PANTHEON, COLUMN OF MARCUS AURELIUS, MAUSOLEUM OF AUGUSTUS, MAUSOLEUM OF
HADRIAN, AND NEIGHBOURHOOD.
[Sidenote: The Septa.]
Near the Piazza Venezia and S. Marco, to the east of the site of the
ancient Circus Flaminius, stood the Septa, an ancient building erected for
the purpose of holding the Roman comitia or elections. Some ruins of a
very peculiar kind are situated under the Palazzo Doria and the church of
S. Maria in Via Lata. They consist of ancient piers of travertine stone,
about thirty-nine inches square, standing in rows at distances of five or
six yards, and evidently belonging to the remains of a portico. There are
three rows of these, each containing eight piers under the Palazzo Doria,
and five rows under the church of S. Maria in Via Lata, containing each
five piers. It is plain that these were originally faced with marble, as
the exterior surface of the travertine is rough hewn. The situation of
these pillars agrees well with the locality in which the Septa are placed
by classical writers, and a further proof that they certainly formed a
part of that building is given by the Capitoline map, upon which we find a
large tract occupied by a building resting upon piers arranged in regular
rows exactly corresponding to the piers under the church of S. Maria and
the Palazzo Doria. Upon these fragments the letters SÆPT and LIA are
legible, which appear to belong to the words SÆPTA JULIA.
The shape of the building is very peculiar. It must have reached along the
side of the Via Lata from the Piazza di S. Marco to the church of S. Maria
in Via Lata, and consisted of a long cloister supported by parallel rows
of eight marble piers. This cannot have been the arrangement of the place
in the Republican or early Imperial times, for a design less adapted for
the orderly meeting of a large body of people can hardly be conceived. It
is much more probable that in the present ruins we have the remains of
Hadrian’s Septa, built when the original purpose of the building, the
reception and division of the centuries when they voted, had become an
affair of the past.
The design of these spacious covered cloisters seems to have been to
afford a sheltered place for various classes of the Roman populace. Even
in Domitian’s time the Septa had become the common resort of slave
vendors, dealers in fancy goods, flâneurs and loungers, and the new
arcades were intended possibly for the express accommodation of such
persons. The wide court in which the great assemblies of the centuries had
previously been held was partly filled up by these new buildings, and
partly occupied by private houses, as the Capitoline plan shows. When that
plan was prepared, in the time of Septimius Severus, the old Septa had
entirely lost their form and original use, and the name only remained
attached to the spacious colonnades of Hadrian.
In the early times of the Republic the Septa were simply an enclosed place
on the Campus Martins partitioned off into a number of different plots by
means of ropes or slight railings, in each of which one division of voters
or century assembled, and whence the presidents passed one by one over the
pontes to deliver the vote of their respective century. Hence arose the
nickname of ovilia, which was given to the septa on account of their
similarity to a sheepfold. Julius Cæsar first entertained the idea of
setting up marble enclosures for the comitia centuriata, and surrounding
them with a magnificent portico. The whole formed a spacious cloistered
court, decorated with works of art, and closely connected with the Villa
Publica. Cæsar’s design was completed after his death by Agrippa in B.C.
27, and he gave the building the name Septa Julia. A rostrum was erected
in it, and such was the extent of the space enclosed that gladiatorial
shows, and sometimes naumachiæ were held there. This was afterwards
altered by Hadrian as above described.
[Sidenote: Temples of Isis and Serapis.]
Westwards from the septa and nearly upon the site now occupied by the
church of S. Stefano del Cacco, the little Via di pie di Marmo and a part
of the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, stood the temples of Isis,
Serapis, and Minerva Chalcidica.[91] The names of the three temples are
given in the catalogue of the Curiosum in the ninth region, and the sites
of the two first, the Iseum and Serapeum, have been sufficiently traced by
the numerous Egyptian antiquities which have been found near the church of
S. Maria sopra Minerva. Of these the most remarkable are the two obelisks,
one of which now stands in the Piazza della Rotunda in front of the
Pantheon, and the others on the Piazza della Minerva. The latter of these
was found between the church of S. Ignazio and that of S. Maria in the
time of Alexander VII. in 1665, and the former had stood, previously to
its erection on the present pedestal, in a little piazza near this place,
whence it was removed by Clement XI. The antiquarian Fea, in his
Miscellanea, gives an account of various other Egyptian relics found on
the south-east side of the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, which
undoubtedly belonged to the Iseum and Serapeum.[92]
Among these was a statue of Isis now in the hall of the dying gladiator in
the Capitol, the two Egyptian lions now at the foot of the steps of the
Capitol; the famous group of the Nile now in the Braccio Nuovo of the
Vatican, and two fragments of an altar with Egyptian reliefs, and the
inscription ISIDI SACRUM. Further traces of the same Egyptian worship were
found by Canina in the year 1852, of which he has given an account in the
Annali dell’ Instituto of that year. The emperors Commodus and Caracalla
were particularly given to the worship of Egyptian deities, and the
emperor Alexander Severus is said to have bestowed additional decorations
upon those temples. The third temple, that of Minerva Chalcidica, which
was restored by Domitian, together with the Iseum and Serapeum after the
fire in A.D. 80, stood nearer to the Pantheon, and probably occupied the
site of the present church called S. Maria sopra Minerva. The statue of
Minerva, formerly in the Giustiniani Palace and now placed in the Braccio
Nuovo of the Vatican, was found here. Some few remains of pilasters which
are built into the foundations of the houses between the Via della
Minerva and the Via di pie di Marmo may have belonged to this temple.
[Illustration: Pantheon.]
[Sidenote: Pantheon.]
