THE ROMAN FORUM
No spot on earth has a grander name or a more imposing history than
the Roman Forum. Its origin takes us far back to geological ages--to a
period modern indeed in the inarticulate annals of the earth, but
compared with which even those great periods which mark the rise and
fall of empires are but as the running of the sands in an hour-glass.
It opens up a wonderful chapter in the earth's stony book. Everywhere
on the site and in the neighbourhood of Rome striking indications of
ancient volcanoes abound. The whole region is as certainly of igneous
origin, and was the centre of as violent fiery action, as the vicinity
of Naples. The volcanic energy of Italy seems to have begun first in
this district, and when exhausted there, to have passed gradually to
the south, where Vesuvius, Etna, and Stromboli witness to the great
furnace that is still burning fiercely under the beautiful land. No
spectacle could have been more sublime than that which the Roman
Campagna presented at this period, when no less than ten volcanoes
were in full or intermittent action, and poured their clouds of smoke
and flame into the lurid sky all around the horizon. Up to the foot of
the mountains the sea covered the vast plain; and the action of these
waves of fire and steaming floods forms a natural epic of the grandest
order. Prodigious quantities of ashes and cinders were discharged from
the craters; and these, deposited and hardened by long pressure under
water, formed the reddish-brown earthy rock called tufa, of which the
seven hills of Rome are composed.
When the sea retired, or rather when the land rose suddenly or
gradually, and the volcanoes became extinct, the streams which
descended from the mountains and watered the recovered land spread
themselves out in numerous fresh-water lakes, which stood an hundred
and fifty feet higher than the present bed of the Tiber. In these
lakes were formed two kinds of fresh-water strata--the first composed
of sand and marl; and the second, where mineral springs gushed forth
through the volcanic rock, of travertine--a peculiar reddish-brown or
yellow calcareous rock, of which St. Peter's and many of the buildings
of modern Rome are composed. We find lacustrine marls on the sides of
the Esquiline Hill where it slopes down into the Forum, and
fresh-water bivalve and univalve shells in the ground under the
equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius on the Capitol; while on the face
of the Aventine Hill, overhanging the Tiber at a height of ninety
feet, is a cliff of travertine, which is half a mile long. The lakes
which formed these deposits must have covered their sites for many
ages. At last, by some new change of level, the lakes retired, and the
Tiber scooped out for itself its present channel to the sea.
When man came upon the scene we have no definite information; but
numerous flints and stone-weapons have been found among the black
pumice breccias of the Campagna mixed with remains of the primitive
bison, the elephant, and the rhinoceros. Human eyes must therefore
have gazed upon the volcanoes of the Roman plain. Human beings,
occupying the outposts of the Sabine Hills, must have seen that plain
broken up by the sea into a complicated archipelago, and beheld in the
very act of formation that wonderful region destined long ages
afterwards to be the scene of some of the greatest events in human
history. The Alban Hills, whose present quiet beauty, adorned with
white gem-like towns, and softened with the purple hues of heaven,
strikes every visitor with admiration, were active volcanoes pouring
streams of lava down into the plain even after the foundation of the
Eternal City. Livy mentions that under the third king of Rome, a
shower of stones, accompanied by a loud noise, was thrown up from the
Alban Mount--a prodigy which gave rise to a nine days' festival
annually celebrated long after by the people of Latium. The remarkable
funereal urns found buried under a bed of volcanic matter between
Marino and Castel Gandolfo on the Alban Hills are an incontrovertible
proof that showers of volcanic ashes must have been ejected from the
neighbouring volcano when the country was inhabited by human beings;
nay, when the inhabitants were far advanced in civilisation, for among
the objects contained in the funereal urns were implements of writing.
At the close of the skirmish between the Romans and Etruscans, near
Albano, in which Aruns, the son of Lars Porsenna, was slain, whose
tomb may still be seen on the spot, a noise like that which Livy
mentions was heard among the surrounding hills.
But the most extraordinary of all the volcanic phenomena within the
historical period was the sudden rising on two memorable occasions of
the waters of the Alban Lake, which now lie deep down within the basin
of an extinct crater. The first swallowed up the royal palace of Alba,
and was so sudden and violent that neither the king nor any of his
household had time to escape. The other occurred during the romantic
siege of the Etruscan city of Veii, near Rome, by Camillus, four
hundred years before Christ. The waters on that occasion rose two
hundred and forty feet in the crater almost to the very edge, and
threatened to overflow and inundate the surrounding country, when they
were withdrawn by a subterranean canal cut in the rock, and poured
into the Tiber by a connecting stream. This emissary, which may still
be seen, was constructed owing to a hint given by an Etruscan
soothsayer, that the city of Veii would not be captured till the
Alban Lake was emptied into the sea. The deep winding cavern on the
face of the Aventine Hill, said to have been inhabited by the
monstrous giant Cacus, the son of Vulcan, who vomited fire, and was
the terror of the surrounding inhabitants, was evidently of volcanic
origin; and the local tradition from which Virgil concocted his fable
was undoubtedly derived from a vivid recollection of the active
operations of a volcano. When Evander, as described in the eighth
_Æneid_, conducted his distinguished guest to the top of the Tarpeian
Rock, in after ages so famous as the place of public execution, and
composed of very hard lava, he assured him that an awful terror
possessed the place, and that some unknown god had his abode there.
The shepherds said it was Jupiter, and that they had often seen him
kindling his lightnings and hurling his thunderbolts from thence.
Evander then pointed to the ruined cities of Saturnia and Janiculum,
on either side of the Tiber, whose destruction had been caused by the
wrath of the god. There can be no doubt that this fable clothed with
supernatural colouring some volcanic phenomena which had taken place
on this spot during the human period. Even as late as three hundred
and ninety years after the foundation of Rome, a chasm opened in the
Forum, and emitted flames and pestilential vapours. An oracle declared
that this chasm would not close until what constituted the glory of
Rome should be cast into it. Marcus Curtius asked if anything in Rome
was more precious than arms and valour; and arraying himself in his
armour, and mounting on a horse splendidly equipped, he leapt in the
presence of the Roman people into the abyss, when it instantly closed
for ever. We thus see that the geology of the Roman plain throws no
inconsiderable light upon the early history and traditions of the
Eternal City, and brings within the cycle of natural phenomena what
were long supposed to be purely fabulous incidents, the inventions of
a poetic imagination. I have dwelt upon these geological incidents so
fully, because nowhere does one realise the striking contrast between
the shortness of man's existence on earth, as in places like the Roman
plain, where the traces of cosmical energy have been greatest and most
enduring.
The volcanic origin of the Roman Forum suggests the curious idea of
the intimate connection of some of the greatest events of history with
volcanic centres. Where the strife of nature has been fiercest, there
by a strange coincidence the storm of human passion has been greatest.
The geological history of a region is most frequently typical of its
human history. We can predicate of a scene where the cosmical
disturbance has been great,--where fire and flood have contended for
the mastery, leaving the effects of their strife in deepening valleys
and ascending hills,--that there man has had a strangely varied and
eventful career. The strongholds and citadels of the earth, where the
great battles of freedom and civilisation have been fought, were all
untold ages previously the centres of violent plutonic disturbances.
Edinburgh Castle, enthroned on its trap-rock, once the centre of a
volcano, is associated with the most stirring and important events in
the history of Scotland; Stirling Castle rises on its trap-rock
erupted by volcanic action above a vast plain, across which a hundred
battles have swept; Dumbarton Castle, crowning its trappean
promontory, has represented in its civil history the protracted
periods of earthquake and eruption concerned in the formation of its
site; while standing in solitude amid the stormy waters of the Firth
of Forth, the Bass Rock, once a scene of fiery confusion, of roaring
waves and heaving earthquakes, has formed alternately the prison where
religious liberty has been strangled, and the fortress where
patriotism has taken its last stand against the forces of the invader.
Palestine, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, and Scotland, the countries
that have had the most remarkable history, and have done most to
advance the human race, are distinguished above other countries for
their geological convulsions and revolutions. The Roman Forum is thus
but one specimen among numerous others of a law of Providence which
has associated the strife of nature with the strife of man, and caused
the ravages of the most terrible elements to prepare the way for the
highest development of the human race.
Between the Roman Forum and the valley beneath Edinburgh Castle we can
trace a striking resemblance, not only in their volcanic origin and
the connection between their geological history and their analogous
civil history, but also in the fact that they were both filled with
small lakes. Between the ridges of the old and new town of Edinburgh,
where the railway runs through Princes Street Gardens, there was in
the memory of many now living a considerable collection of water
called the North Loch. In like manner, in the hollow of the Roman
Forum there was originally a small lake, a relic of the numerous lakes
of the Campagna, which remained after the last elevation of the land,
and which existed pretty far on into the human period. It was fed by
three streams flowing from the Palatine, the Capitoline, and the
Esquiline Hills, which now run underground and meet at this point.
