purposes of a great ruin. It is travertine, of a rich, dark, warm color,
deepened and mellowed by time. There is nothing glaring, harsh, or
abrupt in the harmony of tints. The blue sky above, and the green earth
beneath, are in unison with a tone of coloring not unlike the brown of
one of our own early winter landscapes. The travertine is also of a
coarse grain and porous texture, not splintering into points and edges,
but gradually corroding by natural decay. Stone of such a texture
everywhere opens laps and nooks for the reception and formation of soil.
Every grain of dust that is borne through the air by the lazy breeze of
summer, instead of sliding from a glassy surface, is held where it
falls. The rocks themselves crumble and decompose, and turn into a
fertile mold. Thus, the Coliseum is throughout crowned and draped with a
covering of earth, in many places of considerable depth. Trailing plants
clasp the stones with arms of verdure; wild flowers bloom in their
seasons; and long grass nods and waves on the airy battlements. Life has
everywhere sprouted from the trunk of death. Insects hum and sport in
the sunshine; the burnished lizard darts like a tongue of green flame
along the walls; and birds make the hollow quarry overflow with their
songs. There is something beautiful and impressive in the contrast
between luxuriant life and the rigid skeleton upon which it rests.
As a matter of course, everybody goes to see the Coliseum by moonlight.
The great charm of the ruin under this condition is, that the
imagination is substituted for sight; and the mind for the eye. The
essential character of moonlight is hard rather than soft. The line
between light and shadow is sharply defined, and there is no gradation
of color. Blocks and walls of silver are bordered by, and spring out of,
chasms of blackness. But moonlight shrouds the Coliseum in mystery. It
opens deep vaults of gloom where the eye meets only an ebon wall, upon
which the fancy paints innumerable pictures in solemn, splendid, and
tragic colors. Shadowy forms of emperor and lictor and vestal virgin and
gladiator and martyr come out of the darkness, and pass before us in
long and silent procession. The breezes which blow through the broken
arches are changed into voices, and recall the shouts and cries of a
vast audience. By day, the Coliseum is an impressive fact; by night, it
is a stately vision. By day, it is a lifeless form; by night, a vital
thought.
The Coliseum should by all means be seen by a bright starlight, or under
the growing sickle of a young moon. The fainter ray and deeper gloom
bring out more strongly its visionary and ideal character. When the full
moon has blotted out the stars, it fills the vast gulf of the building
with a flood of spectral light, which falls with a chilling touch upon
the spirit; for then the ruin is like a "corpse in its shroud of snow,"
and the moon is a pale watcher by its side. But when the walls, veiled
in deep shadow, seem a part of the darkness in which they are lost--when
the stars are seen through their chasms and breaks, and sparkle along
the broken line of the battlements--the scene becomes another, tho the
same; more indistinct, yet not so mournful; contracting the sphere of
sight, but enlarging that of thought; less burdening, but more
suggestive.
But under all aspects, in the blaze of noon, at sunset, by the light of
the moon or stars--the Coliseum stands alone and unapproached. It is the
monarch of ruins. It is a great tragedy in stone, and it softens and
subdues the mind like a drama of Aeschylus or Shakespeare. It is a
colossal type of those struggles of humanity against an irresistible
destiny, in which the tragic poet finds the elements of his art. The
calamities which crusht the house of Atreus are symbolized in its broken
arches and shattered walls. Built of the most durable materials, and
seemingly for eternity--of a size, material, and form to defy the
"strong hours" which conquer all, it has bowed its head to their touch,
and passed into the inevitable cycle of decay. "And this too shall pass
away"--which the Eastern monarch engraved upon his signet ring--is
carved upon these Cyclopean blocks. The stones of the Coliseum were once
water; and they are now turning into dust. Such is ever the circle of
nature. The solid is changing into the fluid, and the fluid into the
solid; and that which is unseen is alone indestructible. He does not see
the Coliseum aright who carries away from it no other impressions than
those of form, size, and hue. It speaks an intelligible language to the
wiser mind. It rebukes the peevish and consoles the patient. It teaches
us that there are misfortunes which are clothed with dignity, and
sorrows that are crowned with grandeur. As the same blue sky smiles upon
the ruin which smiled upon the perfect structure, so the same beneficent
Providence bends over our shattered hopes and our answered prayers.
