་ formed; the metals were purified and cast: the marbles were hewn and polished; and after foreign and domestic rapine had been satiated, the remains of the city, could a purchaser have been found, were still venal. The monuments of antiquity had been left naked of their precious ornaments, but the Romans would demolish with their own hands the arches and walls, if the hope of profit could surpass the cost of the labour and exportation. If Charle magne had fixed in Italy the seat of the Western empire, his genius would have aspired to restore, rather than to violate, the works of the Cæsars; but policy confined the French monarch to the forests of Germany; his taste could be gratified only by destruction; and the new palace of Aix-laChapelle was decorated with the marbles of Ravenna* and Rome. Five hundred years after Charlemagne, a king of Sicily, Robert, the wisest and most liberal sovereign of the age, was supplied with the same materials by the easy navigation of the Tiber and the sea; and Petrarch sighs an indignant complaint, that the ancient capital of the world should adorn from her own bowels the slothful luxury of Naples. But these examples of plunder or purchase were *For the spoils of Ravenna (musiva atque marmora), see the original grant of pope Adrian I. to Charlemagne. (Codex Carolin. epist. 67, in Muratori, Script. Ital. tom. iii. p. 2, p. 223. [The mosaics of Ravenna have been noticed in ch. 49, vol. v. p. 392.-ED.] + I shall quote the authentic testimony of the Saxon poet (A.D. 887 -899) de Rebus gestis Carcli magni 1. 5, p. 437-440, in the historians of France (tom. v. p. 180). Ad quæ marmoreas præstabat ROMA Columnas, Quasdam præcipuas pulchra Ravenna dedit. And I shall add, from the Chronicle of Sigebert (Historians of France, a long passage of Petrarch (Opp. p. 536, 537, in Epistolâ hortatoriâ ad Nicolaum Laurentium), it is so strong and full to the point: Nec pudor aut pietas continuit quominus impii spoliata Dei templa, occupatas arces, opes publicas, regiones urbis, atque honores magistratuum inter se divisos (habeant ?); quam unâ in re, turbulenti ac seditiosi homines et totius reliquæ vitæ consiliis et rationibus discordes, inhumani fœderis stupendâ societate convenirent, in pontes et monia atque immeritos lapides desævirent. Denique post vi vel senio collapsa palatia, quæ quondam ingentes tenuerunt viri, post diruptos arcus rare in the darker ages; and the Romans, alone and unenvied, might have applied to their private or public use the remaining structures of antiquity, if, in their present form and situation, they had not been useless in a great measure to the city and its inhabitants. The walls still described the old circumference, but the city had descended from the seven hills into the Campus Martius; and some of the noblest monuments, which had braved the injuries of time, were left in a desert, far remote from the habitations of mankind. The palaces of the senators were no longer adapted to the manners or fortunes of their indigent successors; the use of baths* and porticoes was forgotten; in the sixth century, the games of the theatre, amphitheatre, and circas, had been interrupted; some temples were devoted to the prevailing worship; but the Christian churches preferred the holy figure of the cross; and fashion, or reason, had distributed, after a peculiar model, the cells and offices of the cloister. Under the ecclesiastical reign, the number of these pious foundations was enormously multiplied; and the city was crowded with forty monasteries of men, twenty of women, and sixty chapters and colleges of canons and priests,† who aggravated, instead of relieving, the depopulation of the tenth century. But if the forms of ancient architecture were disregarded by a people insensible of their use and beauty, the plentiful materials were applied to every call of necessity or superstition; till the fairest columns of the Ionic and Corinthian orders, the richest marbles of Paros and Numidia, were degraded, perhaps, to the support of a convent or a stable. The daily havoc which is perpetrated by the Turks in the triumphales (unde majores horum forsitan corruerunt) de ipsius vetustatis ac propriæ impietatis fragminibus vilem quæstum turpi mercimonio captare non puduit. Itaque nunc, heu dolor! heu scelus