desolate region. The system adopted in the case of the valley of the
Chiana may not be practicable, but other, if more costly, means may be
devised. Whatever the outlay, it is sure to be productive, for even now
the marshes yield rich harvests of wheat and maize.
* * * * *
The Tiber, or Tevere, the great river of the Romans, has defied all
attempts at correction down to our own days, and its sudden floods are
said to be even more formidable now than they were in the days of the
Republic. Ever since the time of Ancus Martius there has been going on
a struggle against the alluvium brought down by the river, and it will
need all the skill of the Italian engineers to master this difficult
problem.
The Tiber is by far the most important river of the peninsular portion
of Italy, and its basin is the most extensive.[90] It is, too, the only
river that is navigable in its lower course, from Ostia to Fidenæ.
The Tiber rises on the western slope of the Alpe della Luna, in the
latitude of Florence. The valley through which it flows, whilst in
the heart of the Apennines, is of surpassing beauty; at one time it
expands into broad and fertile basins, at others it is hemmed in by
precipitous rocks. Below the charming basin of Perugia the Tiber
receives the Topino, formed by the confluence of several streams in the
old lacustrine basin of Foligno, one of the most delightful districts
of all Italy, situated at the foot of the Great Apennines and of the
Col Fiorito, which leads across them. The Clituno (Clitumnus) debouches
upon this plain, famous on account of its pellucid waters:―
“The most living crystal that was e’er
The haunt of the river nymph, to gaze and lave
Her limbs.”
The ruins of a beautiful temple still remain near the source of this
river, but the miraculous power of the latter of changing into a
brilliant white the wool of the sheep grazing upon its sacred banks has
gone for ever. {269}
[Illustration: Fig. 96.—ANCIENT LACUSTRINE BASINS OF THE TIBER AND
TOPINO.
Scale 1 : 294,000.]
[Illustration: Fig. 97.—THE CASCADES OF TERNI.]
[Illustration: Fig. 98.—THE DELTA OF THE TIBER.
According to Darondeau (1861) and Desjardins.]
The Nera is the most important tributary of the Tiber; “it gives it to
drink,” as the Italian proverb says, and rivals it in volume. It is
formed by the junction of several streams descending from the Sibylline
Mountains, Monte Velino, and the Sabine Hills. About two thousand years
ago, it is said, most of these rivulets did not reach the Tiber; they
were intercepted in the plain of Rieti, where they formed the Lacus
Velinus, represented at the present day by a few ponds and marshes
scattered over the fertile fields of the “Garden of Roses.” A breach
effected in the calcareous rocks, and several times enlarged since,
allowed the pent-up waters of the Velino to escape to the Nera, and in
doing so they formed those beautiful cascades of Marmora, above Terni,
whose charms have been celebrated by poets and painters. The river
falls down a perpendicular height of {270} 542 feet in a single sheet,
and then rushes down, over heaped-up blocks of rock, until it joins the
more placid waters of the Nera. Far less grand, but perhaps {271} more
charming, are the numerous cascatellas of the Anio, or Teverone, the
last affluent of any importance which the Tiber receives above Rome.
Standing on the verdant hill upon which is built the picturesque town
of Tivoli, silvery cascades may be seen to escape in every direction.
Some of them glide down the polished rocks; others shoot forth from
gloomy arches, remain suspended an instant in the air, and then
disappear again beneath the foliage; but every one of them, whether a
powerful jet or a mere thread of water, possesses some charm of its
own, and, as a whole, they form one of the most delightful spectacles
to be witnessed in Italy. It is these cascades which have rendered
Tivoli famous throughout the world; and in spite of the popular rhyme—
“Tivoli di mal conforto,
O piove, o tira vento, o suona a morto !”— {272}
modern residences have taken the place of the villas of the ancient
Romans, amongst which that of Hadrian was the most sumptuous. Its
ruins, to the west of Tivoli, cover an area of three square miles.
Recently it has been proposed to {273} utilise the great water
power of the Anio far more extensively than has been done hitherto.
