The tale of those Hernican cities, fenced in with primæval walls, among
which we have been lately sojourning, is worthily brought to an end at
Alatri. Among its immediate Hernican fellows that town must certainly
claim the highest place; it might on some grounds claim the highest
place, even if we throw in Old-Latin and Volscian rivals. Yet it is
the one which has the least history. There is very little to say about
it, except that Alatrium, like Ferentinum, was faithful to Rome, but
preferred to keep its separate Hernican being rather than accept the
proffered reward of Roman citizenship. It therefore doubtless remained
a distinct commonwealth down to the Social War. And here at least
there can be no question about dates. Alatri is not especially rich
in mediæval antiquities; it has still less claim to be called rich
in Roman antiquities. Nor does it supply us with the work of more or
less Romanized Hernicans, like the censors of Ferentinum. At Alatri
nearly everything that we care about is strictly primæval. We cannot
reasonably doubt that both the circuits of wall at which we now look
were there in the days of Spurius Cassius, and were by no means new
then.
Alatri seems to have been somewhat of an out-of-the-way place in
all ages. Not lying on any of the great roads of Italy, it has no
place in the Itineraries, and now it lies much further than Anagni
or Ferentino--nay, even than Cori and Norba, from common tracks of
going and from the common haunts of men. Yet it cannot be looked
on as seriously inaccessible; it may at least be reached without
calling in the help of asses and mules. The party whose track we are
now following--a party, be it noticed, numbering two ladies among
them--reached Alatri in a carriage from Frosinone, having slept there
after seeing Ferentino. The old Hernican town of Frusino had scant
justice done to it by our wayfarers; as no man or book had pointed
it out as a seat of primitive walls, it was treated merely as a
resting-place between the wonders of Ferentino and the wonders of
Alatri. Frosinone was slept in, but was not examined; yet a glance from
its railway station, the point which connects Alatri with the modern
world, shows that it at least possesses a by no means contemptible
bell-tower. From Frosinone then our travellers made their way to
Alatri, and, as Alatri gradually rose before them, they were for
a while puzzled, perhaps for a while even disappointed, with what
they saw. But it was not for lack of a striking object to crown the
Alatrian hill-top. Of all the walls of our series, the inner range of
the walls of Alatri, the walls which fence in the _arx_, are the most
prominent in a distant view. Even the circuit of empty Norba, beyond
our immediate range, hardly outdoes these defences of a still inhabited
town. At Alatri indeed the primæval walls are so prominent that in the
distant view no one would suspect them of being primæval walls at all.
They are still so nearly perfect that they can and do discharge what
may be looked on as a survival of their original function. They still
fence in the innermost and loftiest quarter of the town, where, as
in so many other cases, the ancient citadel has become the episcopal
precinct. But at Alatri the episcopal precinct puts on a distinct and
central character which is rarely found in Italian cities. The _arx_
is not in a corner, but in the middle; the lower town, fenced in by the
wall of its own outer circuit, lies around it on every side. The _arx_
forms an open, lofty, and airy platform, looking forth from every point
of the compass on the mountains which keep watch around--on the little
towns, Veroli among them, perched here and there on their heights--on
the houses and churches of Alatri, covering the slope of the hill
which the _arx_ crowns. It is seldom that we find in an Italian town a
church or any other building standing in this way free on a commanding
site, not hemmed in on any side by parasitical buildings. These
hill-towns are perhaps better off in this respect than most others;
at Anagni, at Ferentino, the cathedral churches stand grandly on their
heights, comparatively free from all buildings except their own proper
companions. But there is not the wide, open space around them which
surrounds the church of Alatri. One cannot help wishing that some more
worthy building, either the primæval temple itself or some more fitting
successor, occupied so noble a site, a site in truth which needs--let
us say either the Parthenôn of Athens or the Parthenôn of Lincoln to
do it justice. But the only thing that can be said for the cathedral
church of Alatri is that the lower part of its wall is part of the
_cella_ of the primæval temple. Here we have something even more than
can be seen at Segni. We know not what may have been added in the way
of a pillared front; but it is plain that, as far as the main walls are
concerned, the building which was transformed into a Christian church
was actually the house of pagan worship itself. And it was a house
going back, not to dated Emperors or consuls, but to the unrecorded
age which reared these cities great and fenced up to heaven. There
is the terrace, there is the wall of the _cella_, wrought of the same
wonderful masonry as the walls of the surrounding _arx_, as the walls
of the yet again surrounding city. It is strange indeed to see the
ordinary rites of Christian worship, the ordinary accompaniments of a
Christian church, dwelling, as at Rome and Syracuse, within the temples
of a creed, fallen indeed but perfectly familiar. But here we see them
within walls reared in honour of we know not what--gods of unchronicled
days, gods alongside of whom Jupiter of the Capitol may have seemed
as strange and foreign as Mithras and Serapis now seem alongside of
Jupiter of the Capitol.
Where the præhistoric temple has thus become the cathedral church, it
is not out of keeping that the wall of the præhistoric _arx_ should
become the wall of the cathedral close. This is the wall which we see
from afar, a wall which seems so straight and regular, so clearly
furnished with a modern finish at top, that it is not till we can
distinguish the mighty blocks of which it is formed that it has the air
of a wall even of Roman, even of mediæval, antiquity. Shall we say it?
