Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Melissa McDaniel and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
[Illustration: MARBLE RELIEF OF THE AMBARVALIA SACRIFICE, IN THE
FORUM
The sacrifice of the _suovetaurilia_ took place at the confines of
Rome and Alba Longa after the perlustration of the Roman _ager_. See
pages 15, 70.]
ROME . PAINTED BY
ALBERTO PISA . TEXT
BY M. A. R. TUKER AND
HOPE MALLESON
PUBLISHED BY ADAM &
CHARLES BLACK . SOHO
SQUARE . LONDON . W.
_Published April 1905_
The twelve chapters in this book were all written for the present
volume, but Chapters III., V., VIII., part of XI., and IX. have
already been published in the _Monthly Review_, _Broad Views_,
_Macmillan's Magazine_, and the _Hibbert Journal_.
So much has been written about Rome and Roman subjects within the last
decade, good bad and indifferent, that the task of avoiding as far as
possible hackneyed ground is not an easy one. We have attempted to
present some aspects of Rome as we have ourselves seen it, and we have
drawn on our long acquaintance with the city and above all with its
inhabitants of the old school and the new.
Each chapter is the work of one writer.
ROME, 1905.
Contents
PAGE
CHAPTER I
ROME 1
CHAPTER II
ROMAN BUILDING AND DECORATION 17
CHAPTER III
THE ROMAN CATACOMBS 41
CHAPTER IV
ROMAN REGIONS AND GUILDS 52
CHAPTER V
THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA 69
CHAPTER VI
THE ROMAN MENAGE 93
CHAPTER VII
THE ROMAN PEOPLE--
I. The Italians 112
II. The Romans 125
CHAPTER VIII
ROMAN PRINCELY FAMILIES 159
CHAPTER IX
ROMAN RELIGION 180
CHAPTER X
THE ROMAN CARDINAL 200
CHAPTER XI
ROME BEFORE 1870 212
CHAPTER XII
THE ROMAN QUESTION--
I. Before 1870 235
II. Since 1870 245
List of Illustrations
1. Marble relief of the Ambarvalia Sacrifice, in the
Forum _Frontispiece_
TO FACE PAGE
2. The Forum from the Arch of Septimius Severus 4
3. The Forum, looking towards the Capitol 8
4. Temple of Saturn from the Basilica Julia in the Forum 12
5. S. Peter's and Castel Sant' Angelo from the Tiber 16
6. Temple of Saturn from the Portico of the Dii Consentes 18
7. A Corner of the Forum from the base of the Temple of
Saturn 20
8. Temple of Mars Ultor 24
9. Temple of Vespasian from the Portico of the Dii
Consentes 26
10. The Colosseum on a Spring Day 30
11. The Colosseum at Sunset 34
12. Arch of Titus 38
13. A Procession in the Catacomb of Callistus 42
14. Flavian Basilica on the Palatine 44
15. Library of the House of Domitian on the Palatine 50
16. Forum of Nerva 54
17. Fountain of Trevi 56
18. Column of Marcus Aurelius, Piazza Colonna 58
19. Pantheon, a flank view 62
20. Silversmiths' Arch in the Velabrum 64
21. Convent Garden of San Cosimato, Vicovaro 68
22. A Tract of the Claudian Aqueduct outside the City 72
23. Campagna Romana, from Tivoli 76
24. Subiaco from the Monastery of S. Benedict 78
25. Garden of the Monastery of Santa Scholastica, Subiaco 82
26. Holy Stairs at the Sagro Speco 86
27. Little Gleaner in the Campagna 90
28. Sea-horse Fountain in the Villa Borghese 94
29. Ornamental Water, Villa Borghese 98
30. Village Street at Anticoli, in the Sabine Hills 100
31. Villa d'Este, Tivoli 106
32. In Villa Borghese 110
33. The "Spanish Steps," Piazza di Spagna 114
34. At the Foot of the Spanish Steps, Piazza di Spagna, on
a Wet Day 118
35. Roman Peasant carrying Copper Water Pot 122
36. Chapel of the Passion in the Church of San Clemente 126