The ancients contented themselves with quarrying the concretionary
limestone, or travertin, deposited by the calcareous waters of the
river, sometimes to the depth of a hundred feet. They made use of this
stone for the construction of their public buildings. Travertin, when
first quarried, is white; after a certain time it turns yellow, and
subsequently assumes a beautiful roseate hue, which imparts a character
of majesty to the edifices constructed of it.
[Illustration: Fig. 99.—PEASANTS OF THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA.]
Below their confluence with the Anio, the yellow waters of the Tiber,
discoloured by the clay brought down from the plains of Umbria, rush
beneath the bridges of Rome. Soon afterwards the river winds round
the last hills, which formerly bounded an ancient gulf of the sea,
now silted up. The influence of the tides makes itself felt. At the
head of the Sacred Island, formerly dedicated to Venus, and famous for
its roses, but now a dreary swamp, covered with reeds and asphodels,
it bifurcates. The principal branch, the old Tiber, passes to the
south of this island. Ostia, which was the port of the river during
the early days of Rome, is buried now beneath fields of cereals and
thistles, at a distance of five miles from the sea. Excavations made
there since 1855 have laid bare several temples, tombs, and warehouses.
The merchants of Rome were compelled to abandon that city two thousand
years ago, on account of a bar formed at the mouth of the river.
The Roman emperors, anxious to have an outlet into the sea, ordered
a ship canal to be excavated to the north of Ostia. This is the
Fiumicino, which the erosive action of the Tiber has converted into a
small river. Claudius had huge docks excavated to the north of this
canal, and a new Ostia arose near them. Trajan opened another port to
the south-east of it, which remained for several centuries the port
of Rome. But it, too, has been silted up for about a thousand years,
and the alluvium brought down by the Tiber is continually encroaching
upon the sea, the rate of progress being about three feet annually at
the mouth of the Fiumicino, and ten feet at that of the old Tiber.
Extensive ruins of palaces, baths, and storehouses exist near the
ancient port of Trajan, and several works of art have recently been
excavated there.
The mouth of the Tiber is thus closed by a bar, like that of all other
rivers which flow into the Mediterranean; and the Romans, instead
of being able to make use of their river for communicating with the
sea, are obliged to have recourse to more distant harbours. In former
times they kept up this communication with Sicily, Greece, and the
Orient through Antium, Anxur (Terracina), and even Puteoli; but since
the countries of the North have risen into political and commercial
importance, Cività Vecchia has become the great maritime entrepôt of
the valley of the Tiber. It is well known that Garibaldi has conceived
the stupendous project of converting Rome into a great maritime city.
The stagnant waters of the Campagna are to be carried off by means of
a huge sanitary canal, the bed of the Tiber is to be deepened, and an
artificial harbour capable of receiving the largest vessels is to be
constructed far out in the Mediterranean. {274}
The execution of this vast scheme is no doubt attended with immense
difficulties, not the least amongst which are the annual floods of the
Tiber. Ancient writers tell us that these inundations were dreaded
not only because of the damage done directly, but also because of the
great quantities of animal and vegetable deposits which remained in the
fields after the subsidence of the waters. The nature of these floods
has continued the same down to the present time. At Rome, though its
distance from the sea is only twenty-two miles, the river frequently
rises forty or fifty feet, and in December, 1598, it rose sixty-five
feet ! How is this huge volume of water to be disposed of after it has
passed beneath the bridges of Rome? If the destruction of the forests
in the Apennines is one of the principal causes of these floods, will
it be sufficient to replant them? Or would it be preferable to restore
some of those ancient lakes into which numerous rivers discharged
themselves, which now take their course to the sea? The difficulties
are great indeed, for the western slope of the Apennines is exposed
to the rain-bearing westerly and south-westerly winds, and the floods
of every one of the numerous tributaries of the Tiber take place
simultaneously, and combine to form one vast inundation.
It is by no means difficult to account for the great floods of the
Tiber which take place in winter, but the condition of the river
during summer has for a long time baffled inquiry. The level of the
river during the dry season is far higher than could possibly be
accounted for by the small quantity of rain which falls within its
basin. Its volume in summer is never less than half its average volume,
a phenomenon not hitherto observed in the case of any other river.
The Seine has a basin five times larger than that of the Tiber, and
its average volume is almost double; yet, after a continuance of dry
weather, its volume is only a third or fourth of the Italian river.