Let us picture to ourselves the appearance of this lake embosomed in
the hollow of its hills in the far-off pastoral times, when the
mountains and the high table-lands of Italy were the chosen territory
of those tribes whose property consisted chiefly in their flocks. The
hills of Rome, whose elevation was far more conspicuous in ancient
times than it is now, presented a precipitous front of dark volcanic
rock to the lake. Their slopes were covered with grass and with
natural copse-wood, intermixed with tall ilex trees, or umbrella
pines; while on their summits were little villages surrounded with
Cyclopean walls perched there not only for security, but also for the
healthier air, just as we see at the present day all over Italy. On
the summit of the Capitoline and Esquiline Hills were Sabine
settlements, whose origin is lost in the mists of antiquity. To the
green wooded slopes of the Palatine, according to a beautiful
tradition, sixty years before the destruction of Troy, came Evander
and his Arcadians from Greece, and settled there with their flocks and
herds, and led a quiet idyllic life. According to another tradition,
Æneas, after the destruction of Troy, came to this spot, and marrying
the daughter of a neighbouring king, became the ancestor of the twins
Romulus and Remus, the popular founders of Rome, whose romantic
exposure and nourishment by a she-wolf are known to every schoolboy.
Romulus, after slaying his brother, built a stronghold on the
Palatine, which he opened as an asylum for outlaws and runaway slaves,
who supported themselves chiefly by plunder. The community of this
robber-city consisting almost entirely of males, they provided
themselves with wives by the famous stratagem known as the "Rape of
the Sabine women." Seizing the daughters of their neighbours, the
Sabines of the Capitoline and Esquiline Hills, on a festive occasion,
they carried them away with them to their fortress. A number of
sanguinary fights took place in consequence of this rape around the
swampy margin of the lake. In the last of these engagements the
combatants were separated by the Sabine women suddenly rushing in with
their children between their fathers and brothers and the men who had
become their husbands. A mutual reconciliation then ensued, and the
two communities contracted a firm and close alliance. The Palatine,
Capitoline, and Esquiline villages became henceforth one city, to
which from time to time by conquest new accessions were made, until at
last all the different settlements on the seven hills of Rome were
brought under one rule, and surrounded by a common wall of defence.
Mommsen, Niebuhr, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and other critics, have
made sad havoc with these romantic stories of the origin of Rome. But
although much of the fabulous undoubtedly mingles with them--for the
early history of Rome was not written till it had become a powerful
state, and then the historian had no records of days long past save
what were embodied in popular tradition and poetry--there has recently
been a reaction in favour of them, and they must ever be interesting
on account of their own intrinsic charm, the element of truth which
they contain, and the indelible associations of schoolboy life.
When a joint city was thus compacted and called Rome--possibly its old
Pelasgic appellation--the first effort of the confederated settlements
was to drain the geological lake in the centre of the city into the
Tiber, a quarter of a mile distant. This they did by means of the
celebrated Cloaca Maxima, a part of which may be seen open at the
present day under the pavement of the Roman Forum, near the Temple of
Castor and Pollux. This common sewer of Rome is one of its oldest and
greatest relics. It was built by the first Tarquin, the fifth king of
Rome, a century and a half after the foundation of the city; and
although two thousand five hundred years have passed away since the
architect formed without cement its massive archway of huge volcanic
stones found on the spot, and during all the time it has been
subjected to the shock of numerous earthquakes, inundations of the
Tiber, and the crash of falling ruins, it still serves its original
purpose as effectually as ever, and promises to stand for as many ages
in the future as it has stood in the past. It is commonly said that we
owe the invention of the arch to the Romans; and this work of
undoubted Etruscan architecture is usually considered as among the
very first applications of the principle. But the arched drains and
doorways discovered by Layard at Nineveh prove that the Assyrians
employed the arch centuries before Rome was founded. It had however
only a subordinate place and a very limited application in the ancient
architecture of the East; and it was left to the Romans to give it due
prominence in crossing wide spaces, to make it "the bow of promise,"
the bridge over which they passed to the dominion of the world. The
Cloaca Maxima is a tunnel roofed with two concentric rings of enormous
stones, the innermost having an interior diameter of nearly fourteen
feet, the height being about twelve feet. So capacious was it that
Strabo mentions that a waggon loaded with hay might find room in it;
and it is recorded that the Consul Agrippa passed through it in a
boat. The mouth of the Cloaca opens into the Tiber, near the little
round temple of Hercules in the Forum Boarium; but it is often
invisible owing to the flooding of the river; and even when the Tiber
is low, so much has its bed been silted up that only about three feet
below the keystone of the sewer can be seen. Subsequently all the
sewers of Rome were connected with it; and at the present day the nose
gives infallible proof that it carries off a very large portion of the
pollution of the modern city.
By the Cloaca Maxima, the valley between the Capitoline and Palatine
Hills was for the first time made dry land; all indeed, except a small
swamp which remained in one corner of it to a later age, and which the
great sewer was not deep enough to drain entirely. Reeds grew around
its margin, and boats were employed to cross it, as Ovid tells us. The
name Velabrum--from an Etruscan root, signifying water, occurring in
some other Italian names such as Velletri, Velino--still given to this
locality, where a church stood in the middle ages called S. Silvestro
in Lacu, commemorates the existence of the primeval lake; while the
legend of the casting ashore of Romulus and Remus on the slope of the
Palatine points to the gradual desiccation of the spot. On the level
ground, recovered in this way from the waters, was formed the Roman
Forum; the word Forum meaning simply an open space, surrounded by
buildings and porticoes, which served the purpose of a market-place, a
court of justice, or an exchange; for the Romans transacted more of
their public and private business out of doors than the severe
climate of our northern latitudes will permit us to do. On this common
ground representatives of the separate communities located on the
different hills of Rome, and comprehended and confederated within the
walls of Servius Tullius, met together for the settlement of affairs
that concerned them all. As Rome grew in importance, so did this
central representative part of it grow with it, until at last, in the
time of the Cæsars, it became the heart of the mighty empire, where
its pulse beat loudest. There the fate of the world was discussed.
There Cicero spoke, and Cæsar ruled, and Horace meditated. If the
Temple of Jerusalem was the shrine of religion, the Forum of Rome was
the shrine of law; and from thence has emanated that unrivalled system
of jurisprudence which has formed the model of every nation since.
Being thus the centre of the political power of the empire, the Roman
Forum became also the focus of its architectural and civic splendour.
It was crowded with marble temples, state buildings, and courts of law
to such an extent that we wonder how there was room for them all
within such a narrow area. Monuments of great men, statues of Greek
sculpture, colonnades, and porticoes, rich with the spoils of subject
kingdoms, adorned its sides. The whole region was resplendent with all
the pomp and luxury of paganism in its proudest hour; the word
"ambition," which came ultimately to signify all strivings for
eminence, resolving itself into the elementary meaning of a walk round
the Roman Forum, canvassing for votes at municipal elections.
Thus the Forum continued until the decay of the empire, when hordes of
invaders buried its magnificence in ruins. At the beginning of the
seventh century it must have been open and comparatively free from
_débris_, as is proved by the fact that the column of Phocas, erected,
at that time, stood on the original pavement. Virgil says, in his
account of the romantic interview of Evander with Æneas on the spot
which was to be afterwards Rome--then a quiet pastoral scene, green
with grass, and covered with bushes--that they saw herds of cattle
wandering over the Forum, and browsing on the rich pasture around the
shores of its blue lake. Strange, the law of circularity, after the
lapse of two thousand years, brought round the same state of things in
that storied spot. During the middle ages the Roman Forum was known
only as the Campo Vaccino, the field of cattle. It was a forlorn
waste, with a few ruins scattered over it, and two formal rows of
poplar-trees running down the middle of it, and wild-eyed buffaloes
and mouse-coloured oxen from the Campagna wandering over the solitude,
and cropping the grass and green weeds that grew in the very heart of
old Rome. When Gibbon conceived the idea of the _Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire_, listening to the vespers of the Franciscan friars
in the dim church of Ara Coeli in the neighbourhood, the Forum was an
unsightly piece of ground, covered with rubbish-heaps, with only a
pillar or two emerging from the general filth. When Byron stood beside
the "nameless column with the buried base," commemorated in _Childe
Harold_, he little dreamt what a rich collection of the relics of
imperial times lay under his feet, as completely buried by the wrecks
of ages as Pompeii and Herculaneum under the ashes and lava of
Vesuvius. From fifteen to twenty feet of soil had accumulated over
them.
