fall of the Western Empire, and even of the Gothic kingdom of Italy. A
long period of distress and anarchy, in which empire, and arts, and
riches had migrated from the banks of the Tiber, was incapable of
restoring or adorning the city; and as all that is human must retrograde
if it do not advance, every successive age must have hastened the ruin
of the works of antiquity. To measure the progress of decay, and to
ascertain, at each era, the state of each edifice, would be an endless
and a useless labor; and I shall content myself with two observations
which will introduce a short inquiry into the general causes and
effects. 1. Two hundred years before the eloquent complaint of Poggius,
an anonymous writer composed a description of Rome. His ignorance may
repeat the same objects under strange and fabulous names. Yet this
barbarous topographer had eyes and ears; he could observe the visible
remains; he could listen to the tradition of the people; and he
distinctly enumerates seven theatres, eleven baths, twelve arches, and
eighteen palaces, of which many had disappeared before the time of
Poggius. It is apparent that many stately monuments of antiquity
survived till a late period, and that the principles of destruction
acted with vigorous and increasing energy in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. 2. The same reflection must be applied to the
three last ages; and we should vainly seek the Septizonium of Severus,
which is celebrated by Petrarch and the antiquarians of the sixteenth
century. While the Roman edifices were still entire, the first blows,
however weighty and impetuous, were resisted by the solidity of the mass
and the harmony of the parts; but the slightest touch would precipitate
the fragments of arches and columns that already nodded to their fall.
After a diligent inquiry, I can discern four principal causes of the
ruin of Rome, which continued to operate in a period of more than a
thousand years. I. The injuries of time and nature. II. The hostile
attacks of the Barbarians and Christians. III. The use and abuse of the
materials. And IV. The domestic quarrels of the Romans.
I. The art of man is able to construct monuments far more permanent than
the narrow span of his own existence; yet these monuments, like himself,
are perishable and frail; and in the boundless annals of time his life
and his labors must equally be measured as a fleeting moment. Of a
simple and solid edifice it is not easy, however, to circumscribe the
duration. As the wonders of ancient days, the Pyramids attracted the
curiosity of the ancients: a hundred generations, the leaves of autumn,
have dropped into the grave; and after the fall of the Pharaohs and
Ptolemies, the Caesars and caliphs, the same Pyramids stand erect and
unshaken above the floods of the Nile. A complex figure of various and
minute parts is more accessible to injury and decay; and the silent
lapse of time is often accelerated by hurricanes and earthquakes, by
fires and inundations. The air and earth have doubtless been shaken, and
the lofty turrets of Rome have tottered from their foundations, but the
seven hills do not appear to be placed on the great cavities of the
globe; nor has the city in any age been exposed to the convulsions of
nature which in the climate of Antioch, Lisbon, or Lima, have crumbled
in a few moments the works of ages in the dust. Fire is the most
powerful agent of life and death: the rapid mischief may be kindled and
propagated by the industry or negligence of mankind; and every period of
the Roman annals is marked by the repetition of similar calamities. A
memorable conflagration, the guilt or misfortune of Nero's reign,
continued, though with unequal fury, either six or nine days.
Innumerable buildings, crowded in close and crooked streets, supplied
perpetual fuel for the flames; and when they ceased, four only of the
fourteen regions were left entire; three were totally destroyed, and
seven were deformed by the relics of smoking and lacerated edifices. In
the full meridian of empire, the metropolis arose with fresh beauty from
her ashes; yet the memory of the old deplored the irreparable losses,
the arts of Greece, the trophies of victory, the monuments of primitive
or fabulous antiquity. In the days of distress and anarchy every wound
is mortal, every fall irretrievable; nor can the damage be restored
either by the public care of government or the activity of private
interest. Yet two causes may be alleged, which render the calamity of
fire more destructive to a flourishing than a decayed city. 1. The more
combustible materials of brick, timber, and metals are first melted and
consumed, but the flames may play without injury or effect on the naked
walls and massy arches that have been despoiled of their ornaments. 2.