This perennity of the Tiber can only be accounted for by assuming
that it is fed, during the dry season, from subterranean reservoirs,
in which the water is stored up during winter. These reservoirs must
be very numerous, if we are to judge by the numerous “sinks,” or
“swallows,” met with on the calcareous plateaux of the Apennines. One
of these sinks, known as the “Fountain of Italy,” near Alatri, close
to the Neapolitan frontier, has the appearance of a huge pit, 160 feet
in depth and 300 feet across. Its bottom is occupied by a forest, and
numerous springs give rise to luxuriant herbage, upon which sheep
lowered by means of ropes feed with avidity. It is from sinks like
this that the rivers of the country, the Tiber and the Sacco, are fed.
It has been computed by Venturoli and Lombardini, the engineers, that
about three-fourths of the liquid mass of the Tiber during winter are
derived from subterranean lakes hidden in the depths of the Apennines.
The volume of water annually supplied from this source to the Tiber
would fill a basin having an area of 100 square miles to a depth of 80
feet ! [91]
Primitive Rome is to a large extent indebted for her power to the
Tiber, not {275} because that river is navigable, but because it
traverses the centre of a vast basin, of which Rome is the natural
capital. Rome, moreover, occupied a central position with regard to the
whole of Italy and the world of the ancients; but, as has already been
pointed out, Rome no longer lies upon any of the great high-roads of
nations. That city certainly occupies not only the centre of Italy, but
of all the countries surrounding the Tyrrhenian Sea; and its climate
would leave little to be desired, if it were not for the insalubrity
of the Campagna. Still Rome, though the residence of two sovereigns,
the King of Italy and the Pope, is not even the principal city of the
peninsula, and still less the capital of the Latin race. It is said
that during the Middle Ages, when the popes resided at Avignon, the
population of Rome was reduced to 17,000 souls. Gregorovius, than whom
no one is better acquainted with that epoch in the history of Rome,
doubts this; but there can be no doubt that after the sack ordered by
the Constable of Bourbon its population was reduced to 30,000 souls.
More recently Rome has increased rapidly, but it is still very inferior
to Naples, and even to Milan.
From the very first the Romans were a mixed race. The myth of Romulus
and Remus, the rape of the Sabine women, and incessant internal
conflicts bear evidence to this fact. The remains of ancient cities,
cyclopean walls, burial-grounds, urns, vases, and ornaments prove
that on the right bank of the Tiber the Etrurians were at least as
strong as the Italians. Elsewhere the Gauls predominated, and from an
intermixture of all these various peoples sprang the primitive Roman.
When Rome had reached the zenith of her power things wore a different
aspect, and thousands of foreigners became amalgamated with the Latins,
Gauls, Iberians, Mauritanians, Greeks, Syrians, and Orientals of every
race and climate; slaves, freemen, and citizens flocked towards the
capital of the world, and modified the character of its inhabitants.
Towards the close of the Empire there were more strangers within the
walls of Rome than Romans, and when the empire of the West broke to
pieces, and the empress-city was pillaged repeatedly by barbarian
hordes, the Italians had already become mixed with the most diverse
elements. This endless mixture between different races, victors and
vanquished, masters and slaves, accounts, perhaps, more satisfactorily
for the great changes which have taken place in the course of two
thousand years in the character and spirit of the Romans. Still the
Romans on the right bank of the Tiber, the so called Trasteverini, have
preserved the old Roman type, as transmitted to us in statues and on
medals.
[Illustration: Fig. 100.—ROME.]
Rome is great because of its past, and its ruins are more attractive
than its modern buildings; it is a tomb rather than a living
city. These monuments, raised by the former masters of the world,
strongly impress the imagination. The sight of the Coliseum arouses
an admiration akin to terror, unless we look upon this formidable
edifice as a mere heap of stones. The thought that this vast arena
was crowded with men who sought to kill each other, that the steps
surrounding it were occupied by 80,000 human beings who delighted
in this butchery and {276} encouraged it by their shouts, calls up
an amount of baseness, ferocity, and frenzy, whose existence could
not fail to sap the foundations of Roman civilisation, and make it
an easy prey to the barbarian. The Forum awakens memories of quite
a different nature. Abominations were practised there, too, but its
history as a whole exhibits it as the true centre of the Roman world.
