army of the Crusaders arrived, a magnificent city, filled with wealth,
and abundance of all the luxuries of the East. It was exceedingly
populous, adorned with stately buildings, and well fortified with walls
and towers.
The Musselmans here reverence the tomb of Locman, the wise; also the
sepulchres of seventy prophets, who are believed to have been buried
here.
Rama is situated about thirty miles from Jerusalem, in the middle of an
extensive and fertile plain, which is part of the great field of Sharon.
“It makes,” says Dr. Clarke, “a considerable figure at a distance; but
we found nothing within the place except traces of devastation and
death. It exhibited one scene of ruin: houses, fallen or deserted,
appeared on every side; and instead of inhabitants, we beheld only the
skeletons or putrifying carcasses of horses and camels. A plague, or
rather murrain, during the preceding year, had committed such ravages,
that not only men, women, and children, but cattle of all kinds, and
every thing that had life, became its victims. Few of the inhabitants of
Europe can have been aware of the state of suffering, to which all the
coast of Palestine and Syria was exposed. It followed, and in part
accompanied, the dreadful ravages, caused by the march of the French
army. From the accounts we received, it seemed as if the exterminating
hand of Providence was exercised in sweeping from the earth every trace
of ancient existence. ‘In Rama[148] there was a voice heard; lamentation
and weeping, and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and
could not be comforted, because they were not.’”[149]
NO. XXI.—ROME.
To seek for Rome, vain stranger, art thou come,
And find’st no mark, within Rome’s walls, of Rome?
See here the craggy walls, the towers defaced,
And piles that frighten more than once they pleased:
See the vast theatres, a shapeless load,
And sights more tragic than they ever show’d.
This, this is Rome! Her haughty carcass spread
Still awes in ruin, and commands when dead.
The subject world first took from her their fate;
And when she only stood unconquer’d yet,
Herself she last subdued, to make the work complete.
But ah! so dear the fatal triumph cost,
That conquering Rome is in the conquer’d lost.
Yet rolling Tiber still maintains his stream,
Swell’d with the glories of the Roman name.
Strange power of fate! unshaken moles must waste;
While things that ever move, for ever last.—VITALIS.
As the plan of this work does not admit of our giving any thing like a
history of the various trials and fortunes of Rome; we must confine
ourselves, almost entirely, to a few particulars relative to its origin,
summit of glory and empire, its decay, and ultimate ruin.
There is no unquestionable narrative of facts, on which any writer can
build the primitive history of this vast city and empire; but in its
place we have a mass of popular traditions and fabulous records. On the
taking of Troy, Æneas, a prince of that city, quitted his native land,
and after a long period, spent in encountering a variety of
vicissitudes, he arrived on the coast of Italy, was received with
hospitality by the King of Latium, whose name was Latinus, and
afterwards obtained his throne, from the circumstance of having married
his daughter.
Æneas after this built the city of Lavinium, and, thirty years after,
his son founded that of Alba Longa, which then became the capital of
Latium. Three hundred years after, Romulus founded Rome.
[Illustration: ROME.]
Though Livy has given a very circumstantial account of the origin of
this city, sufficient data have been afforded, since his history was
written, to justify our doubting many of his statements. The first
author in modern times, that led Europe to these doubts, was, we
believe, Dr. Taylor; who, in a work written about sixty years ago,
entitled Elements of Civil Law, has the following passage:—“It was not
peculiar to this people, to have the dawn of their history wrapped up in
fable and mythology, or set in with something that looked like
marvellous and preternatural. There is scarce a nation, that we are
acquainted with, but has this foible in a greater or lesser degree, and
almost pleads a right to be indulged in it. “Datur hæc venia
antiquitati, ut miscendo humana divinis primordia urbium augustiora
faciat.” (Liv. I. Præf.) Indeed the Romans themselves had some suspicion
of their own history. They generally dated their periods not AB U. C.
but began their æra from their consuls, by whom they always reckoned.
The records of Rome were burned at the irruption of the Gauls: they had
nothing for it but tradition before that period. Nor was there an author
extant of that age, or near it, at the time that Livy compiled his
history. Diocles Peparethius (the father of Roman history, since Fabius
Pictor, the first historian that Rome produced, and all his followers,
copied him implicitly) was a writer of no very great credit. The birth
and education of Romulus, is the exact counter-part of that of another
founder of a great empire; and Romulus, I am satisfied, could not
resemble more his brother Remus, than his brother Cyrus. The expedient
of Tarquin’s conveying advice to his son, by striking off the heads of
flowers, is given with the minutest difference, by Aristotle to
Periander of Corinth, and by Herodotus to Thrasybulus. Which similarity
is very ill accounted for by Camerarius. This was one of those
ambulatory stories which (Plutarch in his Greek and Roman Parallels will
furnish us with many such) seem confined to no one age, race, or
country; but have been adopted in their turn, at several periods of
time, and by several very different people, and are perhaps, at least
some of them, true of none. And, lastly, one would imagine, that the
history of the seven kings, which has such an air of romance in it, was
made on purpose for Florus to be ingenious upon in his recapitulation of
the regal state of Rome.”