It is among the common and plebeian habitations that a mischievous spark
is most easily blown to a conflagration; but as soon as they are
devoured, the greater edifices which have resisted or escaped are left
as so many islands in a state of solitude and safety. From her
situation, Rome is exposed to the danger of frequent inundations.
Without excepting the Tiber, the rivers that descend from either side of
the Apennine have a short and irregular course; a shallow stream in the
summer heats; an impetuous torrent when it is swelled in the spring or
winter by the fall of rain and the melting of the snows. When the
current is repelled from the sea by adverse winds, when the ordinary bed
is inadequate to the weight of waters, they rise above the banks and
overspread without limits or control the plains and cities of the
adjacent country. Soon after the triumph of the first Punic War, the
Tiber was increased by unusual rains; and the inundation, surpassing all
former measure of time and place, destroyed all the buildings that were
situate below the hills of Rome. According to the variety of ground, the
same mischief was produced by different means; and the edifices were
either swept away by the sudden impulse, or dissolved and undermined by
the long continuance of the flood. Under the reign of Augustus the same
calamity was renewed: the lawless river overturned the palaces and
temples on its banks; and after the labors of the Emperor in cleansing
and widening the bed that was incumbered with ruins, the vigilance of
his successors was exercised by similar dangers and designs. The project
of diverting into new channels the Tiber itself, or some of the
dependent streams, was long opposed by superstition and local interests;
nor did the use compensate the toil and costs of the tardy and imperfect
execution. The servitude of rivers is the noblest and most important
victory which man has obtained over the licentiousness of nature; and if
such were the ravages of the Tiber under a firm and active government,
what could oppose, or who can enumerate, the injuries of the city after
the fall of the Western Empire? A remedy was at length produced by the
evil itself: the accumulation of rubbish and the earth that has been
washed down from the hills is supposed to have elevated the plain of
Rome fourteen or fifteen feet perhaps above the ancient level: and the
modern city is less accessible to the attacks of the river.
II. The crowd of writers of every nation who impute the destruction of
the Roman monuments to the Goths and the Christians, have neglected to
inquire how far they were animated by a hostile principle, and how far
they possessed the means and the leisure to satiate their enmity. In the
preceding volumes of this history I have described the triumph of
barbarism and religion; and I can only resume in a few words their real
or imaginary connection with the ruin of ancient Rome. Our fancy may
create or adopt a pleasing romance: that the Goths and Vandals sallied
from Scandinavia, ardent to avenge the flight of Odin, to break the
chains and to chastise the oppressors of mankind; that they wished to
burn the records of classic literature, and to found their national
architecture on the broken members of the Tuscan and Corinthian orders.
But in simple truth, the Northern conquerors were neither sufficiently
savage nor sufficiently refined to entertain such aspiring ideas of
destruction and revenge. The shepherds of Scythia and Germany had been
educated in the armies of the Empire, whose discipline they acquired and
whose weakness they invaded; with the familiar use of the Latin tongue,
they had learned to reverence the name and titles of Rome; and though
incapable of emulating, they were more inclined to admire than to
abolish the arts and studies of a brighter period. In the transient
possession of a rich and unresisting capital, the soldiers of Alaric and
Genseric were stimulated by the passions of a victorious army; amidst
the wanton indulgence of lust or cruelty, portable wealth was the object
of their search; nor could they derive either pride or pleasure from the
unprofitable reflection that they had battered to the ground the works
of the consuls and Caesars. Their moments were indeed precious: the Goths
evacuated Rome on the sixth, the Vandals on the fifteenth day, and
though it be far more difficult to build than to destroy, their hasty
assault would have made a slight impression on the solid piles of
antiquity. We may remember that both Alaric and Genseric affected to
spare the buildings of the city; that they subsisted in strength and
beauty under the auspicious government of Theodoric; and that the
momentary resentment of Totila was disarmed by his own temper and the
advice of his friends and enemies. From these innocent Barbarians the
reproach may be transferred to the Catholics of Rome. The statues,
altars, and houses of the daemons were an abomination in their eyes; and
in the absolute command of the city, they might labor with zeal and
perseverance to erase the idolatry of their ancestors. The demolition of
the temples in the East affords to _them_ an example of conduct, and to
_us_ an argument of belief; and it is probable that a portion of guilt
or merit may be imputed with justice to the Roman proselytes. Yet their
abhorrence was confined to the monuments of heathen superstition; and
the civil structures that were dedicated to the business or pleasure of
society might be preserved without injury or scandal. The change of
religion was accomplished not by a popular tumult, but by the decrees of
the emperors, of the Senate, and of time. Of the Christian hierarchy,
the bishops of Rome were commonly the most prudent and least fanatic;
nor can any positive charge be opposed to the meritorious act of saving
and converting the majestic structure of the Pantheon.