It was from this spot that the first impetus was given to the nations
of the West; it was here that the ideas imported from every quarter
of the world bore fruit. The walls, columns, temples, and churches
which surround the Forum relate in mute language the principal events
in the history of Rome; and if we search beneath existing edifices
we meet with structures more ancient, which take us back to a period
still more remote, for edifice has succeeded edifice on this spot,
where pulsated the life of the Roman people. And thus it is throughout
Rome. Every ancient monument, arcade, or broken column, every stone,
bears witness to some {277} historical event, and though it may be
difficult sometimes to interpret these witnesses of the past, the truth
is elicited by degrees.
In spite of pillage and wholesale destruction, there still exist
numerous ancient monuments, of which the Pantheon of Agrippa is one
of the most marvellous. The Vandals, who are usually charged with the
work of destruction, pillaged the city, it is true, but they demolished
nothing. The systematical destruction had begun long before their
time, when the materials for building the first church of St. Peter
were taken from the Circus of Caligula, and from other monuments near
it. The same plan was pursued in the construction of innumerable other
churches and buildings of every kind. Statues were broken to pieces and
used for making lime, and in the beginning of the fifteenth century
there only remained six of them in all Rome, five of marble and one
of bronze. The invasion of the Normans in 1084, and the numerous wars
of the Middle Ages, which were frequently attended by pillage and
conflagrations, wrought further havoc, but so large had been the number
of public buildings and monuments, that on the revival of art in the
sixteenth century many still remained for study and imitation. Since
that time the architectural collection enclosed by the walls of Rome
has been guarded with the utmost care, and still further enriched by
the masterpieces of Michael Angelo, Bramante, and others.
On the Palatine Hill the most curious remains of ancient Rome,
including the foundations of the palaces of the Cæsars and of the walls
of _Roma Quadrata_, have recently been laid open. It was on this hill,
so rich in precious relics, that the first Romans built their city,
in order to afford it the protection of steep escarpments, and of the
marshes on the Tiber and Velabro. When Rome grew more populous it
became necessary to descend from this hill. The town spread over the
valley of the Velabro, which had been drained by Tarquin the Etruscan,
and then climbed up the surrounding hills. A small island in the Tiber
occupied its centre. This the Romans looked upon as a sacred spot. They
enclosed it by a masonry embankment, shaped like a ship, erected an
obelisk in its centre to represent a mast, and a temple of Æsculapius
upon the poop. This island was likened to a vessel bearing the fortunes
of Rome.
There is still another Rome, the subterranean one, which is well worth
study, for we learn more from it about early Christianity than from
all the books that have been written. The crypts of the Christian
burying-places occupy a zone around the city a couple of miles in
width, and embrace about fifty distinct catacombs. Signor Rossi
estimates the length of the subterranean passages at 360 miles. They
are excavated in the tufa, and are, on an average, a yard in width, but
they include chambers which served as oratories, and numerous tiers of
niches for the bodies. The inscriptions, bas-reliefs, and paintings of
these cities of the dead were at all times respected by the pagans,
and fortunately the entrances to them were closed up at the time the
Barbarians invaded Rome. This saved their contents from destruction,
and everything was found intact when they were first reopened towards
the close of the sixteenth century. These tombs prove that the popular
belief of the Christians of that time was very different from what it
is {278} represented to have been by contemporaneous writers, who
belonged to a different class of society from that of the majority of
the faithful. A serene gaiety reigns throughout, and lugubrious emblems
find no place there. We neither meet with representations of martyrdoms
nor with skeletons or images of Death; even the cross, which at a later
epoch became the great symbol of Christianity, is not seen there. The
most common symbols met with are those of the Good Shepherd carrying
a lamb upon his shoulders, and the vine decked with leaves. In the
oldest catacombs, which date back to the second and third centuries,
the figures are Greek in character, and abound in heathen subjects.
One represents the Good Shepherd surrounded by the Three Graces. There
are two Jewish catacombs, likewise excavated in the tufa, and they
enable us to compare the religious notions which prevailed at that time
amongst the followers of the two religions.
