Volume 6 Part 40 (1/2)
Respice ad Palatinum montem..... vasta rudera.... caeteros colles perl.u.s.tra omnia vacua aedificiis, ruinis vineisque oppleta conspicies, (Poggius, de Varietat. Fortunae p. 21.)]
These relics are minutely described by Poggius, one of the first who raised his eyes from the monuments of legendary, to those of cla.s.sic, superst.i.tion. [5] _1._Besides a bridge, an arch, a sepulchre, and the pyramid of Cestius, he could discern, of the age of the republic, a double row of vaults, in the salt-office of the Capitol, which were inscribed with the name and munificence of Catulus. _2._ Eleven temples were visible in some degree, from the perfect form of the Pantheon, to the three arches and a marble column of the temple of Peace, which Vespasian erected after the civil wars and the Jewish triumph. _3._ Of the number, which he rashly defines, of seven _therm_, or public baths, none were sufficiently entire to represent the use and distribution of the several parts: but those of Diocletian and Antoninus Caracalla still retained the t.i.tles of the founders, and astonished the curious spectator, who, in observing their solidity and extent, the variety of marbles, the size and mult.i.tude of the columns, compared the labor and expense with the use and importance. Of the baths of Constantine, of Alexander, of Domitian, or rather of t.i.tus, some vestige might yet be found. _4._ The triumphal arches of t.i.tus, Severus, and Constantine, were entire, both the structure and the inscriptions; a falling fragment was honored with the name of Trajan; and two arches, then extant, in the Flaminian way, have been ascribed to the baser memory of Faustina and Gallienus. [501] _5._ After the wonder of the Coliseum, Poggius might have overlooked small amphitheatre of brick, most probably for the use of the praetorian camp: the theatres of Marcellus and Pompey were occupied in a great measure by public and private buildings; and in the Circus, Agonalis and Maximus, little more than the situation and the form could be investigated. _6._ The columns of Trajan and Antonine were still erect; but the Egyptian obelisks were broken or buried. A people of G.o.ds and heroes, the workmans.h.i.+p of art, was reduced to one equestrian figure of gilt bra.s.s, and to five marble statues, of which the most conspicuous were the two horses of Phidias and Praxiteles. _7._ The two mausoleums or sepulchres of Augustus and Hadrian could not totally be lost: but the former was only visible as a mound of earth; and the latter, the castle of St. Angelo, had acquired the name and appearance of a modern fortress. With the addition of some separate and nameless columns, such were the remains of the ancient city; for the marks of a more recent structure might be detected in the walls, which formed a circ.u.mference of ten miles, included three hundred and seventy-nine turrets, and opened into the country by thirteen gates.
[Footnote 5: See Poggius, p. 8--22.]
[Footnote 501: One was in the Via Nomentana; est alter praeterea Gallieno principi dicatus, ut superscriptio indicat, _Via Nomentana_. Hobhouse, p. 154. Poggio likewise mentions the building which Gibbon ambiguously says be ”might have overlooked.”--M.]
This melancholy picture was drawn above nine hundred years after the fall of the Western empire, and even of the Gothic kingdom of Italy.
A long period of distress and anarchy, in which empire, and arts, and riches had migrated from the banks of the Tyber, was incapable of restoring or adorning the city; and, as all that is human must retrograde if it do not advance, every successive age must have hastened the ruin of the works of antiquity. To measure the progress of decay, and to ascertain, at each aera, the state of each edifice, would be an endless and a useless labor; and I shall content myself with two observations, which will introduce a short inquiry into the general causes and effects. _1._ Two hundred years before the eloquent complaint of Poggius, an anonymous writer composed a description of Rome. [6] His ignorance may repeat the same objects under strange and fabulous names.
Yet this barbarous topographer had eyes and ears; he could observe the visible remains; he could listen to the tradition of the people; and he distinctly enumerates seven theatres, eleven baths, twelve arches, and eighteen palaces, of which many had disappeared before the time of Poggius. It is apparent, that many stately monuments of antiquity survived till a late period, [7] and that the principles of destruction acted with vigorous and increasing energy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. _2._ The same reflection must be applied to the three last ages; and we should vainly seek the Septizonium of Severus; [8] which is celebrated by Petrarch and the antiquarians of the sixteenth century. While the Roman edifices were still entire, the first blows, however weighty and impetuous, were resisted by the solidity of the ma.s.s and the harmony of the parts; but the slightest touch would precipitate the fragments of arches and columns, that already nodded to their fall.