37. A Rustic Dwelling in the Roman Campagna 128
38. Procession with the Host at Subiaco 130
39. Girl selling Birds in the Via del Campidoglio 134
40. Entrance to Ara Coeli from the Forum 138
41. In the Church of Ara Coeli 142
42. Doorway of the Monastery of S. Benedict (Sagro Speco)
at Subiaco 146
43. Chapel of San Lorenzo Loricato at S. Benedict's, Subiaco 150
44. Steps of the Dominican Nuns' Church of SS. Domenico
and Sisto 154
45. Porta San Paolo 158
46. The Colosseum in a Storm 162
47. Arch of Titus from the Arch of Constantine 166
48. Mediaeval House at Tivoli 170
49. Ilex Avenue and Fountain (_Fontana scura_) Villa Borghese 174
50. "House of Cola di Rienzo," by Ponte Rotto 178
51. San Clemente, Choir and Tribune of Upper Church 182
52. Santa Maria in Cosmedin 186
53. Chapel of San Zeno (called _orto del paradiso_) in
S. Prassede 190
54. Cloisters of S. Paul's-without-the-Walls 192
55. Cloisters in Santa Scholastica, Subiaco 196
56. Santa Maria sopra Minerva 198
57. Saint Peter's 200
58. Interior of S. Peter's, the Bronze Statue of S. Peter 204
59. A Cardinal in Villa d'Este 208
60. Villa d'Este--Path of the Hundred Fountains 210
61. Theatre of Marcellus 212
62. Island of the Tiber--the Isola Sacra 216
63. The Steps of Ara Coeli 220
64. Steps of the Church of SS. Domenico and Sisto 224
65. Santa Maria Maggiore 230
66. Arch of Constantine 234
67. Castel and Ponte Sant' Angelo 238
68. Bronze Statue of Marcus Aurelius on the Capitol 240
69. S. Peter's from the Pincian Gardens 244
70. From the Terrace of the House of Domitian 252
_The Illustrations in this volume have been engraved by the Hentschel
Colourtype Process._
ROME
CHAPTER I
ROME
About seven hundred and fifty years before the Christian era some
Latian settlers founded a town on the banks of the Tiber and became
the Roman people. Where did they come from? Had they come across what
was later to be known as the _ager romanus_ from the Latin stronghold
of Alba Longa, or were they a mixed people, partly composed of those
men from Etruria who were already settled in the country round? In the
confused pictures which tradition has handed down to us we see Latins
in conflict with Etruscans, and Romulus relegating the latter to a
special quarter of the city; but we also see one of the three tribes
into which he divided the people bearing an Etruscan name, an Etruscan
chief as his ally, and we know that while two at least of her six
kings belonged to this race, the religion, the art, and the political
institutions of early Rome were borrowed from that Etruscan
civilisation which was at this epoch the most advanced on Latin soil.
However this may be, four legends cling round the mighty founders of
Rome--the Latian, the Aenean, the Arcadian, the Etruscan. The Arcadian
Evander had brought with him a colony of the indigenous people of
Greece, and founded a town at the foot of the Palatine sixty years
before the Trojan war. But at Alba Longa there also reigned kings
descended from Aeneas, who had come to Latium after the capture of
Troy bringing with him the _Palladium_, the sacred image of Pallas.
His descendant, the vestal Rhea Silvia, becomes the mother of the
twins Romulus and Remus by Mars. The babes of the guilty priestess are
cast adrift, but their cradle is carried down the Tiber to the foot of
the Palatine, where they are suckled by a wolf, and brought up by the
shepherd community already established there.
