AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS

STUDIES FROM THE CHRONICLES OF ROME

BY

FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I

New YorkTHE MACMILLAN COMPANYLONDON: MACMILLAN & CO. , LTD. 

1899

_All rights reserved_

Copyright, 1898, By The Macmillan Company. 

Set up and electrotyped October, 1898. Reprinted November, December, 1898. 

_Norwood Press__J. S. Cushing & Co. --Berwick & Smith__Norwood, Mass. , U. S. A. _

TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOLUME I

 PAGE

THE MAKING OF THE CITY 1

THE EMPIRE 22

THE CITY OF AUGUSTUS 57

THE MIDDLE AGE 78

THE FOURTEEN REGIONS 100

REGION I MONTI 106

REGION II TREVI 155

REGION III COLONNA 190

REGION IV CAMPO MARZO 243

REGION V PONTE 274

REGION VI PARIONE 297

LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES

VOLUME I

Map of Rome _Frontispiece_

 FACING PAGE

The Wall of Romulus 4

Palace of the Cæsars 30

The Campagna and Ruins of the Claudian Aqueduct 50

Temple of Castor and Pollux 70

Basilica Constantine 90

Basilica of Saint John Lateran 114

Baths of Diocletian 140

Fountain of Trevi 158

Piazza Barberini 188

Porta San Lorenzo 214

Villa Borghese 230

Piazza del Popolo 256

Island in the Tiber 280

Palazzo Massimo alle Colonna 306

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

VOLUME I PAGEPalatine Hill and Mouth of the Cloaca Maxima 1

Ruins of the Servian Wall 8

Etruscan Bridge at Veii 16

Tombs on the Appian Way 22

Brass of Tiberius, showing the Temple of Concord 24

The Tarpeian Rock 28

Caius Julius Cæsar 36

Octavius Augustus Cæsar 45

Brass of Trajan, showing the Circus Maximus 56

Brass of Antoninus Pius, in Honour of Faustina, withReverse showing Vesta bearing the Palladium 57

Ponte Rotto, now destroyed 67

Atrium of Vesta 72

Brass of Gordian, showing the Colosseum 78

The Colosseum 87

Ruins of the Temple of Saturn 92

Brass of Gordian, showing Roman Games 99

Ruins of the Julian Basilica 100

Brass of Titus, showing the Colosseum 105

Region I Monti, Device of 106

Santa Francesca Romana 111

San Giovanni in Laterano 116

Piazza Colonna 119

Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano 126

Santa Maria Maggiore 134

Porta Maggiore, supporting the Channels of the Aqueductof Claudius and the Anio Novus 145

Interior of the Colosseum 152

Region II Trevi, Device of 155

Grand Hall of the Colonna Palace 162

Interior of the Mausoleum of Augustus 169

Forum of Trajan 171

Ruins of Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli 180

Palazzo del Quirinale 185

Region III Colonna, Device of 190

Arch of Titus 191

Twin Churches at the Entrance of the Corso 197

San Lorenzo in Lucina 204

Palazzo Doria-Pamfili 208

Palazzo di Monte Citorio 223

Palazzo di Venezia 234

Region IV Campo Marzo, Device of 248

Piazza di Spagna 251

Trinità de Monti 257

Villa Medici 265

Region V Ponte 274

Bridge of Sant' Angelo 285

Villa Negroni 292

Region VI Parione, Device of 297

Piazza Navona 303

Ponte Sisto 307

The Cancelleria 316

WORKS CONSULTED

NOT INCLUDING CLASSIC WRITERS NOR ENCYCLOPÆDIAS

1. AMPÈRE--Histoire Romaine à Rome. AMPÈRE--L'Empire Remain à Rome. 

2. BARACCONI--I Rioni di Roma. 

3. BOISSIER--Promenades Archéologiques. 

4. BRYCE--The Holy Roman Empire. 

5. CELLINI--Memoirs. 

6. COPPI--Memoire Colonnesi. 

7. FORTUNATO--Storia delle vite delle Imperatrici Romane. 

8. GIBBON--Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 

9. GNOLI--Vittoria Accoramboni. 

10. GREGOROVIUS--Geschichte der Stadt Rom. 

11. HARE--Walks in Rome. 

12. JOSEPHUS--Life of. 

13. LANCIANI--Ancient Rome. 

14. LETI--Vita di Sisto V. 

15. MURATORI--Scriptores Rerum Italicarum. MURATORI--Annali d'Italia. MURATORI--Antichità Italiane. 

16. RAMSAY AND LANCIANI--A Manual of Roman Antiquities. 

17. SCHNEIDER--Das Alte Rom. 

18. SILVAGNI--La Corte e la Società Romana. 

[Illustration: PALATINE HILL AND MOUTH OF THE CLOACA MAXIMA]

Ave Roma Immortalis

I

The story of Rome is the most splendid romance in all history. A fewshepherds tend their flocks among volcanic hills, listening by day andnight to the awful warnings of the subterranean voice, --born in danger, reared in peril, living their lives under perpetual menace ofdestruction, from generation to generation. Then, at last, the deepvoice swells to thunder, roaring up from the earth's heart, thelightning shoots madly round the mountain top, the ground rocks, and theair is darkened with ashes. The moment has come. One man is a leader, but not all will follow him. He leads his small band swiftly down fromthe heights, and they drive a flock and a little herd before them, while each man carries his few belongings as best he can, and there arefew women in the company. The rest would not be saved, and they perishamong their huts before another day is over. 

Down, always downwards, march the wanderers, rough, rugged, young withthe terrible youth of those days, and wise only with the wisdom ofnature. Down the steep mountain they go, down over the rich, rollingland, down through the deep forests, unhewn of man, down at last to theriver, where seven low hills rise out of the wide plain. One of thosehills the leader chooses, rounded and grassy; there they encamp, andthey dig a trench and build huts. Pales, protectress of flocks, givesher name to the Palatine Hill. Rumon, the flowing river, names thevillage Rome, and Rome names the leader Romulus, the Man of the River, the Man of the Village by the River; and to our own time thetwenty-first of April is kept and remembered, and even now honoured, forthe very day on which the shepherds began to dig their trench on thePalatine, the date of the Foundation of Rome, from which seven hundredand fifty-four years were reckoned to the birth of Christ. 

And the shepherds called their leader King, though his kingship was overbut few men. Yet they were such men as begin history, and in the scantcompany there were all the seeds of empire. First the profound faith ofnatural mankind, unquestioning, immovable, inseparable from every dailythought and action; then fierce strength, and courage, and love of lifeand of possession; last, obedience to the chosen leader, in clearliberty, when one should fail, to choose another. So the Romans began towin the world, and won it in about six hundred years. 

By their camp-fires, by their firesides in their little huts, they toldold tales of their race, and round the truth grew up romantic legend, ever dear to the fighting man and to the husbandman alike, with strangetales of their first leader's birth, fit for poets, and woven to stiryoung hearts to daring, and young hands to smiting. Truth there wasunder their stories, but how much of it no man can tell: how Amulius ofAlba Longa slew his sons, and slew also his daughter, loved of Mars, mother of twin sons left to die in the forest, like Oedipus, father-slayers, as Oedipus was, wolf-suckled, of whom one was born tokill the other and be the first King, and be taken up to Jupiter instorm and lightning at the last. The legend of wise Numa, next, taughtby Egeria; her stony image still weeps trickling tears for her royaladept, and his earthen cup, jealously guarded, was worshipped for morethan a thousand years; legends of the first Arval brotherhood, dim asthe story of Melchisedec, King and priest, but lasting as Rome itself. Tales of King Tullus, when the three Horatii fought for Rome againstthe three Curiatii, who smote for Alba and lost the day--TullusHostilius, grandson of that first Hostus who had fought against theSabines; and always more legend, and more, and more, sometimes misty, sometimes clear and direct in action as a Greek tragedy. They hover uponthe threshold of history, with faces of beauty or of terror, sublime, ridiculous, insignificant, some born of desperate, real deeds, manyanother, perhaps, first told by some black-haired shepherd mother to herwondering boys at evening, when the brazen pot simmered on thesmouldering fire, and the father had not yet come home. 

But down beneath the legend lies the fact, in hewn stones already far inthe third thousand of their years. Digging for truth, searchers havecome here and there upon the first walls and gates of the Palatinevillage, straight, strong and deeply founded. The men who made themmeant to hold their own, and their own was whatsoever they were able totake from others by force. They built their walls round a four-sidedspace, wide enough for them, scarcely big enough a thousand years laterfor the houses of their children's rulers, the palaces of the Cæsars ofwhich so much still stands today. 

Then came the man who built the first bridge across the river, of woodenpiles and beams, bolted with bronze, because the Romans had no iron yet, and ever afterwards repaired with wood and bronze, for its sanctity, inperpetual veneration of Ancus Martius, fourth King of Rome. That was thebridge Horatius kept against Porsena of Clusium, while the fathers hewedit down behind him. 

[Illustration: WALL OF ROMULUS]

Tarquin the first came next, a stranger of Greek blood, chosen, perhaps, because the factions in Rome could not agree. Then Servius, great andgood, built his tremendous fortification, and the King of Italy today, driving through the streets in his carriage, may look upon the wall ofthe King who reigned in Rome more than two thousand and four hundredyears ago. 

Under those six rulers, from Romulus to Servius, from the man of theRiver Village to the man of walls, Rome had grown from a sheepfold to atown, from a town to a walled city, from a city to a little nation, matched against all mankind, to win or die, inch by inch, sword in hand. She was a kingdom now, and her men were subjects; and still the thirdlaw of great races was strong and waking. Romans obeyed their leader solong as he could lead them well--no longer. The twilight of the Kingsgathered suddenly, and their names were darkened, and their sun wentdown in shame and hate. In the confusion, tragic legend rises to tellthe story. For the first time in Rome, a woman, famous in all history, turned the scale. The King's son, passionate, terrible, false, stealsupon her in the dark. 'I am Sextus Tarquin, and there is a sword in myhand. ' Yet she yielded to no fear of steel, but to the horror ofunearned shame beyond death. On the next day, when she lay before herhusband and her father and the strong Brutus, her story told, her deeddone, splendidly dead by her own hand, they swore the oath in which theRepublic was born. While father, husband and friend were stunned withgrief, Brutus held up the dripping knife before their eyes. 'By thismost chaste blood, I swear--Gods be my witnesses--that I will hunt downTarquin the Proud, himself, his infamous wife and every child of his, with fire and sword, and with all my might, and neither he nor any otherman shall ever again be King in Rome. ' So they all swore, and bore thedead woman out into the market-place, and called on all men to stand bythem. 

They kept their word, and the tale tells how the Tarquins were drivenout to a perpetual exile, and by and by allied themselves with Porsena, and marched on Rome, and were stopped only at the Sublician bridge bybrave Horatius. 

Chaos next. Then all at once the Republic stands out, born full grownand ready armed, stern, organized and grasping, but having alreadywithin itself the quickened opposites that were to fight for power solong and so fiercely, --the rich and the poor, the patrician and theplebeian, the might and the right. 

There is a wonder in that quick change from Kingdom to Commonwealth, which nothing can make clear, except, perhaps, modern history. Say thattwo thousand or more years hereafter men shall read of what ourgrandfathers, our fathers and ourselves have seen done in France withina hundred years, out of two or three old books founded mostly ontradition; they may be confused by the sudden disappearance of kings, bythe chaos, the wild wars and the unforeseen birth of a lasting republic, just as we are puzzled when we read of the same sequence in ancientRome. Men who come after us will have more documents, too. It is notpossible that all books and traces of written history should bedestroyed throughout the world, as the Gauls burned everything in Rome, except the Capitol itself, held by the handful of men who had takenrefuge there. 

So the Kingdom fell with a woman's death, and the Commonwealth was madeby her avengers. Take the story as you will, for truth or truth'slegend, it is for ever humanly true, and such deeds would rouse a nationtoday as they did then and as they set Rome on fire once more nearlysixty years later. 

But all the time Rome was growing as if the very stones had life to putout shoots and blossoms and bear fruit. Round about the city the greatServian wall had wound like a vast finger, in and out, grasping theseven hills, and taking in what would be a fair-sized city even in ourday. They were the last defences Rome built for herself, for nearly ninehundred years. 

Nothing can give a larger idea of Rome's greatness than that; not allthe temples, monuments, palaces, public buildings of later years cantell half the certainty of her power expressed by that one fact--Romeneeded no walls when once she had won the world. 

But it is very hard to guess at what the city was, in those grim timesof the early fight for life. We know the walls, and there were nineteengates in all, and there were paved roads; the wooden bridge, the Capitolwith its first temple and first fortress, the first Forum with theSacred Way, were all there, and the public fountain, called theTullianum, and a few other sites are certain. The rest must be imagined. 

[Illustration: RUINS OF THE SERVIAN WALL]

Rome was a brown city in those days, when there was no marble and littlestucco: a brown city teeming with men and women clothed mostly in greyand brown and black woollen cloaks, like those the hill shepherds weartoday, caught up under one arm and thrown far over the shoulder in darkfolds. The low houses without any outer windows, entered by one roughdoor, were built close together, and those near the Forum had shopsoutside them, low-browed places, dark but not deep, where the cloakedkeeper sat behind a stone counter among his wares, waiting for custom, watching all that happened in the market-place, gathering in gossip fromone buyer to exchange it for more with the next, altogether not unlikethe small Eastern merchant of today. 

Yet during more than half the time, there were few young men, or men inprime, in the streets of Rome. They were fighting more than half theyear, while their fathers and their children stayed behind with thewomen. The women sat spinning and weaving wool in their little brownhouses; the boys played, fought, ran races naked in the streets; thesmall girls had their quiet games and, surely, their dolls, made ofrags, stuffed with the soft wool waste from their mothers' spindles andlooms. The old men, scarred and seamed in the battles of an age whenfighting was all hand to hand, kept the shops, or sunned themselves inthe market-place, shelling and chewing lupins to pass the time, as theRomans have always done, and telling old tales, or boasting to eachother of their half-grown grandchildren, and of their full-grown sons, fighting far away in the hills and the plains that Rome might have morepossession. Meanwhile the maidens went in pairs to the springs to fetchwater, or down to the river in small companies to wash the woollenclothes and dry them in the shade of the old wild trees, lest in the sunthey should shrink and thicken; black-haired, black-eyed, dark-skinnedmaids, all of them, strong and light of foot, fit to be mothers of moresoldiers, to slay more enemies, and bring back more spoil. Then, as inour own times, the flocks of goats were driven in from the pastures atearly morning and milked from door to door, for each household, anddriven out again to the grass before the sun was high. In the old wallthere was the Cattle Gate, the Porta Mugonia, named, as the learned say, from the lowing of the herds. Then, as in the hill towns not long ago, the serving women, who were slaves, sat cross-legged on the ground inthe narrow court within the house, with the hand-mill of two stonesbetween them, and ground the wheat to flour for the day's meal. Therehave been wonderful survivals of the first age even to our own time. 

But that which has not come down to us is the huge vitality of those menand women. The world's holders have never risen suddenly in hordes; theyhave always grown by degrees out of little nations, that could livethrough more than their neighbours. Calling up the vision of the firstRome, one must see, too, such human faces and figures of men as arehardly to be found among us nowadays, --the big features, the great, square, devouring jaws, the steadily bright eyes, the strongly builtbrows, coarse, shagged hair, big bones, iron muscles and startingsinews. There are savage countries that still breed such men. They mayhave their turn next, when we are worn out. Browning has made John theSmith a memorable type. 

Rome was a clean city in those days. One of the Tarquins had built thegreat arched drain which still stands unshaken and in use, and smallerones led to it, draining the Forum and all the low part of the town. Thepeople were clean, far beyond our ordinary idea of them, as is plainenough from the contemptuous way in which the Latin authors use theirstrong words for uncleanliness. A dirty man was an object of pity, andmen sometimes went about in soiled clothes to excite the publicsympathy, as beggars do today in all countries. Dirt meant abjectpoverty, and in a grasping, getting race, poverty was the exception, even while simplicity was the rule. For all was simple with them, theirdress, their homes, their lives, their motives, and if one could see theRome of Tarquin the Proud, this simplicity would be of allcharacteristics the most striking, compared with what we know of laterRome, and with what we see about us in our own times. Simplicity is notstrength, but the condition in which strength is least hampered in itsfull action. 

It was easy to live simply in such a place and in such a climate, undera wise King. The check in the first straight run of Rome's historybrought the Romans suddenly face to face with the first greatcomplication of their career, which was the struggle between the richand the poor; and again the half truth rises up to explain the fact. Men whose first instinct was to take and hold took from one another inpeace when they could not take from their enemies in war, since theymust needs be always taking from some one. So the few strong took allfrom the many weak, till the weak banded themselves together to resistthe strong, and the struggle for life took a new direction. 

The grim figure of Lucius Junius Brutus rises as the incarnation of thatcharacter which, at great times, made history, but in peace madetrouble. The man who avenged Lucretia, who drove out the Tarquins, andfounded the Republic, is most often remembered as the father who satunmoved in judgment on his two traitor sons, and looked on with stonyeyes while they paid the price of their treason in torment and death. That one deed stands out, and we forget how he himself fell fighting forRome's freedom. 

But still the evil grew at home, and the hideous law of creditor anddebtor, which only fiercest avarice could have devised, ground the poor, who were obliged to borrow to pay the tax-gatherer, and made slaves ofthem almost to the ruin of the state. 

Just then Etruria wakes, shadowy, half Greek, the central power ofItaly, between Rome and Gaul. Porsena, the Lar of Clusium, comes againstthe city with a great host in gilded arms. Terror descends like a darkmist over the young nation. The rich fear for their riches, the poor fortheir lives. In haste the fathers gather great supplies of corn againsta siege; credit and debt are forgotten; patrician and plebeian joinhands as Porsena reaches Janiculum, and three heroic figures of romancestand forth from a host of heroes. Horatius keeps the bridge, first withtwo comrades, then, at the last, alone in the glory of single-handedfight against an army, sure of immortality whether he live or die. Scævola, sworn with the three hundred to slay the Lar, stabs the wrongman, and burns his hand to the wrist to show what tortures he can bearunmoved. Cloelia, the maiden hostage, rides her young steed at theyellow torrent, and swims the raging flood back to the Palatine. Cloelia and Horatius get statues in the Forum; Scævola is endowed withgreat lands, which his race holds for centuries, and leaves a name sogreat that two thousand years later, Sforza, greatest leader of theMiddle Age, coveting long ancestry, makes himself descend from the manwho burned off his own hand. 

They are great figures, the two men and the noble girl, and real to us, in a way, because we can stand on the very ground they trod, whereHoratius fought, where Scævola suffered and where Cloelia took theriver. They are nearer to us than Romulus, nearer even than Lucretia, aseach figure, following the city's quick life, has more of reality aboutit, and not less of heroism. 

For two hundred years the Romans strove with each other in law making;the fathers for exclusive power and wealth, the plebeians for freedom, first, and then for office in the state; a time of fighting abroad forland, and of contention at home about its division. In fifty years thepoor had their Tribunes, but it took them nearly three times as long, after that, to make themselves almost the fathers' equals in power. 

Once they tried a new kind of government by a board of ten, and it heldfor a while, till again a woman's life turned the tide of Roman history, and fair young Virginia, stabbed by her father in the Forum, left a nameas lasting as any of that day. 

Romance again, but the true romance, above doubt, at last; not at allmythical, but full of fate's unanswerable logic, which makes dim storiesclear to living eyes. You may see the actors in the Forum, where it allhappened, --the lovely girl with frightened, wondering eyes; the father, desperate, white-lipped, shaking with the thing not yet done; AppiusClaudius smiling among his friends and clients; the sullen crowd ofstrong plebeians, and the something in the chill autumn air that was awarning of fate and fateful change. Then the deed. A shriek at the edgeof the throng; a long, thin knife, high in air, trembling before athousand eyes; a harsh, heartbroken, vengeful voice; a confusion and aswaying of the multitude, and then the rising yell of men overlaid, ringing high in the air from the Capitol right across the Forum to thePalatine, and echoing back the doom of the Ten. 

The deed is vivid still, and then there is sudden darkness. One thinksof how that man lived afterwards. Had Virginius a home, a wife, otherchildren to mourn the dead one? Or was he a lonely man, ten times aloneafter that day, with the memory of one flashing moment always undimmedin a bright horror? Who knows? Did anyone care? Rome's story changed itscourse, turning aside at the river of Virginia's blood, and going onswiftly in another way. 

To defeat this time, straight to Rome's first and greatest humiliation;to the coming of the Gauls, sweeping everything before them, Etruscans, Italians, Romans, up to the gates of the city and over the great moatand wall of Servius, burning, destroying, killing everything, to thefoot of the central rock; baffled at the last stronghold on a dark nightby a flock of cackling geese, but not caring for so small a thing whenthey had swallowed up the rest, or not liking the Latin land, perhaps, and so, taking ransom for peace and marching away northwards againthrough the starved and harried hills and valleys of Etruria to theirown country. And six centuries passed away before an enemy entered Romeagain. 

But the Gauls left wreck and ruin and scarcely one stone upon another inthe great desolation; they swept away all records of history, then andthere, and the general destruction was absolute, so that the Rome of theRepublic and of the Empire, the centre and capital of the world, beganto exist from that day. Unwillingly the people bore back Juno's imagefrom Veii, where they had taken refuge and would have stayed, and builthouses, and would have called that place Rome. But the nobles had theirown way, and the great construction began, of which there was to be noend for many hundreds of years, in peace and war, mostly while hardfighting was going on abroad. 

[Illustration: ETRUSCAN BRIDGE AT VEII]

They built hurriedly at first, for shelter, and as best they could, crowding their little houses in narrow streets with small care forsymmetry or adornment. The second Rome must have seemed but a poorvillage compared with the solidly built city which the Gauls had burnt, and it was long before the present could compare with the past. In hastemen seized on fragments of all sorts, blocks of stone, cracked anddefaced in the flames, charred beams that could still serve, a doorhere, a window there, and such bits of metal as they could pick up. Anirregular, crowded town sprang up, and a few rough temples, no doubt aspied and meanly pieced as many of those early churches built of odds andends of ruin, which stand to this day. 

It is not impossible that the motley character of Rome, of which allwriters speak in one way or another, had its first cause in that secondbuilding of the city. Rome without ruins would hardly seem Rome at all, and all was ruined in that first inroad of the savage Gauls, --houses, temples, public places. When the Romans came back from Veii they musthave found the Forum not altogether unlike what it is today, butblackened with smoke, half choked with mouldering humanity, strewn withcharred timbers, broken roof tiles and the wreck of much householdfurniture; a sorrowful confusion reeking with vapours of death, andpestilential with decay. It was no wonder that the poor plebeians lostheart and would have chosen to go back to the clear streets and cleanerair of Veii. Their little houses were lost and untraceable in theuniversal chaos. But the rich man's ruins stood out in bolder relief; hehad his lands still; he still had slaves; he could rebuild his home; andhe had his way. 

But ever afterwards, though the Republic and the Empire spent the wealthof nations in beautifying the city, the trace of that first defeatremained. Dark and narrow lanes wound in and out, round the greatpublic squares, and within earshot of the broad white streets, and thetime-blackened houses of the poor stood huddled out of sight behind thepalaces of the rich, making perpetual contrast of wealth and poverty, splendour and squalor, just as one may see today in Rome, in London, inParis, in Constantinople, in all the mistress cities of the world thathave long histories of triumph and defeat behind them. 

The first Rome sprang from the ashes of the Alban volcano, the secondRome rose from the ashes of herself, as she has risen again and againsince then. But the Gauls had done Rome a service, too. In crushing herto the earth, they had crushed many of her enemies out of existence; andwhen she stood up to face the world once more, she fought not to beatthe Æquians or the Etruscans at her gates, but to conquer Italy. And bysteady fighting she won it all, and brought home the spoils and dividedthe lands; here and there a battle lost, as in the bloody Caudine pass, but always more battles won, and more, and more, sternly relentless torevolt. Brutus had seen his own sons' heads fall at his own word; shouldCaius Pontius, the Samnite, be spared, because he was the bravest of thebrave? To her faithful friends Rome was just, and now and thenhalf-contemptuously generous. 

The idle Greek fine gentlemen of Tarentum sat in their theatre one day, overlooking the sea, shaded by dyed awnings from the afternoon sun, listening entranced to some grand play, --the Oedipus King, perhaps, orAlcestis, or Medea. Ten Roman trading ships came sailing round thepoint; and the wind failed, and they lay there with drooping sails, waiting for the land breeze that springs up at night. Perhaps some roughLatin sailor, as is the way today in calm weather when there is no workto be done, began to howl out one of those strange, endless songs whichhave been sung down to us, from ear to ear, out of the primeval Aryandarkness, --loud, long drawn out, exasperating in its unfinished cadence, jarring on the refined Greek ear, discordant with the actor's finelymeasured tones. In sudden rage at the noise--so it must have been--thosedelicate idlers sprang up and ran down to the harbour, and took theboats that lay there, and overwhelmed the unarmed Roman traders, slayingmany of them. Foolish, cruel, almost comic. So a sensitive musician, driven half mad by a street organ, longs to rush out and break the thingto pieces, and kill the poor grinder for his barbarous noise. 

But when there was blood in the harbour of Tarentum, and some of theships had escaped on their oars, the Greeks were afraid; and when themessage of war came swiftly down to them from inexorable Rome, theirterror grew, and they sent to Pyrrhus of Epirus, who had set up to be aconqueror, to come and conquer Rome for the sake of certain æstheticfine gentlemen who could not bear to be disturbed at a good play on aspring afternoon. He came with all the pomp and splendour of Easternwarfare; he won a battle, and a battle, and half a battle, and then theRomans beat him at Beneventum, famous again and again, and utterlydestroyed his army, and took back with them his gold and his jewels, andthe tusks of his elephants, and the mastery of all Italy to boot, butnot yet beyond dispute. 

Creeping down into Sicily, Rome met Carthage, both giants in those days, and the greatest and last struggle began, with half the known world andall the known sea for a battle-ground. Round and round theMediterranean, by water and land, they fought for a hundred and eighteenyears, through four generations of men, as we should reckon it, bothgrasping and strong, both relentless, both sworn to win or perish forever, both doing great deeds that are remembered still. The mere name ofRegulus is a legion of legends in itself; the name of Hannibal is initself a history, that of Fabius Maximus a lesson; and while historylasts, Cornelius Scipio and Scipio the African will not be forgotten. Itis the story of many and terrible defeats, from each of which Rome rose, fiercely young, to win a dozen terrible little victories. It is strangethat we remember the lost days best; misty Thrasymene and Cannæ'sfearful slaughter rise first in the memory. Then all at once, within tenyears, the scale turns, and Caius Claudius Nero hurls Hasdrubal'sdisfigured head high over ditch and palisade into his brother's camp, right to his brother's feet. And five years later, the battle of Zama, won almost at the gates of Carthage; and then, almost the end, as greatheartbroken Hannibal, defeated, ruined and exiled, drinks up the poisonand rests at last, some forty years after he led his first army tovictory. But he had been dead nearly forty years, when another Scipio atlast tore down the walls of Carthage, and utterly destroyed the city tothe foundations, for ever. And a dozen years later than that, Rome hadconquered all the civilized world round about the Mediterranean sea, from Spain to Asia. 

[Illustration: TOMBS ON THE APPIAN WAY]

II

There was a mother in Rome, not rich, but of great race, for she wasdaughter to Scipio of Africa; and she called her sons her jewels whenother women showed their golden ornaments and their precious stones andboasted of their husbands' wealth. Cornelia's two sons, Tiberius andCaius, lost their lives successively in a struggle against the avariceof the rich men who ruled Rome, Italy and the world; against thatgrasping avarice which far surpassed the greed of any other race beforethe Romans, or after them, and which had suddenly taken new growth asthe spoils of the East and South and West poured into the city. Yet thevast booty men could see was but an earnest of the wide lands which hadfallen to Rome, called 'Public Lands' almost as if in derision, whilethey fell into the power of the few and strong, by the hundred thousandacres at a time. 

Three hundred and fifty years before the Gracchi, when little conquestsstill seemed great, Spurius Cassius had died in defence of his AgrarianLaw, at the hands of the savage rich who accused him of conspiring for acrown. Tiberius Gracchus set up the rights of the people to the publicland, and perished. 

He fell within a stone's throw of the spot on which the great tribune, Nicholas Rienzi, died. The strong, small band of nobles, armed withstaves and clubs, and with that supremacy of contemptuous bearing thatcows the simple, plough their way through the rioting throng, murderously clubbing to right and left. Tiberius, retreating, stumblesagainst a corpse and his enemies are upon him; a stave swung high inair, a dull blow, and all is finished for that day, save to throw thebody into the Tiber lest the people should make a revolution of itsfuneral. 

Next came Caius, a boy of six and twenty, fighting the same fight for afew years. On his head the nobles set a price--its weight in gold. Hehides on the Aventine, and the Aventine is stormed. He escapes by theSublician bridge and the bridge is held behind him by one friend, almostas Horatius held it against an army. Yet the nobles and their hiredCretan bowmen force the way and pursue him into Furina's grove. There aGreek slave ends him, and to get more gold fills the poor head withmetal--and is paid in full. Three hundred died with Tiberius, threethousand were put to death for his brother's sake. With the goods of theslain and the dowries of their wives, Opimius built the Temple ofConcord on the spot where the later one still stands in part, betweenthe Comitium and the Capitol. The poor of Rome, and Cornelia, and thewidows and children of the murdered men, knew what that 'Concord' meant. 

[Illustration: BRASS OF TIBERIUS, SHOWING THE TEMPLE OF CONCORD]

Then followed revolution, war with runaway slaves, war with theimmediate allies, then civil war, while wealth and love of wealth grewside by side, the one, insatiate, devouring the other. 

First the slaves made for Sicily, wild, mountainous, half-governed thenas it is today, and they held much of it against their masters for fiveyears. Within short memory, almost yesterday, a handful of outlaws hasdefied a powerful nation's best soldiers in the same mountains. It issmall wonder that many thousand men, fighting for liberty and life, should have held out so long. 

And meanwhile Jugurtha of Numidia had for long years bought every Romangeneral sent against him, had come to Rome himself and bought the laws, and had gone back to his country with contemptuous leave-taking--'Thoucity where all is sold!' And still he bought, till Caius Marius, high-hearted plebeian and great soldier, brought him back to die in theMamertine prison. 

Then against wealth arose the last and greatest power of Rome, herterrible armies that set up whom they would, to have their will ofSenate and fathers and people. First Marius, then Sylla whom he hadtaught to fight, and taught to beat him in the end, after Cinna had beenmurdered for his sake at Ancona. 

Marius and Sylla, the plebeian and the patrician, were matched at firstas leader and lieutenant, then both as conquerors, then as alternatedespots of Rome and mortal foes, till their long duel wrecked what hadbeen and opened ways for what was to be. 

First, Sylla claims that he, and not Marius, took Jugurtha, when theNumidian ally betrayed him, though the King and his two sons marched inthe train of the plebeian's triumph. Marius answers by a stupendousvictory over the Cimbrians and Teutons, slays a hundred thousand in onebattle, comes home, triumphs again, sets up his trophies in the city andbuilds a temple to Honour and Courage. Next, in greed of popular power, he perjures himself to support a pair of murderous demagogues, betraysthem in turn to the patricians, and Saturninus is pounded to death withroof tiles in the Capitol. Then, being made leader in the war with theallies, already old for fighting, he fails at the outset, and his rivalSylla is General in his stead. 

Then riot on riot in the Forum, violence after violence in the strugglefor the consulship, murder after murder, blood upon blood not yet dry. Sylla gets the expedition against Mithridates; Marius, at home, undermines his enemy's influence and forces the tribes to give him thecommand, and sends out his lieutenants to the East. Sylla's soldiersmurder them, and Sylla marches back against Rome with six legions. Marius is unprepared; Sylla breaks into the city, torch in hand, at thehead of his troops, burning and slaying; the rivals meet face to face inthe Esquiline market-place, Roman fights Roman, and the plebeian losesthe day and escapes to the sea. 

The reign of terror begins, and a great slaying. Sylla declares hisrival an enemy of Rome, and Marius is found hiding in the marshes ofMinturnæ, is dragged out naked, covered with mud, a rope about his neck, and led into a little house of the town to be slain by a slave. 'Darestthou kill Caius Marius?' asks the old man with flashing eyes, and theslave executioner trembles before the unarmed prisoner. They let him go. He wanders to Africa and sits alone among the ruins of Carthage, whileSylla fights victoriously in the East. Rome, momentarily free of both, is torn by dissensions about the voting of the newly enfranchised. Instead of the greater rivals, Cinna and Octavius are matched for plebsand nobles. Knife-armed the parties fight it out in the Forum, thebodies of citizens lie in heaps, and the gutters are gorged with freeblood, and again the patricians win the day. Cinna, fleeing from wrath, is deposed from office. Marius sees his chance again. Unshaven andunshorn since he left Rome last, he joins Cinna, leading six thousandfugitives, seizes and plunders the towns about Rome, while Cinna encampsbeneath the walls. Together they enter Rome and nail Octavius' head tothe Rostra. Then the vengeance of wholesale slaying, in another reign ofterror, and Marius is despot of the city for a while, as Sylla had beenbefore, till spent with age, his life goes out amid drunkenness andblood. The people tear down Sylla's house, burn his villa and drive outhis wife and his children. Back he comes after four years, victorious, fighting his way right and left, against Lucanians and Samnites, back toRome still fighting them, almost loses the battle, is saved by Crassusto take vengeance again, and again the long lists of the proscribed arewritten out and hung up in the Forum, and the city runs blood in a thirdTerror. Amid heaps of severed heads, Sylla sits before the temple ofCastor and sells the lands of his dead enemies; and Catiline is firstknown to history as the executioner of Caius Gratidianus, whom he slicesto death, piecemeal, beyond the Tiber. 

[Illustration: THE TARPEIAN ROCK]

Sylla, cold, aristocratic, sublimely ironical monster, was Rome's firstabsolute and undisputed military lord. Tired of blood, he tried reform, invented an aristocratic constitution, saw that it must fail, and then, to the amazement of his friends and enemies, abdicated and withdrew toprivate life, protected by a hundred thousand veterans of his army, andmany thousands of freedmen, to die at the last without violence. 

Of the chaos he left behind him, Cæsar made the Roman Empire. 

The Gracchi, champions of the people, were foully done to death. Mariusand Sylla, tearing the proud Republic to pieces for their own greatness, both died in their beds, the one of old age, the other of disease. Thereis no irony like that which often ended the lives of great Romans. Marcus Manlius, who saved the Capitol from the Gauls, was hurled to hisdeath from the same rock, by the tribunes of the people, and Rome'scitadel and sanctuary was desecrated by the blood of its preserver. Scipio of Africa breathed his last in exile, but Appius Claudius, theDecemvir, died rich and honoured. 

One asks, naturally enough, how Rome could hold the civilized nations insubjection while she was fighting out a civil war that lasted fiftyyears. We have but little idea of her great military organization, afterarms became a profession and a career. We can but call up scatteredpictures to show us rags and fragments of the immense host thatpatrolled the world with measured tread and matchless precision ofserried rank, in tens and scores and hundreds of thousands, forcenturies, shoulder to shoulder and flank to flank, learning its ownstrength by degrees, till it suddenly grasped all power, gave it to oneman, and made Caius Julius Cæsar Dictator of the earth. 

The greatest figure in all history suddenly springs out of the dimchaos and shines in undying glory, the figure of a man so great that theoffice he held means Empire, and the mere name he bore means Emperortoday in four empires, --Cæsar, Kaiser, Czar, Kaisár, --a man of so vastpower that the history of humanity for centuries after him was thehistory of those who were chosen to fill his place--the history ofnearly half the twelve centuries foretold by the augur Attus, fromRomulus, first King, to Romulus Augustulus, last Emperor. He was a manwhose deeds and laws have marked out the life of the world even to thisfar day. Before him and with him comes Pompey, with him and after himMark Antony, next to him in line and greatness, Augustus--all dwarfscompared with him, while two of them were failures outright, and thethird could never have reached power but in his steps. 

[Illustration: PALACE OF THE CÆSARS]

In that long tempest of parties wherein the Republic went down for ever, it is hard to trace the truth, or number the slain, or reckon up accountof gain and loss. But when Cæsar rises in the centre of the storm theend is sure and there can be no other, for he drives it before him likea captive whirlwind, to do his bidding and clear the earth for hiscoming. Other men, and great men, too, are overwhelmed by it, dasheddown and stunned out of all sense and judgment, to be lost and forgottenlike leaves in autumn, whirled away before the gale. Pompey, greatgeneral and great statesman, conqueror in Spain, subduer of Spartacusand the Gladiators, destroyer of pirates and final victor overMithridates, comes back and lives as a simple citizen. Noble of birth, but not trusted by his peers, he joins with Cæsar, leader of all thepeople, and with Crassus, for more power, and loses the world by givingCæsar an army, and Gaul to conquer. Crassus, brave general, too, isslain in battle in far Parthia, and Pompey steals a march by getting along term in Spain. Cæsar demands as much and is refused by Pompey'sfriends. Then the storm breaks and Cæsar comes back from Gaul to crossthe Rubicon, and take all Italy in sixty days. Pompey, ambitious, ill-starred, fights losing battles everywhere. Murdered at last inEgypt, he, too, is dead, and Cæsar stands alone, master of Rome and ofthe world. One year he ruled, and then they slew him; but no one of themthat struck him died a natural death. 

Creation presupposes chaos, and it is the divine prerogative of geniusto evolve order from confusion. Julius Cæsar found the world of his dayconsisting of disordered elements of strength, all at strife with eachother in a central turmoil, skirted and surrounded by the relative peaceof an ancient and long undisturbed barbarism. 

It was out of these elements that he created what has become modernEurope, and the direction which he gave to the evolution of mankind hasnever wholly changed since his day. Of all great conquerors he was theleast cruel, for he never sacrificed human life without the directintention of benefiting mankind by an increased social stability. Of allgreat lawgivers, he was the most wise and just, and the truths he setdown in the Julian Code are the foundation of modern justice. Of allgreat men who have leaped upon the world as upon an unbroken horse, whohave guided it with relentless hands, and ridden it breathless to thegoal of glory, Cæsar is the only one who turned the race into the trackof civilization and, dying, left mankind a future in the memory of hispast. He is the one great man of all, without whom it is impossible toimagine history. We cannot take him away and yet leave anything of whatwe have. The world could have been as it is without Alexander, withoutCharlemagne, without Napoleon; it could not have been the world we knowwithout Caius Julius Cæsar. 

That fact alone places him at the head of mankind. 

In Cæsar's life there is the same matter for astonishment as inNapoleon's; there is the vast disproportion between beginnings andclimax, between the relative modesty of early aims and the stupendousmagnitude of the climacteric result. One asks how in a few years theimpecunious son of the Corsican notary became the world's despot, andhow the fashionable young spendthrift lawyer of Rome, dabbling inpolitics and almost ignorant of warfare, rose in a quarter of a centuryto be the world's conqueror, lawgiver and civilizer. The daily miracleof genius is the incalculable speed at which it simultaneously thinksand acts. Nothing is so logical as creation, and creation is the firstsign as well as the only proof that genius is present. 

Hitherto the life of Cæsar has not been logically presented. His youthappears almost always to be totally disconnected from his maturity. Thefirst success, the conquest of Gaul, comes as a surprise, because itspreparation is not described. After it everything seems natural, andconquest follows victory as daylight follows dawn; but when we try tothink backwards from that first expedition, we either see nothingclearly, or we find Cæsar an insignificant unit in a general disorder, as hard to identify as an individual ant in a swarming ant-hill. In thelives of all 'great men, ' which are almost always totally unlike thelives of the so-called 'great, '--those born, not to power, but inpower, --there is a point which must inevitably be enigmatical. It may becalled the Hour of Fate--the time when in the suddenly loosed play ofmany circumstances, strained like springs and held back upon themselves, a man who has been known to a few thousands finds himself the chief ofmillions and the despot of a nation. 

Things which are only steps to great men are magnified to attainments inordinary lives, and remembered with pride. The man of genius is sure ofthe great result, if he can but get a fulcrum for his lever. Whatstrikes one most in the careers of such men as Cæsar and Napoleon is thetremendous advance realized at the first step--the difference betweenNapoleon's half-subordinate position before the first campaign in Italyand his dominion of France immediately after it, or the distance whichseparated Cæsar, the impeached Consul, from Cæsar, the conqueror ofGaul. 

It must not be forgotten that Cæsar came of a family that had held greatpositions, and which, though impoverished, still had credit, subsequently stretched by Cæsar to the extreme limit of its borrowingpower. At sixteen, an age when Bonaparte was still an unknown student, Cæsar was Flamen Dialis, or high priest of Jupiter, and at one andtwenty, the 'ill-girt boy, ' as Sylla called him from his way of wearinghis toga, was important enough to be driven from Rome, a fugitive. Hisfirst attempt at a larger notoriety had failed, and Dolabella, whom hehad impeached, had been acquitted through the influence of friends. Yetthe young lawyer had found the opportunity of showing what he could do, and it was not without reason that Sylla said of him, 'You will findmany a Marius in this one Cæsar. '

Twenty years passed before the prophecy began to be realized with thecommencement of Cæsar's career in Gaul, and more than once during thattime his life seemed a failure in his own eyes, and he said scornfullyand sadly of himself that he had done nothing to be remembered at an agewhen Alexander had already conquered the world. 

Those twenty years which, to the thoughtful man, are by far the mostinteresting of all, appear in history as a confused and shapeless medleyof political, military and forensic activity, strongly coloured bysocial scandals, which rested upon a foundation of truth, and darkenedby accusations of worse kind, for which there is no sort of evidence, and which may be safely attributed to the jealousy of unscrupulousadversaries. 

The first account of him, which we have in the seventeenth year of hisage, evokes a picture of youthful beauty. The boy who is to win theworld is appointed high priest of Jove in Rome, --by what stronginfluence we know not, --and we fancy the splendid youth with his tallfigure, full of elastic endurance, the brilliant face, the piercing, bold, black eyes; we see him with the small mitre set back upon the darkand curling locks that grow low on the forehead, as hair often does thatis to fall early, clad in the purple robe of his high office, summoningall his young dignity to lend importance to his youthful grace as hemoves up to Jove's high altar to perform his first solemn sacrifice withhis young consort; for the high priesthood of Jove was held jointly byman and wife, and if the wife died the husband lost his office. 

He was about twenty when he cast his lot with the people, and within theyear he fled from Sylla's persecution. The life of sudden changes andcontrasts had begun. Straight from the sacred office, with all itspomp, and splendour, and solemnity, Cæsar is a fugitive in the Sabinehills, homeless, wifeless, fever-stricken, a price on his head. Suchquick chances of evil fell to many in the days of the great strugglebetween Marius and Sylla, between the people and the nobles. 

Then as Sylla yielded to the insistence of the young 'populist'nobleman's many friends, the quick reverse is turned to us. Cæsar has amilitary command, sees some fighting and much idleness by the shores ofthe Bosphorus, in Bithynia--then in a fit of sudden energy, thesoldier's spirit rises; he dashes to the attack on Mytilene, and showshimself a man. 

[Illustration: CAIUS JULIUS CÆSAR

After a statue in the Palazzo dei Conservatori]

One or two unimportant campaigns, as a subordinate officer, a civiccrown won for personal bravery, an unsuccessful action brought against acitizen of high rank in the hope of forcing himself into notice, a tripto Rhodes made to escape the disgrace of failure, and an adventure withpirates--there, in a few words, is the story of Julius Cæsar's youth, ashistory tells it. But then suddenly, when his projected studies in quietRhodes were hardly begun, he crosses to the mainland, raises troops, seizes cities, drives Mithridates' governor out of the province, returnsto Rome and is elected military tribune. The change is too quick, andone does not understand it. Truth should tell that those early years hadbeen spent in the profound study of philosophy, history, biography, languages and mankind, of the genesis of events from the germ to thebranching tree, of that chemistry of fate which brews effect out ofcause, and distils the imperishable essence of glory from the rougherliquor of vulgar success. 

What strikes one most in the lives of the very great is that everyaction has a cumulative force beyond what it ever has in the existenceof ordinary men. Success moves onward, passing through events on thesame plane, as it were, and often losing brilliancy till it fades away, leaving those who have had it to outlive it in sorrow and weakness. Genius moves upward, treading events under its feet, scaling Olympus, making a ladder of mankind, outlasting its own activity for ever in afinal and fixed glory more splendid than its own bright path. The reallygreat man gathers power in action, the average successful man expendsit. 

And so it must be understood that Cæsar, in his early youth, was notwasting his gifts in what seemed to be a half-voluptuous, half-adventurous, wholly careless life, but was accumulating strength byabsorbing into himself the forces with which he came in contact, exhausting the intelligence of his companions in order to stock his own, learning everything simultaneously, forgetting nothing he learned tillhe could use all he knew to the extreme limit of its value. 

There is something mysterious in the almost unlimited credit which Cæsarseems to have enjoyed when still a very young man; and if the control ofenormous sums of money by which he made himself beloved among the peopleexplains, in a measure, his rapid rise from office to office, it is, onthe other hand, hard to account for the trust which his creditors placedin his promises, and to explain why, when he was taken by pirates, thecities of Asia Minor should have voluntarily contributed money to makeup the ransom demanded, seeing that he had never served in Asia, exceptas a subordinate. The only possible explanation is that while there, hisreal energies were devoted to the attainment of the greatest possiblepopularity in the shortest possible time, and that he was making himselfbeloved by the Asiatic cities, while his enemies said of him that he waswasting his time in idleness and dissipation. 

In any case, it was the control of money that most helped him inobtaining high offices in Rome, and from the very first he seems to haveacted on the principle that in great enterprises economy spells ruin, and that to check expenditure is to trip up success. And this isexplained, if not justified, by his close association with the people, from his very childhood. Until he was made Pontifex Maximus he seems tohave lived in a small house in the Suburra, in one of the most crowdedand least fashionable quarters of Rome; and as a mere boy, it was hisinfluence with the common people that roused Sylla's anxiety. To livewith the people, to take their part against the nobles, to give them ofall he had and of all he could borrow, were the chief rules of hisconduct, and the fact that he obtained such enormous loans proves thatthere were rich lenders who were ready to risk fortunes upon hissuccess. And it was in dealing with the Roman plebeian that he learnedto command the Roman soldier, with the tact of a demagogue and thefirmness of an autocrat. He knew that a man must give largely, evenrecklessly, to be beloved, and that in order to be respected he must beable to refuse coldly and without condition, and that in all ages thepeople are but as little children before genius, though they may riseagainst talent like wild beasts and tear it to death. 

He knew also that in youth ten failures are nothing compared with onesuccess, while in the full meridian of power one failure undoes a scoreof victories; hence his recklessness at first, his magnificent cautionin his latter days; his daring resistance of Sylla's power before he wastwenty, and his mildness towards the ringleaders of popularconspiracies against him when he was near his end; his violence upon theson of King Juba, whom he seized by the beard in open court when hehimself was but a young lawyer, and his moderation in bearing the mostatrocious libels, to punish which might have only increased their force. 

Cæsar's career divides itself not unnaturally into three periods, corresponding with his youth, his manhood and his maturity; with theabsorption of force in gaining experience, the lavish expenditure offorce in conquest, the calm employment of force in final supremacy. Theman who never lost a battle in which he commanded in person, began lifeby failing in everything he attempted, and ended it as the foremost manof all humanity, past and to come, the greatest general, the greatestspeaker, the greatest lawgiver, the greatest writer of Latin prose whomthe great Roman people ever produced, and also the bravest man of hisday, as he was the kindest. In an age when torture was a legitimate partof justice, he caused the pirates who had taken him, and whom he took inturn, to be mercifully put to death before he crucified their deadbodies for his oath's sake, and when his long-trusted servant tried topoison him he would not allow the wretch to be hurt save by the suddenstroke of instant death; nor ever in a long career of conquest did heinflict unnecessary pain. Never was man loved of women as he was, andhis sins were many even for those days, yet in them we find nounkindness, and when his own wife should have been condemned for herlove of Clodius, Cæsar would not testify against her. He divorced her, he said, not because he knew anything, but because his family should beabove suspicion. He plundered the world, but he gave it back its gold insplendid gifts and public works, keeping its glory alone for himself. Hewas hated by the few because he was beloved by the many, and it was notrevenge, but envy, that slew the benefactor of mankind. The weaknessesof the supreme conqueror were love of woman and trust of man, and as thefirst Brutus made his name glorious by setting his people free, thesecond disgraced it and blackened the name of friendship with a stainthat will outlast time, and by a deed second only in infamy to that ofJudas Iscariot. The last cry of the murdered master was the cry of abroken heart--'And thou, too, Brutus, my son!' Alexander left chaosbehind him; Cæsar left Europe, and it may be truly said that thecrowning manifestation of his sublime wisdom was his choice ofOctavius--of the young Augustus--to complete the carving of a worldwhich he himself had sketched and blocked out in the rough. 

