the subterraneous chambers, commonly called the Baths of Titus, whence
the arabesque paintings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are
said to have been derived. These ornaments however have, properly
speaking, nothing to do with the baths, but belonged to a magnificent
palace of an earlier date, whose walls were left by Titus to serve as
part of the supports to the apartments fabricated above them. A vast
number of chambers thus become subterraneous, still remain, and numerous
additional vaulted rooms occupy the courts of the ancient mansion, and
advance in front of them to complete the substructions required for the
arrangements above. These additional parts may be distinguished by the
quality of the work, and still more readily by the want of stucco, and
of every sort of ornament. The Roman antiquaries pretend to determine
that this palace had been abandoned some time before it was thus buried,
and that parts of it had been divided into small habitations for the
poorer class. Many of these vaults, as well of the ancient building, as
of the additions under Titus, were cleared out during the authority of
the French in Rome, but a still larger number remains more or less
filled with rubbish, purposely thrown in from above, and this
circumstance, together with the change of destination in the edifice,
produces an intricacy, or rather confusion in the plan, which the
spectator does not easily unravel, and it is with astonishment that we
contemplate these lofty and spacious apartments, covered with the
richest ornaments, and a profusion of painting and gilding, where it
seems as if the light of day could never have entered; but when the
circumstances of the building are once well understood, these
particularities, and some irregularities in the plan, which at first
sight appear incomprehensible, are fully explained. While all these were
considered as parts of the baths of Titus, all strangers used to be
told, that the Laocoon was found in them, and the very pedestal on which
it stood was pointed out; but now, when it is established that these
chambers never constituted any portion of the baths, this notion is
given up; since in fact all we know on the subject is, that the Laocoon
was found in or near the baths of Titus. I do not know whether a
magnificent bathing vessel of rosso antico, now in the Vatican, is in
the same predicament, but it was said one time to have been found here.
In a long corridor which formed one side of the internal court of the
palace, the painting on the vaults remains tolerably perfect. We see it
by means of a candle fixed at the end of a long reed, and consequently
the examination cannot be very exact, but it is enough to shew to us the
grace and spirit of the figures, and the delicacy of the ornament. In
another part of the ruins we scramble over heaps of rubbish, in chambers
nearly filled up, sometimes walking nearly upright, oftener half
doubled, or crawling on all-fours, to a part where there are similar
paintings, which may be examined close at hand. The execution is slight
but firm, suited to the position in which they were to be seen. The
arrangement of the ornaments, architecturally speaking, is bad, but in
themselves they are generally beautiful, and the figures both of men and
animals are drawn not only with spirit and truth, but with a grace of
attitude and elegance of form, which we certainly do not find in works
of this nature in modern times. One conceives that a very superior
artist must have made the drawings, and that they were copied on the
walls by skilful workmen. There are some apartments, and lofty vaults
above ground, but at a greater distance from the Coliseum; and a large
reservoir, called the _sette sale_, or seven halls, out of the general
circuit of the building. It consists of nine vaults, with the doors so
disposed that you may see seven of them on a diagonal line at one view.
The deposit on the sides proves sufficiently that they were reservoirs
for water, and they are supposed to have supplied the baths of Titus and
Trajan. The present circumstances of these ruins scattered over a great
extent of ground, some in one vineyard, and some in another, accessible
by different ways, and where in going from one to another, one loses
altogether the traces of antiquity, perhaps fill the imagination more,
than if they were in one inclosure; for the apparent distance is
increased by this want of union, by the crooked paths, through which one
reaches them, and by the number of objects intervening; but there is
nothing in any one of the superior buildings to detain the spectator for
long. More pains perhaps have been taken about the plan of this edifice,
than of any other of the ancient baths, but none of the _obscurer_ ruins
of Rome have been well made out, and even the less obvious parts of the
most interesting buildings, have till lately excited little attention.
At every step we have to complain that the Roman antiquities, in spite
of all which has been written upon them, have never been published.