At the same time with his Thermæ, which occupied this district, Agrippa
built the famous dome, called by Pliny and Dion, and in the inscription of
Severus on the architrave of the building itself, the Pantheon, and still
retaining that name, though now consecrated as a Christian Church under
the name of S. Maria ad Martyres or della Rotunda. This consecration,
together with the colossal thickness of the walls, have secured the
building against the waste of time, and the still more destructive attacks
of the barons of the Middle Ages, who destroyed most of the other great
edifices of imperial Rome by either making them their strongholds or
pulling them down for building materials. The pronaos rests upon sixteen
granite columns, with marble Corinthian bases and capitals. It was
formerly approached by six steps, but two only are now above the level of
the surrounding ground. The architrave and frieze are plain, and on the
latter stands the inscription, which formerly, as may be seen by the holes
for nails, was formed by metallic letters:
M . AGRIPPA . L . F . COS . TERTIUM . FECIT.
Agrippa was consul for the third time in B.C. 27, so that the building is
now 1906 years old. Another inscription in smaller characters stands under
this upon the two upper ledges of the architrave, commemorating the
restoration of the building by Severus and Caracalla. The pediment, as may
be seen by the holes of the metal fastenings, formerly contained a bronze
relief representing Jupiter hurling thunderbolts upon the giants. The roof
of the pronaos was originally arched, but the vaulting has been replaced
by strong beams, and on the outside the gilded bronze has been replaced by
lead. In the interior of the pronaos, on each side of the entrance are two
huge niches which formerly contained the statues of Augustus and Agrippa,
but are now empty.
The pronaos is connected with the rotunda by two massive projections of
masonry ornamented at the sides with marble pilasters and exquisitely
worked reliefs in pentelic marble representing candelabra and sacrificial
implements entwined with wreaths. These connecting walls originally rose
to an equal height with the walls of the rotunda, but are now hidden by
the bell towers, erected by Bernini in the time of Urban VIII. about A.D.
1625.
The doorway is of magnificently carved marble slabs, and the folding
doors, moving on massive hinges fixed in two projecting pilasters, are of
exquisitely worked bronze.
The rotunda rests on a rectangular base, similar to those which support
the cylindrical part of the mausoleum of Hadrian and the tomb of Cecilia
Metella. In the parts where the thickness of the wall is not lessened by
niches in the interior, it has the amazing breadth of nineteen feet of
solid brickwork. In addition to this it is strengthened with numerous
arches built into the wall. Three cornices run round the exterior of the
rotunda and divide it into three rings, the lowest of which was faced with
marble, and the two upper with stucco. The dome springs from the second
cornice, and consists first of a ring of masonry seven feet high, and then
of six concentric rings, presenting on the exterior the appearance of six
steps. The top is flat, and is pierced in the centre with a large round
opening twenty-seven feet in diameter. Round the opening is a ring of
ornamental gilded bronze, which is the only part of the old bronze gilt
roof now remaining. The masonry of the dome is of wedge-shaped pumice
stones, chosen for this purpose on account of their lightness. The same
kind of stone is used in several other buildings in Rome where lightness
combined with moderate strength is required. The exterior of the dome is
flat and heavy, and impressive only from its stern and massive solidity.
The proportions of the interior are altogether different, and have been
universally admired for their elegance, and the exquisitely simple taste
with which they are decorated. The lower part contains eight deep niches,
alternately semicircular and square, in one of which the entrance doors
are placed, while the others were filled with statues of deities, now
replaced by Romish altars. They are decorated with pilasters, and two
Corinthian columns stand in front of each, supporting the entablature
which runs round the whole interior. Between the eight principal niches
are eight smaller ones, now used as altars, faced with ædiculæ consisting
of two small columns with entablature and pediment. The two ring cornices
in the interior answer in position to the lower exterior cornices. Above
the upper cornice which runs quite round the building there were
originally twelve niches surrounded with elegant marbles and stucco work.
These were altered in 1747, and their effect injured by the introduction
of heavy pediments, and by the removal of the marbles and stucco work. The
interior of the roof is relieved by well-designed rectangular coffer work,
decreasing in size towards the apex of the dome so as to give the
impression of height and space. The floor is laid with slabs of Phrygian
and Numidian marble, porphyry, and grey granite, in alternate squares and
circles, set in reticulated work. In the centre it has a depression
pierced with small holes to carry off the rain water from the aperture
above. This drain probably communicated with the great cloaca built by
Agrippa to drain the Campus Martius. The proportions of the interior of
the dome are admirably adjusted, so that no part of the building has an
undue prominence, contrasting favourably in this respect with S. Peter’s,
where the immense size of the piers on which the dome is supported dwarf
the upper part too much. The Pantheon will always be reckoned among the
masterpieces of architecture for solid durability combined with beauty of
interior effect.
The Romans prided themselves greatly upon it as one of the wonders of
their great capital, and no other dome of antiquity could rival its
colossal dimensions.[93] The height from the pavement to the crown of the
dome is 143 feet, half of which is occupied by the cylindrical wall and
half by the dome; this height is insignificant when compared with S.
Peter’s, the dome of which is 405 feet from the pavement to the base of
the lantern, and the exterior appearance of S. Peter’s is far finer, but
the diameter of the Pantheon is the greater, and the proportions of the
interior more harmonious.
The inscription assigns its completion to the year B.C. 27, the third
consulship of Agrippa. For a long time the mistaken notion prevailed that
the building was dedicated to Juppiter Ultor, a misapprehension arising
from a corrupt reading in a passage of Pliny, where the words Jovis
Ultoris had been inserted instead of diribitori. The original name,
Pantheon, taken in connection with the numerous niches for statues of the
gods in the interior, seems to contradict the idea that it was dedicated
to any peculiar deity or class of deities. The seven principal niches may
have been intended for the seven superior deities, and the eight ædiculæ
for the next in dignity, while the twelve niches in the upper ring were
occupied by the inferior inhabitants of Olympus. Dion hints at this
explanation when he suggests that the name was taken from the resemblance
of the dome to the vault of heaven.[94]
Originally, to all appearance, the Pantheon was not intended for a temple,
but for a part of Agrippa’s Thermæ. Its shape corresponds very closely
with the description given by Vitruvius of the Laconicum or Sudatio
attached to all Roman Thermæ. He recommends a dome-shaped building, with a
round opening like that of the Pantheon at the crown, which can be opened
or closed at pleasure, so as to lower or raise the temperature, by the
removal or application of a lid (clypeum) moved by chains.