The first period of his life ended with his election to the militarytribuneship on his return to Rome after his Asian adventures, and hisfirst acts were directed towards the reconstruction of what Sylla haddestroyed, by reëstablishing the authority of tribunes and recallingsome of Sylla's victims from their political exile. From that timeonward, in his second period, he was more or less continually in office. Successively a tribune, a quæstor, governor of Farther Spain, ædile, pontifex maximus, prætor, governor of Spain again, and consul with theinsignificant Bibulus, a man of so small importance that people used todate documents, by way of a jest, 'in the Consulship of Julius andCæsar. ' Then he obtained Gaul for his province, and lived the life of asoldier for nine years, during which he created the army that gave himat last the mastery of Rome. And in the tenth year Rome was afraid, andhis enemies tried to deprive him of his power and passed bills againsthim, and drove out the tribunes of the people who took his part; and ifhe had returned to Rome then, yielding up his province and his legions, as he was called upon to do, he would have been judged and destroyed byhis enemies. But he knew that the people loved him, and he crossed theRubicon in arms. 

This second period of his life closed with the last triumph decreed tohim for his victories in Spain. The third and final period had coveredbut one year when his assassins cut it short. 

Nothing demonstrates Cæsar's greatness so satisfactorily as this, thatat his death Rome relapsed at once into civil war and strife as violentas that to which Cæsar had put an end, and that the man who broughtlasting peace and unity into the distracted state, was the man ofCæsar's choice. But in endeavouring to realize his supreme wisdom, nothing helps us more than the pettiness of the accusations broughtagainst him by such historians as Suetonius--that he once remainedseated to receive the whole body of Conscript fathers, that he had agilded chair in the Senate house, and appointed magistrates at his ownpleasure to hold office for terms of years, that he laughed at anunfavourable omen and made himself dictator for life; and such things, says the historian, 'are of so much more importance than all his goodqualities that he is considered to have abused his power and to havebeen justly assassinated. ' But it is the people, not the historian, whomake history, and when Caius Julius Cæsar was dead, the people calledhim God. 

Beardless Octavius, his sister's daughter's son, barely eighteen yearsold, brings in by force the golden age of Rome. As Triumvir, with Antonyand Lepidus, he hunts down the murderers first, then his rebelliouscolleagues, and wins the Empire back in thirteen years. He rules longand well, and very simply, as commanding general of the army and by noother power, taking all into his hands besides, the Senate, the chiefpriesthood, and the Majesty of Rome over the whole earth, for which hewas called Augustus, the 'Majestic. ' And his strength lay in this, thatby the army, he was master of Senate and people alike, so that theycould no longer strive with each other in perpetual bloodshed, and theeverlasting wars of Rome were fought against barbarians far away, whileRome at home was prosperous and calm and peaceful. Then Virgil sang, andHorace gave Latin life to Grecian verse, and smiled and laughed, andwept and dallied with love, while Livy wrote the story of greatness forus all to this day, and Ovid touched another note still unforgotten. Then temple rose by temple, and grand basilicas reared their height bythe Sacred Way; the gold of the earth poured in and Art was queen andmistress of the age. Julius Cæsar was master in Rome for one year. Augustus ruled nearly half a century. Four and forty years he was solemonarch after Antony's fall at Actium. About the thirtieth year of hisreign, Christ was born. 

All men have an original claim to be judged by the standard of their owntime. Counting one by one the victims of the proscription proclaimed bythe triumvirate in which Augustus was the chief power, some historianshave brought down his greatness in quick declination to the level of acold-blooded and cruel selfishness; and they account for his subsequentjust and merciful conduct on the ground that he foresaw politicaladvantage in clemency, and extension of power in the exercise ofjustice. The death of Cicero, sacrificed to Antony's not unreasonablevengeance, is magnified into a crime that belittles the Augustan age. 

Yet compared with the wholesale murders done by Marius and Sylla, and bythe patricians themselves in their struggles with the people, the fewpolitical executions ordered by Augustus sink into comparativeinsignificance, and it will generally be seen that those who most findfault with him are ready to extol the murderers of Julius Cæsar asdevoted patriots, if not as glorious martyrs to the divine cause ofliberty. 

[Illustration: OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS CÆSAR

After a bust in the British Museum]

It is easier, perhaps, to describe the growth of Rome from the earlyKings to Augustus, than to account for the change from the Rome of theEmpire at the beginning of our era to the Rome of the Popes in the yeareight hundred. Probably the easiest and truest way of looking at thetransition is to regard it according to the periods of supremacy, decadence and ultimate disappearance from Rome of the Roman Army. Forthe Army made the Emperors, and the Emperors made the times. The greatmilitary organization had in it the elements of long life, together withall sudden and terrible possibilities. The Army made Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, the Julian Emperors; then destroyed Nero and set upVespasian after one or two experiments. The Army chose such men asTrajan and Marcus Aurelius, and such monsters as Domitian and Commodus;the Army conquered the world, held the world and gave the world towhomsoever it pleased. The Army and the Emperor, each the other's tool, governed Rome for good and ill, for ill and good, by fear and bounty andlargely by amusement, but ultimately to their own and Rome'sdestruction. 

For all the time the two great adversaries of the Empire, the spiritualand material, the Christian and the men of the North, were gainingstrength and unity. Under Augustus, Christ was born. Under Augustus, Hermann the German chieftain destroyed Varus and his legions. By sheerstrength and endurance, the Army widened and broadened the Empire, forcing back the Northmen upon themselves like a spring that gathersforce by tension. Unnoticed, at first, Christianity quietly grew topower. Between Christians and Northmen, the Empire of Rome went down atlast, leaving the Empire of Constantinople behind it. 

The great change was wrought in about five hundred years, by the Empire, from the City of the Republic to what had become the City of the MiddleAge; between the reign of Augustus, first Emperor, and the deposition ofthe last Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, by Odoacer, Rome's hiredPomeranian general. 

In that time Rome was transubstantiated in all its elements, inpopulation, in language, in religion and in customs. To all intents andpurposes, the original Latin race utterly disappeared, and the Latintongue became the broken dialect of a mixed people, out of which themodern Italian speech was to grow, decadent in form, degenerate instrength but renascent in a grace and beauty which the Latin neverpossessed. First the vast population of slaves brought in theircivilized and their barbarous words--Greek, Hebrew and Arabic, orCeltic, German and Slav; then came the Goth, and filled all Italy withhimself and his rough language for a hundred years. The Latin of theRoman Mass is the Latin of slaves in Rome between the first and fifthcenturies, from the time of the Apostles to that of Pope Gelasius, whoseprayer for peace and rest is the last known addition to the Canon, according to most authorities. Compare it with the Latin of Livy andTacitus; it is not the same language, for to read the one by no meansimplies an understanding of the other. 

Or take the dress. It is told of Augustus, as a strange and almostunknown thing, that he wore breeches and stockings, or leg swathings, because he suffered continually with cold. Men went barelegged andwrapped themselves in the huge toga which came down to their feet. Inthe days of Augustulus the toga was almost forgotten; men wore leggings, tunics and the short Greek cloak. 

In the change of religion, too, all customs were transformed, privateand public, in a way impossible to realize today. The Roman household, with the father as absolute head, lord and despot, gradually gave way toa sort of half-patriarchal, half-religious family life, resembling thefirst in principle but absolutely different from it in details andresult, and which, in a measure, has survived in Italy to the presenttime. 

In the lives of men, the terror of one man, as each despot lost power, began to give way to the fear of half-defined institutions, of thedistant government in Constantinople and of the Church as a secularpower, till the time came when the title of Emperor raised a smile, whereas the name of the Pope--of the 'Father-Bishop'--was spoken withreverence by Christians and with respect even by unbelievers. The timecame when the army that had made Emperors and unmade them at itspleasure became a mere band of foreign mercenaries, who fought for wagesand plunder when they could be induced to fight for Rome at all. 

So the change came. But in the long five hundred years of the WesternEmpire Rome had filled the world with the results of her own life andhad founded modern Europe, from the Danube to England and from the Rhineto Gibraltar; so that when the tide set towards the south again, theNorthmen brought back to Italy some of the spirit and some of theinstitutions which Rome had carried northwards to them in the days ofconquest; and they came not altogether as strangers and barbarians, asthe Huns had come, to ravage and destroy, and be themselves destroyedand scattered and forgotten, but, in a measure, as Europeans againstEuropeans, hoping to grasp the remnants of a civilized power. Theodorictried to make a real kingdom, Totila and Teias fell fighting for one;the Franks established one in Gaul, and at last it was a Frank who gavethe Empire life again, and conquests and laws, and was crowned by theChristian Pontifex Maximus in Rome when Julius Cæsar had been dead morethan eight hundred years. 

One of the greatest of the world's historians has told the story of thechange, calling it the 'Decline and Fall of the Empire, ' and describingit in some three thousand pages, of which scarcely one can be spared forthe understanding of the whole. Thereby its magnitude may be gauged, butneither fairly judged nor accurately measured. The man who would graspthe whole meaning of Rome's name, must spend a lifetime in study andlook forward to disappointment in the end. It was Ampère, I believe, whotold a young student that he might get a superficial impression of thecity in ten years, but that twenty would be necessary in order to knowanything about it worthy to be written. And perhaps the largest part ofthe knowledge worth having lies in the change from the ancient capitalof the Empire to the mediæval seat of ecclesiastic domination. 

And, indeed, nothing in all history is more extraordinary than the riseof Rome's second power under the Popes. In the ordinary course of humanevents, great nations appear to have had but one life. When that waslived out, and when they had passed through the artistic period so oftencoincident with early decadence, they were either swept away, or theysank to the insignificance of mere commercial prosperity, thereafterderiving their fashions, arts, tastes, and in fact almost everythingexcept their wealth, from nations far gone in decay. 

[Illustration: THE CAMPAGNA

And Ruins of the Claudian Aqueduct]

But in Rome it was otherwise. The growth of the faith which subjectedthe civilized world was a matter of first importance to civilization, and Rome was the centre of that growing. Moreover, that development andthat faith had one head, chosen by election, and the headship itselfbecame an object of the highest ambition, whereby the strength andgenius of individuals and families were constantly called into activity, and both families and isolated individuals of foreign race wereattracted to Rome. It was no small thing to hold the kings of the earthin spiritual subjection, to be the arbiter of the new Empire founded byCharlemagne, the director of the kingdoms built up in France andEngland, and, almost literally, the feudal lord over all other temporalpowers. The force of a predominant idea gave Rome new life, vivifyingnew elements with the vitality of new ambitions. The theatre was thesame. The actors and the play had changed. The world was no longergoverned by one man as monarch; it was directed by one man, who was thechief personage in the vast and intricate feudal system by which strongmen agreed to live, and to which they forced the weak to submit. 

The Barons came into existence, and Rome was a city of fortresses andtowers, as well as churches. Orsini and Colonna, Caetani andVitelleschi, Savelli and Frangipani, fought with each other forcenturies among ruins, built strongholds of the stones of temples, andburned the marble treasures of the world to make lime. And fiercely theyheld their own. Nicholas Rienzi wanders amid the deserted places, deciphers the broken inscriptions, gathers a little crowd of plebeiansabout him and tells them of ancient Rome, and of the rights of thepeople in old times. All at once he rises, a grand shadow of a Roman, atrue tribune, brave, impulsive, eloquent. A little while longer and heis half mad with vanity and ambition, a public fool in a high place, decking himself in silks and satins, and ornaments of gold, and theangry nobles slay him on the steps of the Aracoeli, as other nobleslong ago slew Tiberius Gracchus, a greater and a better man, almost onthe same spot. 

Meanwhile the great schism of the Church rages, before and after Rienzi. The Empire and its Kingdoms join issue with each other and with theBarons for the lordship of Christendom; there are two Popes, waging warwith nations on both sides, and Rome is reduced to a town of barelytwenty thousand souls. Then comes Hildebrand, Pope Gregory the Seventh, friend of the Great Countess, humbler of the Emperor, a restorer ofthings, the Julius Cæsar of the Church, and from his day there isstability again, as Urban the Second follows, like an Augustus; Nicholasthe Fifth, the next great Pontiff, comes in with the Renascence. Last ofdestroyers Charles, the wild Constable of Bourbon, marches in openrebellion against King, State and Church, friend to the Emperor, straight to his death at the walls, his work of destruction carried outto the terrible end by revengeful Spaniards who spare only the churchesand the convents. Out of those ashes Rome rose again, for the last time, the Rome of Sixtus the Fifth, which is, substantially, the Rome we seetoday; less powerful in the world after that time, but more beautiful asshe grew more peaceful by degrees; flourishing in a strange, motleyway, like no other city in the world, as the Empire of the Hapsburgs andthe Kingdoms of Europe learned to live apart from her, and she wasconcentrated again upon herself, still and always a factor amongnations, and ever to be. But even in latter days, Napoleon could not dowithout her, and Francis the Second of Austria had to resign the Empire, in order that Pius the Seventh might call the self-crowned Corsicansoldier, girt with Charlemagne's huge sword, the anointed Emperor ofChristendom. 

Once more a new idea gives life to fragments hewn in pieces andscattered in confusion. A dream of unity disturbs Italy's sleep. Never, in truth, in all history, has Italy been united save by violence. By thesword the Republic brought Latins, Samnites and Etruscans intosubjection; by sheer strength she crushed the rebellion of the slavesand then forced the Italian allies to a second submission; by terrorMarius and Sylla ruled Rome and Italy; and it was the overwhelming powerof a paid army that held the Italians in check under the Empire, tillthey broke away from each other as soon as the pressure was removed, tolive in separate kingdoms and principalities for thirteen or fourteenhundred years, from Romulus Augustulus--or at least from Justinian--toVictor Emmanuel, King of Italy, in whose veins ran not one drop ofItalian blood. 

One asks whence came the idea of unity which has had such power to movethese Italians, in modern times. The answer is plain and simple. Unityis the word; the interpretation of it is the name of Rome. The desire isfor all the romance and the legends and the visions of supreme greatnesswhich no other name can ever call up. What will be called hereafter themadness of the Italian people took possession of them on the day whenRome was theirs to do with as they pleased. Their financial ruin had itsorigin at that moment, when they became masters of the legendaryMistress of the world. What the end will be, no one can foretell, butthe Rome of old was not made great by dreams. Her walls were founded inblood, and her temples were built with the wealth of conquered nations, by captives and slaves of subject races. 

The Rome we see today owes its mystery, its sadness and its charm to sixand twenty centuries of history, mostly filled with battle, murder andsudden death, deeds horrible in that long-past present which we try tocall up, but alternately grand, fascinating and touching now, as weshape our scant knowledge into visions and fill out our broken dreamswith the stuff of fancy. In most men's minds, perhaps, the charm lies inthat very confusion of suggestions, for few indeed know Rome so well asto divide clearly the truth from the legend in her composition. Suchknowledge is perhaps altogether unattainable in any history; it is mostsurely so here, where city is built on city, monument upon monument, road upon road, from the heart of the soil upwards--the hardened lavaleft by many eruptions of life; where the tablets of Clio have beenshattered again and again, where fire has eaten, and sword has hacked, and hammer has bruised ages of records out of existence, where even therace and type of humanity have changed and have been forgotten twice andthree times over. 

Therefore, unless one have half a lifetime to spend in patient study anddeep research, it is better, if one come to Rome, to feel much than totry and know a little, for in much feeling there is more human truththan in that dangerous little knowledge which dulls the heart andhampers the clear instincts of natural thought. Let him who comes hitherbe satisfied with a little history and much legend, with rough warp offact and rich woof of old-time fancy, and not look too closely for theperfect sum of all, where more than half the parts have perished forever. 

It matters not much whether we know the exact site of Virgil'sLaurentum; it is more interesting to remember how Commodus, cruel, cowardly and selfish, fled thither from the great plague, caring not atall that his people perished by tens of thousands in the city, since hehimself was safe, with the famous Galen to take care of him. We canleave the task of tracing the enclosures of Nero's golden house tolearned archælogists, and let our imagination find wonder and delight intheir accounts of its porticos three thousand feet long, its game park, its baths, its thousands of columns with their gilded capitals, and itswalls encrusted with mother-of-pearl. And we may realize the depth ofRome's abhorrence for the dead tyrant, as we think of how Vespasian andhis son Titus pulled down the enchanted palace for the people's sake, and built the Colosseum where the artificial lake had been, and theirgreat baths on the very foundations of Nero's gorgeous dwelling. 

[Illustration: BRASS OF TRAJAN, SHOWING THE CIRCUS MAXIMUS]

[Illustration: BRASS OF ANTONINUS PIUS, IN HONOUR OF FAUSTINA, WITHREVERSE SHOWING VESTA BEARING THE PALLADIUM]

III

It is impossible to conceive of the Augustan age without Horace, nor toimagine a possible Horace without Greece and Greek influence. At thesame time Horace is in many ways the prototype of the old-fashioned, cultivated, gifted, idle, sarcastic, middle-class Roman official, makingthe most of life on a small salary and the friendship of a greatpersonage; praising poverty, but making the most of the good things thatfell in his way; extolling pristine austerity of life and yielding witha smile to every agreeable temptation; painting the idyllic life of asmall gentleman farmer as the highest state of happiness, but secretlypreferring the town; prudently avoiding marriage, but far too human tocare for an existence in which woman had no share; more sensible intheory than in practice, and more religious in manner than in heart;full of quaint superstitions, queer odds and ends of knowledge, amusinganecdotes and pictures of personal experience; the whole compoundpermeated with a sort of indolent sadness at the unfulfilled promises ofyounger years, in which there had been more of impulse than of ambition, and more of ambition than real strength. The early struggles for Italianunity left many such half-disappointed patriots, and many less fortunatein their subsequent lives than Horace. 

Born in the far South, and the son of a freed slave, brought to Rome asa boy and carefully taught, then sent to Athens to study Greek, he wasbarely twenty years of age when he joined Brutus after Cæsar's death, was with him in Asia, and, in the lack of educated officers perhaps, found himself one day, still a mere boy, tribune of a Legion--or, as weshould say, in command of a brigade of six thousand men, fighting forwhat he believed to be the liberty of Rome, in the disastrous battle ofPhilippi. Brutus being dead, the dream of glory ended, after theamnesty, in a scribe's office under one of the quæstors, and thewould-be liberator of his country became a humble clerk in the Treasury, eking out his meagre salary with the sale of a few verses. Many an oldsoldier of Garibaldi's early republican dreams has ended in much thesame way in our own times under the monarchy. 

But Horace was born to other things. Chaucer was a clerk in the CustomHouse, and found time to be the father of English poetry. Horace's dailywork did not hinder him from becoming a poet. His love of Greek, acquired in Athens and Asia Minor, and the natural bent of his mind madehim the greatest imitator and adapter of foreign verses that ever lived;and his character, by its eminently Italian combination of primrespectability and elastic morality, gave him a two-sided view of menand things that has left us representations of life in three dimensionsinstead of the flat, though often violent, pictures which prejudiceloves best to paint. 

In his admiration of Greek poetry, Horace was not a discoverer; he wasrather the highest expression of Rome's artistic want. If Scipio ofAfrica had never conquered the Carthaginians at Zama, he would benotable still as one of the first and most sincere lovers of Hellenicliterature, and as one of the earliest imitators of Athenian manners. The great conqueror is remembered also as the first man in Rome whoshaved every day, more than a hundred and fifty years before Horace'stime. He was laughed at by some, despised by others and disliked by themajority for his cultivated tastes and his refined manners. 

The Romans had most gifts excepting those we call creative. Instead ofcreating, therefore, Rome took her art whole, and by force, from themost artistic nation the world ever produced. Sculptors, architects, painters and even poets, such as there were, came captive to Rome ingangs, were sold at auction as slaves, and became the property of therich, to work all their lives at their several arts for their master'spleasure; and the State rifled Greece and Asia, and even the Greek Italyof the south, and brought back the masterpieces of an age to adornRome's public places. The Roman was the engineer, the maker of roads, ofaqueducts, of fortifications, the layer out of cities, and the plannerof harbours. In a word, the Roman made the solid and practicalfoundation, and then set the Greek slave to beautify it. When he hadwatched the slave at work for a century or two, he occasionallyattempted to imitate him. That was as far as Rome ever went in originalart. 

But her love of the beautiful, though often indiscriminating and lackingin taste, was profound and sincere. It does not appear that in all herconquests her armies ever wantonly destroyed beautiful things. On thecontrary, her generals brought home all they could with uncommon care, and the consequence was that in Horace's day the public places of thecity were vast open-air museums, and the great temples picture galleriesof which we have not the like now in the whole world. And with thosethings came all the rest; the manners, the household life, thenecessaries and the fancies of a conquering and already decadent nation, the thousands of slaves whose only duty was to amuse their owners andthe public; the countless men and women and girls and boys, whose soulsand bodies went to feed the corruption of the gorgeous capital, or tominister to its enormous luxuries; the companies of flute-players anddancing-girls, the sharp-tongued jesters, the coarse buffoons, theplay-actors and the singers. And then, the endless small commerce of anidle and pleasure-seeking people, easily attracted by bright colours, new fashions and new toys; the drug-sellers and distillers of perfumes, the venders of Eastern silks and linens and lace, the barbers andhairdressers, the jewellers and tailors, the pastry cooks and makers ofhoney-sweetmeats; and everywhere the poor rabble of failures, like scumin the wake of a great ship; the beggars everywhere, and the pickpocketsand the petty thieves. It is no wonder that Horace was fond of strollingin Rome. 

In contrast, the great and wonderful things of the Augustan city standout in high relief, above the varied crowd that fills the streets, withall the dignity that centuries of power can lend. To the tawdry isopposed the splendid, the Roman general in his chiselled corselet anddyed mantle faces the Greek actor in his tinsel; the band of painted, half-clad, bedizened dancing-girls falls back cowering in awestrucksilence as the noble Vestal passes by, high-browed, white-robed, untainted, the incarnation of purity in an age of vice. And the oldSenator in his white cloak with its broad purple hem, his smooth-facedclients at his elbows, his silent slaves before him and behind, meetsthe low-chattering knot of Hebrew money-lenders, making the price ofshort loans for the day, and discussing the assets of a famousspendthrift, as their yellow-turbaned, bearded fathers had talked overthe chances of Julius Cæsar when he was as yet but a fashionable younglawyer of doubtful fortune, with an unlimited gift of persuasion and anequally unbounded talent for amusement. 

Between the contrasts lived men of such position as Horace occupied, butnot many. For the great middle element of society is a growth of latercenturies, and even Horace himself, as time went on, became attached toMæcenas and then, more or less, to the person of the Emperor, by aprocess of natural attraction, just as his butt, Tigellius, gravitatedto the common herd that mourned his death. The 'golden mean' of whichHorace wrote was a mere expression, taught him, perhaps, by his father, a part of his stock of maxims. Where there were only great people on theone side, and a rabble on the other, the man of genius necessarily roseto the level of the high, by his own instinct and their liking. What wasbest of Greek was for them, what was worst was for the populace. 

But the Greek was everywhere, with his keen weak face, his sly look andhis skilful fingers. Scipio and Paulus Emilius had brought him, and hestayed in Rome till the Goth came, and afterwards. Greek poetry, Greekphilosophy, Greek sculpture, Greek painting, Greek music everywhere--tosucceed at all in such society, Virgil and Horace and Ovid must needsmake Greek of Latin, and bend the stiff syllables to Alcaics andSapphics and Hexameters. The task looked easy enough, though it waswithin the powers of so very few. Thousands tried it, no doubt, when thethree or four had set the fashion, and failed, as the second-rate fail, with some little brief success in their own day, turned into the totalfailure of complete disappearance when they had been dead awhile. 

Supreme of them all, for his humanity, Horace remains. Epic Virgil, appealing to the traditions of a living race of nobles and to thecarefully hidden, sober vanity of the world's absolute monarch, does notappeal to modern man. The twilight of the gods has long deepened intonight, and Ovid's tales of them and their goddesses move us by their ownbeauty rather than by our sympathy for them, though we feel the tendertouch of the exiled man whose life was more than half love, in themarvellous Letters of Heroes' Sweethearts--in the complaint of Briseïsto Achilles, in the passionately sad appeal of Hermione to Orestes. Whoever has not read these things does not know the extreme limit ofman's understanding of woman. Yet Horace, with little or nothing of suchtenderness, has outdone Ovid and Virgil in this later age. 

He strolled through life, and all life was a play of which he becamethe easy-going but unforgetful critic. There was something good-naturedeven in his occasional outbursts of contempt and hatred for the thingsand the people he did not like. There was something at once caressingand good-humouredly sceptical in his way of addressing the gods, something charitable in his attacks on all that was ridiculous, --men, manners and fashions. 

He strolled wherever he would, alone; in the market, looking ateverything and asking the price of what he saw, of vegetables and grainand the like; in the Forum, or the Circus, at evening, when 'society'was dining, and the poor people and slaves thronged the open places forrest and air, and there he used to listen to the fortune-tellers, andamong them, no doubt, was that old hag, Canidia, immortalized in thehuge joke of his comic resentment. He goes home to sup on lupins andfritters and leeks, --or says so, --though his stomach abhorred garlic;and his three slaves--the fewest a man could have--wait on him as helies before the clean white marble table, leaning on his elbow. He doesnot forget the household gods, and pours a few drops upon the cementfloor in libation to them, out of the little earthen saucer filled fromthe slim-necked bottle of Campanian earthenware. Then to sleep, carelessof getting up early or late, just as he might feel, to stay at home andread or write, or to wander about the city, or to play the favouriteleft-handed game of ball in the Campus Marius before his bath and hislight midday meal. 

With a little change here and there, it is the life of the idlemiddle-class Italian today, which will always be much the same, let theworld wag and change as it will, with all its extravagances, itsfashions and its madnesses. Now and then he exclaims that there is noaverage common sense left in the world, no half-way stopping-placebetween extremes. One man wears his tunic to his heels, another is girtup as if for a race; Rufillus smells of perfumery, Gargonius of anythingbut scent; and so on--and he cries out that when a fool tries to avoid amistake he will run to any length in the opposite direction. And Horacehad a most particular dislike for fools and bores, and has left us themost famous description of the latter ever set down by an accomplishedobserver. 

By chance, he says, he was walking one morning along the Sacred Streetwith one slave behind him, thinking of some trifle and altogetherabsorbed in it, when a man whom he barely knew by name came up with himin a great hurry and grasped his hand. 'How do you do, sweet friend?'asks the Bore. 'Pretty well, as times go, ' answers Horace, stoppingpolitely for a moment; and then beginning to move on, he sees to hishorror that the Bore walks by his side. 'Can I do anything for you?'asks the poet, still civil, but hinting that he prefers his owncompany. The Bore plunges into the important business of praisinghimself, with a frankness not yet forgotten in his species, and Horacetries to get rid of him, walking very fast, then very slowly, thenturning to whisper a word to his slave, and in his anxiety he feels theperspiration breaking out all over him, while his Tormentor chatters on, as they skirt the splendid Julian Basilica, gleaming in the morning sun. Horace looks nervously and eagerly to right and left, hoping to catchsight of a friend and deliverer. Not a friendly face was in sight, andthe Bore knew it, and was pitilessly frank. 'Oh, I know you would liketo get away from me!' he exclaimed. 'I shall not let you go so easily!Where are you going?' 'Across the Tiber, ' answered Horace, inventing adistant visit. 'I am going to see someone who lives far off, in Cæsar'sgardens--a man you do not know. He is ill. ' 'Very well, ' said the other;'I have nothing to do, and am far from lazy. I will go all the way withyou. ' Horace hung his head, as a poor little Italian donkey does when aheavy load is piled upon his back, for he was fairly caught, and hethought of the long road before him, and he had moreover the unpleasantconsciousness that the Bore was laughing at his imaginary errand, sincethey were walking in a direction exactly opposite from the Tiber, andwould have to go all the way round the Palatine by the Triumphal Roadand the Circus Maximus and then cross by the Sublician bridge, insteadof turning back towards the Velabrum, the Provision Market and theBridge of Æmilius, which we have known and crossed as the Ponte Rotto, but of which only one arch is left now, in midstream. 

[Illustration: PONTE ROTTO, NOW DESTROYED

After an engraving made about 1850]

Then, pressing his advantage, the Bore began again. 'If I am any judgeof myself, ' he observed, 'you will make me one of your most intimatefriends. I am sure nobody can write such good verses as fast as I can. As for my singing, I know it for a fact that Hermogenes is decidedlyjealous of me!' 'Have you a mother, Sir?' asked Horace, gravely. 'Haveyou any relations to whom your safety is a matter of importance?' 'No, 'answered the other, 'no one. I have buried them all!' 'Lucky people!'said the poet to himself, and he wished he were dead, too, at thatmoment, and he thought of all the deaths he might have died. It wasevidently not written that he should die of poison nor in battle, nor ofa cough, nor of the liver, nor even of gout. He was to be slowly talkedto death by a bore. By this time they were before the temple of Castorand Pollux, where the great Twin Brethren bathed their horses atJuturna's spring. The temple of Vesta was before them, and the SacredStreet turned at right angles to the left, crossing over between a rowof shops on one side and the Julian Rostra on the other, to the Courtsof Law. The Bore suddenly remembered that he was to appear in answer toan action on that very morning, and as it was already nine o'clock, hecould not possibly walk all the way to Cæsar's gardens and be backbefore noon, and if he was late, he must forfeit his bail, and the suitwould go against him by default. On the other hand, he had succeeded incatching the great poet alone, after a hundred fruitless attempts, andthe action was not a very important one, after all. He stopped short. 'If you have the slightest regard for me, ' he said, 'you will just goacross with me to the Courts for a moment. ' Horace looked at himcuriously, seeing a chance of escape. 'You know where I am going, ' heanswered with a smile; 'and as for law, I do not know the first thingabout it. ' The Bore hesitated, considered what the loss of the suit mustcost him, and what he might gain by pushing his acquaintance with thefriend of Mæcenas and Augustus. 'I am not sure, ' he said doubtfully, 'whether I had better give up your company, or my case, ' 'My company, byall means!' cried Horace, with alacrity. 'No!' answered the other, looking at his victim thoughtfully, 'I think not!' And he began to moveon again by the Nova Via towards the House of the Vestals. Having madeup his mind to sacrifice his money, however, he lost no time beforetrying to get an equivalent for it. 'How do you stand with Mæcenas?' heasked suddenly, fixing his small eyes on Horace's weary profile, andwithout waiting for an answer he ran on to praise the great man. 'He iskeen and sensible, ' he continued, 'and has not many intimate friends. Noone knows how to take advantage of luck as he does. You would find me avaluable ally, if you would introduce me. I believe you might driveeverybody else out of the field--with my help, of course. ' 'You arequite mistaken there!' answered Horace, rather indignantly. 'He is notat all that kind of man! There is not a house in Rome where any sort ofintrigue would be more utterly useless!' 'Really, I can hardly believeit!' 'It is a fact, nevertheless, ' retorted Horace, stoutly. 'Well, 'said the Bore, 'if it is, I am of course all the more anxious to knowsuch a man!' Horace smiled quietly. 'You have only to wish it, my dearSir, ' he answered, with the faintest modulation of polite irony in histone. 'With such gifts at your command, you will certainly charm him. Why, the very reason of his keeping most people at arm's length is thathe knows how easily he yields!' 'In that case, I will show you what Ican do, ' replied the Bore, delighted. 'I shall bribe the slaves; I willnot give it up, if I am not received at first! I will bide my time andcatch him in the street, and follow him about. One gets nothing in lifewithout taking trouble!' As the man was chattering on, Horace's quickeyes caught sight of an old friend at last, coming towards him from thecorner of the Triumphal Road, for they had already almost passed thePalatine. Aristius, sauntering along and enjoying the morning air, witha couple of slaves at his heels, saw Horace's trouble in a moment, forhe knew the Bore well enough, and realized at once that if he deliveredhis friend, he himself would be the next victim. He was far too cleverfor that, and with a cold-blooded smile pretended not to understandHorace's signals of distress. 'I forget what it was you wished to speakabout with me so particularly, my dear Aristius, ' said the poet, indespair. 'It was something very important, was it not?' 'Yes, ' answeredthe other, with another grin, 'I remember very well; but this is anunlucky day, and I shall choose another time. Today is the thirtiethSabbath, ' he continued, inventing a purely imaginary Hebrew feast, 'andyou surely would not risk a Jew's curse for a few moments ofconversation, would you?' 'I have no religion!' exclaimed Horace, eagerly. 'No superstition! Nothing!' 'But I have, ' retorted Aristius, still smiling. 'My health is not good--perhaps you did not know? I willtell you about it some other time. ' And he turned on his heel, with alaugh, leaving Horace to his awful fate. Even the sunshine looked black. But salvation came suddenly in the shape of the man who had brought theaction against the Bore, and who, on his way to the Court, saw hisadversary going off in the opposite direction. 'Coward! Villain!' yelledthe man, springing forward and catching the poet's tormentor by hiscloak. 'Where are you going now? You are witness, Sir, that I am in myright, ' he added, turning to look for Horace. But Horace had disappearedin the crowd that had collected to see the quarrel, and his gods hadsaved him after all. 

[Illustration: TEMPLE OF CASTOR AND POLLUX]

A part of the life of the times is in the little story, and anyone maystroll today along the Sacred Street, past the Basilica and the sharpturn that leads to the block of old houses where the Court House stood, between St. Adrian's and San Lorenzo in Miranda. Anyone may see just howit happened, and many know exactly how Horace felt from the moment whenthe Bore buttonholed him at the corner of the Julian Basilica till hisfinal deliverance near the corner of the Triumphal Road, which is nowthe Via di San Gregorio. 

[Illustration: ATRIUM OF VESTA]

There was much more resemblance to our modern life than one might thinkat first sight. Perhaps, after his timely escape, Horace turned backalong the Sacred Street, followed by his single slave, and retraced hissteps, past the temple of Vesta, the temple of Julius Cæsar, skirtingthe Roman Forum to the Golden Milestone at the foot of the ascent to theCapitol, from which landmark all the distances in the Roman Empire werereckoned, the very centre of the known world. Thence, perhaps, he turnedup towards the Argiletum, with something of that instinct which takes amodern man of letters to his publisher's when he is in theneighbourhood. There the 'Brothers Sosii' had their publishingestablishment, among many others of the same nature, and employed agreat staff of copyists in preparing volumes for sale. All the yearround the skilled scribes sat within in rows, with pen and ink, workingat the manufacture of books. The Sosii Brothers were rich, and probablyowned their workmen as slaves, both the writers and those who preparedthe delicate materials, the wonderful ink, of which we have not the liketoday, the fine sheets of papyrus, --Pliny tells how they were sometimestoo rough, and how they sometimes soaked up the ink like a cloth, ashappens with our own paper, --and the carefully cut pens of Egyptian reedon which so much of the neatness in writing depended, though Cicero sayssomewhere that he could write with any pen he chanced to take up. 

It was natural enough that Horace should look in to ask how his latestbook was selling, or more probably his first, for he had written but afew Epodes and not many Satires at the time when he met the immortalBore. Later in his life, his books were published in editions of athousand, as is the modern custom in Paris, and were sold all over theEmpire, like those of other famous authors. The Satires did him littlecredit, and probably brought him but little money at their firstpublication. It seems certain that they have come down to us through asingle copy. The Greek form of the Odes pleased people better. Moreover, some of the early Satires made distinguished people shy of hisacquaintance, and when he told the Bore that Mæcenas was difficult ofaccess he remembered that nine months had elapsed from the time of hisown introduction to the great man until he had received the latter'sfirst invitation to dinner. More than once he went almost too far in hisattacks on men and things and then tried to remove the disagreeableimpression he had produced, and wrote again of the same subject in adifferent spirit--notably when he attacked the works of the dead poetLucilius and was afterwards obliged to explain himself. 

No doubt he often idled away a whole morning at his publisher's, lookingover new books of other authors, and very probably borrowing them totake home with him, because he was poor, and he assuredly must havetalked over with the Sosii the impression produced on the public by hislatest poems. He was undoubtedly a quæstor's scribe, but it is more thandoubtful whether he ever went near the Treasury or did any kind ofclerk's work. If he ever did, it is odd that he should never speak ofit, nor take anecdotes from such an occupation and from the clerks withwhom he must have been thrown, for he certainly used every other sort ofsocial material in the Satires. Among the few allusions to anything ofthe kind in his works are his ridicule of the over-dressed prætor of thetown of Fundi, who had been a government clerk in Rome, and in the samestory, his jest at one of Mæcenas' parasites, a freedman, and nominallya Treasury clerk, as Horace had been. In another Satire, the clerks ina body wish him to be present at one of their meetings. 

Perhaps what strikes one most in the study of Horace, which means thestudy of the Augustan age, is the vivid contrast between the man whocomposed the Carmen Sæculare, the sacred hymn sung on the Tenthanniversary of Augustus' accession to the imperial power, besides manyodes that breathe a pristine reverence for the gods, and, on the otherhand, the writer of satirical, playfully sceptical verses, who commentson the story of the incense melting without fire at the temple ofEgnatia, with the famous and often-quoted 'Credat Judæus'! The originalRomans had been a believing people, most careful in all ceremonies andobservances, visiting anything like sacrilege with a cool ferocityworthy of the Christian religious wars in later days. Horace, at onetime or another, laughs at almost every god and goddess in the heathencalendar, and publishes his jests, in editions of a thousand copies, with perfect indifference and complete immunity from censorship, whileapparently bestowing a certain amount of care on household sacrificesand the like. 

The fact is that the Romans were a religious people, whereas theItalians were not. It is a singular fact that Rome, when left long toherself, has always shown a tendency to become systematically devout, whereas most of the other Italian states have exhibited an equallystrong inclination to a scepticism not unfrequently mixed with thegrossest superstition. It must be left to more profound students ofhumanity to decide whether certain places have a permanent influence inone determined direction upon the successive races that inhabit them;but it is quite undeniably true that the Romans of all ages have tendedto religion of some sort in the most marked manner. In Roman historythere is a succession of religious epochs not to be found in the annalsof any other city. First, the early faith of the Kings, interrupted bythe irruption of Greek influences which began approximately with ScipioAfricanus; next, the wild Bacchic worship that produced the secretorgies on the Aventine, the discovery of which led to a religiouspersecution and the execution of thousands of persons on religiousgrounds; then the worship of the Egyptian deities, brought over to Romein a new fit of belief, and at the same time, or soon afterwards, themysterious adoration of the Persian Mithras, a gross and ignorant formof mysticism which, nevertheless, took hold of the people, at a timewhen other religions were almost reduced to a matter of form. 

Then, as all these many faiths lost vitality, Christianity arose, theterribly simple and earnest Christianity of the early centuries, sownfirst under the Cæsars, in Rome's secure days, developing to a powerwhen Rome was left to herself by the transference of the Empire to theEast, culminating for the first time in the crowning of Charlemagne, again in the Crusades, sinking under the revival of mythology andHellenism during the Renascence, rising again, by slow degrees, to theextreme level of devotion under Pius the Ninth and the Frenchprotectorate, sinking suddenly with the movement of Italian unity, andthe coming of the Italians in 1870, then rising again, as we see it now, with undying energy, under Leo the Thirteenth, and showing itself in thebuilding of new churches, in the magnificent restoration of old ones, and in the vast second growth of ecclesiastical institutions, which areonce more turning Rome into a clerical city, now that she is again atpeace with herself, under a constitutional monarchy, but threatened onlytoo plainly by an impending anarchic revolution. It would be hard tofind in the history of any other city a parallel to such periodicalrecurrences of religious domination. Nor, in times when belief has beenat its lowest ebb, have outward religious practices anywhere continuedto hold so important a place in men's lives as they have always held inRome. Of all Rome's mad tyrants, Elagabalus alone dared to break intothe temple of Vesta and carry out the sacred Palladium. During more thaneleven hundred years, six Vestal Virgins guarded the sacred fire and theHoly Things of Rome, in peace and war, through kingdom, republic, revolution and empire. For fifteen hundred years since then, the bonesof Saint Peter have been respected by the Emperors, by Goths, by Kings, revolutions and short-lived republics. 

[Illustration: BRASS OF GORDIAN, SHOWING THE COLOSSEUM]

IV

There was a surprising strength in those early institutions of which thefragmentary survival has made Rome what it is. Strongest of all, perhaps, was the patriarchal mode of life which the shepherds of AlbaLonga brought with them when they fled from the volcano, and of whichthe most distinct traces remain to the present day, while its origingoes back to the original Aryan home. Upon that principle all thehousehold life ultimately turned in Rome's greatest times. The Senatorswere Patres, conscript fathers, heads of strong houses; the Patricianswere those who had known 'fathers, ' that is, a known and noble descent. Horace called Senators simply 'Conscripts, ' and the Roman nobles oftoday call themselves the 'Conscript' families. The chain of traditionis unbroken from Romulus to our own time, while everything else haschanged in greater or less degree. 

It is hard for Anglo-Saxons to believe that, for more than a thousandyears, a Roman father possessed the absolute legal right to try, condemnand execute any of his children, without witnesses, in his own house andwithout consulting anyone. Yet nothing is more certain. 'From the mostremote ages, ' says Professor Lanciani, the highest existing authority, 'the power of a Roman father over his children, including those byadoption as well as by blood, was unlimited. A father might, withoutviolating any law, scourge or imprison his son, or sell him for a slave, or put him to death, even after that son had risen to the highesthonours in the state. ' During the life of the father, a child, no matterof what age, could own no property independently, nor keep any privateaccounts, nor dispose of any little belongings, no matter howinsignificant, without the father's consent, which was never anythingmore than an act of favour, and was revocable at any moment, withoutnotice. If a son became a public magistrate, the power was suspended, but was again in force as soon as the period of office terminated. A manwho had been Dictator of Rome became his father's slave and propertyagain, as soon as his dictatorship ended. 

But if the son married with his father's consent, he was partly free, and became a 'father' in his turn, and absolute despot of his ownhousehold. So, if a daughter married, she passed from her father'sdominion to that of her husband. A Priest of Jupiter for life was free. So was a Vestal Virgin. There was a complicated legal trick by which thefather could liberate his son if he wished to do so for any reason, buthe had no power to set any of his children free by a mere act of will, without legal formality. The bare fact that the men of a people shouldbe not only trusted with such power, but that it should be forciblythrust upon them, gives an idea of the Roman character, and it isnatural enough that the condition of family life imposed by such lawsshould have had pronounced effects that may still be felt. As the Romanswere a hardy race and long-lived, when they were not killed in battle, the majority of men were under the absolute control of their fatherstill the age of forty or fifty years, unless they married with theirparents' consent, in which case they advanced one step towards liberty, and at all events, could not be sold as slaves by their fathers, thoughthey still had no right to buy or sell property nor to make a will. 

There are few instances of the law being abused, even in the mostferocious times. Brutus had the right to execute his sons, who conspiredfor the Tarquins, without any public trial. He preferred the latter. Titus Manlius caused his son to be publicly beheaded for disobeying amilitary order in challenging an enemy to single combat, slaying him, and bringing back the spoils. He might have cut off his head in private, so far as the law was concerned, for any reason whatsoever, great orsmall. 

As for the condition of real slaves, it was not so bad in early times asit became later, but the master's power was absolute to inflict tortureand death in any shape. In slave-owning communities, barbarity hasalways been, to some extent, restrained by the actual value of thehumanity in question, and slaves were not as cheap in Rome as might besupposed. A perfectly ignorant labourer of sound body was worth fromeighty to a hundred dollars of our money, which meant much more in thosedays, though in later times twice that sum was sometimes paid for asingle fine fish. The money value of the slave was, nevertheless, alwaysa sort of guarantee of safety to himself; but men who had right of lifeand death over their own children, and who occasionally exercised it, were probably not, as a rule, very considerate to creatures who werebought and sold like cattle. Nevertheless, the number of slaves who werefreed and enriched by their masters is really surprising. 

The point of all this, however, is that the head of a Roman family was, under protection of all laws and traditions, an absolute tyrant over hiswife, his children, and his servants; and the Roman Senate was a chosenassociation of such tyrants. It is astonishing that they should haveheld so long to the forms of a republican government, and should neverhave completely lost their republican traditions. 

In this household tyranny, existing side by side with certain generalideas of liberty and constitutional government, under the ultimatedomination of the Emperors' despotism as introduced by Augustus, is tobe found the keynote of Rome's subsequent social life. Without thosethings, the condition of society in the Middle Age would beinexplicable, and the feudal system could never have developed. The oldRoman principle that 'order should have precedence over order, not manover man, ' rules most of Europe at the present day, though in Rome andItaly it is now completely eclipsed by a form of government which canonly be defined as a monarchic democracy. 

The mere fact that under Augustus no man was eligible to the Senate whopossessed less than a sum equal to a quarter of a million dollars, showsplainly enough what one of the most skilful despots who ever ruledmankind wisely, thought of the institution. It was intended to balance, by its solidity, the ever-unsettled instincts of the people, to preventas far as possible the unwise passage of laws by popular acclamation, and, so to say, to regulate the pulse of the nation. It has beenimitated, in one way or another, by all the nations we call civilized. 

But the father of the family was in his own person the despot, thesenate, the magistrate and the executive of the law; his wife, hischildren and his slaves represented the people, constantly and eternallyin real or theoretical opposition, while he was protected by all theforce of the most ferocious laws. A father could behead his son withimpunity; but the son who killed his father was condemned to be all butbeaten to death, and then to be sewn up in a leathern sack and drowned. The father could take everything from the son; but if the son took thesmallest thing from his father he was a common thief and malefactor, andliable to be treated as one, at his father's pleasure. The conception ofjustice in Rome never rested upon any equality, but always upon theprecedence of one order over another, from the highest to the lowest. There were orders even among the slaves, and one who had been allowed tosave money out of his allowances could himself buy a slave to wait onhim, if he chose. 

Hence the immediate origin of European caste, of different degrees ofnobility, of the relative standing of the liberal professions, of themediæval guilds of artisans and tradesmen, and of the numeroussubdivisions of the agricultural classes, of which traces survive allover Europe. The tendency to caste is essentially and originally Aryan, and will never be wholly eliminated from any branch of the Aryan race. 

One may fairly compare the internal life of a great nation to a buildingwhich rises from its foundations story by story until the lower part canno longer carry the weight of the superstructure, and the first signs ofweakness begin to show themselves in the oldest and lowest portion ofthe whole. Carefully repaired, when the weakness is noticed at all, itcan bear a little more, and again a little, but at last the breakingstrain is reached, the tall building totters, the highest pinnaclestopple over, then the upper story collapses, and the end comes either inthe crash of a great falling or, by degrees, in the irreparable ruin ofages. But when all is over, and wind and weather and time have sweptaway what they can, parts of the original foundation still stand uprough and heavy, on which a younger and smaller people must build theirnew dwelling, if they build at all. 

The aptness of the simile is still more apparent when we confront thematerial constructions of a nation with the degree of the nation'sdevelopment or decadence at the time when the work was done. 

It is only by doing something of that sort that we can at all realizethe connection between the settlement of the shepherds, the Rome of theCæsars, and the desolate and scantily populated fighting ground of theBarons, upon which, with the Renascence, the city of the later Popesbegan to rise under Nicholas the Fifth. And lastly, without a little ofsuch general knowledge it would be utterly impossible to call up, evenfaintly, the lives of Romans in successive ages. Read the earlier partsof Livy's histories and try to picture the pristine simplicity of thoseprimeval times. Read Cæsar's Gallic War, the marvellously concisereports of the greatest man that ever lived, during ten years of hisconquests. Read Horace, and attempt to see a little of what he describesin his good-natured, easy way. Read the correspondence of the youngerPliny when proconsul in Bithynia under Trajan, and follow theextraordinary details of administration which, with ten thousand others, the Spanish Emperor of Rome carried in his memory, and directed anddecided. Take Petronius Arbiter's 'novel' next, the Satyricon, if you benot over-delicate in taste, and glance at the daily journal of adissolute wretch wandering from one scene of incredible vice to another. And so on, through the later writers; and from among the vast annals ofthe industrious Muratori pick out bits of Roman life at differentperiods, and try to piece them together. At first sight it seems utterlyimpossible that one and the same people should have passed through suchsocial changes and vicissitudes. Every educated man knows the mainpoints through which the chain ran. Scholars have spent their lives inthe attempt to restore even a few of the links and, for the most part, have lost their way in the dry quicksands that have swallowed up somuch. 

'I have raised a monument more enduring than bronze!' exclaimed Horace, in one of his rare moments of pardonable vanity. The expression meantmuch more then than it does now. The golden age of Rome was an age ofbrazen statues apparently destined to last as long as history. Yet themarble outlasted the gilded metal, and Horace's verse outlived both, andthe names of the artists of that day are mostly forgotten, while his isa household word. In conquering races, literature has generally attainedhigher excellence than painting or sculpture, or architecture, for thearts are the expression of a people's tastes, often incomprehensible tomen who live a thousand years later; but literature, if it expressesanything, either by poetry, history, or fiction, shows the feeling ofhumanity; and the human being, as such, changes very little in twenty orthirty centuries. Achilles, in his wrath at being robbed of the lovelyBriseïs, brings the age of Troy nearer to most men in its livingvitality than the matchless Hermes of Olympia can ever bring the centuryof Greece's supremacy. One line of Catullus makes his time more alivetoday than the huge mass of the Colosseum can ever make Titus seem. Wesee the great stones piled up to heaven, but we do not see the men whohewed them, and lifted them, and set them in place. The true poet givesus the real man, and after all, men are more important than stones. Yetthe work of men's hands explains the working of men's hearts, telling usnot what they felt, but how the feelings which ever belong to all menmore particularly affected the actors at one time or another during theaction of the world's long play. Little things sometimes tell thelongest stories. 