THE PANTHEON[9]
BY GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD
The best preserved monument of ancient Rome, and one of the most
beautiful buildings of the modern city, is unhappily placed. The
Pantheon stands in a narrow and dirty piazza, and is shouldered and
elbowed by a mob of vulgar houses. There is no breathing-space around,
which it might penetrate with the light of its own serene beauty. Its
harmonious proportions can be seen only in front; and it has there the
disadvantage of being approached from a point higher than that on which
it stands. On one side is a market; and the space before the matchless
portico is strewn with fish-bones, decayed vegetables, and offal.[10]
Forsyth, the sternest and most fastidious of architectural critics, has
only "large draughts of unqualified praise" for the Pantheon; and, where
he finds nothing to censure, who will venture to do any thing but
commend? The character of the architecture, and the sense of
satisfaction which it leaves upon the mind, are proofs of the enduring
charm of simplicity. The portico is perfectly beautiful. It is one
hundred and ten feet long and forty-four deep, and rests upon sixteen
columns of the Corinthian order, the shafts being of granite and the
capitals of marble. Eight of these are in front, and of these eight,
there are four (including the two on the extreme right and left) which
have two others behind them; the portico being thus divided into three
portions, like the nave and side aisles of a cathedral; the middle
space, leading to the door, being wider than the others. The granite of
the shafts is partly gray and partly rose-colored, but, in the shadow in
which they stand, the difference of hue is hardly perceptible. The
proportions of these columns are faultless; and their massive shafts and
richly-carved capitals produce the effect, at once, of beauty and
sublimity. The pediment above is now a bald front of ragged stone, but
it was once adorned with bas-reliefs in bronze; and the holes, made by
the rivets with which they were fastened, are still to be seen.
The aisles of the portico were once vaulted with bronze, and massive
beams or slabs of the same metal stretched across the whole structure;
but this was removed by Urban VIII., and melted into a baldachino to
deface St. Peter's, and cannon to defend the castle of St. Angelo; and,
not content with this, he has added insult to injury, and commemorated
his robbery in a Latin inscription, in which he claims to be commended
as for a praiseworthy act. But even this is not the heaviest weight
resting on the memory of that vandal pope. He shares with Bernini the
reproach of having added those hideous belfries which now rise above
each end of the vestibule--as wanton and unprovoked an offense against
good taste as ever was committed. A cocked hat upon the statue of
Demosthenes in the Vatican would not be a more discordant addition. The
artist should have gone to the stake, before giving his hand to such a
piece of disfigurement.
The cell, or main portion of the building to which the portico is
attached, is a simple structure, circular in form, and built of brick.
It was formerly encrusted with marble. The cell and the portico stand to
each other in the most harmonious relation, altho it seems to be
admitted that the latter was an addition, not contemplated when the cell
was built. But in the combination there is nothing forced or unnatural,
and they seem as necessary and as preordained complements, one to the
other, as a fine face and a fine head. The cell is a type of masculine
dignity, and the portico, of feminine grace; and the result is a perfect
architectural union.
The interior--a rotunda, surmounted by a dome--is converted into a
Christian church, a purpose to which its form and structure are not well
adapted; and the altars and their accessories are not improvements in an
architectural point of view. But in spite of this--in spite of all that
it has suffered at the hands of rapacity and bad taste--tho the panels
of the majestic dome have been stript of their bronze, and the whole has
been daubed over with a glaring coat of whitewash--the interior still
remains, with all its rare beauty essentially unimpaired. And the reason
of this is that this charm is the result of form and proportion, and can
not be lost except by entire destruction. The only light which the
temple receives is from a circular opening of twenty-eight feet in
diameter at the top; and falling, as it does, directly from the sky, it
fills the whole space with the purity of the heavens themselves. The
magical effect of this kind of illumination it is impossible to
describe....
The pavement of the Pantheon, composed of porphyry, pavonazzetto, and
giallo antico, tho constantly overflowed by the Tiber, and drenched by
the rains which fall upon it from the roof, is the finest in Rome. There
is an opening in the center, through which the water entering by the
dome is carried off into a reservoir.
The Pantheon has a peculiar interest in the history of art, as the
burial place of Raphael. His grave was opened in 1833, and the remains
found to be lying in the spot which Vasari had pointed out.