And on an examination of the pronaos it will be found that the stones in
its upper part, which abut on the central building, are not bonded into
it, but are only placed against it, showing that the pronaos was an
after-thought, and was not erected till the rotunda had been finished.
Agrippa must have changed the design of the building after the completion
of the dome, and, perhaps because he found it too vast for the purposes of
a sudatio, or because he thought it too splendid a building to be employed
for such a purpose, have determined to dedicate it to the gods of
heathendom. The bronze gilt statuary, the work of Diogenes of Athens, with
which the temple was decorated, was much admired by the Roman
connoisseurs, and in particular the group upon the pediment and the
Caryatides. The statue of Venus was adorned with the two divided halves of
the famous pearl of Cleopatra, fellow to the one which Cleopatra is said
to have dissolved in vinegar in order to win her wager that she could
spend ten million sesterces in one dinner.
In the fire of A.D. 80 the Pantheon suffered with the rest of the
buildings in this part of the Campus Martius, but from the solidity of its
construction the injury done was not great, and was repaired soon
afterwards by Domitian. It was damaged by lightning in the reign of
Trajan, but restored by Hadrian, who used it frequently as a court of
justice.
A hundred years after this, the restoration by Septimius Severus, recorded
in the extant inscription, took place A.D. 195. Honorius closed this
temple, with the other temples of Rome, in A.D. 399, but it was not
consecrated as a Christian church until two hundred years afterwards, when
Boniface IV. dedicated it to All Saints in allusion to the pagan name of
Pantheon, giving the name of S. Maria ad Martyres. Two acts of plunder
perpetrated upon the building deserve mention. In the middle of the
seventh century, A.D. 650, Constans II. took off the gilded bronze tiles
of the roof, and was carrying them to Constantinople, with the plunder of
the Forum of Trajan, when he was intercepted at Syracuse by the Saracens
and killed. His act of plunder was imitated by Urban VIII., who in 1632
took away the bronze girders which supported the roof of the pronaos and
had them melted down and used partly for the pillars of the baldachino in
S. Peter’s, and partly for the cannon of the castle of S. Angelo.
[Sidenote: Aqua Virgo.]
Not far from the Pantheon the arches of the Aqua Virgo projected from the
side of the Pincian Hill and crossed the Via Lata. Some remains of these
arches are still to be seen in the Via del Nazareno (No. 12) at the back
of the Fountain of Trevi. They bear an inscription which was copied in the
ninth century by the anonymous chronicler of Einsiedlen, recording the
restoration of the arches by Claudius after they had been partially
destroyed by Caligula, who intended to build an amphitheatre in this
neighbourhood. The arches are now entirely covered with rubbish, and the
conduit of the aqueduct itself, which formerly was raised upon them, is
consequently now upon the level of the ground. The inscription stands on
the side of the conduit, and was formerly at the spot where some principal
street passed under the aqueduct. Above it is a simple cornice, and below,
an architrave, with the upper part of some Doric pilasters, appears above
the surface of the water, which is here tapped to afford a washing trough
to the laundresses of the neighbourhood. The masonry is of solid
travertine blocks, carefully cut and fitted.
[Sidenote: Dogana in the Piazza di Pietra.]
Some topographers have identified the ruin in the Piazza di Pietra, now
the Dogana, with the Posidonium, a portico built by Agrippa in memory of
his naval exploits; but unless the ruin in the Piazza di Pietra be a later
restoration after the fire of A.D. 80, which is possible enough, the style
is not such as to allow us to assign it to the Augustan age. It has eleven
fluted Corinthian marble columns supporting a tolerably well-preserved
entablature, and plainly belonging to the longer side of a basilica or
temple. The architrave, frieze, and cornice, have a heavy and unimpressive
appearance, though some of the details of the work are rich and carefully
executed. In the courtyard of the building a portion of the wall of the
cella, and the spring of the arches of the vaulted roof, can be seen now
incorporated into the modern building.
Various conjectures have been made as to the name and history of this
building. Some of the older topographers thought that it was the Temple of
M. Aurelius, which seems, however, to have been nearer to the column of
that emperor than the ruin in question is;[95] nor does the position of
this ruin allow us to suppose that it formed any part of a series of
buildings placed symmetrically round the column. Palladio gives an
elaborate ground-plan, with all the details, and calls it the Temple of
Mars; but there does not appear to be any evidence in favour of this
appellation; nor is it known how much of Palladio’s design is taken from
what remained of the ruin in his time, and how much is merely conjectural
restoration. The conjecture of Urlichs that the Temple of Marciana,
Trajan’s sister, stood here, rests on no evidence but that of the Notitia,
and is rendered very improbable by the great size of the building, and by
the fact that the expression in the Notitia is Basilica Marciani, and not
Templum Marcianæ. Another hypothesis, which Professor Reber mentions, has
more to recommend it. Antoninus Pius is said to have erected a temple in
honour of his adopted father, Hadrian. This temple could not have stood
in the Forum of Trajan, where there was no room left for such a building,
and would most probably be placed near the rest of the Antonine buildings,
not far from the Column of M. Aurelius. In the Mirabilia, the Temple of
Hadrian is placed near the Church of S. Maria in Aquiro, which
corresponded to the modern Chiesa degli Orfanelli; and part of a temple
precinct built of travertine has been discovered in the Palazzo Cini, and
is, perhaps, a relic of this temple. A medal of the year A.D. 151 contains
a representation of the Temple of Hadrian, and corresponds tolerably well
with the extant ruins; and in the neighbourhood of the Piazza di Pietra,
several statues and fragments of inscriptions bearing the name of
Antoninus Pius have been found at different times. When it is added that
the style of building and execution of the ornamental work belong to the
Antonine era, it will be seen that, although there is nothing more than
probable evidence in favour of the above supposition, yet it has more in
its favour than any of the other conjectures mentioned.
