gaping roofs, still remained on the deserted Palatine; many ornaments and
statues, however, had already been removed to Byzantium. And the empire,
having become Christian, had afterwards closed the temples and
extinguished the fire of Vesta, whilst yet respecting the ancient
Palladium. But in the fifth century the barbarians rush upon Rome, sack
and burn it, and carry the spoils spared by the flames away in their
chariots. As long as the city was dependent on Byzantium a custodian of
the imperial palaces remained there watching over the Palatine. Then all
fades and crumbles in the night of the middle ages. It would really seem
that the popes then slowly took the place of the Caesars, succeeding them
both in their abandoned marble halls and their ever-subsisting passion
for domination. Some of them assuredly dwelt in the palace of Septimius
Severus; a council of the Church was held in the Septizonium; and, later
on, Gelasius II was elected in a neighbouring monastery on the sacred
mount. It was as if Augustus were again rising from the tomb, once more
master of the world, with a Sacred College of Cardinals resuscitating the
Roman Senate. In the twelfth century the Septizonium belonged to some
Benedictine monks, and was sold by them to the powerful Frangipani
family, who fortified it as they had already fortified the Colosseum and
the arches of Constantine and Titus, thus forming a vast fortress round
about the venerable cradle of the city. And the violent deeds of civil
war and the ravages of invasion swept by like whirlwinds, throwing down
the walls, razing the palaces and towers. And afterwards successive
generations invaded the ruins, installed themselves in them by right of
trover and conquest, turned them into cellars, store-places for forage,
and stables for mules. Kitchen gardens were formed, vines were planted on
the spots where fallen soil had covered the mosaics of the imperial
halls. All around nettles and brambles grew up, and ivy preyed on the
overturned porticoes, till there came a day when the colossal assemblage
of palaces and temples, which marble was to have rendered eternal, seemed
to dive beneath the dust, to disappear under the surging soil and
vegetation which impassive Nature threw over it. And then, in the hot
sunlight, among the wild flowerets, only big, buzzing flies remained,
whilst herds of goats strayed in freedom through the throne-room of
Domitian and the fallen sanctuary of Apollo.
A great shudder passed through Pierre. To think of so much strength,
pride, and grandeur, and such rapid ruin--a world for ever swept away! He
wondered how entire palaces, yet peopled by admirable statuary, could
thus have been gradually buried without any one thinking of protecting
them. It was no sudden catastrophe which had swallowed up those
masterpieces, subsequently to be disinterred with exclamations of
admiring wonder; they had been drowned, as it were--caught progressively
by the legs, the waist, and the neck, till at last the head had sunk
beneath the rising tide. And how could one explain that generations had
heedlessly witnessed such things without thought of putting forth a
helping hand? It would seem as if, at a given moment, a black curtain
were suddenly drawn across the world, as if mankind began afresh, with a
new and empty brain which needed moulding and furnishing. Rome had become
depopulated; men ceased to repair the ruins left by fire and sword; the
edifices which by their very immensity had become useless were utterly
neglected, allowed to crumble and fall. And then, too, the new religion
everywhere hunted down the old one, stole its temples, overturned its
gods. Earthly deposits probably completed the disaster--there were, it is
said, both earthquakes and inundations--and the soil was ever rising, the
alluvia of the young Christian world buried the ancient pagan society.
And after the pillaging of the temples, the theft of the bronze roofs and
marble columns, the climax came with the filching of the stones torn from
the Colosseum and the Theatre of Marcellus, with the pounding of the
statuary and sculpture-work, thrown into kilns to procure the lime needed
for the new monuments of Catholic Rome.
It was nearly one o'clock, and Pierre awoke as from a dream. The sun-rays
were streaming in a golden rain between the shiny leaves of the
ever-green oaks above him, and down below Rome lay dozing, overcome by
the great heat. Then he made up his mind to leave the garden, and went
stumbling over the rough pavement of the Clivus Victoriae, his mind still
haunted by blinding visions. To complete his day, he had resolved to
visit the old Appian Way during the afternoon, and, unwilling to return
to the Via Giulia, he lunched at a suburban tavern, in a large, dim room,
where, alone with the buzzing flies, he lingered for more than two hours,
awaiting the sinking of the sun.