The work of excavation was begun seventy-five years ago by the Duchess
of Devonshire, who spent the last years of her life in Rome, and
formed the centre of its brilliant society. Napoleon III., the late
Emperor of the French, carried on the task thus auspiciously
commenced, for the purpose of shedding light upon the parts of Roman
history connected with Julius Cæsar, the hero of his book. In spite of
much opposition from the Papal Government, the work of exhumation was
continued in fits and starts after the French emperor had given it up;
and ever since the Italian Government have taken the matter in hand,
gangs of labourers under the directorship of the accomplished Signor
Rosa have been more or less continually employed, with the result that
almost the whole area has been laid bare from the Capitol to the Arch
of Titus. The British Archæological Society of Rome has given valuable
aid according to the funds in its possession, and the contributions
sent from this country for the purpose. When first commenced, the
changes caused by these excavations were regarded with no favourable
eye by either the artists or the people of Rome. The trees were cut
down, the mantle of verdure that for centuries had covered the
spot--Nature's appropriate pall for the decay of art--was ruthlessly
torn up, and great unsightly holes and heaps of _débris_ utterly
destroyed the picturesque beauty of the scene. But the loss to romance
was a gain to knowledge; and now that the greatest part of the Forum
has been cleared down to the ancient pavement, we are able to form a
much more vivid and accurate conception of what the place must have
been in the days of the empire, and are in a position to identify
buildings which previously had been a theme for endless and violent
disputes. It is a very interesting and suggestive coincidence that the
Forum of Rome should have been thus disentombed at the very time that
Italy rose from its grave of ages, and under a free and enlightened
government, having its centre once more in the Eternal City, proved
that it had inherited no small share of the spirit of the heroic past.
Let us go over in brief detail the various objects of interest that
may now be seen in the centre of Roman greatness. Numerous sources of
information exist which enable us to identify these monuments, and to
form some idea of what they were in their prime. Among these may be
mentioned coins and medals of the emperors, with representations upon
them of buildings and sculptures in the Forum; a marble stone found at
Ancyra, now Angouri in Phrygia, on which is a long inscription
regarding the acts and achievements of Augustus, which is of the
greatest value in determining the topography of the city; the
bas-reliefs on the Arch of Constantine, and on the marble screens of
Trajan, recently excavated in the Forum itself, giving a view of its
north-western and south-eastern ends; and the remains of the antique
marble plan of Rome, now preserved in the Capitoline Museum,
originally affixed to the wall of the superb Temple of Rome, and
discovered in fragments in 1867 in the garden of the monastery of SS.
Cosma e Damiano. We also get most valuable help in the work of
identification from the Itineraries of the middle ages--especially
from that of the celebrated pilgrim from Einsiedlen, Zwingli's town in
Switzerland--who visited Rome in the eighth century, and left his
manuscript to his own abbey, where it may still be seen. A vast
apparatus of learning has been accumulated from the works of ancient
classic authors by the great scholars who have written on the
historical localities and buildings of the Forum, from Donati to
Becker. Nibby, Canina, Ampère, Bunsen, Plattner, and Uhrlich, in their
magnificent works have supplied a mine of wealth from which most
subsequent writers on the Forum have enriched their descriptions.
The direction of the Forum is nearly from north to south, trending a
little from north-east to south-west. It is surprisingly small to have
contained such a large number of buildings, and to have bulked so
prominently in the eye of the world; its greatest length being only
six hundred and seventy-one feet, and its greatest breadth about two
hundred and two feet. Beginning at the north end, we see before us the
vast mass of the ancient Capitol, the proudest symbol of the majesty
of Rome, crowned with the great staring medieval structures of the
Roman municipality, rising up into the campanile of Michael Angelo.
Until of late years, this renowned building was completely buried
beneath a huge mound of rubbish. Now that it has been removed, the
venerable fabric stands out distinctly to view, and we behold the
massive walls of the Treasury, the Record Office, and the Senate
House. The lowest part, constructed of huge blocks of volcanic stones,
was the Ærarium or Public Treasury, and is supposed to have been
formed out of the original wall of the city of the Sabines, which
surrounded the hill of Saturn, as the Capitoline Mount was originally
called, long before Romulus laid the foundation of Rome. As the Roman
army was paid in coppers, spacious cellars were required for storing
the coin, and these were provided in the underground vaults of the
Treasury, partially cut out of the volcanic rock of the Capitol, on
which the building rests. Above the Treasury, on the second floor, we
see the remains of the Doric portico of the Tabularium or Public
Record Office, where the records of Rome, engraved upon bronze
tablets, were kept. The place is now converted into an architectural
museum, where all the most interesting sculptured fragments found in
the Forum are preserved, and are exhibited by gaslight owing to the
darkness. These buildings, it must be remembered, form the back of the
Capitol fronting the Forum. Strictly speaking, they do not belong to
the Forum, which should be traced only from their verge.
The view on the other side of the Capitol, where a gently-inclined
staircase leads up from the streets to the piazza at the top,
surrounded by the modern municipal buildings, raised upon the ancient
substructures above described, is quite different. But the present
aspect of the Capitol is quite disappointing to one who comes to it
seeking for evidences of its former grandeur. There is no trace of the
Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, to which the triumphal processions of
the Roman armies led up, gorgeous with all the attractions of marble
architecture, and the richest spoils of the world, the most splendid
monument of human pride which the world then contained. Probably its
remains were used up in the construction of the gloomy old church of
the _Ara Coeli_, which is supposed by most archæologists to stand upon
its site. The Capitol, it may be remarked, was precisely similar to
the moot-hill, or open-air court, which existed in our own country in
primitive times, and where justice was administered at regular
intervals. The tradition of this original use of it still clings to
the place as a shadow from the past. The hill has always been
appropriated for political purposes. It has continued from the
earliest days to be a centre of secular as opposed to ecclesiastical
authority. The Popes ceded it to the magistracy, whose municipal
buildings now cover it, and placed the church of Ara Coeli--the only
one ever built on the Capitoline Hill--under their protection. The
place of execution was chosen conveniently near to this moot-hill, or
seat of justice; and the criminal, when condemned, was speedily
executed, by being hurled over the rock, just outside of the eastern
rampart, which surrounded the settlement. We can thus easily
understand the association of the Tarpeian Rock with the Capitoline
Hill. They were as closely correlated as the moot-hill and the Gallow
hill in our own country. The primitive method of execution derived a
sanctity from its antiquity, and was continued far on into the most
civilised times of the empire.
So densely crowded were the historical buildings and remarkable sites
in that part of the Forum which lay immediately behind the Capitol,
that it is almost impossible now to identify their position or
remains. This spot forms the great battle-ground of the antiquaries,
whose conclusions in many instances are mere guess-work. Below the
medieval tower of the Capitol is a wide space paved with fragments of
coloured marbles, and with indications of the ground-plan of a
building. This is supposed to mark the site of the Temple of Concord,
erected by the great general Camillus, after the expulsion of the
Gauls, to perpetuate the concord between the plebeians and patricians
on the vexed question of the election of consuls. It was placed beside
the old meeting-place of the privileged families. From the charred
state of some of its sculptures discovered on the spot, it is
supposed to have been destroyed by fire. It was restored and enlarged
a hundred and twenty years before Christ by the Consul Opimius
immediately after the murder of Caius Gracchus. To the classical
student it is specially interesting as the place where Cicero convoked
the senate after the discovery of the Catiline conspiracy, for the
purpose of fixing the punishment due to one of the greatest of crimes.
Among the senators present on that memorable occasion were men of the
highest political and philosophical renown, including Cæsar, Cato, and
Cicero. They came to the conclusion that there was no such thing as
retribution beyond the grave, no future state of consciousness, no
immortality of the soul; consequently death was considered too mild a
punishment for the impious treason of the conspirators; and a penalty,
which should keep alive instead of extinguishing suffering, was
advocated. We learn from this extraordinary argument, as Merivale well
says, how utter was the religious scepticism among the brightest
intellects of Rome only thirty-seven years before the coming of
Christ. The very name of the temple itself, dedicated not to a divine
being as in a more pious age, but to a mere political abstraction, a
mere symbol of a compact effected between two discordant parties in
the state, indicated how greatly the Romans had declined from their
primitive faith.
But the most conspicuous of the ancient remains in this quarter, and
the first to attract the notice of every visitor, is the Ionic portico
of eight columns, called at first the Temple of Jupiter, and then of
Vespasian, but now definitely determined to be the Temple of Saturn,
for it is closely connected with the Ærarium, and the Ærarium is said
by several ancient authors to have led into the podium of the temple
by a doorway in its wall still visible. This temple is supposed to be
of very early origin, and to have marked the site of an ancient Sabine
altar to the oldest of the gods of Italy long before the arrival of
the Romans. It was nearly entire so late as the fifteenth century;
but its cella was ruthlessly destroyed shortly afterwards, and its
marble ornaments used for making lime. The present group of pillars
was so clumsily restored by the French at the beginning of this
century that they are seen to differ from each other in diameter, and
the frieze is composed of fragments that do not harmonise.