[Illustration: THE COLOSSEUM]

Pliny, suffering from sore eyes, going about in a closed carriage, orlying in the darkened basement portico of his house, obliged to dictatehis letters, and unable to read, sends his thanks--by dictation--to hisfriend and colleague, Cornutus, for a fowl sent him, and says thatalthough he is half blind, his eyes are sharp enough to see that it is avery fat one. The touch of human nature makes the whole picture live. Horace, journeying to Brindisi, and trying to sleep a little on a canalboat, is kept awake by mosquitoes and croaking frogs, and by thelong-drawn-out, tipsy singing of a drunken sailor, who at last turns offthe towing mule to graze, and goes to sleep till daylight. It is easierto see all this than to call up one instant of a chariot race in thegreat circus, or one of the ten thousand fights in the Colosseum, wherein gladiators fought and died, and left no word of themselves. 

Yet, without the setting, the play is imperfect, and we must have someof the one to understand the other. For human art is, in the firstplace, a progressive commentary on human nature, and again, in quickreaction, stimulates it with a suggestive force. Little as we reallyknow of the imperial times, we cannot conceive of Rome without theRomans, nor of the Romans without Rome. They belonged together; when theseat of Empire became cosmopolitan, the great dominion began to beweakened; and when a homogeneous power dwelt in the city again, a newdomination had its beginning, and was built up on the ruins of the old. 

Napoleon is believed to have said that the object of art is to createand foster agreeable illusions. Admitting the general truth of thedefinition, it appears perfectly natural that since the Romans hadlittle or no art of their own, they should have begun to import Greekart just when they did, after the successful issue of the Second PunicWar. Up to that time the great struggle had lasted. When it was over, the rest was almost a foregone conclusion. Rome and Carthage had made agreat part of the known world their fighting ground in the duel thatlasted a hundred and eighteen years; and the known world was the portionof the victor. Spoil first, for spoil's sake, he brought home; thenspoil for the sake of art; then art for what itself could give him. Inthe fight for Empire, as in each man's struggle for life, success meansleisure, and therefore civilization, which is the growth of people whohave time at their disposal--time to 'create and foster agreeableillusions. ' When the Romans conquered the Samnites they were the leastartistic people in the world; when Augustus Cæsar died, they possessedand valued the greater part of the world's artistic treasures, many ofthese already centuries old, and they owned literally, and as slaves, amajority of the best living artists. Augustus had been educated inAthens; he determined that Rome should be as Athens, magnified a hundredtimes. Athens had her thousand statues, Rome should have her tenthousand; Rome should have state libraries holding a score of volumesfor every one that Greece could boast; Rome's temples should begalleries of rare paintings, ten for each that Athens had. Rome shouldbe so great, so rich, so gorgeous, that Greece should be as nothingbeside her; Egypt should dwindle to littleness, and the memory ofBabylon should be forgotten. Greece had her Homer, her Sophocles, herAnacreon; Rome should have her immortals also. 

Greatly Augustus laboured for his thought, and grandly he carried outhis plan. He became the greatest 'art-collector' in all history, and themen of his time imitated him. Domitius Tullus, a Roman gentleman, hadcollected so much, that he was able to adorn certain extensive gardens, on the very day of the purchase, with an immense number of genuineancient statues, which had been lying, half neglected, in a barn--or, assome read the passage, in other gardens of his. 

[Illustration: BASILICA CONSTANTINE]

Augustus succeeded in one way. Possibly he was successful in his ownestimation. 'Have I not acted the play well?' they say he asked, justbefore he died. The keynote is there, whether he spoke the words or not. He did all from calculation, nothing from conviction. The artist, activeand creative or passive and appreciative, calculates nothing except themeans of expressing his conviction. And in the over-calculating ofeffects by Augustus and his successors, one of the most singularweaknesses of the Latin race was thrust forward; namely, that giantismor megalomania, which has so often stamped the principal works of theLatins in all ages--that effort to express greatness by size, which isso conspicuously absent from all that the Greeks have left us. Agrippabuilds a threefold temple and Hadrian rears the Pantheon upon itscharred ruins; Constantine builds his Basilica; Michelangelo says, 'Iwill set the Pantheon upon the Basilica of Constantine. ' He does it, andthe result is Saint Peter's, which covers more ground than that otherpiece of giantism, the Colosseum; in Rome's last and modern revival, thePalazzo delle Finanze is built, the Treasury of the poorest of thePowers, which, incredible as it may seem, fills a far greater area thaneither the Colosseum or the Church of Saint Peter's. What else is suchconstructive enormity but 'giantism'? For the great Cathedral ofChristendom, it may be said, at least, that it has more than once inhistory been nearly filled by devout multitudes, numbering fifty orsixty thousand people; in the days of public baths, nearly sixty-threethousand Romans could bathe daily with every luxury of service; whenbread and games were free, a hundred thousand men and women often satdown in the Flavian Amphitheatre to see men tear each other to pieces;of the modern Ministry of Finance there is nothing to be said. The Romancurses it for the millions it cost; but the stranger looks, smiles andpasses by a blank and hideous building three hundred yards long. Thereis no reason why a nation should not wish to be great, but there isevery reason why a small nation should not try to look big; and theenormous follies of modern Italy must be charitably attributed to adefect of judgment which has existed in the Latin peoples from thebeginning, and has by no means disappeared today. The younger Gordianbegan a portico which was to cover forty-four thousand square yards, andintended to raise a statue of himself two hundred and nineteen feethigh. The modern Treasury building covers about thirty thousand squareyards, and goes far to rival the foolish Emperor's insane scheme. 

[Illustration: RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF SATURN]

Great contrasts lie in the past, between his age and ours. One mustguess at them at least, if one have but little knowledge, in order tounderstand at all the city of the Middle Age and the Rome we see today. Imagine it at its greatest, a capital inhabited by more than twomillions of souls, filling all that is left to be seen within andwithout the walls, and half the Campagna besides, spreading out in avast disc of seething life from the central Golden Milestone at thecorner of the temple of Saturn--the god of remote ages, and of earth'sdim beginning; see, if you can, the splendid roads, where to right andleft the ashes of the great rested in tombs gorgeous with marble andgold and bronze; see the endless villas and gardens and terraces liningboth banks of the Tiber, with trees and flowers and marble palaces, fromRome to Ostia and the sea, and both banks of the Anio, from Rome toTivoli in the hills; conceive of the vast commerce, even of the merebusiness of supply to feed two millions of mouths; picture the greatharbour with its thousand vessels--and some of those that brought grainfrom Egypt were four hundred feet long; remember its vast granaries andstore-barns and offices; think of the desolate Isola Sacra as a lovelygarden, of the ruins of Laurentum as an imperial palace and park; reckonup roughly what all that meant of life, of power, of incalculablewealth. Mark Antony squandered, in his short lifetime, eight hundredmillions of pounds sterling, four thousand millions of dollars. Guess, if possible, at the myriad million details of the vast city. 

Then let twelve hundred years pass in a dream, and look at the Rome ofRienzi. Some twenty thousand souls, the remnant and the one hundredthpart of the two millions, dwell pitifully in the ruins of which thestrongest men have fortified bits here and there. The walls of Aurelian, broken and war-worn and full of half-repaired breaches, enclose adesert, a world too wide for its inhabitants, a vast stragglingheterogeneous mass of buildings in every stage of preservation anddecay, splendid temples, mossy and ivy-grown, but scarcely injured bytime, then wastes of broken brick and mortar; stern dark towers ofSavelli, and Frangipani, and Orsini, and Colonna, dominating andthreatening whole quarters of ruins; strange small churches built ofodds and ends and remnants not too heavy for a few workmen to move;broken-down aqueducts sticking up here and there in a city that had todrink the muddy water of the Tiber because not a single channel remainedwhole to feed a single fountain, from the distant springs that had oncefilled baths for sixty thousand people every day. And round about all, the waste Campagna, scratched here and there by fever-stricken peasantsto yield the little grain that so few men could need. The villas gone, the trees burned or cut down, the terraces slipped away into the rivers, the tombs of the Appian Way broken and falling to pieces, or transformedinto rude fortresses held by wild-looking men in rusty armour, whosallied out to fight each other or, at rare intervals, to rob some trainof wretched merchants, riding horses as rough and wild as themselves. Law gone, and order gone with it; wealth departed, and self-respectforgotten in abject poverty; each man defending his little with his ownhand against the many who coveted it; Rome a den of robbers and thieves;the Pope, when there was one, --there was none in the year of Rienzi'sbirth, --either defended by one baron against another, or forced to flyfor his life. Men brawling in the streets, ill clad, savage, ready withsword and knife and club for any imaginable violence. Women safe fromnone but their own husbands and sons, and not always from them. Childrenwild and untaught, growing up to be fierce and unlettered like theirfathers. And in the midst of such a city, Cola di Rienzi, with greatheart and scanty learning, labouring to decipher the inscriptions thattold of dead and ruined greatness, dreaming of a republic, of atribune's power, of the humiliation of the Barons, of a resurrection forItaly and of her sudden return to the dominion of the world. 

Rome, then, was like a field long fallow, of rich soil, but longunploughed. Scarcely below the surface lay the treasures of ages, undreamt of by the few descendants of those who had brought themthither. Above ground, overgrown with wild creepers and flowers, therestill stood some such monuments of magnificence as we find it hard torecall by mere words, not yet voluntarily destroyed, but already fallingto pieces under the slow destruction of grinding time, when violence hadspared them. Robert Guiscard had burned the city in 1084, but he had notdestroyed everything. The Emperors of the East had plundered Rome longbefore that, carrying off works of art without end to adorn their cityof Constantinople. Builders had burned a thousand marble statues to limefor their cement, for the statues were ready to hand and easily brokenup to be thrown into the kiln, so that it seemed a waste of time andtools to quarry out the blocks from the temples. The Barbarians ofGenseric and the Jews of Trastevere had seized upon such of the fourthousand bronze statues as the Emperors had left, and had melted many ofthem down for metal, often hiding them in strange places while waitingfor an opportunity of heating the furnace. And some have been found, here and there, piled up in little vaults, most generally near theTiber, by which it was always easy to ship the metal away. Alreadytemples had been turned into churches, in a travesty only saved from theridiculous by the high solemnity of the Christian faith. Other templesand buildings, here and there, had been partly stripped of columns andmarble facings to make other churches even more nondescript than thefirst. Much of the old was still standing, but nothing of the old waswhole. The Colosseum had not yet been turned into a quarry. TheSeptizonium of Septimius Severus, with its seven stories of columns andits lofty terrace, nearly half as high as the dome of Saint Peter's, though beginning to crumble, still crowned the south end of thePalatine; Minerva's temple was almost entire, and its huge architravehad not been taken to make the high altar of Saint Peter's; and thetriumphal arch of Marcus Aurelius was standing in what was perhaps notyet called the Corso in those days, but the Via Lata--'Broad Street. '

The things that had not yet fallen, nor been torn down, were the moresadly grand by contrast with the chaos around them. There was also thedifference between ruins then, and ruins now, which there is between aking just dead in his greatness, in whose features lingers the smile ofa life so near that it seems ready to come back, and a dried mummy setup in a museum and carefully dusted for critics to study. 

In even stronger and rougher contrast, in the wreck of all that hadbeen, there was the fierce reality of the daily fight for life amid theseething elements of the new things that were yet to be; the preparationfor another time of domination and splendour; the deadly wrestling ofmen who meant to outlive one another by sheer strength and grim power ofkilling; the dark ignorance, darkest just before the waking of newthought, and art, and learning; the universal cruelty of all livingthings to each other, that had grown out of the black past; and, withall this, the undying belief in Rome's greatness, in Rome's future, inRome's latent power to rule the world again. 

That was the beginning of the new story, for the old one was ended, therace of men who had lived it was gone, and their works were followingthem, to the universal dust. Out of the memories they left and thedeparted glory of the places wherein they had dwelt, the magic of theMiddle Age was to weave another long romance, less grand but morestirring, less glorious but infinitely more human. 

Perhaps it is not altogether beyond the bounds of reason to say thatRome was masculine from Romulus to the dark age, and that with the firstdawn of the Renascence she began to be feminine. As in old days theRepublic and the Empire fought for power and conquest and got both byforce, endurance and hardness of character, so, in her second life, others fought for Rome, and courted her, and coveted her, and sometimesoppressed her and treated her cruelly, and sometimes cherished her andadorned her, and gave her all they had. In a way, too, the elderpatriots reverenced their city as a father, and those of after-timesloved her as a woman, with a tender and romantic love. 

Be that as it may, for it matters little how we explain what we feel. And assuredly we all feel that what we call the 'charm, ' the femininecharm, of Rome, proceeds first from that misty time between twogreatnesses, when her humanity was driven back upon itself, and simplepassions, good and evil, suddenly felt and violently expressed, made upthe whole life of a people that had ceased to rule by force, and had notyet reached power by diplomacy. 

It is fair, moreover, to dwell a little on that time, that we may notjudge too hardly the men who came afterwards. If we have any virtuesourselves of which to boast, we owe them to a long growth ofcivilization, as a child owes its manners to its mother; the men of theRenascence had behind them chaos, the ruin of a slave-ridden, Hun-harried, worm-eaten Empire, in which law and order had gone downtogether, and the whole world seemed to the few good men who lived in itto be but one degree better than hell itself. Much may be forgiven them, and for what just things they did they should be honoured, for thehardship of having done right at all against such odds. 

[Illustration: BRASS OF GORDIAN, SHOWING ROMAN GAMES]

[Illustration: RUINS OF THE JULIAN BASILICA]

V

Here and there, in out-of-the-way places, overlooked in the modern ragefor improvement, little marble tablets are set into the walls of oldhouses, bearing semi-heraldic devices such as a Crescent, a Column, aGriffin, a Stag, a Wheel and the like. Italian heraldry has always beeneccentric, and has shown a tendency to display all sorts of strangethings, such as comets, trees, landscapes and buildings in theescutcheon, and it would naturally occur to the stranger that the smallmarble shields, still visible here and there at the corners of oldstreets, must be the coats of arms of Roman families that held propertyin that particular neighbourhood. But this is not the case. They are thedistinctive devices of the Fourteen Rioni, or wards, into which thecity was divided, with occasional modifications, from the time ofAugustus to the coming of Victor Emmanuel, and which with some furtherchanges survive to the present day. The tablets themselves were put upby Pope Benedict the Fourteenth, who reigned from 1740 to 1758, and whofinally brought them up to the ancient number of fourteen; but from thedark ages the devices themselves were borne upon flags on all publicoccasions by the people of the different Regions. For 'Rione' is only acorruption of the Latin 'Regio, ' the same with our 'Region, ' by whichEnglish word it will be convenient to speak of these divisions thatplayed so large a part in the history of the city during many successivecenturies. 

For the sake of clearness, it is as well to enumerate them in theirorder and with the numbers that have always belonged to each. They are:

 I. Monti, II. Trevi, III. Colonna, IV. Campo Marzo, V. Ponte VI. Parione, VII. Regola, VIII. Sant' Eustachio, IX. Pigna, X. Campitelli, XI. Sant' Angelo, XII. Ripa, XIII. Trastevere, XIV. Borgo. 

Five of these names, that is to say, Ponte, Parione, Regola, Pigna andSant' Angelo, indicate in a general way the part of the city designatedby each. Ponte, the Bridge, is the Region about the Bridge of Sant'Angelo, on the left bank at the sharp bend of the river seen from thatpoint; but the original bridge which gave the name was the PonsTriumphalis, of which the foundations are still sometimes visible alittle below the Ælian bridge leading to the Mausoleum of Hadrian. Parione, the Sixth ward, is the next division to the preceding one, towards the interior of the city, on both sides of the modern CorsoVittorio Emmanuele, taking in the ancient palace of the Massimo family, the Cancelleria, famous as the most consistent piece of architecture inRome, and the Piazza Navona. Regola is next, towards the river, comprising the Theatre of Pompey and the Palazzo Farnese. Pigna takes inthe Pantheon, the Collegio Romano and the Palazzo di Venezia. Sant'Angelo has nothing to do with the castle or the bridge, but takes itsname from the little church of Sant' Angelo in the Fishmarket, andincludes the old Ghetto with some neighbouring streets. The rest explainthemselves well enough to anyone who has even a very slight acquaintancewith the city. 

At first sight these more or less arbitrary divisions may seem of littleimportance. It was, of course, necessary, even in early times, to dividethe population and classify it for political and municipal purposes. There is no modern city in the world that is not thus managed by wardsand districts, and the consideration of such management and of its meansmight appear to be a very flat and unprofitable study, tiresome aliketo the reader and to the writer. And so it would be, if it were not truethat the Fourteen Regions of Rome were fourteen elements of romance, each playing its part in due season, while all were frequently the stageat once, under the collective name of the people, in their ever-latentopposition and in their occasional violent outbreaks against the noblesand the popes, who alternately oppressed and spoiled them for privateand public ends. In other words, the Regions with their elected captainsunder one chief captain were the survival of the Roman People, for everat odds with the Roman Senate. In times when there was no government, inany reasonable sense of the word, the people tried to govern themselves, or at least to protect themselves as best they could by a rough systemwhich was all that remained of the elaborate municipality of the Empire. Without the Regions the struggles of the Barons would probably havedestroyed Rome altogether; nine out of the twenty-four Popes who reignedin the tenth century would not have been murdered and otherwise done todeath; Peter the Prefect could not have dragged Pope John the Thirteentha prisoner through the streets; Stefaneschi could never have terrorizedthe Barons, and half destroyed their castles in a week; Rienzi could nothave made himself dictator; Ludovico Migliorati could not have murderedthe eleven captains of Regions in his house and thrown their bodies tothe people from the windows, for which Giovanni Colonna drove out thePope and the cardinals, and sacked the Vatican; in a word, thestrangest, wildest, bloodiest scenes of mediæval Rome could not havefound a place in history. It is no wonder that to men born and bred inthe city the Regions seem even now to be an integral factor in itsexistence. 

There were two other elements of power, namely, the Pope and the Barons. The three are almost perpetually at war, two on a side, against thethird. Philippe de Commines, ambassador of Lewis the Eleventh in Rome, said that without the Orsini and the Colonna, the States of the Churchwould be the happiest country in the world. He forgot the People, andwas doubtless too politic to speak of the Popes to his extremely devoutsovereign. Take away the three elements of discord, and there wouldcertainly have been peace in Rome, for there would have been no one todisturb the bats and the owls, when everybody was gone. 

The excellent advice of Ampère, already quoted, is by no means easy tofollow, since there are not many who have the time and the inclinationto acquire a 'superficial knowledge' of Rome by a ten years' visit. If, therefore, we merely presuppose an average knowledge of history and aguide-book acquaintance with the chief points in the city, the simplestand most direct way of learning more about it is to take the Regions intheir ancient order, as the learned Baracconi has done in hisinvaluable little work, and to try as far as possible to make past deedslive again where they were done, with such description of the placesthemselves as may serve the main purpose best. To follow any other planwould be either to attempt a new history of the city of Rome, or topiece together a new archæological manual. In either case, evensupposing that one could be successful where so much has already beendone by the most learned, the end aimed at would be defeated, forromance would be stiffened to a record, and beauty would be dissected toan anatomical preparation. 

[Illustration: BRASS OF TITUS, SHOWING THE COLOSSEUM]

[Illustration]

REGION I MONTI

'Monti' means 'The Hills, ' and the device of the Region representsthree, figuring those enclosed within the boundaries of this district;namely, the Quirinal, the Esquiline and the Coelian. The line encirclingthem includes the most hilly part of the mediæval city; beginning at thePorta Salaria, it runs through the new quarter, formerly Villa Ludovisi, to the Piazza Barberini, thence by the Tritone to the Corso, by the ViaMarforio, skirting the eastern side of the Capitoline Hill and theeastern side of the Roman Forum to the Colosseum, which it does notinclude; on almost to the Lateran, back again, so as to include theBasilica, by San Stefano Rotondo, and out by the Navicella to the nowclosed Porta Metronia. The remainder of the circuit is completed by theAurelian wall, which is the present wall of the city, though the modernElectoral Wards extend in some places beyond it. The modern gatesincluded in this portion are the Porta Salaria, the Porta Pia, the newgate at the end of the Via Montebello, the next, an unnamed openingthrough which passes the Viale Castro Pretorio, then the PortaTiburtina, the Porta San Lorenzo, the exit of the railway, PortaMaggiore, and lastly the Porta San Giovanni. 

The Region of the Hills takes in by far the largest area of the fourteendistricts, but also that portion which in later times has been the leastthickly populated, the wildest districts of mediæval and recent Rome, great open spaces now partially covered by new though hardly inhabitedbuildings, but which were very lately either fallow land or ploughedfields, or cultivated vineyards, out of which huge masses of ruins rosehere and there in brown outline against the distant mountains, in themidst of which towered the enormous basilicas of Santa Maria Maggioreand Saint John Lateran, the half-utilized, half-consecrated remains ofthe Baths of Diocletian, the Baths of Titus, and over against thelatter, just beyond the southwestern boundary, the gloomy Colosseum, andon the west the tall square tower of the Capitol with its deep-tonedbell, the 'Patarina, ' which at last was sounded only when the Pope wasdead, and when Carnival was over on Shrove Tuesday night. 

It must first be remembered that each Region had a small independentexistence, with night watchmen of its own, who dared not step beyond thelimits of their beat; defined by parishes, there were separate charitiesfor each Region, separate funds for giving dowries to poor girls, separate 'Confraternite' or pious societies to which laymen belonged, and, in a small way, a sort of distinct nationality. There was rivalrybetween each Region and its neighbours, and when the one encroached uponthe other there was strife and bloodshed in the streets. In the publicraces, of which the last survived in the running of riderless horsesthrough the Corso in Carnival, each Region had its colours, its right ofplace, and its separate triumph if it won in the contest. There was allthat intricate opposition of small parties which arose in every mediævalcity, when children followed their fathers' trades from generation togeneration, and lived in their fathers' houses from one century toanother; and there was all the individuality and the local traditionwhich never really hindered civilization, but were always aninsurmountable barrier against progress. 

Some one has called democracy Rome's 'Original Sin. ' It would be morejust and true to say that most of Rome's misfortunes, and Italy's too, have been the result of the instinct to oppose all that is, whether goodor bad, as soon as it has existed for a while; in short, the originalsin of Italians is an original detestation of that unity of which theempty name has been a fetish for ages. Rome, thrown back upon herselfin the dark times, when she was shorn of her possessions, was a truepicture of what Italy was before Rome's iron hand had bound the Italianpeoples together by force, of what she became again as soon as thatforce was relaxed, of what she has grown to be once more, now that thedelight of revolution has disappeared in the dismal swamp of financialdisappointment, of what she will be to all time, because, from all time, she has been populated by races of different descent, who hated eachother as only neighbours can. 

The redeeming feature of a factional life has sometimes been found in areadiness to unite against foreign oppression; it has often shown itselfin an equal willingness to submit to one foreign ruler in order to getrid of another. Circumstances have made the result good or bad. In theyear 799, the Romans attacked and wounded Pope Leo the Third in a solemnprocession, almost killed him and drove him to flight, because he hadsent the keys of the city to Charles the Great, in self-protectionagainst the splendid, beautiful, gifted, black-hearted Irene, Empress ofthe East, who had put out her own son's eyes and taken the throne byforce. Two years later the people of Rome shouted "Life and Victory toCharles the Emperor, " when the same Pope Leo, his scars still fresh, crowned Charlemagne in Saint Peter's. One remembers, for that matter, that Napoleon Bonaparte, crowned in French Paris by another Pope, girton the very sword of that same Frankish Charles, whose bones the Frenchhad scattered to the elements at Aix. Savonarola, of more than doubtfulpatriotism, to whom Saint Philip Neri prayed, but whom the Englishhistorian, Roscoe, flatly calls a traitor, would have taken Florencefrom the Italian Medici and given it to the French king. Dante was forGerman Emperors against Italian Popes. Modern Italy has driven outBourbons and Austrians and given the crown of her Unity to a house ofKings, brave and honourable, but in whose veins there is no drop ofItalian blood, any more than their old Dukedom of Savoy was ever Italianin any sense. The glory of history is rarely the glory of any ideal; itis more often the glory of success. 

The Roman Republic was the result of internal opposition, and theinstinct to oppose power, often rightly, sometimes wrongly, will be thelast to survive in the Latin race. In the Middle Age, when Rome hadshrunk from the boundaries of civilization to the narrow limits of theAurelian walls, it produced the hatred between the Barons and thepeople, and within the people themselves, the less harmful rivalry ofthe Regions and their Captains. 

[Illustration: SANTA FRANCESCA ROMANA]

These Captains held office for three months only. At the expiration ofthe term, they and the people of their Region proceeded in procession, all bearing olive branches, to the temple of Venus and Rome, of which apart was early converted into the Church of Santa Maria Nuova, now knownas Santa Francesca Romana, between the Forum and the Colosseum, and justwithin the limits of 'Monti. ' Down from the hills on the one side thecrowd came; up from the regions of the Tiber, round the Capitol fromColonna, and Trevi, and Campo Marzo, as ages before them the people hadthronged to the Comitium, only a few hundred yards away. There, beforethe church in the ruins, each Region dropped the names of its own twocandidates into the ballot box, and chance decided which of the twoshould be Captain next. In procession, then, all round the Capitol, theywent to Aracoeli, and the single Senator, the lone shadow of theConscript Fathers, ratified each choice. Lastly, among themselves, theyused to choose the Prior, or Chief Captain, until it became the customthat the captain of the First Region, Monti, should of right be head ofall the rest, and in reality one of the principal powers in the city. 

And the principal church of Monti also held preëminence over others. TheBasilica of Saint John Lateran was entitled 'Mother and Head of allChurches of the City and of the World'; and it took its distinctive namefrom a rich Roman family, whose splendid house stood on the same spot asfar back as the early days of the Empire. Even Juvenal speaks of it. 

Overthrown by earthquake, erected again at once, twice burned andimmediately rebuilt, five times the seat of Councils of the Church, enlarged even in our day at enormous cost, it seems destined to stand onthe same spot for ages, and to perpetuate the memory of the Laterans toall time, playing monument to an obscure family of rich citizens, whosename should have been almost lost, but can never be forgotten now. 

Constantine, sentimental before he was great, and great before he was aChristian, gave the house of the Roman gentleman to Pope Sylvester. Hebought it, or it fell to the crown at the extinction of the family, forhe was not the man to confiscate property for a whim; and within thepalace he made a church, which was called by more than one name, tillafter nearly six hundred years it was finally dedicated to Saint Johnthe Baptist; until then it had been generally called the church 'in theLateran house, ' and to this day it is San Giovanni in Laterano. Close byit, in the palace of the Annii, Marcus Aurelius, last of the so-calledAntonines, and last of the great emperors, was born and educated; and inhis honour was made the famous statue of him on horseback, which nowstands in the square of the Capitol. The learned say that it was set upbefore the house where he was born, and so found itself also before theLateran in later times, with the older Wolf, at the place of publicjustice and execution. 

In the wild days of the tenth century, when the world was boiling withfaction, and trembling at the prospect of the Last Judgment, clearlypredicted to overtake mankind in the thousandth year of the Christianera, the whole Roman people, without sanction of the Emperor and withoutprecedent, chose John the Thirteenth to be their Pope. The Regions withtheir Captains had their way, and the new Pontiff was enthroned bytheir acclamation. Then came their disappointment, then their anger. Pope John, strong, high-handed, a man of order in days of chaos, ruledfrom the Lateran for one short year, with such wisdom as he possessed, such law as he chanced to have learnt, and all the strength he had. Neither Barons nor people wanted justice, much less learning. The Latinchronicle is brief: 'At that time, Count Roffredo and Peter thePrefect, '--he was the Prior of the Regions' Captains, --'with certainother Romans, seized Pope John, and first threw him into the Castle ofSant' Angelo, but at last drove him into exile in Campania for more thanten months. But when the Count had been murdered by one of theCrescenzi, '--in whose house Rienzi afterwards lived, --'the Pope wasreleased and returned to his See. '

Back came Otto the Great, Saxon Emperor, at Christmas time, as he camemore than once, to put down revolution with a strong hand and avenge thewrongs of Pope John by executing all but one of the Captains of theRegions. Twelve of them he hanged. Peter the Prefect, or Prior, wasbound naked upon an ass with an earthen jar over his head, floggedthrough the city, and cruelly put to death; and at last his torn bodywas hung by the hair to the head of the bronze horse whereon the statelyfigure of Marcus Aurelius sat in triumph before the door of the Pope'shouse, as it sits today on the Capitol before the Palace of the Senator. And Otto caused the body of murdered Roffredo to be dragged from itsgrave and quartered by the hangman and scattered abroad, a warning tothe Regions and their leaders. They left Pope John in peace after that, and he lived five years and held a council in the Lateran, and died inhis bed. Possibly after his rough experience, his rule was more gentle, and when he was dead he was spoken of as 'that most worthy Pontiff. ' WhoCount Roffredo was no one can tell surely, but his name belongs to thegreat house of Caetani. 

[Illustration: BASILICA OF ST JOHN LATERAN]

It is hard to see past terror in present peace; it is not easy to fancythe rough rabble of Rome in those days, strangely clad, more strangelyarmed, far out in the waste fields about the Lateran, surging up likedemons in the lurid torchlight before the house of the Pope, pressingupon the mailed Count's stout horse, and thronging upon the heels of theCaptains and the Prefect, pounding down the heavy doors with stones, andwith deep shouts for every heavy blow, while white-robed John and hisfrightened priests cower together within, expecting death. Down goes theoak with a crash like artillery, that booms along the empty corridors; amoment's pause, and silence, and then the rush, headed by the Knight andthe leaders who mean no murder, but mean to have their way, once and forever, and buffet back their furious followers when they have reached thePope's room, lest he should be torn in pieces. Then, the subsidence ofthe din, and the old man and his priests bound and dragged out andforced to go on foot by all the long dark way through the city to theblack dungeons of Sant' Angelo beyond the rushing river. 

[Illustration: SAN GIOVANNI IN LATERANO]

It seems far away. Yet we who have seen the Roman people rise, overlaidwith burdens and maddened by the news of a horrible defeat, can guess atwhat it must have been. Those who saw the sea of murderous pale faces, and heard the deep cry, 'Death to Crispi, ' go howling and echoingthrough the city can guess what that must have been a thousand yearsago, and many another night since then, when the Romans were roused andthere was a smell of blood in the air. 

But today there is peace in the great Mother of Churches, with anatmosphere of solemn rest that one may not breathe in Saint Peter's norperhaps anywhere else in Rome within consecrated walls. There is mysteryin the enormous pillars that answer back the softest whispered word fromniche to niche across the silent aisle; there is simplicity and dignityof peace in the lofty nave, far down and out of jarring distance fromthe over-gorgeous splendour of the modern transept. In Holy Week, towards evening at the Tenebræ, the divine tenor voice of PadreGiovanni, monk and singer, soft as a summer night, clear as a silverbell, touching as sadness itself, used to float through the dim air witha ring of Heaven in it, full of that strange fatefulness that followedhis short life, till he died, nearly twenty years ago, foully poisonedby a layman singer in envy of a gift not matched in the memory of man. 

Sometimes, if one wanders upward towards the Monti when the moon ishigh, a far-off voice rings through the quiet air--one of those voiceswhich hardly ever find their way to the theatre nowadays, and which, perhaps, would not satisfy the nervous taste of our Wagnerian times. Perhaps it sounds better in the moonlight, in those lonely, echoingstreets, than it would on the stage. At all events, it is beautiful asone hears it, clear, strong, natural, ringing. It belongs to the placeand hour, as the humming of honey bees to a field of flowers at noon, orthe desolate moaning of the tide to a lonely ocean coast at night. It isnot an exaggeration, nor a mere bit of ill nature, to say that there arethousands of fastidiously cultivated people today who would think it alltheatrical in the extreme, and would be inclined to despise their owntaste if they felt a secret pleasure in the scene and the song. But inRome even such as they might condescend to the romantic for an hour, because in Rome such deeds have been dared, such loves have been loved, such deaths have been died, that any romance, no matter how wild, haslarger probability in the light of what has actually been the lot ofreal men and women. So going alone through the winding moonlit waysabout Tor de' Conti, Santa Maria dei Monti and San Pietro in Vincoli, aman need take no account of modern fashions in sensation; and if he willbut let himself be charmed, the enchantment will take hold of him andlead him on through a city of dreams and visions, and memories strangeand great, without end. Ever since Rome began there must have been justsuch silvery nights; just such a voice rang through the same air agesago; just as now the velvet shadows fell pall-like and unrolledthemselves along the grey pavement under the lofty columns of Mars theAvenger and beneath the wall of the Forum of Augustus. 

[Illustration: PIAZZA COLONNA]

Perhaps it is true that the impressions which Rome makes upon athoughtful man vary more according to the wind and the time of day thanthose he feels in other cities. Perhaps, too, there is no capital in allthe world which has such contrasts to show within a mile of eachother--one might almost say within a dozen steps. One of the mostcrowded thoroughfares of Rome, for instance, is the Via del Tritone, which is the only passage through the valley between the Pincian and theQuirinal hills, from the region of Piazza Colonna towards the railwaystation and the new quarter. During the busy hours of the day a carriagecan rarely move through its narrower portions any faster than at a footpace, and the insufficient pavements are thronged with pedestrians. In ameasure, the Tritone in Rome corresponds to Galata bridge inConstantinople. In the course of the week most of the population of thecity must have passed at least once through the crowded little street, which somehow in the rain of millions that lasted for two years, did notmanage to attract to itself even the small sum which would have sufficedto widen it by a few yards. It is as though the contents of Rome weredaily drawn through a keyhole. In the Tritone are to be seen magnificentequipages, jammed in the line between milk carts, omnibuses anddustmen's barrows, preceded by butcher's vans and followed by miserablecabs, smart dogcarts and high-wheeled country vehicles driven by rough, booted men wearing green-lined cloaks and looking like stage bandits;even saddle horses are led sometimes that way to save time; and on eachside flow two streams of human beings of every type to be found betweenPorta Angelica and Porta San Giovanni. A prince of the Holy Roman Empirepushes past a troop of dirty school children, and is almost driven intoan open barrel of salt codfish, in the door of a poor shop, by ablack-faced charcoal man carrying a sack on his head more than half ashigh as himself. A party of jolly young German tourists in looseclothes, with red books in their hands, and their field-glasses hangingby straps across their shoulders, try to rid themselves of theflower-girls dressed in sham Sabine costumes, and utter exclamations ofastonishment and admiration when they themselves are almost run down bya couple of the giant Royal Grenadiers, each six feet five orthereabouts, besides nine inches, or so, of crested helmet aloft, gorgeous, gigantic and spotless. Clerks by the dozen and liveriedmessengers of the ministries struggle in the press; ladies gather theirskirts closely, and try to pick a dainty way where, indeed, there isnothing 'dain' (a word which Doctor Johnson confesses that he could notfind in any dictionary, but which he thinks might be very useful);servant girls, smart children with nurses and hoops going up to thePincio, black-browed washerwomen with big baskets of clothes on theirheads, stumpy little infantry soldiers in grey uniforms, priests, friars, venders of boot-laces and thread, vegetable sellers pushinghand-carts of green things in and out among the horses and vehicles withamazing dexterity, and yelling their cries in super-humanly highvoices--there is no end to the multitude. If the day is showery, it is asight to see the confusion in the Tritone when umbrellas of every age, material and colour are all opened at once, while the people who havenone crowd into the codfish shop and the liquor seller's and thetobacconist's, with traditional 'con permesso' of excuse for enteringwhen they do not mean to buy anything; for the Romans are mostly civilpeople and fairly good-natured. But rain or shine, at the busy hours, the place is always crowded to overflowing with every description ofvehicle and every type of humanity. 

Out of Babel--a horizontal Babel--you may turn into the little church, dedicated to the 'Holy Guardian Angel. ' It stands on the south side ofthe Tritone, in that part which is broader, and which a little while agowas still called the Via dell' Angelo Custode--Guardian Angel Street. Itis an altogether insignificant little church, and strangers scarcelyever visit it. But going down the Tritone, when your ears are splitting, and your eyes are confused with the kaleidoscopic figures of thescurrying crowd, you may lift the heavy leathern curtain, and leave thehurly-burly outside, and find yourself all alone in the quiet presenceof death, the end of all hurly-burly and confusion. It is quite possiblethat under the high, still light in the round church, with its fourniche-like chapels, you may see, draped in black, that thing which noone ever mistakes for anything else; and round about the coffin a dozentall wax candles may be burning with a steady yellow flame. Possibly, atthe sound of the leathern curtain slapping the stone door-posts, as itfalls behind you, a sad-looking sacristan may shuffle out of a darkcorner to see who has come in; possibly not. He may be asleep, or he maybe busy folding vestments in the sacristy. The dead need littleprotection from the living, nor does a sacristan readily put himself outfor nothing. You may stand there undisturbed as long as you please, andsee what all the world's noise comes to in the end. Or it may be, if thedeparted person belonged to a pious confraternity, that you chance uponthe brothers of the society--clad in dark hoods with only holes fortheir eyes, and no man recognized by his neighbour--chanting penitentialpsalms and hymns for the one whom they all know because he is dead, andthey are living. 

Such contrasts are not lacking in Rome. There are plenty of themeverywhere in the world, perhaps, but they are more striking here, inproportion as the outward forms of religious practice are more ancient, unchanging and impressive. For there is nothing very impressive orunchanging about the daily outside world, especially in Rome. 

Rome, the worldly, is the capital of one of the smaller kingdoms of theworld, which those who rule it are anxious to force into the position ofa great power. One need not criticise their action too hardly; theirmotives can hardly be anything but patriotic, considering the fearfulsacrifices they impose upon their country. But they are not the men whobrought about Italian unity. They are the successors of those men; theyare not satisfied with that unification, and they have dreamed a dreamof ambition, beside which, considering the means at their disposal, theprojects of Alexander, Cæsar and Napoleon sink into comparativeinsignificance. At all events, the worldly, modern, outward ItalianRome is very far behind the great European capitals in development, notto say wealth and magnificence. 'Lay' Rome, if one may use theexpression, is not in the least a remarkable city. 'Ecclesiastic' Romeis the stronghold of a most tremendous fact, from whatever point of viewChristianity may be considered. If one could, in imagination, detach thehead of the Catholic Church from the Church, one would be obliged toadmit that no single living man possesses the far-reaching and lastingpower which in each succeeding papal reign belongs to the Pope. Behindthe Pope stands the fact which confers, maintains and extends that powerfrom century to century; a power which is one of the hugest elements ofthe world's moral activity, both in its own direct action and in thecounteraction and antagonism which it calls forth continually. 

It is the all-pervading presence of this greatest fact in Christendomwhich has carried on Rome's importance from the days of the Cæsars, across the chasm of the dark ages, to the days of the modern popes; andits really enormous importance continually throws forward into cruelrelief the puerilities and inanities of the daily outward world. It isthe consciousness of that importance which makes old Roman society whatit is, with its virtues, its vices, its prejudices and its strange, old-fashioned, close-fisted kindliness; which makes the contrast betweenthe Saturnalia of Shrove Tuesday night and the cross signed with ashesupon the forehead on Ash Wednesday morning, between the carelesslaughter of the Roman beauty in Carnival, and the tragic earnestness ofthe same lovely face when the great lady kneels in Lent, before theconfessional, to receive upon her bent head the light touch of thepenitentiary's wand, taking her turn, perhaps, with a score of women ofthe people. It is the knowledge of an always present power, activethroughout the whole world, which throws deep, straight shadows, as itwere, through the Roman character, just as in certain ancient familiesthere is a secret that makes grave the lives of those who know it. 

The Roman Forum and the land between it and the Colosseum, thoughstrictly within the limits of Monti, were in reality a neutral ground, the chosen place for all struggles of rivalry between the Regions. Thefinal destruction of its monuments dates from the sacking of Rome byRobert Guiscard with his Normans and Saracens in the year one thousandand eighty-four, when the great Duke of Apulia came in arms to succourHildebrand, Pope Gregory the Seventh, against the Emperor Henry theFourth, smarting under the bitter humiliation of Canossa; and againsthis Antipope Clement, more than a hundred years after Otto had come backin anger to avenge Pope John. There is no more striking picture of thefearful contest between the Church and the Empire. 

[Illustration: PIAZZA DI SAN GIOVANNI IN LATERANO]

Alexis, Emperor of the East, had sent Henry, Emperor of the Holy RomanEmpire, one hundred and forty-four thousand pieces of gold, and onehundred pieces of woven scarlet, as an inducement to make war upon theNorman Duke, the Pope's friend. But the Romans feared Henry and sentambassadors to him, and on the twenty-first of March, being the Thursdaybefore Palm Sunday, the Lateran gate was opened for him to enter intriumph. The city was divided against itself, the nobles were forHildebrand, the people were against him. The Emperor seized the Lateranpalace and all the bridges. The Pope fled to the Castle of Sant' Angelo, an impregnable fortress in those times, ever ready and ever provisionedfor a siege. Of the nobles Henry required fifty hostages as earnest oftheir neutrality. On the next day he threw his gold to the rabble andthey elected his Antipope Gilbert, who called himself Clement the Third, and certain bishops from North Italy consecrated him in the Lateran onPalm Sunday. 

Meanwhile Hildebrand secretly sent swift riders to Apulia, calling onRobert Guiscard for help, and still the nobles were faithful to him, andthough Henry held the bridges, they were strong in Trastevere and theBorgo, which is the region between the Castle of Sant' Angelo and SaintPeter's. So it turned out that when Henry tried to bring his Antipope insolemn procession to enthrone him in the Pontifical chair, on Easterday, he found mailed knights and footmen waiting for him, and had tofight his way to the Vatican, and forty of his men were killed andwounded in the fray, while the armed nobles lost not one. Yet he reachedthe Vatican at last, and there he was crowned by the false Pope he hadmade, with the crown of the Holy Roman Empire. The chronicler apologizesfor calling him an emperor at all. Then he set to work to destroy thedwellings of the faithful nobles, and laid siege to the wonderfulSeptizonium of Severus, in which the true Pope's nephew had fortifiedhimself, and began to batter it down with catapults and battering-rams. Presently came the message of vengeance, brought by one man outriding ahost, while the rabble were still building a great wall to encircleSant' Angelo and starve Hildebrand to death or submission, working dayand night like madmen, tearing down everything at hand to pile the greatstones one upon another. Swiftly came the terrible Norman from thesouth, with his six thousand horse, Normans and Saracens, and thirtythousand foot, forcing his march and hungry for the Emperor. But Henryfled, making pretext of great affairs in Lombardy, promising great andwonderful gifts to the Roman rabble, and entrusting to their care hisimperial city. 

Like a destroying whirlwind of fire and steel Robert swept on to thegates and into Rome, burning and slaying as he rode, and sparing neitherman, nor woman, nor child, till the red blood ran in rivers betweenwalls of yellow flame. And he took Hildebrand from Sant' Angelo, andbrought him back to the Lateran through the reeking ruins of the city ingrim and fearful triumph of carnage and destruction. 

That was the end of the Roman Forum, and afterwards, when theblood-soaked ashes and heaps of red-hot rubbish had sunk down andhardened to a level surface, the place where the shepherd fathers ofAlba Longa had pastured their flocks was called the Campo Vaccino, theCattle Field, because it was turned into the market for beeves, and rowsof trees were planted, and on one side there was a walk where ropes weremade, even to our own time. 

It became also the fighting ground of the Regions. Among the strangestscenes in the story of the city are those regular encounters between theRegions of Monti and Trastevere which for centuries took place on feastdays, by appointment, on the site of the Forum, or occasionally on thewide ground before the Baths of Diocletian. They were battles foughtwith stones, and far from bloodless. Monti was traditionally of theImperial or Ghibelline party; Trastevere was Guelph and for the Popes. The enmity was natural and lasting, on a small scale, as it wasthroughout Italy. The challenge to the fray was regularly sent out byyoung boys as messengers, and the place and hour were named and the wordpassed in secret from mouth to mouth. It was even determined byagreement whether the stones were to be thrown by hand or whether themore deadly sling was to be used. 

At the appointed time, the combatants appear in the arena, sometimes asmany as a hundred on a side, and the tournament begins, as in Homerictimes, with taunts and abuse, which presently end in skirmishes betweenthe boys who have come to look on. Scouts are placed at distant pointsto cry 'Fire' at the approach of the dreaded Bargello and his men, whoare the only representatives of order in the city and not, indeed, anxious to face two hundred infuriated slingers for the sake of makingpeace. 

One boy throws a stone and runs away, followed by the rest, allprudently retiring to a safe distance. The real combatants wrap theirlong cloaks about their left arms, as the old Romans used their togas onthe same ground, to shield their heads from the blows; a sling whirlshalf a dozen times like lightning, and a smooth round stone flies like abullet straight at an enemy's face, followed by a hundred more in adeadly hail, thick and fast. Men fall, blood flows, short deep cursesring through the sunny air, the fighters creep up to one another, dodging behind trees and broken ruins, till they are at cruelly shortrange; faster and faster fly the stones, and scores are lying prostrate, bleeding, groaning and cursing. Strength, courage, fierce endurance andluck have it at last, as in every battle. Down goes the leader ofTrastevere, half dead, with an eye gone, down goes the next man to him, his teeth broken under his torn lips, down half a dozen more, dead orwounded, and the day is lost. Trastevere flies towards the bridge, pursued by Monti with hoots and yells and catcalls, and the thousandswho have seen the fight go howling after them, women and childrenscreaming, dogs racing and barking and biting at their heels. And farbehind on the deserted Campo Vaccino, as the sun goes down, women weepand frightened children sob beside the young dead. But the next feastday would come, and a counter-victory and vengeance. 

That has always been the temper of the Romans; but few know howfiercely it used to show itself in those days. It would have beennatural enough that men should meet in sudden anger and kill each otherwith such weapons as they chanced to have or could pick up, clubs, knives, stones, anything, when fighting was half the life of every grownman. It is harder to understand the murderous stone throwing byagreement and appointment. In principle, indeed, it approached thetournament, and the combat of champions representing two parties is anexpression of the ancient instinct of the Latin peoples; so the Horatiiand Curiatii fought for Rome and Alba--so Francis the First of Franceoffered to fight the Emperor Charles the Fifth for settlement of allquarrels between the Kingdom and the Empire--and so the modern Frenchmanand Italian are accustomed to settle their differences by an appeal towhat they still call 'arms, ' for the sake of what modern society ispleased to dignify by the name of 'honour. '

But in the stone-throwing combats of Campo Vaccino there was somethingelse. The games of the circus and the bloody shows of the amphitheatrewere not forgotten. As will be seen hereafter, bull-fighting was afavourite sport in Rome as it is in Spain today, and the hand-to-handfights between champions of the Regions were as much more exciting anddelightful to the crowd as the blood of men is of more price than theblood of beasts. 

The habit of fighting for its own sake, with dangerous weapons, made theRoman rabble terrible when the fray turned quite to earnest; the deadlyhail of stones, well aimed by sling and hand, was familiar to everyRoman from his childhood, and the sight of naked steel at arm's lengthinspired no sudden, keen and unaccustomed terror, when men had littlebut life to lose and set small value on that, throwing it into thebalance for a word, rising in arms for a name, doing deeds of blood andflame for a handful of gold or a day of power. 

Monti was both the battlefield of the Regions and also, in times earlyand late, the scene of the most splendid pageants of Church and State. There is a strange passage in the writings of Ammianus Marcellinus, apagan Roman of Greek birth, contemporary with Pope Damasus in the latterpart of the fourth century. Muratori quotes it, as showing what theBishopric of Rome meant even in those days. It is worth reading, for aheathen's view of things under Valens and Valentinian, before the comingof the Huns and the breaking up of the Roman Empire, and, indeed, beforethe official disestablishment, as we should say, of the heathenreligion; while the High Priest of Jupiter still offered sacrifices onthe Capitol, and the six Vestal Virgins still guarded the Seven HolyThings of Rome, and held their vast lands and dwelt in their splendidpalace in all freedom of high privilege, as of old. 

'For my part, ' says Ammianus, 'when I see the magnificence in which theBishops live in Rome, I am not surprised that those who covet thedignity should use force and cunning to obtain it. For if they succeed, they are sure of becoming enormously rich by the gifts of the devoutRoman matrons; they will drive about Rome in their carriages, as theyplease, gorgeously dressed, and they will not only keep an abundanttable, but will give banquets so sumptuous as to outdo those of kingsand emperors. They do not see that they could be truly happy if insteadof making the greatness of Rome an excuse for their excesses, they wouldlive as some of the Bishops of the Provinces do, who are sparing andfrugal, poorly clad and modest, but who make the humility of theirmanners and the purity of their lives at once acceptable to their Godand to their fellow worshippers. '

So much Ammianus says. And Saint Jerome tells how Prætextatus, Prefectof the City, when Pope Damasus tried to convert him, answered with alaugh, 'I will become a Christian if you will make me Bishop of Rome. '

Yet Damasus, famous for the good Latin and beautiful carving of the manyinscriptions he composed and set up, was undeniably also a good man inthe evil days which foreshadowed the great schism. 