Ah! that Appian Way, that ancient queen of the high roads, crossing the
Campagna in a long straight line with rows of proud tombs on either
hand--to Pierre it seemed like a triumphant prolongation of the Palatine.
He there found the same passion for splendour and domination, the same
craving to eternise the memory of Roman greatness in marble and daylight.
Oblivion was vanquished; the dead refused to rest, and remained for ever
erect among the living, on either side of that road which was traversed
by multitudes from the entire world. The deified images of those who were
now but dust still gazed on the passers-by with empty eyes; the
inscriptions still spoke, proclaiming names and titles. In former times
the rows of sepulchres must have extended without interruption along all
the straight, level miles between the tomb of Caecilia Metella and that
of Casale Rotondo, forming an elongated cemetery where the powerful and
wealthy competed as to who should leave the most colossal and lavishly
decorated mausoleum: such, indeed, was the craving for survival, the
passion for pompous immortality, the desire to deify death by lodging it
in temples; whereof the present-day monumental splendour of the Genoese
Campo Santo and the Roman Campo Verano is, so to say, a remote
inheritance. And what a vision it was to picture all the tremendous tombs
on the right and left of the glorious pavement which the legions trod on
their return from the conquest of the world! That tomb of Caecilia
Metella, with its bond-stones so huge, its walls so thick that the middle
ages transformed it into the battlemented keep of a fortress! And then
all the tombs which follow, the modern structures erected in order that
the marble fragments discovered might be set in place, the old blocks of
brick and concrete, despoiled of their sculptured-work and rising up like
seared rocks, yet still suggesting their original shapes as shrines,
/cippi/, and /sarcophagi/. There is a wondrous succession of high reliefs
figuring the dead in groups of three and five; statues in which the dead
live deified, erect; seats contrived in niches in order that wayfarers
may rest and bless the hospitality of the dead; laudatory epitaphs
celebrating the dead, both the known and the unknown, the children of
Sextius Pompeius Justus, the departed Marcus Servilius Quartus, Hilarius
Fuscus, Rabirius Hermodorus; without counting the sepulchres venturously
ascribed to Seneca and the Horatii and Curiatii. And finally there is the
most extraordinary and gigantic of all the tombs, that known as Casale
Rotondo, which is so large that it has been possible to establish a
farmhouse and an olive garden on its substructures, which formerly upheld
a double rotunda, adorned with Corinthian pilasters, large candelabra,
and scenic masks.*
* Some believe this tomb to have been that of Messalla Corvinus,
the historian and poet, a friend of Augustus and Horace; others
ascribe it to his son, Aurelius Messallinus Cotta.--Trans.
Pierre, having driven in a cab as far as the tomb of Caecilia Metella,
continued his excursion on foot, going slowly towards Casale Rotondo. In
many places the old pavement appears--large blocks of basaltic lava, worn
into deep ruts that jolt the best-hung vehicles. Among the ruined tombs
on either hand run bands of grass, the neglected grass of cemeteries,
scorched by the summer suns and sprinkled with big violet thistles and
tall sulphur-wort. Parapets of dry stones, breast high, enclose the
russet roadsides, which resound with the crepitation of grasshoppers;
and, beyond, the Campagna stretches, vast and bare, as far as the eye can
see. A parasol pine, a eucalyptus, some olive or fig trees, white with
dust, alone rise up near the road at infrequent intervals. On the left
the ruddy arches of the Acqua Claudia show vigorously in the meadows, and
stretches of poorly cultivated land, vineyards, and little farms, extend
to the blue and lilac Sabine and Alban hills, where Frascati, Rocca di
Papa, and Albano set bright spots, which grow and whiten as one gets
nearer to them. Then, on the right, towards the sea, the houseless,
treeless plain grows and spreads with vast, broad ripples, extraordinary
ocean-like simplicity and grandeur, a long, straight line alone parting
it from the sky. At the height of summer all burns and flares on this
limitless prairie, then of a ruddy gold; but in September a green tinge
begins to suffuse the ocean of herbage, which dies away in the pink and
mauve and vivid blue of the fine sunsets.