In the dim twilight of origins we recognise that Romulus is the type
of the Roman people, whom he symbolises, who are found fighting the
Sabine, the Etruscan, even the Latin, for existence as a nation. In
the dim twilight we see all Roman things coming down the Tiber to the
foot of the Palatine--the original _Roma Quadrata_--and we see that
the nucleus of the settlement there was the cave of Lupercus, the
Italian shepherds' god, identified later with the Arcadian Pan. This
cave was just above the site of the present church of Santa Anastasia;
here grew the wild fig-tree in whose roots the cradle of Rhea Silvia's
babes became entangled, and here was the hut of Faustulus their
foster-father.
The Grotto of Lupercus is the oldest sanctuary of kingly Rome. For
the people were shepherds. Other nations had risen under shepherd
kings who led their people to war, but no other people had become
world conquerors; no other people had been equally skilled in the arts
of war and the arts of peace, the arts of the plough and the arts of
the spear, in the self-discipline, the heroic devotion, the unity of
purpose, of the men who once carried in their breast the destinies of
the known world.
The story is aptly figured in the person of the god Mars, who was the
reputed father of Romulus and Remus. The Roman god was at first an
agricultural divinity--the "spears of Mars" were the rods with which
the shepherd owner marked his boundaries. When, under the influence of
Greece, Mars became the god of battles, the boundary marker of the
fields became his war weapons. But if the Roman knew how to beat his
ploughshare into a sword, he also knew how to return from the sword to
the plough. The one was never far from the other--they put him in
possession of those two ways of inheriting the earth, multiplying and
subduing, producing and combating. Thus the pastoral legend never died
out from the land of Saturn, and in the proudest flush of victory,
when the relics of the _hastae martis_ were shown to the triumphant
followers of Mars, there was present to the soul of the Roman the
image of the father of Romulus covering the land with gigantic strides
to strike these same _hastae_ into the soil as a sign of possession,
the emblem of primitive law.
Two hills in Central Italy and a swamp between them provided the
theatre of perhaps the greatest millennium in human history. On the
one hill were the Latins--or let us call them the Roman people--the
site of _Roma Quadrata_ the foster-land of Romulus, the birthplace of
Augustus, the hill which has given its name to the imperial palaces of
the earth. On the other were the Quirites and the site of the Sabine
arx, that _Capitolium_ so-called, says Montfaucon, "because it was the
head of the world, from which the consuls and senators governed the
universe." Whenever the marshy ground between them was passable, the
Latins and Sabines descended the steep declivities of their hills and
transformed it into a battlefield. But even in these early days they
felt the need of a _comitium_ where the rival chiefs could meet to
decide upon terms; and in no long space this battle-ground became the
nucleus and pledge of the political greatness of Rome.
For the Forum symbolises all human civilisation. It is the symbol of
the common meeting ground--the common sentiments and needs--of human
beings, where rancours are laid aside for the business of life--its
common but its noblest business, civic, "civilised," pursuits. It is
the symbol of human greatness also, for the Roman never suffered the
common necessities to force upon him an ignoble peace. The
battle-ground became the centre of civic life, but only on condition
that the interests for which men should combat were never sacrificed
to the interests for which men should co-operate. Through the symbolic
_trait d'union_ of the Forum, two fortresses of barbarians became
the nucleus of the city which ruled the world, and their people the
imperial people of history.
[Illustration: THE FORUM FROM THE ARCH OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS
In the left corner is the _lapis niger_, the traditional tomb of
Romulus. Facing us is the Arch of Titus, and to the right is the
Palatine.]
The city on the Palatine had been extended so as to include the town
of the Sabines or Quirites on the neighbouring Quirinal hill, before
the first king, who was born in the Sabine country, was called to rule
the Romans. The Capitol at this time was a spur of the Quirinal, and
so remained until Trajan dug away a part of the latter to lay the
foundations of his forum. The Etruscans lived on the Caelian and the
two horns of the Esquiline hills; the former was incorporated in the
primitive city, but the Esquiline and Viminal were not enclosed until
the time of Servius Tullius when Rome first became "the city on Seven
Hills." The Aventine where Remus had wished to build the city was
colonised by the conquered Latin towns in the reign of Ancus Martius,
and this isolated hill, overlooking the Tiber on one side and the
campagna on the other, still haunts the imagination with its
melancholy beauty, its pariah history, as though it embodied the
undying protest of Remus, an unceasing claim upon Roman justice. The
varied and interesting Christian memories here, which begin with the
_titulus_ of Priscilla and Aquila, are continued in the Priory of the
once international Order of the Knights of Malta, recording the
noblest effort of the lay world during the middle ages--the
institution of chivalry; and in the modern Benedictine house of Saint
Anselm--our English Anselm.
