Part 5

I walked about a hundred feet up the nave, and stopped. From a habit of analyzing buildings, I counted the paces as I advanced, and knew how far I was within the pile. Still men, at the farthest extremity, seemed dwindled into boys. One, whose size did not appear disproportioned, was cleaning a statue of St. Bruno, at the height of an ordinary church-steeple, stood on the shoulder of the figure, and could just rest his arm on the top of its head. Some marble cherubs, that looked like children, were in high relief against a pier near me, and laying my hand on the hand of one of them, I found it like that of an infant in comparison. All this aided the sense of vastness. The _baldacchino_, or canopy of bronze, which is raised over the great altar, filled the eye no more than a pulpit in a common church; and yet I knew its summit was as lofty as half the height of the spire of Trinity, New York, or about a hundred and thirty feet, and essentially higher than the tower. I looked for a marble throne that was placed at the remotest extremity of the building, also as high as a common church tower, a sort of poetical chair for the popes: it seemed distant as a cavern on a mountain.

To me there was no disappointment. Every thing appeared as vast as feet and inches could make it; and as I stood gazing at the glorious pile, the tears forced themselves from my eyes. Even little P—— was oppressed with the sense of the vastness of the place, for he clung close to my side, though he had passed half his life in looking at sights, and kept murmuring, “_Qu’est-ce que c’est?—qu’est-ce que c’est?—Est-ce une église?_”

It was getting dark, and perhaps the gloom magnified the effect. The atmosphere even,—for this stupendous pile has an atmosphere of its own, one different from that of the outer world,—was soothing and delicious; and I turned away impressed with the truth that if ever the hand of man had indeed raised a structure to the Deity in the least worthy of his majesty, it was this!

LETTER XXI.

The Campagna.—The Tarpeian Rock:—doubts as to its identity.—The Walls of Servius Tullius,—and of Aurelian.—The Muro Torto.—The Wall of Honorius, or the present wall.—Errors of Literary Men with respect to measurement.—The Walls and Ruins of brick.—Limits of modern Rome.—Rome.—Rome not a continued ruin like Pompeii.—The ruins scattered, and well preserved.

I shall not enter into the ordinary details of description at Rome, but treat it as I have treated places less celebrated, touching only on those points that it has struck me are not familiarly known, or, at least were not known to me; and this, too, in my own desultory manner; for, as things have appeared to me differently from my expectations, so shall I communicate them to you. Let us then commence with an outline of the place, its general condition, and its _entourage_, before we proceed to more minute accounts.

Of the Campagna I have already communicated to you some general notions. It is not, however, literally a waste, for it bears grasses and even grain in parts, and has some kitchen-gardens near the walls. The portions nearest the mountains are sandy, but not bare; while you find marshes as you approach the sea. The Campagna di Roma, properly so termed, includes nearly the whole of ancient Latium, and is near three hundred miles in extent; but, by convention, the Campagna is now confined to the uncultivated district immediately around the city. Some annex the Pontine Marshes, which join it in the direction of the sea; but I think the Romans distinguish between the two. Much of the Campagna is grazed, though I think less of it near the town than on the parts more remote. I have seen spots of great fertility; but the portions of it over which I usually gallop in my rides, (and I am now in the saddle daily,)—rides that frequently extend eight or nine miles,—is a species of common that merely bears a tolerable grass. There are spots that are crowded with country-houses and gardens, particularly on the broken land north of Rome; but, in general, this waste is singularly naked of habitations, even up to the very ramparts of the town.

It is scarcely necessary to say, Rome has had various walls, which have been enlarged as the place has grown, for this is the history of every large walled town. It is, however, very necessary to know the positions of these walls, in order to establish the positions of many of the most interesting of the antiquities. Take, for instance, the Tarpeian Rock,—an object not only of interest in itself, but of importance in getting a clear idea of localities,—and we shall find that the heedless are commonly led astray, not only as respects this particular spot, but as respects others dependent on it. I mention this rock as its site is closely connected with the course of the ancient walls.