As Pierre, quite alone and in a dreary mood, slowly paced the endless,
flat highway, that resurrection of the past which he had beheld on the
Palatine again confronted his mind's eye. On either hand the tombs once
more rose up intact, with marble of dazzling whiteness. Had not the head
of a colossal statue been found, mingled with fragments of huge sphinxes,
at the foot of yonder vase-shaped mass of bricks? He seemed to see the
entire colossal statue standing again between the huge, crouching beasts.
Farther on a beautiful headless statue of a woman had been discovered in
the cella of a sepulchre, and he beheld it, again whole, with features
expressive of grace and strength smiling upon life. The inscriptions also
became perfect; he could read and understand them at a glance, as if
living among those dead ones of two thousand years ago. And the road,
too, became peopled: the chariots thundered, the armies tramped along,
the people of Rome jostled him with the feverish agitation of great
communities. It was a return of the times of the Flavians or the
Antonines, the palmy years of the empire, when the pomp of the Appian
Way, with its grand sepulchres, carved and adorned like temples, attained
its apogee. What a monumental Street of Death, what an approach to Rome,
that highway, straight as an arrow, where with the extraordinary pomp of
their pride, which had survived their dust, the great dead greeted the
traveller, ushered him into the presence of the living! He may well have
wondered among what sovereign people, what masters of the world, he was
about to find himself--a nation which had committed to its dead the duty
of telling strangers that it allowed nothing whatever to perish--that its
dead, like its city, remained eternal and glorious in monuments of
extraordinary vastness! To think of it--the foundations of a fortress,
and a tower sixty feet in diameter, that one woman might be laid to rest!
And then, far away, at the end of the superb, dazzling highway, bordered
with the marble of its funereal palaces, Pierre, turning round,
distinctly beheld the Palatine, with the marble of its imperial
palaces--the huge assemblage of palaces whose omnipotence had dominated
the world!
But suddenly he started: two carabiniers had just appeared among the
ruins. The spot was not safe; the authorities watched over tourists even
in broad daylight. And later on came another meeting which caused him
some emotion. He perceived an ecclesiastic, a tall old man, in a black
cassock, edged and girt with red; and was surprised to recognise Cardinal
Boccanera, who had quitted the roadway, and was slowly strolling along
the band of grass, among the tall thistles and sulphur-wort. With his
head lowered and his feet brushing against the fragments of the tombs,
the Cardinal did not even see Pierre. The young priest courteously turned
aside, surprised to find him so far from home and alone. Then, on
perceiving a heavy coach, drawn by two black horses, behind a building,
he understood matters. A footman in black livery was waiting motionless
beside the carriage, and the coachman had not quitted his box. And Pierre
remembered that the Cardinals were not expected to walk in Rome, so that
they were compelled to drive into the country when they desired to take
exercise. But what haughty sadness, what solitary and, so to say,
ostracised grandeur there was about that tall, thoughtful old man, thus
forced to seek the desert, and wander among the tombs, in order to
breathe a little of the evening air!
Pierre had lingered there for long hours; the twilight was coming on, and
once again he witnessed a lovely sunset. On his left the Campagna became
blurred, and assumed a slaty hue, against which the yellowish arcades of
the aqueduct showed very plainly, while the Alban hills, far away, faded
into pink. Then, on the right, towards the sea, the planet sank among a
number of cloudlets, figuring an archipelago of gold in an ocean of dying
embers. And excepting the sapphire sky, studded with rubies, above the
endless line of the Campagna, which was likewise changed into a sparkling
lake, the dull green of the herbage turning to a liquid emerald tint,
there was nothing to be seen, neither a hillock nor a flock--nothing,
indeed, but Cardinal Boccanera's black figure, erect among the tombs, and
looking, as it were, enlarged as it stood out against the last purple
flush of the sunset.
