that its votaries are so easily pleased. Two places may have equal
charms on utterly opposite grounds. The merit of one city is that
it has lived on uninterruptedly from the earliest times till now.
The merit of another city is that it ceased to live at all many ages
back. One is precious because it contains a series of monuments of
all ages. Another is equally precious because all its monuments are
of one age. A third is as precious as either because it contains no
monuments at all. This last kind of charm may seem paradoxical; but it
will be acknowledged by every one who has given himself heartily to
this kind of research. At Veii and at Fidenæ the great merit is that
there is, speaking roughly, nothing to see there; in truth there is the
more to see because there is nothing to see. No doubt Veii and Fidenæ
untouched, as they stood under Lars Tolumnius, would be best of all;
but we set that aside among the things which it is no use hoping for.
And no doubt if we found the sites of Veii and Fidenæ full of Roman
and mediæval monuments, we should doubtless be glad to see them; but,
as they are not there, we are still more glad that they are away. But
we turn from Veii and Fidenæ to a city compared with which Veii and
Fidenæ might seem to have a wealth of monuments. It is, after all,
an exaggeration to say that nothing is left of Veii or of Fidenæ. The
sites are the main things; but there really is something to see beside
the sites. But there is a city, at least the site of a city, much
nearer to Rome than either of them, of which the great charm is that it
does not contain a single monument of any kind or date. Here we can,
even more truly than at Veii and at Fidenæ, say that the very ruins
have perished; but it is just because the very ruins have perished
yet more utterly than elsewhere that the spot has a strong and special
attraction of its own.
We took a kind of Pisgah view of Antemnæ both from the road to the
White Hens and from the road to Fidenæ. As we before said, it ought
to be examined as one of the objects on this last road; only things
are not always as they ought to be. We must therefore start afresh
from the Flaminian gate and for the third time make our way to the
Milvian bridge. This time as our course is to lead us to one of the
oldest sites in Roman history, it may be well, by way of contrast,
to let the bridge call up thoughts of warfare yet later than that
of Constantine. It was on the Roman side of the Milvian bridge, when
the bridge itself, which he had fortified, was betrayed to the Gothic
enemy, that Belisarius, with another Maxentius at his side, withstood
the host which Witigis had led from Narnia. Readers either of Procopius
or of Gibbon must remember how every dart was aimed at the bay horse,
and how the rider of the bay horse escaped without a wound. This time
we keep ourselves, with Belisarius, on the Roman side of the bridge. We
are therefore not tempted to have our thoughts carried off into quite
another part of the world by the statue of a famous Bohemian saint,
who is said by some Bohemian scholars to be a purely imaginary being.
Our present business is not with Saint John Nepomuk, not even with
Belisarius or with Constantine; we have to do with times before Rome
was, when Tiber still parted the free Etruscan from the free Latin. We
walk along his left bank, keeping within the bounds of Latium, but with
the eye tempted at every moment to look across to the opposite, the
Etruscan bank. Both banks are so quiet, both are so nearly forsaken,
both come so easily within an ordinary walk from our Roman quarters,
that it is hard to call up the days when Tiber was the boundary
stream, not merely of separate commonwealths, not merely of distinct
and hostile nations, but of nations between which there was no tie
of origin, language, or religion. To be sold beyond the Tiber was the
most frightful of all dooms which spared life and limb. If the debtor
were sold to Ardea or Tusculum, he might win his freedom and become a
denizen of a city of his own speech. To sell him beyond the Tiber was
like handing him over to bondage among Turks or Moors. But our path
keeps us on the Latin side, in a land which, when it was inhabited at
all, was inhabited by men of an intelligible speech. We peer under a
rocky cliff, the riverward slope of the hill which rises just outside
the Flaminian Gate of Rome. On that hill Witigis held his headquarters
when Belisarius and Saint Peter between them guarded the Pincian.
But, we ask, why did not some city, why did not Rome itself, arise on
a site which seems so thoroughly suited for the needs of an ancient
settlement? But we have to go further for what we seek; no record tells
of any settlement on the Monte Parioli. We pass on by a few tombs in
the hill-side, and we more distinctly make out the shape of a grassy
hill parted by a wide alluvial plain from the river on the eastern
side by which we approach. That is the hill of Antemnæ, a vanished
city whose legendary story may be summed up in a few but instructive
words. Antemnæ was older than Rome. It was one of the towns whose
daughters supplied objects for that great act of what our forefathers
called _Quenfang_, what sociologists called _exogamy_, which secured
that the Roman State should last more than one generation. War follows;
Rome prevails; Hersilia, wife of Romulus, but so strangely mother of
nobody, pleads for the conquered, and Antemnæ is merged, in Rome. We
may be sure that this is the genuine story, rather than others which
give Antemnæ a longer life. In sober history its sole record seems to
be that in Strabo's day the town had wholly passed away, and that the
site was, as now, like Fidenæ, the possession of a single man.
The story in Livy is well imagined. The city whose people Romulus
spares at the prayer of his wife has a specially Roman character.
Parted as the hill is from the Tiber on three sides, its northern
point, the point of a rather long promontory, overhangs the river at
the very point of its junction with the Anio. Hence, it would seem, the
descriptive name _Antemnae_, the town before the rivers. Such a site
belongs to the same class as the hills of Rome. Less isolated than the
Palatine or the Aventine, it is as much isolated as the Capitoline was
while it still clave to the Quirinal. Such a site, with a descriptive
name, can hardly belong to the earliest times; it marks the same degree
of progress as the settlement of Rome itself. Cut off as it was from
the oldest Rome by the whole of the high ground within and without
the Roman walls, such a settlement on the river, a settlement so like
Rome itself, might well be felt to be a special rival, a rival which
must cease to exist as a hostile post, but whose people might well be
incorporated with their more successful kinsfolk.
Of a tale placed in a time which is purely legendary, the utmost that
we can say is that the legend falls in with the appearances of the
site. Antemnæ has utterly perished; there is not a scrap of wall; some
stones which deceive the eye at a distance prove, on coming near, to
be part of the rock peeping out through the sides of the otherwise
green hill. We believe that no antiquities have been found there.
But the site speaks for itself. It is a manifest fortress; the gates
are as plain as if their openings were spanned by arches like those
of Perugia or Trier. We look out on Fidenæ and its surroundings, on
the old battlefields of kings and consuls and emperors; on the bridge
of Narses and Garibaldi, on the line of march which brought the
Gaul, the Carthaginian, the Samnite, and the Goth to the gates, and
some of them within the gates, of Rome. We can look down on nearly
the whole of Roman history from the site where once stood Virgil's
"turrigeræ Antemnæ." But we are yet farther from being able to tell the
towers thereof than we were at Veii and Fidenæ. At Antemnæ the ruins
themselves have perished.