These remains, as I have said, are on the Esquiline; on the opposite
slope of the Cœlian, are some buildings, consisting of piers, vaults,
and arcades; with a sort of Doric pilaster and entablature, much in the
style of the Coliseum, and supposed to have been erected at the same
time, or shortly after, for the reception of wild beasts for the use of
the amphitheatre. Returning again towards the Capitol, we find the
Palatine, half covered with ruins, mixed with modern convents; and the
buildings of the Farnese gardens, designed by M. A. Buonarotti, and by
Vignola. Amongst these is a subterranean apartment, without any opening
for the external light, known by the name of the baths of Livia, which
have been very highly ornamented with painting and gilding, and with
little bas-reliefs in stucco; and considerable remains of these
decorations still exist. I shall not attempt to lead you to all the
different masses of ruin, the long vaults, and immense solid piers,
crowded together on this hill; but I cannot omit to mention a noble
terrace supported on vaults, which commands the Circus maximus, and a
number of interesting objects finely combined. After all, supposing the
whole summit of the Palatine to have been occupied by the palace, which
was probably the case, it would not have been much larger than that
designed by Inigo Jones for Charles I., and of which the
Banquetting-house was built as a specimen. The Roman palace must have
been very irregular, the natural effect of having been erected at
different times, and by men whose views were very different. Amongst its
ruins we are shown a Hippodrome, a Temple of Apollo, and more things
than I can undertake to name; and in the villa Spada, the casino of
which boasts some nearly invisible productions of the pencil of Giulio
Romano, is a considerable subterraneum, called the Baths of Nero. As in
the baths of Titus, you have to hunt out these fragments in different
gardens and vineyards, the entrances to which are frequently very wide
apart, nor is it always easy to obtain admission.
LETTER XXIV.
ROMAN ANTIQUITIES.
_Rome, February, 1817._
IN my last I gave you some account of the buildings about the Forum, or
perhaps I should say, about the Campo Vaccino, for the ancient forum was
of much less extent from N. W. to S. E., which is its present direction,
and greater from N. E. to S. W., reaching as far as the circular church
of St. Theodore, supposed to have been a temple of Romulus; but not
apparently to the building called the temple of Vesta, or even to the
arch of Janus; as these stood, not in the great Forum, but in the
cattle-market, or Forum Boarium. The church of St. Theodore
above-mentioned, is a circular brick building, or at least coated with
brick, for the interior is probably rubble. We have no reason to believe
any of the present remains to be of very high antiquity, or if there be
any thing of the sort, it is concealed by the more recent covering,
which is supposed to have been made, or much repaired, at the time the
building was converted into a Christian church. According to Manazzale
it was _ristabilita_ by Adrian I. in 774, _rifabbricata_ by Nicolas V.
in 1450. Among the arguments used to prove it to have been the ancient
temple of Romulus, or at least to have occupied its site, is a fancied
similarity between St. Theodore (usually called San Toto), and the
founder of the Roman state; and the custom still existing, of carrying
to it sick children for the recovery of their health, since it appears
that the same practice prevailed in ancient times, with respect to the
temple of Romulus. This argument is of some value, since the Romans
still retain many local heathen superstitions. Behind this building is a
small fragment of wall of _opus incertum_, against the Palatine hill,
which we may pronounce more ancient than the temple itself, and probably
of a republican period. The pavement of the yard in front, and of a
considerable portion of the street, is formed of what is usually called
serpentine; but I believe it has no affinity with the stone now so named
by mineralogists, but is rather a green porphyry. One finds in Rome,
however, another stone called green porphyry, very different from this,
and agreeing with the red porphyry in every thing but its colour.
In the neighbourhood of the ancient Forum Boarium, are the remains of
five edifices; the first in our route is the Arch of Janus, which I need
not be very particular in describing, as it has little pretension to any
sort of beauty. The mouldings, without being good, are better drawn, and
better executed than those of the arch of Constantine, which were made
for the building. One or two fragments seem to have belonged to
something else, but in general there is a uniformity of design and
execution. Close by this is the Arch of the Goldsmiths, dedicated to
Septimius Severus, which, in spite of the name, is in fact, no arch at
all, but consists of an entablature supported on two piers, which are
ornamented with pilasters of the Composite order; it is covered with a
profusion of ornaments in bad taste, but producing, nevertheless, some
richness of effect.
