in the salt office of the Capitol, which were inscribed with the name and munificence of Catulus.* 2. Eleven temples were visible in some degree, from the perfect form of the Pantheon, to the three arches and a marble column of the temple of peace, which Vespasian erected after the civil wars and the Jewish triumph. 3. Of the number, which he rashly defines, of seven therma or public baths, none were sufficiently entire to represent the use and distribution of the several parts; but those of Diocletian and Antoninus Caracalla still retained the titles of the founders, and astonished the curious spectator, who, in observing their solidity and extent, the variety of marbles, the size and multitude of the columns, compared the labour and expense with the use and importance. Of the baths of Constantine, of Alexander, of Domitian, or rather of Titus, some vestige might yet be found. 4. The triumphal arches of Titus, Severus, and Constantine, were entire, both the structure and the inscriptions; a falling fragment was honoured with the name of Trajan; and two arches, then extant, in the Flaminian way, have been ascribed to the baser memory of Faustina and Gallienus. 5. After the wonder of the Coliseum, Poggius might have overlooked a small amphitheatre of brick, most probably for the use of the prætorian camp; the theatres of Marcellus and Pompeyt were occupied in a great measure by public and private buildings; and in the Circus Agonalis and Maximus, little more than the situation and the form could be investigated. 6. The columns of Trajan and Antonine were still erect; but the Egyptian obelisks were broken or buried. A people of gods and heroes, the workmanship of art, was reduced to one eques

* [The Capitol was repaired by Q. Catulus 69 B.C. Clinton, F. H. iii. 168. The still existing remains of his substruction and tabularium, with the inscription, are sketched in the Addenda to Sir W. Gell's Topography of Rome (p. 493, edit. Bohn). But it is there erroneously said that these repairs were made in the year when Catulus was consul (A.U.C. 676. B.C. 78). Livy, Pliny, and Cassiodorus, all assign to them a date nine years later. The ruins here referred to belonged to the arx or citadel, at the western end of the Capitoline hill. Yet Catulus extended his operations also to the Temple of Jupiter, the proper Capitol, at the opposite extremity (Livy, Ep. 38).—ED.]

[The theatre of Pompey was restored by the Gothic king, Theo. doric, who furnished the senator Symmachus with funds for that pur pose. Cassiod. Var. iv. 51.-ED.]

trian figure of gilt brass, and to five marble statues, of which the most conspicuous were the two horses of Phidias and Praxiteles. 7. The two mausoleums or sepulchres of Augustus and Adrian could not totally be lost; but the former was only visible as a mound of earth; and the latter, the castle of St. Angelo, had acquired the name and appearance of a modern fortress. With the addition of some separate and nameless columns, such were the remains of the ancient city for the marks of a more recent structure might be detected in the walls, which formed a circumference of ten miles, included three hundred and seventy-nine turrets, and opened into the country by thirteen gates.

:

This melancholy picture was drawn above nine hundred years after the fall of the Western empire, and even of the Gothic kingdom of Italy. A long period of distress and anarchy, in which empire, and arts, and riches, had migrated from the banks of the Tiber, was incapable of restoring or adorning the city; and, as all that is human must retrograde if it do not advance, every successive age must have hastened the ruin of the works of antiquity. To measure the progress of decay, and to ascertain, at each era, the state of each edifice, would be an endless and a useless labour; and I shall content myself with two observations, which will introduce a short inquiry into the general causes and effects. 1. Two hundred years before the eloquent complaint of Poggius, an anonymous writer composed a description of Rome.† His ignorance may repeat the same objects under strange and fabulous names. Yet this barbarous topographer had eyes

and ears; he could observe the visible remains, he could listen to the tradition of the people; and he distinctly enumerates seven theatres, eleven baths, twelve arches, and eighteen palaces, of which many had disappeared before the