Ostia.
From the nearest neighbours and rivals of Rome, from the slight
remains which mark the sites of Veii and Fidenæ, from the almost more
instructive lack of remains which marks the site of Antemnæ, we may
well pass to a spot which lies at a greater distance from Rome than any
of them, but which never was Rome's rival or even neighbour, because
it was from the beginning simply an outlying part of Rome itself. This
is the forsaken haven of Rome at Ostia. The existence of Ostia at an
early stage of the historic being of Rome is no small sign of what
Rome already was, and it may well have had no small share in making
Rome what she afterwards was to be. For an inland town like Rome to
possess a haven of its own, existing solely as its haven, at once
marked and strengthened the difference between Rome and other inland
towns. For Ostia, it must be borne in mind, was the haven of Rome and
nothing else. It was not a separate maritime city made into the haven
of Rome by any process of conquest or confederation. Tradition makes
Ostia spring into being because it was found that Rome needed a haven.
And the tradition has nothing to contradict it and all likelihood to
support it; the name of the place by itself might almost be accepted as
proving its truth. The foundation of Ostia, too, is placed in a period
which is eminently a traditional, as distinguished from a legendary,
period. It is safer not to rule either that there was a personal
Ancus Marcius or that there was not; but we may be pretty sure that
the events assigned to his reign really happened, if we can only keep
ourselves from attempting dates where there is no chronology. Tradition
then calls Ancus the founder of Ostia. The really important point is
that whoever founded Ostia founded it purely in the interest of Rome,
and that in an age when Rome was still in the days of her early growth.
This at once marks a wide difference between Rome and other cities
of that time. Even the most famous of the early seats of maritime
enterprise had the port separate from the city, later than the city.
Corinth herself had her two havens, apart alike from her mountain
citadel and from the venerable columns at its foot. When Corinth
started in life men shrank from the close neighbourhood of the sea.
It marks a later stage when Corinthian enterprise planted colonies
absolutely in the sea--Syracuse on her island, the elder Korkyra on
her peninsula. It was not till long after Ostia had arisen that inland
Athens yoked herself to the sea. But, as the site of Rome itself on
the broad Tiber showed that men had even then learned to understand
the value of sites widely different from Tusculum on her height or
Veii with her encircling brooks, so the creation of Ostia proves yet
more. Rome, far more distant from the sea than Corinth, Megara, or
even Athens, had already learned that a hold on the sea was needful
for her power. There could have been nothing like it in Italy. There
were inland cities and there were maritime cities; but there was no
inland city which had put forth a maritime outpost at such a distance.
Indeed, no other city had put forth such an outpost at all, maritime
or otherwise. For Ostia was not a colony, not a dependency. It had
no separate being of its own. It was a limb of Rome transplanted to a
distance of fifteen Italian miles from the main body.
Ostia, then, called into being because Rome stood on the Tiber, is
eminently a child of the Tiber. But Father Tiber is unluckily one of
those fathers who do not scruple to swallow up their own children. He
has changed his course, and he has changed it in a way which is not a
little dangerous for what is still left of Ostia. The diggings which
have been carried on by the Italian Government are most praiseworthy,
and they have brought to light much that is most interesting and
instructive. But streets, storehouses, temples, theatres, will in
vain be dug out if the ravenous river god is to gulp them down as soon
as they are well dug out. At the present moment one street, with its
pavement laid bare, with its buildings still standing on each side,
leads in a perilous manner into the stream. That is to say, one end
is gone; the rest will soon follow; the pieces of wall nearest to
the stream are crumbling to their fall. Surely it would be well to
imitate in the haven of Ancus the work done for the mother-city by his
successor. Fence in the flood, as the elder Tarquin fenced it in beside
the mouth of the _cloaca maxima_; make a strong wall of defence against
the waters, and the remains which are left of Ostia may abide as long
as the _cloaca maxima_ itself.
And what is left of Ostia is indeed worth preserving. Only a small
part of the town has as yet been dug out; but, even as it is, Ostia
is becoming a fair rival to Pompeii. The interest, indeed, is of a
somewhat different kind in the two places. Pompeii will come first
with the artist and Ostia with the historian. Nothing of any moment
ever happened at Pompeii except the destruction and the discovery
of Pompeii itself. But a great deal happened at Ostia, and that at
widely distant dates. It is perhaps needless to mention that one thing
which is said to have happened at Ostia never happened either there
or anywhere else--namely, destruction by the Saracens in the _fifth_
century, which is recorded indeed in Murray's "Handbook," but which was
certainly unknown to Procopius. Ostia, destroyed by Marius, restored
by Sulla, was failing in the days of Strabo to discharge its duty as
the haven of Rome. It had yielded to the same enemy which afterwards
overcame Ravenna and Pisa; the silt of Father Tiber was too much for
it. Yet, notwithstanding this misfortune, notwithstanding the change
which it led to, when Claudius found it needful to transfer the harbour
of Rome to Portus on the other side of the river, Ostia contrived to
live on through all disadvantages. For it has many and great buildings
later than Strabo and Claudius, among them an Imperial house with
graceful columns, which contains the famous shrine of Mithras. There is
abundant evidence that all through the second century of our æra great
architectural works were carried on at Ostia. Besides the palace, there
is the great central temple, be it of Jupiter or of Vulcan, standing so
proudly on its steps. There is a theatre whose columns and inscriptions
supply no small materials for study, a theatre of which it might be
too much to say that it suggests those of Orange or Taormina, but which
certainly suggests that of Arles.
In the sixth century Procopius describes Ostia as lacking walls, and he
complains that the road from Ostia to Rome did not follow the course
of the river, and was therefore useless as a towing-path. This is
eminently true still. The road goes through scenery of various kinds,
some rather English-looking, though none very striking; the Tiber
makes a far less important feature than we might have looked for. But,
if Ostia had no walls in the days of Belisarius, it had no lack of
walls in earlier days. The most interesting, from one point of view,
among the ruins of Ostia are the remains, forming part of two sides
of a square, of the primitive wall, a dry wall of massive stones,
belonging no doubt to the period of the first foundation. These were
clearly ruinous when the later brick buildings were reared; the wall
was broken down, and men built against and upon it; they plastered it;
they chamfered its stones for the convenience of plastering, as best
suited their purpose. The flourishing town of the second century may
well have been wall-less. Rome herself at that date had no defence. The
wall of Servius had ceased to serve any military purpose, and the wall
of Aurelian was not yet.
