great as that, perpetrated by the Goths; yet most writers record that
the Vandals and Moors emptied Rome of most of her wealth. They revenged
the injuries of Carthage. The pillage lasted fourteen days and nights;
and all that yet remained of public or private wealth, of sacred or
profane treasure, were transported to the vessels of Genseric. Among the
spoils, the splendid relics of two temples, or rather of two religions,
exhibited the remarkable example of the vicissitude of human things.
Since the abolition of Paganism, the capital had been violated and
abandoned; yet the statues of the gods and heroes were still respected,
and the curious roof of gilt bronze was reserved for the rapacious hands
of Genseric. The holy instruments of the Jewish worship had been
ostentatiously displayed to the Roman people, in the triumph of Titus.
They were afterwards deposited in the temple of Peace; and, at the end
of four hundred years, the spoils of Jerusalem were transferred to
Carthage, by a barbarian who derived his origin from the shores of the
Baltic. It was difficult either to escape or to satisfy the avarice of a
conqueror, who possessed leisure to collect, and ships to transport, the
wealth of the capital. The imperial ornaments of the palace, the
magnificent furniture and wardrobe, the sideboards of massy plate, were
accumulated with disorderly rapine; the gold and silver amounted to
several thousand talents; yet even the brass and copper were laboriously
removed. The empress was rudely stripped of her jewels, and, with her
two daughters, the only surviving remains of the great Theodosius, was
compelled, as a captive, to follow the haughty Vandal; who immediately
hoisted sail, and returned, with a prosperous navigation, to the port of
Carthage. Many thousand Romans of both sexes, chosen for some useful or
agreeable qualifications, reluctantly embarked on board the fleet of
Genseric; and their distress was aggravated by the unfeeling barbarian,
who, in the division of the booty, separated the wives from their
husbands, and the children from their parents.
The consequences of this Vandal invasion, to the public and private
buildings, are thus regarded by the same authority (Gibbon):—“The
spectator, who casts a mournful view over the ruins of ancient Rome, is
tempted to accuse the memory of the Goths and Vandals, for the mischief
which they had neither the leisure, nor power, nor perhaps the
inclination, to perpetrate. The tempests of war might strike some lofty
turrets to the ground; but the destruction which undermined the
foundations of those massy fabrics, was prosecuted, slowly and silently,
during a period of ten centuries. The decay of the city had gradually
impaired the value of the public works. The circus and theatres might
still excite, but they seldom gratified, the desires of the people; the
temples, which had escaped the zeal of the Christians, were no longer
inhabited, either by gods or men; the diminished crowds of the Romans
were lost in the immense space of their baths and porticoes; and the
stately libraries and halls of justice became useless to an indolent
generation, whose repose was seldom disturbed, either by study or
business. The monuments of consular or imperial greatness were no longer
revered as the immortal glory of the capital; they were only esteemed as
an inexhaustible mine of materials, cheaper and more convenient than the
distant quarry. Specious petitions were addressed to the easy
magistrates of Rome, which stated the want of bricks or stones for some
necessary service; the fairest forms of architecture were rudely defaced
for the sake of some paltry or pretended repairs; and the degenerate
Romans, who converted the spoil to their own emolument, demolished, with
sacrilegious hands, the labours of their ancestors.”
In 472 the city was sacked by Ricimer, who enjoyed power under cover of
the name of the Emperor Libius Severus. His victorious troops, breaking
down every barrier, rushed with irresistible violence into the heart of
the city, and Rome was subverted. The unfortunate emperor (Anthemius)
was dragged from his concealment, and inhumanly massacred by the command
of Ricimer his son-in-law; who thus added a third, or perhaps a fourth,
emperor to the number of his victims. The soldiers, who united the rage
of factious citizens with the savage manners of barbarians, were
indulged, without control, in the licence of rapine and murder; the
crowd of slaves and plebeians, who were unconcerned in the event, could
only gain by the indiscriminate pillage; and the face of the city
exhibited the strange contrast of stern cruelty and dissolute
intemperance. The sack of Rome by Ricimer is generally overlooked by the
apologists of the early invaders; but it must not be forgotten, that
they were indulged in the plunder of all but two regions of the city.
To Vitiges (about A. D. 540) must be ascribed the destruction of the
aqueducts, which rendered the thermæ useless; and as these appear never
to have been frequented afterwards, their dilapidation must be
partially, but only partially, ascribed to the Goths.
Vitiges burned every thing without the walls, and commenced the
desolation of the Campagna.