The present building was erected by Innocent XII. at the end of the
seventeenth century in order to prevent the fall of the columns, which had
become dangerously disjointed. The entablature has been restored in many
parts, and a kind of attica erected over it, which gives the ruin the
appearance of being in better preservation than it really is.
[Sidenote: Gnomon Obelisk.]
North of the Piazza Capranica, in the open space called the Piazza di
Monte Citorio, is a large obelisk of red syenite. This is the Gnomon
Obelisk, of which Pliny gives an interesting account in his ‘Natural
History.’ It was brought by Augustus from Egypt, with that which is now in
the Piazza del Popolo, and was erected on the Campus Martins under the
directions of the mathematician Facundus Novus to serve as a sun-dial, by
which not only the hour of the day, but also the day of the month, might
be shown. For this purpose the pavement of the piazza in which it stood
was marked out with a complicated system of lines in bronze; and, to
prevent any disturbances caused by the settlement of the foundations, they
were laid as deep below the ground as the height of the obelisk itself.
Pliny remarks that when he wrote, the gnomon had ceased for thirty years
to mark the time rightly, and he ascribes this inaccuracy to some
displacement of the obelisk due to natural causes, such as earthquakes or
inundations.[96] It is more probable that the inaccuracy of the Julian
calendar gradually produced the change. Ammianus Marcellinus, the Notitia,
and the anonymous writer of the Einsiedlen MS., all mention this obelisk
as still standing on the place where Augustus placed it. It was
then--after the ninth century--lost for a time, but discovered again in
1403 with a part of the figures of the dial. Marliani, in the first half
of the sixteenth century, mentions a part of the obelisk as lying
neglected in a cellar near S. Lorenzo in Lucina, and it was not erected
upon the present site until 1792.
To the east and north of the Monte Citorio lay the great buildings of the
Antonine era, of which we still have some remains in the base of the
Pillar of Antoninus Pius, now in the Giardino della Pigna of the Vatican,
the magnificent Pillar of M. Aurelius in the Piazza Colonna, and the
remains of the arch of the latter emperor, now in the Palace of the
Conservators of the Capitol.
[Sidenote: Pillar of Antoninus Pius.]
The first of these, the Pillar of Antoninus Pius, was a monolith of red
syenite, resting upon a pedestal of the same stone ornamented with
reliefs. These remained upon their original site in the garden of the Casa
della Missione near the Monte Citorio, until the time of Benedict XIV.,
when the pedestal was removed and placed in the Piazza di Monte Citorio
near the Gnomon Obelisk, but the monolith was found to be so damaged, as
not to be worth the expense of re-erection. Pius VI. when he placed the
Gnomon Obelisk in the Piazza di Monte Citorio, removed the pedestal and
took it to the Vatican Gardens, and it was finally placed in the Giardino
della Pigna by Gregory XVI., who caused it to be carefully restored.
[Sidenote: Column of M. Aurelius.]
The second of the great Antonine monuments, the Column of M. Aurelius,
still stands upon its original site in the Piazza Colonna. Formerly it was
the centre point of a group of massive temples and colossal halls, which
have entirely perished. It is now surrounded by houses of modern
construction, and surmounted by a statue of S. Paul, and looks like a grey
veteran clothed in the dress of a later generation, in which he feels
self-conscious and ill at ease. The only remains of the colonnades, which
once enclosed the court in which it stood, are to be found on the east
side of the piazza in the palace of the Prince of Piombino. They consist
of a triple portico of brickwork, probably faced in ancient times with
marble. The Temple of M. Aurelius, which stood, like that of Trajan, in
front of the column, was probably upon the western side towards the Piazza
di Monte Citorio, and it is from the ruins of this temple, and not of the
Amphitheatre of Statilius, as commonly supposed, that the mound of ruins
called Monte Citorio may have been formed. But no traces of the
substructions or of the walls or columns have been found.[97]
The column itself, which is a close imitation of that of Trajan, stands
upon a pedestal which was so altered by Fontana from its original shape as
to present a totally different appearance. The ancient pedestal was much
less massive and better proportioned to the upper part of the monument.
Its base stood at a level thirteen feet lower than the present pavement of
the square, and it consisted of a basement of solid stonework about
sixteen feet in height resting on three steps, nearly the whole of which
is now under the level of the surrounding ground. On the east side was the
door by which the spiral staircase in the interior was reached. Upon the
basement stood a large square flat stone, ornamented with genii and
triumphal and military ensigns, and above this the pedestal upon which,
before the restorations by Fontana, only the words CONSECRATIO and D.
ANTONINI. AUG. PII. were legible. The original shape and inscription of
this lower part are only known to us from old prints and antiquarian notes
in Gamucci, Du Perac, and Piranesi’s works. It became necessary for the
safety of the pillar, in 1589 to restore the base, and the whole was cased
in marble and repaired by Fontana, under the orders of Sixtus V., who at
the same time placed the statue of S. Paul upon the top. From a want of
accurate historical information, however, the old inscription was supposed
to refer to the elder of the Antonines, Antoninus Pius, and the new
inscription accordingly speaks of the monument as dedicated to him. The
error was discovered by a narrower inspection of the reliefs upon the
shaft, which clearly relate to the exploits of M. Aurelius.
The plinth is quite simple, and the base of the shaft is formed, like the
Column of Trajan, in the shape of a laurel crown. The whole of the shaft
is occupied by a spiral series of reliefs, and only a small ring of fluted
mouldings separates them from the capital, which is of the Romano-Doric
order. The whole pillar measures 122 feet in height, being two feet lower
than that of Trajan. The shafts of the two are exactly of the same height
(100 Roman feet), and are formed in the same way of solid cylinders of
marble, in the centre of which the spiral staircase which leads to the top
is hewn.