The history of Ostia from the ninth century onwards, from the vain
attempt of Gregory the Fourth to turn Ostia into _Gregoriopolis_,
belongs to another, though almost adjacent, site. New Ostia, with its
castle, its cathedral, its gateway, its one or two narrow streets, but
with seemingly hardly a dozen inhabitants, is a sadder sight than old
Ostia, with no inhabitant except the stalwart _custode_, who defends
himself against Ostian air by daily doses of quinine. Yet the castle
of Cardinal Estouteville ranks high among picturesque fortresses; the
cathedral shows a mixture of classical and Gothic detail for which
nothing in Rome prepares us; fragments of ancient work lie around;
the staircase of the bishop's palace, the palace of the first among
cardinals, is rich in ancient inscriptions. But we hasten on to the
older site. There is something specially striking in its half-excavated
state. We tread the ancient pavement, between the ancient houses, of a
street dug out of a cornfield on either side. The wall of Ancus loses
itself in a bank of earth. Here a house, there a temple, is dug out,
leaving just space enough to see it among surrounding blades of corn.
At Pompeii, too, the diggings are not finished; but there one part is
dug, another is not; here we thread our way along what is dug with the
far greater mass of the undug to right and left of us. So far we are
content; the undug may soon be promoted to the state of the dug, and
Mother Earth is a safe keeper of antiquities. It is otherwise with
Father Tiber. When he is close on one side of us, there is, as our
guide truly tells us, no small danger. He once, as Horace witnesses,
set forth to destroy the monuments of Numa at Rome; he is clearly
minded to do the like by the monuments of Numa's grandson at Ostia.
The Alban Mount.
What is the common point of connexion between all the lands and places
which bear the name of Alba, Albania, or something like it? They lie
so far apart, they are inhabited by people of such utterly different
nations and languages, that it is strange if there be any point of
connexion among them, while it is at least as strange if the name has
settled down on so many remote spots by sheer accident only. We must
not forget that our own land has an interest in the question: we dwell
in the Isle of Albion, and its northern part is specially Albanach or
Albany. An English lady living on the eastern shore of the Hadriatic
was lately complimented by a Scotch lady because, being an Albanian,
she spoke such good English. It was afterwards suggested to her that
she might have answered with a _tu quoque_ or something more; the
Englishwoman was no Albanian; the Scotchwoman in a certain sense was.
But have Albanians of either of these kinds anything to do either with
the Duke of Al_v_a--for in his tongue "non aliud est _v_i_v_ere quam
_b_i_b_ere"--or with the Albania beyond the Euxine? Then again it is
singular to read, say in Dionysios of Halikarnassos, the local wars of
Rome and Alba Longa described under exactly the same gentile names as
those by which Imperial Anna describes strife between the New Rome and
those Ghegs and Tosks who have again begun to make themselves famous.
It is Ῥωμαῖοι and Ἀλβανοί in both cases, without the change of jot or
tittle. In this case, at least, we believe that philologers would deny
the slightest kindred between the names; but the casual identity is
thereby only made the more startling. A malicious critic might say
that Anna's Romans were as unlike old Romans as her Albanians could be
unlike the men of Alba Longa. But her Romans did at least claim to be
Romans, sharers in the inheritance of the wolf and the eagle; while
her Albanians certainly laid no claims to any rights in the Alban sow
and her thirty pigs.
Rome, undutiful daughter, swept away her mother city so thoroughly
that its site has become a matter of dispute. But the name lived on in
derivative forms. Alba perished, but the Alban lake and the Alban mount
kept their places, to play no small part in the history of Rome. There
is the lake, there is the great drain for its waters, so strangely
interwoven with the tale of Veii. There is the mount, with the road
by which the chariot of Marcellus went up in triumph; there are still
the displaced stones of the temple which was the religious centre
of the Latin name. But for the fanaticism of the last Stewart, the
pillared front of the Latin Jupiter might still form the proudest of
crowns for the height on which the gazer from the walls of Rome fixes
his eye more commonly than on any other. And, if Alba perished, she
did in a manner rise again. The neighbourhood of dead Alba became as
favourite a quarter for the villas of Roman nobles as the neighbourhood
of living Tusculum. There the great Pompeius had a dwelling; there,
according to one version of his story, his body--or perhaps only his
head--found a stately tomb, though Hadrian could make his verse by the
Alexandrian Shore to say that no tomb had been found for him who had
so many temples. But of all villas on Alban ground, of all _Albana_,
the _Albanum_ of the Emperors, with its spacious gardens, its long
terraces still to be traced, of course came to be the greatest. The
walled station of the Imperial guards, the fellow of the Prætorian
camp at Rome, became the kernel of a new town, and Albano still
exists, an episcopal city, seat of a cardinal-bishop, and it still
keeps its character as a summer retreat for those who, now as of old,
seek to escape the smoke and wealth and noise of lordly Rome. Albano
and Alba stand in somewhat the same relation as Spalato and Salona.
In both cases the new city grew out of an Imperial dwelling-place in
the neighborhood of the old. But there is this wide difference between
them, that Alba has utterly perished, while Salona survives in ample
ruins. Alba had vanished ages and ages before Albano arose. Spalato
stood ready to be a city of refuge for those who fled from Salona in
her day of overthrow.
The town of Albano itself contains a good many antiquities, the most
prominent among which, that which greets the eye on the entrance from
Rome, is the huge tower-like pile, so cruelly stripped of its hewn
stone, which, truly or falsely, passes for the tomb of Cnæus Pompeius
Magnus. More striking on a close examination, though spoiled in its
effect by a Papal freak of restoration, is the tomb which hovers
between the names of Aruns son of Porsena and the Horatii and Curiatii.
Which of the two would Sir George Lewis have looked on as the more
impossible? This is the tomb which so singularly forestalled the
outline of the Glastonbury kitchen--before its chimneys perished--and
thereby of the Museum laboratory at Oxford. A good deal of the wall of
the camp, a good deal of an amphitheatre on the hill-side, and several
other fragments of the earlier Imperial time, are still to be seen.
But after all Albano really exists, not for its own sake, but as a
starting-point for the Alban lake and the Alban mount, and hardly less
as a starting-point for
... the still glassy lake that sleeps
Beneath Aricia's trees.
Aricia has changed its site; the small modern town has flown up to
the level of the _arx_, to be approached by Albano by almost the only
work on which we do not grudge to see the name of Pius IX. The viaduct
of that "Pontifex Optimus Maximus"--his votaries seem never quite to
distinguish between him and Jupiter--is really a work worthy of Cæsars
or consuls. Below it new Aricia has left the elder city, its fragments
of walls and of the Appian Way, to be sought for in the valley below,
the crater, so wise men tell us, of an extinct volcano, the biggest
surely even in this region where craters meet us at every step. Scraps
of primæval wall, hardly to be distinguished from the rocks, prepare
us for what we are to see at places further out of the ordinary track;
walls of the days of Sulla join on alike to what we have seen at Rome,
and to what we are to see at Cori. But, after all, the "still glassy
lake" to which the grove of the "rex nemorensis" has given the name of
Nemi, is the true glory of Aricia. How well we remember being puzzled
years and years ago with the thrilling run of the lines--
Those trees in whose dim shadow
The ghastly priest doth reign,
The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain.