The Janiculum, the site of a fortress built by Ancus Martius against
the Etruscans, was not enclosed within the city walls till the time of
Aurelian; the Vatican hill was only enclosed in the ninth century by
Leo IV. All these hills were once steep defences against enemies in
the surrounding country; now that there are no longer any enemies the
Romans appear bent on abolishing the hills, and the mania for planing
and razing is carried to an extent which must seem nothing less
than childish to the visitor. The Viminal has become almost
indistinguishable since the Villa Massimo was pulled down, and only
the name _Via Viminale_, which replaces the older Via Strozzi,
indicates the hill which lay between the Quirinal and the Esquiline.
Some idea may be gained of the original steepness of the hills when we
realise that in the memory of the Romans the road past Palazzo
Aldobrandini--on a slope of the Quirinal--used to be at the level of
the top of the high wall which now surrounds it. The Capitol was only
approachable from the Forum, and was never connected with the city on
the hither side until the construction of the historic steps of Ara
Coeli, one of the rare works undertaken by the Romans during the
absence of the popes in Avignon.
The Tiber is now but a narrow stream in the midst of its ancient bed.
The Romans had never embanked the swift-flowing river, and the
enormous deposits of the yellow sand which give it its traditional
colour, and which threaten to completely dam the river by the island
of the Tiber, may afford the explanation. The inundations of 1900 in
fact reached the same level as those of 1872, as we may see recorded
in the neighbouring church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. Few spots in
Rome exceed in varied interest the _isola sacra_ which with its two
historic bridges the _pons Fabricius_ and the _pons Cestius_ spans the
Tiber at the heart of the city. Here was the temple to Aesculapius,
whose worship had been introduced into Rome during a time of
pestilence in obedience to the Sibylline oracles. The island itself
thereafter assumed the form of a huge stone ship, faced with
travertine, the prow with the sculptured staff and serpent of the god
being still clearly visible; and here Greece and Rome met a
civilisation and an art still older than their own, for the mast of
this great ship is formed by an Egyptian obelisk. Hard by is the
district where the Romans, who had borrowed from them their gods and
their cult, compelled the "_turba impia_" ("the impious crowd") of
Etruscans to dwell; while the walled enclosure in which, from the
eleventh century onwards, Christian Rome obliged the Jews to live, is
approached by the Fabrician bridge, as we may gather from the
inscription in Hebrew and Latin on the little church of San Giovanni
Calibita, beneath a painting of the Crucifixion, which says: "I have
spread forth my hands all the day to an unbelieving people, who walk
in a way that is not good."
In the early twelfth century Otho III. brought, as he believed, the
body of the Hebrew apostle Saint Bartholomew to this island, as 1400
years earlier the cult of Aesculapius had been brought there from
Greece. The city of Beneventum had, however, it is supposed, palmed
off on the emperor the body of Saint Paulinus of Nola which rests in
the church dedicated to the apostle by the side of that of Saint
Adelbert the apostle of the Slavs. The Franciscans came to the _isola
sacra_ in the sixteenth century, and one of the friars of Saint
Bartholomew's is the popular dentist of the poor from all quarters.