III. The value of any object that supplies the wants or pleasures of
mankind is compounded of its substance and its form, of the materials
and the manufacture. Its price must depend on the number of persons by
whom it may be acquired and used; on the extent of the market; and
consequently on the ease or difficulty of remote exportation according
to the nature of the commodity, its local situation, and the temporary
circumstances of the world. The Barbarian conquerors of Rome usurped in
a moment the toil and treasure of successive ages; but except the
luxuries of immediate consumption, they must view without desire all
that could not be removed from the city in the Gothic wagons or the
fleet of the Vandals. Gold and silver were the first objects of their
avarice; as in every country, and in the smallest compass, they
represent the most ample command of the industry and possessions of
mankind. A vase or a statue of those precious metals might tempt the
vanity of some Barbarian chief; but the grosser multitude, regardless of
the form, was tenacious only of the substance; and the melted ingots
might be readily divided and stamped into the current coin of the
empire. The less active or less fortunate robbers were reduced to the
baser plunder of brass, lead, iron, and copper: whatever had escaped the
Goths and Vandals was pillaged by the Greek tyrants; and the Emperor
Constans in his rapacious visit stripped the bronze tiles from the roof
of the Pantheon. The edifices of Rome might be considered as a vast and
various mine: the first labor of extracting the materials was already
performed; the metals were purified and cast; the marbles were hewn and
polished; and after foreign and domestic rapine had been satiated, the
remains of the city, could a purchaser have been found, were still
venal. The monuments of antiquity had been left naked of their precious
ornaments; but the Romans would demolish with their own hands the arches
and walls, if the hope of profit could surpass the cost of the labor and
exportation. If Charlemagne had fixed in Italy the seat of the Western
Empire, his genius would have aspired to restore, rather than to
violate, the works of the Caesars: but policy confined the French monarch
to the forests of Germany; his taste could be gratified only by
destruction; and the new palace of Aix-la-Chapelle was decorated with
the marbles of Ravenna and Rome. Five hundred years after Charlemagne, a
king of Sicily, Robert,--the wisest and most liberal sovereign of the
age,--was supplied with the same materials by the easy navigation of the
Tiber and the sea; and Petrarch sighs an indignant complaint that the
ancient capital of the world should adorn from her own bowels the
slothful luxury of Naples. But these examples of plunder or purchase
were rare in the darker ages; and the Romans, alone and unenvied, might
have applied to their private or public use the remaining structures of
antiquity, if in their present form and situation they had not been
useless in a great measure to the city and its inhabitants. The walls
still described the old circumference, but the city had descended from
the seven hills into the Campus Martius; and some of the noblest
monuments which had braved the injuries of time were left in a desert,
far remote from the habitations of mankind. The palaces of the senators
were no longer adapted to the manners or fortunes of their indigent
successors: the use of baths and porticos was forgotten; in the sixth
century the games of the theatre, amphitheatre, and circus had been
interrupted; some temples were devoted to the prevailing worship, but
the Christian churches preferred the holy figure of the cross; and
fashion, or reason, had distributed after a peculiar model the cells and
offices of the cloister. Under the ecclesiastical reign, the number of
these pious foundations was enormously multiplied; and the city was
crowded with forty monasteries of men, twenty of women, and sixty
chapters and colleges of canons and priests, who aggravated instead of
relieving the depopulation of the tenth century. But if the forms of
ancient architecture were disregarded by a people insensible of their
use and beauty, the plentiful materials were applied to every call of
necessity or superstition; till the fairest columns of the Ionic and
Corinthian orders, the richest marbles of Paros and Numidia, were
degraded, perhaps to the support of a convent or a stable. The daily
havoc which is perpetrated by the Turks in the cities of Greece and Asia
may afford a melancholy example; and in the gradual destruction of the
monuments of Rome, Sixtus the Fifth may alone be excused for employing
the stones of the Septizonium in the glorious edifice of St. Peter's.