In these days the fault would be held to lie with the poet for
venturing on an allusion which it might need a little research to take
in. In those days we thought in such cases that the fault lay with
ourselves; we admired without understanding till we lighted on the
explanation which enabled us to understand as well. As such a process
is a wholesome one, we will leave the lines without comment; not to
speak of books of reference, the story will be found, in a somewhat
grotesque form, in Dr. Merivale's chapter on the reign of Caius, better
known as Caligula.
The ghastly priest has gone from Nemi; but the lake is there still,
and the successors of the trees. Access is courteously granted by
the present owner, who, we may believe, has never slain anybody, and
who, we hope, may not be slain himself. But though we may admire Nemi
from close by, we do not fully understand Nemi and its place among
things, till we can look upon it in company with its greater fellow
of Alba. That is, we must climb the Alban mount, or a good part of
its height. But we go first to the Alban lake itself; and to do so
we go along its rim and slide down the side of its crater. There we
find the _emissarius_, so deftly cut in the rock, and which has done
its work so well for so many ages. Who made it? Camillus, or some
one long before Camillus? The men who built the great _cloaca_ of
Rome were quite capable of cutting the hole through the rock of Alba,
without any message from Delphi or any design against the walls of
Veii. Whoever the borer was, he did his work far more thoroughly than
Claudius ages afterwards did his for the Fucine lake, which work it
has been left for the Torlonia of our own day to finish. But no one,
we may suppose, wished at any time to drain the Alban lake, but only
to keep it in order. How needful such a work is we do not fully grasp
till we can look down from above. Then we take in the strict accuracy
of the name _crater_. We see the two lakes, greater and smaller, side
by side, like two basins in the strictest sense, in which, at some
time which geologists may fix, but which it is enough for history to
say that it was long before the oldest primæval wall, the powers of
water supplanted those of fire. We take in how the larger lake, with
its narrow rim, in some parts of its circuit with its low rim, liable
to be swollen, but with no natural outlet for its waters, might easily
come to overflow, if artificial means had not been, in some early time,
taken to check it.
But when we have wound our way by the rim of the lake, by the house
which the so-called Prisoner of the Vatican never chooses to visit, by
the rock which still bears his name, when we have crossed the so-called
fields of Hannibal--yet another crater, science tells us--when we have
climbed by the triumphal way to the height of Monte Cavo, we do indeed
understand the geography and history of Rome and Latium better than
we did before. The eye may range over the height of Tusculum and over
the battle-ground of Regillus as far as the height of Præneste; it
may range hither and thither over many points which have their charm
both of history and of nature. But there are two sides to which the
historical eye will be attracted before all others. Such a gazer will
better take in the position of Rome, as he sees it, with its seven
hills shrunk out of sight, a point--rather a line--in the Latin plain,
with a wall of Etruscan hills beyond it. We see how utterly different
was the position of Rome from the position of the elder cities; we see
how she lies in the midst, at the very meeting-place of nations; we
see how needful for her it was to make the barrier behind her her own;
and we understand her wars with Veii better than before. But we look
down too on the Latin plain itself: we look down, we believe, on the
vanished site of Rome's mother at our feet; we look out on the great
flat once fringed with cities, and on the great and wide sea beyond it.
Here, standing forth as an advanced post of the land, we see where
... the Witch's Fortress
O'erhangs the dark-blue seas.
And beyond Circeii and its island satellites, we look on to the more
distant height, in so many ages the boundary height, best known as
a height by the name of Anxur, but known as a boundary by the name
of Terracina. When we think how early Rome became the mistress,
not only of the height on which we stand and of the kindred heights
around it, but of that long coast-line and its protecting heights, we
feel why Rome, so early in her history, had to enter on a career of
wide-spreading policy, which could never have suggested itself to a
power seated at Veii or at Præneste. Rome, on her great river, with
her haven at its mouth, with her long line of sea-faring subjects or
allies, felt from a very early time the friendship or enmity of the
great powers of the sea to be an important matter. She had to dread
Etruscan pirates and Phœnician traders; the Greek of Cumæ might
perhaps do something more against her than merely shelter her tyrants.
We may believe or not in the connexion between the Alban lake and the
fall of Veii, but, as we look one way from beside the few stones that
are left of Jove's loftiest temple, we understand how needful it was
that Juno of Veii should move to Rome. We may or we may not have the
camping-ground of Hannibal behind us; but as we look out seawards we
believe in the first treaty with Carthage; we go on to wonder how
things had turned about, when Duilius and Lutatius could break the
Carthaginian power by sea, and when Hannibal could make his way into
Italy by land.
Cori.
There was some reason in the remark made by Mr. Creighton in the
Academy a little time back, that there must be something "irritating to
the Italians of the present date in the point of view which is often
adopted by English writers towards Italian history." "Their cities,"
he said, "which are still instinct with political and social life, are
regarded as museums of curiosities, which serve to awaken picturesque
reminiscences in the mind of the passing tourist." Mr. Creighton was
speaking of Genoa, and at Genoa and in cities like Genoa, what he
says may be perfectly true. But there are other Italian cities where
the political and social life at least hides itself from the passing
tourist, and where the curiosity with which he regards the city is as
nothing compared with the curiosity with which the inhabitants of the
city seem to regard him. The curiosity is not specially irritating;
it is perhaps mixed up with a certain open craving after _soldi_
which nothing short of the very highest civilization can get rid
of; but it is quite distinct from the endless touting and wearying
which the traveller has to undergo in places which are one degree
more advanced, or which, to speak more civilly, have fallen less
far back. For it is only civil to believe of cities which were once
independent commonwealths, members of the League of the Thirty Cities,
and, therefore, doubtless instinct with political life, that they
were, at least two or three millenniums back, cleaner than they are
now, and filled with inhabitants who had something more to do than
their successors seem to have. But the interest which the novelty
of the stranger awakens in the minds of the present inhabitants--far
keener, it would seem, than the interest which the antiquity of the
city awakens in his mind--really does him no harm. The modern Latins
or Volscians come and look; they wonder; they follow. If the nature of
the country requires that the strangers be set on asses and mules, the
curiosity, as is only natural, reaches its height. The asses of the
Prisci Latini or of their Volscian neighbours are undoubtedly grave
and discreet beasts; even the obstinacy of the mule is a virtue when
he knows the way so much better than his foreign rider. But there is
something grotesque in the way of going; it is not wonderful if the
sight gathers together a crowd, if the travellers find themselves the
centre, not exactly of triumph, for they are not drawn in a chariot;
not exactly of an ovation, for they do not walk on foot; but of a not
ill-humoured procession of gazers, it may even be of admirers.