[Footnote 6: Liber de Mirabilibus Romae ex Registro Nicolai Cardinalis de Arragonia in Bibliotheca St. Isidori Armario IV., No. 69. This treatise, with some short but pertinent notes, has been published by Montfaucon, (Diarium Italic.u.m, p. 283--301,) who thus delivers his own critical opinion: Scriptor xiiimi. circiter saeculi, ut ibidem notatur; antiquariae rei imperitus et, ut ab illo aevo, nugis et anilibus fabellis refertus: sed, quia monumenta, quae iis temporibus Romae supererant pro modulo recenset, non parum inde lucis mutuabitur qui Romanis antiquitatibus indagandis operam navabit, (p. 283.)]
[Footnote 7: The Pere Mabillon (a.n.a.lecta, tom. iv. p. 502) has published an anonymous pilgrim of the ixth century, who, in his visit round the churches and holy places at Rome, touches on several buildings, especially porticos, which had disappeared before the xiiith century.]
[Footnote 8: On the Septizonium, see the Memoires sur Petrarque, (tom.
i. p. 325,) Donatus, (p. 338,) and Nardini, (p. 117, 414.)]
After a diligent inquiry, I can discern four princ.i.p.al causes of the ruin of Rome, which continued to operate in a period of more than a thousand years. I. The injuries of time and nature. II. The hostile attacks of the Barbarians and Christians. III. The use and abuse of the materials. And, IV. The domestic quarrels of the Romans.
I. The art of man is able to construct monuments far more permanent than the narrow span of his own existence; yet these monuments, like himself, are perishable and frail; and in the boundless annals of time, his life and his labors must equally be measured as a fleeting moment. Of a simple and solid edifice, it is not easy, however, to circ.u.mscribe the duration. As the wonders of ancient days, the pyramids [9] attracted the curiosity of the ancients: a hundred generations, the leaves of autumn, have dropped [10] into the grave; and after the fall of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies, the Caesars and caliphs, the same pyramids stand erect and unshaken above the floods of the Nile. A complex figure of various and minute parts to more accessible to injury and decay; and the silent lapse of time is often accelerated by hurricanes and earthquakes, by fires and inundations. The air and earth have doubtless been shaken; and the lofty turrets of Rome have tottered from their foundations; but the seven hills do not appear to be placed on the great cavities of the globe; nor has the city, in any age, been exposed to the convulsions of nature, which, in the climate of Antioch, Lisbon, or Lima, have crumbled in a few moments the works of ages into dust. Fire is the most powerful agent of life and death: the rapid mischief may be kindled and propagated by the industry or negligence of mankind; and every period of the Roman annals is marked by the repet.i.tion of similar calamities.
A memorable conflagration, the guilt or misfortune of Nero's reign, continued, though with unequal fury, either six or nine days. [11]
Innumerable buildings, crowded in close and crooked streets, supplied perpetual fuel for the flames; and when they ceased, four only of the fourteen regions were left entire; three were totally destroyed, and seven were deformed by the relics of smoking and lacerated edifices. [12]
In the full meridian of empire, the metropolis arose with fresh beauty from her ashes; yet the memory of the old deplored their irreparable losses, the arts of Greece, the trophies of victory, the monuments of primitive or fabulous antiquity. In the days of distress and anarchy, every wound is mortal, every fall irretrievable; nor can the damage be restored either by the public care of government, or the activity of private interest. Yet two causes may be alleged, which render the calamity of fire more destructive to a flouris.h.i.+ng than a decayed city.
_1._ The more combustible materials of brick, timber, and metals, are first melted or consumed; but the flames may play without injury or effect on the naked walls, and ma.s.sy arches, that have been despoiled of their ornaments. _2._ It is among the common and plebeian habitations, that a mischievous spark is most easily blown to a conflagration; but as soon as they are devoured, the greater edifices, which have resisted or escaped, are left as so many islands in a state of solitude and safety. From her situation, Rome is exposed to the danger of frequent inundations. Without excepting the Tyber, the rivers that descend from either side of the Apennine have a short and irregular course; a shallow stream in the summer heats; an impetuous torrent, when it is swelled in the spring or winter, by the fall of rain, and the melting of the snows.