Most travellers give themselves up to the guidance of common _laquais de place_, who are dignified by the name of _ciceroni_; and even they who are sceptical, and smile at much of what they hear, are more or less imposed on by the ignorance and knavery of these men. We had one of these ciceroni for a week or ten days, simply with a view to get acquainted with the town, and he undertook to show us this Tarpeian Rock among his other curiosities. We were led into a common garden on the Capitol Hill, where a rock overlooked the site of the Forum, and were told it was the place in question. Even the maps of Roma Antica, and most of the guide-books, point out this spot as the Tarpeian Rock; though, I believe, there are very satisfactory reasons for showing, that while it must be near the celebrated place of punishment, this cannot be it in very fact. Conversing on this subject with one of the most industrious of the antiquaries here, he reasoned in this manner:—The punishment of the Tarpeian Rock was both a poetical and a literal punishment; the literal being death, and the poetical expulsion from the city. By throwing a criminal from the rock that is commonly exhibited, his body would be cast into the centre of the Forum, or into the heart of the place; and hence he infers that it is not the true Tarpeian Rock. There is, moreover, the narrative of a messenger of Camillus, I believe, who was sent to Rome at the time it was besieged by the Gauls, who says he landed at a particular point, and entered the town by climbing up the Tarpeian Rock. This account confirms the opinion that this work must look outward as regards the walls. The whole Capitol Hill is a rock, covered with a thin soil; and I believe it is generally admitted that the entire hill, or rock, bore the name of the unworthy Tarpeia, who is understood to have been buried on it. This may certainly account for the confusion in the names; though it would still seem that the precise place of punishment must be different from that which is usually shown as such. My antiquary pointed to a spot that is on the side of the hill nearly opposite to the Forum, along the margin of which the wall was known once to have run, and where the height, in addition to that of the wall, or perhaps of one of its towers, would be sufficient to ensure death, as would not be the case at the rock commonly seen, even after allowing for the manner in which the Forum has been filled by rubbish. Admitting his reasoning to be true, and it is certainly very plausible if no more, you see the importance of understanding the sites of the ancient walls.

Passing over the infancy of Rome, the two principal walls that succeeded are that of Servius Tullius, and that of Aurelian. The first was built about two centuries after the town had its origin. It included the Capitol, Viminal, Quirinal, Esquiline, Palatine, Celian, and Aventine, or the Seven Hills of Rome, with a small triangular piece of ground on the other side of the Tiber, which did not, however, include the present site of St. Peter’s. The space within these limits, would not exceed that which is now covered by New York, below Bleecker street, and yet it was the Rome of the Augustan age. The hills are not large, though some are double the size of others. The Capitol and Palatine are both small, particularly the former, which, agreeably to our mode of constructing, could not hold a population to exceed two or three thousand, even with narrow streets with high houses. Admitting the lowest numbers that are given as the population of Rome at this period, it is difficult to imagine where they all lived. Pompeii proves that the Romans did not personally occupy much space, although the courts and gardens did. The slaves, who must have composed a large portion of the population of Rome, were probably crowded into a small space; and the great depth of the _débris_ that now covers the ancient city proves that the materials were abundant: from all which it is fair to infer that the dwellings were of great height. The houses around Naples were low, probably on account of frequent earthquakes, calamities that doubtless occurred oftener before the great eruption of the volcano than since. After making all these allowances, however, it will be necessary to people suburbs of great extent, or to diminish, by more than half, the popular accounts of the number of the inhabitants.

The emperor Aurelian, fearful that the town might be taken by surprise, on account of the extent of the suburbs, about the year 276, caused new walls to be built. These walls in no place touched the wall of Servius Tullius, and may have a little more than doubled the size of the _enceinte_. These walls still exist, or, at least, walls exist that are attributed equally to Aurelian and Honorius, who lived more than a century later. Some of the antiquaries contend that the walls of Aurelian included a space more than twice, or even thrice as great as that contained within the present walls, and thus account for the mode of accommodating the population, which they complacently take at the highest number. A writer, who was a contemporary of Aurelian, affirms that the wall of this emperor was fifty miles in circuit; and Vasi appears to adopt his account of the matter, though he is obliged to admit that no traces exist of these prodigiously extensive works.

It strikes me that there are several serious objections to this explanation. In the first place, it is impossible to believe that traces would not exist of these walls had they ever been built, when the walls constructed a little more than a century later are standing almost perfect. Allowing that _all_ of the present wall is not as old as Honorius, which probably is the case, a part certainly is. There is a portion of the present wall that is called the _Muro Torto_, or the Crooked Wall, from the circumstance that it is so much out of the perpendicular as to excite apprehensions of its falling on the stranger who passes beneath it. Now there is a writer of the time of Belisarius, (530–40,) who says that this wall was exactly in such a condition in his day. It is difficult to believe that this should be the fact, and that all traces of the wall of Aurelian, which was built only two centuries and a half earlier, should have been lost. But it may be said this was a part of Aurelian’s wall, for it is the foundation of Domitian’s gardens, of unusual thickness and strength, and was made use of for the new city wall on that account, and that the wall of Aurelian still contained a circuit of fifty miles. If the _Muro Torto_ be in truth a part of Aurelian’s wall, then are not all traces of his wall lost; and it is very improbable that an emperor who was about to increase the walls of the city, which, exceedingly irregular, had a circuit of less than eight miles, to a circuit of more than forty-five of our miles, should choose to extend the town so short a distance towards the north, the quarter that was the most agreeable and the most healthy, and yet as far in the other directions as would be necessary to make up the required distance. In point of fact, the space between the wall of Servius and the present wall is much greater in this direction than in any other; the object having been, probably, to include the whole of the Campus Martius and the Pincian Hill.