Something of this kind is likely to be the destiny, at some point at
least, of those who wish to carry out the full programme of the right
wing of the Latin host of Regillus:
Aricia, Cora, Norba,
Velitræ, with the might
Of Setia and of Tusculum.
Tusculum they will, perhaps, have made the object of a separate
pilgrimage; Aricia belongs to the following of Jupiter and the Alban
mount; "Setia's purple vineyards" it may be hard to take into the line
of march; but, with a slight change of order, "Velitræ, Cora, Norba,"
with the later Ninfa thrown in as a substitute for neglected Setia,
will form an admirable group, a day's journey, which those who have
made it will perhaps, at the end of a day or two, feel sorry that
they have not cut into two. Velitræ--hardly changed in the modern
Velletri--has itself but little to show beyond one of the very noblest
bell-towers of the second Italian period, where the pointed arch creeps
in, a visitor which in Italy is better away, but which at least keeps
out the vagaries of a yet later time. The lie of the town is good;
it stands well on its hill, of no great elevation among its brighter
neighbours. Besides the bell-tower, it has little to show in the
ecclesiastical line, save only the eccentricity of having its cathedral
church placed as if we were in Wales instead of in Italy, at the bottom
of the city instead of at the top. One or two ancient houses and modern
palaces may claim some attention, but Velletri, truly barren in Roman
remains, cannot be said to be fruitful in those of mediæval times. The
chief value of the town is as a starting-point--we can hardly call it
centre--for Cora, Norba, and several other of its ancient fellows. The
view from Velletri is beyond words. We look over the fertile plain,
dying away to the right into the Pomptine marshes, and fenced in by the
mighty limestone bulwark of the Volscian mountains. To the right of all
the height of Anxur's temple looms in the distance; Circeii, with its
following of islands, rises nearer and more plainly, almost itself like
a great island, reminding the visitor from the West of England of Brean
Down and the Holms in the Severn Sea. But the mountains draw the eyes
towards them by something more than their bright masses, something more
than a light and shade upon their sides. Several of their strong points
are crowned with castles and whole towns; and one point so crowned
stands out as the centre of all. We see one spur of the mountain, far
lower than the heights beyond it, crowned by a little city coming some
way down its sides, with a tall tower rising well from the midst when
the sunlight catches it. There stands one of the chief objects for
which Velletri is the starting-point; there we have to look for--
... the gigantic watch-towers,
No work of earthly men,
Whence Cora's sentinel's o'erlook
The never-ending fen.
Watch-towers, perhaps, in the strictest sense, we do not see, and we
shall hardly find them when we come nearer; but Cora, _Cori_, still
keeps the mightiest of walls, which it was no wonder that men looked
on as too mighty to be the work of such mortals--in Homer's phrase--as
we now are, and looked on them as reared by no hands weaker than those
of the forgers of Jove's own thunderbolts. With Cori we enter on the
examination of a long series of towns, whose main feature is their
primæval walls, and among these Cori has the merit of showing us the
walls that are the most primæval of all. None of its fellows can show
such blocks as the mysterious engineers, whose work men love to call
Cyclopean, piled together in the lower town of Cori, just outside
what is now the gate of Ninfa. Blocks indeed of equal size we may see
elsewhere, but surely none of equal rudeness. They are heaped together
as they were hewn or torn away from their place in the natural rock;
huge limestone blocks of every size and shape, with the spaces between
them filled up with similar stones of their own kind. But the whole
range of the wall of Cori is not of this primitive sort. The curious
in such matters distinguish five epochs: Cyclopean, Latin, Old Roman,
Roman of Sulla's day, and--the leap is a great one--mediæval walls
of the time of King Ladislaus; we hardly venture to give an Angevin
king of the hither Sicily the full Slavonic shape which marks him
as sprung from the other side of Hadria. The stones of the first
four--we have already spoken of the first of all--are all polygonal,
of distinguishing degrees of regularity of work and degrees of size.
The rudest wall, as far as we saw, of all is to be found quite at the
bottom; the others may be seen side by side in the great walls of the
_arx_ which soar high above all, and which shelter the chief ornament
of Cori in quite another department.
According to the nearly invariable rule, the _arx_ of Cora contained
a temple, and the temple, as so often happens, has been turned into
a church. But the change has been less destructive to Cori than in
many other places. The house of St. Peter has been built without
damaging the portico of the house of Hercules--the old Latin Herculus
was hopelessly confused with the Hêraklês of Greek legend--and still
keeps the columns of his portico, both on its front and its sides;
keeps his entablature, his pediment, the gate-way of his _cella_, the
inscription which records the work of the local _duumvirs_, Manlius
and Turpilius. But what shall we say to the columns themselves? They
profess to be Doric, even to be Greek Doric; but they have bases; they
stand as wide apart as Etruscan tradition planted the columns of the
Capitoline Jupiter; the shafts themselves, instead of being as massive
as Pæstum, are slenderer than Nemea. But sin against rule as it may,
the upper temple at Cori is still undoubtedly pretty, to say the least,
and it is really all the more interesting because of its sin against
rule. Far finer in themselves are the Corinthian columns--such as are
left--of the temple of the Greek Twin Brethren lower down the hill;
but we can see good Corinthian columns in a great many places; the
peculiarities of the Hercules temple are special to Cori. Do they not
speak of the Hellenizing mind of the great dictator who made Cora rise
again after it had suffered deeply at the hands of his Marian enemies?
Stern restorer of what he deemed Rome's ancient ways, but votary and
favourite of Hellenic gods, the taste of Sulla might well lead him to
some such forms as we see in the object, yet prominent from many points
of view, that crowns the height of the citadel of Cora.
But we have not gone through the full tale of the antiquities of
this strange little mountain-city. Outside the Ninfa gate, spanning
at a vast height the deep gorge which on that side forms the foss
of Cori, rises a bridge, of days which we call ancient, but which we
are tempted to call modern so near to the Cyclopean wall. Not a few
fragments of columns may be marked here and there in the streets. We
light too on inscriptions. Besides the _duumvirs_--one might call them
the bailiffs--of the Roman Municipium, whose names are carved on the
frieze of Hercules, another commemorates two _Praitors_; surely these,
with their archaic spelling, are the abiding magistrates of the Latin
Commonwealth--as Cicero's Milo was dictator of Lanuvium--dependent on
Rome, but not fully incorporated in her substance. Then, besides the
chief temple, other Pagan buildings and objects have been turned to
Christian uses. In the church where St. Peter has supplanted Hercules,
an altar, if altar it be, bearing rams with horns and the Gorgon's
head, has been hollowed out to make a baptismal font. The church of St.