Early on the following morning Pierre, eager to see everything, returned
to the Appian Way in order to visit the catacomb of St. Calixtus, the
most extensive and remarkable of the old Christian cemeteries, and one,
too, where several of the early popes were buried. You ascend through a
scorched garden, past olives and cypresses, reach a shanty of boards and
plaster in which a little trade in "articles of piety" is carried on, and
there a modern and fairly easy flight of steps enables you to descend.
Pierre fortunately found there some French Trappists, who guard these
catacombs and show them to strangers. One brother was on the point of
going down with two French ladies, the mother and daughter, the former
still comely and the other radiant with youth. They stood there smiling,
though already slightly frightened, while the monk lighted some long,
slim candles. He was a man with a bossy brow, the large, massive jaw of
an obstinate believer and pale eyes bespeaking an ingenuous soul.
"Ah! Monsieur l'Abbe," he said to Pierre, "you've come just in time. If
the ladies are willing, you had better come with us; for three Brothers
are already below with people, and you would have a long time to wait.
This is the great season for visitors."
The ladies politely nodded, and the Trappist handed a candle to the
priest. In all probability neither mother nor daughter was devout, for
both glanced askance at their new companion's cassock, and suddenly
became serious. Then they all went down and found themselves in a narrow
subterranean corridor. "Take care, mesdames," repeated the Trappist,
lighting the ground with his candle. "Walk slowly, for there are
projections and slopes."
Then, in a shrill voice full of extraordinary conviction, he began his
explanations. Pierre had descended in silence, his heart beating with
emotion. Ah! how many times, indeed, in his innocent seminary days, had
he not dreamt of those catacombs of the early Christians, those asylums
of the primitive faith! Even recently, while writing his book, he had
often thought of them as of the most ancient and venerable remains of
that community of the lowly and simple, for the return of which he
called. But his brain was full of pages written by poets and great prose
writers. He had beheld the catacombs through the magnifying glass of
those imaginative authors, and had believed them to be vast, similar to
subterranean cities, with broad highways and spacious halls, fit for the
accommodation of vast crowds. And now how poor and humble the reality!
"Well, yes," said the Trappist in reply to the ladies' questions, "the
corridor is scarcely more than a yard in width; two persons could not
pass along side by side. How they dug it? Oh! it was simple enough. A
family or a burial association needed a place of sepulchre. Well, a first
gallery was excavated with pickaxes in soil of this description--granular
tufa, as it is called--a reddish substance, as you can see, both soft and
yet resistant, easy to work and at the same time waterproof. In a word,
just the substance that was needed, and one, too, that has preserved the
remains of the buried in a wonderful way." He paused and brought the
flamelet of his candle near to the compartments excavated on either hand
of the passage. "Look," he continued, "these are the /loculi/. Well, a
subterranean gallery was dug, and on both sides these compartments were
hollowed out, one above the other. The bodies of the dead were laid in
them, for the most part simply wrapped in shrouds. Then the aperture was
closed with tiles or marble slabs, carefully cemented. So, as you can
see, everything explains itself. If other families joined the first one,
or the burial association became more numerous, fresh galleries were
added to those already filled. Passages were excavated on either hand, in
every sense; and, indeed, a second and lower storey, at times even a
third, was dug out. And here, you see, we are in a gallery which is
certainly thirteen feet high. Now, you may wonder how they raised the
bodies to place them in the compartments of the top tier. Well, they did
not raise them to any such height; in all their work they kept on going
lower and lower, removing more and more of the soil as the compartments
became filled. And in this wise, in these catacombs of St. Calixtus, in
less than four centuries, the Christians excavated more than ten miles of
galleries, in which more than a million of their dead must have been laid
to rest. Now, there are dozens of catacombs; the environs of Rome are
honeycombed with them. Think of that, and perhaps you will be able to
form some idea of the vast number of people who were buried in this
manner."
Pierre listened, feeling greatly impressed. He had once visited a coal
pit in Belgium, and he here found the same narrow passages, the same
heavy, stifling atmosphere, the same nihility of darkness and silence.
