in the Monti. The great Piazza di Termini, now re-named Piazza delle
Terme, before the railway station, took its name from the Baths of
Diocletian--'Thermae,' 'Terme,' 'Termini.' The Baths of Titus, the Baths
of Constantine, of Philippus, Novatus and others were all in Monti,
supplied by the aqueduct of Claudius, the Anio Novus, the Aqua Marcia,
Tepula, Julia, Marcia Nova and Anio Vetus. No people in the world were
such bathers as the old Romans; yet few cities have ever suffered so
much or so long from lack of good water as Rome in the Middle Age. The
supply cut off, the whole use of the vast institutions was instantly
gone, and the huge halls and porticos and playgrounds fell to ruin and
base uses. Owing to their peculiar construction and being purposely made
easy of access on all sides, like the temples, the buildings could not
even be turned to account by the Barons for purposes of fortification,
except as quarries for material with which to build their towers and
bastions. The inner chambers became hiding-places for thieves, herdsmen
in winter penned their flocks in the shelter of the great halls, grooms
used the old playground as a track for breaking horses, and round and
about the ruins, on feast days, the men of Monti and Trastevere chased
one another in their murderous tournaments of stone throwing. A fanatic
Sicilian priest saved the great hall of Diocletian's Baths from
destruction in Michelangelo's time.
[Illustration: PORTA MAGGIORE, SUPPORTING THE CHANNELS OF THE AQUEDUCT
OF CLAUDIUS AND THE ANIO NOVUS]
The story is worth telling, for it is little known. In a little church
in Palermo, in which the humble priest Antonio Del Duca officiated, he
discovered under the wall-plaster a beautiful fresco or mosaic of the
Seven Archangels, with their names and attributes. Day after day he
looked at the fair figures till they took possession of his mind and
heart and soul, and inspired him with the apparently hopeless desire to
erect a church in Rome in their honour. To Rome he came, persuaded of
his righteous mission, to fail of course, after seven years of
indefatigable effort. Back to Palermo then, to the contemplation of his
beloved angels. And again they seemed to drive him to Rome. Scarcely had
he returned when in a dream he seemed to see his ideal church among the
ruins of the Baths of Diocletian, which had been built, as tradition
said, by thousands of condemned Christians. To dream was to wake with
new enthusiasm, to wake was to act. In an hour, in the early dawn, he
was in the great hall which is now the Church of Santa Maria degli
Angeli, 'Saint Mary of the Angels.'
But it was long before his purpose was finally accomplished. Thirty
years of his life he spent in unremitting labour for his purpose, and an
accident at last determined his success. He had brought a nephew with
him from Sicily, a certain Giacomo Del Duca, a sculptor, who was
employed by Michelangelo to carve the great mask over the Porta Pia.
Pope Pius the Fourth, for whom the gate was named, praised the stone
face to Michelangelo, who told him who had made it. The name recalled
the sculptor's uncle and his mad project, which appealed to
Michelangelo's love of the gigantic. Even the coincidence of appellation
pleased the Pope, for he himself had been christened Angelo, and his
great architect and sculptor bore an archangel's name. So the work was
done in short time, the great church was consecrated, and one of the
noblest of Roman buildings was saved from ruin by the poor
Sicilian,--and there, in 1896, the heir to the throne of Italy was
married with great magnificence, that particular church being chosen
because, as a historical monument, it is regarded as the property of the
Italian State, and is therefore not under the immediate management of
the Vatican. Probably not one in a thousand of the splendid throng that
filled the church had heard the name of Antonio Del Duca, who lies
buried before the high altar without a line to tell of all he did. So
lies Bernini, somewhere in Santa Maria Maggiore, so lies Platina,--he,
at least, the better for no epitaph,--and Beatrice Cenci and many
others, rest unforgotten in nameless graves.