The great winding wreath of bas-reliefs which twines round the column
contains scenes from the history of the German wars in the years from A.D.
167-179, in which a number of the tribes north of the Danube, the
Marcomanni, Quadi, Suevi, Hermonduri, Jazyges, Vandali, Sarmati, Alani,
and Roxolani, with many others, took part. The representations begin with
an army on the march crossing a river (the Danube); then follow, as on the
Pillar of Trajan, scenes in which the general harangues his troops, the
enemy’s encampments are seen, and a great victory is won, accompanied with
the usual thank-offerings.
But the most remarkable part of the whole relief is a scene which plainly
corresponds to the account given by Dion Cassius of the sudden, and, as it
seemed, supernatural relief afforded by a thunderstorm to the Roman army
when hard pressed by the Quadi, who had surrounded them and succeeded in
preventing all their efforts to escape. “The Roman army,” says Dion, “were
in the greatest distress from fatigue, many of them were wounded, and they
were hemmed in by the enemy, without water, under a burning sun. They
could neither fight nor retreat, and would have been compelled to stand
in their ranks and die under the scorching heat, had not some thick clouds
suddenly gathered, and a heavy rain fallen, which refreshed them, and
afforded them drink. This did not happen without the intervention of the
gods (οὐκ ἀθεεί), for it was said that one Arnuphis, an Egyptian magician,
was with Marcus Aurelius, and that he, by invoking the aid of Hermes, the
god of the air, and some other deities by means of incantations, drew down
the rain.” Xiphilinus, however, from whose abridgement of Dion we have the
above account, declares that “Dion has purposely falsified the
circumstances, for he must have known that the ‘legio fulminata’ obtained
its name from this incident, the true history of which was as follows.
There was a legion in the army of Marcus Aurelius, consisting entirely of
Christians. The emperor being told that their prayers in such an emergency
never remained unanswered, requested them to pray for help to their God.
When they had prayed, God immediately smote the enemy with lightning, but
refreshed the Roman army by a copious rain, upon which Marcus published a
decree, in which he complimented the Christian legion and bestowed the
name fulminate upon it.” History however, does not bear out this wonderful
tale of Xiphilinus, for the name fulminate is known, from inscriptions, to
have been given to the twelfth legion as early as the reign of
Augustus.[98]
Upon the pillar the scene is represented by the figure of Jupiter Pluvius
dripping with rain, which the soldiers are eagerly catching in their
shields.
The drought is followed by an inundation, in which many of the Germans are
drowned. A grand battle takes place, followed by the burning of the
enemy’s huts and the seizure of numerous captives.
The figure of Marcus Aurelius on horseback, accompanying a long train of
spoil taken from the German tribes, and a long series of battles,
conflagrations of villages and towns, conferences with the enemy’s
generals follow, and the first campaign ends at a point near the centre of
the column, with a procession of trophies and spoils of war, in the midst
of which a figure of Victory inscribes the triumph on a shield.
Over this figure of Victory begins the history of the second campaign, in
which four battles are represented, and various military scenes, as the
crossing of the Danube in boats, the thanksgiving sacrifices after
victory, the emperor addressing his army, captures of women and children,
and finally a long train of captives and spoils led off in triumph. This
great marble history is after the model of that on Trajan’s Column. The
style of execution is, however, somewhat different: the figures stand out
much more from the surface, are more roughly cut, and have a heavier and
stiffer look, resembling that of the reliefs upon the Arch of Severus, and
the base of the Pillar of Antoninus Pius.
The column is called in all ancient writings Columna Antonini, which may
apply to either of the Antonines. But it is perfectly evident from spiral
reliefs, representing the frequent crossings of the Danube, and especially
from that recording the incident of the sudden storm which extricated the
Roman army from their difficulties, that the German wars of Marcus
Aurelius are the subject commemorated.
Aurelius Victor and Julius Capitolinus state that temples, columns and
priesthoods, were dedicated to this emperor after his death, and some
inscriptions discovered in 1777 in the Piazza Colonna establish the
conclusion that this pillar was erected in his honour beyond doubt. These
inscriptions, now in the Gallery of Inscriptions in the Vatican, contain a
petition from Adrastus, a freedman of Septimius Severus, and custodian of
the Pillar of Marcus Aurelius, addressed to the Emperor Severus requesting
leave to have the miserable hut (cannaba) in which he lived changed into a
habitable house (solarium) for himself and his heirs, and also the decree
of the emperor, giving the permission and assigning materials and a site.
The petition was presented immediately on the accession of Severus, and
the decree is dated in the consulship of Falco and Clarus, A.D. 193, two
months after the emperor had taken possession of the palace. In this
inscription the pillar is called the Columna Centenaria, and exact
measurements of the shaft have shown that it is just one hundred Roman
feet in height, including the base and capital.[99]
The bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius, which stood on the summit, was
probably carried off by the Byzantine emperor, Constans II., to Syracuse,
and was there taken by the Saracens from him, and conveyed to Alexandria
with the rest of the plunder he had stripped from the buildings of Rome.
To distinguish this column from the above-mentioned Pillar of Antoninus
Pius, it is called in some of the legal documents of the tenth century
“Columpna major Antonina.” As recorded in the inscription on the modern
base, it was much injured by lightning in the fourteenth century, and
restored by Sixtus V.
[Sidenote: Piazza Navona.]
The Piazza Navona was formerly a stadium, not a circus. The strongest
evidence we have in favour of this rests on the shape of the piazza and of
the ruins. One of the essential parts of a circus, the spina, is entirely
wanting, and the end from which the runners started is at right angles to
the longer sides, while in a circus, as in the case of the Circus of
Maxentius, the carceres always stood in a slanting direction across the
course, in order to equalise the distances round the spina.