The Cloaca Maxima is so little visible that one can hardly form a
decided judgment concerning its construction. It is said to be of
peperino, or rather of what Brocchi has called _tufa litoide_, repaired
in many places with travertine. We see only two ends of a short piece,
running perhaps two hundred yards, from the neighbourhood of the arch of
Janus into the Tiber. At the upper end only one course of arch stones,
of peperino, or tufa is seen, and the joints seem somewhat loosened by
time; in front of this is another arch of brick, springing from a higher
level, but apparently of ancient workmanship. The older arch is filled
up with silt to somewhat above the springing. Towards the land, the
modern sewer varies its direction, and the old one is entirely filled
up. Close by the sewer is a good spring of clear water, and a little
higher up, another more copious one. They are so far distinct, that the
use of the upper as a washing-place does not affect the lower. The upper
spring appears from beneath a brick arch, and may therefore be brought
from some distance; the lower rises under rocks. The position of this
spring is of importance in settling the topography of ancient Rome, as
it must have supplied the lake Juturna, and have been the place where
Castor and Pollux were seen watering their horses after the battle of
the lake Regillus. Some have supposed another spring, in order to put
the lake of Juturna, and consequently the temple of Vesta, at the foot
of the Palatine, just by the three columns of Jupiter Stator; the
arrangement is doubtless convenient, but the evidence is defective. The
outlet of the Cloaca into the Tiber has three courses of arch stones of
peperino, as perfect as if done yesterday, and of excellent masonry, but
in so exposed a situation it is hardly credible, that some restorations
should not at times have been necessary. It appears among the remains of
an ancient wall, which is also of peperino, or tufa, but of a softer
variety and less perfect workmanship. We may suppose all this prior to
Augustus, but between the kings and emperors there is a very wide
interval, and there seems no mode of fixing a precise date for any of
the restorations; what evidence we possess is certainly in favour of its
having retained the form and arrangement given to it by the Tarquins.
The next antiquity I shall notice, consists of some columns in the
church of Santa Maria, in Cosmedim. The church itself is a basilica of
very early date, and presents nothing of pagan antiquities in its
general appearance externally, excepting some ancient fragments of
architecture in the portico, and a large stone, supposed to have been
the covering of a sewer, representing a huge round face with an open
mouth. It is called the _Bocca della verità_, because if you assert a
falsehood with your hand in this mouth, it will close upon you.
Within side are nine large columns, which have evidently formed part of
the peristyle of a temple, and probably remain in their original
position. Seven of them have very beautiful Composite capitals, which
may probably be considered the best examples of that order in Rome. The
church contains a very rich pavement of the sort called Byzantine,
composed of tesselated marbles, and there are about twenty other small
marble columns, the spoils of various buildings, with capitals of all
ages, from the time of Titus to that of Constantine, and perhaps later.
From some appearances, one might imagine that the larger columns were
shaken by an earthquake. One of their capitals was wanting, and has been
supplied from some other ancient building; but even this alteration must
have been prior to the date of the present church, in which neither
columns nor capitals are of any value. There are some walls of the
ancient temple behind the choir. This church also preserves its ancient
marble pulpit and reading-desk; and there is an ancient picture, which
we are told floated of itself by sea from Greece, about the year 800.