The last emperor of Rome was Augustulus. Odoacer, king of the Heruli,
entered Italy with a vast multitude of barbarians, and having ravaged
it, at length approached Rome itself. The city made no resistance; he
therefore deposed Augustulus, and took the dignity of empire on himself.
From this period the Romans lost all command in Italy.
A. D. 479. Five centuries elapsed from the age of Trajan and the
Antonines, to the total extinction of the Roman empire in the west. At
that unhappy period, the Saxons fiercely struggled with the natives for
the possession of Britain. Gaul and Spain were divided between the
powerful monarchies of the Franks and Visigoths; and the dependent
kingdoms of the Suevi and Burgundians in Africa were exposed to the
cruel persecution of the Vandals, and the savage insults of the Moors.
Rome and Italy, as far as the banks of the Danube, were afflicted by an
army of barbarian mercenaries, whose lawless tyranny was succeeded by
the reign of Theodoric, the Ostrogoth. All the subjects of the empire,
who, by the use of the Latin language, more particularly deserved the
name and privileges of Romans, were oppressed by the disgrace and
calamities of foreign conquest; and the victorious nations of Germany
established a new system of manners and government in the western
countries of Europe.
That Rome, however, did not always suffer from the Goths, is evident
from a passage in one of the letters written by Cassiodorus, at one time
minister to Theodoric:—“The care of the Roman city is a subject to
which our thoughts are ever awake. For what is there which it behoves us
to provide for, more worthy than the keeping up the repair of a city
which, it is evident, contains the ornaments of our republic? therefore,
let your illustrious highness know, that we have appointed a notable
person, on account of its splendid Cloacæ, which are productive of so
much astonishment to beholders, that they may well be said to surpass
the wonders of other cities. There thou mayest see flowing rivers,
inclosed, as it were, in hollow mountains. There thou mayest see the
rapid waters navigated by vessels, not without some anxiety lest they
should suffer shipwreck in the precipitate torrent. Hence, O matchless
Rome! it may be inferred what greatness is in thee. For what city may
dare to contend with thy lofty superstructures, when even thy lowest
recesses can find no parallel?”
In 546, Rome was besieged by Totila the Goth. Having reduced, by force
or treaty, the towns of inferior note in the midland provinces of Italy,
Totila proceeded to besiege Rome. He took it December 17th of the same
year. On the loss of the city, several persons,—some say five
hundred,—took, refuge in the church of St. Peter. As soon as the
daylight had displayed the victory of the Goths, their monarch visited
the tomb of the prince of the apostles; but while he prayed at the
altar, twenty-five soldiers and sixty citizens were put to the sword in
the vestibule of the temple. The arch-deacon Pelagius stood before him
with the gospels in his hand.—“O Lord, be merciful to your servant.”
“Pelagius,” said Totila, with an insulting smile, “your pride now
condescends to become a suppliant.” “I am a suppliant,” replied the
prudent arch-deacon; “God has now made us your subjects, and, as your
subjects, we are entitled to your clemency.” At his humble prayer, the
lives of the Romans were spared; and the chastity of the maids and
matrons was preserved inviolate from the passions of the hungry
soldiers. But they were rewarded by the freedom of pillage. The houses
of the senators were plentifully stored with gold and silver. The sons
and daughters of Roman consuls tasted the misery which they had spurned
or relieved, wandered in tattered garments through the streets of the
city, and begged their bread before the gates of their hereditary
mansions.
Against the city he appeared inexorable. One third of the walls was
demolished by his command; fire and engines prepared to consume or
subvert the most stately works of antiquity; and the world was
astonished by the fatal decree, that Rome should be changed into “a
pasture for cattle!” Belisarius, hearing of this, wrote him a letter, in
which he observed, “That if Totila conquered, he ought, for his own
sake, to preserve a city, which would then be his own by right of
conquest, and would, at the same time, be the most beautiful city in his
dominions. That it would be his own loss, if he destroyed it, and
redound to his utter dishonour. For Rome, having been raised to so great
a grandeur and majesty by the virtue and industry of former ages,
posterity would consider him as a common enemy of mankind, in depriving
them of an example and living representation of their ancestors.”
In consequence of this letter, Totila permitting his resolution to be
diverted, signified to the ambassadors of Belisarius, that he should
spare the city; and he stationed his army at the distance of one hundred
and twenty furlongs, to observe the motions of the Roman general. With
the remainder of his forces, he occupied, on the summit of Gargarus, one
of the camps of Hannibal. The senators were dragged in his train, and
afterwards confined in the fortresses of Campagna. The citizens, with
their wives and children, were dispersed in exile; and, during forty
days, Rome was abandoned to desolate and dreary solitude.