[Illustration: SANTA MARIA MAGGIORE]

And here, in the year 366, in the Region of Monti, in the church wherenow stands Santa Maria Maggiore, a great and terrible name stands outfor the first time in history. Orsino, Deacon of the Holy Roman Catholicand Apostolic Church, rouses a party of the people, declares theelection of Damasus invalid, proclaims himself Pope in his stead, andofficiates as Pontiff in the Basilica of Sicininus. Up from the deepcity comes the roaring crowd, furious and hungry for fight; the greatdoors are closed and Orsino's followers gather round him as he stands onthe steps of the altar; but they are few, and those for Damasus aremany; down go the doors, burst inward with battering-rams, up shoot theflames to the roof, and the short, wild fray lasts while one may countfive score, and is over. Orsino and a hundred and thirty-six of his menlie dead on the pavement, the fire licks the rafters, the crowd pressoutward, and the great roof falls crashing down into wide pools ofblood. And after that Damasus reigns eighteen years in peace andsplendour. No one knows whether the daring Deacon was of the race thatmade and unmade popes afterwards, and held half Italy with itsfortresses, giving its daughters to kings and taking kings' daughtersfor its sons, till Vittoria Accoramboni of bad memory began to bringdown a name that is yet great. But Orsino he was called, and he had inhim much of the lawless strength of those namesakes of his who outfoughtall other barons but the Colonna, for centuries; and romance may wellmake him one of them. 

Three hundred years later, and a little nearer to us in the dimperspective of the dark ages, another scene is enacted in the samecathedral. Martin the First was afterwards canonized as Saint Martin forthe persecutions he suffered at the hands of Constans, who feared andhated him and set up an antipope in his stead, and at last sent himprisoner to die a miserable death in the Crimea. Olympius, Exarch ofItaly, was the chosen tool of the Emperor, sent again and again to Rometo destroy the brave Bishop and make way for the impostor. At last, saysthe greatest of Italian chroniclers, fearing the Roman people and theirsoldiers, he attempted to murder the Pope foully, in hideous sacrilege. To that end he pretended penitence, and begged to be allowed to receivethe Eucharist from the Pope himself at solemn high Mass, secretlyinstructing one of his body-guards to stab the Bishop at the very momentwhen he should present Olympius with the consecrated bread. 

Up to the basilica they went, in grave and splendid procession. One mayguess the picture, with its deep colour, with the strong faces of thosemen, the Eastern guards, the gorgeous robes, the gilded arms, the highsunlight crossing the low nave and falling through the yellow clouds ofincense upon the venerable bearded head of the holy man whose death waspurposed in the sacred office. First, the measured tread of the Exarch'sband moving in order; then, the silence over all the kneeling throng, and upon it the bursting unison of the 'Gloria in Excelsis' from thechoir. Chant upon chant as the Pontiff and his Ministers intone theEpistle and the Gospel and are taken up by the singers in chorus at thefirst words of the Creed. By and by, the Pope's voice alone, still clearand brave in the Preface. 'Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and allthe company of Heaven, ' he chants, and again the harmony of many voicessinging 'Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth. ' Silence then, at theConsecration, and the dark-browed Exarch bowing to the pavement, besidethe paid murderer whose hand is already on his dagger's hilt. 'O Lamb ofGod, that takest away the sins of the world, ' sings the choir in itssad, high chant, and Saint Martin bows, standing, over the altar, himself communicating, while the Exarch holds his breath, and the slayerfixes his small, keen eyes on the embroidered vestments and guesses howthey will look with a red splash upon them. 

As the soldier looks, the sunlight falls more brightly on the gold, theincense curls in mystic spiral wreaths, its strong perfume penetratesand dims his senses; little by little, his thoughts wander till they arestrangely fixed on something far away, and he no longer sees Pope noraltar nor altar-piece beyond, and is wrapped in a sort of waking sleepthat is blindness. Olympius kneels at the steps within the rail, and hisheart beats loud as the grand figure of the Bishop bends over him, andthe thin old hand with its strong blue veins offers the sacred bread tohis open lips. He trembles, and tries to glance sideways to his leftwith downcast eyes, for the moment has come, and the blow must be struckthen or never. Not a breath, not a movement in the church, not thefaintest clink of all those gilded arms, as the Saint pronounces the fewsolemn words, then gravely and slowly turns, with his deacons to rightand left of him, and ascends the altar steps once more, unhurt. Amiracle, says the chronicler. A miracle, says the amazed soldier, andrepeats it upon solemn oath. A miracle, says Olympius himself, penitentand converted from error, and ready to save the Pope by all means hehas, as he was ready to slay him before. But he only, and the hiredassassin beside him, had known what was to be, and the people say thatthe Exarch and the Pope were already reconciled and agreed against theEmperor. 

The vast church has had many names. It seems at one time to have beenknown as the Basilica of Sicininus, for so Ammianus Marcellinus stillspeaks of it. But just before that, there is the lovely legend of PopeLiberius' dream. To him and to the Roman patrician, John, came theBlessed Virgin in a dream, one night in high summer, commanding them tobuild her a church wheresoever they should find snow on the morrow. Andtogether they found it, glistening in the morning sun, and they traced, on the white, the plan of the foundation, and together built the firstchurch, calling it 'Our Lady of Snows, ' for Damasus to burn when Orsinoseized it, --but the people spoke of it as the Basilica of Liberius. Itwas called also 'Our Lady of the Manger, ' from the relic held holythere; and Sixtus the Third named it 'Our Lady, Mother of God'; andunder many popes it was rebuilt and grew, until at last, for its size, it was called, as it is today, 'The Greater Saint Mary's. ' At one time, the popes lived near it, and in our own century, when the palace hadlong been transferred to the Quirinal, a mile to northward of thebasilica, Papal Bulls were dated 'From Santa Maria Maggiore. '

It is too gorgeous now, too overladen, too rich; and yet it is imposing. The first gold brought from South America gilds the profusely decoratedroof, the dark red polished porphyry pillars of the high altar gleam inthe warm haze of light, the endless marble columns rise in shiningranks, all is gold, marble and colour. 

Many dead lie there, great men and good; and one over whom a sort ofmystery hangs, for he was Bartolommeo Sacchi, Cardinal Platina, historian of the Church, a chief member of the famous Roman Academy ofthe fifteenth century, and a mediæval pagan, accused with PomponiusLetus and others of worshipping false gods; tried, acquitted for lack ofevidence; dead in the odour of sanctity; proved at last ten times aheathen, and a bad one, today, by inscriptions found in the remotestpart of the Catacombs, where he and his companions met in darkest secretto perform their extravagant rites. He lies beneath the chapel of Sixtusthe Fifth, but the stone that marked the spot is gone. 

Strange survivals of ideas and customs cling to some places like ghosts, and will not be driven away. The Esquiline was long ago the haunt ofwitches, who chanted their nightly incantations over the shallow graveswhere slaves were buried, and under the hideous crosses whereon deadmalefactors had groaned away their last hours of life. Mæcenas clearedthe land and beautified it with gardens, but still the witches came bystealth to their old haunts. The popes built churches and palaces on it, but the dark memories never vanished in the light; and even in our owndays, on Saint John's Eve, which is the witches' night of the Latinrace, as the Eve of May-day is the Walpurgis of the Northmen, the peoplewent out in thousands, with torches and lights, and laughing tricks ofexorcism, to scare away the powers of evil for the year. 

On that night the vast open spaces around the Lateran were thronged withmen and women and children; against the witches' dreaded influence theycarried each an onion, torn up by the roots with stalk and flower; allabout, on the outskirts of the place, were kitchen booths, set up withboughs and bits of awnings, yellow with the glare of earthen and ironoil lamps, where snails--great counter-charms against spells--were friedand baked in oil, and sold with bread and wine, and eaten with more orless appetite, according to the strength of men's stomachs. All night, till the early summer dawn, the people came and went, and wandered roundand round, and in and out, in parties and by families, to go laughinghomeward at last, scarce knowing why they had gone there at all, unlessit were because their fathers and mothers had done as they did forgenerations unnumbered. 

[Illustration: BATHS OF DIOCLETIAN]

And the Lateran once had another half-heathen festival, on the Saturdayafter Easter, in memory of the ancient Floralia of the Romans, which hadformerly been celebrated on the 28th of April. It was a most strangefestival, now long forgotten, in which Christianity and paganism wereblended together. Baracconi, from whom the following account is taken, quotes three sober writers as authority for his description. Yet thereis a doubt about the very name of the feast, which is variously calledthe 'Coromania' and the 'Cornomania. '

On the afternoon of the Saturday in Easter week, say these writers, thepriests of the eighteen principal 'deaconries'--an ecclesiasticaldivision of the city long ago abolished and now somewhat obscure--causedthe bells to be rung, and the people assembled at their parish churches, where they were received by a 'mansionarius, '--probably meaning here 'avisitor of houses, '--and a layman, who was arrayed in a tunic, andcrowned with the flowers of the cornel cherry. In his hand he carried aconcave musical instrument of copper, by which hung many little bells. One of these mysterious personages, who evidently represented the paganelement in the ceremony, preceded each parish procession, being followedimmediately by the parish priest, wearing the cope. From all parts ofthe city they went up to the Lateran, and waited before the palace ofthe Pope till all were assembled. 

The Pope descended the steps to receive the homage of the people. Immediately, those of each parish formed themselves into wide circlesround their respective 'visitors' and priests, and the strange ritebegan. In the midst the priest stood still. Round and round him the lay'visitor' moved in a solemn dance, striking his copper bellsrhythmically to his steps, while all the circle followed his gyrations, chanting a barbarous invocation, half Latin and half Greek: 'Hail, divinity of this spot! Receive our prayers in fortunate hour!' and manyverses more to the same purpose, and quite beyond being construedgrammatically. 

The dance is over with the song. One of the parish priests mounts uponan ass, backwards, facing the beast's tail, and a papal chamberlainleads the animal, holding over its head a basin containing twenty piecesof copper money. When they have passed three rows of benches--whichbenches, by the bye?--the priest leans back, puts his hand behind himinto the basin, and pockets the coins. 

Then all the priests lay garlands at the feet of the Pope. But thepriest of Santa Maria in Via Lata also lets a live fox out of a bag, andthe little creature suddenly let loose flies for its life, through theparting crowd, out to the open country, seeking cover. It is like theHebrew scapegoat. In return each priest receives a golden coin from thePontiff's hand. The rite being finished, all return to their respectiveparishes, the dancing 'visitor' still leading the procession. Eachpriest is accompanied then by acolytes who bear holy water, branches oflaurel, and baskets of little rolls, or of those big, sweet wafers, rolled into a cylinder and baked, which are called 'cialdoni, ' and areeaten to this day by Romans with ice cream. From house to house they go;the priest blesses each dwelling, sprinkling water about with thelaurel, and then burning the branch on the hearth and giving some of therolls to the children. And all the time the dancer slowly dances andchants the strange words made up of some Hebrew, a little Chaldean and aleavening of nonsense. 

 Jaritan, jaritan, iarariasti Raphaym, akrhoin, azariasti!

One may leave the interpretation of the jargon to curious scholars. Asfor the rite itself, were it not attested by trustworthy writers, onewould be inclined to treat it as a mere invention, no more to bebelieved than the legend of Pope Joan, who was supposed to have beenstoned to death near San Clemente, on the way to the Lateran. 

An extraordinary number of traditions cling to the Region of Monti, andconsidering that in later times a great part of this quarter was awilderness, the fact would seem strange. As for the 'Coromania' it seemsto have disappeared after the devastation of Monti by Robert Guiscard in1084, and the general destruction of the city from the Lateran to theCapitol is attributed to the Saracens who were with him. But a morelogical cause of depopulation is found in the disappearance of waterfrom the upper Region by the breaking of the aqueducts, from which aloneit was derived. The consequence of this, in the Middle Age, was that theonly obtainable water came from the river, and was naturally taken fromit up-stream, towards the Piazza del Popolo, in the neighbourhood ofwhich it was collected in tanks and kept until the mud sank to thebottom and it was approximately fit to drink. 

In Imperial times the greater number of the public baths were situatedin the Monti. The great Piazza di Termini, now re-named Piazza delleTerme, before the railway station, took its name from the Baths ofDiocletian--'Thermæ, ' 'Terme, ' 'Termini. ' The Baths of Titus, the Bathsof Constantine, of Philippus, Novatus and others were all in Monti, supplied by the aqueduct of Claudius, the Anio Novus, the Aqua Marcia, Tepula, Julia, Marcia Nova and Anio Vetus. No people in the world weresuch bathers as the old Romans; yet few cities have ever suffered somuch or so long from lack of good water as Rome in the Middle Age. Thesupply cut off, the whole use of the vast institutions was instantlygone, and the huge halls and porticos and playgrounds fell to ruin andbase uses. Owing to their peculiar construction and being purposely madeeasy of access on all sides, like the temples, the buildings could noteven be turned to account by the Barons for purposes of fortification, except as quarries for material with which to build their towers andbastions. The inner chambers became hiding-places for thieves, herdsmenin winter penned their flocks in the shelter of the great halls, groomsused the old playground as a track for breaking horses, and round andabout the ruins, on feast days, the men of Monti and Trastevere chasedone another in their murderous tournaments of stone throwing. A fanaticSicilian priest saved the great hall of Diocletian's Baths fromdestruction in Michelangelo's time. 

[Illustration: PORTA MAGGIORE, SUPPORTING THE CHANNELS OF THE AQUEDUCTOF CLAUDIUS AND THE ANIO NOVUS]

The story is worth telling, for it is little known. In a little churchin Palermo, in which the humble priest Antonio Del Duca officiated, hediscovered under the wall-plaster a beautiful fresco or mosaic of theSeven Archangels, with their names and attributes. Day after day helooked at the fair figures till they took possession of his mind andheart and soul, and inspired him with the apparently hopeless desire toerect a church in Rome in their honour. To Rome he came, persuaded ofhis righteous mission, to fail of course, after seven years ofindefatigable effort. Back to Palermo then, to the contemplation of hisbeloved angels. And again they seemed to drive him to Rome. Scarcely hadhe returned when in a dream he seemed to see his ideal church among theruins of the Baths of Diocletian, which had been built, as traditionsaid, by thousands of condemned Christians. To dream was to wake withnew enthusiasm, to wake was to act. In an hour, in the early dawn, hewas in the great hall which is now the Church of Santa Maria degliAngeli, 'Saint Mary of the Angels. '

But it was long before his purpose was finally accomplished. Thirtyyears of his life he spent in unremitting labour for his purpose, and anaccident at last determined his success. He had brought a nephew withhim from Sicily, a certain Giacomo Del Duca, a sculptor, who wasemployed by Michelangelo to carve the great mask over the Porta Pia. Pope Pius the Fourth, for whom the gate was named, praised the stoneface to Michelangelo, who told him who had made it. The name recalledthe sculptor's uncle and his mad project, which appealed toMichelangelo's love of the gigantic. Even the coincidence of appellationpleased the Pope, for he himself had been christened Angelo, and hisgreat architect and sculptor bore an archangel's name. So the work wasdone in short time, the great church was consecrated, and one of thenoblest of Roman buildings was saved from ruin by the poorSicilian, --and there, in 1896, the heir to the throne of Italy wasmarried with great magnificence, that particular church being chosenbecause, as a historical monument, it is regarded as the property of theItalian State, and is therefore not under the immediate management ofthe Vatican. Probably not one in a thousand of the splendid throng thatfilled the church had heard the name of Antonio Del Duca, who liesburied before the high altar without a line to tell of all he did. Solies Bernini, somewhere in Santa Maria Maggiore, so lies Platina, --he, at least, the better for no epitaph, --and Beatrice Cenci and manyothers, rest unforgotten in nameless graves. 

From the church to the railway station stretch the ruins, continuous, massive, almost useless, yet dear to all who love old Rome. On the southside, there used to be a long row of buildings, ending in a tall oldmansion of good architecture, which was the 'Casino' of the great oldVilla Negroni. In that house, but recently gone, Thomas Crawford, sculptor, lived for many years, and in the long, low studio that stoodbefore what is now the station, but was then a field, he modelled thegreat statue of Liberty that crowns the Capitol in Washington, andWashington's own monument which stands in Richmond, and many of hisother works. My own early childhood was spent there, among the old-timegardens, and avenues of lordly cypresses and of bitter orange trees, andthe moss-grown fountains, and long walks fragrant with half-wild rosesand sweet flowers that no one thinks of planting now. Beyond, a wildwaste of field and broken land led up to Santa Maria Maggiore; and thegrand old bells sent their far voices ringing in deep harmony to ourwindows; and on the Eve of Saint Peter's day, when Saint Peter's was adream of stars in the distance and the gorgeous fireworks gleamed in thedark sky above the Pincio, we used to climb the high tower above thehouse and watch the still illumination and the soaring rockets through agrated window, till the last one had burst and spent itself, and wecrept down the steep stone steps, half frightened at the sound of ourown voices in the ghostly place. 

And in that same villa once lived Vittoria Accoramboni, married toFrancesco Peretti, nephew of Cardinal Montalto, who built the house, andwas afterwards Sixtus the Fifth, and filled Rome with his works in thefive years of his stirring reign. Hers also is a story worth telling, for few know it, even among Romans, and it is a tale of bloodshed, andof murder, and of all crimes against God and man, and of the fall of thegreat house of Orsini. But it may better be told in another place, whenwe reach the Region where they lived and fought and ruled, by terror andthe sword. 

Near the Baths of Diocletian, and most probably on the site of that sameVilla Negroni, too, was that vineyard, or 'villa' as we should say, where Cæsar Borgia and his elder brother, the Duke of Gandia, suppedtogether for the last time with their mother Vanozza, on the night ofthe 14th of June, in the year 1497. There has always been a dark mysteryabout what followed. Many say that Cæsar feared his brother's power andinfluence with the Pope. Not a few others suggest that the cause of themutual hatred was a jealousy so horrible to think of that one may hardlyfind words for it, for its object was their own sister Lucrezia. Howeverthat may be, they supped together with their mother in her villa, afterthe manner of Romans in those times, and long before then, and longsince. In the first days of summer heat, when the freshness of spring isgone and June grows sultry, the people of the city have ever loved tobreathe a cooler air. In the Region of Monti there were a score ofvillas, and there were wide vineyards and little groves of trees, suchas could grow where there was not much water, or none at all perhaps, saving what was collected in cisterns from the roofs of the fewscattered houses, when it rained. 

In the long June twilight the three met together, the mother and her twosons, and sat down under an arbour in the garden, for the air was drywith the south wind and there was no fear of fever. Screened lamps andwax torches shed changing tints of gold and yellow on the fine linen, and the deep-chiselled dishes and vessels of silver, and the tallglasses and beakers of many hues. Fruit was piled up in the midst, suchas the season afforded, cherries and strawberries, and bright orangesfrom the south. One may fancy the dark-browed woman of forty years, inthe beauty of maturity almost too ripe, with her black eyes and hair ofauburn, her jewelled cap, her gold laces just open at her marble throat, her gleaming earrings, her sleeves slashed to show gauze-fine linen, herwhite, ring-laden fingers that delicately took the finely carved meatsin her plate--before forks were used in Rome--and dabbled themselvesclean from each touch in the scented water the little page poured overthem. On her right, her eldest, Gandia, fair, weak-mouthed, sensuallybeautiful, splendid in velvet, and chain of gold, and deep-red silk, hisblue eyes glancing now and then, half scornfully, half anxiously at hisstrong brother. And he, Cæsar, the man of infamous memory, sitting therethe very incarnation of bodily strength and mental daring; square as agladiator, dark as a Moor, with deep and fiery eyes, now black, now redin the lamplight, the marvellous smile wreathing his thin lips now andthen, and showing white, wolfish teeth, his sinewy brown hands directin every little action, his soft voice the very music of a lie to thosewho knew the terrible brief tones it had in wrath. 

Long they sat, sipping the strong iced wine, toying with fruits andnuts, talking of State affairs, of the Pope, of Maximilian, the joustingEmperor, --discussing, perhaps, with a smile, his love of dress and thebeautiful fluted armour which he first invented;--of Lewis the Eleventhof France, tottering to his grave, strangest compound of devotion, avarice and fear that ever filled a throne; of Frederick of Naples, towhom Cæsar was to bear the crown within a few days; of Lucrezia'squarrel with her husband, which had brought her to Rome; and at her nameCæsar's eyes blazed once and looked down at the strawberries on thesilver dish, and Gandia turned pale, and felt the chill of the nightair, and stately Vanozza rose slowly in the silence, and bade her evilsons good-night, for it was late. 

Two hours later, Gandia's thrice-stabbed corpse lay rolling and bobbingat the Tiber's edge, as dead things do in the water, caught by its silksand velvets in wild branches that dipped in the muddy stream; and thewaning moon rose as the dawn forelightened. 

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE COLOSSEUM]

If the secrets of old Rome could be known and told, they would fill theworld with books. Every stone has tasted blood, every house has had itstragedy, every shrub and tree and blade of grass and wild flower hassucked life from death, and blossoms on a grave. There is no end ofmemories, in this one Region, as in all the rest. Far up by Porta Pia, over against the new Treasury, under a modern street, lie the bones ofguilty Vestals, buried living, each in a little vault two fathoms deep, with the small dish and crust and the earthen lamp that soon flickeredout in the close damp air; and there lies that innocent one, Domitian'svictim, who shrank from the foul help of the headsman's hand, as herfoot slipped on the fatal ladder, and fixed her pure eyes once upon therabble, and turned and went down alone into the deadly darkness. Down bythe Colosseum, where the ruins of Titus' Baths still stand in part, stood Nero's dwelling palace, above the artificial lake in which theColosseum itself was built, and whose waters reflected the flames of thegreat fire. To northward, in a contrast that leaps ages, rise the hugewalls of the Tor de' Conti, greatest of mediæval fortresses built withinthe city, the stronghold of a dim, great house, long passed away, kinsmen of Innocent the Third. What is left of it helps to enclose apeaceful nunnery. 

There were other towers, too, and fortresses, though none so strong asthat, when it faced the Colosseum, filled then by the armed thousands ofthe great Frangipani. The desolate wastes of land in the Monti were evergood battlefields for the nobles and the people. But the stronger andwiser and greater Orsini fortified themselves in the town, in Pompey'stheatre, while the Colonna held the midst, and the popes dwelt far aloofon the boundary, with the open country behind them for ready escape, andthe changing, factious, fighting city before. 

The everlasting struggle, the furious jealousy, the always ready knife, kept the Regions distinct and individual and often at enmity with eachother, most of all Monti and Trastevere, hereditary adversaries, Ghibelline and Guelph. Trastevere has something of that proud andviolent character still. Monti lost it in the short eruption of'progress' and 'development. ' In the wild rage of speculation whichculminated in 1889, its desolate open lands, its ancient villas and itsstrange old houses were the natural prey of a foolish greediness thelike of which has never been seen before. Progress ate up romance, andhundreds of acres of wretched, cheaply built, hideous, unsafe buildingssprang up like the unhealthy growth of a foul disease, between theLateran gate and the old inhabited districts. They are destined to agraceless and ignoble ruin. Ugly cracks in the miserable stucco showwhere the masonry is already parting, as the hollow foundations subside, and walls on which the paint is still almost fresh are shored up withdusty beams lest they should fall and crush the few paupers who dwellwithin. Filthy, half-washed clothes of beggars hang down from thewindows, drying in the sun as they flap and flutter against pretentiousmoulded masks of empty plaster. Miserable children loiter in thehigh-arched gates, under which smart carriages were meant to drive, andgnaw their dirty fingers, or fight for a cold boiled chestnut one ofthem has saved. Squalor, misery, ruin and vile stucco, with a sprinklingof half-desperate humanity, --those are the elements of the modernpicture, --that is what the 'great development' of modern Rome broughtforth and left behind it. Peace to the past, and to its ashes of romanceand beauty. 

[Illustration]

REGION II TREVI

In Imperial times, the street now called the Tritone, from the Triton onthe fountain in Piazza Barberini, led up from the Portico of VipsaniusAgrippa's sister in the modern Corso to the temple of Flora at thebeginning of the Quattro Fontane. It was met at right angles by a longstreet leading straight from the Forum of Trajan, and which struck itclose to the Arch of Claudius. Then, as now, this point was the meetingof two principal thoroughfares, and it was called Trivium, or the'crossroads. ' Trivium turned itself into the Italian 'Trevi, ' called insome chronicles 'the Cross of Trevi. ' The Arch of Claudius carried theAqua Virgo, still officially called the Acqua Vergine, across thehighway; the water, itself, came to be called the water 'of thecrossroads' or 'of Trevi, ' and 'Trevi' gave its name at last to theRegion, long before the splendid fountain was built in the early part ofthe last century. The device of the Region seems to have nothing to dowith the water, except, perhaps, that the idea of a triplicity ispreserved in the three horizontally disposed rapiers. 

The legend that tells how the water was discovered gave it the firstname it bore. A detachment of Roman soldiers, marching down fromPræneste, or Palestrina, in the summer heat, were overcome by thirst, and could find neither stream nor well. A little girl, passing that way, led them aside from the high-road and brought them to a welling spring, clear and icy cold, known only to shepherds and peasants. They dranktheir fill and called it Aqua Virgo, the Maiden Water. And so it hasremained for all ages. But it is commonly called 'Trevi' in Rome, by thepeople and by strangers, and the name has a ring of poetry, by itsassociations. For they say that whoever will go to the great fountain, when the high moon rays dance upon the rippling water, and drink, andtoss a coin far out into the middle, in offering to the genius of theplace, shall surely come back to Rome again, old or young, sooner orlater. Many have performed the rite, some secretly, sadly, heartbroken, for love of Rome and what it holds, and others gayly, many together, laughing, while they half believe, and sometimes believing altogetherwhile they laugh. And some who loved, and could meet only in Rome, havegone there together, and women's tears have sometimes dropped upon thesilvered water that reflected the sad faces of grave men. 

The foremost memories of the past in Trevi centre about the ancientfamily of the Colonna, still numerous, distinguished and flourishingafter a career of nearly a thousand years--longer than that, it may be, if one take into account the traditions of them that go back beyond theearliest authentic mention of their greatness; a race of singularindependence and energy, which has given popes to Rome, and greatpatriots, and great generals as well, and neither least nor last, Vittoria, princess and poetess, whose name calls up the gentlestmemories of Michelangelo's elder years. 

The Colonna were originally hill men. The earliest record of them tellsthat their great lands towards Palestrina were confiscated by theChurch, in the eleventh century. The oldest of their titles is that ofDuke of Paliano, a town still belonging to them, rising on an eminenceout of the plain beyond the Alban hills. The greatest of their earlyfortresses was Palestrina, still the seat and title estate of theBarberini branch of the family. Their original stronghold in Rome wasalmost on the site of their present palace, being then situated on theopposite side of the Basilica of the Santi Apostoli, where theheadquarters of the Dominicans now are, and running upwards andbackwards, thence, to the Piazza della Pilotta; but they held Rome by achain of towers and fortifications, from the Quirinal to the Mausoleumof Augustus, now hidden among the later buildings, between the Corso, the Tiber, the Via de' Pontefici and the Via de' Schiavoni. The presentpalace and the basilica stood partly upon the site of the ancientquarters occupied by the first Cohort of the Vigiles, or city police, ofwhom about seven thousand preserved order when the population of ancientRome exceeded two millions. 

The 'column, ' from which the Colonna take their name, is generallysupposed to have stood in the market-place of the village of that namein the higher part of the Campagna, between the Alban and the Samnitehills, on the way to Palestrina. It is a peaceful and vine-clad country, now. South of it rise the low heights of Tusculum, and it is more thanprobable that the Colonna were originally descended from the greatcounts who tyrannized over Rome from that strong point of vantage and, through them, from Theodora Senatrix. Be that as it may, their armsconsist of a simple column, used on a shield, or as a crest, or as thebadge of the family, and it is found in many a threadbare tapestry, inmany a painting, in the frescos and carved ornaments of many a dim oldchurch in Rome. 

[Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF TREVI]

In their history, the first fact that stands out is their adherence tothe Emperors, as Ghibellines, whereas their rivals, the Orsini, wereGuelphs and supporters of the Church in most of the great contests ofthe Middle Age. The exceptions to the rule are found when the Colonnahad a Pope of their own, or one who, like Nicholas the Fourth, was oftheir own making. 'That Pope, ' says Muratori, 'had so boundlesslyfavoured the aggrandizement of the Colonna that his actions dependedentirely upon their dictates, and a libel was published upon him, entitled the Source of Evil, illustrated by a caricature, in which themitred head of the Pontiff was seen issuing from a tall column betweentwo smaller ones, the latter intended to represent the two livingcardinals of the house, Jacopo and Pietro. ' Yet in the next reign, whenthey impeached the election of Boniface the Eighth, they foundthemselves in opposition to the Holy See, and they and theirs werealmost utterly destroyed by the Pope's partisans and kinsmen, thepowerful Caetani. 

Just before him, after the Holy See had been vacant for two years andnearly four months, because the Conclave of Perugia could not agree upona Pope, a humble southern hermit of the Abruzzi, Pietro da Morrone, hadbeen suddenly elevated to the Pontificate, to his own inexpressiblesurprise and confusion, and after a few months of honest, but utterlyfruitless, effort to understand and do what was required of him, he hadtaken the wholly unprecedented step of abdicating the papacy. He wassucceeded by Benedict Caetani, Boniface the Eighth, keen, learned, brave, unforgiving and the mortal foe of the Colonna; 'the magnanimoussinner, ' as Gibbon quotes from a chronicle, 'who entered like a fox, reigned like a lion and died like a dog. ' Yet the judgment is harsh, forthough his sins were great, the expiation was fearful, and he was braveas few men have been. 

Samson slew a lion with his hands, and the Philistines with the jaw-boneof an ass. Men have always accepted the Bible's account of theslaughter. But when an ass, without the aid of any Samson, killed a lionin the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Priori, in Florence, the event waslooked upon as of evil portent, exceeding the laws of nature. For PopeBoniface had presented the Commonwealth of Florence with a young andhandsome lion, which was chained up and kept in the court of the palaceaforesaid. A donkey laden with firewood was driven in, and 'either fromfear, or by a miracle, ' as the chronicle says, at once assailed the lionwith the utmost ferocity, and kicked him to death, in spite of theefforts of a number of men to drag the beast of burden off. Of the twohypotheses, the wise men of the day preferred the supernaturalexplanation, and one of them found an ancient Sibylline prophecy to theeffect that 'when the tame beast should kill the king of beasts, thedissolution of the Church should begin. ' Which saying, adds Villani, waspresently fulfilled in Pope Boniface. 

For the Pope had a mortal quarrel with Philip the Fair of France whom hehad promised to make Emperor, and had then passed over in favour ofAlbert, son of Rudolph of Hapsburg; and Philip made a friend and ally ofStephen Colonna, the head of the great house, who was then in France, and drove Boniface's legate out of his kingdom, and allowed the Count ofArtois to burn the papal letters. The Pope retorted by a MajorExcommunication, and the quarrel became furious. The Colonna being underhis hand, Boniface vented his anger upon them, drove them from Rome, destroyed their houses, levelled Palestrina to the ground, and ploughedup the land where it had stood. The six brothers of the house wereexiles and wanderers. Old Stephen, the idol of Petrarch, alone andwretched, was surrounded by highwaymen, who asked who he was. 'StephenColonna, ' he answered, 'a Roman citizen. ' And the thieves fell back atthe sound of the great name. Again, someone asked him with a sneer whereall his strongholds were, since Palestrina was gone. 'Here, ' heanswered, unmoved, and laying his hand upon his heart. Of such stuffwere the Pope's enemies. 

Nor could he crush them. Boniface was of Anagni, a city of prehistoricwalls and ancient memories which belonged to the Caetani; and there, inthe late summer, he was sojourning for rest and country air, with hiscardinals and his court and his kinsmen about him. Among the cardinalswas Napoleon Orsini. 

[Illustration: GRAND HALL OF THE COLONNA PALACE]

Then came William of Nogaret, sent by the King of France, and SciarraColonna, the boldest man of his day, and many other nobles, with threehundred knights and many footmen. For a long time they had secretlyplotted a master-stroke of violence, spending money freely among thepeople, and using all persuasion to bring the country to their side, yetwith such skill and caution that not the slightest warning reached thePope's ears. In calm security he rose early on the morning of theseventh of September. He believed his position assured, his friendsloyal and the Colonna ruined for ever; and Colonna was at the gate. 

Suddenly, from below the walls, a cry of words came up to the palacewindows; long drawn out, distinct in the still mountain air. 'Long livethe King of France! Death to Pope Boniface!' It was taken up by hundredsof voices, and repeated, loud, long and terrible, by the people of thetown, by men going out to their work in the hills, by women loitering ontheir doorsteps, by children peering out, half frightened, from behindtheir mothers' scarlet woollen skirts, to see the armed men ride up thestony way. Cardinals, chamberlains, secretaries, men-at-arms, fled likesheep; and when Colonna reached the palace wall, only the Pope's ownkinsmen remained within to help him as they could, barring the greatdoors and posting themselves with crossbows at the grated window. Forthe Caetani were always brave men. 

But Boniface knew that he was lost, and calmly, courageously, evengrandly, he prepared to face death. 'Since I am betrayed, ' he said, 'andam to die, I will at least die as a Pope should!' So he put on the greatpontifical chasuble, and set the tiara of Constantine upon his head, and, taking the keys and the crosier in his hands, sat down on the papalthrone to await death. 

The palace gates were broken down, and then there was no moreresistance, for the defenders were few. In a moment Colonna in hisarmour stood before the Pontiff in his robes; but he saw only the enemyof his race, who had driven out his great kinsmen, beggars and wandererson the earth, and he lifted his visor and looked long at his victim, andthen at last found words for his wrath, and bitter reproaches and tauntswithout end and savage curses in the broad-spoken Roman tongue. AndWilliam of Nogaret began to speak, too, and threatened to take Bonifaceto Lyons where a council of the Church should depose him and condemn himto ignominy. Boniface answered that he should expect nothing better thanto be deposed and condemned by a man whose father and mother had beenpublicly burned for their crimes. And this was true of Nogaret, who wasno gentleman. A legend says that Colonna struck the Pope in the face, and that he afterwards made him ride on an ass, sitting backwards, afterthe manner of the times. But no trustworthy chronicle tells of this. Onthe contrary, no one laid hands upon him while he was kept a prisonerunder strict watch for three days, refusing to touch food; for even ifhe could have eaten he feared poison. And Colonna tried to force him toabdicate, as Pope Celestin had done before him, but he refused stoutly;and when the three days were over, Colonna went away, driven out, somesay, by the people of Anagni who turned against him. But that isabsurd, for Anagni is a little place and Colonna had a strong force ofgood soldiers with him. Possibly, seeing that the old man refused toeat, Sciarra feared lest he should be said to have starved the Pope todeath. They went away and left him, carrying off his treasures withthem, and he returned to Rome, half mad with anger, and fell into thehands of the Orsini cardinals, who judged him not sane and kept him aprisoner at the Vatican, where he died soon afterwards, consumed by hiswrath. And before long the Colonna had their own again and rebuiltPalestrina and their palace in Rome. 

Twenty-five years later they were divided against each other, in thewild days when Lewis the Bavarian, excommunicated and at war with thePope, was crowned and consecrated Emperor, by the efforts of anextraordinary man of genius, Castruccio degli Interminelli, known betteras Castruccio Castracane, the Ghibelline lord of Lucca who made Italyring with his deeds for twenty years, and died of a fever, in the heightof his success and glory, at the age of forty-seven years. SciarraColonna was for him and for Lewis. Stephen, head of the house, wasagainst them, and in those days when Rome was frantic for an Emperor, Stephen's son Jacopo had the quiet courage to bring out the Bull ofExcommunication against the chosen Emperor and nail it to the door ofSan Marcello, in the Corso, in the heart of Rome and in the sight of athousand angry men, in protest against what they meant to do--againstwhat was doing even at that moment. And he reached Palestrina in safety, shaking the dust of Rome from his feet. 

But on that bright winter's day, Lewis of Bavaria and his queen rodedown from Santa Maria Maggiore by the long and winding ways towardsSaint Peter's. The streets were all swept and strewn with yellow sandand box leaves and myrtle that made the air fragrant, and from everywindow and balcony gorgeous silks and tapestries were hung, and evenornaments of gold and silver and jewels. Before the procession rodestandard-bearers, four for each Region, on horses most richlycaparisoned. There rode Sciarra Colonna, and beside him, for once inhistory, Orsino Orsini, and others, all dressed in cloth of gold, andCastruccio Castracane, wearing that famous sword which in our own timeswas offered by Italy to King Victor Emmanuel; and many other Barons rodethere in splendid array, and there was great concourse of the people. Sothey came to Saint Peter's; and because the Count of the Lateran shouldby right have been the Emperor's sponsor at the anointing, and had leftRome in anger and disdain, Lewis made Castruccio a knight of the Empireand Count of the Lateran in his stead, and sponsor; and twoexcommunicated Bishops consecrated the Emperor, and anointed him, andSciarra Colonna crowned him and his queen. After which they feasted inthe evening at the Aracoeli, and slept in the Capitol, because theywere all weary with the long ceremony, and it was too late to go home. The chronicler's comment is curious. 'Note, ' he says, 'what presumptionwas this, of the aforesaid damned Bavarian, such as thou shalt not findin any ancient or recent history; for never did any Christian Emperorcause himself to be crowned save by the Pope or his legate, even thoughopposed to the Church, neither before then nor since, except thisBavarian. ' But Sciarra and Castruccio had their way, and Lewis did whateven Napoleon, master of the world by violent chance, would not do. Andtwenty years later, in the same chronicle, it is told how 'Lewis ofBavaria, who called himself Emperor, fell with his horse, and was killedsuddenly, without penitence, excommunicated and damned by Holy Church. 'It is a curious coincidence that Boniface the Eighth, Sciarra'sprisoner, and Lewis the Bavarian, whom he crowned Emperor, both died onthe eleventh of October, according to most authorities. 

The Senate of Rome had dwindled to a pitiable office, held by one man. At or about this time, the Colonna and the Orsini agreed by a compromisethat there should be two, chosen from their two houses. The Popes werein Avignon, and men who could make Emperors were more than able to do asthey pleased with a town of twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants, solong as the latter had no leader. One may judge of what Rome was, wheneven pilgrims did not dare to go thither and visit the tomb of SaintPeter. The discord of the great houses made Rienzi's life a career; thedefection of the Orsini from the Pope's party led to his flight; theirbattles suggested to the exiled Pope the idea of sending him back toRome to break their power and restore a republic by which the Pope mightrestore himself; and the rage of their retainers expended itself in hisviolent death. For it was their retainers who fought for their masters, till the younger Stephen Colonna killed Bertoldo Orsini, the bravest manof his day, in an ambush, and the Orsini basely murdered a boy of theColonna on the steps of a church. But Rienzi was of another Region, ofthe Regola by the Tiber, and it is not yet time to tell his story. Andby and by, as the power of the Popes rose and they became again as theCæsars had been, Colonna and Orsini forgot their feuds, and were glad tostand on the Pope's right and left as hereditary 'Assistants of the HolySee. ' In the petty ending of all old greatnesses in modern times, theresult of the greatest feud that ever made two races mortal foes ismerely that no prudent host dare ask the heads of the two houses todinner together, lest a question of precedence should arise, such as nomaster of ceremonies would presume to settle. That is what it has cometo. Once upon a time an Orsini quarrelled with a Colonna in the Corso, just where Aragno's café is now situated, and ran him through with hisrapier, wounding him almost to death. He was carried into the palace ofthe Theodoli, close by, and the records of that family tell that withinthe hour eight hundred of the Colonna's retainers were in the house toguard him. In as short space, the Orsini called out three thousand menin arms, when Cæsar Borgia's henchman claimed the payment of a tax. 

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE MAUSOLEUM OF AUGUSTUS

From a print of the last century]

Times have changed since then. The Mausoleum of Augustus, once afortress, has been an open air theatre in our time, and there the greatSalvini and Ristori often acted in their early youth; it is a circusnow. And in less violent contrast, but with change as great from what itwas, the palace of the Colonna suggests no thought of defence nowadays, and the wide gates and courtyard recall rather the splendours of theConstable and of his wife, Maria Mancini, niece of Cardinal Mazarin, than the fiercer days when Castracane was Sciarra's guest on the otherside of the church. 

The Basilica of the Apostles is said to have been built by Pelagius theFirst, who was made Pope in the year 555, and who dedicated it to SaintPhilip and Saint James. Recent advances in the study of archæology makeit seem more than probable that he adapted for the purpose a part of theancient barracks of the Vigiles, of which the central portion appearsalmost to coincide with the present church, at a somewhat differentangle; and in the same way it is likely that the remains of the northwing were rebuilt at a later period by the Colonna as a fortifiedpalace. In those times men would not have neglected to utilize themassive substructures and walls. However that may be, the Colonna dweltthere at a very early date, and in eight hundred years or more have onlyremoved their headquarters from one side of the church to the other. Thelatter has been changed and rebuilt, and altered again, like most of thegreat Roman sanctuaries, till it bears no resemblance to the originalbuilding. The present church is distinctly ugly, with the worst defectsof the early eighteenth century; and that age was as deficient incultivated taste as it was abhorrent of natural beauty. Some fragmentsof the original frescos that adorned the apse are now preserved in ahall behind the main Sacristy of Saint Peter's. Against the flat walls, under the inquisition of the crudest daylight, the fragments of Melozzoda Forli's masterpiece are masterpieces still; the angelic faces, imprisoned in a place not theirs, reflect the sadness of art'scaptivity; and the irretrievable destruction of an inimitable pastexcites the pity and resentment of thoughtful men. The attempt to outdothe works of the great has exhibited the contemptible imbecility of thelittle, and the coarse-grained vanity of Clement the Eleventh hasparodied the poetry of art in the bombastic prose of a vulgar tongue. Pope Pelagius took for his church the pillars and marbles of Trajan'sForum, in the belief that his acts were acceptable to God; but Clementhad no such excuse, and the edifice which was a monument of faith hasgiven place to the temple of a monumental vanity. 

[Illustration: FORUM OF TRAJAN]

It is remarkable that the Colonna rarely laid their dead in the Churchof the Apostles, for it was virtually theirs by right of immediateneighbourhood, and during their domination they could easily haveassumed actual possession of it as a private property. A very curiouscustom, which survived in the sixteenth century, and perhaps much later, bears witness to the close connection between their family and thechurch. At that time a gallery existed, accessible from the palace andlooking down into the basilica, so that the family could assist at Masswithout leaving their dwelling. 

On the afternoon of the first of May, which is the traditional feast ofthis church, the poor of the neighbourhood assembled within. The windowsof the palace gallery were then thrown open and a great number of fatfowls were thrown alive to the crowd, turkeys, geese and the like, toflutter down to the pavement and be caught by the luckiest of the peoplein a tumultuous scramble. When this was over, a young pig was swung outand lowered in slings by a purchase of which the block was seized to aroof beam. When just out of reach the rope was made fast, and the mostactive of the men jumped for the animal from below, till one wasfortunate enough to catch it with his hands, when the rope was let go, and he carried off the prize. The custom was evidently similar to thatof climbing the May-pole, which was set up on the same day in the CampoVaccino. May-day was one of the oldest festivals of the Romans, for itwas sacred to the tutelary Lares, or spirits of ancestors, and was keptholy, both publicly by the whole city as the habitation of the Romanpeople, and by each family in its private dwelling. It is of Aryanorigin and is remembered in one way or another by all Aryan races in ourown time, and it is not surprising that in the general conversion ofPaganism to Christianity a new feast should have been intentionally madeto coincide with an old one; but it is hard to understand the lack ofall reverence for sacred places which could admit such a scene as thescrambling for live fowls and pigs in honour of the twelve Apostles, apious exercise which is perhaps paralleled, though assuredly notequalled, in crudeness, by the old Highland custom of smoking tobacco inkirk throughout the sermon. 

At the very time when we have historical record of a Pope's presence asan amused spectator of the proceedings, Michelangelo had lately paintedthe ceiling of the Sixtine chapel, and had not yet begun his LastJudgment; and 'Diva' Vittoria Colonna, not yet the friend of his lateryears, was perhaps even then composing those strangely passionatespiritual sonnets which appeal to the soul through the heart, by thewomanly pride that strove to make the heart subject to the soul. 

The commonplace romance which has represented Vittoria Colonna andMichelangelo as in love with each other is as unworthy of both as it iswholly without foundation. They first met nine years before her death, when she was almost fifty and he was already sixty-four. She had thenbeen widowed twelve years, and it was long since she had refused inNaples the princely suitors who made overtures for her hand. The trueromance of her life was simpler, nobler and more enduring, for it beganwhen she was a child, and it ended when she breathed her last in thehouse of Giuliano Cesarini, the kinsman of her people, whose descendantmarried her namesake in our own time. 

At the age of four, Vittoria was formally betrothed to Francescod'Avalos, heir of Pescara, one of that fated race whose family historyhas furnished matter for more than one stirring tale. Vittoria was bornin Marino, the Roman town and duchy which still gives its title toPrince Colonna's eldest son, and she was brought up in Rome and Naples, of which latter city her father was Grand Constable. Long before she wasmarried, she saw her future husband and loved him at first sight, asshe loved him to her dying day, so that although even greater offerswere made for her, she steadfastly refused to marry any other man. Theywere united when she was seventeen years old, he loved her devotedly, and they spent many months together almost without other society in theisland of Ischia. The Emperor Charles the Fifth was fighting hislifelong fight with Francis the First of France. Colonna and Pescarawere for the Empire, and Francesco d'Avalos joined the imperial army; hewas taken prisoner at Ravenna and carried captive to France; released, he again fought for Charles, who offered him the crown of the kingdom ofNaples; but he refused it, and still he fought on, to fall at last atPavia, in the strength of his mature manhood, and to die of his woundsin Milan when Vittoria was barely five and thirty years of age, stillyoung, surpassingly beautiful, and gifted as few women have ever been. What their love was, their long correspondence tells, --a love passionateas youth and enduring as age, mutual, whole and faithful. For many yearsthe heartbroken woman lived in Naples, where she had been most happy, feeding her soul with fire and tears. At last she returned to Rome, toher own people, in her forty-ninth year. There she was visited by theold Emperor for whom her husband had given his life, and there she metMichelangelo. 

It was natural enough that they should be friends. It is monstrous tosuppose them lovers. The melancholy of their natures drew them together, and the sympathy of their tastes cemented the bond. To the woman-hatingman of genius, this woman was a revelation and a wonder; to the greatprincess in her perpetual sorrow the greatest of creative minds was asolace and a constant intellectual delight. Their friendship was mutual, fitting and beautiful, which last is more than can be said for theabsurd stories about their intercourse which are extant in print andhave been made the subject of imaginary pictures by more than onepainter. The tradition that they used to meet often in the little Churchof Saint Sylvester, behind the Colonna gardens, rests upon the fact thatthey once held a consultation there in the presence of Francescod'Olanda, a Portuguese artist, when Vittoria was planning the Convent ofSaint Catherine, which she afterwards built not very far away. The truthis that she did not live in the palace of her kinsfolk after her returnto Rome, but most probably in the convent attached to the other andgreater Church of Saint Sylvester which stands in the square of thatname not far from the Corso. The convent itself is said to have beenoriginally built for the ladies of the Colonna who took the veil, andwas only recently destroyed to make room for the modern Post-office, thechurch itself having passed into the hands of the English. Thecoincidence of the two churches being dedicated to the same saintdoubtless helped the growth of the unjust fable. But in an age of greatwomen, in the times of Lucrezia Borgia, great and bad, of CatherineSforza, great and warlike, Vittoria Colonna was great and good; and theascetic Michelangelo, discovering in her the realization of an ideal, laid at her feet the homage of a sexagenarian's friendship. 

In the battle of the archæologists the opposing forces traverse andbreak ground, and rush upon each other again, 'hurtling together likewild boars, '--as Mallory describes the duels of his knights, --and whenlearned doctors disagree it is not the province of a searcher afterromance to attempt a definition of exact truths. 'Some romancesentertain the genius, ' quotes Johnson, 'and strengthen it by the nobleideas which they give of things; but they corrupt the truth of history. '

Professor Lanciani, who is probably the greatest authority, living ordead, on Roman antiquities, places the site of the temple of the Sun inthe Colonna gardens, and another writer compares the latter to thehanging gardens of Babylon, supported entirely on ancient arches andsubstructures rising high above the natural soil below. But beforeAurelian erected the splendid building to record his conquest ofPalmyra, the same spot was the site of the 'Little Senate, ' institutedby Elagabalus in mirthful humour, between an attack of sacrilegiousfolly and a fit of cruelty. 

The 'Little Senate' was a woman's senate; in other words, it was aregular assembly of the fashionable Roman matrons of the day, who metthere in hours of idleness under the presidency of the Emperor's mother, Semiamira. Ælius Lampridius, quoted by Baracconi, has a passage aboutit. 'From this Senate, ' he says, 'issued the absurd laws for thematrons, entitled Semiamiran Senatorial Decrees, which determined foreach matron how she might dress, to whom she must yield precedence, bywhom she might be kissed, deciding which ladies might drive in chariots, and which in carts, and whether the latter should be drawn bycaparisoned horses, or by asses, or by mules, or oxen; who should beallowed to be carried in a litter or a chair, which might be of leatheror of bone with fittings of ivory or of silver, as the case might be;and it was even determined which ladies might wear shoes adorned onlywith gold, and which might have gems set in their boots. ' Consideringhow little human nature has changed in eighteen hundred years it is easyenough to imagine what the debates in the 'Little Senate' must have beenwith Semiamira in the chair ruling everything 'out of order' which didnot please her capricious fancy: the shrill discussions about afashionable head-dress, the whispered intrigues for a jewel-studdedslipper, the stormy divisions on the question of gold hairpins, and theatmosphere of beauty, perfumes, gossip, vanity and all femininedissension. But the 'Little Senate' was short-lived. 