* [Respecting these horses, refer to a note in ch. 39, vol. iv. p. 269, and some further observations, made by Gibbon, near the close of this chapter.-ED.] +Liber de Mirabilibus Romæ, ex Registro Nicolai Cardinalis de Arragoniâ in Bibliothecâ Sti. Isidori Armario IV. No. 69. This treatise, with some short but pertinent notes, has been published by Montfaucon, (Diarium Italicum, p. 283-301) who thus delivers his own critical opinion: Scriptor xiiimi circiter sæculi, ut ibidem notatur; antiquariæ rei imperitus, et, ut ab illo ævo, nugis et anilibus fabellis refertus, sed, quia monumenta, quæ iis temporibus Romæ supererant, pro modulo recenset, non parum inde lucis mutua bitur qui Romanis antiquitatibus indagandis operam navabit (p. 283).

time of Poggius. It is apparent, that many stately monuments of antiquity survived till a late period;* and that the principles of destruction acted with vigorous and increasing energy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 2. The same reflection must be applied to the three last ages; and we should vainly seek the Septizonium of Severus,† which is celebrated by Petrarch and the antiquarians of the sixteenth century. While the Roman edifices were still entire, the first blows, however weighty and impetuous, were resisted by the solidity of the mass and the harmony of the parts; but the slightest touch would precipitate the fragments of arches and columns, that already nodded to their fall.

After a diligent inquiry, I can discern four principal causes of the ruin of Rome, which continued to operate in a period of more than a thousand years. I. The injuries of time and nature. II. The hostile attacks of the Barbarians and Christians. III. The use and abuse of the materials. And, IV. The domestic quarrels of the Romans.

I. The art of man is able to construct monuments far more permanent than the narrow span of his own existence; yet these monuments, like himself, are perishable and frail; and in the boundless annals of time, his life and his labours must equally be measured as a fleeting moment. Of a simple and solid edifice, it is not easy, however, to circum scribe the duration. As the wonders of ancient days, the pyramids attracted the curiosity of the ancients; a hun

* The Père Mabillon (Analecta, tom. iv. p. 502) has published an anonymous pilgrim of the ninth century, who, in his visit round the churches and holy places of Rome, touches on several buildings, especially porticoes, which had disappeared before the thirteenth cen tury. [Benjamin of Tudela passed through Rome in 1161. His descriptions are sometimes ridiculously disfigured by his religious prejudices and ignorance of history. Yet a skilful archæologist might sift from them useful information. The "two copper pillars constructed by King Solomon of blessed memory," in the church of St. John in porta Latina, the "statue of Samson, with a lance of stone in his hand," that of Absalom, the son of David, these and other more astounding marvels, indicate works of ancient art remaining at that period, which may be better explained. De la Brocquière speaks only in general terms of what he saw at the same time as Poggio, and tells of "grand edifices, columns of marble, statues, and marvellous monuments." Early Travels, edit. Bohn, p. 66—68. 285.—ED.]

On the Septizonium. see the Mémoires sur Pétrarque (tom. i. p. 325), Donatus (p. 338), and Nardini (p. 117. 414).

"

The age of the pyramids is remote and unknown, since Diodorus

dred generations, the leaves of autumn,* have dropped into the grave; and after the fall of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies, the Cæsars and Caliphs, the same pyramids stand erect and unshaken above the floods of the Nile. A complex figure, of various and minute parts, is more accessible to injury and decay; and the silent lapse of time is often accelerated by hurricanes and earthquakes, by fires and inundations. The air and earth have doubtless been shaken; and the lofty turrets of Rome have tottered from their foundations; but the seven hills do not appear to be placed on the great cavities of the globe; nor has the city, in any age, been exposed to the convulsions of nature, which, in the climate of Antioch, Lisbon, or Lima, have crumbled in a few moments the works of ages into dust. Fire is the most powerful agent of life and death; the rapid mischief may be kindled and propagated by the industry or negligence of mankind; and every period of the Roman annals is marked by the repetition of similar calamities. A memorable conflagration, the guilt or misfortune of Nero's reign, continued, though with unequal fury, either six or nine days.t Innumerable buildings, crowded in close and crooked streets, supplied