The flamelets of the candles showed merely like stars in the deep gloom;
they shed no radiance around. And he at last understood the character of
this funereal, termite-like labour--these chance burrowings continued
according to requirements, without art, method, or symmetry. The rugged
soil was ever ascending and descending, the sides of the gallery snaked:
neither plumb-line nor square had been used. All this, indeed, had simply
been a work of charity and necessity, wrought by simple, willing
grave-diggers, illiterate craftsmen, with the clumsy handiwork of the
decline and fall. Proof thereof was furnished by the inscriptions and
emblems on the marble slabs. They reminded one of the childish drawings
which street urchins scrawl upon blank walls.
"You see," the Trappist continued, "most frequently there is merely a
name; and sometimes there is no name, but simply the words /In Pace/. At
other times there is an emblem, the dove of purity, the palm of
martyrdom, or else the fish whose name in Greek is composed of five
letters which, as initials, signify: 'Jesus Christ, Son of God,
Saviour.'"
He again brought his candle near to the marble slabs, and the palm could
be distinguished: a central stroke, whence started a few oblique lines;
and then came the dove or the fish, roughly outlined, a zigzag indicating
a tail, two bars representing the bird's feet, while a round point
simulated an eye. And the letters of the short inscriptions were all
askew, of various sizes, often quite misshapen, as in the coarse
handwriting of the ignorant and simple.
However, they reached a crypt, a sort of little hall, where the graves of
several popes had been found; among others that of Sixtus II, a holy
martyr, in whose honour there was a superbly engraved metrical
inscription set up by Pope Damasus. Then, in another hall, a family vault
of much the same size, decorated at a later stage, with naive mural
paintings, the spot where St. Cecilia's body had been discovered was
shown. And the explanations continued. The Trappist dilated on the
paintings, drawing from them a confirmation of every dogma and belief,
baptism, the Eucharist, the resurrection, Lazarus arising from the tomb,
Jonas cast up by the whale, Daniel in the lions' den, Moses drawing water
from the rock, and Christ--shown beardless, as was the practice in the
early ages--accomplishing His various miracles.
"You see," repeated the Trappist, "all those things are shown there; and
remember that none of the paintings was specially prepared: they are
absolutely authentic."
At a question from Pierre, whose astonishment was increasing, he admitted
that the catacombs had been mere cemeteries at the outset, when no
religious ceremonies had been celebrated in them. It was only later, in
the fourth century, when the martyrs were honoured, that the crypts were
utilised for worship. And in the same way they only became places of
refuge during the persecutions, when the Christians had to conceal the
entrances to them. Previously they had remained freely and legally open.
This was indeed their true history: cemeteries four centuries old
becoming places of asylum, ravaged at times during the persecutions;
afterwards held in veneration till the eighth century; then despoiled of
their holy relics, and subsequently blocked up and forgotten, so that
they remained buried during more than seven hundred years, people
thinking of them so little that at the time of the first searches in the
fifteenth century they were considered an extraordinary discovery--an
intricate historical problem--one, moreover, which only our own age has
solved.
"Please stoop, mesdames," resumed the Trappist. "In this compartment here
is a skeleton which has not been touched. It has been lying here for
sixteen or seventeen hundred years, and will show you how the bodies were
laid out. Savants say that it is the skeleton of a female, probably a
young girl. It was still quite perfect last spring; but the skull, as you
can see, is now split open. An American broke it with his walking stick
to make sure that it was genuine."
The ladies leaned forward, and the flickering light illumined their pale
faces, expressive of mingled fright and compassion. Especially noticeable
was the pitiful, pain-fraught look which appeared on the countenance of
the daughter, so full of life with her red lips and large black eyes.
Then all relapsed into gloom, and the little candles were borne aloft and
went their way through the heavy darkness of the galleries. The visit
lasted another hour, for the Trappist did not spare a detail, fond as he
was of certain nooks and corners, and as zealous as if he desired to work
the redemption of his visitors.