Some fifty years after Elagabalus, Aurelian triumphed over Zenobia ofPalmyra, and built his temple of the Sun. That triumph was the finestsight, perhaps, ever seen in imperial Rome. Twenty richly caparisonedelephants and two hundred captive wild beasts led the immenseprocession; eight hundred pairs of gladiators came next, the glory andstrength of fighting manhood, with all their gleaming arms andaccoutrements, marching by the huge Flavian Amphitheatre, where sooneror later they must fight each other to the death; then countlesscaptives of the East and South and West and North, Syrian nobles, Gothicwarriors, Persian dignitaries beside Frankish chieftains, and Tetricus, the great Gallic usurper, in the attire of his nation, with his youngson whom he had dared to make a Senator in defiance of the Empire. Threeroyal equipages followed, rich with silver, gold and precious stones, one of them Zenobia's own, and she herself seated therein, young, beautiful, proud and vanquished, loaded from head to foot with gems, most bitterly against her will, her hands and feet bound with a goldenchain, and about her neck another, long and heavy, of which the end washeld by a Persian captive who walked beside the chariot and seemed tolead her. Then Aurelian, the untiring conqueror, in the car of theGothic king, drawn by four great stags, which he himself was tosacrifice to Jove that day according to his vow, and a long line ofwagons loaded down and groaning under the weight of the vast spoil; theRoman army, horse and foot, the Senate and the people, a million, perhaps, all following the indescribable magnificence of the greattriumph, along the Sacred Way, that was yellow with fresh strewn sandand sweet with box and myrtle. 

[Illustration: RUINS OF HADRIAN'S VILLA AT TIVOLI]

But when it was over, Aurelian, who was generous when he was notviolent, honoured Zenobia and endowed her with great fortune, and shelived for many years as a Roman Matron in Hadrian's villa at Tivoli. Andthe Emperor made light of the 'Little Senate' and built his Sun templeon the spot, with singular magnificence, enriching its decoration withpearls and precious stones and with fifteen thousand pounds in weight ofpure gold. Much of that temple was still standing in the seventeenthcentury and was destroyed by Urban the Eighth, the Pope who built theheavy round tower on the south side of the Quirinal palace, facing MonteCavallo. 

Monte Cavallo itself was a part of the Colonna villa, and its name, onlyrecently changed to Piazza del Quirinale, was given to it by the greathorses that stand on each side of the fountain, and which were foundlong ago, according to tradition, between the Palazzo Rospigliosi andthe Palazzo della Consulta. In the times of Sixtus the Fifth, they werein a pitiable state, their forelegs and tails gone, their necks broken, their heads propped up by bits of masonry. When he finished the Quirinalpalace he restored them and set them up, side by side, before theentrance, and when Pius the Sixth changed their position and turned themround, the ever conservative and ever discontented Roman people weredisgusted by the change. On the pedestal of one of them are the words, 'Opus Phidiae, ' 'the work of Phidias, ' A punning placard was at oncestuck upon the inscription with the legend, 'Opus Perfidiae PiiSexti'--'the work of perfidy of Pius the Sixth. '

The Quirinal palace cannot be said to have played a part in the historyof Rome. Its existence is largely due to the common sense of Sixtus theFifth, and to his love of good air. He was a shepherd by birth, and itis recorded that the first of his bitter disappointments was that thefarmer whom he served set him to feed the pigs because he could notlearn how to drive sheep to pasture; a disgrace which ultimately madehim run away, when he fell in with a monk whose face he liked. Heinformed the astonished father that he meant to follow him everywhere, 'to Hell, if he chose, '--which was a forcible if not a piousresolution, --and explained that the pigs would find their way homealone. Later, when he had quarrelled with all the monks in Naples, including his superiors, he came to Rome, and, being by that time verylearned, he was employed to expound the 'Formalities' of Scotus to the'Signor' Marcantonio Colonna, abbot of the Monastery of the Apostles;and there he resided as a guest for a long time till his brilliant pupilwas himself master of the subject, as well as a firm friend of thequarrelsome monk; and in their intercourse the seeds were no doubt sownof that implacable hatred against the Orsini which, under the great andjust provocation of a kinsman's murder, ended in the exile and temporaryruin of the Colonna's rivals. No doubt, also, the abbot and the monkoften strolled together in the Colonna gardens, and the future Popebreathed the high air of the Quirinal hill with a sense of relief, anddreamed of living up there, far above the city, literally in anatmosphere of his own. Therefore, when he was Pope, he made the greatpalace that crowns the eminence, completing and extending a much smallerbuilding planned by the wise Gregory the Thirteenth, and ever sincethen, until 1870, the Popes lived there during some part of the year. Itis modern, as age is reckoned in Rome, and it has modern associations inthe memory of living men. 

It was from the great balcony of the Quirinal that Pius the Ninthpronounced his famous benediction to an enthusiastic and patrioticmultitude in 1846. It will be remembered that a month after hiselection, Pius proclaimed a general amnesty in favour of all personsimprisoned for political crimes, and a decree by which all criminalprosecutions for political offences should be immediately discontinued, unless the persons accused were ecclesiastics, soldiers, or servants ofthe government, or criminals in the universal sense of the word. 

The announcement was received with a frenzy of enthusiasm, and Rome wentmad with delight. Instinctively, the people began to move towards theQuirinal from all parts of the city, as soon as the proclamation waspublished; the stragglers became a band, and swelled to a crowd; musicwas heard, flags appeared and the crowd swelled to a multitude thatthronged the streets, singing, cheering and shouting for joy as theypushed their way up to the palace, filling the square, the streets thatled to it and the Via della Dateria below it, to overflowing. In answerto this popular demonstration the Pope appeared upon the great balconyabove the main entrance; a shout louder than all the rest burst frombelow, the long drawn 'Viva!' of the southern races; he lifted hishand, and there was silence; and in the calm summer air his quiet eyeswere raised towards the sky as he imparted his benediction to the peopleof Rome. 

Twenty-four years later, when the Italians had taken Rome, a detachmentof soldiers accompanied by a smith and his assistants marched up to thesame gate. Not a soul was within, and they had instructions to enter andtake possession of the palace. In the presence of a small and silentcrowd of sullen-looking men of the people, the doors were forced. 

The difference between Unity under Augustus and Unity under VictorEmmanuel is that under the Empire the Romans took Italy, whereas underthe Kingdom the Italians have taken Rome. Without pretending that therecan be any moral distinction between the two, one may safely admit thatthere is a great and vital one between the two conditions of Rome, atthe two periods of history, a distinction no less than that whichseparates the conqueror from the conquered, and the fruits of conquestfrom the consequences of subjection. But thinking men do not forget thatthey look at the past in one way and at the present in another; and thatwhile the actions of a nation are dictated by the impulses of contagioussentiment, the judgments of history are too often based upon an all butcommercial reckoning and balancing of profit and loss. 

When Sixtus the Fifth was building the Quirinal palace, he was notworking in a wilderness resembling the deserted fields of the outlyingMonti. The hill was covered with gardens and villas. Ippolito d'Este, the son of Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, and of Lucrezia Borgia, had builthimself a residence on the west side of the hill, surrounded by gardens. It was in the manner of his magnificent palace at Tivoli, that Villad'Este of which the melancholy charm had such a mysterious attractionfor Liszt, where the dark cypresses reflect their solemn beauty in thestagnant water, and a weed-grown terrace mourns the dead artist in thesilence of decay. 

[Illustration: PALAZZO DEL QUIRINALE]

Further on, along the Via Venti Settembre, stretched the pleasuregrounds of Oliviero, Cardinal Carafa, who is remembered as the man whofirst recognized the merits of the beautiful mutilated groupsubsequently known as 'Pasquino, ' and set it upon the pedestal whichmade it famous, and gave its name a place in all languages, by the wittylampoons and stinging satires almost daily affixed to the block ofstone. Many other villas followed in the same direction, and in thoseinsecure days not a few Romans, when the summer days grew hot, werecontent to move up from their palaces in the lower parts of the city tobreathe the somewhat better air of the Quirinal and the Esquiline, instead of risking a journey to the country. 

Sixtus the Fifth died in the Quirinal palace, and twenty-one other Popeshave died there since, all following the curious custom of bequeathingtheir hearts and viscera to the parish Church of the Saints Vincent andAnastasius, which is known as the Church of Cardinal Mazarin, becausethe tasteless front was built by him, though the rest existed muchearlier. It stands opposite the fountain of Trevi, at one corner of thelittle square; the vault in which the urns were placed is just behindand below the high altar; but Benedict the Fourteenth built a specialmonument for them on the left of the apse, and a tablet on the rightrecords the names of the Popes who left these strange legacies to thechurch. 

In passing, one may remember that Mazarin himself was born in the Regionof Trevi, the son of a Sicilian, --like Crispi and Rudinì. His father wasemployed at first as a butler and then as a steward by the Colonna, married an illegitimate daughter of the family, and lived to see hisgranddaughter, Maria Mancini, married to the head of the house, and hisson a cardinal and despot of France, and himself, after the death of hisfirst wife, the honoured husband of Porzia Orsini, so that he was theonly man in history who was married both to an Orsini and to a Colonna. In the light of his father's extraordinary good fortune, the success ofthe son, though not less great, is at least less astonishing. Themagnificent Rospigliosi palace, often ascribed by a mistake to CardinalScipio Borghese, was the Palazzo Mazarini and Mazarin's father diedthere; it was inherited by the Dukes of Nevers, through another niece ofthe Cardinal's, and was bought from them between 1667 and 1670, byPrince Rospigliosi, brother of Pope Clement the Ninth, then reigning. 

Urban the Eighth, the Barberini Pope, had already left his mark on theQuirinal hill. The great Barberini palace was built by him, it is said, of stones taken from the Colosseum, whereupon a Pasquinade announcedthat 'the Barberini had done what the Barbarians had not. ' TheBarbarians did not pull down the Colosseum, it is true, but they couldassuredly not have built as Urban did, and in that particular instance, without wishing to justify the vandalisms of the centuries succeedingthe Renascence, it may well be asked whether the Amphitheatre is notmore picturesque in its half-ruined state, as it stands, and whether thecity is not richer by a great work of art in the princely dwelling whichfaces the street of the Four Fountains. 

Among the many memories of the Quirinal there is one more mysteriousthan the rest. The great Baths of Constantine extended over the site ofthe Palazzo Rospigliosi, and the ruins were in part standing at the endof the sixteenth century. It is related by a writer of those days and aneye-witness of the fact, that a vault was discovered beneath the oldbaths, about eighty feet long by twenty wide, closed at one end by awall thrown up with evident haste and lack of skill, and completelyfilled with human bodies that fell to dust at the first touch, evidentlylaid there all at the same time, just after death, and probablynumbering at least a thousand. In vain one conjectures the reason ofsuch wholesale burial--one of Nero's massacres, perhaps, or a plague. Noone can tell. 

The invaluable Baracconi, often quoted, recalls the fact that Tasso, when a child, lived with his father in some house on the Monte Cavallo, when the execrable Carafa cardinal and his brother had temporarilysucceeded in seizing all the Colonna property; and he gives a letter ofBernardo, the poet's father, written in July to his wife, who was awayjust then. 

[Illustration: PIAZZA BARBERINI]

'I do not wish the children to go to the vineyard because they get toohot, and the air is bad there this summer, but in order that they mayhave a change, I took steps to have the use of the Boccaccio Vineyard[Villa Colonna], and the Duke of Paliano [then a Carafa, for the latterhad stolen the title as well as the lands] has let me have it, and wehave been here a week and shall stay all summer in this good air. '

The words call up a picture of Tasso, a small boy, pale with the heat ofa Roman summer, but restless and for ever running about, overheated andcatching cold like all delicate children, which brings the unhappy poeta little nearer to us. 

Of those great villas and gardens there remain the Colonna, theRospigliosi and the Quirinal, by far the largest of the three, andenclosing between four walls an area almost, if not quite, equal to thePincio. The great palace where twenty-two popes died is inhabited by theroyal family of Italy and crowns the height, as the Vatican, far awayacross the Tiber, is also on an eminence of its own. They face eachother, like two principles in natural and eternal opposition, --Rome theconqueror of the world, and Italy the conqueror of Rome. And he wholoves the land for its own sake can only pray that if they must opposeeach other for ever in heart, they may abide in that state of civilizedthough unreconciled peace, which is the nation's last and only hope ofprosperity. 

[Illustration]

REGION III COLONNA

When the present Queen of Italy first came to Rome as Princess Margaret, and drove through the city to obtain a general impression of it, shereached the Piazza Colonna and asked what the column might be which isthe most conspicuous landmark in that part of Rome and gives a name tothe square, and to the whole Region. The answer of the elderly officerwho accompanied the Princess and her ladies is historical. 'Thatcolumn, ' he answered, 'is the Column of Piazza Colonna'--'the Column ofColumn Square, ' as we might say--and that was all he could tellconcerning it, for his business was not archæology, but soldiering. Thecolumn was erected by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, whose equestrianstatue stands on the Capitol, to commemorate his victory over theMarcomanni. 

[Illustration: ARCH OF TITUS]

It is remarkable that so many of the monuments still preservedcomparatively intact should have been set up by the adoptive line of theso-called Antonines, from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius, and that the twomonster columns, the one in Piazza Colonna and the one in Trajan'sForum, should be the work of the last and the first of those emperors, respectively. Among other memorials of them are the Colosseum, the Archof Titus and the statue mentioned above. The lofty Septizonium islevelled to the ground, the Palaces of the Cæsars are a mountain ofruins, the triumphal arches of Marcus Aurelius and of Domitian havedisappeared with those of Gratian, of Valens, of Arcadius and of manyothers; but the two gigantic columns still stand erect with theirsculptured tales of victory and triumph almost unbroken, surmounted bythe statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, whose memory was sacred toall Christians long before the monuments were erected, and to whom, respectively, they have been dedicated by a later age. 

There may have been a connection, too, in the minds of the people, between the 'Column of Piazza Colonna' and the Column of the Colonnafamily, since a great part of this Region had fallen under thedomination of the noble house, and was held by them with a chain oftowers and fortifications; but the pillar which is the device of theRegion terminates in the statue of the Apostle Peter, whereas the onewhich figures in the shield of Colonna is crowned with a royal crown, inmemory of the coronation of Lewis the Bavarian by Sciarra, who himselfgenerally lived in a palace facing the small square which bears hisname, and which is only a widening of the Corso just north of SanMarcello, the scene of Jacopo Colonna's brave protest against hiskinsman's mistaken imperialism. 

The straight Corso itself, or what is the most important part of it toRomans, runs through the Region from San Lorenzo in Lucina to Piazza diSciarra, and beyond that, southwards, it forms the western boundary ofTrevi as far as the Palazzo di Venezia, and the Ripresa de' Barberi--the'Catching of the Racers. ' West of the Corso, the Region takes in theMonte Citorio and the Piazza of the Pantheon, but not the Pantheonitself, and eastwards it embraces the new quarter which was formerly theVilla Ludovisi, and follows the Aurelian wall, from Porta Salaria toPorta Pinciana. Corso means a 'course, ' and the Venetian Paul theSecond, who found Rome dull compared with Venice, gave it the name whenhe made it a race-course for the Carnival, towards the close of thefifteenth century. Before that it was Via Lata, --'Broad Street, '--andwas a straight continuation of the Via Flaminia, the main northernhighway from the city. For centuries it has been the chief playground ofthe Roman Carnival, a festival of which, perhaps, nothing but the memorywill remain in a few years, when the world will wonder how it could bepossible that the population of the grave old city should have gone madeach year for ten days and behaved itself by day and night like a crowdof schoolboys let loose. 

'Carnival' is supposed to be derived from 'Carnelevamen, ' a 'solace forthe flesh. ' Byron alone is responsible for the barbarous derivation'Carne Vale, ' farewell meat--a philological impossibility. In the mindsof the people it is probably most often translated as 'Meat Time, ' aname which had full meaning in times when occasional strict fasting andfrequent abstinence were imposed on Romans almost by law. Its beginningsare lost in the dawnless night of time--of Time, who was Kronos, ofKronos who was Saturn, of Saturn who gave his mysterious name to theSaturnalia in which Carnival had its origin. His temple stood at thefoot of the Capitol hill, facing the corner of the Forum, and there areremains of it today, tall columns in a row, with architrave and friezeand cornice; from the golden milestone close at hand, as from thebeginning of time, were measured the ways of the world to the ends ofthe earth; and the rites performed within it were older than any others, and different, for here the pious Roman worshipped with uncovered head, whereas in all other temples he drew up his robes as a veil lest anysight of evil omen should meet his eyes, and here waxen tapers werefirst burned in Rome in honour of a god. And those same tapers played apart, to the end, on the last night of Carnival. But in the coincidenceof old feasts with new ones, the festival of Lupercus falls nearer tothe time of Ash Wednesday, for the Lupercalia were celebrated on thefifteenth of February, whereas the Carnival of Saturn began on theseventeenth of December. 

Lupercus was but a little god, yet he was great among the shepherds inRome's pastoral beginnings, for he was the driver away of wolves, and onhis day the early settlers ran round and round their sheepfold on thePalatine, all dressed in skins of fresh-slain goats, praising the Faungod, and calling upon him to protect their flocks. And in truth, as thewinter, when wolves are hungry and daring, was over, his protection wasa foregone conclusion till the cold days came again. The grottodedicated to him was on the northwest slope of the Palatine, nearlyopposite the Church of Saint George in Velabro, across the Via di SanTeodoro; and all that remains of the great festival in which Mark Antonyand the rest ran like wild men through the streets of Rome, smiting menand women with the purifying leathern thong, and offering at last thatcrown which Cæsar thrice refused, is merged and forgotten, with theSaturnalia, in the ten days' feasting and rioting that change to theashes and sadness of Lent, as the darkest night follows the brightestday. For the Romans always loved strong contrasts. 

Carnival, in the wider sense, begins at Christmas and ends when Lentbegins; but to most people it means but the last ten days of the season, when festivities crowd upon each other till pleasure fights for minutesas for jewels; when tables are spread all night and lights are put outat dawn; when society dances itself into distraction and poor men makesuch feasting as they can; when no one works who can help it, and nowork done is worth having, because it is done for double price and halfits value; when affairs of love are hastened to solution or catastrophe, and affairs of state are treated with the scorn they merit in the eyesof youth, because the only sense is laughter, and the only wisdom, folly. That is Carnival, personified by the people as a riotous oldred-cheeked, bottle-nosed hunchback, animated by the spirit of fun. 

In a still closer sense, Carnival is the Carnival in the Corso, or was;for it is dead beyond resuscitation, and such efforts as are made togive it life again are but foolish incantations that call up sad ghostsof joy, spiritless and witless. But within living memory, it was verydifferent. In those days which can never come back, the Corso was asight to see and not to be forgotten. The small citizens who had smallhouses in the street let every window to the topmost story for the wholeten days; the rich whose palaces faced the favoured line threw opentheir doors to their friends; every window was decorated, from everybalcony gorgeous hangings, or rich carpets, or even richer tapestrieshung down; the street was strewn thick with yellow sand, and wheresoeverthere was an open space wooden seats were built up, row above row, whereone might hire a place to see the show and join in throwing flowers, andthe lime-covered 'confetti' that stung like small shot and whitenedeverything like meal, and forced everyone in the street or within reachof it to wear a shield of thin wire netting to guard the face, and thickgloves to shield the hands; or, in older times, a mask, black, white, orred, or modelled and painted with extravagant features, like evil beingsin a dream. 

[Illustration: TWIN CHURCHES AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE CORSO

From a print of the last century]

In the early afternoon of each day except Sunday it all began, day afterday the same, save that the fun grew wilder and often rougher as thedoom of Ash Wednesday drew near. First when the people had gathered intheir places, high and low, and already thronged the street from side toside, there was a distant rattle of scabbards and a thunder of hoofs, and all fell back, crowding and climbing upon one another, to let ascore of cavalrymen trot through, clearing the way for the carriages ofthe 'Senator' and Municipality, which drove from end to end of the Corsowith their scarlet and yellow liveries, before any other vehicles wereallowed to pass, or any pelting with 'confetti' began. But on theinstant when they had gone by, the showers began, right, left, upwards, downwards, like little storms of flowers and snow in the afternoonsunshine, and the whole air was filled with the laughter and laughingchatter of twenty thousand men and women and children--such a sound ascould be heard nowhere else in the world. Many have heard a great hostcheer, many have heard the battle-cries of armies, many have heard theterrible deep yell that goes up from an angry multitude in times ofrevolution; but only those who remember the Carnival as it used to behave heard a whole city laugh, and the memory is worth having, for it islike no other. The sound used to flow along in great waves, followingthe sights that passed, and swelling with them to a peal that was like acheer, and ebbing then to a steady, even ripple of enjoyment that neverceased till it rose again in sheer joy of something new to see. Nothingcan give an idea of the picture in times when Rome was still Roman; nopower of description can call up the crowd that thronged and jammed thelong, narrow street, till the slowly moving carriages and cars seemed toforce their way through the stiffly packed mass of humanity as a strongvessel ploughs her course up-stream through packed ice in winter. Yet noone was hurt, and an order reigned which could never have been producedby any means except the most thorough good temper and the determinationof each individual to do no harm to his neighbour, though all respect ofindividuals was as completely gone as in any anarchy of revolution. Themore respectable a man looked who ventured into the press in ordinaryclothes, the more certainly he became at once the general mark forhail-storms of 'confetti. ' No uniform nor distinguishing badge wasrespected, excepting those of the squad of cavalrymen who cleared theway, and the liveries of the Municipality's coaches. Men and women weretravestied and disguised in every conceivable way, as Punch and Judy, asjudges and lawyers with enormous square black caps, black robes andbands, or in dresses of the eighteenth century, or as Harlequins, oreven as bears and monkeys, singly, or in twos and threes, or in littlecompanies of fifteen or twenty, all dressed precisely alike andperforming comic evolutions with military exactness. Everyone carried acapacious pouch, or a fishing-basket, or some receptacle of the kind forthe white 'confetti, ' and arms and hands were ceaselessly swung in air, flinging vast quantities of the snowy stuff at long range and short. Atevery corner and in every side street, men sold it out of huge baskets, by the five, and ten, and twenty pounds, weighing it out with theancient steelyard balance. Every balcony was lined with long troughs ofit, constantly replenished by the house servants; every carriage and carhad a full supply. And through all the air the odd, clean odour of thefresh plaster mingled with the fragrance of the box-leaves and theperfume of countless flowers. For flowers were thrown, too, in everyway, loose and scattered, or in hard little bunches, the 'mazzetti, 'that almost hurt when they struck the mark, and in beautiful nosegays, rarely flung at random when a pretty face was within sight at a window. The cars, often charmingly decorated, were filled with men and womenrepresenting some period of fashion, or some incident in history, orsome allegorical subject, and were sometimes two or three stories high, and covered all over with garlands of flowers and box and myrtle. In theintervals between them endless open carriages moved along, lined withwhite, filled with white dominos, drawn by horses all protected andcovered with white cotton robes, against the whiter 'confetti'--everyonefighting mock battles with everyone else, till it seemed impossible thatanything could be left to throw, and the long perspective of the narrowstreet grew dim between the high palaces, and misty and purple in theevening light. 

A gun fired somewhere far away as a signal warned the carriages to turnout, and make way for the race that was to follow. The last moments werethe hottest and the wildest, as flowers, 'confetti, ' sugar plums withcomet-like tails, wreaths, garlands, everything, went flying through theair in a final and reckless profusion, and as the last car rolled awaythe laughter and shouting ceased, and all was hushed in the expectationof the day's last sight. Again, the clatter of hoofs and scabbards, asthe dragoons cleared the way; twenty thousand heads and necks craning tolook northward, as the people pushed back to the side pavements;silence, and the inevitable yellow dog that haunts all race-courses, scampering over the white street, scared by the shouts, and catcalls, and bursts of spasmodic laughter; then a far sound of flying hoofs, adead silence, and the quick breathing of suppressed excitement; louderand louder the hoofs, deader the hush; and then, in the dash of asecond, in the scud of a storm, in a whirlwind of light and colour andsparkling gold leaf, with straining necks, and flashing eyes, and widered nostrils flecked with foam, the racing colts flew by as fleet asdarting lightning, riderless and swift as rock-swallows by the sea. 

Then, if it were the last night of Carnival, as the purple air grewbrown in the dusk, myriads of those wax tapers first used in Saturn'stemple of old lit up the street like magic and the last game of allbegan, for every man and woman and child strove to put out another'scandle, and the long, laughing cry, 'No taper! No taper! Senza moccolo!'went ringing up to the darkling sky. Long canes with cloths or dampsponges or extinguishers fixed to them started up from nowhere, downfrom everywhere, from window and balcony to the street below, and fromthe street to the low balconies above. Put out at every instant, thelittle candles were instantly relighted, till they were consumed down tothe hand; and as they burned low, another cry went up, 'Carnival isdead! Carnival is dead!' But he was not really dead till midnight, whenthe last play of the season had been acted in the playhouses, the lastdance danced, the last feast eaten amid song and laughter, and thesolemn Patarina of the Capitol tolled out the midnight warning like afuneral knell. That was the end. 

The riderless race was at least four hundred years old when it was givenup. The horses were always called Bárberi, with the accent on the firstsyllable, and there has been much discussion about the origin of thename. Some say that it meant horses from Barbary, but then it should bepronounced Barbéri, accented on the penultimate. Others think it stoodfor Bárbari--barbarian, that is, unridden. The Romans never misplace anaccent, and rarely mistake the proper quantity of a syllable long orshort. For my own part, though no scholar has as yet suggested it, Ibelieve that the common people, always fond of easy witticisms andcatchwords, coined the appellation, with an eye to the meaning of boththe other derivations, out of Barbo, the family name of Pope Paul theSecond, who first instituted the Carnival races, and set the winningpost under the balcony of the huge Palazzo di Venezia, which he hadbuilt beside the Church of Saint Mark, to the honour and glory of hisnative city. 

He made men run foot-races, too: men, youths and boys, of all ages; andthe poor Jews, in heavy cloth garments, were first fed and stuffed withcakes and then made to run, too. The jests of the Middle Age were savagecompared with the roughest play of later times. 

The pictures of old Rome are fading fast. I can remember, when a littleboy, seeing the great Carnival of 1859, when the Prince of Wales was inRome, and the masks which had been forbidden since the revolution wereallowed again in his honour; and before the flower throwing began, I sawLiszt, the pianist, not yet in orders, but dressed in a close-fittingand very fashionable grey frock-coat, with a grey high hat, young then, tall, athletic and erect; he came out suddenly from a doorway, looked tothe right and left in evident fear of being made a mark for 'confetti, 'crossed the street hurriedly and disappeared--not at all thesilver-haired, priestly figure the world knew so well in later days. Andby and by the Prince of Wales came by in a simple open carriage, a thinyoung man in a black coat, with a pale, face and a quiet smile, lookingall about him with an almost boyish interest, and bowing to the rightand left. 

Then in deep contrast of sadness, out of the past years comes a greatfuneral by night, down the Corso; hundreds of brown, white-beardedfriars, two and two with huge wax candles, singing the ancient chant ofthe penitential psalms; hundreds of hooded lay brethren of theConfraternities, some in black, some in white, with round holes fortheir eyes that flashed through, now and then, in the yellow glare ofthe flaming tapers; hundreds of little street boys beside them in theshadow, holding up big horns of grocers' paper to catch the drippingwax; and then, among priests in cotta and stole, the open bier carriedon men's shoulders, and on it the peaceful figure of a dead girl, white-robed, blossom crowned, delicate as a frozen flower in the coldwinter air. She had died of an innocent love, they said, and she wasborne in through the gates of the Santi Apostoli to her rest in thesolemn darkness. Nor has anyone been buried in that way since then. 

[Illustration: SAN LORENZO IN LUCINA]

In the days of Paul the Second, what might be called living Rome, takenin the direction of the Corso, began at the Arch of Marcus Aurelius, long attributed to Domitian, which stood at the corner of the smallsquare called after San Lorenzo in Lucina. Beyond that point, northwardsand eastwards, the city was a mere desert, and on the west side thedwelling-houses fell away towards the Mausoleum of Augustus, thefortress of the Colonna. The arch itself used to be called the Arch ofPortugal, because a Portuguese Cardinal, Giovanni da Costa, lived in theFiano palace at the corner of the Corso. No one would suppose that verymodern-looking building, with its smooth front and conventionalbalconies, to be six hundred years old, the ancient habitation of allthe successive Cardinals of Saint Lawrence. Its only other interest, perhaps, lies in the fact that it formed part of the great estatesbestowed by Sixtus the Fifth on his nephews, and was nevertheless soldover their children's heads for debt, fifty-five years after his death. The swineherd's race was prodigal, excepting the 'Great Friar' himself, and, like the Prodigal Son, it was not long before the Peretti werereduced to eating the husks. 

It was natural that the palaces of the Renascence should rise along theonly straight street of any length in what was then the inhabited partof the city, and that the great old Roman Barons, the Colonna, theOrsini, the Caetani, should continue to live in their strongholds, wherethey had always dwelt. The Caetani, indeed, once bought from aFlorentine banker what is now the Ruspoli palace, and Sciarra Colonnahad lived far down the Corso; but with these two exceptions, theprincely habitations between the Piazza del Popolo and the Piazza diVenezia are almost all the property of families once thought foreignersin Rome. The greatest, the most magnificent private dwelling in theworld is the Doria Pamfili palace, as the Doria themselves were the mostfamous, and became the most powerful of those many nobles who, in thecourse of centuries, settled in the capital and became Romans, not onlyin name but in fact--Doria, Borghese, Rospigliosi, Pallavicini andothers of less enduring fame or reputation, who came in the train oralliance of a Pope, and remained in virtue of accumulated riches andacquired honour. 

Two hundred and fifty years have passed since a council of learneddoctors and casuists decided for Pope Innocent the Tenth the preciselimit of his just power to enrich his nephews and relations, thePamfili, by an alliance with whom the original Doria of Genoa addedanother name to their own, and inherited the vast estates. But nearlyfour hundred years before Innocent, the Doria had been high admirals andalmost despots of Genoa. For they were a race of seamen from the first, in a republic where seamanship was the first essential to distinction. Albert Doria overcame the Pisans off Meloria in 1284, slaying fivethousand, and taking eleven thousand prisoners. Conrad, his son, was'Captain of the Genoese Freedom, ' and 'Captain of the People. ' LambaDoria vanquished the Venetians under the brave Andrea Dandolo, andPaganino Doria conquered them again under another Andrea Dandolo; andthen an Andrea Doria took service with the Pope, and became the greatestsailor in Europe, the hero of a hundred sea-fights, at one time the allyof Francis the First of France, and the most dangerous opponent ofGonzalvo da Cordova, then high admiral of the Empire under Charles theFifth, a destroyer of pirates, by turns the idol, the enemy and thedespot of his own city, Genoa, and altogether such a type of asoldier-sailor of fortune as the world has not seen before or since. Andthere were others after him, notably Gian Andrea Doria, remembered bythe great victory over the Turks at Lepanto, whence he brought homethose gorgeous Eastern spoils of tapestry and embroideries which hang inthe Doria palace today. 

[Illustration: PALAZZO DORIA PAMFILI]

The history of the palace itself is not without interest, for it showshow property, which was not in the possession of the original Barons, sometimes passed from hand to hand, changing names with each new owner, in the rise and fall of fortunes in those times. The first buildingseems to have belonged to the Chapter of Santa Maria Maggiore, whichsomehow ceded it to Cardinal Santorio, who spent an immense sum inrebuilding, extending and beautifying it. When it was almost finished, Julius the Second came to see it, and after expressing the highestadmiration for the work, observed that such a habitation was lessfitting for a prince of the church than for a secular duke--meaning, bythe latter, his own nephew, Francesco della Rovere, then Duke of Urbino;and the unfortunate Santorio, who had succeeded in preserving hispossessions under the domination of the Borgia, was forced to offer themost splendid palace in Rome as a gift to the person designated by hismaster. He died of a broken heart within the year. A hundred yearslater, the Florentine Aldobrandini, nephew of Clement the Eighth, boughtit from the Dukes of Urbino for twelve thousand measures of grain, furnished them for the purpose by their uncle, and finally, when it hadfallen in inheritance to Donna Olimpia Aldobrandini, Innocent the Tenthmarried her to his nephew, Camillo Pamfili, from whom, by the fusion ofthe two families, it at last came into the hands of the Doria-Pamfili. 

The Doria palace is almost two-thirds of the size of Saint Peter's, andwithin the ground plan of Saint Peter's the Colosseum could stand. Itused to be said that a thousand persons lived under the roof outside ofthe gallery and the private apartments, which alone surpass in extentthe majority of royal residences. Without some such comparison merewords can convey nothing to a mind unaccustomed to such size and space, and when the idea is grasped, one asks, naturally enough, how the peoplelived who built such houses--the people whose heirs, far reduced insplendour, if not in fortune, are driven to let four-fifths of theirfamily mansion, because they find it impossible to occupy more roomsthan suffice the Emperor of Germany or the Queen of England. One oftenhears foreign visitors, ignorant of the real size of palaces in Rome, observe, with contempt, that the Roman princes 'let their palaces. ' Itwould be more reasonable to inquire what use could be made of suchbuildings, if they were not let, or how any family could be expected toinhabit a thousand rooms, and, ultimately, for what purpose suchmonstrous residences were ever built at all. 

The first thing that suggests itself in answer to the latter question asthe cause of such boundless extravagance is the inherited giantism ofthe Latins, to which reference has been more than once made in thesepages, and to which the existence of many of the principal buildings inRome must be ascribed. Next, we may consider that at one time oranother, each of the greater Roman palaces has been, in all essentials, the court of a pope or of a reigning feudal prince. Lastly, it must beremembered that each palace was the seat of management of all itsowner's estates, and that such administration in those times required anumber of scribes and an amount of labour altogether out of proportionwith the income derived from the land. 

At first sight the study of Italian life in the Middle Age does not seemvery difficult, because it is so interesting. But when one has read theold chronicles that have survived, and the histories of those times, oneis amazed to see how much we are told about people and their actions, and how very little about the way in which people lived. It is easier tolearn the habits of the Egyptians, or the Greeks, or the ancient Romans, or the Assyrians, than to get at the daily life of an Italian familybetween the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries, from such books as wehave. There are two reasons for this. One is the scarcity of literature, excepting historical chronicles, until the time of Boccaccio and theItalian storytellers. The other is the fact that what we call the MiddleAge was an age of transition from barbarism to the civilization of theRenascence, and the Renascence was reached by sweeping away all thebarbarous things that had gone before it. 

One must have lived a lifetime in Italy to be able to call up a fairlyvivid picture of the eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth centuries. Onemust have actually seen the grand old castles and gloomy monasteries, and feudal villages of Calabria and Sicily, where all things are leastchanged from what they were, and one should understand something of thenature of the Italian people, where the original people have survived;one must try also to realize the violence of those passions which areugly excrescences on Italian character even now, and which were once themain movers of that character. 

There are extant many inventories of lordly residences of earlier timesin Italy, for the inventory was taken every time the property changedhands by inheritance or sale. Everyone of these inventories begins atthe main gate of the stronghold, and the first item is 'Rope for givingthe cord. ' Now 'to give the cord' was a torture, and all feudal lordshad the right to inflict it. The victim's hands were tied behind hisback, the rope was made fast to his bound wrists, and he was hoistedsome twenty feet or so to the heavy iron ring which is fixed in themiddle of the arch of every old Italian castle gateway; he was thenallowed to drop suddenly till his feet, to which heavy weights weresometimes attached, were a few inches from the ground, so that thestrain of his whole weight fell upon his arms, twisted them backwards, and generally dislocated them at the shoulders. And this was usuallydone three times, and sometimes twenty times, in succession, to the sameprisoner, either as a punishment or by way of examination, to extract aconfession of the truth. As the rope of torture was permanently rovethrough the pulley over the front door, it must have been impossible notto see it and remember what it meant every time one went in or out. Andsuch quick reminders of danger and torture, and sudden, painful death, give the pitch and key of daily existence in the Middle Age. Every man'slife was in his hand until it was in his enemy's. Every man might beforced, at a moment's notice, to defend not only his honour, and hisbelongings, and his life, but his women and children, too, --not againstpublic enemies only, but far more often against private spite andpersonal hatred. Nowadays, when most men only stake their money on theirconvictions, it is hard to realize how men reasoned who staked theirlives at every turn; or to guess, for instance, at what women felt whosehusbands and sons, going out for a stroll of an afternoon, in thestreets of Rome, might as likely as not be brought home dead of a dozensword-wounds before evening. A husband, a father, was stabbed in thedark by treachery; try and imagine the daily and year-long sensations ofthe widowed mother, bringing up her only son deliberately to kill herhusband's murderer; teaching him to look upon vengeance as the first, most real and most honourable aim of life, from the time he was oldenough to speak, to the time when he should be strong enough to kill. Everything was earnest then. One should remember that most of thestories told by Boccaccio, Sacchetti and Bandello--the stories fromwhich Shakespeare got his Italian plays, his Romeo and Juliet, hisMerchant of Venice--were not inventions, but were founded on the truth. Everyone has read about Cæsar Borgia, his murders, his treacheries andhis end, and he is held up to us as a type of monstrous wickedness. Buta learned Frenchman, Émile Gebhart, has recently written a ratherconvincing treatise, to show that Cæsar Borgia was not a monster at all, nor even much of an exception to the general rule among the Italiandespots of his day, and his day was civilized compared with that ofRienzi, of Boniface the Eighth, of Sciarra Colonna. 

In order to understand anything about the real life of the Middle Age, one should begin at the beginning; one should see the dwellings, thecastles, and the palaces with their furniture and arrangements, oneshould realize the stern necessities as well as the few luxuries of thattime. And one should make acquaintance with the people themselves, fromthe grey-haired old baron, the head of the house, down to the sculleryman and the cellarer's boy and the stable lads. And then, knowingsomething of the people and their homes, one might begin to learnsomething about their household occupations, their tremendously tragicinterests and their few and simple amusements. 

[Illustration: PORTA SAN LORENZO]

The first thing that strikes one about the dwellings is the enormousstrength of those that remain. The main idea, in those days, when a manbuilt a house, was to fortify himself and his belongings against attacksfrom the outside, and every other consideration was secondary to that. That is true not only of the Barons' castles in the country and of theirfortified palaces in town, --which were castles, too, for thatmatter, --but of the dwellings of all classes of people who could affordto live independently, that is, who were not serfs and retainers of therich. We talk of fire-proof buildings nowadays, which are mere shells ofiron and brick and stone that shrivel up like writing-paper in a greatfire. The only really fire-proof buildings were those of the Middle Age, which consisted of nothing but stone and mortar throughout, stone walls, stone vaults, stone floors, and often stone tables and stone seats. Ionce visited the ancient castle of Muro, in the Basilicata, one of thesouthern provinces in Italy, where Queen Joanna the First paid her lifefor her sins at last, and died under the feather pillow that was forceddown upon her face by two Hungarian soldiers. It is as wild and lonely aplace as you will meet with in Europe, and yet the great castle hasnever been a ruin, nor at any time uninhabited, since it was built inthe eleventh century, over eight hundred years ago. Nor has the lowerpart of it ever needed repair. The walls are in places twenty-five feetthick, of solid stone and mortar, so that the embrasure by which eachnarrow window is reached is like a tunnel cut through rock, while thedeep prisons below are hewn out of the rock itself. Up to what we shouldcall the third story, every room is vaulted. Above that the floors arelaid on beams, and the walls are not more than eight feetthick--comparatively flimsy for such a place! Nine-tenths of it wasbuilt for strength--the small remainder for comfort; there is not asingle large hall in all the great fortress, and the courtyard withinthe main gate is a gloomy, ill-shaped little paved space, barely bigenough to give fifty men standing room. Nothing can give any idea of thecrookedness of it all, of the small dark corridors, the narrow windingsteps, the dusky inclined ascents, paved with broad flagstones thatecho the lightest tread, and that must have rung and roared like seacaves to the tramp of armed men. And so it was in the cities, too. InRome, bits of the old strongholds survive still. There were more of themthirty years ago. Even the more modern palaces of the late Renascenceare built in such a way that they must have afforded a safe refugeagainst everything except artillery. The strong iron-studded doors andthe heavily grated windows of the ground floor would stand a siege fromthe street. The Palazzo Gabrielli, for two or three centuries the chiefdwelling of the Orsini, is built in the midst of the city like a greatfortification, with escarpments and buttresses and loop-holes; and atthe main gate there is still a portcullis which sinks into the ground bya system of chains and balance weights and is kept in working order evennow. 

In the Middle Age, each town palace had one or more towers, tall, squareand solid, which were used as lookouts and as a refuge in case the restof the palace should be taken by an enemy. The general principle of allmediæval towers was that they were entered through a small window at agreat height above the ground, by means of a jointed wooden ladder. Onceinside, the people drew the ladder up after them and took it in withthem, in separate pieces. When that was done, they were comparativelysafe, before the age of gunpowder. There were no windows to break, itwas impossible to get in, and the besieged party could easily keepanyone from scaling the tower, by pouring boiling oil or melted leadfrom above, or with stones and missiles, so that as long as provisionsand water held out, the besiegers could do nothing. As for water, thegreat rainwater cistern was always in the foundations of the toweritself, immediately under the prison, which got neither light nor airexcepting from a hole in the floor above. Walls from fifteen to twentyfeet thick could not be battered down with any engines then inexistence. Altogether, the tower was a safe place in times of danger. Itis said that at one time there were over four hundred of these in Rome, belonging to the nobles, great and small. 

The small class of well-to-do commoners, the merchants and goldsmiths, such as they were, who stood between the nobles and the poor people, imitated the nobles as much as they could, and strengthened their housesby every means. For their dwellings were their warehouses, and in timesof disturbance the first instinct of the people was to rob themerchants, unless they chanced to be strong enough to rob the nobles, assometimes happened. But in Rome the merchants were few, and were verygenerally retainers or dependants of the great houses. It is frequent inthe chronicles to find a man mentioned as the 'merchant' of the Colonnafamily, or of the Orsini, or of one of the independent Italian princes, like the Duke of Urbino. Such a man acted as agent to sell the produceof a great estate; part of his business was to lend money to the owner, and he also imported from abroad the scanty merchandise which could beimported at all. About half of it usually fell into the hands ofhighwaymen before it reached the city, and the price of luxuries wasproportionately high. Such men, of course, lived well, though there wasa wide difference between their mode of life and that of the nobles, notso much in matters of abundance and luxury, as in principle. The chiefrule was that the wives and daughters of the middle class did a certainamount of housekeeping work, whereas the wives and daughters of thenobles did not. The burgher's wife kept house herself, overlooked thecooking, and sometimes cooked a choice dish with her own hands, andtaught her daughters to do so. A merchant might have a considerableretinue of men, for his service and protection, and they carried staveswhen they accompanied their master abroad, and lanterns at night. Butthe baron's men were men-at-arms, --practically soldiers, --who wore hiscolours, and carried swords and pikes, and lit the way for their lord atnight with torches, always the privilege of the nobles. As a matter offact, they were generally the most dangerous cutthroats whom thenobleman was able to engage, highwaymen, brigands and outlaws, whom heprotected against the semblance of the law; whereas the merchant'strain consisted of honest men who worked for him in his warehouse, orthey were countrymen from his farms, if he had any. 

It is not easy to give any adequate idea of those great mediævalestablishments, except by their analogy with the later ones that cameafter them. They were enormous in extent, and singularly uncomfortablein their internal arrangement. 

A curious book, published in 1543, and therefore at the firstculmination of the Renascence, has lately been reprinted. It is entitled'Concerning the management of a Roman Nobleman's Court, ' and wasdedicated to 'The magnificent and Honourable Messer Cola da Benevento, 'forty years after the death of the Borgia Pope and during the reign ofPaul the Third, Farnese, who granted the writer a copyright for tenyears. The little volume is full of interesting details, and theattendant gentlemen and servants enumerated give some idea of whataccording to the author was not considered extravagant for a nobleman ofthe sixteenth century. There were to be two chief chamberlains, ageneral controller of the estates, a chief steward, four chaplains, amaster of the horse, a private secretary and an assistant secretary, anauditor, a lawyer and four literary personages, 'Letterati, ' who, amongthem, must know 'the four principal languages of the world, namely, Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Italian. ' The omission of every other livinglanguage but the latter, when Francis the First, Charles the Fifth andHenry the Eighth were reigning, is pristinely Roman in its contempt of'barbarians. ' There were also to be six gentlemen of the chambers, aprivate master of the table, a chief carver and ten waiting men, abutler of the pantry with an assistant, a butler of the wines, six headgrooms, a marketer with an assistant, a storekeeper, a cellarer, acarver for the serving gentlemen, a chief cook, an under cook andassistant, a chief scullery man, a water carrier, a sweeper, --and lastin the list, a physician, whom the author puts at the end of the list, 'not because a doctor is not worthy of honour, but in order not to seemto expect any infirmity for his lordship or his household. '

This was considered a 'sufficient household' for a nobleman, but by nomeans an extravagant one, and many of the officials enumerated wereprovided with one or more servants, while no mention is made of anyladies in the establishment nor of the numerous retinue they required. But one remembers the six thousand servants of Augustus, all honourablyburied in one place, and the six hundred who waited on Livia alone; andthe modest one hundred and seven which were reckoned 'sufficient' forthe Lord Cola of Benevento sink into comparative insignificance. ForLivia, besides endless keepers of her robes and folders of herclothes--a special office--and hairdressers, perfumers, jewellers andshoe keepers, had a special adorner of her ears, a keeper of her chairand a governess for her favourite lap-dog. 

The little book contains the most complete details concerning dailyexpenditure for food and drink for the head of the house and hisnumerous gentlemen, which amounted in a year to the really notextravagant sum of four thousand scudi, or dollars, over fourteenhundred being spent on wine alone. The allowance was a jug--rather morethan a quart--of pure wine daily to each of the 'gentlemen, ' and thesame measure diluted with one-third of water to all the rest. Sixteenounces of beef, mutton, or veal were reckoned for every person, and eachreceived twenty ounces of bread of more or less fine quality, accordingto his station; and an average of twenty scudi was allowed daily asgiven away in charity, --which was not ungenerous, either, for such ahousehold. The olive oil used for the table and for lamps was the same, and was measured together, and the household received each a pound ofcheese, monthly, besides a multitude of other eatables, all of which arecarefully enumerated and valued. Among other items of a different natureare 'four or five large wax candles daily, for his lordship, ' and waxfor torches 'to accompany the dishes brought to his table, and toaccompany his lordship and the gentlemen out of doors at night, ' and'candles for the altar, ' and tallow candles for use about the house. Asfor salaries and wages, the controller and chief steward received tenscudi, each month, whereas the chaplain only got two, and the 'literarymen, ' who were expected to know Hebrew, Greek and Latin, were each paidone hundred scudi yearly. The physician was required to be not only'learned, faithful, diligent and affectionate, ' but also 'fortunate' inhis profession. Considering the medical practices of those days, adoctor could certainly not hope to heal his patients without the elementof luck. 

The old-fashioned Roman character is careful, if not avaricious, withoccasional flashes of astonishing extravagance, and its idea of richesis so closely associated with that of power as to make the display of anumerous retinue its first and most congenial means of exhibiting greatwealth; so that to this day a Roman in reduced fortune will live verypoorly before he will consent to exist without the two or threesuperfluous footmen who loiter all day in his hall, or the handsomeequipage in which his wife and daughters are accustomed to take thedaily drive, called from ancient times the 'trottata, ' or 'trot, ' in theVilla Borghese, or the Corso, or on the Pincio, and gravely provided forin the terms of the marriage contract. At a period when servants werenecessary, not only for show but also for personal protection, it is notsurprising that the nobles should have kept an extravagant number ofthem. 

[Illustration: PALAZZO DI MONTE CITORIO

From a print of the last century]

Then also, to account for the size of Roman palaces, there was thepatriarchal system of life, now rapidly falling into disuse. Theso-called 'noble floor' of every mansion is supposed to be reservedexclusively for the father and mother of the family, and the order ofarranging the rooms is as much a matter of rigid rule as in the housesof the ancient Romans, where the vestibule preceded the atrium, theatrium the peristyle, and the latter the last rooms which looked uponthe garden. So in the later palace, the door from the first landing ofthe grand staircase opens upon an outer hall, uncarpeted, but crossed bya strip of matting, and furnished only with a huge table andold-fashioned chests, made with high backs, on which are painted orcarved the arms of the family. Here, at least two or three footmen aresupposed to be in perpetual readiness to answer the door, the lineallydescended representatives of the armed footmen who lounged there fourhundred years ago. Next to the hall comes the antechamber, sometimesfollowed by a second, and here is erected the 'baldacchino, ' thecoloured canopy which marks the privilege of the sixty 'conscriptfamilies' of Rome, who rank as princes. It recalls the times when, having powers of justice, and of life and death, the lords sat in stateunder the overhanging silks, embroidered with their coats of arms, toadminister the law. Beyond the antechamber comes the long succession ofstate apartments, lofty, ponderously decorated, heavily furnished withold-fashioned gilt or carved chairs that stand symmetrically against thewalls, and on the latter are hung pictures, priceless works of oldmasters beside crude portraits of the last century, often arranged muchmore with regard to the frames than to the paintings. Stiff-leggedpier-tables of marble and alabaster face the windows or are placedbetween them; thick curtains that can be drawn quite back cover thedoors; strips of hemp carpet lead straight from one door to another; thelight is dim and cold, half shut out by the window curtains, and gets apeculiar quality of sadness and chilliness, which is essentiallycharacteristic of every old Roman house, where the reception rooms areonly intended to be used at night, and the sunny side is exclusivelyappropriated to the more intimate life of the owners. There may bethree, four, six, ten of those big drawing-rooms in succession, eachcovering about as much space as a small house in New York or London, before one comes to the closed door that gives access to the princess'boudoir, beyond which, generally returning in a direction parallel withthe reception rooms, is her bedroom, and the prince's, and the latter'sstudy, and then the private dining-room, the state dining-room, thegreat ballroom, with clear-story windows, and as many more rooms as thesize of the apartment will admit. In the great palaces, the picturegallery takes a whole wing and sometimes two, the library beinggenerally situated on a higher story. 