But the most remarkable monument of antiquity in this part is the
marble triumphal Arch of Septimius Severus, which stands in front of
the ruins of the Temple of Concord. It invaded the site of the
republican Græcostasis, where foreign ambassadors waited for an
audience of the senate, and occupied part of the area of the Comitium,
whose original character was thereby destroyed; for it was erected at
a time when men ceased to care for the venerable associations
connected with the early history of their city. One gazes upon this
monument of Roman power and pride with deep respect, for it has stood
nearly seventeen centuries; and though rusty and sorely battered, and
its sculptures much mutilated, it is still one of the most solid and
perfect relics of imperial times. It was raised to commemorate the
wars of Septimius Severus in Parthia and Arabia; and represents among
its carvings the goddess Rome receiving the homage of the Eastern
nations. It exhibits on its panels many scenes connected with his
campaigns, the memory of which no humane man would have liked to
perpetuate. On the upper part of the Arch is a large inscription in
honour of the emperor and his two sons, Caracalla and Geta. The name
of Geta, however, was afterwards erased by his brother when he had
murdered him, and other words substituted. Marks of the erasure may
still be seen perfectly distinct after all these centuries, and
vividly recall the terrible associations of the incident. The dislike
which Caracalla and Geta had for each other was so virulent that their
father took them both with him to Britain, in order that they might
forget their mutual animosity while engaged in active warfare.
Septimius Severus died during this campaign at York, and his sons
returned to Rome to work out soon after the domestic tragedy of which
this Arch reminds us. On the top of the Arch there was originally a
bronze group of a chariot and four horses, with the emperor and his
sons driving it. But this was removed at an early date; and in the
middle ages the summit of the Arch supported the campanile of the
church of St. Sergius and Bacchus that was built up against its sides.
A little to the left, the road passing under the Arch joins the Clivus
Capitolinus which wound through the Forum, and led up to the great
Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. The pavement of this ancient road,
which still exists, is formed of broad hexagonal slabs of lava, and is
as smooth and as finely jointed at this day as when the triumphal
processions of the victorious Roman generals used to pass over it.
At the western corner of the Arch of Severus are the scanty remains of
a tall conical pyramid, about fifteen feet in diameter, which is
identified as the Umbilicus Romæ, placed in the exact centre of old
Rome. Not far from it stood the Milliarium Aureum, or Golden
Milestone, on which were inscribed all the distances of roads without
the walls. The Roman roads throughout the empire terminated at this
point. With this central milestone was connected that admirable system
of roads which the Romans constructed in our distant island; and it is
a remarkable circumstance that the principal railway lines in England
are identical with the general direction of the old Roman roads. The
Antonine Way is now the Great Western Railway, and the Roman Watling
Street, which ran diagonally across the country from Chester in the
north-west to Dover in the south-east, is now replaced by the Dover,
London, Birmingham, Grand Junction, Chester, and Crewe Railways. The
reason of this union of ancient and modern lines of communication is
obvious. The Romans formed their roads for the purpose of transporting
their armies from place to place, and at certain distances along the
roads a series of military stations were established. In course of
time these stations became villages, towns, and cities such as
Chester, Leicester, Lancaster, Manchester. Thus, strange as it may
appear, the Milliarium Aureum of the Roman Forum has had much to do
with the origin of our most ancient and important towns, and with the
formation of the great lines of railway that now carry on the enormous
traffic between them.
The exposed vaults immediately behind the Arch of Severus, bounding
the Forum in this direction, are richly draped with the long, delicate
fronds of the maidenhair fern. Shaded from the sun, it grows here in
the crevices of the old walls in greater luxuriance and profusion than
elsewhere in the city. There is something almost pathetic in this
association of the frailest of Nature's productions with the ruins of
the most enduring of man's works. Strength that is crumbling to dust
and ashes, and tender beauty that ever clings to the skirts of time,
as she steps over the sepulchres of power, have here in their
combination a deep significance. The growth of the soft fern on the
mouldering old stones seems like the sad, sweet smile of Nature over a
decay with which she sympathises, but which she cannot share. The same
feeling took possession of me when, wandering over the ruins of the
Palaces of the Cæsars on a sunny February afternoon, I saw above the
hoary masses of stone the rose-tinted bloom of almond-trees. Out of
the gray relics of man's highest hour of pride, the leafless
almond-rod blossomed as of old in the holy place of the Hebrew
Tabernacle; and its miracle of colour and tenderness was like the
crimson glow that lingers at sunset upon Alpine heights, telling of a
glory that had long vanished from the spot.
Beneath these fern-draped vaults is the oldest prison in the world.
The celebrated Mamertine Prison takes us back to the very foundation
of the city. It was regarded in the time of the Cæsars as one of the
most ancient relics of Rome, and was invested with peculiar interest
because of its venerable associations. It consists of a series of
vaults excavated out of the solid tufa rock, where it slopes down from
the Capitoline Hill into the Forum, each lined with massive blocks of
red volcanic stone. For a long time these vaults have been used as
cellars under a row of tall squalid-looking houses built over them
between the Via di Marforio and the Vicolo del Ghettarello; and the
sense of smell gives convincing proof that where prisoners of state
used to be confined, provisions of wine, cheese, and oil have been
stored. The prison has recently passed into the possession of the
British and American Archæological Society of Rome, which pays a
certain rent to the Italian Government for its use. By this society it
is illuminated and shown every Monday afternoon during the season. One
of the members conducts the party through the upper and lower prisons,
and explains everything of interest connected with them. Dr. Parker,
whose labours have done so much to elucidate this part of ancient
Rome, was the guide on the occasion of my visit; and as the party was
unusually small, we had a better opportunity of seeing what was to be
seen, and hearing the guide's observations.
The uppermost vault is still below the level of the surrounding soil,
and the entrance to it is by the church of San Giuseppe di Falegnami,
the patron of the Roman joiners, built over it. Beneath is a
subterranean chapel, forming a sort of crypt to the upper church,
called San Pietro in Carcere, containing a curious ancient crucifix,
an object of great veneration, and hung round with blazing lamps and
rusty daggers, pistols, and other deadly instruments, the votive
offerings of bandits and assassins who sought at this shrine of the
chief of the apostles to make their peace with heaven. Descending from
the chapel by a flight of steps we come through a modern door, opened
through the wall for the convenience of the pilgrims who annually
visit the sacred spot in crowds, to the ancient vestibule, or grand
chamber of the prison, commonly called the Prison of St. Peter from
the church tradition which asserts that the great apostle was
confined here by order of Nero before his martyrdom. The pillar to
which he was bound is still pointed out in the cell; and Dr. Parker,
lifting up its cover, showed us a well in the pavement of the floor,
which is said to have sprung up miraculously to furnish water for the
baptism of the jailors Processus and Martinianus whom he had
converted, though, unfortunately for this tradition, the fountain is
described by Plutarch as existing in the time of Jugurtha's
imprisonment. Indeed there is every reason to believe that this
chamber was originally a well-house or a subterranean cistern for
collecting water at the foot of the Capitol, from which circumstance
it derived its name of Tullianum, from _tullius_, the old Etruscan
word for _spring_, and not from Servius Tullius, who was erroneously
supposed to have built it. The whole chamber in primitive times was
filled with water, and the hole in the roof was used for drawing it
out. Dr. Parker gave us a little of the water in a goblet, but,
notwithstanding its sacred reputation, it tasted very much like
ordinary water, being very cool and fresh, with a slight medicinal
taste. He also pointed our attention to a rugged hollow in the wall of
the staircase, and told us that this was the print of St. Peter's head
in the hard stone, said to have been produced as he stumbled and fell
against it, coming down the stair a chained prisoner. It requires no
small amount of devotional credulity to recognise the likeness or to
believe the story.
But there is no need for having recourse to such ecclesiastical
legends in order to produce a solemn impression in this chamber. Its
classical associations are sufficient of themselves to powerfully
affect the imagination. There is no reason to doubt the common belief
that this is the identical cell in which the famous Jugurtha was
starved to death. The romantic history of this African king is
familiar to all readers of Sallust, who gives a masterly account of
the Jugurthine war. When finally defeated, after having long defied
the Roman army, his person was taken possession of by treachery and
carried in chains to Rome, where he adorned the triumphal procession
of his conqueror Marius, and was finally cast into this cell,
perishing there of cold and hunger. What a terrible ending to the
career of a fierce, free soldier, who had spent his life on horseback
in the boundless sultry deserts of Western Africa! The temperature of
the place is exceedingly damp and chill. Jugurtha himself, when
stripped of his clothes by the executioners, and let down into it from
the hole in the roof, exclaimed with grim humour, "By Hercules, how
cold your bath is!" A more hideous and heart-breaking dungeon it is
impossible to imagine. Not a ray of light can penetrate the profound
darkness of this living tomb. Sallust spoke of the appearance of it in
his day, from the filth, the gloom, and the smell, as simply terrific.