Oliva bears a dedication dating only from the sixteenth century; but it
is a lovely cloister of that better kind of _Renaissance_ which was in
truth only a falling back on Romanesque. In the church are memorials
of earlier times, classical columns used again, fitted some of them
with capitals of the very rudest Romanesque, whose fellows may be
found in Worcester and at Hildesheim. Altogether Cori is emphatically a
place for a visit. But a word of warning must be given. Cori and Norba
cannot be combined so as to see both worthily in a single day. Let the
traveller either make two distinct outings from Velletri, or let him
take his chance of sleeping at Cori; it may not be a worse chance than
sleeping at Frosinone, where sleep may be had. Then let him rise up
early in the morning and saddle his ass, or, if able-bodied, let him
rather make his way on his own feet along the mountain-path to Norba.
Norba.
We will suppose that, the mutual curiosity of natives and strangers
having been fully gratified at Cori, the strangers have set out on
their way, on mule-back or otherwise. The mountain-track up and down,
skirting the lower heights of the Volscian range, opens noble views
of the higher mountains inland, of the wide flat below, and of the sea
beyond. But these views are perhaps, on the whole, better enjoyed when
the traveller has found a firm foothold within "Norba's ancient wall"
than while he has personal experience how
The patient ass, up flinty paths,
Plods with his weary load.
Still worse indeed is it when the flinty paths have to be plodded
down, and when the weary load needs all his theoretical philosophy
to persuade him how thoroughly safe he really is, while the weakness
of the flesh surrounds the descent with terrors which he knows to
be unreal. At last the ancient wall rises immediately before him;
the hill-side, a small height straight above the path, is climbed on
his own feet, and he can presently contemplate at his ease both the
wall itself and the prospect which it commands. The last part of the
ass-track has become so like a lane anywhere else that we are amazed
when we reach the other side of the immediate height of Norba, and find
how far below lies the plain from which the almost perpendicular cliffs
spring to bear up the forsaken city. For at Norba the curiosity will
be almost wholly on the side of the stranger; in cannot be returned in
kind, as at Cori; a lone shepherd or two may come to look at him; he
cannot bring together the least approach to a triumphal procession.
For within the wall all is, we cannot say desolate or forsaken, for
the crops are there, full and green--"_segetes, ubi Norba fuit_"--but
the ancient circuit is at least empty of all dwelling-places of man.
We would fain believe that the space has stood as empty as it now
does ever since the people of Norba--less wise, as the event showed,
than their neighbours of Cora--embraced the cause of Marius with such
desperate zeal that they slew themselves and burned their houses rather
than let either themselves or their goods fall into the hands of Sulla.
This inference might possibly be rash; for the ancient wall fences in
at least one ruin which may be later than the days of the fortunate
dictator. But it is clear that Norba, if it recovered from this great
single blow, gradually dwindled away, to the profit, first of Norma
by its side, which still abides, and of Ninfa, at its foot, which has
perished only less utterly than Norba itself.
Cori and Norba are alike cities set on hills, and neither of them has
any fear of being hid. But they are set on hills in different senses.
Cori occupies the upper part of the sloping hill, and the houses spread
down the slope. Norba occupies a large table-land on the edge of the
mountains, and its outer wall is carried along the upper rim of a
steep and lofty cliff. No dwellings could ever have spread themselves
downwards on the side which looks toward the marshes and the sea.
But we should hardly have said the outer wall; for the height was so
carefully fortified that outlying defences were placed at various
points on the side of the cliff wherever the primitive engineers
deemed such defences needful. Within the circuit, again, the _arx_
rose on several terraces; its highest point--crowned, we may believe,
as usual, by a temple--must have formed a proud object indeed from the
vast extent of land and sea which it looks down upon. No other of its
ancient neighbours looks down so immediately on the great Pomptine
flat as Norba does, as none looks down from so great a height. Cori
rather occupies a hill thrown out in front of the mountain; Norba sits
on the edge of the mountain itself, though of course at a much lower
elevation than the huge masses further inland. The towers and temples
of the city must have had a wonderful effect from the lands below; as
it is, there is nothing to mark the place but the line of wall itself,
which does not always stand out in a very marked way from the cliff.
It is then perhaps in some sort well that the later Norma has taken
the place of Norba. On the hill of Norba we see that Norma and Norba
by no means join one another; there is a gap between them which, while
we are on the mountain, might pass for a valley. But as we look from
below, the winding outline of the hills puts this gap out of sight,
and Norma and Norba become in appearance one whole. Norma looks like
a continuation of Norba; it might pass for its still inhabited part,
perhaps, as at Syracuse and Girgenti, for the elder stronghold within
which the city had again shrunk up. From the points where the eye can
take in ruined Ninfa at the foot of the cliff, and the further town of
Sermoneta crowning a hill-top far lower than the height of Norba, the
whole grouping is wonderful. The view from Norba itself takes in points
with which we have become familiar since we first gazed on them from
the height of the Latian Jupiter. But we see them in new groupings and
new proportions; the islands, prisons for dangerous or discreditable
members of the Imperial house, stand out in special prominence in front
of the Circæan height--a height so nearly cut off from the mainland
that it seems like the greatest of the island group. Nowhere do we
better understand what men looked on as a great and strong city in days
when they had not yet learned that an element of truer might lurked
in what, judged by the standard of Norba, would seem a mere group of
molehills by the yellow Tiber.
As the whole city lay on the top of the hill, the space taken in by
the walls is necessarily greater than in those towns where the hill
stands distinct, the _arx_ alone crowns the top, and where the town
walls are placed lower down. The nature of the construction adapts
itself to the needs of the different parts of the circuit. The mass
of the wall is of polygonal stones, rude, but far less rude than the
rudest at Cori. Without being actually laid in regular order, they
have a certain tendency to fall into courses as it were of themselves,
and it is not always easy to tell how far the roughness of the stone
has been from the beginning, and how far it is due to the action of
the weather on stones cut perhaps somewhat less carefully than the
finer stones at Cori. But the Norban builders could, when it was worth
their while, do something more than this. They could, when they had
to make a corner, put together squared stones cut with a good deal of
exactness, and when it was convenient that a corner should be rounded
off, they could do that too with equal skill. This last was done at
the greatest gateway looking towards Norma. Here there is no sign
of either lintel, arch, or attempt at arch, to span the opening; it
would almost seem that the gate itself was simply placed across the
opening with nothing over it, much as at Tusculum the gate was hung
between two pieces of native rock. That the arch was not known to the
first builders of Norba, but that they had reached the stage in which
men began as it were to stretch forth their hands towards that great
invention, is shown by a ruined building--one of the few things within
the wall of Norba which can be called even a ruined building--a little
way beyond the _arx_. Here we have a distinct attempt at a vault for
the roof; but it is not the apparent cupola of Mykênê and New Grange,
nor the apparent barrel-vault of Tusculum. The building is oblong, and
the attempted arches rise on both sides, from the small ones as well
as from the longer. The ruined state of the building, whatever it was,
most unluckily hinders us from seeing how the four vaults, so to call
them, were made to meet in the middle. It must have been a strange
problem in construction. Hard by is the other building at which we have
already hinted as being of later date. It has real arches and masonry,
like that which at Cori is attributed to Sulla's time. But it may as
well come before the overthrow of Norba in his day as after it.