I shall now proceed to a more beautiful and more perfect remain, usually
called the Temple of Vesta. The antiquaries here are pretty generally
agreed that it has no right to the appellation, though there are some
arguments in its favour, and rather assign it to Hercules Victor, built
A. U. C. 480. For my part I doubt, as every body must be content to do,
who troubles himself with the names of the Roman antiquities, and
believes only according to evidence. It is a small cell, partly of
brick, and partly of stone; the latter ancient, the former modern;
surrounded by a peristyle of twenty elegant Corinthian columns of white
marble, some of which have capitals in the Greek taste, and some rather
more in the Roman. I believe I have already noticed this distinction,
but I will now in a few words endeavour to explain to you in what it
consists. In the Greek order, the abacus is not cut off at the angles;
the general form of the capital more or less resembles that of a bell;
and in the foliage of the leaves, one part does not lie over the other,
but the divisions merely touch each other at the points. In the Roman,
the angles of the abacus are cut off; the general form is that of a
funnel; and the lower divisions of the leaves usually lie over the
upper. What I here call Greek foliage is frequently designated as
consisting of the leaves of the acanthus; while the Roman is considered
to be imitated from olive leaves; there is little resemblance to either,
yet the olive branch may have suggested the idea of the Roman ornament;
while the Greek resembles some sorts of thistle, rather than the
acanthus of Linnæus, but it is probable that the Greeks intended a
thistle by the name acanthus, though the _mollis Acanthus_ of Virgil
seems to belong to some other plant, and his evergreen acanthus must
again be different.
When the Romans first began to feel the beauties of Grecian
architecture, they probably were obliged to make use of Greek artists
for its execution, and to such a period I attribute the present edifice.
About the time of Augustus, the Romans had formed to themselves a style
decidedly their own, and differing in many particulars from their Greek
models. From that emperor to Trajan, or perhaps later, we do not find
any capital, or other ornamental part of public buildings, in which the
taste of the details is Greek; but as skill in the fine arts seems to
have utterly disappeared in Italy, sooner than in Greece, the Romans of
the latter age had again recourse to the chisel of Greek artists. In the
time of Trajan indeed, Apollodorus grecised, but in a different manner.
The forms of the mouldings in the forum of Trajan approach to those of
the Greeks, and they are executed with Grecian truth and delicacy of
workmanship, but the ornaments are such as were usual at Rome. In the
temple of Vesta the ornament is Greek, but it is not particularly well
executed. The entablature is entirely gone, nor are there any fragments
by which to restore it. Pieces of the soffite of the portico however,
are found, and some _antefixæ_ have been dug up, which perhaps belonged
to this edifice. The bases are in the Roman taste, and well designed,
though rather smaller than usual; they have no separate plinths, but are
set on one which is continued round the building, and forms the upper
step.
Before the first volume of the Ionian antiquities, published by the
Dilettanti Society, had made us acquainted with really fine specimens of
the Ionic order, the Temple of Fortuna Virilis was cited as one of its
best examples. As usual, the Roman antiquaries are agreed about nothing
but that this edifice is misnamed. It is of a clumsy overcharged
architecture, but looks rather better in reality than in the drawings,
because the relief of the ornaments is very small. Part of the old work
having been much defaced, new mouldings have been badly executed in
plaster, without the ornaments.
I have mentioned a sepulchre of Pontius Pilate at Vienne, in Dauphiné.
His palace is at Rome, if you believe tradition, and a very curious
palace it must have been, whimsically made up with fragments of better
times. The edifice has been more reasonably supposed the habitation of
Rienzi, tribune of the people in the fourteenth century, whose curious
history you have read in Gibbon. The authority for this is an
inscription which states it to have been erected by Nicolas, son of
Crescentius and Theodora.
The ancient Pons Palatinus was built, or at least begun by Marcus
Fulvius, who was censor in 575; and terminated by Scipio Africanus in
612, A. U. C. It was thrown down in 1598, and the present fragment is
for the most part a papal structure of the seventeenth century. A
little, and but very little, of the ancient Roman work is visible. A
stranger is perhaps more struck by the nets turned round by the action
of the water, than by the remains of the bridge. These nets are intended
for large fish, and principally sturgeon, whose nature it is to push
quietly against the obstacle; the weight of the fish prevents the motion
of the net, till the person appointed to watch it can take possession of
his prey.