The height of the vault is about sixteen feet, its length thirty feet,
and its breadth twenty-two feet. It is cased with huge masses of
volcanic stone, arranged in courses, converging towards the roof, not
on the principle of the arch, but extending horizontally to a centre,
as we see in some of the Etruscan tombs. This peculiar style of
construction proves the very high antiquity of the chamber.
This cell played the same part in Roman history which the Tower of
London has done in our own. Here, by the orders of Cicero, were
strangled Lentulus, Cethegus, and one or two more of the accomplices
of Catiline, in his famous conspiracy. Here was murdered, under
circumstances of great baseness, Vercingetorix, the young and gallant
chief of the Gauls, whose bravery called forth the highest qualities
of Julius Cæsar's military genius, and who, when success abandoned his
arms, boldly gave himself up as an offering to appease the anger of
the Romans. Here perished Sejanus, the minister and son-in-law of
Tiberius, who was detected in a conspiracy against the emperor, and
richly deserved his fate on account of his cruelty and treachery.
Here also was put to death Simon Bar-Gioras, the governor of the
revolted Jews during the last dreadful siege of Jerusalem, who was
taken prisoner, and after gracing the triumph of the emperor Titus at
Rome, shared the fate which usually happened to captives after such an
exhibition.
From the Tullianum or Prison of St. Peter, we were led through a
tortuous subterranean passage of Etruscan character, a hundred yards
long, cut out of the rock. It was so low that we had to stoop all the
way, and in some places almost to creep, and so narrow that a very
stout person would have some difficulty in forcing himself through.
The floor was here and there wet with the overflowing of neighbouring
drains, which exhaled a noisome smell; and we had to pick our steps
carefully through thick greasy mud, which on the slopes was very
slippery and disagreeable. We followed each other in Indian file,
stooping low, each with a wax taper burning dimly in the damp
atmosphere, and presenting a most picturesque appearance. This passage
was discovered only a few years ago. Numerous passages of a similar
nature are said to penetrate the volcanic rock on which the Capitol
stands, in every direction, like the galleries of an ant's nest. Some
of these have been exposed, and others walled up. They connect the
Prison with the _Cloaca_, and doubtless furnished means by which the
bodies of criminals who had been executed might be secretly disposed
of. The passage in question brought us to four other chambers, each
darker and more dismal than the other, and partially filled with heaps
of rubbish and masses of stone that had fallen from their roofs and
sides. At the top of each vault there was a man-hole for letting a
prisoner down with cords into it. A visit to these six vaults of the
Mamertine Prison gives one an idea that can never be forgotten of the
cruelty and tyranny which underlay all the gorgeous despotism of Rome,
alike in the kingly, republican, and imperial periods. Some of the
remains may still be seen of the _Scalæ Gemoniæ_, the "steps of
sighs," down which the bodies of those who were executed were thrown,
to be exposed to the insults of the populace. The only circumstance
that relieves the intolerable gloom of the associations of the Prison
is, that Nævius is said to have written two of his plays while he was
confined in it for his attacks on the aristocracy; a circumstance
which links it to the Tower of London, which has also its literary
reminiscences. After having been immured so long in such disagreeable
physical darkness--appropriate emblem of the deeds of horror committed
in it--we were truly glad to catch at last a faint glimmer of daylight
shimmering into the uppermost passage, and to emerge into the open
sunshine, from beneath a house at the farther end of the Vicolo del
Ghettarello.
A modern carriage-road used to pass along this way, leading up to the
Piazza del Campidoglio in front of the Capitol, and cutting the Forum
into two parts, concealing a considerable portion of it. This
obstruction has now been swept away, and the Forum is fully exposed
from end to end. Below this old road we observe the "nameless column"
of _Childe Harold_, which long stood with its base buried, and was
taken for the ruins of a temple. When excavated in 1813 it was found
to stand on an isolated pedestal, with an inscription recording that
it was erected by the exarch Smaragdus to the emperor Phocas; and the
mode in which the offering was made was worthy of the infamous subject
and the venal dedicator. Nothing can be clearer from the style of the
monument than that it was stolen from the Temple of Vespasian
adjoining; for it is an exact fellow of the three graceful Corinthian
pillars still standing in front of the Ærarium. It was near this
pillar, a few years after it was raised, that Gregory the Great,
before he became Pope, saw the young Saxon captives exposed to be sold
as slaves, and was so struck with their innocent looks and hopeless
fate that he asked about their nationality and religion. Being told
that they were Angli, he said, "_Non Angli, sed Angeli_." The
impression made upon him led to a mission for converting the natives
of Britain, which set out from Rome under St. Augustine in 596. Thus
does the column of the infamous usurper Phocas link itself on the
historic page with the conversion of Britain to Christianity.
Beside the Pillar of Phocas are two large marble screens or parapets,
with magnificent bas-reliefs sculptured on both sides. They were
discovered about sixteen years ago _in situ_, and are among the most
interesting and important objects that have been brought to light by
the recent excavations in the Forum. Their peculiar form has given
rise to much controversy; some antiquarians regarding them as an
avenue along which voters went up to the poll at the popular elections
of consuls, designed either to preserve the voters from the pressure
of the mob, or to prevent any but properly qualified persons from
getting admission; while others believe that the passage between the
double screen led to an altar. This latter opinion seems the more
plausible one, for the sculptures on one side represent the
_suovetaurilia_--a bull, a ram, and a boar, adorned with ribbons and
vittæ, walking in file, which were usually sacrificed for the
purification of Rome at the Lustrum, as the census taken every five
years was called. The other sculptures on the marble screens consist
of a number of human figures in greater or less relief; one of them
being supposed to commemorate the provision made by Trajan for the
children of poor or deceased citizens in the orphanage which he was
the first to found in Rome; and the other, the burning of the deeds
which contained the evidence of the public debt of the Roman citizens,
which the emperor generously cancelled. But the chief significance of
the sculptures lies in their background of architectural and other
objects indicating the locality of the scenes represented. They place
before us a view of the Forum as it appeared in the time of Trajan,
and enable us to identify the various objects which then crowded it,
and to fix their relative position. The topographical importance of
these reliefs has been well discussed by Signor Brizio and Professor
Henzen in the _Proceedings of the Roman Archæological Institute_; and
also in a paper read by Mr. Nichols before the Society of Antiquaries
in London in 1875. By translating into perspective their somewhat
conventional representations of temples, basilicas, and arches, Mr.
Nichols has given us in his monograph on the subject two very
effective pictorial restorations of the Forum as it was in the days of
Trajan. Both the screens exhibit, very distinctly sculptured, a
fig-tree and a statue on a pedestal, which are interesting from their
classical associations. The tree is not the famous Ruminal fig-tree
originally of the Palatine and then of the Comitium, but, as Pliny
tells us, a self-sown tree which grew in the mid Forum on the site of
the Lake of Curtius, which in Ovid's time, as we learn from himself,
was a dry space of natural ground marked off by a low fence, and
including an altar. This fig-tree, along with a vine and an olive,
which grew associated with it, was much prized on account of the shade
which it afforded. The figure under the fig-tree, carrying a vine stem
on its left shoulder, and uplifting its right arm, has been recognised
as that of Marsyas, whose statue was often put in market-places as an
emblem of plenty and indulgence. Martial, Horace, Seneca, and Pliny
all alluded to this statue in the Forum, which stood near the edge of
the Lake of Curtius, and was crowned with garlands by Julia, the
daughter of Augustus, during her disgraceful assignations beside it
with her lovers at night.
On the east side of the Forum the excavations have been stopped in the
meantime, as the modern level of the ground is occupied by valuable
houses, and two very interesting old churches, Santa Martina and Sta.
Adriano. Under the part not yet exhumed lie the remains of the
earliest of all the Basilicas, the Basilica of Porcia, built by the
elder Cato in the immediate vicinity of the Curia, and also those of
the famous Basilica Æmilia, which probably extended along the greater
part of the east side of the Forum. Some of the most important
monuments of ancient Rome, known to us only by the writings of classic
authors, doubtless lie buried in this locality. Under the church of
Sta. Adriano, the famous Curia Hostilia or Senate House, attributed to
Tullus Hostilius, stood. The original building was destroyed by fire
at the funeral of Clodius, through the carelessness of the populace,
who insisted upon burning his body within it; but it was replaced by
the Curia Julia, which was rebuilt by Augustus, who added to it an
important structure, called in the Ancyran inscription Chalcidicum,
for the convenience of the senators. Around it stood the statues of
men who had rendered important services to the state; and not far off
was an altar and statue of Victory, which formed the last
rallying-ground of expiring paganism against the dominating
Christianity of the empire. In the year 382 the Christian party had
removed this altar and statue; and when their restoration was demanded
by Symmachus, the request was refused by Ambrose, as opposed to the
conscience of the Christian senators; and this decision being ratified
by the votes of the assembly, the doom of paganism, as the national
religion, was in consequence sealed. The Curia Julia ceased to serve
its original purpose at the death of Caligula, when the consuls
convoked the senate in the Capitol instead, to mark their aversion to
the rule of the Cæsars; and the building was probably burnt down and
finally rebuilt in the time of Diocletian. One of the most curious
uses to which it was put, was to mark the _Suprema tempestas_, which
closed the hours of legal business, by means of its shadow projected
on the pavement; a primitive mode of reckoning time which existed
before the first Punic war, and was afterwards superseded by a
sun-dial and a clepsydra or water-clock erected in the Forum.