indignum de vestris marmoreis columnis, de liminibus templorum (ad quæ nuper ex orbe toto concursus devotissimus fiebat), de imaginibus sepulchrorum sub quibus patrum vestrorum venerabilis civis (cinis?) erat, ut reliquas sileam, desidiosa Neapolis adornatur. Sie paulatin ruinæ ipsæ deficiunt. Yet king Robert was the friend of Petrarch. * Yet Charlemagne washed and swam at Aix-la-Chapelle with a hundred of his courtiers (Eginhart, c. 22, p. 108, 109); and Muratori describes, as late as the year 814, the public baths which were built at Spoleto in Italy. (Annali, tom. vi. p. 416.) See the Annals of Italy, A.D. 988. For this and the preceding cities of Greece and Asia may afford a melancholy example; and in the gradual destruction of the monuments of Rome, Sixtus the Fifth may alone be excused for employing the stones of the Septizonium in the glorious edifice of St. Peter's. A fragment, a ruin, howsoever mangled or profaned, may be viewed with pleasure and regret; but the greater part of the marble was deprived of substance, as well as of place and proportion; it was burnt to lime for the purpose of cement. Since the arrival of Poggius, the temple of Concord,+ and many capital structures, had vanished from his eyes; and an epigram of the same age expresses a just and pious fear that the continuance of this practice would finally annihilate all the monuments of antiquity. The smallness of their numbers was the sole check on the demands and depredations of the Romans. The imagination of Petrarch might create the presence of a mighty people; § and I hesitate to believe, that even in the fourteenth century, they could be reduced to a contemptible list of thirty-three thousand inhabitants. From that period to the reign of Leo the Tenth, if they multiplied to the amount of eighty-five thousand, the increase of citi zens was, in some degree, pernicious to the ancient city. fact, Muratori himself is indebted to the Benedictine history of Père Mabillon. * Vita di Sisto Quinto, da Gregorio Leti, tom. iii. p. 50. [The modern devastation of Caffa by the Russians (see ch. 63, p. 110), may be ranked with the worst of ancient times.-ED.] + Porticus ædis Concordiæ, quam cum primum ad urbem accessi, vidi fere integram opere marmoreo admodum specioso: Romani post modum ad calcem ædem totam et porticus partem disjectis columnis sunt demoliti (p. 12). The temple of Concord was therefore not destroyed by a sedition in the thirteenth century, as I have read in a MS. treatise Del Governo civile di Roma, lent me formerly at Rome, and ascribed (I believe falsely) to the celebrated Gravina. Poggius likewise affirms, that the sepulchre of Cæcilia Metella was burnt for lime (p. 19, 20). Composed by Æneas Sylvius, afterwards pope Pius II. and published by Mabillon from a MS. of the queen of Sweden. (Museum Italicum, tom. i. p. 97.) Oblectat me, Roma, tuas spectare ruinas : Ex cujus lapsu gloria prisca patet. Sed tuus hic populus muris defossa vetustis Calcis in obsequium marmora dura coquit. Impia tercentum si sic gens egerit aunos, Nullum hinc indicium nobilitatis erit. § Vagabamur pariter in illâ urbe tam magnâ; quæ, cum propter spatium vacua videretur, populum habet immensum. (Opp. p. 605. Epist. Familiares, 2. 14.) These states of the popula IV. I have reserved for the last, the most potent and forcible cause of destruction, the domestic hostilities of the Romans themselves. Under the dominion of the Greek and French emperors, the peace of the city was disturbed by accidental, though frequent, seditions; it is from the decline of the latter, from the beginning of the tenth century, that we may date the licentiousness of private war, which violated with impunity the laws of the Code and the gospel; without respecting the majesty of the absent sovereign, or the presence and person of the vicar of Christ. In a dark period of five hundred years, Rome was perpe tually afflicted by the sanguinary quarrels of the nobles and the people, the Guelphs and Ghibelines, the Colonna and Ursini; and if much has escaped the knowledge, and much is unworthy of the notice, of history, I have exposed, in the two preceding chapters, the causes and effects of the public disorders. At such a time, when every quarrel was decided by the sword, and none could trust their lives or