As we looked up at no very amazing distance, the wall of the _arx_ of
Alatri had a good deal of the air of the wall of a modern prison. We
could not yet see the construction, and the outline seemed more regular
and rectangular than it proves to be. Nowhere do we better see than
at Alatri the nature of these primitive walls. They are seldom walls
in the same sense as the later walls of Rome or of other places, walls
built on the ground and standing up clear on both sides. Their business
commonly is, as is perhaps more clear at Alatri than anywhere else,
to strengthen by masonry the scarped side of a hill. Hence they have
little or no height within, and the gateways are necessarily reached
from within by a steep descent. The open space at Alatri allows this
arrangement to be studied with unusual ease. The wall is eminently a
wall against a hill, and its arrangements are made with no small art.
The weak corner has its double defence; the way up from the town at
this point is carefully sheltered. And what stones they are with which
the hill of Alatri is strengthened; above all, what stones they are
which are piled together to form its main gateway. Nowhere indeed in
the walls of Alatri, whether of temple, _arx_, or city, do we find
anything quite so rude as the rudest part of the wall of Cori. All the
stones, of whatever shape--and they are of many shapes--have clearly
been cut; they are all laid according to some kind of system, though
the system according to which they are laid is not the same in every
part of the wall. In some parts they seem almost to take the shape of
constructive arches, at least of attempts at arches, such as may be
seen in gateways and roofs at Segni and elsewhere. The true arch, it
is hardly needful to say, is nowhere found in the original work; nor
do we find even any of the attempts at the arch in that position where
we should have most naturally looked for them, in the gateways. The
great gateway of the _arx_ at Alatri is indeed a wonderful work. Its
builders either knew the arch and despised it, or else the thought of
the arch had not come into their heads. It is as pure an example of
the lintel-construction as any gateway at Athens or Mykênê. We suppose
that the lintel-stone of the great treasury is yet vaster than the huge
lintel-stone at Alatri; but the Anakim of Alatri were at least rivals
whom those of Mykênê could not have despised. But, except in vastness
of construction, we must not compare the gateway at Alatri, perfectly
plain, a mere piling, though a very skilful piling, of huge blocks with
the really artistic work of the Mykênaian treasuries. It goes rather
with the lion-gate; only there are no lions. The builders of Alatri
could carve, as is shown over one of the smaller gateways of the _arx_.
But they chose to carve quite other subjects than lions. On the great
gate however they carved nothing; that is left in the stern majesty of
the vast blocks which form it. And here we may distinguish between the
cut blocks of the gateway itself and the far ruder blocks just within
it, which merely formed part of the foundation, and which, when the
steep path went down to the gate, would not have stood above ground.
Even the builders of primæval walls clearly drew a line between what
was meant to meet the public eye and what was not.
But we must remember that the walls of which we have been speaking,
the walls which first catch the eye, are not the whole of the walls of
Alatri. They fence in only its inner and higher circuit. Their effect
in the distant view is so imposing that the visitor will most likely be
tempted to go to them first, instead of doing things in a more regular
order by first tracking out the walls of the town itself. But these
last, except that they do not supply anything like the primæval gate,
are just as well worthy of study as the walls of the _arx_ itself. They
remain perfectly round the greater part of the circuit of the city, and
they are of the same general construction as the walls of the _arx_.
At some points a singular contrast is made by mediæval additions to
the defences; good thirteenth century work, with the characteristic
windows of the time, stands out as projections from the primæval wall.
And, as in some of the other places, we have something thrown in in
the way of what the walls contain, besides the attractions of the
walls themselves. From the _arx_ of Alatri we look down on several
bell-towers and rose-windows, and one church at least, that of _Santa
Maria Maggiore_, though hardly equal to its namesake at Ferentino, is
quite worthy of examination. But, next to its walls, the strong point
of Alatri lies in its domestic buildings. Very seldom, in Italy or
out of it, do we see graceful windows, chiefly couplets with a divided
shaft, more thickly gathered together, than in its crooked and narrow
streets. Alatri, in short, is, to the antiquarian eye, satisfactory
in every point save one. There should have been some decent building,
pagan or Christian, crowning the noble site of its _arx_, the noblest
in our whole range.
With Alatri we end one main stage of our _iter_, that of the
hill-cities. We shall henceforth pass by places which lie more in
the world, some of them in the thick of modern communication. But if
we had turned back at Alatri, we should have done a good stroke of
work. A journey to the walls of the Hernicans is in every way pleasant
and profitable. And in truth, even if we throw in the Old-Latins and
the Volscians, it is not a journey of hardships. The little inns
are very humble, very simple, but they may be fed in and slept in
without anything very frightful to endure. It may perhaps be well to
mention that the _Locanda d'Italia_, at Anagni, recommended in various
guide-books, has ceased to exist for some years. Still a day and a
night at Anagni are no hardship, and a guide may be found, shirtless
and letterless, who knows what is really worth going to much better
than many in England who boast at once more clothes and more learning.
Indeed, the men of the walls seem altogether a kindly and well-disposed
race. Some say that is because they are said to be reclaimed brigands,
perhaps on the principle that a reformed rake used to be said to make
the best husband. There are indeed more beggars among them than need
be; but on this head a wise rule was laid down by a young Volscian, or
he might be a Hernican--we cannot always be exact among these obsolete
nationalities--"Give to the halt and the blind; but not to anybody
else."