HADRIAN'S TOMB[11]
BY RODOLFO LANCIANI
Nerva was the last Emperor buried in the mausoleum of Augustus.[12]
Trajan's ashes were laid to rest in an urn of gold under his monumental
column. Hadrian determined to raise a new tomb for himself and his
successors, and, like Augustus, selected a site on the green and shady
banks of the Tiber, not on the city side, however, but in the gardens of
Domitia, which, with those of Agrippina, formed a crown property called
by Tacitus "Nero's Gardens." The mausoleum and the bridge which
gave access to it were substantially finished in A.D. 136.
Antoninus Pius, after completing the ornamental part in 139, transferred
to it Hadrian's ashes from their temporary burial-place in the former
villa of Cicero at Puteoli, and was himself afterward interred there....
Beside the passages of the "Hadrian's Life," and of Dion Cassius, two
descriptions of the monument have come down to us, one by Procopius, the
other by Leo I. From these we learn that it was composed of a square
basement of moderate height, each side of which measured 247 feet. It
was faced with blocks of Parian marble, with pilasters at the corners,
crowned by a capital. Above the pilasters were groups of men and horses
in bronze, of admirable workmanship. The basement was protected around
by a sidewalk and a railing of gilt bronze, supported by marble pillars
crowned with gilded peacocks, two of which are in the Giardino della
Pigna, in the Vatican. A grand circular mole, nearly a thousand feet in
circumference, and also faced with blocks of Parian marble, stood on the
square basement and supported in its turn a cone of earth covered with
evergreens, like the mausoleum of Augustus.
Of this magnificent decoration nothing now remains except a few blocks
of the coating of marble, on the east side of the quadrangle, near the
Bastione di S. Giovanni. All that is visible of the ancient work from
the outside are the blocks of peperino of the mole which once supported
the outer casing. The rest, both above and below, is covered by the
works of fortification constructed at various periods, from the time of
Honorius (393-403) to our own days. In no other monument of ancient and
medieval Rome is our history written, molded, as it were, so vividly, as
upon the battered remains of this castle-tomb. Within and around it took
place all the fights for dominion with which popes, emperors, barons,
barbarians, Romans, have distracted the city for fifteen hundred years.
Of the internal arrangement of the monument nothing was known until
1825, when the principal door was discovered in the middle of the square
basement facing the bridge. It opens upon a corridor leading to a large
niche, which, it is conjectured, contained a statue of Hadrian. The
walls of this vestibule, by which modern visitors generally begin their
inspection, are built of travertine, and bear evidence of having been
paneled with Numidian marble. The pavement is of white mosaic. On the
right side of this vestibule, near the niche, begins an inclined spiral
way, 30 feet high and 11 feet wide, leading up to the central chamber,
which is in the form of a Greek cross.
There is no doubt that the tomb was adorned with statues. Procopius
distinctly says that, during the siege laid by the Goths to the castle
in 537, many of them were hurled down from the battlements upon the
assailants. On the strength of this passage topographers have been in
the habit of attributing to the mausoleum all the works of statuary
discovered in the neighborhood; like the Barberini Faun now in Munich,
the exquisite statue of a River God described by Cassiano dal Pozzo,
etc., as if such subjects were becoming a house of death. The mausoleum
of Hadrian formed part of one of the largest and noblest cemeteries of
ancient Rome, crossed by the Via Triumphalis. The tomb next in
importance to it was the so-called "Meta," or "sepulcrum Romuli," or
"sepulcrum Neronis," a pyramid of great size, which stood on the site of
the church of St. Maria Transpontina, and was destroyed by Alexander VI.
in 1499.
TRAJAN'S FORUM[13]
BY FRANCIS WEY
In the midst of the busy quarters lying at the base of the Quirinal, you
come out upon a great piazza which you name at once without ever having
seen it before; Trajan's Column serves as ensign for a forum, of which
Apollodorus of Damascus erected the porticoes. The lines described by
the bases of a plantation of pillars will help you to identify the
pesimeter of the temple which Hadrian consecrated, and the site of the
Ulpian Library which was divided into two chambers--one for Greek books,
and the other for Latin; and finally the situation of the basilica,
opening on to the forum and with its apse in the north-northwest
direction....
It was in the Ulpian Basilica that, in 312, Constantine, having
assembled the notables of the empire seated himself in the presbyterium,
to proclaim his abjuration of polytheism in favor of the religion of
Christ; on that day and spot the prince closed the cycle of antiquity,
opened the catacombs, and inaugurated the modern world. The Acts of St.