The truth of this subject we leave to abler hands; proceeding at once to
the manner in which the ceremonies are recorded to have been adopted at
the first laying down the foundations of the city. Romulus, having sent
for some of the Tuscans, to instruct him in the ceremonies that ought to
be observed in laying the foundations, and they having instructed him
according to his desire, his work began in the following manner:—First,
he dug a trench, and threw into it the first-fruits of all things,
either good by custom, or necessary by nature; and every man taking a
small turf of earth of the country from which he came, they all cast
them in promiscuously together. Making their trench their centre, they
described the city in a circle round it. Then the founder fitted to a
plough a brazen ploughshare; and yoking together a bull and a cow, drew
a deep line or furrow round the bounds; those that followed after,
taking care that the clods fell inwards towards the city. They built the
wall upon this line, which they called Pomœrium, from pone mœnia. Though
the phrase of Pomœrium proferre be commonly used in authors, to signify
the enlarging of the city, it is, nevertheless, certain that the city
might be enlarged without that ceremony. For Tacitus and Gellius declare
no person to have had a right of extending the Pomœrium, but such a one
as had taken away some part of an enemy’s country in war; whereby, it is
manifest, that several great men, who never obtained the honour,
increased the buildings with considerable additions. It is remarkable
that the same ceremony with which the foundations of their cities were
first laid, they used, too, in destroying and rasing places taken from
the enemy; which we find was begun by the chief commander’s turning up
some of the walls with a plough.
We do not, as we have before stated, propose to give even a slight
history of this celebrated city. It is sufficient for our purpose to
state, that it was first governed by kings, and then by consuls, up to
the time when the Gauls took the city, under their commander Brennus.
This was the first calamity that Rome experienced at the hands of an
enemy; and this occurred in the three hundred and sixty-fifth year after
its foundation.
The city of Veii had just surrendered to Camillus after a ten years’
siege, when the Gauls made an irruption into Italy, and had begun to
besiege Clusium, a Tuscan city; at which time a deputation arrived at
Rome with an entreaty from the Clusians, that the Romans would interfere
in their behalf, through the medium of ambassadors. This request was
immediately complied with; and three of the Fabii, persons of the
highest rank, were despatched to the Gallic camp. The Gauls, out of
respect to the name of Rome, received these ambassadors with all
imaginable civility; but they could not be induced to raise the siege.
Upon this, the ambassadors going into the town, and encouraging the
Clusians to a sally, one of them was seen personally engaged in the
action. This, being contrary to the generally received law of nations,
was resented in so high a manner by the enemy, that, breaking up from
before Clusium, their whole army marched directly against Rome. At
about eleven miles from the city, they met with the Roman army,
commanded by the military tribunes; who, engaging without any order or
discipline, received an entire defeat. Upon the arrival of this ill news
at Rome, the greatest part of the inhabitants immediately fled. Those
that resolved to stay, however, fortified themselves in the Capitol. The
Gauls soon appeared at the city gates; and, destroying all with fire and
sword, carried on the siege of the Capitol with all imaginable fury. At
last, resolving on a general assault, they were discovered by the
cackling of geese; and as many as had climbed the ramparts were driven
down by Manlius; when Camillus, setting upon them in the rear with
twenty thousand men he had got together about the country, gave them a
total overthrow.
The city, however, had been set on fire by the barbarians, and so
entirely demolished, that, upon the return of the people, they resolved
upon abandoning the ruins, and seeking a more eligible abode in the
recently conquered city of Veii, a town already built and well provided
with all things. But this being opposed by Camillus, they set to work
with such extraordinary diligence, that the vacant space of the old city
was quickly covered with new buildings, and the whole finished within
the short space of one year. The Romans, however, on this occasion, were
in too great a hurry to think of either order or regularity. The city
was, therefore, rebuilt without any reference to order; no care being
taken to form the streets in straight lines.
In this conflagration, all the public records were burned; but there is
no reason to believe, that it was accompanied by any losses, which a
lover of the arts should mourn for. As many writers have remarked, the
Romans were not naturally a people of taste. They never excelled in the
fine arts; and even their own writers invariably allow, that they were
indebted for every thing that was elegant in the arts to the people of
Greece[150].