Here, then, in the midst of the river which determined the site of the
cosmopolitan city, is a spot to whose history Egypt, Greece, Etruria,
Palestine have contributed--Aesculapius, "one of the Twelve," the
Christian Slavs, the Saxon Otho, Francis of Assisi. In Paulinus of
Nola we are reminded of the earliest Western monasteries, and the
Franciscan friars represent for us the thirteenth-century revival of
the religious spirit in Italy. What more? In the red-gowned
confraternity of the island we are put in touch with an institution
which seems to be as old as human history, with those burial guilds,
sanctioned by Roman law, under shelter of which the first Christians
obtained a legal footing for themselves and their cemeteries long
before their religion was tolerated.
[Illustration: THE FORUM, LOOKING TOWARDS THE CAPITOL
The Palatine is to the left. See pages 4, 5, 61.]
The vicissitudes of the city have made certain features of its life as
eternal as itself. Through the middle ages it was the sanctuary and
since the renascence of classical learning it has been the museum of
Europe. Long before there were any kind of facilities for travelling
every one came to Rome. A procession of people from every race under
heaven, in every variety--every excess and defect--of costume, has
passed along the streets under the observant but unastonished eyes of
the _blase_ Roman; and when a lay pilgrim in a brown tunic, hung
with rosaries, and carrying a crucifix taller than himself, walked
last year out of Saint Peter's among the Easter crowd, no one noticed
him. The modern city in becoming the hostess of the other provinces of
Italy is approximating in size to the Rome of the early empire; but
the Rome of the popes made no sort of provision for the influx of
Europe. The Inn of the Bear, in the street of that name leading to
Ponte Sant' Angelo, provided the best accommodation; and here, it is
said, Dante himself had lodged. It is but a hundred years ago that a
pavement was placed for pedestrians, and then only one side of the
Corso boasted a narrow footpath. The streets were encumbered with
hucksters' stalls, with refuse, dirt, and stones; the nights were dark
as pitch, and hygiene was only hinted at in the marble _affiches_
which may still be seen at certain old street corners announcing that
_monsignore_ the way warden would visit with a fine of 25 _scudi_ and
divers bodily pains the practice of emptying every kind of refuse into
the side streets.
Now that the city is emerging from the chrysalis of the middle ages
the cry of "Vandals!" goes up on all sides. But Rome has always been
destroyed. Not even her moral vicissitudes give her a greater right to
be called "the eternal city" than her survival of the material ruin to
which she has over and over again been subjected. That Goth and Vandal
have not wrought more havoc than emperors, people, and popes is
recorded in the pasquinade on Urban VIII. (Barberini), who stripped
the bronze off the Pantheon to adorn the baldacchino of Saint
Peter's:--_Quod non fecerunt Barbari, fecerunt Barberini_. It is a
curious coincidence that the inscription commemorating the victories
of Claudius in Britain, in which our kings are irreverently spoken of
as "barbarians," should now grace the garden of the Barberini palace
in Rome. _Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis._
One factor only has been constant in the vicissitudes of
Rome--barbarian invaders, rescuers of popes, foreign intruders,
internecine brawlers, the flights and elections of popes, have each
brought the opportunity for wholesale pillage. To the Roman love of
destruction must be added the love of the large and superfluous: from
the time of the emperors to the present hour when sites and buildings
are doomed on all hands in order that the colossal monument of Victor
Emmanuel II. may dominate the centre of the Roman tramway
system--while the House of Augustus is unexcavated and his tomb is
dishonoured--the Romans have proved themselves to be the sons of those
who killed the prophets, by building or desecrating their sepulchres.
But when "new Rome" is condemned let us not forget that it has given
us what the learning and the riches of the most munificent popes never
compassed--an excavated Forum.
There is no Mayfair and no Seven Dials in Rome. The poor live, and
have always lived, cheek by jowl with the rich: a palace in the Ghetto
and a hovel in the Corso have each existed without offence. This
brings us to another permanent feature of Roman life--the beggars.