A fragment, a ruin, howsoever mangled or profaned, may be viewed with
pleasure and regret; but the greater part of the marble was deprived of
substance, as well as of place and proportion: it was burnt to lime for
the purpose of cement. Since the arrival of Poggius, the temple of
Concord and many capital structures had vanished from his eyes; and
an epigram of the same age expresses a just and pious fear that the
continuance of this practice would finally annihilate all the monuments
of antiquity. The smallness of their numbers was the sole check on the
demands and depredations of the Romans. The imagination of Petrarch
might create the presence of a mighty people; and I hesitate to believe
that even in the fourteenth century they could be reduced to a
contemptible list of thirty-three thousand inhabitants. From that period
to the reign of Leo the Tenth, if they multiplied to the amount of
eighty-five thousand, the increase of citizens was in some degree
pernicious to the ancient city.
IV. I have reserved for the last, the most potent and forcible cause of
destruction, the domestic hostilities of the Romans themselves. Under
the dominion of the Greek and French emperors, the peace of the city was
disturbed by accidental though frequent seditions: it is from the
decline of the latter, from the beginning of the tenth century, that we
may date the licentiousness of private war, which violated with impunity
the laws of the Code and the gospel, without respecting the majesty of
the absent sovereign or the presence and person of the vicar of Christ.
In a dark period of five hundred years, Rome was perpetually afflicted
by the sanguinary quarrels of the nobles and the people, the Guelphs and
Ghibelines, the Colonna and Ursini; and if much has escaped the
knowledge, and much is unworthy of the notice, of history, I have
exposed in the two preceding chapters the causes and effects of the
public disorders. At such a time, when every quarrel was decided by the
sword and none could trust their lives or properties to the impotence of
law, the powerful citizens were armed for safety, or offense, against
the domestic enemies whom they feared or hated. Except Venice alone, the
same dangers and designs were common to all the free republics of Italy;
and the nobles usurped the prerogative of fortifying their houses and
erecting strong towers that were capable of resisting a sudden attack.
The cities were filled with these hostile edifices; and the example of
Lucca, which contained three hundred towers, her law which confined
their height to the measure of fourscore feet, may be extended with
suitable latitude to the more opulent and populous States. The first
step of the senator Brancaleone in the establishment of peace and
justice, was to demolish (as we have already seen) one hundred and forty
of the towers of Rome; and in the last days of anarchy and discord, as
late as the reign of Martin the Fifth, forty-four still stood in one of
the thirteen or fourteen regions of the city. To this mischievous
purpose the remains of antiquity were most readily adapted: the temples
and arches afforded a broad and solid basis for the new structures of
brick and stone; and we can name the modern turrets that were raised on
the triumphal monuments of Julius Caesar, Titus, and the Antonines. With
some slight alterations, a theatre, an amphitheatre, a mausoleum, was
transformed into a strong and spacious citadel. I need not repeat that
the mole of Adrian has assumed the title and form of the castle of St.