The obelisk, which now stands in the centre of the piazza was brought by
Innocent X. from the Circus of Maxentius on the Appian Road. The Circus of
Maxentius was not, however, its original site, for the hieroglyphics are
of Roman execution and contain the name of Domitian.
[Sidenote: Mausoleum of Augustus.]
The northern part of the Campus Martius, between the Via del Ripetta and
the Pincian Hill, contained only one great building of which we have any
knowledge. This was the Mausoleum of Augustus, the ruins of which are now
buried under the Teatro Correa, and are approached by a narrow entry
leading out of the Via dei Pontefici. All that can now be seen of the
shapeless mass which this once stately building presents, is a small part
of the cylindrical brickwork basement on the left of the entrance to the
Teatro Correa, and another fragment of the same at the back of the Church
of S. Rocco. The proofs that these are the remains of the Mausoleum of
Augustus are quite indisputable. Suetonius places it between the Tiber and
the Flaminian Road, and Strabo speaks of it as standing near the bank of
the river, descriptions which, though they are not very definite, agree
with the site of the Teatro Correa sufficiently. Complete certainty is,
however, afforded by the inscriptions which have been found on the site of
the Ustrina Cæsarum, where the bodies were burnt before burial. These were
found near the Corso, between the Via degli Otto Cantoni and the Via dei
Pontefici, a spot answering to Strabo’s notice of the site of the Ustrina
as standing in the middle of the Campus, which is here narrowed by the
approach of the Pincian Hill towards the river.
Augustus had built this magnificent tomb in his sixth consulship (B.C.
28). At that time the course of the Flaminian Road through the Campus was
lined with the tombs of many eminent Roman statesmen and public
characters, which have all, with the exception of the insignificant Tomb
of Bibulus, totally disappeared. The modern city has entirely effaced all
traces of these, but we may in all probability suppose that the Flaminian
road presented no less striking a spectacle in the days of Augustus than
the Appian, which we are accustomed to regard as the great burying-place
of Rome.
The name mausoleum was apparently given to this tomb if not immediately,
yet soon after its completion, not from any resemblance in the plan of the
building of the famous monument of the Halicarnassian queen, which
differed entirely in shape and design, but because the expression
mausoleum had already become a name used to designate any tomb of colossal
proportions. The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus was a rectangular building
surrounded with a colonnade, while the Tomb of Augustus was cylindrical
and ornamented with deep niches. Strabo gives the following description of
the latter monument: “The most remarkable of all the tombs in the Campus
is that called the Mausoleum, which consists of a huge mound of earth
raised upon a lofty base of white marble near the river bank, and planted
to the summit with evergreen trees. Upon the top is a bronze statue of
Cæsar Augustus, and under the mound are the burial-places of Augustus and
his family and friends, while behind it is a spacious wood containing
admirably designed walks. In the middle of the Campus is the enclosure he
made for burning the corpses, also of white marble, surrounded by an iron
railing, and planted with poplar-trees.”[100]
The mound of earth here described by Strabo was probably of a conical
shape, and the trees were planted on terraced ledges. The mass of the
building was cylindrical, like the central portions of Hadrian’s
Mausoleum, and of the tombs of Plautius and Cæcilia Metella, and was
supported upon a square basement which is now entirely buried beneath the
level of the ground. The exterior of the cylindrical part was relieved by
large niches which doubtless contained statues, and broke the otherwise
heavy uniformity of the surface. At the entrance were the bronze pillars
which Augustus had ordered to be erected after his death, on which was
engraved a catalogue of the acts of his reign. We now possess a fragment
of a copy of this interesting document in the famous Monumentum Ancyranum,
found at Ancyra in the vestibule of a Temple of Augustus. Besides these
pillars two obelisks stood in front of the entrance door, one of which is
now placed in the Piazza of S. Maria Maggiore, while the other stands
between the statues of the Dioscuri on the Quirinal. These obelisks were
not, however, placed there at the time when the tomb was first built, but
at a later period of the empire. The entrance fronted towards the city,
i.e., to the south, near the apse of the Church of S. Rocco, and appears
to have had a portico with columns, the traces of which are still left.
The interior was formed by massive concentric walls, the spaces between
which were vaulted and divided into cells for the deposit of the urns
containing the ashes of the illustrious dead. A great alabaster vase found
near the Mausoleum in 1777, and placed in the Vatican Museum, was probably
one of these. We know from various passages of Roman authors that the
first burial which took place here was that of the young Marcellus, the
favourite nephew of Augustus, who died at Baiæ[101] in B.C. 23, and the
last, that of the Emperor Nerva in A.D. 98. Trajan was buried under his
column. The Mausoleum of Hadrian became the Imperial tomb in A.D.
138.[102] During the 160 years which intervened, the ashes of Agrippa,
Octavia, the mother of Marcellus, Drusus, Caius and Lucius, Augustus
himself and Livia, Germanicus, Drusus, son of Tiberius, the elder
Agrippina, Tiberius, Antonia (wife of L. Domitius), Claudius and
Britannicus were deposited here. Besides these there must have been a
great number of other friends and relations of the Imperial family buried
here. Only one of all the inscriptions recording these burials is now
extant. It is engraved on a pedestal, which bore the urn where the ashes
of the elder Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus and mother of Caligula,
lay. In the inscription on this pedestal Caligula is called Augustus,
showing that the burial took place after his accession, in accordance with
the account of Agrippina’s banishment by Tiberius. The pedestal was
hollowed out and used in the Middle Ages as a measure for corn, and is
still inscribed with the words RUGITELLA DI GRANO. It may now be seen in
the courtyard of the Conservator’s Palace on the Capitol. At the same
time, and at a spot between the Mausoleum and the Corso were found six
cippi of travertine, recording the burning of the bodies of four of the
children of Germanicus, Tiberius Cæsar, Caius Cæsar, Livilla, and one
whose name is erased. The remaining two cippi record the burning of the
bodies of a son of Drusus, and of one of the Flavian family. It is evident
that these belonged to the Ustrina Cæsarum, a place described by Strabo,
as quoted above, where the corpses of the dead were burnt and the formal
ceremony of collecting the bones took place. The cippi may still be seen
in the Vatican Museum.
