Part 75

Silliman, speaking of the Coliseum, says, “It is the most magnificent and imposing monument of ancient Rome. After all the spoliation it has suffered for many centuries, by which two-thirds of its materials have been plundered, to build palaces and other structures, it still stands a stupendous ruin, solemn, awful, and even in desolation beautiful. Its position is very near to the forum, and we pass to it through the arch of Titus. We felicitate ourselves that we saw the almost perfect amphitheater at Nismes, as from that, and even from the less perfect one at Arles, we obtained those strong and correct impressions, which have enabled us more justly to appreciate the gigantic ruin, which still towers in venerable majesty, above both the Rome of the Cæsars, and the Rome of the popes. The Coliseum was begun A. D. 73, by Vespasian, and finished by Titus, A. D. 80, ten years after the conquest of Jerusalem. Church tradition states that its architect was Gaudentius, a Christian martyr, and that some twelve thousand captive Jews and Christians were employed in its construction. It is built chiefly of travertine, although there are large quantities of bricks and tufa in the structure. Its form is elliptical: there are four stories adorned by columns: the lower is Doric, thirty feet high: the second is Ionic, thirty-three feet high; the third, Corinthian, fifty-four feet, and above this, was the frieze and cornice. The hight of the outer wall was one hundred and fifty-seven English feet. The longer axis, walls included, was six hundred and twenty feet; the shorter, five hundred and thirteen; circumference, seventeen hundred and seventy feet; the arena, two hundred and eighty-seven feet long and a hundred and eighty feet broad. The superficial area was nearly six acres. The arches were numbered, externally, from one to eighty. One arch is not numbered, and this is believed to have been the private entrance of the emperor. There were, within the amphitheater, four groups of seats, corresponding, as at Nismes, to the different orders of people. The seats could receive eighty-seven thousand persons, or one hundred and ten thousand, including those who stood. The interior has been very much despoiled, and the seats are almost ruined; but a staircase has been constructed, by which we ascended securely to the top of the building, and enjoyed a grand view, not only by day, but by a full moon. Byron’s splendid description in Manfred, does it no more than justice.”

The building, as may be seen in the cut on the preceding page, is much decayed; and it is, also, “deformed by innumerable holes on the outside, believed to have been produced by the extraction of the dowels of bronze, which were originally placed in the joints to keep the stones in place. At the dedication of the amphitheater by Titus, five thousand, or according to some, nine thousand wild beasts were slaughtered, and the savage exhibition went on during one hundred days. On the occasion of the triumph of Trajan over the Dacians, the shows were continued one hundred and twenty-three days; eleven thousand animals were slain, and one thousand gladiators matched against each other. Besides malefactors, captives and slaves, freeborn citizens, even those of noble birth, hired themselves as gladiators; and women volunteered on the arena, to exhibit their skill in murder. The barbarous gladiatorial games were continued during four hundred years; the last show of the wild beasts was under Theodoric, and these brutal entertainments were abolished by Honorius.”

THE PANTHEON.

The Pantheon, says a late tourist, “is the most perfect, as a whole, of all the structures which have come down to us from ancient Rome. The invasion of time alone would not have injured it materially, and, notwithstanding the spoliations of popes and other depredators, it still remains a grand and beautiful building. It stands in a dirty, disagreeable herb market, and the accumulations of earth and rubbish have almost entirely covered its lofty steps, which were seven in number, until its floor is now nearly on a level with the street. Its dome was covered with gilt bronze, and its portico lined with the same metal, which was plundered to be cast for the pillars and other parts of the _baldacchino_ in St. Peter’s. On this occasion, four hundred and fifty thousand pounds were taken. The emperor Constans II. had previously, in 657, stripped the roof, and plundered the silver from the interior of the dome. He destined these things for the ornament of his imperial palace at Constantinople; but being murdered at Syracuse, on his return, the plunder was borne to Alexandria. It was, originally, the spoils of Egypt after the battle of Actium, and now returned to Egypt again. The external facings of polished marble, have also been torn off; but although thus despoiled, the Pantheon is still magnificent, notwithstanding that the fires have often heated it, the overflowing Tiber has deluged its floor, and the rains have poured in at the only opening, which is in the dome. This is a circular hole in the center of the dome, twenty-eight feet in diameter, and is said to have been once glazed. The rich marble facings and magnificent columns of the interior, still remain. The beautiful columns are of polished granite and porphyry. The niches, originally filled by the statues of the pagan gods, have not been disturbed; but they are now occupied by saints, and virgins, and other symbols of Catholic worship. The interior is one vast room, one hundred and forty-three feet in diameter, exclusive of the walls, which are twenty feet thick, and it is of the same hight, one hundred and forty-three feet: the dome occupies one-half of the hight. It is not inaptly illustrated by the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington, which, although smaller, is of the same form. When in the Roman Pantheon, you look up to its sky-lighted dome, there is an impression of simple grandeur which even St. Peter’s does not produce:

“‘Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime— Shrine of all saints, and temple of all gods.’