It is possible that, during the three hundred and fifty years, which
elapsed from the Gallic invasion till the reign of Augustus, many
magnificent buildings may have been erected; but we have no evidence
that such was the case; and the few facts, which we are enabled to glean
from the pages of ancient writers, are scarcely favourable to the
supposition. The commencement of the age of Roman luxury is generally
dated from the year 146 B. C., when the fall of Carthage and of Corinth
elevated the power of the republic to a conspicuous height. Yet, more
than fifty years afterwards, no marble columns had been introduced into
any public buildings; and the example of using them as decorations of
private houses was set by the orator Crassus, in the beginning of the
first century before the Christian era.
The architectural splendour of the city must be dated from the age of
Augustus. “I found it of brick,” he was accustomed to say; “I shall
leave it of marble.” Nor was he content with his own labours; at his
instigation many private individuals contributed to the embellishment of
the capital. The Pantheon, one of the noblest structures of Rome, and
several others, were the works of his chief minister, Agrippa.
Tiberius and Caligula betrayed no wish to imitate their predecessor; but
several works of utility and magnitude were completed under Claudius.
Then came, however, the emperor Nero; with whose reign is associated
that memorable conflagration, which malice attributed to the Christians,
and which raged beyond all example of former ages. This fire left, of
the fourteen regions into which Augustus had divided the city, only four
parts untouched. It was, therefore, fatal to many of the most venerable
fanes and trophies of the earlier ages. This conflagration lasted from
six to nine days. In the time of Titus, too, another fire ravaged the
city for three days and nights; and in that of Trajan, another
conflagration consumed part of the Forum, and the Golden House of Nero;
after which few remains of the ancient city were left; the rest being,
to use the language of Tacitus, “scanty relics, lacerated and
half-burned.”
The city, nevertheless, soon rose with fresh grandeur and beauty from
its ashes. Trajan performed his part; and Hadrian followed with
redoubled assiduity. They were followed by the Antonines; and so
effective was the example they set, that most of the more opulent
senators of Rome deemed it an honour, and almost an obligation, to
contribute to the glory and external splendour of their native city.
These monuments of architecture were adorned with the finest and most
beautiful productions of sculpture and painting. Every quarter of Rome
was filled with temples, theatres, amphitheatres, porticoes, triumphal
arches, and aqueducts; with baths, and other buildings, conducive to
the health and pleasure, not of the noble citizens only, but of the
meanest.
The principal conquests of the Romans, were achieved under the republic;
and the emperors, for the most part, were satisfied with preserving
those dominions which had been acquired by the policy of the senate, the
active emulation of the senators, and the martial enthusiasm of the
people. The seven first centuries were filled with a rapid succession of
triumphs; but it was for Augustus, to relinquish the ambitious design of
subduing the whole earth, and to introduce moderation into the public
councils. He bequeathed a valuable legacy to his successors, the advice
of confining the empire within those limits which nature seemed to have
placed as its permanent bulwarks and boundaries:—on the west the
Atlantic ocean; the Rhine and Danube on the north; the Euphrates on the
east; and towards the south the deserts of Africa and Arabia.
The first exception to this policy was the conquest of Britain; the
second the conquests of Trajan. It was, however, revived by Hadrian;
nearly the first measure of whose reign was the resignation of all that
emperor’s eastern conquests.
The Roman empire, in the time of the Antonines, was about two thousand
miles in breadth, from the wall of Antoninus and the northern limits of
Dacia, to Mount Atlas and the tropic of Cancer. It extended, in length,
more than three thousand miles, from the Western Ocean to the Euphrates;
it was situated in the finest part of the temperate zone, between the
twenty-fourth and fifty-sixth degrees of northern latitude; and it was
supposed to contain above sixteen hundred thousand square miles, for the
most part of fertile and well cultivated land.
Pius studied the defence of the empire rather than the enlargement of
it—a line of policy, which rendered him more serviceable to the
commonwealth than the greatest conqueror. Marcus and Lucius (Antonini)
made the first division of the empire. At length it was put up to public
sale and sold to the highest bidder. It was afterwards arrested in its
ruin by Alexander Severus. The fortunes of the empire, after the
progress of several successive tyrants, was again restored by the
courage, conduct, and extraordinary virtues of Claudius the Second; to
whom has been attributed, with every probability of truth, the courage
of Trajan, the moderation of Augustus, and the piety of Antoninus.