properties to the impotence of law, the powerful citizens were armed for safety or offence against the domestic enemies, whom they feared or hated. Except Venice alone, the same dangers and designs were common to all the free republics of Italy; and the nobles usurped the prerogative of fortifying their houses, and erecting strong towers* that were capable of resisting a sudden attack. The cities were filled with these hostile edifices; and the example of Lucca, which contained three hundred towers, her law which confined tion of Rome at different periods are derived from an ingenious treatise of the physician Lancisi, de Romani Cœli Qualitatibus (p. 122). [Sir W. Gell (Topog. p. 498. edit. Bohn) notices the fluctuations in the number of inhabitants at Rome and their causes; he says: In the reign of pope Innocent III. (A.D. 1198-1216) the population was estimated at only 35,000; during the residence of the popes at Avignon (A.D. 1309-1378) it amounted, according to the Abbate Cancelliere, to no more than 17,000; after their return it quickly increased to 60,000. The cruel sack of the city in 1527, by the Constable de Bourbon, reduced it to 33,000. A hundred and fifty years later the number was quadrupled, and about the year 1700 amounted to 140,000. The present population of Rome will be considered at the close of this chapter.-ED.] *All the facts that relate to the towers at Rome, and in other free cities of Italy, may be found in the laborious and entertaining compilation of Muratori, Antiquitates Italia Medii Evi, dissertat. 26 (tom. ii. p. 493--496 of the Latin, tom. i. p. 446 of the Italian work). their height to the measure of fourscore feet, may be extended with suitable latitude to the more opulent and populous states. The first step of the senator Brancaleone in the establishment of peace and justice, was to demolish (as we have already seen) one hundred and forty of the towers of Rome; and, in the last days of anarchy and discord, as late as the reign of Martin the Fifth, forty-four still stood in one of the thirteen or fourteen regions of the city. To this mischievous purpose, the remains of antiquity were most readily adapted; the temples and arches afforded a broad and solid basis for the new structures of brick and stone; and we can name the modern turrets that were raised on the triumphal monuments of Julius Cæsar, Titus, and the Antonines.* With some slight alterations, a theatre, an amphitheatre, a mausoleum was transformed into a strong and spacious citadel. I need not repeat that the mole of Adrian has assumed the title and form of the castle of St. Angelo; † the Septizonium of Severus was capable of standing against a royal. ariny; the sepulchre of Metella has sunk under its outworks; § the theatres of * As for instance, Templum Jani nunc dicitur, turris Centii Frangipanis; et sane Jano imposita turris lateritiæ conspicua hodieque vestigia supersunt. (Montfaucon, Diarium Italicum, p. 186.) The anonymous writer (p. 285) enumerates, arcus Titi, turris Cartularia; arcus Julii Cæsaris et Senatorum, turres de Bratis; arcus Antonini, turris de Cosectis, &c. Hadriani molem . . . magna ex parte Romanorum injuria . . disturbavit; quod certe funditus evertissent, si eorum manibus pervia, absumptis grandibus saxis, reliqua moles exstitisset. (Poggius de Varietate Fortunæ, p. 12.) Against the emperor Henry IV. (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. ix. p. 147.) § I must copy an important passage of Montfaucon: Turris ingens rotunda . . . . Cæciliæ Metellæ sepulchrum erat, cujus muri tam solidi, ut spatium perquam minimum intus vacuum supersit; et Torre di Bove dicitur, a boum capitibus muro inscriptis. Huic sequiori ævo, tempore intestinorum bellorum, ceu urbecula adjuncta fuit, cujus monia et turres etiamnum visuntur; ita ut sepulchrum Metellæ quasi arx oppiduli fuerit. Ferventibus in urbe partibus, cum Ursini atque Columnenses mutuis cladibus perniciem inferrent civitati, in utriusve partis ditionem cederet magni momenti erat (p.142). [Lord Byron (Childe Harold, canto iv. stanza 99) describes the tomb of Metella as still existing: "There is a stern round tower of other days, Firm as a fortress What was this tower of strength ?--a woman's grave." And the inscription on it, CECILIE Q. CRETICL F. METELLE CRASSI, |