Rome has always lived on the foreigner, and it has always had troops
of beggars patrolling its streets, in the time of the Antonines as in
that of Gregory the Great, or as in that of the latest of the
sovereign pontiffs, Pius IX.; and the cheerful-faced beggar who was
licensed by this pope to sit by the statue of Saint Peter lived to the
closing years of the century and gave a dowry of 200,000 francs to his
daughter on her marriage. The difficulties which met the Roman of the
era of Gregory the Great when pest and the transition to the
agricultural system of _coloni_ threw the serfs upon the streets, met
the government of Italy when after September 1870 the whole motley
crowd which had been the recipient of the Christian system of
alms-giving was in its turn suddenly thrown upon the streets of the
city. Those who remember the "seventies" or the "eighties" in Rome
remember the menacing manner in which "alms" were "asked," how near
together were blessing and cursing, and how unfrequented roads and
hills were beset by sturdy beggars, lineal descendants of the brigand
who placing his hat in the roadway levelled his gun at you as he
proffered the request: "For the love of God put something in that
hat."
Papal charity pauperised a whole people: notices in the streets on wet
days announced the free distribution of bread in the Colosseum; doles
of bread were given by all the parish clergy to the practising members
of their congregations. The men women and children who had passed
their time doing odd jobs in churches, following viaticum and funeral
processions, and providing a church crowd on all occasions, were
suddenly called upon to make some concession to the modern
spirit--hawking a bunch of crumpled flowers, a box of matches or a
couple of bootlaces up and down the streets, in and out of the
restaurants, these latest recruits to the commercial spirit exchanged
the atmosphere of the sacristy for the busy whirl of trade without
ceasing to be what they had always been, beggars pure and simple.
Successful attempts are now being made to put down begging. The great
and real distress which exists in the city is mainly due to the
excessive rents and the terrible overcrowding--in the _San Lorenzo_
quarter the modern poor of Rome may be found herded together with
five, six, and even seven families living _in one room_. The mania for
building in the "eighties" led to the "building crisis"; streets of
unfinished houses mock the houseless poor and the "improvements" of
the city are gradually demolishing the poorer dwellings. Amidst this
misery it is still the old Roman population which receives most help;
they are known in their parishes, and the old established subsidies
and dowries come their way.
[Illustration: TEMPLE OF SATURN FROM THE BASILICA JULIA IN THE FORUM
The Capitol is to the left. The temple is built at the foot of the
Capitol hill. See pages 3, 13, 30, 91.]
The population of Rome has varied as much as its fortunes. The maximum
was reached in the time of the Flavian emperors--2 millions, but even
in the time of Augustus the inhabitants probably numbered 1,300,000. A
period of three hundred and fifty years, which brings us to the date
of the "Peace of the Church," sufficed to decrease this number by more
than a million (A.D. 335). After a thousand years of Christian
domination the population of the city had sunk to its minimum, 17,000
(A.D. 1377). Even in the reign of the magnificent Leo X. it was not
more than 30 or 40 thousand. From the beginning of the seventeenth
century when it exceeded 100,000, it steadily increased, till in 1800
the population numbered 153,000. But during the "empire," 1812, it
fell to 118,000. Ten years after "the Italians" entered Rome it had
increased by 79,000, to 305,000. The last census, 1900, shows a
resident population of 450,000--not a third of its classical
total--and Naples is still the most densely populated city of Italy.
* * * * *
The Greek tradition in Rome seems summed in the Palatine, the hill of
"Pallas"; but the Capitol, the hill of Saturn, sums Italy itself. The
one represents the Roman Empire, the other the Roman Commune--those
liberties and that self-government which began with the entry of the
_gentes_ and the formation from among them of the Roman Senate, and
which were never to be abolished. The Palatine has not been inhabited
since the officials of the Exarchate abandoned it in the eighth
century; but the life of the Capitol has never been intermitted; it
has never ceased to represent all the moments in the life of the Roman
people. This distinction is sharply drawn to-day: the Palatine is a
hill of majestic ruins visited only by the tourist, the Capitol is
still the seat of the municipality of Rome, ascended by every couple
for the celebration of their marriage, and its registers signalise
every young life born to the city.