From the church to the railway station stretch the ruins, continuous,
massive, almost useless, yet dear to all who love old Rome. On the south
side, there used to be a long row of buildings, ending in a tall old
mansion of good architecture, which was the 'Casino' of the great old
Villa Negroni. In that house, but recently gone, Thomas Crawford,
sculptor, lived for many years, and in the long, low studio that stood
before what is now the station, but was then a field, he modelled the
great statue of Liberty that crowns the Capitol in Washington, and
Washington's own monument which stands in Richmond, and many of his
other works. My own early childhood was spent there, among the old-time
gardens, and avenues of lordly cypresses and of bitter orange trees, and
the moss-grown fountains, and long walks fragrant with half-wild roses
and sweet flowers that no one thinks of planting now. Beyond, a wild
waste of field and broken land led up to Santa Maria Maggiore; and the
grand old bells sent their far voices ringing in deep harmony to our
windows; and on the Eve of Saint Peter's day, when Saint Peter's was a
dream of stars in the distance and the gorgeous fireworks gleamed in the
dark sky above the Pincio, we used to climb the high tower above the
house and watch the still illumination and the soaring rockets through a
grated window, till the last one had burst and spent itself, and we
crept down the steep stone steps, half frightened at the sound of our
own voices in the ghostly place.
And in that same villa once lived Vittoria Accoramboni, married to
Francesco Peretti, nephew of Cardinal Montalto, who built the house, and
was afterwards Sixtus the Fifth, and filled Rome with his works in the
five years of his stirring reign. Hers also is a story worth telling,
for few know it, even among Romans, and it is a tale of bloodshed, and
of murder, and of all crimes against God and man, and of the fall of the
great house of Orsini. But it may better be told in another place, when
we reach the Region where they lived and fought and ruled, by terror and
the sword.
Near the Baths of Diocletian, and most probably on the site of that same
Villa Negroni, too, was that vineyard, or 'villa' as we should say,
where Caesar Borgia and his elder brother, the Duke of Gandia, supped
together for the last time with their mother Vanozza, on the night of
the 14th of June, in the year 1497. There has always been a dark mystery
about what followed. Many say that Caesar feared his brother's power and
influence with the Pope. Not a few others suggest that the cause of the
mutual hatred was a jealousy so horrible to think of that one may hardly
find words for it, for its object was their own sister Lucrezia. However
that may be, they supped together with their mother in her villa, after
the manner of Romans in those times, and long before then, and long
since. In the first days of summer heat, when the freshness of spring is
gone and June grows sultry, the people of the city have ever loved to
breathe a cooler air. In the Region of Monti there were a score of
villas, and there were wide vineyards and little groves of trees, such
as could grow where there was not much water, or none at all perhaps,
saving what was collected in cisterns from the roofs of the few
scattered houses, when it rained.
In the long June twilight the three met together, the mother and her two
sons, and sat down under an arbour in the garden, for the air was dry
with the south wind and there was no fear of fever. Screened lamps and
wax torches shed changing tints of gold and yellow on the fine linen,
and the deep-chiselled dishes and vessels of silver, and the tall
glasses and beakers of many hues. Fruit was piled up in the midst, such
as the season afforded, cherries and strawberries, and bright oranges
from the south. One may fancy the dark-browed woman of forty years, in
the beauty of maturity almost too ripe, with her black eyes and hair of
auburn, her jewelled cap, her gold laces just open at her marble throat,
her gleaming earrings, her sleeves slashed to show gauze-fine linen, her
white, ring-laden fingers that delicately took the finely carved meats
in her plate--before forks were used in Rome--and dabbled themselves
clean from each touch in the scented water the little page poured over
them. On her right, her eldest, Gandia, fair, weak-mouthed, sensually
beautiful, splendid in velvet, and chain of gold, and deep-red silk, his
blue eyes glancing now and then, half scornfully, half anxiously at his
strong brother. And he, Caesar, the man of infamous memory, sitting there
the very incarnation of bodily strength and mental daring; square as a
gladiator, dark as a Moor, with deep and fiery eyes, now black, now red
in the lamplight, the marvellous smile wreathing his thin lips now and
then, and showing white, wolfish teeth, his sinewy brown hands direct
in every little action, his soft voice the very music of a lie to those
who knew the terrible brief tones it had in wrath.
Long they sat, sipping the strong iced wine, toying with fruits and
nuts, talking of State affairs, of the Pope, of Maximilian, the jousting
Emperor,--discussing, perhaps, with a smile, his love of dress and the
beautiful fluted armour which he first invented;--of Lewis the Eleventh
of France, tottering to his grave, strangest compound of devotion,
avarice and fear that ever filled a throne; of Frederick of Naples, to
whom Caesar was to bear the crown within a few days; of Lucrezia's
quarrel with her husband, which had brought her to Rome; and at her name
Caesar's eyes blazed once and looked down at the strawberries on the
silver dish, and Gandia turned pale, and felt the chill of the night
air, and stately Vanozza rose slowly in the silence, and bade her evil
sons good-night, for it was late.