Then followed Aurelian, Tacitus, and Probus; and Rome felt redeemed from
the ruin that awaited her: but Constantine laid the inevitable
ground-work of its destruction, by removing the imperial throne to
Byzantium. Rome became an easy prey to her barbarian enemies; by whom
she was several times sacked, pillaged, and partially burned. The most
powerful of these enemies was Alaric:—the people he had to conquer and
take advantage of, are thus described by Ammianus Marcellinus:—“Their
long robes of silk purple float in the wind, and as they are agitated,
by art or accident, they occasionally discover the under-garments, the
rich tunics, embroidered with the figures of various animals. Followed
by a train of fifty servants, and tearing up the pavement, they move
along the street with the same impetuous speed, as if they had travelled
with post-horses; and the example of the senators is boldly imitated by
the matrons and ladies, whose covered-carriages are continually driving
round the immense space of the city and suburbs. Whenever these persons
of high distinction condescend to visit the public baths, they assume,
on their entrance, a tone of loud and insolent command, and appropriate
to their own use the conveniences which were designed for the Roman
people. As soon as they have indulged themselves in the refreshments of
the bath, they resume their rings, and the other ensigns of their
dignity; select from their private wardrobe of the finest linen, such as
might suffice for a dozen persons, the garments the most agreeable to
their fancy, and maintain till their departure the same haughty
demeanour, which, perhaps, might have been excused in the great
Marcellus, after the conquest of Syracuse.
“Sometimes, indeed, these heroes undertake more arduous achievements;
they visit their estates in Italy, and procure themselves, by the toil
of servile hands, the amusements of the chase. If at any time, but more
especially on a hot day, they have courage to sail in their painted
galleys, from the Lucrine Lake to their elegant villas on the sea-coast
of Puteoli and Cajeta, they compare their own expeditions to the marches
of Cæsar and Alexander. Yet, should a fly presume to settle on the
silken folds of their gilded umbrellas; should a sun-beam penetrate
through some unregarded and imperceptible chink they deplore their
intolerable hardships, and lament, in affected language, that they were
not born in the land of the Cimmerians, the regions of eternal
darkness.”
Such was the character of the nobles of Rome at the period in which
their city was taken possession of by Alaric. As soon as the barbarian
had got possession of the Roman port, he summoned the city to surrender
at discretion; and his demands were enforced by the positive
declaration, that a refusal, or even a delay, should be instantly
followed by the destruction of the magazines, on which the life of the
Roman people depended. The clamours of that people, and the terror of
famine, subdued the pride of the senate. They listened without
reluctance to the proposing of a new emperor on the throne of Honorius;
and the suffrage of the Gothic conqueror bestowed the purple on Attalus,
the præfect of the city. Attalus was created emperor by the Goths and
Romans; he was, however, soon degraded by Alaric, and Rome subjected to
a general sack. The conqueror no longer dissembled his appetite for
plunder. The trembling senate, without any hopes of relief, prepared, by
a desperate resistance, to delay the ruin of their country. But they
were unable to guard against the secret conspiracy of their slaves and
domestics. At the hour of midnight, the Salarian gate was opened, and
the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic
trumpet. Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of
Rome, the imperial city, which had subdued and civilised so considerable
a part of mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of
Scythia and Germany. A cruel slaughter was made of the Romans; the
streets of the city were filled with dead bodies, which, during the
consternation, remained unburied. The despair of the inhabitants was
sometimes converted into fury; and whenever the barbarians were provoked
by opposition, they extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the
innocent, and the helpless. The private revenge of 40,000 slaves was
exercised without pity or remorse; and the ignominious lashes, which
they had formerly received, were washed away in the blood of the guilty,
or obnoxious families. The matrons and virgins of Rome were exposed to
injuries more dreadful, in the apprehension of chastity, than death
itself.
When the portable riches had been seized, the palaces were rudely
stripped of their splendid and costly furniture; the sideboards of
massy plate, and the variegated wardrobes of silk and purple, were
irregularly piled in the wagons, that always followed the march of a
Gothic army. The most exquisite works of art were roughly handled, or
wantonly destroyed; many a statue was melted for the sake of the
precious materials; and many a vase, in the division of the spoil, was
shivered into fragments by the stroke of the battle-axe. The sack lasted
six days.
The edifices, too, of Rome received no small injury from the violence of
the Goths; but those injuries appear to have been somewhat exaggerated.
At their entrance they fired a multitude of houses; and the ruins of the
palace of Sallust remained, in the age of Justinian, a stately monument
of the Gothic conflagration. Procopius confines the fire to one peculiar
quarter; but adds, that the Goths ravaged the whole city. Cassiodorus
says, that many of the “wonders of Rome,” were burned; and Olympiodorus
speaks of the infinite quantity of wealth, which Alaric carried away.
We collect, also, how great the disaster was, when he tells us, that,
on the retreat of the Goths, 14,000 returned in one day.