The patriarchal system required that all the married sons, with theirwives and children and servants, should be lodged in the same buildingwith their parents. The eldest invariably lived on the second floor, thesecond son on the third, which is the highest, though there is generallya low rambling attic, occupied by servants, and sometimes by thechaplain, the librarian and the steward, in better rooms. When therewere more than two married sons, which hardly ever happened under theold system of primogeniture, they divided the apartments between them asbest they could. The unmarried younger children had to put up with whatwas left. Moreover, in the greatest houses, where there was usually acardinal of the name, one wing of the first floor was entirely given upto him; and instead of the canopy in the antechamber, flanked by thehereditary coloured umbrellas carried on state occasions by two lackeysbehind the family coach, the prince of the Church was entitled to athrone room, as all cardinals are. The eldest son's apartment wasgenerally more or less a repetition of the state one below, but therooms were lower, the decorations less elaborate, though seldom lessstiff in character, and a large part of the available space was given upto the children. 

It is clear from all this that even in modern times a large family mighttake up a great deal of room. Looking back across two or threecenturies, therefore, to the days when every princely household was acourt, and was called a court, it is easier to understand the existenceof such phenomenally vast mansions as the Doria palace, or those of theBorghese, the Altieri, the Barberini and others, who lived in almostroyal state, and lodged hundreds upon hundreds of retainers in theirhomes. 

And not only did all the members of the family live under one roof, as afew of them still live, but the custom of dining together at one hugetable was universal. A daily dinner of twenty persons--grandparents, parents and children, down to the youngest that is old enough to sit upto its plate in a high chair, would be a serious matter to most Europeanhouseholds. But in Rome it was looked upon as a matter of course, andwas managed through the steward by a contract with the cook, who wasbound to provide a certain number of dishes daily for the fixed meals, but nothing else--not so much as an egg or a slice of toast beyondthat. This system still prevails in many households, and as it is to beexpected that meals at unusual hours may sometimes be required, anelaborate system of accounts is kept by the steward and his clerks, andthe smallest things ordered by any of the sons or daughters are chargedagainst an allowance usually made them, while separate reckonings arekept for the daughters-in-law, for whom certain regular pin-money isprovided out of their own dowries at the marriage settlement, all ofwhich goes through the steward's hands. The same settlement, even inrecent years, stipulated for a fixed number of dishes of meat daily, generally only two, I believe, for a certain number of new gowns andother clothes, and for a great variety of details, besides the use of acarriage every day, to be harnessed not more than twice, that is, eitherin the morning and afternoon, or once in the daytime and once at night. Everything, --a cup of tea, a glass of lemonade, --if not mentioned in themarriage settlement, had to be paid for separately. The justice of suchan arrangement--for it is just--is only equalled by its inconvenience, for it requires the machinery of a hotel, combined with an honesty notusual in hotels. Undoubtedly, the whole system is directly descendedfrom the practice of the ancients, which made every father of a familythe absolute despot of his household, and made it impossible for a sonto hold property or have any individual independence during hisfather's life, and it has not been perceptibly much modified since theMiddle Age, until the last few years. Its existence shows in thestrongest light the main difference between the Latin and theAnglo-Saxon races, in the marked tendency of the one to submit todespotic government, and of the other to govern itself; of the one tostay at home under paternal authority, and of the other to leave thefather's house and plunder the world for itself; of the sons of the oneto accept wives given them, and of the other's children to marry as theyplease. 

Roman family life, from Romulus to the year 1870, was centred in thehead of the house, whose position was altogether unassailable, whoserequirements were necessities, and whose word was law. Next to him inplace came the heir, who was brought up with a view to his exercisingthe same powers in his turn. After him, but far behind him inimportance, if he promised to be strong, came the other sons, who, ifthey took wives at all, were expected to marry heiresses, and one ofwhom, almost as a matter of course, was brought up to be a churchman. The rest, if there were any, generally followed the career of arms, andremained unmarried; for heiresses of noble birth were few, and theirguardians married them to eldest sons of great houses whenever possible, while the strength of caste prejudice made alliances of nobles with thedaughters of rich plebeians extremely unusual. 

It is possible to trace the daily life of a Roman family in the MiddleAge from its regular routine of today, as out of what anyone may see inItaly the habits of the ancients can be reconstructed with more thanapproximate exactness. And yet it is out of the question to fix theperiod of the general transformation which ultimately turned the Rome ofthe Barons into the Rome of Napoleon's time, and converted thehigh-handed men of Sciarra Colonna's age into the effeminate fops of1800, when a gentleman of noble lineage, having received a box on theear from another at high noon in the Corso, willingly followed theadvice of his confessor, who counselled him to bear the affront withChristian meekness and present his other cheek to the smiter. Customshave remained, fashions have altogether changed; the outward forms ofearly living have survived, the spirit of life is quite another; andthough some families still follow the patriarchal mode of existence, thepatriarchs are gone, the law no longer lends itself to support householdtyranny, and the subdivision of estates under the Napoleonic code isguiding an already existing democracy to the untried issue of aproblematic socialism. Without attempting to establish a comparison uponthe basis of a single cause, where so many are at work, it ispermissible to note that while in England and Germany a more or lessvoluntary system of primogeniture is admitted and largely followed fromchoice, and while in the United States men are almost everywhereentirely free to dispose of their property as they please, and while thepopulation and wealth of those countries are rapidly increasing, France, enforcing the division of estates among children, though she isaccumulating riches, is faced by the terrible fact of a steadilydiminishing census; and Italy, under the same laws, is not only rapidlyapproaching national bankruptcy, but is in parts already depopulated byan emigration so extensive that it can only be compared with thewestward migration of the Aryan tribes. The forced subdivision ofproperty from generation to generation is undeniably a socialisticmeasure, since it must, in the end, destroy both aristocracy andplutocracy; and it is surely a notable point that the two great Europeannations which have adopted it as a fundamental principle of goodgovernment should both be on the road to certain destruction, whilethose powers that have wholly and entirely rejected any such measure arefilling the world with themselves and absorbing its wealth at anenormous and alarming rate. 

[Illustration: VILLA BORGHESE]

The art of the Renascence has left us splendid pictures of mediævalpublic life, which are naturally accepted as equally faithfulrepresentations of the life of every day. Princes and knights, ingorgeous robes and highly polished armour, ride on faultlesslycaparisoned milk-white steeds; wondrous ladies wear not less wonderfulgowns, fitted with a perfection which women seek in vain today, andembroidered with pearls and precious stones that might ransom a rajah;young pages, with glorious golden hair, stand ready at the elbows oftheir lords and ladies, or kneel in graceful attitude to deliver aletter, or stoop to bear a silken train, clad in garments which themodern costumer strives in vain to copy. After three or four centuries, the colours of those painted silks and satins are still richer thananything the loom can weave. In the great fresco, each individual of themultitude that fills a public place, or defiles in open procession underthe noonday light, is not only a masterpiece of fashion, but a model ofneatness; linen, delicate as woven gossamer, falls into folds as finelyexact as an engraver's point could draw; velvet shoes tread withoutspeck or spot upon the well-scoured pavement of a public street;men-at-arms grasp weapons and hold bridles with hands as carefullytended as any idle fine gentleman's, and there is neither fleck norbreath of dimness on the mirror-like steel of their armour; the veryflowers, the roses and lilies that strew the way, are the perfection offresh-cut hothouse blossoms; and when birds and beasts chance to benecessary to the composition of the picture, they are represented withno less care for a more than possible neatness, their coats are combedand curled, their attitudes are studied and graceful, they wearcarefully made collars, ornamented with chased silver and gold. 

Centuries have dimmed the wall-painting, sunshine has faded it, mouldhas mottled the broad surfaces of red and blue and green, and a laterage has done away with the dresses represented; yet, when the frescos inthe library of the Cathedral at Siena, for instance, were newlyfinished, they were the fashion-plates of the year and month, executedby a great artist, it is true, grouped with matchless skill and drawnwith supreme mastery of art, but as far from representing the ordinaryscenes of daily life as those terrible coloured prints publishednowadays for tailors, in which a number of beautiful young gentlemen, inperfectly new clothes, lounge in stage attitudes on the one side, and anequal number of equally beautiful young butlers, coachmen, grooms andpages, in equally perfect liveries, appear to be discussing theæsthetics of an ideal and highly salaried service, at the other end ofthe same room. In the comparison there is all the brutal profanity oftruth that shocks the reverence of romance; but in the respectiverelations of the great artist's masterpiece and of the poor modernlithograph to the realities of each period, there is the clue to thedaily life of the Middle Age. 

Living was outwardly rough as compared with the representations of it, though it was far more refined than in any other part of Europe, andItaly long set the fashion to the world in habits and manners. Peoplekept their fine clothes for great occasions, there was a keeper of robesin every large household, and there were rooms set apart for thepurpose. In every-day life, the Barons wore patched hose and leathernjerkins, stained and rusted by the joints of the armour that was sooften buckled over them, or they went about their dwellings in longdressing-gowns which hid many shortcomings. When gowns, and hose, andjerkins were well worn, they were cut down for the boys of the family, and the fine dresses, only put on for great days, were preserved asheirlooms from generation to generation, whether they fitted thesuccessive wearers or not. The beautiful tight-fitting hose which, inthe paintings of the time, seem to fit like theatrical tights, wereneither woven nor knitted, but were made of stout cloth, and must oftenhave been baggy at the knees in spite of the most skilful cutting; andthe party-coloured hose, having one leg of one piece of stuff and one ofanother, and sometimes each leg of two or more colours, were very likelyfirst invented from motives of economy, to use up cuttings and leavings. Clothes were looked upon as permanent and very desirable property, andkings did not despise a gift of fine scarlet cloth, in the piece, tomake them a gown or a cloak. As for linen, as late as the sixteenthcentury, the English thought the French nobles very extravagant becausethey put on a clean shirt once a fortnight and changed their rufflesonce a week. 

[Illustration: PALAZZO DI VENEZIA]

The mediæval Roman nobles were most of them great farmers as well asfighters. Then, as now, land was the ultimate form of property, and itsproduce the usual form of wealth; and then, as now, many families were'land-poor, ' in the sense of owning tracts of country which yieldedlittle or no income but represented considerable power, and furnishedthe owners with most of the necessaries of life, such rents as werecollected being usually paid in kind, in oil and wine, in grain, fruitand vegetables, and even in salt meat, and horses, cattle forslaughtering and beasts of burden, not to speak of wool, hemp and flax, as well as firewood. But money was scarce and, consequently, all thethings which only money could buy, so that a gown was a possession, anda corselet or a good sword a treasure. The small farmer of our timesknows what it means to have plenty to eat and little to wear. Hisposition is not essentially different from that of the average landedgentry in the Middle Age, not only in Italy, but all over Europe. Intimes when superiority lay in physical strength, courage, horsemanshipand skill in the use of arms, the so-called gentleman was notdistinguished from the plebeian by the newness or neatness of hisclothes so much as by the nature and quality of the weapons he wore whenhe went abroad in peace or war, and very generally by being mounted on agood horse. 

In his home he was simple, even primitive. He desired space more thancomfort, and comfort more than luxury. His furniture consisted almostentirely of beds, chests and benches, with few tables except such aswere needed for eating. Beds were supported by boards laid on trestles, raised very high above the floor to be beyond the reach of rats, miceand other creatures. The lower mattress was filled with the dried leavesof the maize, and the upper one contained wool, with which the pillowsalso were stuffed. The floors of dwelling rooms were generally eitherpaved with bricks or made of a sort of cement, composed of lime, sandand crushed brick, the whole being beaten down with iron pounders, whilein the moist state, during three days. There were no carpets, and freshrushes were strewn everywhere on the floors, which in summer were firstwatered, like a garden path, to lay the dust. There was no glass in thewindows of ordinary rooms, and the consequence was that during thedaytime people lived almost in the open air, in winter as well assummer; sunshine was a necessity of existence, and sheltered courts andcloistered walks were built like reservoirs for the light and heat. 

In the rooms, ark-shaped chests stood against the walls, to contain theordinary clothes not kept in the general 'guardaroba. ' In the deepembrasures of the windows there were stone seats, but there were fewchairs, or none at all, in the bedrooms. At the head of each bed hung arough little cross of dark wood--later, as carving became more general, a crucifix--and a bit of an olive branch preserved from Palm Sundaythroughout the year. The walls themselves were scrupulously whitewashed;the ceilings were of heavy beams, supporting lighter cross-beams, onwhich in turn thick boards were laid to carry the cement floor of theroom overhead. 

Many hundred men-at-arms could be drawn up in the courtyards, and theirhorses stalled in the spacious stables. The kitchens, usually situatedon the ground floor, were large enough to provide meals for half athousand retainers, if necessary; and the cellars and undergroundprisons were a vast labyrinth of vaulted chambers, which notunfrequently communicated with the Tiber by secret passages. Inrestoring the palace of the Santacroce, a few years ago, a number ofskeletons were discovered, some still wearing armour, and all mostevidently the remains of men who had died violent deaths. One of themwas found with a dagger driven through the skull and helmet. The handthat drove it must have been strong beyond the hands of common men. 

The grand staircase led up from the sunny court to the state apartments, such as they were in those days. There, at least, there were sometimescarpets, luxuries of enormous value, and even before the Renascence thewhite walls were hung with tapestries, at least in part. In those times, too, there were large fireplaces in almost every room, for fuel wasstill plentiful in the Campagna and in the near mountains; and where thehouses were practically open to the air all day, fires were an absolutenecessity. Even in ancient times it is recorded that the Roman Senate, amidst the derisive jests of the plebeians, once had to adjourn onaccount of the extreme cold. People rose early in the Middle Age, dinedat noon, slept in the afternoon when the weather was warm, and supped, as a rule, at 'one hour of the night, ' that is to say an hour after 'AveMaria, ' which was rung half an hour after sunset, and was the end of theday of twenty-four hours. Noon was taken from the sun, but did not fallat a regular hour of the clock, and never fell at twelve. In winter, forinstance, if the Ave Maria bell rang at half-past five of our moderntime, the noon of the following day fell at 'half-past eighteen o'clock'by the mediæval clocks. In summer, it might fall as early as threequarters past fifteen; and this manner of reckoning time was common inRome thirty-five years ago, and is not wholly unpractised in some partsof Italy still. 

It was always an Italian habit, and a very healthy one, to get out ofdoors immediately on rising, and to put off making anything like acareful toilet till a much later hour. Breakfast, as we understand it, is an unknown meal in Italy, even now. Most people drink a cup of blackcoffee, standing; many eat a morsel of bread or biscuit with it and getout of doors as soon as they can; but the greediness of an Anglo-Saxonbreakfast disgusts all Latins alike, and two set meals daily are thoughtto be enough for anyone, as indeed they are. The hard-working Italianhill peasant will sometimes toast himself a piece of corn bread beforegoing to work, and eat it with a few drops of olive oil; and in theabsence of tea or coffee, the people of the Middle Age often drank amouthful of wine on rising to 'move the blood, ' as they said. But thatwas all. 

Every mediæval palace had its chapel, which was sometimes an adjacentchurch communicating with the house, and in many families it is even nowthe custom to hear the short low Mass at a very early hour. Butprobably nothing can give an adequate idea of the idleness of the MiddleAge, when the day was once begun. Before the Renascence, there was nosuch thing as study, and there were hardly any pastimes except gamblingand chess, both of which the girls and youths of the Decameron seem tohave included in one contemptuous condemnation when they elected tospend their time in telling stories. The younger men of the household, of course, when not actually fighting, passed a certain number of hoursin the practice of horsemanship and arms; but the only real excitementthey knew was in love and war, the latter including everything betweenthe battles of the Popes and Emperors, and the street brawls of privateenemies, which generally drew blood and often ended in a death. 

It does not appear that the idea of 'housekeeping' as the chiefoccupation of the Baron's wife ever entered into the Roman mind. Innorthern countries there has always been more equality between men andwomen, more respect for woman as an intelligent being, and less care forher as a valuable possession to be guarded against possible attacks fromwithout. In Rome and the south of Italy the women in a great householdwere carefully separated from the men, and beyond the outer halls inwhich visitors were received, business transacted and politicsdiscussed, there were closed doors, securely locked, leading to thewomen's apartments beyond. In every Roman palace and fortress there wasa revolving 'dumb-waiter' between the women's quarters and the men's, called the 'wheel, ' and used as a means of communication. Through thisthe household supplies were daily handed in, for the cooking was verygenerally done by women, and through the same machine the prepared foodwas passed out to the men, the wheel being so arranged that men andwomen could not see each other, though they might hear each other speak. To all intents and purposes the system was oriental and the women wereshut up in a harem. The use of the dumb-waiter survived the revolutionin manners under the Renascence, and the wheel itself remains as acuriosity of past times in more than one Roman dwelling today. It hadits uses and was not a piece of senseless tyranny. In order to keep upan armed force for all emergencies the Baron took under his protectionas men-at-arms the most desperate ruffians, outlaws and outcasts whom hecould collect, mostly men under sentence of banishment or death forhighway robbery and murder, whose only chance of escaping torture anddeath lay in risking life and limb for a master strong enough to defythe law, the 'bargello' and the executioner, in his own house or castle, where such henchmen were lodged and fed, and were controlled by nothingbut fear of the Baron himself, of his sons, when they were grown up, and of his poorer kinsmen who lived with him. There were no crimes whichsuch malefactors had not committed, or were not ready to commit for aword, or even for a jest. The women, on the other hand, were in thefirst place the ladies and daughters of the house, and of kinsmen, brought up in almost conventual solitude, when they were not actuallyeducated in convents; and, secondly, young girls from the Baron'sestates who served for a certain length of time, and were then generallymarried to respectable retainers. The position of twenty or thirty womenand girls under the same roof with several hundreds of the mostatrocious cutthroats of any age was undeniably such as to justify themost tyrannical measures for their protection. 

There are traces, even now, of the enforced privacy in which they lived. For instance, no Roman lady of today will ever show herself at a windowthat looks on the street, except during Carnival, and in most housessomething of the old arrangement of rooms is still preserved, wherebythe men and women occupy different parts of the house. 

One must try to call up the pictures of one day, to get any idea ofthose times; one must try and see the grey dawn stealing down the dark, unwindowed lower walls of the fortress that flanks the Church of theHoly Apostles, --the narrow and murky street below, the broad, dim spacebeyond, the mystery of the winding distances whence comes the firstsound of the day, the far, high cry of the waterman driving his littledonkey with its heavy load of water-casks. The beast stumbles along inthe foul gloom, through the muddy ruts, over heaps of garbage at thecorners, picking its way as best it can, till it starts with a snort andalmost falls with its knees upon a dead man, whose thrice-stabbed bodylies right across the way. The waterman, ragged, sandal-shod, stops, crosses himself, and drags his beast back hurriedly with a mutteredexclamation of mingled horror, disgust and fear for himself, and makesfor the nearest corner, stumbling along in his haste lest he should befound with the corpse and taken for the murderer. As the dawnforelightens, and the cries go up from the city, the black-hoodedBrothers of Prayer and Death come in a little troop, their lantern stillburning as they carry their empty stretcher, seeking for dead men; andthey take up the poor nameless body and bear it away quickly from thesight of the coming day. 

Then, as they disappear, the great bell of the Apostles' Church beginsto toll the morning Angelus, half an hour before sunrise, --threestrokes, then four, then five, then one, according to ancient custom, and then after a moment's silence, the swinging peal rings out, taken upand answered from end to end of the half-wasted city. A troop ofmen-at-arms ride up to the great closed gate 'in rusty armour marvellousill-favoured, ' as Shakespeare's stage direction has it, mud-splashed, their brown cloaks half concealing their dark and war-worn mail, theirlong swords hanging down and clanking against their huge stirrups, theirbeasts jaded and worn and filthy from the night raid in the Campagna, orthe long gallop from Palestrina. The leader pounds three times at theiron-studded door with the hilt of his dagger, a sleepy porter, grey-bearded and cloaked, slowly swings back one half of the gate andthe ruffians troop in, followed by the waterman who has gone round thefortress to avoid the dead body. The gate shuts again, with a longthundering rumble. High up, wooden shutters, behind which there is noglass, are thrown open upon the courtyard, and one window after anotheris opened to the morning air; on one side, girls and women look out, muffled in dark shawls; from the other grim, unwashed, bearded men calldown to their companions, who have dismounted and are unsaddling theirweary horses, and measuring out a little water to them, where water is athing of price. 

The leader goes up into the house to his master, to tell him of thenight's doings, and while he speaks the Baron sits in a great woodenchair, in his long gown of heavy cloth, edged with coarse fox's fur, hisfeet in fur slippers, and a shabby cap upon his head, but a manly andstern figure, all the same, slowly munching a piece of toasted bread andsipping a few drops of old white wine from a battered silver cup. 

Then Mass in the church, the Baron, his kinsmen, the ladies and thewomen kneeling in the high gallery above the altar, the men-at-arms andmen-servants and retainers crouching below on the stone pavement; adusky multitude, with a gleam of steel here and there, and red flashingeyes turned up with greedy longing towards the half-veiled faces of thewomen, met perhaps, now and then, by a furtive answering glance fromunder a veil or hoodlike shawl, for every woman's head is covered, butof the men only the old lord wears his cap, which he devoutly lifts at'Gloria Patri' and 'Verbum Caro, ' and at 'Sanctus' and at theconsecration. It is soon over, and the day is begun, for the sun isfully risen and streams through the open unglazed windows as the maidssprinkle water on the brick floors, and sweep and strew fresh rushes, and roll back the mattresses on the trestle beds, which are not madeagain till evening. In the great courtyard, the men lead out the horsesand mount them bareback and ride out in a troop, each with his sword byhis side, to water them at the river, half a mile away, for not a singlepublic fountain is left in Rome; and the grooms clean out the stables, while the peasants come in from the country, driving mules laden withprovisions for the great household, and far away, behind barred doors, the women light the fires in the big kitchen. 

Later again, the children of the noble house are taught to ride andfence in the open court; splendid boys with flowing hair, bright as goldor dark as night, dressed in rough hose and leathern jerkin, bright-eyed, fearless, masterful already in their play as a lion'swhelps, watched from an upper window by their lady mother and theirlittle sisters, and not soon tired of saddle or sword--familiar with thegrooms and men by the great common instinct of fighting, but as far fromvulgar as Polonius bade Laertes learn to be. 

So morning warms to broad noon, and hunger makes it dinner-time, and theyoung kinsmen who have strolled abroad come home, one of them with hishand bound up in a white rag that has drops of blood on it, for he haspicked a quarrel in the street and steel has been out, as usual, thoughno one has been killed, because the 'bargello' and his men were insight, down there near the Orsini's theatre-fortress. And at dinner whenthe priest has blessed the table, the young men laugh about thescrimmage, while the Baron himself, who has killed a dozen men inbattle, with his own hand, rebukes his sons and nephews with all theuseless austerity which worn-out age wears in the face of unbrokenyouth. The meal is long, and they eat much, for there will be nothingmore till night; they eat meat broth, thick with many vegetables andbroken bread and lumps of boiled meat, and there are roasted meats andhuge earthen bowls of salad, and there is cheese in great blocks, andvast quantities of bread, with wine in abundance, poured for each man bythe butler into little earthen jugs from big earthenware flagons. Theyeat from trenchers of wood, well scoured with ashes; forks they havenone, and most of the men use their own knives or daggers when they arenot satisfied with the carving done for them by the carver. Each man, when he has picked a bone, throws it under the table to the house-dogslying in wait on the floor, and from time to time a basin is passed anda little water poured upon the fingers. The Baron has a napkin of hisown; there is one napkin for all the other men; the women generally eatby themselves in their own apartments, the so-called 'gentlemen' in the'tinello, ' and the men-at-arms and grooms, and all the rest, in the biglower halls near the kitchens, whence their food is passed out to themthrough the wheel. 

After dinner, if it be summer and the weather hot, the gates are barred, the windows shut, and the whole household sleeps. Early or late, as thecase may be, the lords and ladies and children take the air, guarded byscores of mounted men, riding towards that part of the city where theymay neither meet their enemies nor catch a fever in the warm months. Inrainy weather they pass the time as they can, with telling of manytales, short, dramatic and strong as the framework of a good play, withmusic, sometimes, and with songs, and with discussing of such news asthere may be in such times. And at dusk the great bells ring toeven-song, the oil lamp is swung up in the great staircase, the windowsand gates are shut again, the torches and candles and little lamps arelit for supper, and at last, with rushlights, each finds the way alongthe ghostly corridors to bed and sleep. That was the day's round, andthere was little to vary it in more peaceful times. 

Over all life there was the hopeless, resentful dulness that oppressedmen and women till it drove them half mad, to the doing of desperatethings in love and war; there was the everlasting restraint of dangerwithout and of forced idleness within--danger so constant that it ceasedto be exciting and grew tiresome, idleness so oppressive that battle, murder and sudden death were a relief from the inactivity of sluggishpeace; a state in which the mind was no longer a moving power in man, but only by turns the smelting pot and the anvil of half-smotheredpassions that now and then broke out with fire and flame and sword toslash and burn the world with a history of unimaginable horror. 

That was the Middle Age in Italy. A poorer race would have gone downtherein to a bloody destruction; but it was out of the Middle Age thatthe Italians were born again in the Renascence. It deserved the name. 

[Illustration]

REGION IV CAMPO MARZO

It was harvest time when the Romans at last freed themselves from thevery name of Tarquin. In all the great field, between the Tiber and theCity, the corn stood high and ripe, waiting for the sickle, while Brutusdid justice upon his two sons, and upon the sons of his sister, and uponthose 'very noble youths, ' still the Tarquins' friends, who laid downtheir lives for their mistaken loyalty and friendship, and for whosedevotion no historian has ever been brave enough, or generous enough, tosay a word. It has been said that revolution is patriotism when itsucceeds, treason when it fails, and in the converse, more than onebrave man has died a traitor's death for keeping faith with a fallenking. Successful revolution denied those young royalists the charitablehandful of earth and the four words of peace--'sit eis terralevis'--that should have laid their unquiet ghosts, and the brutalcynicism of history has handed down their names to the perpetualexecration of mankind. 

The corn stood high in the broad field which the Tarquins had taken fromMars and had ploughed and tilled for generations. The people went outand reaped the crop, and bound it in sheaves to be threshed for thepublic bread, but their new masters told them that it would be impiousto eat what had been meant for kings, and they did as was commanded tothem, meekly, and threw all into the river. Sheaf upon sheaf, load uponload, the yellow stream swept away the yellow ears and stalks, down tothe shallows, where the whole mass stuck fast, and the seeds took rootin the watery mud, and the stalks rotted in great heaps, and the islandof the Tiber was first raised above the level of the water. Then thepeople burned the stubble and gave back the land to Mars, calling it theCampus Martius, after him. 

There the young Romans learned the use of arms, and were taught to ride;and under sheds there stood those rows of wooden horses, upon whichyouths learned to vault, without step or stirrup, in their armour andsword in hand. There they ran foot-races in the clouds of dust whirledup from the dry ground, and threw the discus by the twisted thong as theyoung men of the hills do today, and the one who could reach the goalwith the smallest number of throws was the winner, --there, under thesummer sun and in the biting wind of winter, half naked, and tough aswolves, the boys of Rome laboured to grow up and be Roman men. 

There, also, the great assemblies were held, the public meetings and theelections, when the people voted by passing into the wooden lists thatwere called 'Sheepfolds, ' till Julius Cæsar planned the great marbleportico for voting, and Agrippa finished it, making it nearly a mileround; and behind it, on the west side, a huge space was kept open forcenturies, called the Villa Publica, where the censors numbered thepeople. The ancient Campus took in a wide extent of land, for itincluded everything outside the Servian wall, from the Colline Gate tothe river. All that visibly bears its name today is a narrow street thatruns southward from the western end of San Lorenzo in Lucina. The Regionof Campo Marzo, however, is still one of the largest in the city, including all that lies within the walls from Porta Pinciana, by Capo leCase, Via Frattina, Via di Campo Marzo and Via della Stelletta, past theChurch of the Portuguese and the Palazzo Moroni, --known by Hawthorne'snovel as 'Hilda's Tower, '--and thence to the banks of the Tiber. 

[Illustration: PIAZZA DI SPAGNA]

From the Renascence until the recent extension of the city on the southand southeast, this Region was the more modern part of Rome. In theMiddle Age it was held by the Colonna, who had fortified the tomb ofAugustus and one or two other ruins. Later it became the strangers'quarter. The Lombards established themselves near the Church of SaintCharles, in the Corso; the English, near Saint Ives, the little churchwith the strange spiral tower, built against the University of theSapienza; the Greeks lived in the Via de' Greci; the Burgundians in theVia Borgognona, and thence to San Claudio, where they had their Hospice;and so on, almost every nationality being established in a colony of itsown; and the English visitors of today are still inclined to think thePiazza di Spagna the most central point of Rome, whereas to Romans itseems to be very much out of the way. 

The tomb of Augustus, which served as the model for the greaterMausoleum of Hadrian, dominated the Campus Martius, and its main wallsare still standing, though hidden by many modern houses. The tomb of theJulian Cæsars rose on white marble foundations, a series of concentricterraces, planted with cypress trees, to the great bronze statue ofAugustus that crowned the summit. Here rested the ashes of Augustus, ofthe young Marcellus, of Livia, of Tiberius, of Caligula, and of manyothers whose bodies were burned in the family Ustrinum near the tombitself. Plundered by Alaric, and finally ruined by Robert Guiscard, whenhe burnt the city, it became a fortress under the Colonna, and isincluded, with the fortress of Monte Citorio, in a transfer of propertymade by one member of the family to another in the year 1252. Ruined atlast, it became a bull ring in the last century and in the beginning ofthis one, when Leo the Twelfth forbade bull-fighting. Then it was atheatre, the scene of Salvini's early triumphs. Today it is a circus, dignified by the name of the reigning sovereign. 

Few people know that bull-fights were common in Rome eighty years ago. The indefatigable Baracconi once talked with the son of the lastbull-fighter. So far as one may judge, it appears that during theMiddle Age, and much later, it was the practice of butchers to baitanimals in their own yards, before slaughtering them, in the belief thatthe cruel treatment made the meat more tender, and they admitted thepeople to see the sport. From this to a regular arena was but a step, and no more suitable place than the tomb of the Cæsars could be foundfor the purpose. A regular manager took possession of it, provided thevictims, both bulls and Roman buffaloes, and hired the fighters. It doesnot appear that the beasts were killed during the entertainment, and oneof the principal attractions was the riding of the maddened bull threetimes round the circus; savage dogs were also introduced, but in allother respects the affair was much like a Spanish bull-fight, and quiteas popular; when the chosen bulls were led in from the Campagna, theRoman princes used to ride far out to meet them with long files ofmounted servants in gala liveries, coming back at night in torchlightprocession. And again, after the fight was over, the circus wasilluminated, and there was a small display of Bengal lights, while thefashionable world of Rome met and gossiped away the evening in thearena, happily thoughtless and forgetful of all the spot had been andhad meant in history. 

The new Rome sinks out of sight below the level of the old, as oneclimbs the heights of the Janiculum on the west of the city, or thegardens of the Pincio on the east. The old monuments and the oldchurches still rise above the dreary wastes of modern streets, and fromthe spot whence Messalina looked down upon the cypresses of the firstEmperor's mausoleum, the traveller of today descries the cheap metallicroof which makes a circus of the ancient tomb. 

For it was in the gardens of Lucullus that Mark Antony'sgreat-grandchild felt the tribune's sword in her throat, and in the neatdrives and walks of the Pincio, where pretty women in smart carriageslaugh over today's gossip and tomorrow's fashion, and the immaculatedandy idles away an hour and a cigarette, the memory of Messalina callsup a tragedy of shades. Less than thirty years after Augustus hadbreathed out his old age in peace, Rome was ruled again by terror andblood, and the triumph of a woman's sins was the beginning of the end ofthe Julian race. The great historian who writes of her guesses thatposterity may call the truth a fable, and tells the tale so tersely andsoberly from first to last, that the strength of his words suggests awhole mystery of evil. Without Tiberius, there could have been noMessalina, nor, without her, could Nero have been possible; and theworst of the three is the woman--the archpriestess of all conceivablecrime. Tacitus gives Tiberius one redeeming touch. Often the old Emperorcame almost to Rome, even to the gardens by the Tiber, and then turnedback to the rocks of Capri and the solitude of the sea, in mortal shameof his monstrous deeds, as if not daring to show himself in the city. With Nero, the measure was full, and the world rose and destroyed him. Messalina knew no shame, and the Romans submitted to her, and but for acourt intrigue and a frightened favourite she might have lived out herlife unhurt. In the eyes of the historian and of the people of her timeher greatest misdeed was that while her husband Claudius, the Emperor, was alive she publicly celebrated her marriage with the handsome Silius, using all outward legal forms. Our modern laws of divorce have so faraccustomed our minds to such deeds that, although we miss the legalformalities which would necessarily precede such an act in our time, wesecretly wonder at the effect it produced upon the men of that day, andare inclined to smile at the epithets of 'impious' and 'sacrilegious'which it called down upon Messalina, whose many other frightful crimeshad elicited much more moderate condemnation. Claudius, himself nonovice or beginner in horrors, hesitated long after he knew the truth, and it was the favourite Narcissus who took upon himself to order theEmpress' death. Euodus, his freedman, and a tribune of the guard weresent to make an end of her. Swiftly they went up to the gardens--thegardens of the Pincian--and there they found her, beautiful, dark, dishevelled, stretched upon the marble floor, her mother Lepidacrouching beside her, her mother, who in the bloom of her daughter'sevil life had turned from her, but in her extreme need was overcomewith pity. There knelt Domitia Lepida, urging the terror-mad woman notto wait the executioner, since life was over and nothing remained but tolend death the dignity of suicide. But the dishonoured self was empty ofcourage, and long-drawn weeping choked her useless lamentations. Thensuddenly the doors were flung open with a crash, and the stern tribunestood silent in the hall, while the freedman Euodus screamed out curses, after the way of triumphant slaves. From her mother's hand the lostEmpress took the knife at last and trembling laid it to her breast andthroat, with weakly frantic fingers that could not hurt herself; thesilent tribune killed her with one straight thrust, and when theybrought the news to Claudius sitting at supper, and told him thatMessalina had perished, his face did not change, and he said nothing ashe held out his cup to be filled. 

[Illustration: PIAZZA DEL POPOLO]

She died somewhere on the Pincian hill. Romance would choose the spotexactly where the nunnery of the Sacred Heart stands, at the Trinità de'Monti, looking down De Sanctis' imposing 'Spanish' steps; and the housein which the noble girls of modern Rome are sent to school may haverisen upon the foundations of Messalina's last abode. Or it may be thatthe place was further west, in the high grounds of the French Academy, or on the site of the academy itself, at the gates of the public garden, just where the old stone fountain bubbles and murmurs under the shade ofthe thick ilex trees. Most of that land once belonged to Lucullus, theconqueror of Mithridates, the Academic philosopher, the arch feaster, and the man who first brought cherries to Italy. 

[Illustration: TRINITÀ DE' MONTI]

The last descendant of Julia, the last sterile monster of the Julianrace, Nero, was buried at the foot of the same hill. Alive, he wascondemned by the Senate to be beaten to death in the Comitium; dead byhis own hand, he received imperial honours, and his ashes rested for athousand years where they had been laid by his two old nurses and awoman who had loved him. And during ten centuries the people believedthat his terrible ghost haunted the hill, attended and served bythousands of demon crows that rested in the branches of the trees abouthis tomb, and flew forth to do evil at his bidding, till at last PopePaschal the Second cut down with his own hands the walnut trees whichcrowned the summit, and commanded that the mausoleum should bedestroyed, and the ashes of Nero scattered to the winds, that he mightbuild a parish church on the spot and dedicate it to Saint Mary. It issaid, too, that the Romans took the marble urn in which the ashes hadbeen, and used it as a public measure for salt in the old market-placeof the Capitol. A number of the rich Romans of the Renascence afterwardscontributed money to the restoration of the church and built themselveschapels within it, as tombs for their descendants, so that it is theburial-place of many of those wealthy families that settled in Rome andtook possession of the Corso when the Barons still held the less centralparts of the city with their mediæval fortresses. Sixtus the Fourth andJulius the Second are buried in Saint Peter's, but their chapel washere, and here lie others of the della Rovere race, and many of theChigi and Pallavicini and Theodoli; and here, in strange coincidence, Alexander the Sixth, the worst of the Popes, erected a high altar on thevery spot where the worst of the Emperors had been buried. It is gonenow, but the strange fact is not forgotten. 

Far across the beautiful square, at the entrance to the Corso, twinchurches seem to guard the way like sentinels, built, it is said, toreplace two chapels which once stood at the head of the bridge of Sant'Angelo; demolished because, when Rome was sacked by the Constable ofBourbon, they had been held as important points by the Spanish soldiersin besieging the Castle, and it was not thought wise to leave suchuseful outworks for any possible enemy in the future. Alexander theSeventh, the Chigi Pope, died, and left the work unfinished; and a folkstory tells how a poor old woman who lived near by saved what she couldfor many years, and, dying, left one hundred and fifty scudi to help thecompletion of the buildings; and Cardinal Gastaldi, who had been refusedthe privilege of placing his arms upon a church which he had desired tobuild in Bologna, and was looking about for an opportunity ofperpetuating his name, finished the two churches, his attention havingbeen first called to them by the old woman's humble bequest. 

As for the Pincio itself, and the ascent to it from the Piazza delPopolo, all that land was but a grass-grown hillside, crowned by a fewsmall and scattered villas and scantily furnished with trees, until thebeginning of the present century; and the public gardens of the earliertime were those of the famous and beautiful Villa Medici, which Napoleonthe First bestowed upon the French Academy. It was there that thefashionable Romans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries used tomeet, and walk, and be carried about in gilded sedan-chairs, and flirt, and gossip, and exchange views on politics and opinions about the latestscandal. That was indeed a very strange society, further from us in manyways than the world of the Renascence, or even of the Crusades; for theMiddle Age was strong in the sincerity of its beliefs, as we arepowerful in the cynicism of our single-hearted faith in riches; but thefabric of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was founded upon theabuse of an already declining power; it was built up in the mostextraordinary and elaborate affectation, and it was guarded by a systemof dissimulation which outdid that of our own day by many degrees, andpossibly surpassed the hypocrisy of any preceding age. 

No one, indeed, can successfully uphold the idea that the highdevelopment of art in any shape is of necessity coincident with a stronggrowth of religion or moral conviction. Perugino made no secret of beingan atheist; Lionardo da Vinci was a scientific sceptic; Raphael was anamiable rake, no better and no worse than the majority of those giftedpupils to whom he was at once a model of perfection and an example offree living; and those who maintain that art is always the expression ofa people's religion have but an imperfect acquaintance with the age ofPraxiteles, Apelles and Zeuxis. Yet the idea itself has a foundation, lying in something which is as hard to define as it is impossible toignore; for if art be not a growth out of faith, it is always the resultof a faith that has been, since although it is possible to conceive ofreligion without art, it is out of the question to think of art as awhole, without a religious origin; and as the majority of writers findit easier to describe scenes and emotions, when a certain lapse of timehas given them what painters call atmospheric perspective, so theRenascence began when memory already clothed the ferocious realism ofmediæval Christianity in the softer tones of gentle chivalry and tenderromance. It is often said, half in jest, that, in order to haveintellectual culture, a man must at least have forgotten Latin, if hecannot remember it, because the fact of having learned it leavessomething behind that cannot be acquired in any other way. Similarly, Ithink that art of all sorts has reached its highest level in successiveages when it has aimed at recalling, by an illusion, a once vividreality from a not too distant past. And so when it gives itself up tothe realism of the present, it impresses the senses rather than thethoughts, and misses its object, which is to bring within our mentalreach what is beyond our physical grasp; and when, on the other hand, itgoes back too far, it fails in execution, because its models are notonly out of sight, but out of mind, and it cannot touch us because wecan no longer feel even a romantic interest in the real or imaginaryevents which it attempts to describe. 

The subject is too high to be lightly touched, and too wide to betouched more than lightly here; but in this view of it may perhaps befound some explanation of the miserable poverty of Italian art in theeighteenth century, foreshadowed by the decadence of the seventeenth, which again is traceable to the dissipation of force and thedisappearance of individuality that followed the Renascence, asinevitably as old age follows youth. Besides all necessary gifts ofgenius, the development of art seems to require that a race should notonly have leisure for remembering, but should also have something toremember which may be worthy of being recalled and perhaps of beingimitated. Progress may be the road to wealth and health, and to suchhappiness as may be derived from both; but the advance of civilizationis the path of thought, and its landmarks are not inventions nordiscoveries, but those very great creations of the mind which ennoblethe heart in all ages; and as the idea of progress is inseparable fromthat of growing riches, so is the true conception of civilizationindivisible from thoughts of beauty and nobility. In the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries, Italy had almost altogether lost sight of these;art was execrable, fashion was hideous, morality meant hypocrisy; thesurest way to power lay in the most despicable sort of intrigue, andinward and spiritual faith was as rare as outward and visible devoutnesswas general. 

That was the society which frequented the Villa Medici on fineafternoons, and it is hard to see wherein its charm lay, if, indeed, ithad any. Instead of originality, its conversation teemed with artificialconventionalisms; instead of nature, it exhibited itself in the disguiseof fashions more inconvenient, uncomfortable and ridiculous than thoseof any previous or later times; it delighted in the impossiblynonsensical 'pastoral' verses which we find too silly to read; and inplace of wit, it clothed gross and cruel sayings in a thin remnant ofworn-out classicism. It had not the frankly wicked recklessness of theFrench aristocracy between Lewis the Fourteenth and the Revolution, northe changing contrasts of brutality, genius, affectation and Puritanicalausterity which marked England's ascent, from the death of Edward theSixth to the victories of Nelson and Wellington; still less had it anyof those real motives for existence which carried Germany through herlong struggle for life. It had little which we are accustomed to respectin men and women, and yet it had something which we lack today, andwhich we unconsciously envy--it had a colour of its own. Wandering underthe ancient ilexes of those sad and beautiful gardens, meeting here andthere a few silent and soberly clad strangers, one cannot but long forthe brilliancy of two centuries ago, when the walks were gay withbrilliant dresses, and gilded chairs, and servants in liveries ofscarlet and green and gold, and noble ladies, tottering a few steps ontheir ridiculous high heels, and men bewigged and becurled, theiruseless little hats under their arms, and their embroidered coat tailsflapping against their padded, silk-stockinged calves; and red-legged, unpriestly Cardinals who were not priests even in name, but only the laylife-peers of the Church; and grave Bishops with their secretaries; andlaughing abbés, whose clerical dress was the accustomed uniform ofgovernment office, which they still wore when they were married, andwere fathers of families. There is little besides colour to recommendthe picture, but at least there is that. 

The Pincian hill has always been the favourite home of artists of allkinds, and many lived at one time or another in the little villas thatonce stood there, and in the houses in the Via Sistina and southward, and up towards the Porta Pinciana. Guido Reni, the Caracci, SalvatorRosa, Poussin, Claude Lorrain, have all left the place the associationof their presence, and the Zuccheri brothers built themselves the housewhich still bears their name, just below the one at the corner of theTrinità de' Monti, known to all foreigners as the 'Tempietto' or littletemple. But the Villa Medici stands as it did long ago, its wallsuninjured, its trees grander than ever, its walks unchanged. Soft-hearted Baracconi, in love with those times more than with theMiddle Age, speaks half tenderly of the people who used to meet there, calling them collectively a gay and light-hearted society, gentle, idle, full of graceful thoughts and delicate perceptions, brilliantreflections and light charms; he regrets the gilded chairs, the hugebuilt-up wigs, the small sword of the 'cavalier servente, ' and theabbé's silk mantle, the semi-platonic friendships, the jests borrowedfrom Goldoni, the 'pastoral' scandal, and exchange of compliments andmadrigals and epigrams, and all the brilliant powdered train of thatextinct world. 

[Illustration: VILLA MEDICI]

Whatever life may have been in those times, that world died in a prettytableau, after the manner of Watteau's paintings; it meant little andaccomplished little, and though its bright colouring brings it for amoment to the foreground, it has really not much to do with the Rome weknow nor with the Rome one thinks of in the past, always great, alwayssad, always tragic, as no other city in the world can ever be. 

Ignorance, tradition, imagination, romance, --call it what you will, --haschosen the long-closed Pincian Gate for the last station of blindBelisarius. There, says the tale, the ancient conqueror, the banisherand maker of Popes, the favourite and the instrument of imperialTheodora, stood begging his bread at the gate of the city he had won andlost, leaning upon the arm of the fair girl child who would not leavehim, and stretching forth his hand to those that passed by, with afeeble prayer for alms, pathetic as Oedipus in the utter ruin of hislife and fortune. A truer story tells how Pope Silverius, humble andgentle, and hated by Theodora, went up to the Pincian villa to answerthe accusation of conspiring with the Goths, when he himself had openedthe gates of Rome to Belisarius; and how he was led into the great hallwhere the warrior's wife, Theodora's friend, the beautiful and evilAntonina, lay with half-closed eyes upon her splendid couch, whileBelisarius sat beside her feet, toying with her jewels. There thehusband and wife accused the Pope, and judged him without hearing, andcondemned him without right; and they caused him to be stripped of hisrobes, and clad as a poor monk and driven out to far exile, that theymight set up the Empress Theodora's Pope in his place; and with him theydrove out many Roman nobles. 

And it is said that when Silverius was dead of a broken heart in thelittle island of Palmaria, Belisarius repented of his deeds and builtthe small Church of Santa Maria de' Crociferi, behind the fountain ofTrevi, in partial expiation of his fault, and there, to prove the truthof the story, the tablet that tells of his repentance has stood nearlyfourteen hundred years and may be read today, on the east wall, towardsthe Via de' Poli. The man who conquered Africa for Justinian, seizedSicily, took Rome, defended it successfully against the Goths, reducedRavenna, took Rome from the Goths again, and finally rescuedConstantinople, was disgraced more than once; but he was not blinded, nor did he die in exile or in prison, for at the end he breathed hislast in the enjoyment of his freedom and his honours; and the story ofhis blindness is the fabrication of an ignorant Greek monk who lived sixhundred years later and confounded Justinian's great general with theromantic and unhappy John of Cappadocia, who lived at the same time, wasa general at the same time, and incurred the displeasure of that samepious, proud, avaricious Theodora, actress, penitent and Empress, whoseparamount beauty held the Emperor in thrall for life, and whosesurpassing cruelty imprinted an indelible seal of horror upon hisglorious reign--of her who, when she delivered a man to death, admonished the executioner with an oath, saying, 'By Him who liveth forever, if thou failest, I will cause thee to be flayed alive. '

Another figure rises at the window of the Tuscan Ambassador's greatvilla, with the face of a man concerning whom legend has also found muchto invent and little to say that is true, a man of whom modern sciencehas rightly made a hero, but whom prejudice and ignorance have wronglycrowned as a martyr--Galileo Galilei. Tradition represents him aslanguishing, laden with chains, in the more or less mythical prisons ofthe Inquisition; history tells very plainly that his first confinementconsisted in being the honoured guest of the Tuscan Ambassador in thelatter's splendid residence in Rome, and that his last imprisonment wasa relegation to the beautiful castle of the Piccolomini near Siena, thanwhich the heart of man could hardly desire a more lovely home. Historyaffirms beyond doubt, moreover, that Galileo was the personal friend ofthat learned and not illiberal Barberini, Pope Urban the Eighth, underwhose long reign the Copernican system was put on trial, who believed inthat system as Galileo did, who read his books and talked with him; andwho, when the stupid technicalities of the ecclesiastic courts declaredthe laws of the universe to be nonsense, gave his voice against thedecision, though he could not officially annul it without scandal. 'Itwas not my intention, ' said the Pope in the presence of witnesses, 'tocondemn Galileo. If the matter had depended upon me, the decree of theIndex which condemned his doctrines should never have been pronounced. '

That Galileo's life was saddened by the result of the absurd trial, andthat he was nominally a prisoner for a long time, is not to be denied. But that he suffered the indignities and torments recorded in legend isno more true than that Belisarius begged his bread at the PortaPinciana. He lived in comfort and in honour with the Ambassador in theVilla Medici, and many a time from those lofty windows, unchanged sincebefore his day, he must have watched the earth turning with him from thesun at evening, and meditated upon the emptiness of the ancient phrasethat makes the sun 'set' when the day is done--thinking of the world, perhaps, as turning upon its other side, with tired eyes, and ready forrest and darkness and refreshment, after long toil and heat. 