Totila is known to have destroyed a third part of the walls; and
although he desisted from his meditated destruction of every monument,
the extent of the injury inflicted by that conqueror may have been
greater than is usually supposed. Procopius affirms, that he did burn
“not a small portion of the city,” especially beyond the Tiber. One of
the authors of the Chronicles records a fire, and the total abandonment
of the city for more than forty days; and it must be mentioned, that
there is no certain trace of the palace of the Cæsars having survived
the irruption of Totila.
With Totila, the dilapidation of Rome by the barbarians is generally
allowed to terminate.
The incursion of the Lombards in 578 and 593 completed the desolation of
the Campagna; but did not affect the city itself.
Their king Luitprand (in 741) has been absolved from a supposed
violence; but Astolphus (in 754) did assault the city violently; and
whatever structures were near the walls must be supposed to have
suffered from the attack.
From that period, Rome was not forcibly entered, that is not after a
siege, until the fall of the Carlovingian race, when it was defended in
the name of the emperor Lambert; and assaulted and taken by barbarians,
commanded by Arnulphus, son of Carloman of Bavaria (A. D. 896).
It would exceed our limits were we to enter into a detail of the various
causes, which were so long at work in effecting the ruin of the ancient
monuments of Rome. If we except the Pantheon, the ancient remains have
been so mutilated and destroyed, that even the name is, in many cases,
doubtful. If a person, says Dr. Burton, expects to find at Rome such
magnificent remains, as he has read of in Athens, he will be grievously
disappointed. It is highly necessary to know, that whatever exists at
Rome as a monument of ancient times has suffered from various
calamities.
Gibbon states four causes of decay:—The injuries of time and nature;
the hostile attacks of the barbarians and christians; the use and abuse
of the materials; and the domestic quarrels of the Romans. There is
great truth in Pope’s remark—
Some felt the silent strokes of mouldering age;
Some hostile fury; some religious rage;
Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire,
And Papal piety, and Gothic fire.
The injuries done by the Christian clergy to the architectural beauty of
Rome, may be divided into two kinds: those, which were commanded, or
connived at, by the Romans, for useful repairs or constructions; and
those, which were encouraged or permitted from motives of fanaticism.
In the year 426, during the reign of Theodosius the Younger, there was a
great destruction of the temples and fanes. “The destruction of the
idolatrous fanes,” says an ecclesiastical writer, “was from the
foundation; and so complete, that we cannot perceive a vestige of the
former superstition. Their temples are so destroyed, that the appearance
of their form no longer remains; nor can those of our times recognise
the shape of their altars. As for their materials, they are dedicated to
the fanes of the martyrs. Temples are not found among the wonders
admired by Theodoric, except the half-stripped Capitoline fane is to be
enumerated; and Procopius confines his notices to the Temple of Peace,
and to the Temple of Janus. In the reign of Justinian, the temples were
partly in private hands, and, therefore, not universally protected as
public edifices. Pagan structures would naturally suffer more at the
first triumph of Christianity than afterwards, when the rage and the
merit of destruction must have diminished. It is not then rash to
believe, that many temples were destroyed or despoiled, and the
materials employed to the honour of the new religion. Du Barga asserts
that there were marks on the obelisks of their having been all
overthrown, with the exception of one, which was not dedicated to any of
the false gods of antiquity.”
The destruction of the baths are attributed to the same piety, and those
of Diocletian and Caracalla showed, in the eighth century, evident marks
of human violence. Pope Gregory III. employed nine columns of some
ancient building for the church of St. Peter. The rebuilding of the city
walls by four popes, in the same century, was a useful but a destructive
operation. Pope Hadrian I. threw down an immense structure of Tiburtine
stone to enlarge the church of St. Maria in Cosmedin. Donus I. had
before (A. D. 676) stripped the marble from a large pyramid, generally
known by the name of Scipio’s Tomb. Paul II. employed the stones of the
Coliseum to build a palace. Sixtus IV. took down the Temple of Hercules,
and destroyed the remains of an ancient bridge to make four hundred
cannon-balls for the castle of St. Angelo. Paul III. and his nephews
laboured incessantly at the quarry of the Coliseum. He devastated, also,
many other buildings. Sixtus V. threw down several statues still
remaining in the capital. Urban VIII. took off the bronze from the
portico of the Pantheon, and some of the base of the sepulchre of
Cecilia Metella; and Paul V. removed the entablature and pediment of a
structure in the Forum of Nerva, and also the remaining column of the
Temple of Peace. Lastly, Alexander VII. took down the arch called “di
Portogallo,” in order to widen the Corso. The inferior clergy, too, were
great depredators; insomuch that a volume of no inconsiderable size has
been composed by one of their own order to enumerate the Pagan materials
applied to the use of the church.