The Mausoleum remained closed after Nerva’s burial until the capture of
Rome by Alaric in A.D. 409, when the Goths broke it open in their search
for treasure, and scattered the ashes of the Cæsars to the winds. It was
then probably that the alabaster vase mentioned above was removed from the
Mausoleum and carried to the Ustrina where it was found.
In the 12th century the Mausoleum suffered the fate of all the other great
buildings of Rome. It became a castle of the Colonna family, and bore the
name Augusta. The mound of earth was then probably removed, and a stone or
brick tower built in its place. Previously to this, the statue of
Augustus, with the bronze decorations of the Pantheon and Forum of Trajan,
had probably been carried to Syracuse by Constans, and thence to
Alexandria by the Saracens.
The building might, however, still, like the tomb of Hadrian, have long
defied the attacks of time, had not the Romans themselves, in the
commotions of 1167, demolished the Colonna Castle, and with it the greater
part of the walls upon which it was built. Two hundred years later, the
body of the last of the Tribunes, Cola di Rienzi, was burned by the Jews
before the Mausoleum.[103] At that time the spot was called Campo d’Austa
from the ancient site of the Ustrina. The interior chambers seem to have
been entirely demolished in the 15th century, and only the exterior wall
left. Poggio, the Florentine, describes the building as used in his time
(1440) for a vineyard, and before that date its shape was completely
changed by the falling in of the vaulting of the interior, so that it
presented the appearance of an amphitheatre instead of a lofty conical
building. In Donatis’ book (1638), it is represented as a funnel-shaped
ruin with a garden on the sloping sides of the interior. Much information
might doubtless be gained by well-directed excavations, which have
apparently never been undertaken on account of the present occupation of
the ruin as a circus in winter and a theatre (the Teatro Correa) in
summer.
[Sidenote: Muro Torto.]
Beyond the Porta del Popolo on the edge of the Pincian hill, there is a
very ancient piece of wall, faced in the style called opus reticulatum,
which is made of small diamond-shaped blocks of tufa set in the surface of
a mass of concrete. These blocks are driven into the concrete before the
lime has dried and set. This ruin, which is called the Muro Torto, is
often spoken of as having been a part of the house of Sylla but I do not
know upon what authority. It may have formed a part of the substructions
of some of the private buildings on the Pincian, previous to the time of
Aurelian, who incorporated it in his wall. Near the angle of the wall
where it turns sharply to the south is a point at which the brickwork
leans in great masses considerably out of the perpendicular, whence the
name of Muro Torto. Procopius speaks of this as having been in the same
state long before his time, and calls it the broken wall.
[Sidenote: Pons Ælius.]
Passing along the bank of the Tiber by the Via Ripetta from the Porta del
Popolo we come to the bridge of S. Angelo (Pons Ælius) which crosses the
river close to the Castle of S. Angelo, anciently the Mausoleum of
Hadrian. This bridge was built by the Emperor Hadrian at the same time
with his Mausoleum. The anonymous writer of the Einsiedlen MS. gives an
inscription which in his time remained upon the bridge assigning its
erection to the nineteenth tribuneship and third consulship of Hadrian,
which indicates the year A.D. 135, and in confirmation of this Nardini
gives a medal of Hadrian which dates from his third consulship, and has on
the obverse a representation of this bridge. The name Pons Ælius, given to
it by Dion Cassius in his account of Hadrian’s funeral, was probably
derived either from Hadrian’s prænomen Ælius, or from the name of his son
Ælius Cæsar whose burial was the first which took place in the Mausoleum.
The piers of the bridge are ancient, but the upper parts have been
rebuilt.
[Sidenote: Mausoleum of Hadrian.]
The Mausoleum of Hadrian owes its preservation entirely to the peculiar
fitness of the site and shape for the purpose of a fortress which it has
served since the time of Belisarius. Had it not been thus made serviceable
to the turbulent spirit of the mediæval Romans, the same hands which
stripped the great pile of its marble facing, and, after hurling the
statues with which it was adorned into the moat, allowed them to lie there
in oblivion, would have torn asunder and carried away the whole mass to
furnish materials for the palaces and stables of their ferocious and
ignorant nobles. The original form of this colossal mausoleum is now
greatly changed by the modern buildings which have been piled upon it, by
the addition of the corbels round its upper part, and by the loss of the
exterior facing of marble, so that the ancient appearance can be only
conjecturally restored. The remaining ancient part consists of a square
basement of concrete and travertine blocks, the sides of which measured
ninety-five yards surmounted by an enormous cylindrical structure of
travertine seventy yards in diameter and seventy-five feet high. Procopius
tells us that this was cased in Parian marble, and that upon the summit
stood a number of splendid marble statues of men and horses.[104] There
are several other tombs in Italy constructed upon the same plan with a
cylindrical tower placed upon a square base. Two of these are upon the
Appian road about three miles from Rome, the celebrated Tomb of Cæcilia
Metella, and that of the Servilii, and belong to the Republican Era. Two
others are of the Augustan Age, the tomb of the Plautii at Ponte Lucano,
near Tivoli, and the beautiful monument of Munatius Plancus, near Gaeta.
Hadrian’s design was not therefore by any means a new one, as we might
have expected in the case of an emperor who was himself an architect, and
proud of his artistic designs.