The present wall is said to be sixteen Roman miles and a half in circuit, which would be not far from fifteen of our miles. I have often ridden round them on my morning’s excursions, or nearly round them, and I take this to be near the distance; though the present _enceinte_ of the Transtiberina, or the part of the town west of the Tiber, is much larger now, than when the wall of Honorius, or the present wall, existed in that quarter also. Paris, including soldiers and strangers, has often contained a million of souls, although the town has an unusual number of gardens, with many wide streets and public places, besides palaces and hotels without number; and yet Paris does not fill its walls, by perhaps a fifth of the entire surface. Were the _enceinte_ of Paris compactly built up, two millions might comfortably dwell within the walls, and at need, by packing the people, as they were evidently packed at Pompeii and Herculaneum, three millions. The circuit of the walls of Paris is about eighteen miles. This would allow Rome to contain a million and a half or two millions within the present limits; and what good authority is there for supposing it ever had more people?

Rome was divided into fourteen quarters in the time of Augustus. These divisions have descended down to our own time, and, although the names are changed, it is probable they are essentially the same. Aurelian lived near the end of the third century, and in the fourth century these fourteen quarters bore the following names, viz. Porta Capena, Cœlimontana, Isis et Serapis, Via Sacra, Esquilina, Alta Semita, Via Lata, Forum Romanum, Circus Flaminius, Palatium, Circus Maximus, Piscina Publica, Aventina, and Transtiberina. It is easy to trace the situation of all of these quarters within the present walls. Is it probable that Rome increased so much in the two centuries and a half that succeeded Augustus, as to require, that a space contained in a circuit of sixteen Roman miles and a half should be extended to a circuit of fifty, in order to receive the people? I do not believe it.

What then becomes of the statement of Vopiscus, the authority quoted by M. Vasi? I know nothing of him; but any man of observation must know that writers of a higher order of genius frequently betray great ignorance of positive things, and of nothing more than measurement. Sir Walter Scott, in his Life of Napoleon, says, “By the treaty of Presburgh, Austria is said to have lost _one million of square miles of territory, two millions and a half of subjects_, and a revenue to the amount of ten millions and a half of florins!” &c. &c.; and in speaking of another treaty, an error quite as gross appears. In the edition I read, letters were introduced, rendering the blunder still more serious.[4] Here the great poet, in a grave history, makes a fragment of the Austrian empire near four times as great as the whole empire, and almost a fifth as large as all Europe. Comparing population with surface, he makes the ratio about two souls and a half to the square mile, and that in a country where it probably exceeds three hundred.[5] Perhaps no men are less to be trusted in matters of this sort than purely literary men, and yet they usually produce the books. Let us suppose the art of printing unknown, and the only authority for the life of Napoleon, or rather for this one fact, to be, twenty centuries hence, a manuscript of a certain great author called Scotius, what marvels might not posterity believe of the extent of the Austrian empire!—such, probably, as M. Vasi would have us believe of the extent of Rome, on the authority of this Vopiscus. It is of no moment to the result, whether this error in the history of Napoleon was the consequence of ignorance or want of care in the author, or a blunder in the compositor. The circumstance, had it not been corrected, would have stood recorded; and in a manuscript, or an edition might, in the lapse of centuries, pass for an established fact, on the authority of a great name.

Footnote 4:

In the subsequent editions these errors of the author, or blunders of the press, which ever they may be, have been corrected.

Footnote 5:

Mr. Washington Irving, in his Life of Columbus, vol. i. p. 83, has the following:—“Between them is placed the island of Cipango, or Japan, which, according to Marco Polo, lay fifteen hundred miles distant from the Asiatic coast. _In his computation, Columbus advanced this island about a thousand leagues too much to the east, supposing it to be about in the situation of Florida, and at this island he hoped first to arrive._” The _centre_ of Florida and the centre of the island of Japan lie about 130° asunder. A degree of longitude in those latitudes will average somewhere about fifty miles, (this is approximative, not calculated,) which will give _two_ thousand leagues as the distance between them.