Sylvester describe many passages of the discourse in which, "invoking
truth against mischievous divisions," and declaring that he "put away
superstitions born of ignorance and reared on unreason," the emperor
ordains that "churches be opened to Christians, and that the priests of
the temples and those of Christ enjoy the same privileges." He himself
undertakes to build a church in his Lateran palace.
I do not think there exists any monument in the world more precious or
more exquisite in its proportions than Trajan's Column, nor one that has
rendered more capital service. This has been set forth with more
authority than I can pretend to, by Viollet-le-Duc, the architect who
has written best on his own art; his description sums up the subject and
makes everything clear. A set of pictures of the campaigns of Trajan
against the Decians--the bas-reliefs--reproduces the arms, the
accouterments, the engines of war, the dwellings of the barbarians; we
discern the breed of the warriors and their horses; we look upon the
ships of the time, canoes and quinqueremes; women of all ranks, priests
of all theogonies, sieges, and assaults. Such are the merits of this
sculptured host, that Polidoro da Caravaggio, Giulio Romano, Michael
Angelo, and all the artists of the Renaissance have drawn thence models
of style and picturesque grouping.
Trajan's Column is of pure Carrara marble. The shaft measures about
ninety-four English feet, by twelve in diameter at the base, and ten
below the capital, which is Doric and carved out of a single block; the
column is composed of thirty-four blocks, hollowed out internally and
cut into a winding stair. A series of bas-reliefs, divided from one
another by a narrow band, run spirally around the shaft parallel to the
inner staircase of a hundred and eighty-two steps, and describes
twenty-three circuits to reach the platform on which the statue is
placed. The foot and the pedestal are seventeen feet high; the torus, of
enormous diameter, is a monolith; the whole construction rises a hundred
and thirty-five feet from the ground. These thirty-four blocks,
measuring eleven meters in circumference by one in height, had--a task
of considerable precision--to have holes drilled in them for the screws
of the staircase, it being necessary to determine from the inside
precisely where these borings must be made in order not to break the
continuity of the bas-reliefs, executed by several different hands, and
which are more deeply worked in proportion as they gain in height, so as
to appear of an equal projection.
THE BATHS OF CARACALLA[14]
BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
You reach the Baths of Caracalla, the most imposing object after the
Coliseum that one sees in Rome. These colossal structures are so many
signs of their times. Imperial Rome plundered the entire Mediterranean
basin, Spain, Gaul, and two-thirds of England, for the benefit of a
hundred thousand idlers. She amused them in the Coliseum with massacres
of beasts and of men; in the Circus Maximus with combats of athletes and
with chariot races; in the theater of Marcellus with pantomimes, plays,
and the pageantry of arms and costume; she provided them with baths, to
which they resorted to gossip, to contemplate statues, to listen to
declaimers, to keep themselves cool in the heats of summer. All that had
been invented of the convenient, agreeable, and beautiful, all that
could be collected in the world that was curious and magnificent, was
for them; the Cæsars fed them and diverted them, seeking only to afford
them gratification, and to obtain their acclamations.
A Roman of the middle classes might well regard his emperors as so many
public purveyors, administering his property, relieving him from
troublesome cares, furnishing him at fair rates, or for nothing, with
corn, wine, and oil, giving him sumptuous meals and well-got-up fêtes,
providing him with pictures, statues, pantomimists, gladiators, and
lions, resuscitating his "blasé" taste every morning with some
surprising novelty, and even occasionally converting themselves into
actors, charioteers, singers, and gladiators for his especial delight.
In order to lodge this group of amateurs in a very suitable to its regal
pretensions, architecture invented original and grand forms. Vast
structures always indicate some corresponding excess, some immoderate
concentration and accumulation of the labor of humanity. Look at the
Gothic cathedrals, the pyramids of Egypt, Paris of the present day, and
the docks of London!
On reaching the end of a long line of narrow streets, white walls, and
deserted gardens, the great ruin appears. There is nothing with which to
compare its form, while the line it describes on the sky is unique. No
mountains, no hills, no edifices, give any idea of it. It resembles all
these; it is a human structure, which time and events have so deformed
and transformed, as to render a natural production. Rising upward in the
air, its moss-stained embossed summit and indented crest with its wide
crevices, a red, mournful, decayed mass, silently reposes in a shroud of
clouds.