“An inscription on the frieze records that the Pantheon was erected by Agrippa, B. C. _anno_ 26; and another inscription on the architrave records its subsequent restoration by Septimius Severus. In 608, Boniface obtained from the emperor Phocas permission to consecrate the Pantheon as a Christian church, which, doubtless, saved it from destruction. How much is it to be regretted that a similar protection had not saved the Coliseum and other precious works, whose ruins bear testimony to the misdirected zeal of the Christian church in early ages. The portico is one hundred and ten feet long and forty-four deep. It contains sixteen Corinthian monolithic columns of oriental granite, forty six and one-half feet high and five feet in diameter, with capitals and bases of Greek marble. The pediment still shows where the figures in bass-relief were attached.

“The magnificent bronze doors are thirty-nine feet high, and the entire opening is nineteen wide. It is believed that they are the original doors erected by Agrippa. No doubt they would have been used for the decoration of St. Peter’s, had not the Pantheon been consecrated as a church. The interior cornice at the bottom of the dome has been perfectly preserved, with its rich sculptures. The pavement of the Pantheon is of porphyry, alternating with other polished stones in geometric figures. Some antiquarians have argued that the Pantheon was originally an appendage of the baths of Agrippa, and that the portico was of subsequent construction, when the building was converted into a temple. However this may be, it is one of the most interesting structures of ancient or modern times; and had it not been most shamefully robbed it would have stood to-day perfect in beauty as it was when Christ died, and when Paul preached and suffered in Rome. We bent with deep interest over the grave of Raphael, whose remains still slumber beneath the pavement of the Pantheon, marked only by a humble slab of marble level with the floor. It is well known that until 1833 his place of interment was only matter of conjecture; in that year, owing to unexpected evidence, the present grave was opened in presence of the pope and numerous artists. The skull was of a singularly fine form; and its discovery spoiled the speculations of the phrenologists on another skull in the academy of St. Luke’s, which had before been supposed to be that of the great painter.”

ROMAN AMPHITHEATER AT NISMES.

Nismes, anciently Nemausis, was formerly a flourishing colony of Romans, established by Augustus Cæsar, after the battle of Actium. Among its splendid monuments of antiquity, the amphitheater, being infinitely better preserved than those of Rome and Verona, is the finest monument of the kind now extant. It was built in the reign of Antonius Pius, who contributed a large sum of money toward its erection. It is of an oval figure, one thousand and eighty feet in circumference, sufficiently capacious to contain twenty thousand spectators. The architecture is of the Tuscan order, sixty feet high, composed of two open galleries, built one over another, consisting each of sixty arcades. The entrance into the arena was by four great gates, with porticos; and the seats, of which there were thirty-two rows, sufficient to contain some twenty-five thousand people, rising one above another, consisted of great blocks of stone, many of which still remain. Over the north gate, appear two bulls, in alto-relievo, extremely well executed, emblems which, according to the usage of the Romans, signified that the amphitheater was erected at the expense of the people. In other parts are heads, busts, and other sculptures in bass-relief.

This magnificent structure stands in the lower part of the city, and strikes the spectator with awe and veneration. The external architecture is almost entire in its whole circuit. It was fortified as a citadel by the Visigoths, in the beginning of the sixth century: they raised within it a castle, two towers of which are still extant, and surrounded it with a broad and deep moat, which was filled up in the thirteenth century. In all the subsequent wars to which the city of Nismes was exposed, it served as the last refuge of the citizens, and sustained a great number of successive attacks; so that its fine preservation is almost miraculous.