[Illustration: Fig. 101.—THE HILLS OF ROME.]
By an absurd predilection for mystical numbers, Rome is even now spoken
of as the “City of the Seven Hills,” although it lost all claim to such
a designation {279} after it had outgrown the walls built by Servius
Tullius. Independently of Monte Testaccio, which is merely a heap of
potsherds, there are at least nine hills within the walls of actual
Rome, viz. the Aventino, to which the plebeians retired during their
feeble struggles for independence; the Palatino, the ancient seat of
the Cæsars; the Capitolino, surmounted by the temple of Jupiter; Monte
Celio (Cælius); the Esquilino; Viminale; Quirinale; Citorio; and the
Pincio, with its public gardens. Besides these, there are two hills on
the opposite bank of the Tiber, viz. Monte Gianicolo (Janiculum), the
highest of all, and the Vatican, which derives its name from the Latin
word _vates_, a soothsayer, it having once been the seat of Etruscan
divination.
Faithful to its traditions, the last hill has ever since remained the
place of vaticinations. When the Christian priests left the obscurity
of the catacombs they established themselves upon it, and thence they
governed Rome and the Western world. The Papal palace, abounding
in treasures of art, was built upon it, and close to it stands the
resplendent basilica of St. Peter, the centre of Catholic Christendom.
A long arcade connects the palace with the Castle of Sant’ Angelo,
the ancient mausoleum of Hadrian. The guns of this fortress no longer
defend the Vatican, for the temporal power of the pontiffs is a thing
of the past; but their sumptuous church of St. Peter, with its dome
rising high into the air, and visible even from the sea, its statues,
marbles, and mosaics, bears witness to the fact that the riches of all
Christendom formerly found their way to Rome. St. Peter’s alone cost
nearly £20,000,000 sterling, and is only one out of the 365 churches
of the city of the popes. At the same time, the admiration which their
sumptuous edifice arouses is not without its alloy. A multiplicity of
ornaments dwarfs the proportions of this colossal building, and, more
serious still, instead of its being the embodiment of an entire epoch
of its faith and ideas, it is representative only of a transitory phase
in the local history of Catholicism, of an age of contradictions,
when the paganism of the Renaissance and the Christianity of the
Middle Ages allied themselves in order to give birth to a pompous and
sensuous neo-Catholicism suited to the tastes and caprices of the
century. How different is the impression we derive from this building
from that which the sombre nave of a Gothic cathedral makes upon us !
It is a remarkable fact that the quarter of Rome in which the church
of St. Peter is built is the only portion of the city which was laid
waste by the Mussulmans in 846, who are thus able to boast of having
sacked Papal Rome and taken possession of Jerusalem, whilst the tomb
of Mohammed has ever remained in the hands of the faithful. As to
the Jews, they did not come to Rome as conquerors. Shut up in their
filthy Ghetto near the swampy banks of the Tiber, and not far from
that arch of Titus which reminded them of the destruction of their
temple, they have been the objects of hatred and persecution during
nineteen centuries. They have survived, thanks to the power of their
gold, and since their liberation from bondage they contribute even more
to the embellishment of the Italian capital than do their Christian
fellow-citizens.
Our nineteenth century is not favourable to the creation of edifices
fit to rival {280} the Coliseum or St. Peter’s, but there are works of
another nature, not less deserving of attention, which may distinguish
this third era in the history of Rome. Above all, it will be necessary
to protect the city against the floods of the Tiber, and to improve
its sanitary condition. The bed of the river will have to be deepened,
embankments constructed, and a system of drainage established.
It is well known that the quantity of water supplied to the Rome of the
ancients was prodigious. In the time of Trajan nine grand aqueducts,
having a total length of 262 miles, supplied about 4,400 gallons of
water per second, and this quantity was augmented to the extent of
one-fourth by canals subsequently constructed. Even now, although
most of these ancient aqueducts are in ruins, the water supply of the
capital of Italy is superior to that of most other cities.[92] But if
the time should ever come when Rome will occupy the whole of the space
enclosed within its walls, if ever the Forum should again become the
centre of the city, then the want of water will be felt there as much
as in most of the other great towns of Europe.