Before we reach the theatre of Marcellus, we have to hunt out the ruins
of three temples, which stand close together, almost indeed touching in
some parts, but not placed symmetrically, or even parallel to each
other. One of these is supposed to have been the Temple of Filial Piety,
erected on the site of the prison where the story recorded by Pliny
occurred, of a father nourished by the milk of his daughter; but nobody
has yet attempted to determine which of the three. The present church of
S. Nicola in Carcere, seems to preserve in its name some memory of the
tradition, and this occupies the whole space of the middle temple, while
parts of the peristyles of the two others are built up in its side
walls. The middle one was a hexastyle, peripteral temple, of the Ionic
order, built of peperino. Of that on the right of the spectator, we may
see a range of five of the columns of the flank. They have a sort of
Corinthian capital, but I would not venture from the little that is seen
of the architecture, to guess at the date. The third was Doric, and much
smaller.
We may next visit the Theatre of Marcellus, of which but little is seen,
as it is encumbered with the formless mass of the Orsini Palace, and
that little is occupied by a range of dirty shops. Enough remains to
show that the architecture has been such as we might expect from the
date of its erection. It formed for a long while the model of the Doric
order, and is still considered as the finest example remaining of what
is called Roman Doric, although the introduction of dentils in the
cornice is esteemed very licentious. The Roman Doric, however, is an
order of which we have so few ancient examples, that our choice is
extremely limited. Of the Theatre of Pompey nothing is to be seen but a
few vaults, and a range of houses, whose circular form points out that
they have been erected on the ancient foundations.
The Portico of Octavia is a fine fragment, in an awkward, dirty,
disagreeable situation. The order has not much ornament, but it is well
proportioned. The effect is spoiled by the brick walls and arches, which
have been erected to supply the place of the deficient columns, and some
of these are as early as the reign of Severus. Several of the antefixæ
of this roof still exist, but I believe they have fallen down and been
put up again, so that we cannot determine what was their precise
situation.
This portico anciently enclosed two temples, and with a long neck you
may contrive to see the Composite capital of a column of one of them,
which is supposed to be the most ancient specimen of the order in
existence; I can venture no criticisms on what is so imperfectly
visible.
There are some vestiges of the baths of Agrippa in stables behind the
Pantheon, upon which I shall not stop to speculate, nor upon the more
conspicuous Arco de’ Ciambelli, which is also supposed to have belonged
to them, but transport you at once to the Pantheon itself, the most
perfect and majestic edifice remaining, of the good time of Roman
architecture. I must according to my plan, begin with what may be learnt
or guessed relating to its history. For a long while, the prevailing
opinion was, that the body of the edifice was of the time of the
republic, and the portico an addition made by Agrippa: indeed there were
some very mysterious dreams about the purpose and antiquity of this
temple. I have already mentioned the investigations of M. Achille Le
Clerc; the cell seems to have formed a complete circular building
itself, not essentially attached to any thing, except at the back, where
some remains, attributed to the baths of Agrippa, appear to be united
with it, but there is no trace of a door, or other opening, to form a
communication between them. In front, the two masses of brickwork which
at present support the turrets, are added to bring out a straight line
to receive the portico, leaving between them a space which is covered
with a vault, and which may be termed the pronaos. To these the portico
is added, but there is no intimate union either between the circular
part and these projections, or between the latter and the portico. A
brick wall, rising considerably above the roof of the portico, is
supported on the arch over the pronaos, which occupies the space
continued from the three middle intercolumniations of the portico; and
on this wall there is a pediment, or part of a pediment, for the top is
cut off, and it seems uncertain if it ever formed a complete triangle;
and it is this pediment, and the detached construction of the different
parts, which have afforded the antiquaries a motive for believing the
present portico a posterior addition. If, reasoned M. Le Clerc, the
building was originally finished without a portico, we shall find traces
of the method of completing it without one either on the circular cell,
or on the face of the two additional masses of brickwork. He examined
both with the greatest care, and in both was perfectly satisfied, from
the interruption of the mouldings, and also from the offsets of the
work, that no finishing could ever have taken place on either, but that
the present portico, or something analogous to it, must have existed
from the first.