The municipal franchises of Italy have played a large part in her
history, and that of Rome is no exception. Moreover the Senate of
Rome, the heads of each _gens_ from among the original settlers, and
the _Populus_, who be it remembered were the _gentes_ and were never
synonymous with the _plebs_, represented two constant facts and
factors--a free Senate and free municipal government by the _Populus
Romanus_. These flourished in the middle ages as they had flourished
in the classical city, and it was thus easy for Cola di Rienzo to
restore them when the popes had abandoned the city to its fate. Papal
letters to Charlemagne's predecessors were indited in the name of the
Senate and people of Rome--a custom which influenced the early
government of the Roman Church herself, for her letters to other
Christian Churches were written in the name of "the Roman Church,"
even when, as in the case of Clement's epistle, they were the actual
handiwork of the then head of the Christian community. Again, when
Pepin obliged the Lombard king to cede the exarchate of Ravenna not to
the emperor but to Rome, the words employed were: "to the Holy Church
and the Roman Republic." Even in the time of the proud Innocent III.
the city was still governed "by the Senate and people of Rome," and
when the Romans again tired of their Senate--as tradition says they
had done when they made Numa king--they created in its place a supreme
magistrate who was designated "the Senator," one of whose duties was
to maintain the pontiff in his See, and to provide conveniently for
his safe conduct and that of the Sacred College when journeying within
his jurisdiction. The extent of this jurisdiction is perhaps all that
now remains of the power once held by the Senate and Roman people. The
municipality of Rome is the largest in the world; it is conterminous
with the whole Roman _agro_, so that its history is inseparably linked
with that of the Roman boundaries as well as with the life of the
Roman people.
The outward and visible sign of these primaeval Roman liberties is the
tetragram S.P.Q.R.--_Senatus Populus Que Romanus_ (the Roman Senate
and People), which took the place of the earlier formula _Populus
Romanus et Quirites_, and it is of the Sabines, not of the humble
conjunction, that that Q still reminds us. All down the centuries we
may recognise those four letters--surmounted in imperial times by an
eagle--crowning the standard of the Romans, carried far and wide not
only through the streets of the city and to the uttermost ends of the
earth, but in that religious perlustration of the _ager_ when the
ambarvalia rites were celebrated at the Cluilian Trench which
separated Rome from Alba Longa, the site of the combat between the
Alban Curatii and the Roman Horatii. One of the finest remains in the
Forum is the marble relief which represents the _suovetaurilia_, the
sow, sheep, and bull sacrificed on this occasion. That Roman greatness
which came to be synonymous with confines as large as the known world,
had risen with the recognition of these sacred limits, limits which
still define the Roman municipality--the symbol of Roman liberties.
The Pragmatic Sanction and the world power of Rome! Can two things be
more disparate? Yet the version which renders S.P.Q.R. into _Si Peu
Que Rien_ must surely be laid at the door of "Gallicanism"--it points
to an ecclesiastical not a political _diminutio capitis_. The tract of
the city which we see from the terrace on the Pincian hill, looking
towards the Janiculum, has been called the most historic plot of land
in the world. Is it without reason that the furthest point of this
unequalled panorama is the dome which Michael Angelo erected over the
tomb of S. Peter? Three mighty civilisations--the Etruscan, the Roman,
the Christian--resulted in the foundation of two world empires. Rome
is now entering on a third existence, its existence as the capital of
Italy, but has it suffered thereby no _diminutio capitis_? Is it not a
fact that the classical and the ecclesiastical represented her only
world-wide destinies, the only life of Rome which penetrated as truly
beyond the city as within its classic confines? Has not the papacy,
with all its faults, been the actual link connecting ancient and
modern Rome, preserving unbroken the tradition which gave her, beyond
her ritual boundaries, the government of the world without?
[Illustration: S. PETER'S AND CASTEL SANT' ANGELO FROM THE TIBER
See pages 16, 32, 239, 242.]