When I travelled among you, I wept to see the Zocolanti occupying
that very Capitol to which Paulus Emilus led King Perseus, the
descendant of Alexander, chained to his triumphal car; that temple
to which the Scipios had brought the spoils of Carthage, and in
which Pompey triumphed over Asia, Africa, and Europe. But even more
bitter were my tears when I recalled the feast that Cæsar spread for
our ancestors on twenty-two thousand tables, and when I compared
the _congiaria_, that immense free distribution of corn, with the
scanty and poor bread that you eat to-day, sold to you at so high a
price by the apostolic chamber. Alas! you cannot even sow your soil
without the permission of these apostles; and, indeed, what have you
with which to sow it? There is not a citizen among you, save a few
that live in the Trastevere quarter, who has a plough. Your God fed
five thousand men, to say nothing of the women and children, with
five loaves and two gudgeons, according to St. John; four thousand
men, according to Matthew.[44] You, Romans, are made to swallow the
gudgeon[45] without receiving any bread. The successors of Lucullus
are reduced to the holy practice of fasting.
Your climate has never changed, whatever be said to the contrary.
Who, then, has so greatly changed your soil, your fortunes, and your
spirit? Whence comes it that the whole country from the gates of
Rome to Ostia is inhabited only by reptiles? Why do we find that,
from Montefiascone to Viterbo, and in the whole region through which
the Appian Way still leads to Naples, a vast desert has replaced the
smiling land that was once covered with palaces, gardens, harvests,
and countless numbers of citizens? I sought the Forum Romanum of
Trajan, that square once paved with reticulated marble, surrounded by
a colonnaded peristyle and adorned with a hundred statues; and what I
found was the Campo Vacino, the cattle-market, a market of lean and
milkless cows. And I asked myself: Where are those two million Romans
who once peopled this capital? I found that on the average only 3500
children are now born annually in Rome. Setting aside Jews, priests,
and foreigners, Rome cannot have one hundred thousand inhabitants.
I asked of them: Whose is this splendid building that I see, girt
about with ruins? It belongs to the monks, they said. Here once was
the house of Augustus; there Cicero dwelt, and there Pompey. On their
ruins have arisen convents.
I wept, Romans; and I think highly enough of you to believe that you
weep with me.