You enter, and it seems as if you had never seen anything in the world
so grand. The Coliseum itself is no approach to it, so much do a
multiplicity and irregularity of ruins add to the vastness of the vast
enclosure. Before these heaps of red corroded masonry, these round
vaults spanning the air like the arches of a mighty bridge before these
crumbling walls, you wonder whether an entire city did not once exist
there. Frequently an arch has fallen, and the monstrous mass that
sustained it still stands erect, exposing remnants of staircases and
fragments of arcades, like so many shapeless, deformed houses.
Sometimes it is cleft in the center, and a portion appears about to fall
and roll away, like a huge rock. Sections of wall and pieces of
tottering arches cling to it and dart their projections threateningly
upward in the air. The courts are strewed with various fragments, and
blocks of brick welded together by the action of time, like stones
incrusted with the deposits of the sea. Elsewhere are arcades quite
intact, piled up story upon story, the bright sky appearing behind them,
and above, along the dull red brickwork is a verdant head-dress of
plants, waving and rustling in the midst of the ethereal blue.
Here are mystic depths, wherein the bedewed shade prolongs itself among
mysterious shadows. Into these the ivy descends, and anemones, fennel,
and mallows fringe their brinks. Shafts of columns lie half-buried under
climbing vines and heaps of rubbish, while luxuriant clover carpets the
surrounding slopes. Small green oaks, with round tops, innumerable green
shrubs, and myriads of gillyflowers cling to the various projections,
nestle in the hollows, and deck its crest with their yellow clusters.
All these murmur in the breeze, and the birds are singing in the midst
of the imposing silence....
You ascend, I know not how many stories, and, on the summit, find the
pavement of the upper chambers to consist of checkered squares of
marble; owing to the shrubs and plants that have taken root among them,
these are disjoined in places, a fresh bit of mosaic sometimes appearing
intact on removing a layer of earth. Here were sixteen hundred seats of
polished marble. In the Baths of Diocletian there were places for three
thousand two hundred bathers. From this elevation, on casting your eyes
around, you see, on the plain, lines of ancient aqueducts radiating in
all directions and losing themselves in the distance, and, on the side
of Albano, three other vast ruins, masses of red and black arcades,
shattered and disintegrated brick by brick, and corroded by time.
You descend and take another glance. The hall of the "piscine" is a
hundred and twenty paces long; that in which the bathers disrobed is
eighty feet in height; the whole is covered with marble, and with such
beautiful marble that mantel ornaments are now made of its fragments. In
the sixteenth century the Farnese Hercules was discovered here, and the
Torso and Venus Callipygis, and I know not how many other masterpieces;
and in the seventeenth century hundreds of statues. No people, probably,
will ever again display the same luxurious conveniences, the same
diversions, and especially the same order of beauty, as that which the
Romans displayed in Rome.
Here only can you comprehend this assertion--a civilization other than
our own, other and different, but in its kind as complete and as
elegant. It is another animal, but equally perfect, like the mastodon,
previous to the modern elephant.
THE AQUEDUCT BUILDERS[15]
BY RODOLFO LANCIANI
One of the praises bestowed by Cicero on the founder of the city is that
"he selected a district very rich in springs." A glance at the plan will
at once prove the accuracy of the statement. Twenty-three springs have
been described within the walls, several of which are still in
existence; others have disappeared owing to the increase of modern soil.
"For four hundred and forty-one years," says Frontinus, "the Romans
contented themselves with such water as they could get from the Tiber,
from wells, and from springs. Some of these springs are still held in
great veneration on account of their health-restoring qualities, like
the spring of the Camoenae, that of Apollo, and that of Juturna."
The first aqueduct, that of the "Aqua Appia," is the joint work of
Appius Claudius Cæcus and C. Plautius Venox, censors in 312
B.C. The first built the channel, the second discovered the
springs 1,153 meters northeast of the sixth and seventh milestones of
the Via Collatina. They are still to be seen, much reduced in volume, at
the bottom of some stone quarries near the farmhouse of La Rustica.
The second aqueduct was begun in 272 B.C. by Manius Curius
Dentatus, censor, and finished three years later by Fulvius Flaccus. The
water was taken from the river Anio 850 meters above St. Cosimato, on
the road from Tivoli to Arsoli (Valeria). The course of the channel can
be traced as far as Gallicano; from Gallicano to Rome it is
uncertain....