Silliman says of this amphitheater, that it gives a very exact idea of the Coliseum at Rome, though it is of course smaller. “It is built,” he adds, “of limestone in immense blocks, laid in courses with perfect regularity and without mortar. Mortise holes in the center of the upper surface of each block show that the Romans employed the same means still in use, to raise and handle large masses of stone. The accuracy of the masonry seems the more remarkable if we consider the elliptical form of the structure, making all the vertical joints converge to the foci of the ellipse. In one place we saw a line of light through a joint of this sort where the wall was at least four feet thick. The passages, of course, all expand outward also, and thus admit of a speedy evacuation of the amphitheater through its sixty _vomitoriæ_. The dimensions of this ellipse are four hundred and thirty-seven by three hundred and twenty-two feet. By walking deliberately around the structure, these dimensions are more readily realized than by a numerical statement: the circuit is a quarter of a mile. The cornice was decorated with carving and finished with a frieze; except in the portion corresponding to nine or ten arches, the capping and cornice are complete around the entire circuit. In the part where the cornice is deficient, the Saracens, more than eleven hundred years ago, erected two towers, which were destroyed by Charles Martel, and fire applied by him disfigured the amphitheater. As it was all of stone he could not destroy it, but the wood placed in its arches and corridors burned as in a furnace. He wished to destroy the building, which had often been used as a fortress in the numerous wars that followed the downfall of the Roman empire. He succeeded only in blackening it with smoke which remains to this day. The heat, however, caused some portions of the limestone to flake off; but very little progress was made toward the destruction of the amphitheater. The building is national property, and the French government has restored many of the arches, laid anew the pavements, and has taken precautions to guard against further dilapidation. The exterior of the building is, indeed, somewhat corroded by time, but had war and violence been restrained, this noble monument of antiquity would have remained, an architectural wonder to all future ages. Many of the rows of marble seats remain entire, and enable the observer perfectly to understand the whole arrangement. The emperor and his household entered by a lower and special corridor, and the vestal virgins by a corresponding opening on the opposite side. The senators and patricians entered higher up, while the plebeians, entering still higher, occupied the more elevated positions, and the slaves the uppermost of all. The police also had their appointed place.

“Projecting outward from the cornice at regular intervals were stones, pierced with holes six inches or more in diameter, through which passed poles to sustain the awning, the lower ends of the poles being sustained by corbel stones projecting from the wall below. The amphitheater had no other covering but the awning, and this, on occasions of the use of the building for public games, was stretched upon ropes crossing from side to side of the arena. This covering secured the spectators from sun and rain, while it permitted free ventilation. The gladiators entered on one side of the arena and the wild beasts on the other, and probably the same rule prevailed when gladiator was to contend with gladiator. Here man fought his fellow-man, or with the fierce wild beast, to pamper the cruel appetite for blood. Strange feelings of awe and grandeur are excited by seeing the vast space which was so often filled with human beings, and one’s mind runs wild with excitement when he sees in imagination, the lion’s eye glancing at the grating until he was enlarged to spring upon his victim. The weeds and grass now grow among the seats, and green-sward covers the once ensanguined arena. The little lizards leap from stone to stone, and their brief generations are now the sole tenants of these ancient piles.”

TRAJAN’S PILLAR.

This historical column was erected at Rome by the emperor Trajan to commemorate his victories over the Dacians, and is considered the masterpiece of the splendid monuments of art elevated by that emperor in the Roman capital. Its celebrity is chiefly owing to the beautifully wrought bass-reliefs, containing about two thousand figures, with which it is ornamented. It stands in the middle of a square, to form which, a hill, one hundred and forty feet in hight, was leveled; and was intended, as appears by the inscription on its base, both as a tomb for the emperor, and to display the hight of the hill, which had thus with incredible labor, been reduced to a plane surface. It was erected in the year 114 of the Christian era; and the emperor Constantine, two centuries and a half afterward, regarded it as the most magnificent structure by which Rome was even at that time embellished. This pillar is built of white marble, its base consisting of twelve stones of enormous size, being raised on a socle, or foot of eight steps; and within it is a staircase illuminated by forty-four windows. Its hight, equaling that of the hill which had been leveled, to give place to the large square called the _Forum Romanum_, is one hundred and forty feet, being thirty-five feet less elevated than the Antonine column.

COLUMN OF ANTONINE.

This grand column is one of the most conspicuous monuments of ancient Rome. It is near the present post-office, in a busy, populous square—the Piazza Colonna—in the midst of the modern city. The hight of the column of Antonine is one hundred and sixty-eight feet; diameter, eleven and one-half; the pedestal is twenty-five feet and eight inches high. It was erected by the senate and people of Rome to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, A. D. 174. Bass-reliefs, as in Trajan’s column, run spirally around the monument, representing military movements and victories. One of the reliefs represents Jupiter as dropping rain from his extended arms. This has been supposed to allude to the effect attributed to the prayers of the Christian legion from Mytilene, in the army of the emperor, who, at his request, prayed for rain when there was a great drought. The column is composed of pieces of white marble, and in the interior are one hundred and ninety steps lighted by forty-two loopholes. By a strange incongruity, a statue of St. Paul, ten feet high, has been made to replace the emperor on the top of the column. This was done by Sixtus V. It is said that the drawn sword which the apostle holds in his hand proves a conductor to the lightning, and that the column has been several times injured.

MAISON CARRE, AT NISMES.

