated mass at one of the altars, which is still regarded with peculiar veneration.' — Jameson, ' Sacred and Legendary Art.' It was the custom for the mediaeval Popes to celebrate their second mass of Christmas night in this church, for which reason S. Anastasia is still especially commemorated in that mass. Plato (father of Pope John VII., 705-8), buried in this church, is described in his epitaph as having restored, at his own expense, the staircase leading into the ancient Palace of the Caesars. 1 ' There is no doubt that many of the amusements, still more many of the religious practices now popular in this capital, may be traced to sources in pagan antiquity. The game of morra, played with the fingers (the micare digitis of the ancients); the rural feasting Ijefore the chapel of the Madonna del Divino Amore on Whit Monday ; the revelry and dancing s«6 dio for the whole night on the Vigil of S. John (a scene on the Lateran piazza, riotous, grotesque, but not licentious); the divining by dreams to oljtain numbers for the lottery ; hanging ex-voto pictures in churches to commemorate escapes from danger or recovery from illness; the offering of jewels, watches, weapons,