Near the Curia under the present roadway must lie the site of the
Comitium, or meeting-place of the Roman burgesses. This was far the
most important spot in the Forum in the days of the Republic. It was
not a covered building, but a templum or a consecrated space open to
the air. In its area grew a fig-tree, in commemoration of the sacred
tree which sheltered Romulus and Remus in their infancy; and we read
of drops of blood and milk falling upon it as omens from the sky. One
of the stones on its pavement, from its extraordinary blackness, was
called the tombstone of Romulus, and a number of statues adorned its
sides, including the three Sibyls, which gave the name of "In Tria
Fata" down to medieval times to this part of the Forum. From its
rostra, or stone platform, addresses were delivered by political
agitators to open-air assemblies of the people. The Comitium reminds
us very strikingly of the municipal origin of the Roman empire. In
primitive times that mode of government was admirably adapted to the
necessities of the city; but when Rome became mistress of the world it
was found unfitted to discharge imperial functions. The establishment
of the monarchical form of Government overthrew the Comitium, and with
it the very life of the Roman city.
In front of the church of S. Adriano--said to be no other than the
actual Curia of Diocletian, though greatly altered and partly rebuilt
by Pope Honorius I. in the year 630--are some fragments of the
Basilica Æmilia. This court was erected on the site of the Basilica
Fulvia, and superseded by a more splendid building called the Basilica
Pauli, which was the Bourse or Exchange of ancient Rome. The building
of this last Basilica was interrupted for a long time by the disorders
consequent on the assassination of Cæsar. When finished, it was
considered to be one of the most magnificent buildings in the world;
and was especially admired on account of its beautiful columns of
Phrygian marble. These were afterwards removed to decorate the church
of St. Paul outside the gate, where some of them that survived the
burning of the old edifice may be seen behind the high altar of the
new. Between the Curia and the Basilica Æmilia is supposed to have
stood the celebrated Temple of Janus, built according to Livy by Numa
Pompilius, the closing or opening of which was the signal of peace or
war. It was probably at first one of the ancient gates in a line of
fortifications uniting the Capitol with the Palatine; and afterwards
comprised, besides a passage-way through which a great part of the
traffic of Rome passed, a diminutive bronze temple containing a bronze
statue of the venerable deity of the Sabines, whose one face looked to
the east, and the other to the west. The bronze gates of the temple
were closed by Augustus for the third time after the battle of Actium,
and finally shut when Christianity became the religion of the empire.
Procopius saw the temple still standing in the sixth century; and he
tells us that, during the siege of the city by the Goths, when it was
defended by Belisarius, some of the adherents of the old pagan
superstition made a secret attempt to open the shrine and set the god
at liberty.
One gazes at the wall of earth and rubbish, fifteen feet deep, marking
the present limit of the excavations in this direction, with a
profound longing that the obstruction could be removed at once, and
the rich antiquarian treasures lying hid underneath brought to light.
Few things in Rome appealed more powerfully to my curiosity than this
huge bank of _débris_, behind and beneath which imagination was free
to picture all kinds of possibilities. On the part that has been
uncovered, we see a row of brick bases on which had stood monuments of
gilt bronze to some of the distinguished men of Rome; the remains of a
line of shops of the third century demolished during the excavations;
the pedestal of what is said by some to have been Domitian's and by
others Constantine's gigantic equestrian statue; and farther down,
rude heaps of masonry, belonging to the substructures of the Rostra
and Temple of Julius Cæsar. Part of the curved wall of the Rostra may
still be seen built of large blocks of travertine; and in front is a
fixed platform, where a large number of people could stand and listen
to the speaker. This Rostra is specially interesting because it was
constructed in the year of Cæsar's death, and was intended to mark the
design of the great triumvir to destroy the memory of the old
oligarchy by separating the rostra or "hustings" from their former
connection with the senate and comitia, and make them entirely popular
institutions. The front of it was afterwards adorned by Augustus with
the beaks of ships taken at Actium. The small Heroön or Temple of
Cæsar behind the Rostra was erected on the spot where the body of
Cæsar was burned before the house which he had so long inhabited, and
in a part of the Forum especially associated with his greatest
political triumphs. It superseded an altar and lofty column of
Numidian marble, at which the people had previously offered sacrifices
to the memory of their idol, the first mortal in Rome raised to the
rank of the gods; an honour justified, they imagined, not only by his
great deeds, but also by his alleged descent from Venus Anadyomene.
Running down the middle of the Forum is a rough, ancient causeway,
with its blocks of lava still in their original position, but so
disjointed that it is no easy task walking over them. On the other
side is the raised platform of the Basilica Julia of Augustus,
extending from north to south, the whole length of the Forum, with
steps leading up to it from the paved street. This stupendous law
court, the grandest in Rome where Trajan sat to administer justice,
and from whose roof Caligula day after day lavishly threw down money
to the people, has, by its own identity being established beyond
dispute, more than any other discovery helped to determine the
topography of the Roman Forum. It was begun by Julius Cæsar on the
site of the older Basilica Sempronia, which had previously partially
replaced the _Veteres Tabernæ_ or shops of early times required for
the trades carried on in a market-place, and also the schools for
children where Appius Claudius had first seen Virginia reading. Having
been partially destroyed by fire, Augustus afterwards completed and
greatly enlarged the building. It was used as the place of meeting of
the _Centumviri_, a court which we learn from the younger Pliny, who
himself practised before it, had a hundred and eight judges sitting in
four separate tribunals, within sight and hearing of one another, like
the old courts in Westminster Hall. The Basilica is not yet entirely
excavated, a large part of its breadth being still under modern
buildings. It consisted of a series of plain, massive arches built of
travertine. The pavement is wonderfully perfect, being composed of a
mosaic pattern of valuable marbles, doubtless saved from destruction
or removal to build some church or palace by the fortunate
circumstance that the ruins of the Basilica covered and concealed them
at an early period. On this pavement and on the steps leading up to it
are incised numerous squares and circles which are supposed to have
been tabulæ lusoriæ, or gaming-tables. A few have inscriptions near
them alluding to their use. Cicero mentions the dice-players of the
Forum with reprobation; and the fact that such sports should have
intruded into the courts of justice shows that the Romans had lost at
this time their early veneration for the law. The rows of brick arches
seen on the platform are mere modern restorations, placed there by
Cavaliere Rosa to indicate the supposed original plan of the building.
At the south end of it an opening in the pavement shows a part of the
Cloaca Maxima, with the sewerage passing through it underneath.
The ancient street between the Basilica Julia and the Temple of Castor
and Pollux, is undoubtedly the famous _Vicus Tuscus_, so called after
the Etruscan soldiers who belonged to the army of Porsenna, and, being
defeated at Ariccia, took refuge in this part of Rome. This street, so
often mentioned by classic writers, led to the Circus Maximus, and is
now identified with the Via dei Fienili; the point of departure from
the Forum being marked by a statue of Vertumnus, the Etruscan god, the
ruined pedestal of which, in all likelihood, is that which has lately
been unveiled on the steps at the north-east corner of the Basilica
Julia. It was considered almost as sacred as the Via Sacra itself,
being the route taken by the great procession of the Circensian games,
in which the statues of the gods were carried in cars from the Capitol
through the Forum to the circus. In front of the Basilica Julia, and
on the opposite side of the way, so numerous were the statues which
Julius Cæsar contrived to crowd together, that the Emperor
Constantine, during his famous visit to Rome, is said to have been
almost stupefied with amazement. Some such feeling is produced in our
own minds when we reflect that the bewildering array of sculptures in
the Roman galleries, admired by a concourse of pilgrims from every
country, are but chance discoveries, unnoticed by history, and of no
account in their own time. What must have been the feast of splendour
of which these are but the crumbs!