Angelo; the Septizonium of Severus was capable of standing against a
royal army; the sepulchre of Metella has sunk under its outworks; the
theatres of Pompey and Marcellus were occupied by the Savelli and Ursini
families; and the rough fortress has been gradually softened to the
splendor and elegance of an Italian palace. Even the churches were
encompassed with arms and bulwarks, and the military engines on the roof
of St. Peter's were the terror of the Vatican and the scandal of the
Christian world. Whatever is fortified will be attacked; and whatever is
attacked may be destroyed. Could the Romans have wrested from the popes
the castle of St. Angelo, they had resolved by a public decree to
annihilate that monument of servitude. Every building of defense was
exposed to a siege; and in every siege the arts and engines of
destruction were laboriously employed. After the death of Nicholas the
Fourth, Rome, without a sovereign or a senate, was abandoned six months
to the fury of civil war. "The houses," says a cardinal and poet of the
times, "were crushed by the weight and velocity of enormous stones; the
walls were perforated by the strokes of the battering-ram; the towers
were involved in fire and smoke; and the assailants were stimulated by
rapine and revenge." The work was consummated by the tyranny of the
laws; and the factions of Italy alternately exercised a blind and
thoughtless vengeance on their adversaries, whose houses and castles
they razed to the ground. In comparing the _days_ of foreign, with the
_ages_ of domestic hostility, we must pronounce that the latter have
been far more ruinous to the city; and our opinion is confirmed by the
evidence of Petrarch. "Behold," says the laureate, "the relics of Rome,
the image of her pristine greatness! neither time nor the Barbarian can
boast the merit of this stupendous destruction: it was perpetrated by
her own citizens, by the most illustrious of her sons; and your
ancestors [he writes to a noble Annibaldi] have done with battering-ram
what the Punic hero could not accomplish with the sword." The influence
of the two last principles of decay must in some degree be multiplied by
each other, since the houses and towers which were subverted by civil
war required a new and perpetual supply from the monuments of antiquity.
These general observations may be separately applied to the amphitheatre
of Titus, which has obtained the name of the Coliseum, either from its
magnitude or from Nero's colossal statue; an edifice, had it been left
to time and nature, which might perhaps have claimed an eternal
duration. The curious antiquaries who have computed the numbers and
seats are disposed to believe that above the upper row of stone steps
the amphitheatre was encircled and elevated with several stages of
wooden galleries, which were repeatedly consumed by fire, and restored
by the emperors. Whatever was precious, or portable, or profane, the
statues of gods and heroes, and the costly ornaments of sculpture which
were cast in brass or overspread with leaves of silver and gold, became
the first prey of conquest or fanaticism, of the avarice of the
Barbarians or the Christians. In the massy stones of the Coliseum, many
holes are discerned; and the two most probable conjectures represent the
various accidents of its decay. These stones were connected by solid
links of brass or iron, nor had the eye of rapine overlooked the value
of the baser metals; the vacant space was converted into a fair or
market; the artisans of the Coliseum are mentioned in an ancient survey;
and the chasms were perforated or enlarged to receive the poles that
supported the shops or tents of the mechanic trades. Reduced to its
naked majesty, the Flavian amphitheatre was contemplated with awe and
admiration by the pilgrims of the North; and their rude enthusiasm broke
forth in a sublime proverbial expression, which is recorded in the
eighth century, in the fragments of the venerable Bede: "As long as the
Coliseum stands, Rome shall stand; when the Coliseum falls, Rome will
fall; when Rome falls, the world will fall." In the modern system of war
a situation commanded by the three hills would not be chosen for a
fortress: but the strength of the walls and arches could resist the
engines of assault; a numerous garrison might be lodged in the
inclosure; and while one faction occupied the Vatican and the Capitol,
the other was intrenched in the Lateran and the Coliseum.