Two hours later, Gandia's thrice-stabbed corpse lay rolling and bobbing
at the Tiber's edge, as dead things do in the water, caught by its silks
and velvets in wild branches that dipped in the muddy stream; and the
waning moon rose as the dawn forelightened.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE COLOSSEUM]
If the secrets of old Rome could be known and told, they would fill the
world with books. Every stone has tasted blood, every house has had its
tragedy, every shrub and tree and blade of grass and wild flower has
sucked life from death, and blossoms on a grave. There is no end of
memories, in this one Region, as in all the rest. Far up by Porta Pia,
over against the new Treasury, under a modern street, lie the bones of
guilty Vestals, buried living, each in a little vault two fathoms deep,
with the small dish and crust and the earthen lamp that soon flickered
out in the close damp air; and there lies that innocent one, Domitian's
victim, who shrank from the foul help of the headsman's hand, as her
foot slipped on the fatal ladder, and fixed her pure eyes once upon the
rabble, and turned and went down alone into the deadly darkness. Down by
the Colosseum, where the ruins of Titus' Baths still stand in part,
stood Nero's dwelling palace, above the artificial lake in which the
Colosseum itself was built, and whose waters reflected the flames of the
great fire. To northward, in a contrast that leaps ages, rise the huge
walls of the Tor de' Conti, greatest of mediaeval fortresses built within
the city, the stronghold of a dim, great house, long passed away,
kinsmen of Innocent the Third. What is left of it helps to enclose a
peaceful nunnery.
There were other towers, too, and fortresses, though none so strong as
that, when it faced the Colosseum, filled then by the armed thousands of
the great Frangipani. The desolate wastes of land in the Monti were ever
good battlefields for the nobles and the people. But the stronger and
wiser and greater Orsini fortified themselves in the town, in Pompey's
theatre, while the Colonna held the midst, and the popes dwelt far aloof
on the boundary, with the open country behind them for ready escape, and
the changing, factious, fighting city before.
The everlasting struggle, the furious jealousy, the always ready knife,
kept the Regions distinct and individual and often at enmity with each
other, most of all Monti and Trastevere, hereditary adversaries,
Ghibelline and Guelph. Trastevere has something of that proud and
violent character still. Monti lost it in the short eruption of
'progress' and 'development.' In the wild rage of speculation which
culminated in 1889, its desolate open lands, its ancient villas and its
strange old houses were the natural prey of a foolish greediness the
like of which has never been seen before. Progress ate up romance, and
hundreds of acres of wretched, cheaply built, hideous, unsafe buildings
sprang up like the unhealthy growth of a foul disease, between the
Lateran gate and the old inhabited districts. They are destined to a
graceless and ignoble ruin. Ugly cracks in the miserable stucco show
where the masonry is already parting, as the hollow foundations subside,
and walls on which the paint is still almost fresh are shored up with
dusty beams lest they should fall and crush the few paupers who dwell
within. Filthy, half-washed clothes of beggars hang down from the
windows, drying in the sun as they flap and flutter against pretentious
moulded masks of empty plaster. Miserable children loiter in the
high-arched gates, under which smart carriages were meant to drive, and
gnaw their dirty fingers, or fight for a cold boiled chestnut one of
them has saved. Squalor, misery, ruin and vile stucco, with a sprinkling
of half-desperate humanity,--those are the elements of the modern
picture,--that is what the 'great development' of modern Rome brought
forth and left behind it. Peace to the past, and to its ashes of romance
and beauty.