Siculus (tom. i. 1. 1. c. 44. p. 72.) is unable to decide whether they were constructed one thousand or three thousand four hundred years before the one hundred and eightieth Olympiad. Sir John Marsham's contracted scale of the Egyptian dynasties would fix them about two thousand years before Christ. (Canon. Chronicus, p. 47.) [A poet of the present century has well denominated the Pyramids, "rocks amid the flood of time." (Wanderer of Switzerland, by James Montgomery.) Dr. Lepsius, the high antiquity of whose Egyptian Chronology is well known, carries back the erection of the oldest pyramids to the time of the "fourth and fifth Manethonic dynasties, therefore between three and four thousand years before Christ." Letters from Egypt. Preliminary account, p. 13, edit. Bohn.-ED.]

* See the speech of Glaucus in the Iliad. (Z. 146.) This natural but melancholy image is familiar to Homer.

The learning and criticism of M. des Vignoles (Histoire Critique de la République des Lettres, tom. 8. p. 74-118. 9. p. 172-187.) dates the fire of Rome from A.D. 64, July 19, and the subsequent persecution of the Christians from November 15, of the same year. [The date of the fire of Rome is satisfactorily ascertained; that of the persecution not so clearly. Idatius places it in A.D. 58; while Eusebius, Jerome, and Epiphanius bring it down so late as 66 and 67. Clinton infers from Tacitus and Suetonius, that it followed immediately after the fire in the year 64, and preceded the pestilence in the autumn of 65. F. R. i. 46. 47.-ED.]

perpetual fuel for the flames, and when they ceased, four only of the fourteen regions were left entire; three were totally destroyed, and seven were deformed by the relics of smoking and lacerated edifices. In the full meridian of empire, the metropolis arose with fresh beauty from her ashes; yet the memory of the old deplored their irreparable losses, the arts of Greece, the trophies of victory, the monuments of primitive or fabulous antiquity. In the days of distress and anarchy, every wound is mortal, every fall irre trievable; nor can the damage be restored either by the public care of government, or the activity of private interest. Yet two causes may be alleged, which render the calamity of fire more destructive to a flourishing than a decayed city. 1. The more combustible materials of brick, timber, and metals, are first melted or consumed, but the flames may play without injury or effect on the naked walls, and massy arches, that have been despoiled of their ornaments. 2. It is among the common and plebeian habitations that a mischievous spark is most easily blown to a conflagration; but as soon as they are devoured, the greater edifices, which have resisted or escaped, are left as so many islands in a state of solitude and safety. From her situation, Rome is exposed to the danger of frequent inundations. Without excepting the Tiber, the rivers that descend from either side of the Apennine have a short and irregular course; a shallow stream in the summer heats; an impetuous torrent when it is swelled, in the spring or winter, by the fall of rain, and the melting of the snows. When the current is. repelled from the sea by adverse winds, when the ordinary bed is inadequate to the weight of waters, they rise above the banks, and overspread, without limits or control, the plains and cities of the adjacent country. Soon after the triumph of the first Punic war, the Tiber was increased by

* Quippe in regiones quatuordecim Roma dividitur, quarum quatuor integræ manebant, tres solo tenus dejectæ septem reliquis pauca tectorum vestigia supererant, lacera et semiusta. Among the old relics that were irreparably lost, Tacitus enumerates the temple of the moon of Servius Tullius; the fane and altar consecrated by Evander præsenti Herculi; the temple of Jupiter Stator, a vow of Romulus; the palace of Numa; the temple of Vesta cum penatibus populi Romani. He then deplores the opes tot victoriis quæsitæ et Græcarum artium decora.... multa quæ seniores meminerant, quæ reparari nequibant. (Annal. 15. 40, 41.)