It is plain from the history of Procopius that the statues of men and
horses which he describes were upon the top of the building. For the
defenders of the mausoleum against the army of Vitiges being hard pressed
by the approach of the Goths under shelter of a testudo, in their despair
seized these statues and hurled them upon the heads of their assailants,
thus breaking down the testudines and repelling the attack. Of the exact
order in which they were arranged we have no evidence. Tradition asserts
that the twenty-four Corinthian columns destroyed by fire in the Basilica
of St. Paul in 1823 formerly belonged to the Mausoleum of Hadrian, and
that they were removed by Honorius.[105] A comparison of this tradition
with a passage of Herodian, in which he says that the ashes of Septimius
Severus were buried in the temple where rest the bones of the Antonini,
has led to the conjecture that the columns formed the colonnade of a round
temple on the top of the mausoleum in which temple Hadrian’s colossal
statue stood, and that the bronze fir-cone found here, which is now in the
Vatican garden, ornamented the summit. Round this temple, and upon the
level top of the cylindrical tower, may have been arranged the various
statues of which Procopius speaks.
The colossal head of Hadrian’s statue found here is still to be seen in
the Museo Pio Clementino, the bronze gilt peacocks in the Giardino della
Pigna. The famous Barberini Faun, now at Munich, and the dancing Faun at
Florence, were amongst the ornaments of the upper part of the tomb.
Another conjecture as to the shape of the upper part of the building is
that it was surmounted by a smaller cylindrical tower, with a roof in the
shape of a truncated cone, upon the top of which stood the colossal statue
of Hadrian. There is not sufficient evidence to give any degree of
certainty to either of these conjectural restorations.
The interior of the building, according to the latest discoveries,
consists of a large central rectangular chamber (thirty-six by thirty feet
wide and fifty-four feet high), approached by an ascending spiral
corridor, leading from a lower chamber which communicated immediately with
the principal entrance. The entrance was a high arch in the cylindrical
tower immediately opposite the bridge; it is now walled up and the lower
chamber into which it leads can only be approached from above.
In the central chamber there are four niches in which formerly stood the
urns and tombstones of the illustrious persons buried here. A large
sarcophagus of porphyry found here was used for the tomb of Pope Innocent
II. in the Lateran, and the lid may still be seen in the Baptisterium of
St. Peter’s, where it is used as a font. The chamber was lighted and
ventilated by square passages cut through the stone in a slanting
direction, and the rain water was carried off by other channels, which
conveyed it into drains at the foot of the building. It does not appear to
be certainly known whether other chambers may not exist in the interior
which have not been yet discovered. Piranesi gives a number of additional
chambers besides the two above mentioned, but his representation is
probably conjectural.
After the burial of Nerva no more room was left in the Mausoleum of
Augustus for the interment of the imperial ashes. Trajan’s remains were
deposited under his column in the forum bearing his name, but Hadrian
gladly seized the opportunity of adding another to the many colossal
structures he had already reared. The mausoleum was begun at the same time
with the Ælian bridge in the year A.D. 135. The bricks of which part of
the building consists have stamps of various years of Hadrian’s reign, and
show that the greater part of the building was erected by him, though
Antoninus Pius probably completed it. Hadrian’s son Ælius, who died before
his father, was the first Cæsar whose ashes were placed in this tomb.
After him, Hadrian himself was buried here, and then the Emperor Antoninus
Pius, and his wife the elder Faustina, three of their sons, Fulvius
Antoninus, M. Galerius Aurelius Antoninus, and L. Aurelius Verus, the
colleague of M. Aurelius in the empire, and a daughter Aurelia Fadilla.
No record has been preserved of the burial of M. Aurelius, but it seems
probable that his ashes were deposited here, as the Mausoleum of Hadrian
continued to be the tomb of the Antonines till the time of Severus, who
built a third imperial monument, the Septizonium, on the Appian Road.[106]
Four children of M. Aurelius were buried here, who died during their
father’s life, named Aurelius Antoninus, T. Ælius Aurelius, and Domitia
Faustina, and also his miserable son and successor the Emperor Commodus.
The inscriptions recording all these burials, were copied by the anonymous
writer of Einsiedlen in the ninth century, when they were apparently still
legible upon the south wall of the square basement. The inscriptions
recording the names Hadrian and M. Aurelius may have been placed upon the
upper part of the tomb, like those on the Plautian Tomb and the Tomb of
Cæcilia Metella, and may therefore either have escaped the notice of the
above-mentioned anonymous traveller, or have been stripped off with the
marble casing of the exterior.
After the burial of M. Aurelius the tomb was closed until the sack of Rome
by Alaric in A.D. 410, when this barbarian’s soldiers probably broke it
open in search of treasure, and scattered the ashes of the Antonines to
the winds. From this time for a hundred years the tomb was turned into a
fortress, the possession of which became the object of many struggles in
the wars of the Goths under Vitiges A.D. 537 and Totilas who was killed
A.D. 552. From the end of the sixth century, when Gregory the Great saw on
its summit a vision of St. Michael sheathing his sword in token that the
prayers of the Romans for preservation from the plague were heard, the
Mausoleum of Hadrian was considered as a consecrated building under the
name of S. Angelus inter nubes, usque ad cælos, or inter cælos, until it
was seized in A.D. 923 by Alberic, Count of Tusculum and the infamous
Marozia, and again became the scene of the fierce struggles of those
miserable ages between popes, emperors, and reckless adventurers.[107] The
last injuries appear to have been inflicted upon the building in the
contest between the French Pope Clemens VII. and the Italian Pope Urban
VIII. The exterior was then finally dismantled and stripped. Partial
additions and restorations soon began to take place. Boniface IX., in the
beginning of the fifteenth century, erected new battlements and
fortifications on and around it, and since his time it has remained in the
possession of the Papal Government. The strange medley of Papal reception
rooms, dungeons, and military magazines which now encumbers the top was
chiefly built by Paul III. The corridor connecting it with the Vatican
dates from the time of Alexander Borgia (A.D. 1494), and the bronze statue
of St. Michael on the summit, which replaced an older marble statue, from
the reign of Benedict XIV.[108]