When the current is repelled from the sea by adverse winds, when the ordinary bed is inadequate to the weight of waters, they rise above the banks, and overspread, without limits or control, the plains and cities of the adjacent country. Soon after the triumph of the first Punic war, the Tyber was increased by unusual rains; and the inundation, surpa.s.sing all former measure of time and place, destroyed all the buildings that were situated below the hills of Rome. According to the variety of ground, the same mischief was produced by different means; and the edifices were either swept away by the sudden impulse, or dissolved and undermined by the long continuance, of the flood. [13] Under the reign of Augustus, the same calamity was renewed: the lawless river overturned the palaces and temples on its banks; [14] and, after the labors of the emperor in cleansing and widening the bed that was enc.u.mbered with ruins, [15] the vigilance of his successors was exercised by similar dangers and designs. The project of diverting into new channels the Tyber itself, or some of the dependent streams, was long opposed by superst.i.tion and local interests; [16] nor did the use compensate the toil and cost of the tardy and imperfect execution. The servitude of rivers is the n.o.blest and most important victory which man has obtained over the licentiousness of nature; [17] and if such were the ravages of the Tyber under a firm and active government, what could oppose, or who can enumerate, the injuries of the city, after the fall of the Western empire? A remedy was at length produced by the evil itself: the acc.u.mulation of rubbish and the earth, that has been washed down from the hills, is supposed to have elevated the plain of Rome, fourteen or fifteen feet, perhaps, above the ancient level; [18] and the modern city is less accessible to the attacks of the river. [19]
[Footnote 9: The age of the pyramids is remote and unknown, since Diodorus Siculus (tom. i l. i. c. 44, p. 72) is unable to decide whether they were constructed 1000, or 3400, years before the clx.x.xth Olympiad.
Sir John Marsham's contracted scale of the Egyptian dynasties would fix them about 2000 years before Christ, (Canon. Chronicus, p. 47.)]
[Footnote 10: See the speech of Glaucus in the Iliad, (Z. 146.) This natural but melancholy image is peculiar to Homer.]
[Footnote 11: The learning and criticism of M. des Vignoles (Histoire Critique de la Republique des Lettres, tom. viii. p. 47--118, ix.
p. 172--187) dates the fire of Rome from A.D. 64, July 19, and the subsequent persecution of the Christians from November 15 of the same year.]
[Footnote 12: Quippe in regiones quatuordecim Roma dividitur, quarum quatuor integrae manebant, tres solo tenus dejectae: septem reliquis pauca testorum vestigia supererant, lacera et semiusta. Among the old relics that were irreparably lost, Tacitus enumerates the temple of the moon of Servius Tullius; the fane and altar consecrated by Evander praesenti Herculi; the temple of Jupiter Stator, a vow of Romulus; the palace of Numa; the temple of Vesta c.u.m Penatibus populi Romani. He then deplores the opes tot victoriis quaesitae et Graecarum artium decora.... multa quae seniores meminerant, quae reparari nequibant, (Annal. xv. 40, 41.)]
[Footnote 13: A. U. C. 507, repentina subversio ipsius Romae praevenit triumphum Romanorum.... diversae ignium aquarumque clades pene absumsere urbem Nam Tiberis insolitis auctus imbribus et ultra opinionem, vel diuturnitate vel maguitudine redundans, _omnia_ Romae aedificia in plano posita delevit. Diversae qualitates locorum ad unam convenere perniciem: quoniam et quae segnior inundatio tenuit madefacta dissolvit, et quae cursus torrentis invenit impulsa dejecit, (Orosius, Hist. l. iv. c. 11, p. 244, edit. Havercamp.) Yet we may observe, that it is the plan and study of the Christian apologist to magnify the calamities of the Pagan world.]
[Footnote 14:
Vidimus flavum Tiberim, retortis Littore Etrusco violenter undis, Ire dejectum monumenta Regis Templaque Vestae. (Horat. Carm. I. 2.)
If the palace of Numa and temple of Vesta were thrown down in Horace's time, what was consumed of those buildings by Nero's fire could hardly deserve the epithets of vetustissima or incorrupta.]
[Footnote 15: Ad coercendas inundationes alveum Tiberis laxavit, ac repurgavit, completum olim ruderibus, et aedificiorum prolapsionibus coarctatum, (Suetonius in Augusto, c. 30.)]
[Footnote 16: Tacitus (Annal. i. 79) reports the pet.i.tions of the different towns of Italy to the senate against the measure; and we may applaud the progress of reason. On a similar occasion, local interests would undoubtedly be consulted: but an English House of Commons would reject with contempt the arguments of superst.i.tion, ”that nature had a.s.signed to the rivers their proper course,” &c.]
[Footnote 17: See the Epoques de la Nature of the eloquent and philosophic Buffon. His picture of Guyana, in South America, is that of a new and savage land, in which the waters are abandoned to themselves without being regulated by human industry, (p. 212, 561, quarto edition.)]