From primæval and forsaken Norba we go down the hill-side, learning
as we go how high Norba stands, to hardly less forsaken, though only
mediæval, Ninfa. Ninfa, unlike Norba, has a few inhabitants; there is
a house and a mill, if not within the fortified enclosure, at least
just outside it, and, if the enclosure itself contains no actual
dwelling-places of man, it contains abundance of buildings which have
once been so. One can hardly fancy a greater contrast than that which
strikes us between the stern primæval wall of Norba, fencing in the
thick-standing corn, and the wall of Ninfa, with its towers, its varied
and picturesque outline, fencing in a crowd of houses, churches, and
buildings of every kind, the oldest of which could not have arisen till
a thousand years after Norba became desolate. All are now forsaken,
roofless, shattered, forming one of the most singular gatherings of
ruins to be seen anywhere, the mummy, as it has been well called, of
a dead town. Ninfa was once a place of some consequence, which played
its part in local history; perhaps the most notable event suggested
by its name is that here Alexander III., a Pope who had so much to
do with our own history, was consecrated after his famous disputed
election. But its position in the deadly flat, close by a stream,
led to its ruin; the malaria was too much for it, and Ninfa ceased to
be reckoned among the cities of articulate-speaking men. Some freak
might restore the greatness of Norba; for there is nothing to hinder
men living there if the fancy took them; they cannot live at Ninfa
without greater changes than a Marius or a Sulla can work. There is
something specially striking in a town, whose remains are so extensive,
standing so utterly desolate. There is something Irish in the look
of things at Ninfa, as indeed there is in the look of a good many of
the ruined mediæval sites which often meet us in this region. It is
not merely the fact of their being ruined, though there is something
Irish in that; the tall, slender towers, of which there are many both
at Ninfa and elsewhere, have a real likeness to many buildings in
Ireland. But, though the general look of Ninfa is singularly striking,
there is less to be learned from the particular buildings than might
have been looked for. They are spread over several centuries, some of
the houses reaching even into _Renaissance_ times. The church of most
pretension lies without the walls; several within them keep their apses
and the paintings on them, but little more. The whole is a wilderness
of ruins, strange, impressive, but hardly venerable. As the ruin of a
town, the wreck of many buildings crowded close together, fallen Ninfa
has little of the solemnity of our own ruined castles and abbeys. As
for the elements of wonder and mystery, they dwell in this region on
the hill-top, among the mighty masses of stone which the men of an
unrecorded age piled together to make Norba.
Segni.
The visitor to Segni will find difficulties in studying the history
on the spot second only to those which he finds at Norba. It is quite
certain that he will find no books at Norba, save such as he may take
with him, which are not likely to be many. It is possible that there
may be books at Segni; there may lurk in some odd corner either a
hidden scholar with his treasured library, or a bookseller of that
class, sometimes to be found in old-fashioned places, who dislikes
nothing so much as parting with his books. But, if such there be, they
do not force themselves on the eye on one's entrance into Segni. A
natural and important question is sure to present itself, and--without
wings to fly at once to the libraries of Rome--there is no immediate
means of answering it. Is the name of Signia--now by a very slight
change _Segni_--to be found in any of the lists of the Thirty Cities of
Latium? The lists are many, and the traveller is not likely to carry
them all in his head. He may perhaps be able to repeat the lines in
which Macaulay draws the picture of many of them; and, if so, every
step that he takes among the Latin cities will make him more fully
admire the fitness and force of the points and epithets picked out
in each case. But at Segni the Lay of Regillus fails him; he has his
quotations for Cora and Norba; he has no quotations for Signia. Still
Macaulay's verses are not a full or formal list of the cities; while,
if he argues that Signia lies too much in the heart of the Volscian
and Hernican land to have belonged to the Latin name, he is met by the
fact that "Ferentinum of the rock," yet further on, has its place in
them alongside of "Gabia of the pool." He turns to his guide-book--and
the guide-book of Gsell-fels, though it sometimes leaves things out,
is almost always to be trusted for what it puts in; he there finds only
the entry of the alleged Roman colony of the days of the Tarquins, with
the remark that the existing walls seem to point to an earlier origin.
And again a thought may occur to him, if not at Segni itself, yet in
the later course of the journey of which Segni forms a part--Were the
people of ancient Signia specially skilful in the making of mosaic
pavements? There is a kind of work called _opus Signinum_, a pattern
of black spots on a white ground, of which there is a good deal at
Pompeii, and of which the visitor to Segni will most likely see an
example a few days later at Anagni. The question is hardly so exciting
as the question as to the position of Signia in the days of the Latin
League. But it is one which may suggest itself, and it is one which
it will be hard to answer with only the resources which are to be had
at Segni itself. The visitor to Segni is thus likely to find himself
a little uncomfortable as to more than one point in the history of the
place where he stands. And he will feel most uncomfortable of all as to
the great point of all with regard to its earliest history. Still, he
may for the moment comfort himself by thinking that there are those who
might be unkind enough to hint that he would still be equally uncertain
if he had a hundred quotations on the tip of his tongue, or if he were
in a library with thousands of volumes to turn to.
But whether Signia was ever a Thirty-city or not--we may be
allowed to follow the local usage of Canterbury, which speaks of "a
Six-preacher"--there is no doubt as to its geographical position;
there is no doubt as to the grandeur of its remains. In starting from
Velletri, with Algidus and its holm-oaks and its memories of Æquian
encampments on our left hand, on the right we turn the corner of the
Volscian mountains, and the railway carries us along the valley between
them and their Hernican rivals. We reach the station of Segni; we mark
more than one town perched on the opposite heights; we have close by
us, in the low ground--reminding us of Ninfa on a smaller scale--the
walls of a forsaken fortress, with a shattered tower of wonderful
height and slenderness; but the walls of Signia still keep themselves
hidden among the mountains. It is not from the side of Velletri, but,
as we afterwards learn, from the side of Anagni, that Segni on its
mountain height, and its satellite of Gavignano, perched on a smaller
detached hill in front, form striking features in the landscape.