 * * * * *

One may stand under those old trees before the Villa Medici, beside theancient fountain facing Saint Peter's distant dome, and dream the greatreview of history, and call up a vast, changing picture at one's feetbetween the heights and the yellow river. First, the broad corn-field ofthe Tarquin Kings, rich and ripe under the evening breeze of summer thatruns along swiftly, bending the golden surface in soft moving waves fromthe Tiber's edge to the foot of the wooded slope. Then, the hurriedharvesting, the sheaves cast into the river, the dry, stiff stubblebaking in the sun, and presently the men of Rome coming forth inprocession from the dark Servian wall on the left to dedicate the fieldto the War God with prayer and chant and smoking sacrifice. By and bythe stubble trodden down under horses' hoofs, the dusty plain theexercising ground of young conquerors, the voting place, later, of astrong Republic, whither the centuries went out to choose their consuls, to decide upon peace or war, to declare the voice of the people in gravematters, while the great signal flag waved on the Janiculum, well insight though far away, to fall suddenly at the approach of any foe andsuspend the 'comitia' on the instant. And in the flat and dusty plain, buildings begin to rise; first, the Altar of Mars and the holy place ofthe infernal gods, Dis and Proserpine; later, the great 'Sheepfold, ' thelists and hustings for the voting, and, encroaching a little upon thetraining ground, the temple of Venus Victorious and the huge theatre ofPompey, wherein the Orsini held their own so long; but in the times ofLucullus, when his gardens and his marvellous villa covered the Pincianhill, the plain was still a wide field, and still the field of Mars, without the walls, broken by few landmarks, and trodden to deep whitedust by the scampering hoofs of half-drilled cavalry. Under theEmperors, then, first beautified in part, as Cæsar traces the greatSepta for the voting, and Augustus erects the Altar of Peace and buildsup his cypress-clad tomb, crowned by his own image, and Agrippa raiseshis triple temple, and Hadrian builds the Pantheon upon its ruins, whilethe obelisk that now stands on Monte Citorio before the House ofParliament points out the brass-figured hours on the broad marble floorof the first Emperor's sun-clock and marks the high noon of Rome'sglory--and the Portico of Neptune and many other splendid works springup. Isis and Serapis have a temple next, and Domitian's race-courseappears behind Agrippa's Baths, straight and white. By and by theAntonines raise columns and triumphal arches, but always to southward, leaving the field of Mars a field still, for its old uses, and the tiredrecruits, sweating from exercise, gather under the high shade ofAugustus' tomb at midday for an hour's rest. 

Last of all, the great temple of the Sun, with its vast portico, and theMithræum at the other end, and when the walls of Aurelian are built, andwhen ruin comes upon Rome from the north, the Campus Martius is stillalmost an open stretch of dusty earth on which soldiers have learnedtheir trade through a thousand years of hard training. 

Not till the poor days when the waterless, ruined city sends its peopledown from the heights to drink of the muddy stream does Campo Marzobecome a town, and then, around the castle-tomb of the Colonna and thecastle-theatre of the Orsini the wretched houses begin to rise here andthere, thickening to a low, dark forest of miserable dwellings threadedthrough and through, up and down and crosswise, by narrow and crookedstreets, out of which by degrees the lofty churches and palaces of thelater age are to spring up. From a training ground it has become afighting ground, a labyrinth of often barricaded ways and lanes, deeperand darker towards the water-gates cut in the wall that runs along theTiber, from Porta del Popolo nearly to the island of Saint Bartholomew, and almost all that is left of Rome is crowded and huddled into thenarrow pen overshadowed and dominated here and there by black fortressesand brown brick towers. The man who then might have looked down from thePincian hill would have seen that sight; houses little better than thoseof the poorest mountain village in the Southern Italy of today, blackwith smoke, black with dirt, blacker with patches made by shadowywindows that had no glass. A silent town, too, surly and defensive; nowand then the call of the water-carrier disturbs the stillness, morerarely, the cry of a wandering peddler; and sometimes a distant sound ofhoofs, a far clash of iron and steel, and the echoing yell of furiousfighting men--'Orsini!' 'Colonna!'--the long-drawn syllables coming updistinct through the evening air to the garden where Messalina died, while the sun sets red behind the spire of old Saint Peter's across theriver, and gilds the huge girth of dark Sant' Angelo to a rusty red, like battered iron bathed in blood. 

Back come the Popes from Avignon, and streets grow wider and housescleaner and men richer--all for the Bourbon's Spaniards to sack, andburn, and destroy before the last city grows up, and the rounded domesraise their helmet-like heads out of the chaos, and the broad Piazza delPopolo is cleared, and old Saint Peter's goes down in dust to make wayfor the Cathedral of all Christendom as it stands. Then far away, onSaint Peter's evening, when it is dusk, the great dome, and the smalldomes, and the colonnades, and the broad façade are traced in silverlights that shine out quietly as the air darkens. The solemn bells tollthe first hour of the June night; the city is hushed, and all at oncethe silver lines are turned to gold, as the red flame runs in magicchange from the topmost cross down the dome, in rivers, to the roof, andthe pillars and the columns of the square below--the grandestillumination of the grandest church the world has ever seen. 

[Illustration]

REGION V PONTE

The Region of Ponte, 'the Bridge, ' takes its name from the ancientTriumphal Bridge which led from the city to the Vatican Fields, and atlow water some fragments of the original piers may be seen in the riverat the bend just below Ponte Sant' Angelo, between the Church of SaintJohn of the Florentines on the one bank, and the Hospital of SantoSpirito on the other. In the Middle Age, according to Baracconi andothers, the broken arches still extended into the stream, and upon themwas built a small fortress, the outpost of the Orsini on that side. Thedevice, however, appears to represent a portion of the later Bridge ofSant' Angelo, built upon the foundations of the Ælian Bridge ofHadrian, which connected his tomb with the Campus Martius. The Regionconsists of the northwest point of the city, bounded by the Tiber, fromMonte Brianzo round the bend, and down stream to the new Lungara bridge, and on the land side by a very irregular line running across the CorsoVittorio Emanuele, close to the Chiesa Nuova, and then eastward andnorthward in a zigzag, so as to take in most of the fortresses of theOrsini family, Monte Giordano, Tor Millina, Tor Sanguigna, and the nowdemolished Torre di Nona. The Sixth and Seventh Regions adjacent to theFifth and to each other would have to be included in order to take inall that part of Rome once held by the only family that rivalled, andsometimes surpassed, the Colonna in power. 

As has been said before, the original difference between the two wasthat the Colonna were Ghibellines and for the Emperors, while the Orsiniwere Guelphs and generally adhered to the Popes. In the violent changesof the Middle Age, it happened indeed that the Colonna had at least onePope of their own, and that more than one, such as Nicholas the Fourth, favoured their race to the point of exciting popular indignation. But, on the whole, they kept to their parties. When Lewis the Bavarian was tobe crowned by force, Sciarra Colonna crowned him; when Henry the Seventhof Luxemburg had come to Rome for the same purpose, a few years earlier, the Orsini had been obliged to be satisfied with a sort of second-ratecoronation at Saint John Lateran's; and when the struggle between thetwo families was at its height, nearly two centuries later, and Sixtusthe Fourth 'assumed the part of mediator, ' as the chronicle expressesit, one of his first acts of mediation was to cut off the head of aColonna, and his next was to lay regular siege to the strongholds of thefamily in the Roman hills; but before he had brought this singularprocess of mediation to an issue he suddenly died, the Colonna returnedto their dwellings in Rome 'with great clamour and triumph, ' got thebetter of the Orsini, and proceeded to elect a Pope after their ownhearts, in the person of Cardinal Cibo, of Genoa, known as Innocent theEighth. He it is who lies under the beautiful bronze monument in theinner left aisle of Saint Peter's, which shows him holding in his hand amodel of the spear-head that pierced Christ's side, a relic believed tohave been sent to the Pope as a gift by Sultan Bajazet the Second. 

The origin of the hatred between Colonna and Orsini is unknown, for thearchives of the former have as yet thrown no light upon the subject, andthose of the latter were almost entirely destroyed by fire in the lastcentury. In the year 1305, Pope Clement the Fifth was elected Pope atPerugia. He was a Frenchman, and was Archbishop of Bordeaux, thecandidate of Philip the Fair, whose tutor had been a Colonna, and hewas chosen by the opposing factions of two Orsini cardinals because thepeople of Perugia were tired of a quarrel that had lasted eleven months, and had adopted the practical and always infallible expedient ofdeliberately starving the conclave to a vote. Muratori calls it ascandalous and illicit election, which brought about the ruin of Italyand struck a memorable blow at the power of the Holy See. Though not agreat man, Philip the Fair was one of the cleverest that ever lived. Before the election he had made his bishop swear upon the Sacred Host toaccept his conditions, without expressing them all; and the mostimportant proved to be the transference of the Papal See to France. Thenew Pope obeyed his master, established himself in Avignon, and the Kingto all intents and purposes had taken the Pontificate captive and lostno time in using it for his own ends against the Empire, his hereditaryfoe. Such, in a few words, is the history of that memorable transaction;and but for the previous quarrels of Colonna, Caetani and Orsini, itcould never have taken place. The Orsini repented bitterly of what theyhad done, for one of Clement the Fifth's first acts was to 'annulaltogether all sentences whatsoever pronounced against the Colonna. '

But the Pope being gone, the Barons had Rome in their power and used itfor a battlefield. Four years later, we find in Villani the first recordof a skirmish fought between Orsini and Colonna. In the month ofOctober, 1309, says the chronicler, certain of the Orsini and of theColonna met outside the walls of Rome with their followers, to thenumber of four hundred horse, and fought together, and the Colonna won;and there died the Count of Anguillara, and six of the Orsini weretaken, and Messer Riccardo degli Annibaleschi who was in their company. 

Three years afterwards, Henry of Luxemburg alternately feasted andfought his way to Rome to be crowned Emperor in spite of Philip theFair, the Tuscan league and Robert, King of Naples, who sent a thousandhorsemen out of the south to hinder the coronation. In a day Rome wasdivided into two great camps. Colonna held for the Emperor the Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore, the Colosseum, the Torre delle Milizie, --the bricktower on the lower part of the modern Via Nazionale, --the Pantheon, asan advanced post in one direction, and Santa Sabina, a church that wasalmost a fortress, on the south, by the Tiber, --a chain of fortresseswhich would be formidable in any modern revolution. Against Henry, however, the Orsini held the Vatican and Saint Peter's, the Castle ofSant' Angelo and all Trastevere, their fortresses in the Region ofPonte, and, moreover, the Capitol itself. The parties were well matched, for, though Henry entered Rome on the seventh of May, the strugglelasted till the twenty-ninth of June. 

Those who have seen revolutions can guess at the desperate fighting inthe barricaded streets, and at the well-guarded bridges from one end ofthe city to the other. Backwards and forwards the battle raged for daysand weeks, by day and night, with small time for rest and refreshment. Forward rode the Colonna, the stolid Germans, Henry himself, the eagleof the Empire waving in the dim streets beside the flag that displayedthe simple column in a plain field. It is not hard to hear and see itall again--the clanging gallop of armoured knights, princes, nobles andbishops, with visors down, and long swords and maces in their hands, thehigh, fierce cries of the light-armed footmen, the bowmen and theslingers, the roar of the rabble rout behind, the shrill voices of womenat upper windows, peering down for the face of brother, husband, orlover in the dashing press below, --the dust, the heat, the fierce Junesunshine blazing on broad steel, and the deep, black shadows putting outall light as the bands rush past. Then, on a sudden, the answering shoutof the Orsini, the standard of the Bear, the Bourbon lilies of Anjou, the scarlet and white colours of the Guelph house, the great blackhorses, and the dark mail--the enemies surging together in the streetlike swift rivers of loose iron meeting in a stone channel, with arending crash and the quick hammering of steel raining desperate blowson steel--horses rearing their height, footmen crushed, knights reelingin the saddle, sparks flying, steel-clad arms and long swords whirlingin great circles through the air. Foremost of all in fight the Bishop ofLiège, his purple mantle flying back from his corselet, trampling downeverything, sworn to win the barricade or die, riding at it like amadman, forcing his horse up to it over the heaps of quivering bodiesthat made a causeway, leaping it alone at last, like a demon in air, andstanding in the thick of the Orsini, slaying to right and left. 

In an instant they had him down and bound and prisoner, one man againsta thousand; and they fastened him behind a man-at-arms, on the crupper, to take him into Sant' Angelo alive. But a soldier, whose brother he hadslain a moment earlier, followed stealthily on foot and sought the jointin the back of the armour, and ran in his pike quickly, and killedhim--'whereof, ' says the chronicle, 'was great pity, for the Bishop wasa man of high courage and authority. ' But on the other side of thebarricade, those who had followed him so far, and lost him, felt theirhearts sink, for not one of them could do what he had done; and afterthat, though they fought a whole month longer, they had but little hopeof ever getting to the Vatican. So the Colonna took Henry up to theLateran, where they were masters, and he was crowned there by threecardinals in the Pope's stead, while the Orsini remained grimlyintrenched in their own quarter, and each party held its own, even afterHenry had prudently retired to Tivoli, in the hills. 

[Illustration: ISLAND IN THE TIBER]

At last the great houses made a truce and a compromise, by which theyattempted to govern Rome jointly, and chose Sciarra--the same who hadtaken Pope Boniface prisoner in Anagni--and Matteo Orsini of MonteGiordano, to be Senators together; and there was peace between them fora time, in the year in which Rienzi was born. But in that very year, asthough foreshadowing his destiny, the rabble of Rome rose up, and chosea dictator; and somehow, by surprise or treachery, he got possession ofthe Barons' chief fortresses, and of Sant' Angelo, and set up thestandard of terror against the nobles. In a few days he sacked andburned their strongholds, and the high and mighty lords who had made thereigning Pope, and had fought to an issue for the Crown of the HolyRoman Empire, were conquered, humiliated and imprisoned by an upstartplebeian of Trastevere. The portcullis of Monte Giordano was lifted, andthe mysterious gates were thrown wide to the curiosity of a populacedrunk with victory; Giovanni degli Stefaneschi issued edicts ofsovereign power from the sacred precincts of the Capitol; and thevagabond thieves of Rome feasted in the lordly halls of the Colonnapalace. But though the tribune and the people could seize Rome, outnumbering the nobles as ten to one, they had neither the means northe organization to besiege the fortified towns of the great houses, which hemmed in the city and the Campagna on every side. Thither thenobles retired to recruit fresh armies among their retainers, to forgenew swords in their own smithies, and to concert new plans forrecovering their ancient domination; and thence they returned in theirstrength, from their towers and their towns and fortresses, fromPalestrina and Subiaco, Genazzano, San Vito and Paliano on the south, and from Bracciano and Galera and Anguillara, and all the Orsini castleson the north, to teach the people of Rome the great truth of those days, that 'aristocracy' meant not the careless supremacy of the nobly born, but the power of the strongest hands and the coolest heads to take andhold. Back came Colonna and Orsini, and the people, who a few monthsearlier had acclaimed their dictator in a fit of justifiable ill-temperagainst their masters, opened the gates for the nobles again, and no manlifted a hand to help Giovanni degli Stefaneschi, when the men-at-armsbound him and dragged him off to prison. Strange to say, no furthervengeance was taken upon him, and for once in their history, the noblesshed no blood in revenge for a mortal injury. 

No man could count the tragedies that swept over the Region of Pontefrom the first outbreak of war between the Orsini and the Colonna, tillPaolo Giordano Orsini, the last of the elder branch, breathed out hislife in exile under the ban of Sixtus the Fifth, three hundred yearslater. There was no end of them till then, and there was littleinterruption of them while they lasted; there is no stone left standingfrom those days in that great quarter that may not have been splashedwith their fierce blood, nor is there, perhaps, a church or chapelwithin their old holding into which an Orsini has not been borne dead ordying from some deadly fight. Even today it is gloomy, and the broadmodern street, which swept down a straight harvest of memories throughthe quarter to the very Bridge of Sant' Angelo, has left the mediævalshadows on each side as dark as ever. Of the three parts of the city, which still recall the Middle Age most vividly, namely, theneighbourhood of San Pietro in Vincoli, in the first Region, the by-waysof Trastevere and the Region of Ponte, the latter is by far the mostinteresting. It was the abode of the Orsini; it was also the chief placeof business for the bankers and money-changers who congregated thereunder the comparatively secure protection of the Guelph lords; and itwas the quarter of prisons, of tortures, and of executions both secretand public. The names of the streets had terrible meaning: there was theVicolo della Corda, and the Corda was the rope by which criminals werehoisted twenty feet in the air, and allowed to drop till their toes werejust above the ground; there was the Piazza della Berlina Vecchia, theplace of the Old Pillory; there was a little church known as the 'Churchof the Gallows'; and there was a lane ominously called Vicolo delloMastro; the Mastro was the Master of judicial executions, in otherwords, the Executioner himself. Before the Castle of Sant' Angelo stoodthe permanent gallows, rarely long unoccupied, and from an upper windowof the dark Torre di Nona, on the hither side of the bridge, a rope hungswinging slowly in the wind, sometimes with a human body at the end ofit, sometimes without. It was the place, and that was the manner, ofexecutions that took place in the night. In Via di Monserrato stood theold fortress of the Savelli, long ago converted into a prison, andcalled the Corte Savella, the most terrible of all Roman dungeons forthe horror of damp darkness, for ever associated with Beatrice Cenci'strial and death. Through those very streets she was taken in the cart tothe little open space before the bridge, where she laid down her lifeupon the scaffold three hundred years ago, and left her story ofoffended innocence, of revenge and of expiation, which will not beforgotten while Rome is remembered. 

Beatrice Cenci's story has been often told, but nowhere more clearly andjustly than in Shelley's famous letter, written to explain his play. There are several manuscript accounts of the last scene at the PonteSant' Angelo, and I myself have lately read one, written by acontemporary and not elsewhere mentioned, but differing only from therest in the horrible realism with which the picture is presented. Thetruth is plain enough; the unspeakable crimes of Francesco Cenci, hismore than inhuman cruelty to his children and his wives, his monstrouslust and devilish nature, outdo anything to be found in any history ofthe world, not excepting the private lives of Tiberius, Nero, orCommodus. His daughter and his second wife killed him in his sleep. Hisdeath was merciful and swift, in an age when far less crimes werevisited with tortures at the very name of which we shudder. They weredriven to absolute desperation, and the world has forgiven them theirone quick blow, struck for freedom, for woman's honour and for lifeitself in the dim castle of Petrella. Tormented with rack and cord theyall confessed the deed, save Beatrice, whom no bodily pain could move;and if Paolo Santacroce had not murdered his mother for her money beforetheir death was determined, Clement the Eighth would have pardoned them. But the times were evil, an example was called for, Santacroce hadescaped to Brescia, and the Pope's heart was hardened against the Cenci. 

[Illustration: BRIDGE OF SANT' ANGELO]

They died bravely, there at the head of the bridge, in the calm Maymorning, in the midst of a vast and restless crowd, among whom more thanone person was killed by accident, as by the falling of a pot of flowersfrom a high window, and by the breaking down of a balcony over a shop, where too many had crowded in to see. The old house opposite looked downupon the scene, and the people watched Beatrice Cenci die from thosesame arched windows. Above the sea of faces, high on the woodenscaffold, rises the tall figure of a lovely girl, her hair gleaming inthe sunshine like threads of dazzling gold, her marvellous blue eyesturned up to Heaven, her fresh young dimpled face not pale with fear, her exquisite lips moving softly as she repeats the De Profundis of herlast appeal to God. Let the axe not fall. Let her stand there for everin the spotless purity that cost her life on earth and set her name forever among the high constellated stars of maidenly romance. 

Close by the bridge, just opposite the Torre di Nona, stood the 'LionInn, ' once kept by the beautiful Vanozza de Catanei, the mother ofRodrigo Borgia's children, of Cæsar, and Gandia, and Lucrezia, and theplace was her property still when she was nominally married to hersecond husband, Carlo Canale, the keeper of the prison across the way. In the changing vicissitudes of the city, the Torre di Nona made way forthe once famous Apollo Theatre, built upon the lower dungeons andfoundations, and Faust's demon companion rose to the stage out of thedepths that had heard the groans of tortured criminals; the theatreitself disappeared a few years ago in the works for improving theTiber's banks, and a name is all that remains of a fact that made mentremble. In the late destruction, the old houses opposite were notaltogether pulled down, but were sliced, as it were, through their roofsand rooms, at a safe angle; and there, no doubt, are still standingportions of Vanozza's inn, while far below, the cellars where she kepther wine free of excise, by papal privilege, are still as cool andsilent as ever. 

Not far beyond her hostelry stands another Inn, famous from early daysand still open to such travellers as deign to accept its poorhospitality. It is an inn for the people now, for wine carters, and thebetter sort of hill peasants; it was once the best and most fashionablein Rome, and there the great Montaigne once dwelt, and is believed tohave written at least a part of his famous Essay on Vanity. It is theAlbergo dell' Orso, the 'Bear Inn, ' and perhaps it is not a coincidencethat Vanozza's sign of the Lion should have faced the approach to theLeonine City beyond the Tiber, and that the sign of the Bear, 'TheOrsini Arms, ' as an English innkeeper would christen it, should havebeen the principal resort of the kind in a quarter which wasthree-fourths the property and altogether the possession of the greathouse that overshadowed it, from Monte Giordano on the one side, andfrom Pompey's Theatre on the other. 

The temporary fall of the Orsini at the end of the sixteenth centurycame about by one of the most extraordinary concatenations of events tobe found in the chronicles. The story has filled more than one volumeand is nevertheless very far from complete; nor is it possible, sincethe destruction of the Orsini archives, to reconstruct it with absoluteaccuracy. Briefly told, it is this. 

Felice Peretti, monk and Cardinal of Montalto, and still nominally oneof the so-called 'poor cardinals' who received from the Pope a dailyallowance known as 'the Dish, ' had nevertheless accumulated a good dealof property before he became Pope under the name of Sixtus the Fifth, and had brought some of his relatives to Rome. Among these was his wellbeloved nephew, Francesco Peretti, for whom he naturally sought anadvantageous marriage. There was at that time in Rome a notary, namedAccoramboni, a native of the Marches of Ancona and a man of some wealthand of good repute. He had one daughter, Vittoria, a girl of excessivevanity, as ambitious as she was vain and as singularly beautiful as shewas ambitious. But she was also clever in a remarkable degree, and seemsto have had no difficulty in hiding her bad qualities. Francesco Perettifell in love with her, the Cardinal approved the match, though he was aman not easily deceived, and the two were married and settled in theVilla Negroni, which the Cardinal had built near the Baths ofDiocletian. Having attained her first object, Vittoria took less painsto play the saint, and began to dress with unbecoming magnificence andto live on a very extravagant scale. Her name became a byword in Romeand her lovely face was one of the city's sights. The Cardinal, devotedly attached to his nephew, disapproved of the latter's young wifeand regretted the many gifts he had bestowed upon her. Like most clevermen, too, he was more than reasonably angry at having been deceived inhis judgment of a girl's character. So far, there is nothing notcommonplace about the tale. 

At that time Paolo Giordano Orsini, the head of the house, Duke ofBracciano and lord of a hundred domains, was one of the greatestpersonages in Italy. No longer young and already enormously fat, he wasmarried to Isabella de' Medici, the daughter of Cosimo, reigning inFlorence. She was a beautiful and evil woman, and those who haveendeavoured to make a martyr of her forget the nameless doings of heryouth. Giordano was weak and extravagant, and paid little attention tohis wife. She consoled herself with his kinsman, the young and handsomeTroilo Orsini, who was as constantly at her side as an official'cavalier servente' of later days. But the fat Giordano, indolent andpleasure seeking, saw nothing. Nor is there anything much more thanvulgar and commonplace in all this. 

Paolo Giordano meets Vittoria Peretti in Rome, and the two commonplacesbegin the tragedy. On his part, love at first sight; ridiculous, atfirst, when one thinks of his vast bulk and advancing years, terrible, by and by, as the hereditary passions of his fierce race could be, backed by the almost boundless power which a great Italian lordpossessed in his surroundings. Vittoria, tired of her dull and virtuoushusband and of the lectures and parsimony of his uncle, and not dreamingthat the latter was soon to be Pope, saw herself in a dream of glorycontrolling every mood and action of the greatest noble in the land. Andshe met Giordano again and again, and he pleaded and implored, and wasalternately ridiculous and almost pathetic in his hopeless passion forthe notary's daughter. But she had no thought of yielding to hisentreaties. She would have marriage, or nothing. Neither words nor giftscould move her. 

She had a husband, he had a wife; and she demanded that he should marryher, and was grimly silent as to the means. Until she was married to himhe should not so much as touch the tips of her jewelled fingers, norhave a lock of her hair to wear in his bosom. He was blindly in love, and he was Paolo Giordano Orsini. It was not likely that he shouldhesitate. He who had seen nothing of his wife's doings, suddenly saw hiskinsman, Troilo, and Isabella was doomed. Troilo fled to Paris, andOrsini took Isabella from Bracciano to the lonely castle of Galera. There he told her his mind and strangled her, as was his right, beingfeudal lord and master with powers of life and death. Then fromBracciano he sent messengers to kill Francesco Peretti. One of them hada slight acquaintance with the Cardinal's nephew. 

They came to the Villa Negroni by night, and called him out, saying thathis best friend was in need of him, and was waiting for him at MonteCavallo. He hesitated, for it was very late. They had torches andweapons, and would protect him, they said. Still he wavered. ThenVittoria, his wife, scoffed at him, and called him coward, and thrusthim out to die; for she knew. The men walked beside him with theirtorches, talking as they went. They passed the deserted land in theBaths of Diocletian, and turned at Saint Bernard's Church to go towardsthe Quirinal. Then they put out the lights and killed him quickly in thedark. 

His body lay there all night, and when it was told the next day thatMontalto's nephew had been murdered, the two men said that they had lefthim at Monte Cavallo and that he must have been killed as he came homealone. The Cardinal buried him without a word, and though he guessed thetruth he asked neither vengeance nor justice of the Pope. 

[Illustration: VILLA NEGRONI

From a print of the last century]

Gregory the Thirteenth guessed it, too, and when Orsini would havemarried Vittoria, the Pope forbade the banns and interdicted their unionfor ever. That much he dared to do against the greatest peer in thecountry. 

To this, Orsini replied by plighting his faith to Vittoria with a ring, in the presence of a serving woman, an irregular ceremony which heafterwards described as a marriage, and he thereupon took his bride andher mother under his protection. The Pope retorted by a determinedeffort to arrest the murderers of Francesco; the Bargello and his menwent in the evening to the Orsini palace at Pompey's Theatre anddemanded that Giordano should give up the criminals; the porter repliedthat the Duke was asleep; the Orsini men-at-arms lunged out with theirweapons, looked on during the interview, and considering the presence ofthe Bargello derogatory to their master, drove him away, killing one ofhis men and wounding several others. Thereupon Pope Gregory forbade theDuke from seeing Vittoria or communicating with her by messengers, onpain of a fine of ten thousand gold ducats, an order to which Orsiniwould have paid no attention but which Vittoria was too prudent todisregard, and she retired to her brother's house, leaving the Duke in astate of frenzied rage that threatened insanity. Then the Pope seemed towaver again, and then again learning that the lovers saw each otherconstantly in spite of his commands, he suddenly had Vittoria seized andimprisoned in Sant' Angelo. It is impossible to follow the long strugglethat ensued. It lasted four years, at the end of which time the Duke andVittoria were living at Bracciano, where the Orsini was absolute lordand master and beyond the jurisdiction of the Church--two hours' ridefrom the gates of Rome. But no further formality of marriage had takenplace and Vittoria was not satisfied. Then Gregory the Thirteenth died. 

During the vacancy of the Holy See, all interdictions of the late Popewere suspended. Instantly Giordano determined to be married, and came toRome with Vittoria. They believed that the Conclave would last some timeand were making their arrangements without haste, living in Pompey'sTheatre, when a messenger brought word that Cardinal Montalto wouldsurely be elected Pope within a few hours. In the fortress is the smallfamily church of Santa Maria di Grotta Pinta. The Duke sent down word tohis chaplain that the latter must marry him at once. That night aretainer of the house had been found murdered at the gate; his body layon a trestle bier before the altar of the chapel when the Duke's messagecame; the Duke himself and Vittoria were already in the little windingstair that leads down from the apartments; there was not a moment to belost; the frightened chaplain and the messenger hurriedly raised amarble slab which closed an unused vault, dropped the murdered man'sbody into the chasm, and had scarcely replaced the stone when the ducalpair entered the church. The priest married them before the altar infear and trembling, and when they were gone entered the whole story inthe little register in the sacristy. The leaf is extant. 

Within a few hours, Montalto was Pope, the humble cardinal was changedin a moment to the despotic pontiff, whose nephew's murder wasunavenged; instead of the vacillating Gregory, Orsini had to face theterrible Sixtus, and his defeat and exile were foregone conclusions. Hecould no longer hold his own and he took refuge in the States of Venice, where his kinsman, Ludovico, was a fortunate general. He made a willwhich divided his personal estate between Vittoria and his son, Virginio, greatly to the woman's advantage; and overcome by theinfirmity of his monstrous size, spent by the terrible passions of hislater years, and broken in heart by an edict of exile which he could nolonger defy, he died at Salò within seven months of his great enemy'scoronation, in the forty-ninth year of his age. 

Vittoria retired to Padua, and the authorities declared the inheritancevalid, but Ludovico Orsini's long standing hatred of her was inflamed tomadness by the conditions of the will. Six weeks after the Duke's death, at evening, Vittoria was in her chamber; her boy brother, Flaminio, wassinging a Miserere to his lute by the fire in the great hall. A sound ofquick feet, the glare of torches, and Ludovico's masked men filled thehouse. Vittoria died bravely with one deep stab in her heart. The boy, Flaminio, was torn to pieces with seventy-four wounds. 

But Venice would permit no such outrageous deeds. Ludovico was besiegedin his house, by horse and foot and artillery, and was taken alive withmany of his men and swiftly conveyed to Venice; and a week had notpassed from the day of the murder before he was strangled by theBargello in the latter's own room, with the red silk cord by which itwas a noble's privilege to die. The first one broke, and they had totake another, but Ludovico Orsini did not wince. An hour later his bodywas borne out with forty torches, in solemn procession, to lie in statein Saint Mark's Church. His men were done to death with hideous torturesin the public square. So ended the story of Vittoria Accoramboni. 

[Illustration]

REGION VI PARIONE

The principal point of this Region is Piazza Navona, which exactlycoincides with Domitian's race-course, and the Region consists of anirregular triangle of which the huge square is at the northern angle, the western one being the Piazza della Chiesa Nuova and the southernextremity the theatre of Pompey, so often referred to in these pages asone of the Orsini's strongholds and containing the little church inwhich Paolo Giordano married Vittoria Accoramboni, close to the Campodei Fiori which was the place of public executions by fire. The nameParione is said to be derived from the Latin 'Paries, ' a wall, appliedto a massive remnant of ancient masonry which once stood somewhere inthe Via di Parione. It matters little; nor can we find any satisfactoryexplanation of the gryphon which serves as a device for the wholequarter, included during the Middle Age, with Ponte and Regola, in thelarge portion of the city dominated by the Orsini. 

The Befana, which is a corruption of Epifania, the Feast of theEpiphany, is and always has been the season of giving presents in Rome, corresponding with our Christmas; and the Befana is personated as agruff old woman who brings gifts to little children after the manner ofour Saint Nicholas. But in the minds of Romans, from earliest childhood, the name is associated with the night fair, opened on the eve of theEpiphany in Piazza Navona, and which was certainly one of the mostextraordinary popular festivals ever invented to amuse children and makechildren of grown people, a sort of foreshadowing of Carnival, buthaving at the same time a flavour and a colour of its own, unlikeanything else in the world. 

During the days after Christmas a regular line of booths is erected, encircling the whole circus-shaped space. It is a peculiarity of Romanfestivals that all the material for adornment is kept together from yearto year, ready for use at a moment's notice, and when one sees theenormous amount of lumber required for the Carnival, for the fireworkson the Pincio, or for the Befana, one cannot help wondering where it isall kept. From year to year it lies somewhere, in those vastsubterranean places and great empty houses used for that especialpurpose, of which only Romans guess the extent. When needed, it issuddenly produced without confusion, marked and numbered, ready to beput together and regilt or repainted, or hung with the acres ofdraperies which Latins know so well how to display in everythingapproaching to public pageantry. 

At dark, on the Eve of the Epiphany, the Befana begins. The hundreds ofbooths are choked with toys and gleam with thousands of little lights, the open spaces are thronged by a moving crowd, the air splits with theinfernal din of ten thousand whistles and tin trumpets. Noise is thefirst consideration for a successful befana, noise of any kind, shrill, gruff, high, low--any sort of noise; and the first purchase of everyonewho comes must be a tin horn, a pipe, or one of those grotesque littlefigures of painted earthenware, representing some characteristic type ofRoman life and having a whistle attached to it, so cleverly modelled inthe clay as to produce the most hideous noises without even the additionof a wooden plug. But anything will do. On a memorable night nearlythirty years ago, the whole cornopean stop of an organ was sold in thefair, amounting to seventy or eighty pipes with their reeds. Theinstrument in the old English Protestant Church outside of Porta delPopolo had been improved, and the organist, who was a practicalAnglo-Saxon, conceived the original and economical idea of selling theuseless pipes at the night fair for the benefit of the church. Thebraying of the high, cracked reeds was frightful and never to beforgotten. 

Round and round the square, three generations of families, children, parents and even grandparents, move in a regular stream, closer andcloser towards midnight and supper-time; nor is the place deserted tillthree o'clock in the morning. Toys everywhere, original with anattractive ugliness, nine-tenths of them made of earthenware dashed witha kind of bright and harmless paint of which every Roman child remembersthe taste for life; and old and young and middle-aged all blow theirwhistles and horns with solemnly ridiculous pertinacity, pausing only tomake some little purchase at the booths, or to exchange a greeting withpassing friends, followed by an especially vigorous burst of noise asthe whistles are brought close to each other's ears, and the party thatcan make the more atrocious din drives the other half deafened from thefield. And the old women who help to keep the booths sit warming theirskinny hands over earthen pots of coals and looking on without a smileon their Sibylline faces, while their sons and daughters sell clayhunchbacks and little old women of clay, the counterparts of theirmothers, to the passing customers. Thousands upon thousands of peoplethrong the place, and it is warm with the presence of so much humanity, even under the clear winter sky. And there is no confusion, noaccident, no trouble, there are no drunken men and no pickpockets. ButRomans are not like other people. 

In a few days all is cleared away again, and Bernini's great fountainfaces Borromini's big Church of Saint Agnes, in the silence; and theofficious guide tells the credulous foreigner how the figure of the Nilein the group is veiling his head to hide the sight of the hideousarchitecture, and how the face of the Danube expresses the River God'sterror lest the tower should fall upon him; and how the architectretorted upon the sculptor by placing Saint Agnes on the summit of thechurch, in the act of reassuring the Romans as to the safety of hershrine; and again, how Bernini's enemies said that the obelisk of thefountain was tottering, till he came alone on foot and tied four lengthsof twine to the four corners of the pedestal, and fastened the stringsto the nearest houses, in derision, and went away laughing. It was atthat time that he modelled four grinning masks for the corners of hissedan-chair, so that they seemed to be making scornful grimaces at hisdetractors as he was carried along. He could afford to laugh. He hadbeen the favourite of Urban the Eighth who, when Cardinal Barberini, hadactually held the looking-glass by the aid of which the handsome youngsculptor modelled his own portrait in the figure of David with thesling, now in the Museum of Villa Borghese. After a brief period ofdisgrace under the next reign, brought about by the sharpness of hisNeapolitan tongue, Bernini was restored to the favour of Innocent theTenth, the Pamfili Pope, to please whose economical tastes he executedthe fountain in Piazza Navona, after a design greatly reduced in extentas well as in beauty, compared with the first he had sketched. But anaccount of Bernini would lead far and profit little; the catalogue ofhis works would fill a small volume; and after all, he was successfulonly in an age when art had fallen low. In place of Michelangelo'suniversal genius, Bernini possessed a born Neapolitan's universalfacility. He could do something of everything, circumstances gave himenormous opportunities, and there were few things which he did notattempt, from classic sculpture to the final architecture of SaintPeter's and the fortifications of Sant' Angelo. He was afflicted by thehereditary giantism of the Latins, and was often moved by motives ofpetty spite against his inferior rival, Borromini. His best work is thestatue of Saint Teresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria, a figure which hasrecently excited the ecstatic admiration of a French critic, expressedin language that betrays at once the fault of the conception, the tasteof the age in which Bernini lived, and the unhealthy nature of thesculptor's prolific talent. Only the seventeenth century could haverepresented such a disquieting fusion of the sensuous and thespiritual, and it was reserved for the decadence of our own days to findwords that could describe it. Bernini has been praised as theMichelangelo of his day, but no one has yet been bold enough, or foolishenough, to call Michelangelo the Bernini of the sixteenth century. Barely sixty years elapsed between the death of the one and birth of theother, and the space of a single lifetime separates the zenith of theRenascence from the nadir of Barocco art. 

[Illustration: PIAZZA NAVONA]

The names of Bernini and of Piazza Navona recall Innocent the Tenth, whobuilt the palace beside the Church of Saint Agnes, his meannesses, hisnepotism, his weakness, and his miserable end; how his relativesstripped him of all they could lay hands on, and how at the last, whenhe died in the only shirt he possessed, covered by a single raggedblanket, his sister-in-law, Olimpia Maldachini, dragged from beneath hispallet bed the two small chests of money which he had succeeded inconcealing to the end. A brass candlestick with a single burning taperstood beside him in his last moments, and before he was quite dead, aservant stole it and put a wooden one in its place. When he was dead atthe Quirinal, his body was carried to Saint Peter's in a bier so shortthat the poor Pope's feet stuck out over the end, and three days later, no one could be found to pay for the burial. Olimpia declared that shewas a starving widow and could do nothing; the corpse was thrust into aplace where the masons of the Vatican kept their tools, and one of theworkmen, out of charity or superstition, lit a tallow candle beside it. In the end, the maggiordomo paid for a deal coffin, and Monsignor Segnigave five scudi--an English pound--to have the body taken away andburied. It was slung between two mules and taken by night to the Churchof Saint Agnes, where in the changing course of human and domesticevents, it ultimately got an expensive monument in the worst possibletaste. The learned and sometimes witty Baracconi, who has set down thestory, notes the fact that Leo the Tenth, Pius the Fourth and Gregorythe Sixteenth fared little better in their obsequies, and he commentsupon the democratic spirit of a city in which such things can happen. 

Close to the Piazza Navona stands the famous mutilated group, known asPasquino, of which the mere name conveys a better idea of the Romancharacter than volumes of description, for it was here that thepasquinades were published, by affixing them to a pedestal at the cornerof the Palazzo Braschi. And one of Pasquino's bitterest jests wasdirected against Olimpia Maldachini. Her name was cut in two, to make agood Latin pun: 'Olim pia, nunc impia, ' 'once pious, now impious, ' or'Olimpia, now impious, ' as one chose to join or separate the syllables. Whole books have been filled with the short and pithy imaginaryconversations between Marforio, the statue of a river god which used tostand in the Monti, and Pasquino, beneath whom the Roman children usedto be told that the book of all wisdom was buried for ever. 

In the Region of Parione stands the famous Cancelleria, a masterpiece ofBramante's architecture, celebrated for many events in the later historyof Rome, and successively the princely residence of several cardinals, chief of whom was that strong Pompeo Colonna, the ally of the EmperorCharles the Fifth, who was responsible for the sacking of Rome by theConstable of Bourbon, who ultimately ruined the Holy League, and imposedhis terrible terms of peace upon Clement the Seventh, a prisoner inSant' Angelo. Considering the devastation and the horrors which were theresult of that contest, and its importance in Rome's history, it isworth while to tell the story again. Connected with it was the lastgreat struggle between Orsini and Colonna, Orsini, as usual, siding forthe Pope, and therefore for the Holy League, and Colonna for theEmperor. 

Charles the Fifth had vanquished Francis the First at Pavia, in the year1525, and had taken the French King prisoner. A year later the HolyLeague was formed, between Pope Clement the Seventh, the King of France, the Republics of Venice and Florence, and Francesco Sforza, Duke ofMilan. Its object was to fight the Emperor, to sustain Sforza, and toseize the Kingdom of Naples by force. Immediately upon the proclamationof the League, the Emperor's ambassadors left Rome, the Colonna retiredto their strongholds, and the Emperor made preparations to send Charles, Duke of Bourbon, the disgraced relative of King Francis, to storm Romeand reduce the imprisoned Pope to submission. The latter's first andnearest source of fear lay in the Colonna, who held the fortresses andpasses between Rome and the Neapolitan frontier, and his first instinctwas to attack them with the help of the Orsini. But neither side wasready for the fight, and the timid Pontiff eagerly accepted the promiseof peace made by the Colonna in order to gain time, and he dismissed theforces he had hastily raised against them. 

[Illustration: PALAZZO MASSIMO ALLE COLONNA]

[Illustration: PONTE SISTO

From a print of the last century]

They, in the mean time, treated with Moncada, Regent of Naples for theEmperor, and at once seized Anagni, put several thousand men in thefield, marched upon Rome with incredible speed, seized three gates inthe night, and entered the city in triumph on the following morning. ThePope and the Orsini, completely taken by surprise, offered little or noresistance. According to some writers, it was Pompeo Colonna's daringplan to murder the Pope, force his own election to the Pontificate byarms, destroy the Orsini, and open Rome to Charles the Fifth; and whenthe Colonna advanced on the same day, by Ponte Sisto, to Trastevere, andthreatened to attack Saint Peter's and the Vatican, Clement the Seventh, remembering Sciarra and Pope Boniface, was on the point of imitatingthe latter and arraying himself in his Pontifical robes to await hisenemy with such dignity as he could command. But the remonstrances ofthe more prudent cardinals prevailed, and about noon they conveyed himsafely to Sant' Angelo by the secret covered passage, leaving theColonna to sack Trastevere and even Saint Peter's itself, though theydared not come too near to Sant' Angelo for fear of its cannons. Thetumult over at last, Don Ugo de Moncada, in the Emperor's name, tookpossession of the Pope's two nephews as hostages for his own safety, entered Sant' Angelo under a truce, and stated the Emperor's conditionsof peace. These were, to all intents and purposes, that the Pope shouldwithdraw his troops, wherever he had any, and that the Emperor should befree to advance wherever he pleased, except through the Papal States, that the Pope should give hostages for his good faith, and that heshould grant a free pardon to all the Colonna, who vaguely agreed towithdraw their forces into the Kingdom of Naples. To this humiliatingpeace, or armistice, for it was nothing more, the Pope was forced by theprospect of starvation, and he would even have agreed to sail toBarcelona in order to confer with the Emperor; but from this he wasultimately dissuaded by Henry the Eighth of England and the King ofFrance, 'who sent him certain sums of money and promised him theirsupport. ' The consequence was that he broke the truce as soon as hedared, deprived the Cardinal of his hat, and, with the help of theOrsini, attacked the Colonna by surprise on their estates, giving ordersto burn their castles and raze their fortresses to the ground. Fourvillages were burned before the surprised party could recover itself;but with some assistance from the imperial troops they were soon able toface their enemies on equal terms, and the little war raged fiercelyduring several months, with varying success and all possible cruelty onboth sides. 

Meanwhile Charles, Duke of Bourbon, known as the Constable, and more orless in the pay of the Emperor, had gathered an army in Lombardy. Hisforce consisted of the most atrocious ruffians of the time, --LutheranGermans, superstitious Spaniards, revolutionary Italians, and such othernondescripts as would join his standard, --all fellows who had in realityneither country nor conscience, and were ready to serve any soldier offortune who promised them plunder and license. The predominating elementwas Spanish, but there was not much to choose among them all so far astheir instincts were concerned. Charles was penniless, as usual; heoffered his horde of cutthroats the rich spoils of Tuscany and Rome, they swore to follow him to death and perdition, and he began hissouthward march. The Emperor looked on with an approving eye, and thePope was overcome by abject terror. In the vain hope of saving himselfand the city he concluded a truce with the Viceroy of Naples, agreeingto pay sixty thousand ducats, to give back everything taken from theColonna, and to restore Pompeo to the honours of the cardinalate. Theconditions of the armistice were forthwith carried out, by thedisbanding of the Pope's hired soldiers and the payment of theindemnity, and Clement the Seventh enjoyed during a few weeks thepleasant illusion of fancied safety. 

He awoke from the dream, in horror and fear, to find that the Constableconsidered himself in no way bound by a peace concluded with theEmperor's Viceroy, and was advancing rapidly upon Rome, ravaging andburning everything in his way. Hasty preparations for defence were made;a certain Renzo da Ceri armed such men as he could enlist with suchweapons as he could find, and sent out a little force of grooms andartificers to face the Constable's ruthless Spaniards and the fierceGermans of his companion freebooter, George of Fransperg, or Franzberg, who carried about a silken cord by which he swore to strangle the Popewith his own hands. The enemy reached the walls of Rome on the night ofthe fifth of May; devastation and famine lay behind them in their track, the plunder of the Church was behind the walls, and far from northwardcame rumours of the army of the League on its way to cut off theirretreat. They resolved to win the spoil or die, and at dawn theConstable, clad in a white cloak, led the assault and set up the firstscaling ladder, close to the Porta San Spirito. In the very act a bulletstruck him in a vital part and he fell headlong to the earth. BenvenutoCellini claimed the credit of the shot, but it is more than probablethat it sped from another hand, that of Bernardino Passeri; it matterslittle now, it mattered less then, as the infuriated Spaniards stormedthe walls in the face of Camillo Orsini's desperate and hopelessresistance, yelling 'Blood and the Bourbon, ' for a war-cry. 

Once more the wretched Pope fled along the secret corridor with hiscardinals, his prelates and his servants; for although he might yet haveescaped from the doomed city, messengers had brought word that CardinalPompeo Colonna had ten thousand men-at-arms in the Campagna, ready tocut off his flight, and he was condemned to be a terrified spectator ofRome's destruction from the summit of a fortress which he dared notsurrender and could hardly hope to defend. Seven thousand Romans wereslaughtered in the storming of the walls; the enemy gained allTrastevere at a blow and the sack began; the torrent of fury pouredacross Ponte Sisto into Rome itself, thousands upon thousands ofsteel-clad madmen, drunk with blood and mad with the glitter of gold, astorm of unimaginable terror. Cardinals, Princes and Ambassadors weredragged from their palaces, and when greedy hands had gathered up allthat could be taken away, fire consumed the rest, and the miserablecaptives were tortured into promising fabulous ransoms for life andlimb. Abbots, priors and heads of religious orders were treated withlike barbarity, and the few who escaped the clutches of the bloodthirstySpanish soldiers fell into the reeking hands of the brutal Germanadventurers. The enormous sum of six million ducats was gatheredtogether in value of gold and silver bullion and of precious things, andas much more was extorted as promised ransom from the gentlemen andchurchmen and merchants of Rome by the savage tortures of the lash, theiron boot and the rack. The churches were stripped of all consecratedvessels, the Sacred Wafers were scattered abroad by the CatholicSpaniards and trampled in the bloody ooze that filled the ways, theconvents were stormed by a rabble in arms and the nuns were distributedas booty among their fiendish captors, mothers and children wereslaughtered in the streets and drunken Spaniards played dice for thedaughters of honourable citizens. 

From the surrounding Campagna the Colonna entered the city in arms, orderly, silent and sober, and from their well-guarded fortresses theycontemplated the ruin they had brought upon Rome. Cardinal Pompeoinstalled himself in his palace of the Cancelleria in the Region ofParione, and gave shelter to such of his friends as might be useful tohim thereafter. In revenge upon John de' Medici, the Captain of theBlack Bands, whose assistance the Pope had invoked, the Cardinal causedthe Villa Medici on Monte Mario to be burned to the ground, and Clementthe Seventh watched the flames from the ramparts of Sant' Angelo. Onegood action is recorded of the savage churchman. He ransomed andprotected in his house the wife and the daughter of that GiorgioSantacroce who had murdered the Cardinal's father by night, when theCardinal himself was an infant in arms, more than forty years earlier;and he helped some of his friends to escape by a chimney from the roomin which they had been confined and tortured into promising a ransomthey could not pay. But beyond those few acts he did little to mitigatethe horrors of the month-long sack, and nothing to relieve the city fromthe yoke of its terrible captors. The Holy League sent a small force tothe Pope's assistance and it reached the gates of Rome; but theSpaniards were in possession of immense stores of ammunition andprovisions, they had more horses than they needed and more arms thanthey could bear; the forces of the League had traversed a country inwhich not a blade of grass had been left undevoured nor a measure ofcorn uneaten; and the avengers of the dead Constable, securely fortifiedwithin the walls, looked down with contempt upon an army alreadydecimated by sickness and starvation. 