[Illustration]
REGION II TREVI
In Imperial times, the street now called the Tritone, from the Triton on
the fountain in Piazza Barberini, led up from the Portico of Vipsanius
Agrippa's sister in the modern Corso to the temple of Flora at the
beginning of the Quattro Fontane. It was met at right angles by a long
street leading straight from the Forum of Trajan, and which struck it
close to the Arch of Claudius. Then, as now, this point was the meeting
of two principal thoroughfares, and it was called Trivium, or the
'crossroads.' Trivium turned itself into the Italian 'Trevi,' called in
some chronicles 'the Cross of Trevi.' The Arch of Claudius carried the
Aqua Virgo, still officially called the Acqua Vergine, across the
highway; the water, itself, came to be called the water 'of the
crossroads' or 'of Trevi,' and 'Trevi' gave its name at last to the
Region, long before the splendid fountain was built in the early part of
the last century. The device of the Region seems to have nothing to do
with the water, except, perhaps, that the idea of a triplicity is
preserved in the three horizontally disposed rapiers.
The legend that tells how the water was discovered gave it the first
name it bore. A detachment of Roman soldiers, marching down from
Praeneste, or Palestrina, in the summer heat, were overcome by thirst,
and could find neither stream nor well. A little girl, passing that way,
led them aside from the high-road and brought them to a welling spring,
clear and icy cold, known only to shepherds and peasants. They drank
their fill and called it Aqua Virgo, the Maiden Water. And so it has
remained for all ages. But it is commonly called 'Trevi' in Rome, by the
people and by strangers, and the name has a ring of poetry, by its
associations. For they say that whoever will go to the great fountain,
when the high moon rays dance upon the rippling water, and drink, and
toss a coin far out into the middle, in offering to the genius of the
place, shall surely come back to Rome again, old or young, sooner or
later. Many have performed the rite, some secretly, sadly, heartbroken,
for love of Rome and what it holds, and others gayly, many together,
laughing, while they half believe, and sometimes believing altogether
while they laugh. And some who loved, and could meet only in Rome, have
gone there together, and women's tears have sometimes dropped upon the
silvered water that reflected the sad faces of grave men.
The foremost memories of the past in Trevi centre about the ancient
family of the Colonna, still numerous, distinguished and flourishing
after a career of nearly a thousand years--longer than that, it may be,
if one take into account the traditions of them that go back beyond the
earliest authentic mention of their greatness; a race of singular
independence and energy, which has given popes to Rome, and great
patriots, and great generals as well, and neither least nor last,
Vittoria, princess and poetess, whose name calls up the gentlest
memories of Michelangelo's elder years.
The Colonna were originally hill men. The earliest record of them tells
that their great lands towards Palestrina were confiscated by the
Church, in the eleventh century. The oldest of their titles is that of
Duke of Paliano, a town still belonging to them, rising on an eminence
out of the plain beyond the Alban hills. The greatest of their early
fortresses was Palestrina, still the seat and title estate of the
Barberini branch of the family. Their original stronghold in Rome was
almost on the site of their present palace, being then situated on the
opposite side of the Basilica of the Santi Apostoli, where the
headquarters of the Dominicans now are, and running upwards and
backwards, thence, to the Piazza della Pilotta; but they held Rome by a
chain of towers and fortifications, from the Quirinal to the Mausoleum
of Augustus, now hidden among the later buildings, between the Corso,
the Tiber, the Via de' Pontefici and the Via de' Schiavoni. The present
palace and the basilica stood partly upon the site of the ancient
quarters occupied by the first Cohort of the Vigiles, or city police, of
whom about seven thousand preserved order when the population of ancient
Rome exceeded two millions.
The 'column,' from which the Colonna take their name, is generally
supposed to have stood in the market-place of the village of that name
in the higher part of the Campagna, between the Alban and the Samnite
hills, on the way to Palestrina. It is a peaceful and vine-clad country,
now. South of it rise the low heights of Tusculum, and it is more than
probable that the Colonna were originally descended from the great
counts who tyrannized over Rome from that strong point of vantage and,
through them, from Theodora Senatrix. Be that as it may, their arms
consist of a simple column, used on a shield, or as a crest, or as the
badge of the family, and it is found in many a threadbare tapestry, in
many a painting, in the frescos and carved ornaments of many a dim old
church in Rome.
[Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF TREVI]
In their history, the first fact that stands out is their adherence to
the Emperors, as Ghibellines, whereas their rivals, the Orsini, were
Guelphs and supporters of the Church in most of the great contests of
the Middle Age. The exceptions to the rule are found when the Colonna
had a Pope of their own, or one who, like Nicholas the Fourth, was of
their own making. 'That Pope,' says Muratori, 'had so boundlessly
favoured the aggrandizement of the Colonna that his actions depended
entirely upon their dictates, and a libel was published upon him,
entitled the Source of Evil, illustrated by a caricature, in which the
mitred head of the Pontiff was seen issuing from a tall column between
two smaller ones, the latter intended to represent the two living
cardinals of the house, Jacopo and Pietro.' Yet in the next reign, when
they impeached the election of Boniface the Eighth, they found
themselves in opposition to the Holy See, and they and theirs were
almost utterly destroyed by the Pope's partisans and kinsmen, the
powerful Caetani.
Just before him, after the Holy See had been vacant for two years and
nearly four months, because the Conclave of Perugia could not agree upon
a Pope, a humble southern hermit of the Abruzzi, Pietro da Morrone, had
been suddenly elevated to the Pontificate, to his own inexpressible
surprise and confusion, and after a few months of honest, but utterly
fruitless, effort to understand and do what was required of him, he had
taken the wholly unprecedented step of abdicating the papacy. He was
succeeded by Benedict Caetani, Boniface the Eighth, keen, learned,
brave, unforgiving and the mortal foe of the Colonna; 'the magnanimous
sinner,' as Gibbon quotes from a chronicle, 'who entered like a fox,
reigned like a lion and died like a dog.' Yet the judgment is harsh, for
though his sins were great, the expiation was fearful, and he was brave
as few men have been.
Samson slew a lion with his hands, and the Philistines with the jaw-bone
of an ass. Men have always accepted the Bible's account of the
slaughter. But when an ass, without the aid of any Samson, killed a lion
in the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Priori, in Florence, the event was
looked upon as of evil portent, exceeding the laws of nature. For Pope
Boniface had presented the Commonwealth of Florence with a young and
handsome lion, which was chained up and kept in the court of the palace
aforesaid. A donkey laden with firewood was driven in, and 'either from
fear, or by a miracle,' as the chronicle says, at once assailed the lion
with the utmost ferocity, and kicked him to death, in spite of the
efforts of a number of men to drag the beast of burden off. Of the two
hypotheses, the wise men of the day preferred the supernatural
explanation, and one of them found an ancient Sibylline prophecy to the
effect that 'when the tame beast should kill the king of beasts, the
dissolution of the Church should begin.' Which saying, adds Villani, was
presently fulfilled in Pope Boniface.
For the Pope had a mortal quarrel with Philip the Fair of France whom he
had promised to make Emperor, and had then passed over in favour of
Albert, son of Rudolph of Hapsburg; and Philip made a friend and ally of
Stephen Colonna, the head of the great house, who was then in France,
and drove Boniface's legate out of his kingdom, and allowed the Count of
Artois to burn the papal letters. The Pope retorted by a Major
Excommunication, and the quarrel became furious. The Colonna being under
his hand, Boniface vented his anger upon them, drove them from Rome,
destroyed their houses, levelled Palestrina to the ground, and ploughed
up the land where it had stood. The six brothers of the house were
exiles and wanderers. Old Stephen, the idol of Petrarch, alone and
wretched, was surrounded by highwaymen, who asked who he was. 'Stephen
Colonna,' he answered, 'a Roman citizen.' And the thieves fell back at
the sound of the great name. Again, someone asked him with a sneer where
all his strongholds were, since Palestrina was gone. 'Here,' he
answered, unmoved, and laying his hand upon his heart. Of such stuff
were the Pope's enemies.
Nor could he crush them. Boniface was of Anagni, a city of prehistoric
walls and ancient memories which belonged to the Caetani; and there, in
the late summer, he was sojourning for rest and country air, with his
cardinals and his court and his kinsmen about him. Among the cardinals
was Napoleon Orsini.
[Illustration: GRAND HALL OF THE COLONNA PALACE]
Then came William of Nogaret, sent by the King of France, and Sciarra
Colonna, the boldest man of his day, and many other nobles, with three
hundred knights and many footmen. For a long time they had secretly
plotted a master-stroke of violence, spending money freely among the
people, and using all persuasion to bring the country to their side, yet
with such skill and caution that not the slightest warning reached the
Pope's ears. In calm security he rose early on the morning of the
seventh of September. He believed his position assured, his friends
loyal and the Colonna ruined for ever; and Colonna was at the gate.