I have little doubt that we now see, essentially, the form and dimensions of the wall of Aurelian, if not the wall itself. Some alterations, we know, have been made, for the gates are changed, and it is probable, the wall, in places, has also undergone repairs; but it is not much more difficult to believe that the walls which are now standing are sixteen hundred years old, than to believe they are fourteen, or of the time of Honorius.

I leave you to judge of the feelings with which I ride beneath these walls. The Muro Torto in particular gives me great satisfaction, as one can be reasonably certain that he sees the identical bricks in the identical places they have occupied since the time of Domitian, or near eighteen hundred years. You will be surprised to hear that these walls are nearly all of bricks, as indeed are the aqueducts, temples, and most of the other ruins of Rome. Augustus boasted that he found the city of bricks and left it of marble; but time has left it of bricks again. This contradiction is explained by the fact that the marbles which cased most of the brickwork, in the baths, temples, palaces, and amphitheatres, have been removed for other works, and also by the fact that the saying of Augustus is not to be taken too literally.

You will be surprised, perhaps, at receiving these accounts so soon, and to find me speaking already of the environs of Rome with so much familiarity, on a month’s acquaintance. Soon after reaching the Eternal City, I hired a saddle-horse, to accompany my old friend the —— of —— in his morning rides; and besides having the advantage of a learned cicerone, who has passed years in Rome, I have made the discovery, that one in the saddle can see more of this place in a week, than is seen in a month by those who use carriages, or who go on foot. You will better understand this by getting a clearer idea of the actual condition of the town and its environs.

The wall which, right or wrong, is called that of Aurelian, is said to be sixteen Roman miles and a half in circuit, being separated into two parts by the Tiber. Of the part east of the river, which contains Rome proper, about one-third, or perhaps a little less, is occupied by the modern town: the remainder is in common gardens, villas, and ruins, many of the latter being scattered over the whole surface. You are not to suppose, however, that any part of Rome to-day exhibits the appearance of a continued ruined town, like Pompeii, with its streets, and squares. Though in the vicinity of the Forum there is an approach to such a character, it is not distinct and intelligible at a glance, as at Pompeii. So many objects are crowded together at this spot, as to render it the centre of interest, it is true; but it is far from preserving its outlines, as it existed of old. Even the site of the Forum has been disputed. The ruins, in general, are scattered, and, with comparatively few exceptions, are far from being well preserved. They are vast, particularly the baths, but not very distinct; and the _coup d’œil_ gives an air of desolation to that part of the _enceinte_. They require study and investigation to excite a very deep interest, or, at least, an interest beyond that which accompanies the general reflection that one sees the remains of Rome.

The modern town east of the river luckily covers little beside the Campus Martius; all in the region of the palace, the circuses, and the baths being virtually unoccupied. Houses there certainly are scattered over the space within the walls, and churches too; but, after all, they produce no very sensible effect on the general appearance of the place. Beyond the proper limits of the modern town, the prevailing character is that of antiquity and ruin a little impaired perhaps by the presence of the gardens and garden-walls.

Much of the site of old Rome, or the region about the Seven Hills, is enclosed in these walls; but much also lies in common. One can enter many of the enclosures too, and a horse enables me to see whether there is any thing within worthy of examination. As my object is less antiquarian research, than such pictures as may help to give you better ideas of things than are to be got from generalities, in my next letter I will take you with me in one of these morning rides, that you may see objects as they present themselves, as well as one can see who is obliged to use another’s eyes.

LETTER XXII.

Morning ride round the City.—Egyptian Obelisk.—The Pincian Hill.—Raphael.—Villa Borghese.—Muro Torto.—Invasions on this side the town.—Pretorian Camp.—A Basilica.—The Campagna.—Fine breed of Horses.—Temples of the god of Return, and of Bacchus.—Fountain of Egeria.—Tomb of Cæcilia Metella.—The Circus ascribed to Caracella erected by Maxentius.—Rome never materially larger than at present.—Tomb of Caius Cestius.—Protestant Cemetery.—Monte Testaceo.—The old system of Patron and Client.—Anecdote of Ferdinando King of Naples.

In order to effect the purpose just mentioned, we will mount at the door of our lodgings, in the Via Ripetta, and quit the town by the nearest gate, which is that of “the people,” or the Porta del Popolo. The obelisk in the centre of the area that we pass is Egyptian, as you may see by the hieroglyphics. It formerly stood before the Temple of the sun, at Heliopolis, and was transported to Rome by order of Augustus, as an ornament to the Circus Maximus. It has now stood near three centuries, or longer than America has been settled, where it is.