If the amphitheater of Nismes strikes the spectator with an idea of greatness and sublimity, the Maison Carré enchants him with the most exquisite beauties of architecture and sculpture. This fine structure, as is evidenced by the inscription discovered on its front, was built by the inhabitants of Nismes, in honor of Caius Cæsar, and Lucius Cæsar, grandchildren of Augustus, by his daughter Julia, the wife of Agrippa. It stands upon a pediment six feet high, is eighty-two feet long, thirty-five broad, and thirty-seven in hight, without reckoning the pediment. The body of it is adorned with twenty columns engaged in the wall; and the peristyle, which is open, with ten detached pillars that support the entablature. They are all of the Corinthian order, fluted and embellished with capitals of the most exquisite sculpture: the frieze and cornice are much admired, and the foliage is esteemed inimitable. The proportions of the building are so happily blended, as to give it an air of majesty and grandeur, which the most indifferent spectator can not behold without emotion. To enjoy these beauties, it is not necessary to be a connoisseur in architecture: they are indeed so exquisite that they may be visited with a fresh appetite for years together. What renders them still more interesting is, that they are entire, and very little affected, either by the ravages of time, or the havoc of war. Cardinal Alberoni declared this elegant structure to be a jewel which deserved a cover of gold to preserve it from external injuries. An Italian painter, perceiving a small part of the roof repaired by modern French masonry, tore his hair, and exclaimed in a rage, “Zounds! what do I see? Harlequin’s hat on the head of Augustus!” In its general architectural effect, as well as in all its details of sculpture and ornament, the Maison Carré of Nismes is ravishingly beautiful, and can not be paralleled by any structure of ancient or modern times. That which most excites the astonishment of the admiring spectator, is to see it standing entire, like the effect of enchantment, after such a succession of ages, subjected as several of them were, to the ravages of the barbarians who overran the most interesting parts of Europe.

In the progress of many centuries, the Maison Carré has been used as a Christian church, and also for many ordinary purposes, some of them of the lowest character. The fine Corinthian columns of this building have been much corroded by time, and two that were contiguous, were mutilated in the flutings to make more room for the passage of a farmer’s cart when the temple was used as a barn or stable; and, to afford more accommodations, walls were built up between the columns of the portico. In the eleventh century it was used as town-house, or _hôtel de ville_. When attached to the Augustine convent it was employed as a sepulcher; and in the days of terror, the revolutionary tribunal held its meetings here. The building is at present occupied as a museum. It contains many interesting objects, especially Roman antiquities: the pictures are not remarkable. There is in it a beautiful mosaic pavement taken up entire from a Roman house. This temple is supposed to have been only the center of a much larger building, extending with wings and long colonnades to the right and left, whose foundations have been discovered.

THE PONT DU GARD.

This celebrated Roman monument is distant about three leagues from the city of Nismes. Instead of finding it in a ruinous condition, as he might reasonably have expected, the traveler, on approaching it, is agreeably disappointed when he perceives that it looks as fresh as a modern bridge of a few years’ standing. The climate is either so pure and dry, or the freestone with which it is built is so hard, that the very angles of the stones remain as acute as if they had been recently cut. A few of them have, indeed, dropped out of the arches; but the whole is admirably preserved, and presents the eye with a piece of architecture, so unaffectedly elegant, so simple, and, at the same time, so majestic, that it defies the most phlegmatic spectator to view it without admiration. It was raised in the Augustan age, by the Roman colony of Nismes, to convey a stream of water between two mountains, for the use of that city. By means of it the arena of the amphitheater could be flooded for the _naumachiæ_. It stands over the river Gardon, a beautiful pastoral stream, brawling among rocks which form a number of pretty natural cascades, and overshadowed on each side by trees and shrubs, which add greatly to the rural beauties of the scene.

This elegant structure consists of three bridges, or tiers of arches, one above another; the first of six, the second of eleven, and the third of thirty-six arches. The hight, comprehending the aqueduct on the top, is one hundred and seventy-four feet and three inches, and the length, between the two mountains, which it unites, is seven hundred and twenty-three feet. The order of the architecture is Tuscan; but its symmetry is inconceivable. By scooping the bases of the pilasters of the second tier of arches, a passage was made for foot-travelers; but although the ancients far excelled the moderns in point of beauty and magnificence, they certainly fell short of them in point of convenience. The inhabitants of Avignon have, in this particular, improved the Roman work by a new bridge by apposition, constructed on the same plan with that of the lower tier of arches, of which indeed it seems to be a part, affording a broad and commodious passage over the river, to horses and carriages. The aqueduct for the continuance of which this superb work was raised, conveyed a stream of pure water from the fountain of Eure, near the city of Uzes, and extended nearly six leagues in length.

[Illustration: ANCIENT ROMAN AQUEDUCT.]

ANCIENT AQUEDUCT NEAR ROME.