It is difficult to say where this system of depredation would have
stopped, had not Benedict XIV. erected a cross in the centre of the
arena, and declared the place sacred, out of respect to the blood of the
many martyrs who had been butchered there during the persecution. This
declaration, if issued two or three centuries before, would have
preserved the Coliseum entire; it can now only protect its remains, and
transmit them in their present state to posterity.
Conflagrations, also, contributed to the destruction of the city. In 312
the temple of Fortuna was burned down. The palaces of Symmachus and
Lampadius, with the baths of Constantine, suffered by the same cause.
Nor must the destruction be confined to one element. The Tiber rose, not
unfrequently, to the walls, and many inundations are recorded. Indeed,
even so early as the second siege of the city by Totila, there was so
much uncultivated land within the walls, that Diogenes, the governor,
thought the corn, he had sown, would be sufficient to supply the
garrison and citizens in a protracted defence.
It is impossible to assign a precise date to the total destruction of
the greater portion of the ancient site; but the calamities of the
seventh and eighth centuries must have contributed to, if they did not
complete, the change. A scarcity in the year 604, a violent earthquake a
few years afterwards, a pestilence in or about the year 678, five great
inundations of the Tiber from 680 to 797, a second famine in the
pontificate of Pope Constantine, which lasted thirty-six months, a
pestilence in the last year of the seventh century, and the assault of
the Lombards for three months in 755;—these are the events which
compose the Roman history of this unhappy period.
Added to all this, the importance of the new city accelerated the ruin
of the old; and great was the destruction during the periods in which
separate parties fought their battles in the public streets, after the
restoration of the empire of the West; in which we must record the ruin,
caused by Robert Guiscard, which proved more injurious to the remains of
Rome, from 1082 to 1084, than all the preceding barbarians of every age:
for the Normans and Saracens of his army, with the papal faction, burned
the town from the Flaminian gate to the Antonine column, and laid waste
the sides of the Esquiline to the Lateran; thence he set fire to the
region from that church to the Coliseum and the Capitol. He attacked the
Coliseum for several days, and finished the ruin of the Capitol.
A cotemporary writer says, that all the regions of the city were
ruined; and another spectator, who was in Rome twelve years afterwards,
laments that although what remained could not be equalled—what was
ruined, could never be repaired.
Thou stranger which for Rome in Rome here seekest,
And nought of Rome in Rome perceiv’st at all,
These same old walls, old arches, which thou seest,
Old palaces, is that which Rome men call.
Behold what wreck, what ruin, and what waste,
And how that she which with her mighty power
Tamed all the world, hath tamed herself at last,
The prey of Time, which all things doth devour.
Rome now of Rome is the only funeral,
And only Rome, of Rome hath victory;
Ne ought save Tyber, hastening to his fall
Remains of all: O World’s inconstancy!
That which is firm, doth flit and fall away;
And that is flitting, doth abide and stay.
SPENSER’S _Ruins of Rome_.
In the annals for 1167, we find that the German Barbarossa assaulted the
Vatican for a week, and that the Pope saved himself in the Capitol. The
Colonna were driven from the mausoleum of Augustus. After the Popes had
begun to yield in the unequal contest with the senators and people, and
had ceased to be constantly in the capital, the field was left open for
the wars of the senators; that is, of the nobles themselves. The Colonna
and Ursini then appear among the destroyers of the city. In 1291, a
civil war occurred, which lasted six months; the issue of which was,
according to a spectator, that Rome was reduced to the condition of a
town “besieged, bombarded and burned.”
At the period in which Henry VII. was crowned Emperor, battles were
fought in every quarter of the city. The fall of houses, indeed, the
fire, the slaughter, the ringing of the bells from the churches, the
shouts of the combatants, and the clanging of arms, the Roman people
rushing from all quarters towards the Capitol; this universal uproar
attended the coronation of the new Cæsar, and the Cardinals apprehended
the total destruction of the city.