Segni belongs to the same class of hill-fortress as Norba, not the
same class as Cori. It occupies, not the top of a conical hill, but
a table-land, if we may apply that name to so narrow a space, on
the mountain itself. The distinction is well marked by comparing it
with Gavignano just below, which is one of the chief objects in the
immediate view from the height of Segni. The difference is just the
same as the difference between Norba and Sermoneta, though Gavignano
has more the air of being an outpost of Segni than Sermoneta has of
being an outpost of Norba. The hill-top which Segni crowns is long
and narrow, at some points very narrow indeed, so as to give to the
space within the walls nearly the shape of a figure of eight. The
space within is neither wholly forsaken, as at Norba, nor all crowded
with dwellings, as at Cori. The modern town has withdrawn into one
quarter of the old enclosure; but it has not, as in so many other
cases, withdrawn into the ancient citadel. The site of the _arx_ of
Signia, rising but little above the general level of the hill-top,
but placed well so as to command what we may call the isthmus between
the two parts of the town, forms no part of the dwelling-place of
the modern Signians; but under the name of _Passegiata_ it does form
part of their pleasure-ground. The modern town has retreated into the
other loop of the figure of eight, that which lies furthest from the
traveller as he draws near from Velletri, but to which the course of
the road will necessarily take him first. He may enter by a gateway
of Roman date, and if he so does his eye will soon be struck by the
great number of graceful fragments of mediæval work to be found within
the narrow streets of Segni. The town has most likely been for ages
too poor to follow the example of its richer neighbours in replacing
beauty by ugliness. But he will do better to keep for a while from
entering the inhabited part of the town. Let him first make the circuit
of the ancient walls. And he can hardly doubt whether to turn to the
right hand or to the left. The claims of the left are in this case
overwhelming. Long before he has reached the town, he must have seen
far away on the hill the most precious of the remains of Signia, the
gateway which stands, forsaken but still untouched, beckoning him, as
it were, to make his way first of all to the most instructive thing
which the primæval city has to show him.
But before he can reach either the Roman or the primæval gate he will
have begun to notice the character of the wall. The construction is
hardly so rude as the rudest parts of the wall at Cori, but a great
deal of it belongs to the same general stage of engineering progress.
The huge polygonal stones are heaped together; but one might note
perhaps two stages, yet often intermingled--one, where the sides _only_
of the stones are cut so as to fit their neighbours; another, where
the outer faces are also smoothed of what is called "rustication" in
late _Renaissance_ work. In the first they are not left so utterly in a
state of nature as they are at Cori. Their sides have been cut to the
shape which was thought best for the work of piling them together. In
a later stage, also seen at Cori, the outer sides, those which stand
free from the scarped wall, are also cut; but it is not always easy
to say how much of the change of the surface is due to art and how
much to weather. At Segni the peculiar shape of the enclosure makes it
somewhat hard to follow the line of the walls without a ground-plan,
and a ground-plan is not to be had at Segni merely by asking for it.
But it is plain that, in many parts at least, on the whole side of
the hill which lies exposed to the open valley, and on the head of the
whole promontory, there was, whenever the ground allowed and required
it, a double wall, one on the edge of the hill, the other at some
distance down its side. The most famous of the gates of Segni, locally
known as _Porta Saracenesca_, leads from the outside world into the
outer enclosure, at a point well chosen for military purposes, close
to the edge, and commanding the path by which the traveller will most
likely make his way to it. And a mighty gate it is, and one that holds
no small place in the history of the art of construction. It is one of
those instances which show that their builders were still ignorant of
the principle of the arch, but that they were, so to speak, in search
of it. They had not yet learned how to make the top of an opening out
of stones really so arranged as to stand by mutual support; but they
were striving after something beyond the mere horizontal lintel resting
on two vertical supports. The builders of Segni had not got so far as
those of Veii or Tusculum; as they had no idea of the true principle
of the arch, so they had no idea of its form; all they could do was
to place two horizontal stones with sides sloping inwards immediately
under the lintel. In truth, the construction is still purely that of
the lintel, and nothing else; but the form chosen shows a certain
vain striving after something different. As such, it is no small
lesson which it teaches; and the effect of the great stones thus piled
together to form the entrance is striking and solemn. It carries us
back from days which on our side of the Alps we deem ancient, but when
the arts of construction were as well known as they are now, to days
when men were making the first rude attempts towards the greatest of
constructive inventions. Attempts of this kind, simply because they are
mere attempts, failures and not successes, have a more ancient look
than those examples where the builders were fully satisfied with the
lintel construction and attempted no other. In point of fact, whatever
their relative date, they are later in idea, as showing a desire to
innovate on the received form, some instances of which were at last
crowned with success.
It is not easy to see how this gate came by its local name. One can
understand the process of thought by which the roofing at Tusculum,
which has the outward shape of the pointed arch, came to be called
_arco Gotico_; it is harder to guess why the great primæval gate of
Segni should be attributed to Saracens. It is far from being the only
primæval gateway in the whole circuit. No less than five have been
counted between the outer and inner walls, and two more in the part of
the enclosure occupied by the modern town, where the two lines of wall
coincide. Hard by _Porta Saracenesca_ itself is a small sally-port;
of the others, the larger ones, like _Porta Saracenesca_ itself,
stand at right angles to the wall. Some of them at least show the same
strivings after the arch as their greater neighbour. The nature of the
ground forbids the _arx_ from reaching any great height above the rest
of the city; but its place is easily marked. It contains a singular
large cistern of Roman work, and close by is one of those junctions
of different ages which always preach to us a living historic lesson.
Here is the terrace of a temple wrought with stones of the primitive
construction. On this primitive work rise the remains of the _cella_ in
Roman masonry, and the Roman wall of the _cella_ is now carried up to
form a church. Now, at least the church is of no architectural value,
but it is none the less a witness to the greatest of all the changes
which the hoary walls of Signia have looked upon.
Landed, then, in Christian Segni, we may, perhaps, remember that one of
the greatest of the Popes was born either in the town itself or in its
satellite of Gavignano. But which was the actual spot? Our one guide
available at the moment seems to doubt between the two. In either case
we see, if we do not tread, the place which gave birth to the third
and greatest of the Innocents. We find, too, that a Papal palace of
Segni was swept away by the Duke of Alva in that strange war which the
Catholic King Philip waged, not, of course, against the Vicar of St.
Peter, but against the temporal Sovereign of the Roman States.
We are thus, even at Segni, plunged among Papal memories; we look over
the valley of the Trerus across to Anagni, and they press upon us with
double force. We hasten to the spot where a lesser Pope than Innocent,
but still a mighty one, died like a dog after his fox-like entrance and
his lion-like reign.
Iter ad Brundisium.