Perhaps the most beautiful of the ruins of the Forum are the three
marble columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux near the Basilica
Julia. They are the only prominent objects on the south-west side of
the Forum, and at once arrest the eye by their matchless symmetry and
grace. Time has dealt very hardly with them, battering their shapely
columns and rich Corinthian capitals, and discolouring their pure
white Pentelic marble. But it has not succeeded in destroying their
wonderful beauty; and the russet hues with which they have been
stained by the long lapse of the ages have rather added to them the
charm of antique picturesqueness. They rest upon a huge mound of
broken masonry, in the interstices of which Nature has sown her seeds
of minute life, which spread over it a tender pall of bright
vegetation. The three columns are bound together by iron rods, and
still further kept in position by the fragments of architrave and
cornice supported by them. They are forty-eight feet in height and
nearly five feet in diameter, while their flutings are nine inches
across. Around the basement a large quantity of broken columns,
capitals, and pedestals has been disinterred, some of which have
acquired an historic renown on account of the purposes which they have
served in the fine arts. Michael Angelo converted one huge fragment
into the pedestal of the celebrated bronze equestrian statue of Marcus
Aurelius, which he transferred from its original site in front of the
Arch of Septimius Severus, where it had stood for thirteen or fourteen
centuries, to the front of the Capitol; while out of another fragment
Raphael carved the well-known statue of Jonah sitting on a whale, to
be seen in the Chigi Chapel of Sta. Maria del Popolo, the only piece
of sculpture executed by the immortal painter. The Italian Government
has entirely excavated the ruins, and thus set at rest the numerous
controversies among antiquaries regarding its true name.
The temple of Castor and Pollux probably dates as far back as the year
487 before Christ, when the dictator Postumius vowed to build a
monument in commemoration of his victory at the great battle of Lake
Regillus, with which the mythical history of Rome closes. It recalls
the well-known romantic legend of the mysterious interference of the
Dioscuri in that memorable struggle which Macaulay has woven into one
of the most spirited of his Lays. The temple is supposed to have been
erected on the spot where the divine Twins announced the victory to
the people in the Forum at the close of the day. About twenty feet
from the eastern corner of the temple are slight remains of a shallow
oval basin, which has been identified as the lake or fountain of
Juturna, the wife of Janus, the Sabine war-god, where the Dioscuri
washed their armour and horses from the blood and dust of the fray. It
was probably at first a natural spring gushing out of the tufa rock of
the Palatine Hill, but being dried up, it became in later times a
_lacus_ or basin artificially supplied with water. For long ages
afterwards the anniversary of the great battle was celebrated every
year on the fifteenth of July by a splendid pageant worthy of the
greatness of the empire. The Roman knights, clothed in purple robes,
and crowned with olive wreaths, and bearing their trophies, first
offered sacrifice in the shrine of Castor and Pollux, and then formed
a procession, in which five thousand persons sometimes took part,
which filed in front of the temple and marched through the city.
The original building having stood for nearly five hundred years, it
began to exhibit signs of decay, and accordingly it was rebuilt upon
the old foundations by Augustus, and dedicated by Tiberius. The podium
or mass of rubble masonry therefore which we see beneath the three
columns at the present day belongs to the time of the kings, while the
columns themselves belong to the imperial period. Caligula used the
temple as a vestibule to his palace on the Palatine Hill immediately
behind. On the brow of that hill, separated only by the pavement of
the modern street, projects a labyrinth of vaults, arches, and broken
walls, a mighty maze of desolation without a plan, so interspersed
with verdure and foliage that "it looks as much a landscape as a
ruin." This is supposed to be the palace of Caligula; and its remains
abundantly attest the extraordinary magnificence of this imperial
domain, which contained all that was rich and rare from the golden
East, from beyond the snowy Alps, and from Greece, the home of art.
The substructions of this mighty ruin are truly astonishing; they are
so vast, so massive, so enduring, that they seem as if built by
giants. Concealed by modern houses built up against the foot of the
palace, some of the remains of the famous bridge which Caligula threw
obliquely over the Forum can be made out; two of the tall brick piers
are visible above the houses, and in the gable of the outer house the
spring of one of the arches can be distinctly seen. The bridge was
constructed by Caligula for the purpose of connecting his palace with
the Capitol, on the summit of which stood the magnificent Temple of
Jupiter, so that, as he said himself, he might be able to converse
conveniently with his colleague, the greatest of the gods! It is
probable that it served more than one purpose; that it was used both
as an aqueduct and a road for horses and chariots from the Palatine to
the Capitol. Be this as it may, it must have been a stupendous
structure, nearly a quarter of a mile long, and about a hundred feet
high, striding over the whole diagonal of the Forum, with a double or
triple tier of arches, like the remains of the Claudian aqueduct that
spans the Campagna.
The immediate vicinity of the Temple of Castor and Pollux is full of
interest to the classical student. To the right of it are the remains
of the Regia or Royal Palace, the official residence of the early
kings of Rome, and afterwards, during the whole period of the
Republic, of the Pontifex Maximus, as the real head of the State as
well as the Church. Numa Pompilius resided here in the hope that, by
occupying neutral ground, he might conciliate the Latins of the
Palatine and the Sabines of the Capitoline Hills. It was also the home
of Julius Cæsar during the greater part of his life, where Calpurnia,
his wife, dreamed that the pediment of the house had fallen down, and
the sacred weapons in the Sacrarium were stirred by a supernatural
power; an omen that was but too truly fulfilled when Cæsar went forth
to the Forum on the fatal Ides of March, and was carried back a bloody
corpse from the Curia of Pompey. It ceased to become the residence of
the Pontifex when Augustus bought the house of Hortensius on the
Palatine, and elected to dwell there instead; and was therefore given
over to the Vestal Virgins to increase their scanty accommodation. The
_Atrium Vestæ_, or convent of the Vestal Virgins, adjoined the Regia,
and behind it, along the lower slope of the Palatine, stretched the
sacred grove of Vesta, which seems to have been used as a place of
privileged interment for the sisterhood, as a number of gravestones
with the names of vestal virgins upon them were found in digging the
foundations of the church of Sta. Maria Liberatrice in the
seventeenth century. The residence of the Pontifex Maximus and of the
Vestal Virgins, who were regarded as the highest and holiest
personages in the State, gave an air of great respectability to this
neighbourhood, and it became in consequence the fashionable quarter of
Rome. Close beside the house of the Vestal Virgins was the far-famed
Temple of Vesta, in which they ministered, whose podium or basement,
which is a mere circular mound of rough masonry, may be seen on the
spot.
The worship of Vesta, the goddess of the household fire, was one of
the most primitive forms of religion. It doubtless arose from the
great difficulty in prehistoric times of producing fire by rubbing two
sticks against one another. Such a flame once procured would be
carefully guarded against extinction in some central spot by the
unmarried women of the household, who had nothing else to do. And from
this central fire all the household fires of the settlement would be
obtained. A relic of this prehistoric custom existed in the rule that
if the sacred vestal fire was ever allowed to go out it could only be
kindled anew by the primitive process of friction. The worship of
Vesta survived an old world of exhausted craters and extinct
volcanoes, with which was buried a world of lost nations. The
Pelasgians brought to Italy the stone of the domestic hearth, the
foundation of the family, and the tombstone, the boundary of the
fields divided after the death of the head of the family, the
foundation of property; and upon this double base arose the great
distinctive edifice of the Roman Law, the special gift of Rome to the
civilisation of the world. Rhea Sylvia, mother of Romulus, was a
Vestal Virgin of Alba, which shows that the worship of Vesta existed
in this region long before the foundation of Rome. The origin of the
first temple and of the institutions of Vestal Virgins for its service
was attributed to Numa Pompilius. The first building, as Ovid tells
us, was constructed with wattled walls and a thatched roof like the
primitive huts of the inhabitants. It was little more than a covered
fireplace. It was the public hearth of the new city, round which were
gathered all the private ones. On it burned continually the sacred
fire, the symbol of the life of the state, which was believed to have
been brought from Troy, and the continuance of which was connected by
superstition with the fortunes of Rome. In the secret penetralia of
the temple, where no man was allowed to enter, was kept with
scrupulous care, for its preservation was equally bound up with the
safety of the empire, the Palladium, or image of Pallas, saved from
the destruction of Troy, and which was supposed to have originally
fallen from heaven. The circular form and the domed roof of the temple
were survivals of the prehistoric huts of the Aborigines, which were
invariably round, as the traces of their foundations show. With the
exception of the Palladium, which remained invisible during all the
ages to ordinary mortal eyes until the destructive fire in the Forum,
in the reign of Commodus, compelled the Vestal Virgins to expose it in
removing it for safety to the imperial court, there was in primitive
times no statue or material representation of the goddess except the
sacred fire in the mysterious shrine of the temple. Indeed the Romans,
as Plutarch tells us, raised no statue to the gods until the year of
Rome 170. In this respect the religion of the Romans, whose divinities
had no participation in the life and passions of men, and had nothing
to do with the human form, differed widely from the religion of the
Greeks, which, inspired by the sentiment of the beautiful in man and
nature, gave birth to art.