The absence of the Popes, also, from the year 1360 to 1376, has been
esteemed peculiarly calamitous to the ancient fabrics. Petrarch was
overwhelmed with regret. He complained that the ruins were in danger of
perishing; that the nobles were the rivals of time and the ancient
Barbarians; and that the columns and precious marbles of Rome were
devoted to the decoration of the slothful metropolis of their Neapolitan
rivals. Yet, it appears that these columns and marbles were taken from
palaces comparatively modern, from the thresholds of churches, from the
shrines of sepulchres, from structures to which they had been conveyed
from their original state, and finally, from ruins actually fallen. The
solid masses of antiquity are not said to have suffered from this
spoliation; and the edifices, whose impending ruin affected Petrarch,
were the sacred basilicas, then converted into fortresses.
The great earthquake of 1349 operated, also, in a very destructive
manner; several ancient ornaments being thrown down; and an inundation
of the Tiber is recorded among the afflictions of the times. The summits
of the hills alone were above the water; and the lower grounds were for
eight days converted into a lake.
The return of the Popes was the signal of renewed violence. The Colonna
and Ursini, the people and the church, fought for the Capitol and
towers; and the forces of the Popes repeatedly bombarded the town.
During the great schism of the West, the hostile entries of Ladislaus of
Naples, and the tumultuous government of the famous Perugian, Braccio
Montone, despoiled the tomb of Hadrian, and doubtless other monuments.
Yet that violence is supposed to have been less pernicious than the
peaceful spoliation which succeeded the extinction of the schism of
Martin V, in 1417; and the suppression of the last revolt of the Romans
by his successor Eugenius IV, in 1434: for from that epoch is dated the
consumption of such marble or travertine, as might either be stripped
with facility from the stone monuments, or be found in isolated
fragments.
We now give place to a description of what remained in the time of
Poggio Bracciolini. Besides a bridge, an arch, a sepulchre, and the
pyramid of Cestius, he could discern, of the age of the republic, 1, a
double row of vaults, in the salt-office of the Capitol, which were
inscribed with the name and munificence of Catullus. 2, Eleven temples
were visible, in some degree, from the perfect form of the Pantheon to
the three arches and a marble column of the temple of Peace, which
Vespasian erected after the civil wars and the Jewish triumph. 3, Of the
public baths, none were sufficiently entire to represent the use and
distribution of the several parts; but those of Diocletian and Caracalla
still retained the titles of the founders, and astonished the curious
spectator; who, in observing their solidity and extent, the variety of
marbles, the size and multitude of the columns, compared the labour and
expense with the use and the importance. Of the baths of Constantine, of
Alexander, of Domitian, or rather of Titus, some vestige might yet be
found. 4, The triumphal arches of Titus, Severus, and Constantine were
entire, both the structures and the inscriptions; a falling fragment was
honoured with the name of Trajan; and two arches were still extant in
the Flaminian way. 5, After the wonder, of the Coliseum, Poggio might
have overlooked a small amphitheatre of brick, most probably for the
use of the Prætorian camp: the theatres of Marcellus and Pompey were
occupied, in a great measure, by public and private buildings; and in
the Circus Agonalis and Maximus, little more than the situation and the
form could be investigated. 6, The columns of Trajan and Antonine were
still erect; but the Egyptian obelisks were broken or buried. A people
of gods and heroes, the workmanship of art, was reduced to one
equestrian figure of gilt brass, and to five marble statues, of which
the most conspicuous were the two horses of Phidias and Praxiteles. 7,
The two mausoleums or sepulchres of Augustus and Hadrian could not
totally be lost; but the former was visible only as a mound of earth;
and the latter, the castle of St. Angelo, had acquired the name and
appearance of a modern fortress. With the addition of some separate and
nameless columns, such were the remains of the ancient city.
In the intervals between the two visits of Poggio to Rome, the cell, and
part of the Temple of Concord, and the base of the tomb of Metella, were
ground to lime; also a portico near the Minerva. Poggio’s description of
the ruins, it may be observed, is not sufficiently minute or correct to
supply the deficiency of his contemporary Blondus; but we may distinctly
mark, that the site of ancient Rome had arrived at the desolation in
which it is seen at the present day. The Rome of the lower and middle
ages was a mass of irregular lanes, built upon or amongst ruins, and
surmounted by brick towers, many of them on ancient basements. The
streets were so narrow, that two horsemen could ride abreast. Two
hundred houses, three towers, and three churches, choked up the forum of
Trajan. The reformation of Sixtus IV., and the embellishments of his
successors, have obliterated this town, and that which is now seen is a
capital, which can only date from the end of the fifteenth century.