The Temple of Vesta, as might have been expected, shared in all the
wonderful changes of Roman history. It was abandoned when the Gauls
entered Rome, and the Vestal Virgins took the sacred fire and the
Palladium to Cære in Etruria for safety. It was destroyed two hundred
and forty-one years before Christ, when L. Metellus, the Pontifex
Maximus at the time, saved the Palladium with the loss of his
eyesight, and consequently of his priesthood, for which a statue was
erected to him in the Capitol. It was consumed in the great fire of
Nero, and rebuilt by Vespasian, on some of whose coins it is
represented. It was finally burnt down in the fire of Commodus, which
destroyed at the same time many important buildings in the Forum. The
worship of Vesta was prohibited by Gratianus in the year 382 of our
era, and the public maintenance of the Vestal Virgins abandoned, in
spite of the protestations of Symmachus and the forlorn hope of the
pagan party. Great as was the reverence paid to the shrine of Vesta,
not being a temple in the proper sense of the term, as it was not
consecrated by augury, it had not the right of sanctuary. Mucius
Scævola, the unfortunate Pontifex Maximus, was murdered beside the
altar by order of Marius, and his blood sprinkled the image of the
goddess; and Piso Licinianus, the adopted son of Galba, after the
assassination of that emperor beside the Curtian Lake in the Forum,
was dragged out from the innermost shrine of the temple, to which he
had fled for refuge, and barbarously massacred at the door. But it is
impossible to dwell upon all the remarkable events with which this
haunted shrine of Rome's earliest and most beautiful worship is
associated. Certainly no greater object of interest has been exhumed
among all the antiquities of the Eternal City than the little round
mass of shapeless masonry which has been identified beyond all
reasonable doubt as the basement of the world-renowned temple, the
household hearth of old Rome.
Opposite the Temple of Vesta, at the north-east corner of the Forum,
where it ends, is the magnificent façade of the Temple of Antoninus
Pius and Faustina, the most perfect of all the Roman temples. There
are six splendid Corinthian columns in front and two at the sides,
each composed of a single block of green ripple-marked Cipollino
marble, about forty-six feet in height and five feet in diameter, with
bases and capitals of marble, originally white, but now rusty and
discoloured by age; all beautifully proportioned and carved in the
finest style of ancient art. These columns were buried to half their
height in medieval times; and houses were built up against and between
them, the marks of whose roofs are still visible in indentations near
their summits. These houses were removed, and the ground excavated
down to the bases of the columns in the sixteenth century by Palladio,
revealing a grand flight of marble steps, twenty-one in number,
leading up to the temple from the street. The excavations at that time
were made for the purpose of finding marbles and building materials
for the Church of St. Peter's. Two sides of the cella of the temple
still remain, formed by large massive blocks of peperino, probably
taken from the second wall of Rome, which must have passed very near
to the east end of this temple; for the ancient Roman architects were
as unscrupulous in appropriating the relics of former ages as their
successors. The roughness of these walls was hidden by an outer casing
of marble, ornamented with pilasters, of which only the small capitals
now remain. Both the cella and the portico still retain a large
portion of their magnificent marble entablature; and the frieze and
cornice are richly covered with carvings of vases and candelabra,
guarded by griffins, exquisite in design and execution. The marble
slabs that covered the whole outside of the temple had been burnt for
lime in a kiln that stood in front of the portico in the sixteenth
century, and in this lime-kiln were found fragments of statues,
bas-reliefs, and inscriptions, which were about to be destroyed in
that barbarous fashion.
The temple was originally begun by Antoninus Pius to the memory of his
unworthy wife Faustina in the year 142 of our era, but being
unfinished at his death, it was dedicated by the senate to both their
names. We see it represented in all its magnificence on some of the
coins of this emperor. In the year 1430 Pope Martin V. built over its
remains a church called S. Lorenzo in Miranda, whose singular ugliness
was in striking contrast to the grandeur of the venerable ruin which
embraced it. The floor of this church was ten feet above the original
level of the temple, and its roof was carried twenty feet above its
cornice. It contained several tombs of the Roman apothecaries, to
whose Corporation it belonged. No one will regret that it has been
removed; the excavations in front of it having reduced the level of
the ground far below its doorway, and thus cut off the approach. It is
strange to think of the two different kinds of worship carried on at
such widely separated intervals within this remarkable building, first
a pagan temple and then a Christian church--worship so different in
name and yet so like in reality; for the divine honours paid to a
mortal emperor and his wife were transferred in after ages to frail
mortals such as Saint Laurence and the Virgin Mary. We are reminded by
the inscription above the portico of the temple, "Divo Antonino et
Divæ Faustina," that the government of the Cæsars had become an
earthly omnipotence in the estimation of the Romans and the subject
nations. They looked alone to Cæsar for all their good, and from him
they feared their chiefest evil. He had become to them their
providence or their fate. The adoration offered to him was not a mere
act of homage or sign of fealty, but was most truly and in the highest
sense a worship as to a divine being.
The view in this part of the Forum, looking down from the Antonine
Temple, is most striking and suggestive. It reveals some of the
grandest objects of ancient Rome. Immediately beyond is the hoary old
church of SS. Cosma e Damiano, with mosaics of the sixth century on
its tribune, built out of three ancient temples, as Dr. Parker has
clearly proved--the round Temple of Romulus Maxentius, the Temple of
Venus, and the Temple of Rome. The south wall of this last-mentioned
temple, built of huge square blocks of tufa, to which the marble plan
of Rome was fastened by metal hooks, may still be seen in the church;
and it is interesting as being the last pagan temple which remained in
use in Rome. Here was the last struggle of paganism with the unbelief
which itself inspired. The gods of the Pantheon had lost all
significance. The worship of abstract qualities, such as Concord and
Victory, or of the personification of a local providence in the city
of Rome itself, could not satisfy the longing of the human soul. As
religion decayed the worship of the gods was superseded by the worship
of the emperor. Their statues were decapitated and the head of the
emperor was placed upon them. On the statue of Olympic Jove appeared
the bust of the contemptible Caligula; and this incongruous adaptation
represented the change of the popular faith from its former heavenly
idealisations to the most grovelling fetish worship of the time. This
deification of the emperors avenged its terrible blasphemy by the
sublime wickedness of those who were so raised above humanity. Here,
in this last pagan temple of Rome, converted into one of the earliest
Christian churches, we see the darkness and despair of the heathen
world preparing for that joyful morning light of Christianity which
has transferred the faith of mankind to foundations which can never
more be shaken. Immediately beyond in the background are the huge
gloomy arches of the Basilica of Constantine, fretted with coffers,
suspended in mid-air for upwards of sixteen centuries, in defiance of
the laws of gravity and the ravages of time and of human destroyers,
taken as a model for churches by Roman architects, though built
originally for a law court. In front is the Arch of Titus, with its
well-known sculptures of the spoils from the Temple of Jerusalem,
spanning the highest point of the Via Sacra. And closing up the view
is the grandest ruin in the world, the stupendous broken circle of the
Colosseum, rising tier above tier into the blue sky, burnt deep brown
by the suns of ages, holding the spectator breathless with wonder, and
thrilling the mind with the awful associations connected with it.
The Forum lies like an open sepulchre in the heart of old Rome. All is
death there; the death of nature and the death of a race whose long
history has done more to shape the destiny of the world than any
other. The soil beneath our feet is formed by the ashes of an extinct
fire, and by the dust of a vanished empire. Everywhere the ruins of
time and of man are mingled with the relics of an older creation; and
the sculptured marbles of the temples and law courts, where Cæsar
worshipped and Cicero pled, lie scattered amid the tufa-blocks, the
cinders of the long quiescent volcanoes of the Campagna. Nature and
man have both accomplished their work in this spot; and the relics
they have left behind are only the exuviæ of the chrysalis out of
which the butterfly has emerged, or the empty wave-worn shells left
high and dry upon an ancient coast-line. It is a remarkable
circumstance that the way in which the Forum originated was the very
way in which it was destroyed. The cradle of Roman greatness became
its tomb. The Forum originated in the volcanic fires of earth; it
passed away in the incendiary fires of man. In the month of May 1084
the Norman leader, Robert Guiscard, came with his troops to rescue
Gregory VII. from the German army which besieged Rome. Then broke
out--whether by accident or design is not known--the terrible
conflagration which extended from the Capitol to the Coelian Hill, but
raged with the greatest intensity in the Forum. In that catastrophe
classical Rome passed away, and from the ashes of the fire arose the
Phoenix of modern Rome. The greatest of physical empires was wrecked
on this spot, and out of the wreck was constructed the greatest
spiritual empire the world has ever known. For the Roman Pontificate,
to use the famous saying of Hobbes, was but the ghost of the deceased
Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.