At this juncture, Clement the Seventh resolved to abandon furtherresistance and sue for peace. The guns of Sant' Angelo had all but firedtheir last shot, and the supply of food was nearly exhausted, when thePope sent for Cardinal Colonna; the churchman consented to a parley, andthe man who had suffered confiscation and disgrace entered the castle asthe arbiter of destiny. He was received as the mediator of peace and abenefactor of humanity, and when he stated his terms they were notrefused. The Pope and the thirteen Cardinals who were with him were toremain prisoners until the payment of four hundred thousand ducats ofgold, after which they were to be conducted to Naples to await thefurther pleasure of the Emperor; the Colonna were to be absolutely andfreely pardoned for all they had done; in the hope of some subsequentassistance the Pope promised to make Cardinal Colonna the Legate of theMarches. As a hostage for the performance of these and other conditions, Cardinal Orsini was delivered over to his enemy, who conducted him ashis prisoner to the Castle of Grottaferrata, and the Colonna secretlyagreed to allow the Pope to go free from Sant' Angelo. On the night ofDecember the ninth, seven months after the storming of the city, thehead of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church fled from thecastle in the humble garb of a market gardener, and made good his escapeto Orvieto and to the protection of the Holy League. 

Meanwhile a pestilence had broken out in Rome, and the spectre of amysterious and mortal sickness distracted those who had survived theterrors of sword and flame. The Spanish and German soldiery either fellvictims to the plague or deserted in haste and fear; and though CardinalPompeo's peace contained no promise that the city should be evacuated, it was afterwards stated upon credible authority that, within two yearsfrom their coming, not one of the barbarous horde was left alive withinthe walls. When all was over the city was little more than a heap ofruins, but the Colonna had been victorious, and were sated with revenge. This, in brief, is the history of the storming and sacking of Rome whichtook place in the year 1527, at the highest development of theRenascence, in the youth of Benvenuto Cellini, when Michelangelo had notyet painted the Last Judgment, when Titian was just fifty years old, andwhen Raphael and Lionardo da Vinci were but lately dead; and thecontrast between the sublimity of art and the barbarity of human naturein that day is only paralleled in the annals of our own century, at oncethe bloodiest and the most civilized in the history of the world. 

The Cancelleria, wherein Pompeo Colonna sheltered the wife and daughterof his father's murderer, is remembered for some modern politicalevents: for the opening of the first representative parliament underPius the Ninth, in 1848, for the assassination of the Pope's minister, Pellegrino Rossi, on the steps of the entrance in the same year, and asthe place where the so-called Roman Republic was proclaimed in 1849. Butit is most of all interesting for the nobility of its proportions andthe simplicity of its architecture. It is undeniably, and almostundeniedly, the best building in Rome today, though that may not besaying much in a city which has been more exclusively the prey of theBarocco than any other. 

[Illustration: THE CANCELLERIA

From a print of the last century]

The Palace of the Massimo, once built to follow the curve of a narrowwinding street, but now facing the same great thoroughfare as theCancelleria, has something of the same quality, with a wholly differentcharacter. It is smaller and more gloomy, and its columns are almostblack with age; it was here, in 1455, that Pannartz and Schweinheim, twoof those nomadic German scholars who have not yet forgotten the road toItaly, established their printing-press in the house of Pietro de'Massimi, and here took place one of those many romantic tragedies whichdarkened the end of the sixteenth century. For a certain SignoreMassimo, in the year 1585, had been married and had eight sons, mostlygrown men, when he fell in love with a light-hearted lady of more witthan virtue, and announced that he would make her his wife, though hissons warned him that they would not bear the slight upon their mother'smemory. The old man, infatuated and beside himself with love, would notlisten to them, but published the banns, married the woman, and broughther home for his wife. 

One of the sons, the youngest, was too timid to join the rest; but onthe next morning the seven others went to the bridal apartment, andkilled their step-mother when their father was away. But he came backbefore she was quite dead, and he took the Crucifix from the wall by thebed and cursed his children. And the curse was fulfilled upon them. 

Parione is the heart of Mediæval Rome, the very centre of that blackcloud of mystery which hangs over the city of the Middle Age. A historymight be composed out of Pasquin's sayings, volumes have been writtenabout Cardinal Pompeo Colonna and the ruin he wrought, whole books havebeen filled with the life and teachings and miracles of Saint PhilipNeri, who belonged to this quarter, erected here his great oratory, andis believed to have recalled from the dead a youth of the house ofMassimo in that same gloomy palace. 

The story of Rome is a tale of murder and sudden death, varied, changing, never repeated in the same way; there is blood on everythreshold; a tragedy lies buried in every church and chapel; and againwe ask in vain wherein lies the magic of the city that has fed on terrorand grown old in carnage, the charm that draws men to her, the powerthat holds, the magic that enthralls men soul and body, as Lady Venuscast her spells upon Tannhäuser in her mountain of old. Yet none denyit, and as centuries roll on, the poets, the men of letters, themusicians, the artists of all ages, have come to her from far countriesand have dwelt here while they might, some for long years, some for thefew months they could spare; and all of them have left something, averse, a line, a sketch, a song that breathes the threefold mystery oflove, eternity and death. 

Index

A

Abruzzi, i. 159; ii. 230

Accoramboni, Flaminio, i. 296 Vittoria, i. 135, 148, 289-296, 297

Agrarian Law, i. 23

Agrippa, i. 90, 271; ii. 102 the Younger, ii. 103

Alaric, i. 252; ii. 297

Alba Longa, i. 3, 78, 130

Albergo dell' Orso, i. 288

Alberic, ii. 29

Albornoz, ii. 19, 20, 74

Aldobrandini, i. 209; ii. 149 Olimpia, i. 209

Alfonso, i. 185

Aliturius, ii. 103

Altieri, i. 226; ii. 45

Ammianus Marcellinus, i. 132, 133, 138

Amphitheatre, Flavian, i. 91, 179

Amulius, i. 3

Anacletus, ii. 295, 296, 304

Anagni, i. 161, 165, 307; ii. 4, 5

Ancus Martius, i. 4

Angelico, Beato, ii. 158, 169, 190-192, 195, 285

Anguillara, i. 278; ii. 138 Titta della, ii. 138, 139

Anio, the, i. 93 Novus, i. 144 Vetus, i. 144

Annibaleschi, Riccardo degli, i. 278

Antiochus, ii. 120

Antipope-- Anacletus, ii. 84 Boniface, ii. 28 Clement, i. 126 Gilbert, i. 127 John of Calabria, ii. 33-37

Antonelli, Cardinal, ii. 217, 223, 224

Antonina, i. 266

Antonines, the, i. 113, 191, 271

Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, i. 46, 96, 113, 114, 190, 191

Appian Way, i. 22, 94

Appius Claudius, i. 14, 29

Apulia, Duke of, i. 126, 127; ii. 77

Aqua Virgo, i. 155

Aqueduct of Claudius, i. 144

Arbiter, Petronius, i. 85

Arch of-- Arcadius, i. 192 Claudius, i. 155 Domitian, i. 191, 205 Gratian, i. 191 Marcus Aurelius, i. 96, 191, 205 Portugal, i. 205 Septimius Severus, ii. 93 Valens, i. 191

Archive House, ii. 75

Argiletum, the, i. 72

Ariosto, ii. 149, 174

Aristius, i. 70, 71

Arnold of Brescia, ii. 73, 76-89

Arnulf, ii. 41

Art, i. 87; ii 152 and morality, i. 260, 261; ii. 178, 179 religion, i. 260, 261 Barocco, i. 303, 316 Byzantine in Italy, ii. 155, 184, 185 development of taste in, ii. 198 factors in the progress of art, ii. 181 engraving, ii. 186 improved tools, ii. 181 individuality, i. 262; ii. 175-177 Greek influence on, i. 57-63 modes of expression of, ii. 181 fresco, ii. 181-183 oil painting, ii. 184-186 of the Renascence, i. 231, 262; ii. 154 phases of, in Italy, ii. 188 progress of, during the Middle Age, ii. 166, 180 transition from handicraft to, ii. 153

Artois, Count of, i. 161

Augustan Age, i. 57-77

Augustulus, i. 30, 47, 53; ii. 64

Augustus, i. 30, 43-48, 69, 82, 89, 90, 184, 219, 251, 252, 254, 270; ii. 64, 75, 95, 102, 291

Aurelian, i. 177, 179, 180; ii. 150

Avalos, Francesco, d', i. 174, 175

Aventine, the, i. 23, 76; ii. 10, 40, 85, 119-121, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 132, 302

Avignon, i. 167, 273, 277; ii. 6, 9

B

Bacchanalia, ii. 122

Bacchic worship, i. 76; ii. 120

Bajazet the Second, Sultan, i. 276

Baracconi, i. 104, 141, 178, 188, 252, 264, 274, 304; ii. 41, 45, 128, 130, 138, 323

Barberi, i. 202

Barberini, the, i. 157, 187, 226, 268, 301; ii. 7

Barbo, i. 202; ii. 45

Barcelona, i. 308

Bargello, the, i. 129, 293, 296; ii. 42

Basil and Constantine, ii. 33

Basilica (Pagan)-- Julia, i. 66, 71, 106; ii. 92

Basilicas (Christian) of-- Constantine, i. 90; ii. 292, 297 Liberius, i. 138 Philip and Saint James, i. 170 Saint John Lateran, i. 107, 112, 117, 278, 281 Santa Maria Maggiore, i. 107, 135, 139, 147, 148, 166, 208, 278; ii. 118 Santi Apostoli, i. 157, 170-172, 205, 241, 242; ii. 213 Sicininus, i. 134, 138

Baths, i. 91 of Agrippa, i. 271 of Caracalla, ii. 119 of Constantine, i. 144, 188 of Diocletian, i. 107, 129, 145-147, 149, 289, 292 of Novatus, i. 145 of Philippus, i. 145 of public, i. 144 of Severus Alexander, ii. 28 of Titus, i. 55, 107, 152

Befana, the, i. 298, 299, 300; ii. 25

Belisarius, i. 266, 267, 269

Benediction of 1846, the, i. 183

Benevento, Cola da, i. 219, 220

Bernard, ii. 77-80

Bernardi, Gianbattista, ii. 54

Bernini, i. 147, 301, 302, 303; ii. 24

Bibbiena, Cardinal, ii. 146, 285 Maria, ii. 146

Bismarck, ii. 224, 232, 236, 237

Boccaccio, i. 211, 213 Vineyard, the, i. 189

Bologna, i. 259; ii. 58

Borghese, the, i. 206, 226 Scipio, i. 187

Borgia, the, i. 209 Cæsar, i. 149, 151, 169, 213, 287; ii. 150, 171, 282, 283 Gandia, i. 149, 150, 151, 287 Lucrezia, i. 149, 177, 185, 287; ii. 129, 151, 174 Rodrigo, i. 287; ii. 242, 265, 282 Vanozza, i. 149, 151, 287

Borgo, the Region, i. 101, 127; ii. 132, 147, 202-214, 269

Borroinini, i. 301, 302; ii. 24

Botticelli, ii. 188, 190, 195, 200, 276

Bracci, ii. 318

Bracciano, i. 282, 291, 292, 294 Duke of, i. 289

Bramante, i. 305; ii. 144, 145, 274, 298, 322

Brescia, i. 286

Bridge. See _Ponte_ Ælian, the, i. 274 Cestian, ii. 105 Fabrician, ii. 105 Sublician, i. 6, 23, 67; ii. 127, 294. 

Brotherhood of Saint John Beheaded, ii. 129, 131

Brothers of Prayer and Death, i. 123, 204, 242

Brunelli, ii. 244

Brutus, i. 6, 12, 18, 41, 58, 80; ii. 96

Buffalmacco, ii. 196

Bull-fights, i. 252

Burgundians, i. 251

C

Cæsar, Julius, i. 29-33, 35-41, 250; ii. 102, 224, 297

Cæsars, the, i. 44-46, 125, 249, 252, 253; ii. 224 Julian, i. 252 Palaces of, i. 4, 191; ii. 95

Caetani, i. 51, 115, 159, 161, 163, 206, 277 Benedict, i. 160

Caligula, i. 46, 252, ii. 96

Campagna, the, i. 92, 94, 158, 237, 243, 253, 282, 312; ii. 88, 107, 120

Campitelli, the Region, i. 101; ii. 64

Campo-- dei Fiori, i. 297 Marzo (Campus Martius), i. 65, 112, 271 the Region, i. 101, 248, 250, 275; ii. 6, 44 Vaccino, i. 128-131, 173

Canale, Carle, i. 287

Cancelleria, i. 102, 305, 312, 315, 316; ii. 223

Canidia, i. 64; ii. 293

Canossa, i. 126; ii. 307

Canova, ii. 320

Capet, Hugh, ii. 29

Capitol, the, i. 8, 14, 24, 29, 72, 107, 112, 167, 190, 204, 278, 282; ii. 12, 13, 21, 22, 52, 64, 65, 67-75, 84, 121, 148, 302

Capitoline hill, i. 106, 194

Captains of the Regions, i. 110, 112, 114 Election of, i. 112

Caracci, the, i. 264

Carafa, the, ii. 46, 49, 50, 56, 111 Cardinal, i. 186, 188; ii. 56, 204

Carnival, i. 107, 193-203, 241, 298; ii. 113 of Saturn, i. 194

Carpineto, ii. 229, 230, 232, 239, 287

Carthage, i. 20, 26, 88

Castagno, Andrea, ii. 89, 185

Castle of-- Grottaferrata, i. 314 Petrella, i. 286 the Piccolomini, i. 268 Sant' Angelo, i. 114, 116, 120, 126, 127, 128, 129, 259, 278, 284, 308, 314; ii. 17, 28, 37, 40, 56, 59, 60, 109, 152, 202-214, 216, 269

Castracane, Castruccio, i. 165, 166, 170

Catacombs, the, i. 139 of Saint Petronilla, ii. 125 Sebastian, ii. 296

Catanei, Vanossa de, i. 287

Catharine, Queen of Cyprus, ii. 305

Cathedral of Siena, i. 232

Catiline, i. 27; ii. 96, 294

Cato, ii. 121

Catullus, i. 86

Cavour, Count, ii. 90, 224, 228, 237

Cellini, Benvenuto, i. 311, 315; ii. 157, 195

Cenci, the, ii. 1 Beatrice, i. 147, 285-287; ii. 2, 129, 151 Francesco, i, 285; ii. 2

Centra Pio, ii. 238, 239

Ceri, Renzo da, i. 310

Cesarini, Giuliano, i. 174; ii. 54, 89

Chapel, Sixtine. See under _Vatican_

Charlemagne, i. 32, 49, 51, 53, 76, 109; ii. 297

Charles of Anjou, i. Ii. 160 Albert of Sardinia, ii. 221 the Fifth, i. 131, 174, 206, 220, 305, 306; ii. 138

Chiesa. See _Church_ Nuova, i. 275

Chigi, the, i. 258 Agostino, ii. 144, 146 Fabio, ii. 146

Christianity in Rome, i. 176

Christina, Queen of Sweden, ii. 150, 151, 304, 308

Chrysostom, ii. 104, 105. 

Churches of, -- the Apostles, i. 157, 170-172, 205, 241, 242; ii. 213 Aracoeli, i. 52, 112, 167; ii. 57, 70, 75 Cardinal Mazarin, i. 186 the Gallows, i. 284 Holy Guardian Angel, i. 122 the Minerva, ii. 55 the Penitentiaries, ii. 216 the Portuguese, i. 250 Saint Adrian, i. 71 Agnes, i. 301, 304 Augustine, ii. 207 Bernard, i. 291 Callixtus, ii. 125 Charles, i. 251 Eustace, ii. 23, 24, 26, 39 George in Velabro, i. 195; ii. 10 Gregory on the Aventine, ii. 129 Ives, i. 251; ii. 23, 24 John of the Florentines, i. 273 Pine Cone, ii. 56 Peter's on the Janiculum, ii. 129 Sylvester, i. 176 Saints Nereus and Achillæus, ii. 125 Vincent and Anastasius, i. 186 San Clemente, i. 143 Giovanni in Laterano, i. 113 Lorenzo in Lucina, i. 192 Miranda, i. 71 Marcello, i. 165, 192 Pietro in Montorio, ii. 151 Vincoli, i. 118, 283; ii. 322 Salvatore in Cacaberis, i. 112 Stefano Rotondo, i. 106 Sant' Angelo in Pescheria, i. 102; ii. 3, 10, 110 Santa Francesca Romana, i. 111 Maria de Crociferi, i. 267 degli Angeli, i. 146, 258, 259 dei Monti, i. 118 del Pianto, i. 113 di Grotto Pinta, i. 294 in Campo Marzo, ii. 23 in Via Lata, i. 142 Nuova, i. 111, 273 Transpontina, ii. 212 della Vittoria, i. 302 Prisca, ii. 124 Sabina, i. 278; ii. 40 Trinità dei Pellegrini, ii. 110

Cicero, i. 45, 73; ii. 96, 294

Cimabue, ii. 156, 157, 162, 163, 169, 188, 189

Cinna, i. 25, 27

Circolo, ii. 245

Circus, the, i. 64, 253 Maximus, i. 64, 66; ii. 84, 119

City of Augustus, i. 57-77 Making of the, i. 1-21 of Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8 of the Empire, i. 22-56 of the Middle Age, i. 47, 78-99, 92 of the Republic, i. 47 today, i. 55, 92

Civilization, ii. 177 and bloodshed, ii. 218 morality, ii. 178 progress, ii. 177-180

Claudius, i. 46, 255, 256; ii. 102

Cloelia, i. 13

Coelian hill, i. 106

Collegio Romano, i. 102; ii. 45, 61

Colonna, the, i. 51, 94, 104, 135, 153, 157-170, 172, 176, 187, 206, 217, 251, 252, 271, 272, 275-283, 306-315; ii. 2, 6, 8, 10, 16, 20, 37, 51, 54, 60, 106, 107, 126, 204 Giovanni, i. 104 Jacopo, i. 159, 165, 192 Lorenzo, ii. 126, 204-213 Marcantonio, i. 182; ii. 54 Pietro, i. 159 Pompeo, i. 305, 310-317; ii. 205 Prospero, ii. 205 Sciarra, i. 162-166, 192, 206, 213, 229, 279, 275, 281, 307 Stephen, i. 161, 165; ii. 13, 16 the Younger, i. 168 Vittoria, i. 157, 173-177; ii. 174 the Region, i. 101, 190-192; ii. 209 War between Orsini and, i. 51, 104, 159, 168, 182, 275-283, 306-315; ii. 12, 18, 126, 204-211

Colosseum, i. 56, 86, 90, 96, 106, 107, 111, 125, 152, 153, 187, 191, 209, 278; ii. 25, 64, 66, 84, 97, 202, 203, 301

Column of Piazza Colonna i. 190, 192

Comitium, i. 112, 257, 268

Commodus, i. 46, 55; ii. 97, 285

Confraternities, i. 108, 204

Conscript Fathers, i. 78, 112

Constable of Bourbon, i. 52, 259, 273, 304, 309-311; ii. 308

Constans, i. 135, 136

Constantine, i. 90, 113, 163

Constantinople, i. 95, 119

Contests in the Forum, i. 27, 130

Convent of Saint Catharine, i. 176

Convent of Saint Sylvester, i. 176

Corneto, Cardinal of, ii. 282, 283

Cornomania, i. 141

Cornutis, i. 87

Coromania, i. 141, 144

Corsini, the, ii. 150

Corso, i. 96, 106, 108, 192, 196, 205, 206, 229, 251 Vittorio Emanuele, i. 275

Corte Savella, i. 284; ii. 52

Cosmas, the, ii. 156, 157

Costa, Giovanni da, i. 205

Court House, i. 71

Crassus, i. 27, 31; ii. 128

Crawford, Thomas, i. 147

Crescentius, ii. 40, 41

Crescenzi, i. 114; ii. 27, 40, 209

Crescenzio, ii. 28-40 Stefana, ii. 39

Crispi, i. 116, 187

Crusade, the Second, ii. 86, 105

Crusades, the, i. 76

Curatii, i. 3, 131

Customs of early Rome, i. 9, 48 in dress, i. 48 religion, i. 48

D

Dante, i. 110; ii. 164, 175, 244

Decameron, i. 239

Decemvirs, i. 14; ii. 120

Decrees, Semiamiran, i. 178

Democracy, i. 108

Development of Rome, i. 7, 18 some results of, i. 154 under Barons, i. 51 Decemvirs, i. 14 the Empire, i. 29, 30 Gallic invasion, i. 15-18 Kings, i. 2-7, 14-45 Middle Age, i. 47, 92, 210-247 Papal rule, i. 46-50 Republic, i. 7-14 Tribunes, i. 14

Dictator of Rome, i. 29, 79

Dietrich of Bern, ii. 297

Dionysus, ii. 121

Dolabella, i. 34

Domenichino, ii. 147

Domestic life in Rome, i. 9

Dominicans, i. 158; ii. 45, 46, 49, 50, 60, 61

Domitian, i. 45, 152, 205; ii. 104, 114, 124, 295

Doria, the, i. 206; ii. 45 Albert, i. 207 Andrea, i. 207 Conrad, i. 207 Gian Andrea, i. 207 Lamba, i. 207 Paganino, i. 207

Doria-Pamfili, i. 206-209

Dress in early Rome, i. 48

Drusus, ii. 102

Duca, Antonio del, i. 146, 147 Giacomo del, i. 146

Dürer, Albert, ii. 198

E

Education, ii. 179

Egnatia, i. 75

Elagabalus, i. 77, 177, 179; ii. 296, 297

Election of the Pope, ii. 41, 42, 277

Electoral Wards, i. 107

Elizabeth, Queen of England, ii. 47

Emperors, Roman, i. 46 of the East, i. 95, 126

Empire of Constantinople, i. 46 of Rome, i. 15, 17, 22-28, 31, 45, 47, 53, 60, 72, 99

Encyclicals, ii. 244

Erasmus, ii. 151

Esquiline, the, i. 26, 106, 139, 186; ii. 95, 131, 193

Este, Ippolito d', i. 185

Etruria, i. 12, 15

Euodus, i. 255, 256

Eustace, Saint, ii. 24, 25 square of, ii. 25, 42

Eustachio. See _Sant' Eustachio_

Eutichianus, ii. 296

Eve of Saint John, i. 140 the Epiphany, 299

F

Fabius, i. 20

Fabatosta, ii. 64, 84

Farnese, the, ii. 151 Julia, ii. 324

Farnesina, the, ii. 144, 149, 151

Fathers, Roman, i. 13, 78, 79-84

Ferdinand, ii. 205

Ferrara, Duke of, i. 185

Festivals, i. 193, 298 Aryan in origin, i. 173 Befana, i. 299-301 Carnival, i. 193-203 Church of the Apostle, i. 172, 173 Coromania, i. 141 Epifania, i. 298-301 Floralia, i. 141 Lupercalia, i. 194 May-day in the Campo Vaccino, i. 173 Saturnalia, i. 194 Saint John's Eve, i. 140

Festus, ii. 128

Feuds, family, i. 168

Field of Mars. See _Campo Marzo_

Finiguerra, Maso, ii. 186-188

Flamen Dialis, i. 34

Floralia. See _Festivals_

Florence, i. 160

Forli, Melozzo da, i. 171

Fornarina, the, ii. 144, 146

Forum, i, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 17, 26, 27, 64, 72, 111, 126, 129, 194; ii. 64, 92-94, 97, 102, 294, 295 of Augustus, i. 119 Trajan, i. 155, 171, 172, 191

Fountains (Fontane) of-- Egeria, ii. 124 Trevi, i. 155, 156, 186, 267 Tullianum, i. 8

Franconia, Duke of, ii. 36, 53

Francis the First, i. 131, 174, 206, 219, 304

Frangipani, i. 50, 94, 153; ii. 77, 79, 84, 85

Frederick, Barbarossa, ii. 34, 85, 87 of Naples, i. 151 the Second, ii. 34

Fulvius, ii. 121

G

Gabrini, Lawrence, ii. 4 Nicholas, i. 23, 93, 103, 168, 211, 281; ii. 3-23, 308

Gaeta, ii. 36

Galba, ii. 295

Galen, i. 55

Galera, i. 282, 291

Galileo, i. 268

Gardens, i. 93 Cæsar's, i. 66, 68 of Lucullus, i. 254, 270 of the Pigna, ii. 273 Pincian, i. 255 the Vatican, ii. 243, 271, 287

Gargonius, i. 65

Garibaldi, ii. 90, 219, 220, 228, 237

Gastaldi, Cardinal, i. 259

Gate. See _Porta_ the Colline, i. 250 Lateran, i. 126, 154 Septimian, ii. 144, 147

Gebhardt, Émile, i. 213

Gemonian Steps, ii. 67, 294

Genseric, i. 96; ii. 70

George of Franzburg, i. 310

Gherardesca, Ugolino della, ii. 160

Ghetto, i. 102; ii. 2, 101, 110-118

Ghibellines, the, i. 129, 153, 158; ii. 6

Ghiberti, ii. 157. 

Ghirlandajo, ii. 157, 172, 276

Giantism, i. 90-92, 210, 302

Gibbon, i. 160

Giotto, ii. 157, 160-165, 169, 188, 189, 200

Gladstone, ii. 231, 232

Golden Milestone, i. 72, 92, 194

Goldoni, i. 265

Goldsmithing, ii. 156, 157, 186, 187

"Good Estate" of Rienzi, ii. 10-12

Gordian, i. 91

Goths, ii. 297, 307. 

Gozzoli, Benozzo, ii. 190, 195

Gracchi, the, i. 22, 28 Caius, i. 23; ii. 84 Cornelia, i. 22, 24 Tiberius, i. 23; ii. 102

Gratidianus, i. 27

Guards, Noble, ii. 241, 243, 247, 248, 309, 310, 312 Palatine, ii. 247, 248 Swiss, ii. 246, 247, 310

Guelphs, i. 159; ii. 42, 126, 138 and Ghibellines, i. 129, 153, 275; ii. 160, 162, 173

Guiscard, Robert, i. 95, 126, 127, 129, 144, 252; ii. 70

H

Hadrian, i. 90, 180; i. 25, 202, 203

Hannibal, i. 20

Hasdrubal, i. 21

Henry the Second, ii. 47 Fourth, i. 126, 127; ii. 307 Fifth, ii. 307 Seventh of Luxemburg, i. 273, 276-279; ii. 5 Eighth, i. 219; ii. 47, 274

Hermann, i. 46

Hermes of Olympia, i. 86

Hermogenes, i. 67

Hilda's Tower, i. 250

Hildebrand, i. 52, 126-129; ii. 

Honorius, ii. 323, 324

Horace, i. 44, 57-75, 85, 87; ii. 293 and the Bore, i. 65-71 Camen Seculare of, i. 75 the Satires of, i. 73, 74

Horatii, i. 3, 131

Horatius, i. 5, 6, 13, 23; ii. 127

Horses of Monte Cavallo, i. 181

Hospice of San Claudio, i. 251

Hospital of-- Santo Spirito, i. 274; ii. 214, 215

House of Parliament, i. 271

Hugh of Burgundy, ii. 30 of Tuscany, ii. 30

Huns' invasion, i. 15, 49, 132

Huxley, ii. 225, 226

I

Imperia, ii. 144

Infessura, Stephen, ii. 59, 60, 204-213

Inn of-- The Bear, i. 288 Falcone, ii. 26 Lion, i. 287 Vanossa, i. 288

Inquisition, i. 286; ii. 46, 49, 52, 53, 54

Interminelli, Castruccio degli, i. 165

Irene, Empress, i. 109

Ischia, i. 175

Island of Saint Bartholomew, i. 272; ii. 1

Isola Sacra, i. 93

Italian life during the Middle Age, i. 210, 247 from 17th to 18th centuries, i. 260, 263, 264

J

Janiculum, the, i. 15, 253, 270; ii. 268, 293, 294, 295

Jesuit College, ii. 61

Jesuits, ii. 45, 46, 61-63

Jews, i. 96; ii. 101-119

John of Cappadocia, i. 267, 268

Josephus, ii. 103

Juba, i. 40

Jugurtha, i. 25

Jupiter Capitolinus, ii. 324, 325 priest of, i. 80, 133

Justinian, i. 267

Juvenal, i. 112; ii. 105, 107, 124

K

Kings of Rome, i. 2-7

L

Lampridius, Ælius, i. 178

Lanciani, i. 79, 177

Lateran, the, i. 106, 112-114, 129, 140-142 Count of, i. 166

Latin language, i. 47

Latini Brunetto, ii. 163

Laurentum, i. 55, 93

Lazaret of Saint Martha, ii. 245

League, Holy, i. 305, 306, 313, 314

Lentulus, ii. 128

Lepida, Domitia, i. 255, 256

Letus, Pomponius, i. 139; ii. 210

Lewis of Bavaria, i. 165, 167, 192, 275 the Seventh, ii. 86, 105 Eleventh, i. 104, 151 Fourteenth, i. 253

Library of-- Collegio Romano, ii. 45 Vatican, ii. 275, 276, 282 Victor Emmanuel, ii. 45, 61

Lieges, Bishop of, i. 280

Lincoln, Abraham, ii. 231, 236

Lippi, Filippo, ii. 190, 191, 192-195, 200

Liszt, i. 185, 203; ii. 176

Livia, i. 220, 252

Livy, i. 44, 47

Lombards, the, i. 251

Lombardy, i. 309

Lorrain, i. 264

Loyola, Ignatius, ii. 46, 62

Lucilius, i. 74

Lucretia, i. 5, 12, 13

Lucullus, i. 257, 270

Lupercalia, i. 194

Lupercus, i. 194

M

Macchiavelli, ii. 174

Mæcenas, i. 62, 69, 74, 140; ii. 293

Mænads, ii. 122

Maldachini, Olimpia, i. 304, 305

Mamertine Prison, i. 25; ii. 72, 293

Mancini, Maria, i. 170, 187

Mancino, Paul, ii. 210

Manlius, Cnæus, ii. 121 Marcus, i. 29; ii. 71, 84 Titus, i. 80

Mantegna, Andrea, ii. 157, 169, 188, 196-198

Marcomanni, i. 190

Marforio, i. 305

Marino, i. 174

Marius, Caius, i. 25, 29

Marius and Sylla, i. 25, 29, 36, 45, 53; ii. 69

Mark Antony, i. 30, 93, 195, 254

Marozia, ii. 27, 28

Marriage Laws, i. 79, 80

Mary, Queen of Scots, ii. 47

Masaccio, ii. 190

Massimi, Pietro de', i. 317

Massimo, i. 102, 317

Mattei, the, ii. 137, 139, 140, 143 Alessandro, ii. 140-143 Curzio, ii. 140-143 Girolamo, ii. 141-143 Marcantonio, ii. 140, 141 Olimpia, ii. 141, 142 Piero, ii. 140, 141

Matilda, Countess, ii. 307

Mausoleum of-- Augustus, i. 158, 169, 205, 251, 252, 270, 271 Hadrian, i. 102, 252; ii. 28, 202, 270. See _Castle of Sant' Angelo_

Maximilian, i. 151

Mazarin, i. 170, 187

Mazzini, ii. 219, 220

Mediævalism, death of, ii. 225

Medici, the, i. 110; ii. 276 Cosimo de', i. 289; ii. 194 Isabella de', i. 290, 291 John de', i. 313

Messalina, i. 254, 272; ii. 255, 256, 257

Michelangelo, i. 90, 146, 147, 173, 175, 177, 302, 303, 315; ii. 129, 130, 157, 159, 166, 169, 171, 172, 175, 188, 200, 276-281, 284, 317-319, 322 "Last Judgment" by, i. 173; ii. 171, 276, 280, 315 "Moses" by, ii. 278, 286 "Pietà" by, ii. 286

Middle Age, the, i. 47, 92, 210-247, 274; ii. 163, 166, 172-175, 180, 196

Migliorati, Ludovico, i. 103

Milan, i. 175 Duke of, i. 306

Milestone, golden, i. 72

Mithræum, i. 271

Mithras, i. 76

Mithridates, i. 26, 30, 37, 358

Mocenni, Mario, ii. 249

Monaldeschi, ii. 308

Monastery of-- the Apostles, i. 182 Dominicans, ii. 45, 61 Grottaferrata, ii. 37 Saint Anastasia, ii. 38 Gregory, ii. 85 Sant' Onofrio, ii. 147

Moncada, Ugo de, i. 307, 308

Mons Vaticanus, ii. 268

Montaigne, i. 288

Montalto. See _Felice Peretti_

Monte Briano, i. 274 Cavallo, i. 181, 188, 292, 293; ii. 205, 209 Citorio, i. 193, 252, 271 Giordano, i. 274, 281, 282, 288; ii. 206 Mario, i. 313; ii. 268

Montefeltro, Guido da, ii. 160

Monti-- the Region, i. 101, 106, 107, 111, 112, 125, 133, 134, 144, 150, 185, 305; ii. 133, 209 and Trastevere, i. 129, 145, 153; ii. 133, 209 by moonlight, i. 117

Morrone, Pietro da, i. 159

Muratori, i. 85, 132, 159, 277; ii. 40, 48, 76, 126, 324

Museums of Rome, i. 66 Vatican, ii. 272, 273, 283, 286, 287 Villa Borghese, i. 301

Mustafa, ii. 247

N

Naples, i. 175, 182, 307, 308

Napoleon, i. 32, 34, 53, 88, 109, 258; ii. 218, 221, 298 Louis, ii. 221, 223, 237

Narcissus, i. 255

Navicella, i. 106

Nelson, i. 253

Neri, Saint Philip, i. 318

Nero, i. 46, 56, 188, 254, 257, 285; ii. 163, 211, 291

Nilus, Saint, ii. 36, 37, 40

Nogaret, i. 162, 164

Northmen, i. 46, 49

Numa, i. 3; ii. 268

Nunnery of the Sacred Heart, i. 256

O

Octavius, i. 27, 30, 43, 89; ii. 291

Odoacer, i. 47; ii. 297

Olanda, Francesco d', i. 176

Oliviero, Cardinal Carafa, i. 186, 188

Olympius, i. 136, 137, 138

Opimius, i. 24

Orgies of Bacchus, i. 76; ii. 120

Orgies of the Mænads, ii. 121 on the Aventine, i. 76; ii. 121

Orsini, the, i. 94, 149, 153, 159, 167-169, 183, 216, 217, 271, 274, 306-314; ii. 16, 126, 138, 204 Bertoldo, i. 168 Camillo, i. 311 Isabella, i. 291 Ludovico, i. 295 Matteo, i. 281 Napoleon, i. 161 Orsino, i. 166 Paolo Giordano, i. 283, 290-295 Porzia, i. 187 Troilo, i. 290, 291 Virginio, i. 295 war between Colonna and, i. 51, 104, 159, 168, 182, 275-283, 306-315; ii. 18, 126, 204

Orsino, Deacon, i. 134, 135

Orvieto, i. 314

Otho, ii. 295 the Second, ii. 304

Otto, the Great, i. 114; ii. 28, 30 Second, ii. 28 Third, ii. 29-37

Ovid, i. 44, 63

P

Painting, ii. 181 in fresco, ii. 181-183 oil, ii. 184-186

Palace (Palazzo)-- Annii, i. 113 Barberini, i. 106, 187 Borromeo, ii. 61 Braschi, i. 305 Cæsars, i. 4, 191; ii. 64 Colonna, i. 169, 189; ii. 205 Consulta, i. 181 Corsini, ii. 149, 308 Doria, i. 207, 226 Pamfili, i. 206, 208 Farnese, i. 102 Fiano, i. 205 della Finanze, i. 91 Gabrielli, i. 216 the Lateran, i. 127; ii. 30 Massimo alle Colonna, i. 316, 317 Mattei, ii. 140 Mazarini, i. 187 of Nero, i. 152 della Pilotta, i. 158 Priori, i. 160 Quirinale, i. 139, 181, 185, 186, 188, 189, 304 of the Renascence, i. 205 Rospigliosi, i. 181, 187, 188, 189 Ruspoli, i. 206 Santacroce, i. 237; ii. 23 of the Senator, i. 114 Serristori, ii. 214, 216 Theodoli, i. 169 di Venezia, i. 102, 192, 202

Palatine, the, i. 2, 13, 67, 69, 194, 195; ii. 64, 119

Palermo, i. 146

Palestrina, i. 156, 157, 158, 161, 165, 166, 243, 282; ii. 13, 315

Paliano, i. 282 Duke of, i. 157, 189

Palladium, i. 77

Pallavicini, i. 206, 258

Palmaria, i. 267

Pamfili, the, i. 206

Pannartz, i. 317

Pantheon, i. 90, 102, 195, 271, 278; ii. 44, 45, 146

Parione, the Region, i. 101, 297, 312, 317; ii. 42 Square of, ii. 42

Pasquino, the, i. 186, 305, 317

Passavant, ii. 285

Passeri, Bernardino, i. 313; ii. 308

Patarina, i. 107, 202

Patriarchal System, i. 223-228

Pavia, i. 175

Pecci, the, ii. 229 Joachim Vincent, ii. 229, 230. 

Peretti, the, i. 205 Felice, i. 149, 289-295 Francesco, i. 149, 289, 292 Vittoria. See _Accoramboni_

Perugia, i. 159, 276, 277

Perugino, ii. 157, 260, 276

Pescara, i. 174

Peter the Prefect, i. 114; ii. 230

Petrarch, i. 161

Petrella, i. 286

Philip the Fair, i. 160, 276, 278 Second of Spain, ii. 47

Phocas, column of, ii. 93. 

Piazza-- Barberini, i. 155 della Berlina Vecchia, i. 283 Chiesa Nuova, i. 155 del Colonna, i. 119, 190 Gesù, ii. 45 della Minerva, ii. 45 Moroni, i. 250 Navona, i. 102, 297, 298, 302, 303, 305; ii. 25, 46, 57 Pigna, ii. 55 of the Pantheon, i. 193; ii. 26 Pilotta, i. 158 del Popolo, i. 144, 206, 259, 273 Quirinale, i. 181 Romana, ii. 136 Sant' Eustachio, ii. 25 San Lorenzo in Lucina, i. 192, 205, 250 Saint Peter's, ii. 251, 309 di Sciarra, i. 192 Spagna, i. 251; ii. 42 delle Terme, i. 144 di Termini, i. 144 Venezia, i. 206

Pierleoni, the, ii. 77, 79, 82, 101, 105, 106, 109, 114

Pigna, ii. 45 the Region, i, 101, 102; ii. 44

Pilgrimages, ii. 245

Pincian (hill), i. 119, 270, 272

Pincio, the, i. 121, 189, 223, 253, 255, 256, 259, 264, 272

Pintelli, Baccio, ii. 278, 279

Pinturicchio, ii. 147

Pliny, the Younger, i. 85, 87

Pompey, i. 30

Pons Æmilius, i. 67 Cestius, ii. 102, 105 Fabricius, ii. 105 Triumphalis, i. 102, 274

Ponte. See also _Bridge_ Garibaldi, ii. 138 Rotto, i. 67 Sant' Angelo, i. 274, 283, 284, 287; ii. 42, 55, 270 Sisto, i. 307, 311; ii. 136 the Region, i. 274, 275

Pontifex Maximus, i. 39, 48

Pontiff, origin of title, ii. 127

Pope-- Adrian the Fourth, ii. 87 Alexander the Sixth, i. 258; ii. 269, 282 Seventh, i. 259 Anastasius, ii. 88 Benedict the Sixth, ii. 28-30 Fourteenth, i. 186 Boniface the Eighth, i. 159, 160, 167, 213, 280, 306; ii. 304 Celestin the First, i. 164 Second, ii. 83 Clement the Fifth, i. 275, 276 Sixth, ii. 9, 17-19 Seventh, i. 306, 307, 310, 313, 314; ii. 308 Eighth, i. 286 Ninth, i. 187; ii. 110 Eleventh, i. 171 Thirteenth, ii. 320 Damascus, i. 133, 135, 136 Eugenius the Third, ii. 85 Fourth, ii. 7, 56 Ghisleri, ii. 52, 53 Gregory the Fifth, ii. 32-37 Seventh, i. 52, 126; ii. 307 Thirteenth, i. 183, 293 Sixteenth, i. 305; ii. 221, 223 Honorius the Third, ii. 126 Fourth, ii. 126 Innocent the Second, ii. 77, 79, 82, 105 Third, i. 153; ii. 6 Sixth, ii. 19 Eighth, i. 275 Tenth, i. 206, 209, 302, 303 Joan, i. 143 John the Twelfth, ii. 282 Thirteenth, i. 113 Fifteenth, ii. 29 Twenty-third, ii. 269 Julius the Second, i. 208, 258; ii. 276, 298, 304 Leo the Third, i. 109; ii. 146, 297 Fourth, ii. 242 Tenth, i. 304; ii. 276, 304 Twelfth, i. 202; ii. 111 Thirteenth, i. 77; ii. 218-267, 282, 287, 308, 312, 313 Liberius, i. 138 Lucius the Second, ii. 84, 85 Martin the First, i. 136 Nicholas the Fourth, i. 159, 274 Fifth, i. 52; ii. 58, 268, 269, 298, 304 Paschal the Second, i. 258; ii. 307 Paul the Second, i. 202, 205 Third, i. 219; ii. 41, 130, 304, 323, 324 Fourth, ii. 46, 47, 48-51, 111, 112 Fifth, ii. 289 Pelagius the First, i. 170, 171; ii. 307 Pius the Fourth, i. 147, 305 Sixth, i. 181, 182 Seventh, i. 53; ii. 221 Ninth, i. 76, 183, 315; ii. 66, 110, 111, 216, 221-225, 252, 253, 255, 257, 258, 265, 298, 308, 311 Silverius, i. 266 Sixtus the Fourth, i. 258, 275; ii. 127, 204-213, 274, 278, 321 Fifth, i. 52, 139, 149, 181, 184, 186, 205, 283; ii. 43, 157, 241, 304, 323 Sylvester, i. 113; ii. 297, 298 Symmachus, ii. 44 Urban the Second, i. 52 Sixth, ii. 322, 323 Eighth, i. 181, 187, 268, 301; ii. 132, 203, 298 Vigilius, ii. 307

Popes, the, i. 125, 142, 273 at Avignon, i. 167, 273, 277; ii. 9 among sovereigns, ii. 228 election of, ii. 41, 42 hatred for, ii. 262-264 temporal power of, i. 168; ii. 255-259

Poppæa, i. 103

Porcari, the, ii. 56 Stephen, ii. 56-60, 204

Porsena of Clusium, i. 5, 6, 12

Porta. See also _Gate_-- Angelica, i. 120 Maggiore, i. 107 Metronia, i. 106 Mugonia, i. 10 Pia, i. 107, 147, 152; ii. 224 Pinciana, i. 193, 250, 264, 266, 269 del Popolo, i. 272, 299 Portese, ii. 132 Salaria, i. 106, 107, 193 San Giovanni, i. 107, 120 Lorenzo, i. 107 Sebastiano, ii. 119, 125 Spirito, i. 311; ii. 132, 152 Tiburtina, i. 107

Portico of Neptune, i. 271 Octavia, ii. 3, 105

Poussin, Nicholas, i. 264

Præneste, i. 156

Prætextatus, i. 134

Prefect of Rome, i. 103, 114, 134

Presepi, ii. 139

Prince of Wales, i. 203

Prior of the Regions, i. 112, 114

Processions of-- the Brotherhood of Saint John, ii. 130 Captains of Regions, i. 112 Coromania, i. 141 Coronation of Lewis of Bavaria, i. 166, 167 Ides of May, ii. 127-129 the Triumph of Aurelian, i. 179

Progress and civilization, i. 262; ii. 177-180 romance, i. 154

Prosper of Cicigliano, ii. 213

Q

Quæstor, i. 58

Quirinal, the (hill), i. 106, 119, 158, 182, 184, 186, 187; ii. 205

R

Rabble, Roman, i. 115, 128, 132, 153, 281; ii. 131

Race course of Domitian, i. 270, 297

Races, Carnival, i. 108, 202, 203

Raimondi, ii. 315

Rampolla, ii. 239, 249, 250

Raphael, i. 260, 315; ii. 159, 169, 175, 188, 200, 281, 285, 322 in Trastevere, ii. 144-147 the "Transfiguration" by, ii. 146, 281

Ravenna, i. 175

Regions (Rioni), i. 100-105, 110-114, 166 Captains of, i. 110 devices of, i. 100 fighting ground of, i. 129 Prior, i. 112, 114 rivalry of, i. 108, 110, 125

Regola, the Region, i. 101, 168; ii. 1-3

Regulus, i. 20

Religion, i. 48, 50, 75

Religious epochs in Roman history, i. 76

Renascence in Italy, i. 52, 77, 84, 98, 99, 188, 237, 240, 250, 258, 261, 262, 303; ii. 152-201, 280 art of, i. 231 frescoes of, i. 232 highest development of, i. 303, 315 leaders of, ii. 152, 157-159 manifestation of, ii. 197 palaces of, i. 205, 216 represented in "The Last Judgment, " ii. 280 results of development of, ii. 199

Reni, Guido, i. 264; ii. 317

Republic, the, i. 6, 12, 15, 53, 110; ii. 291 and Arnold of Brescia, ii. 86 Porcari, ii. 56-60 Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8 modern ideas of, ii. 219

Revolts in Rome-- against the nobles, ii. 73 of the army, i. 25 Arnold of Brescia, ii. 73-89 Marius and Sylla, i. 25 Porcari, ii. 56-60 Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8, 73 slaves, i. 24 Stefaneschi, i. 281-283; ii. 219-222

Revolutionary idea, the, ii. 219-222

Riario, the, ii. 149, 150, 151 Jerome, ii. 205

Rienzi, Nicholas, i. 23, 93, 103, 168, 211, 281; ii. 3-23, 308

Rioni. See _Regions_

Ripa, the Region, i. 101; ii. 118

Ripa Grande, ii. 127

Ripetta, ii. 52

Ristori, Mme. , i. 169

Robert of Naples, i. 278

Roffredo, Count, i. 114, 115

Rome-- a day in mediæval, i. 241-247 Bishop of, i. 133 charm of, i. 54, 98, 318 ecclesiastic, i. 124 lay, i. 124 a modern Capital, i. 123, 124 foundation of, i. 2 of the Augustan Age, i. 60-62 Barons, i. 50, 84, 104, 229-247; ii. 75 Cæsars, i. 84 Empire, i. 15, 17, 28, 31, 45, 47, 53, 60, 99 Kings, i. 2-7, 10, 11 Middle Age, i. 110, 210-247, 274; ii. 172-175 Napoleonic era, i. 229 Popes, i. 50, 77, 84, 104 Republic, i. 6, 12, 16, 53, 110 Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8 today, i. 55 sack of, by Constable of Bourbon, i. 259, 273, 309-315 sack of, by Gauls, i. 15, 49, 252 Guiscard, i. 95, 126-129, 252 seen from dome of Saint Peter's, ii. 302 under Tribunes, i. 14 Decemvirs, i. 14 Dictator, i. 28

Romulus, i. 2, 5, 30, 78, 228

Rospigliosi, i. 206

Rossi, Pellegrino, i. 316 Count, ii. 223

Rostra, i. 27; ii. 93 Julia, i. 68; ii. 93

Rota, ii. 215

Rovere, the, i. 258; ii. 276, 279, 321

Rudinì, i. 187

Rudolph of Hapsburg, i. 161

Rufillus, i. 65

S

Sacchi, Bartolommeo, i. 139, 147

Saint Peter's Church, i. 166, 278; ii. 202, 212, 243, 246, 268, 289, 294, 295, 326 altar of, i. 96 architects of, ii. 304 bronze doors of, ii. 299, 300 builders of, ii. 304 Chapel of the Choir, ii. 310, 313, 314 Chapel of the Sacrament, ii. 274, 306, 308, 310, 312, 313 Choir of, ii. 313-316 Colonna Santa, ii. 319 dome of, i. 96; ii. 302 Piazza of, ii. 251 Sacristy of, i. 171

Salvini, i. 169, 252 Giorgio, i. 313

Santacroce Paolo, i. 286

Sant' Angelo the Region, i. 101; ii. 101

Santorio, Cardinal, i. 208

San Vito, i. 282

Saracens, i. 128, 144

Sarto, Andrea del, ii. 157, 169

Saturnalia, i. 125, 194, 195

Saturninus, i. 25

Satyricon, the, i. 85

Savelli, the, i. 284; ii. 1, 16, 126, 206 John Philip, ii. 207-210

Savonarola, i. 110

Savoy, house of, i. 110; ii. 219, 220, 224

Scævola, i. 13

Schweinheim, i. 317

Scipio, Cornelius, i. 20 of Africa, i. 20, 22, 29, 59, 76; ii. 121 Asia, i. 21; ii. 120

Scotus, i. 182

See, Holy, i. 159, 168; ii. 264-267, 277, 294

Segni, Monseignor, i. 304

Sejanuo, ii. 294

Semiamira, i. 178

Senate, Roman, i. 167, 168, 257 the Little, i. 177, 180

Senators, i. 78, 112, 167

Servius, i. 5, 15

Severus-- Arch of, ii. 92 Septizonium of, i. 96, 127

Sforza, i. 13; ii. 89

Sforza, Catharine, i. 177; ii. 150 Francesco, i. 306

Siena, i. 232, 268; ii. 229

Signorelli, ii. 277

Slaves, i. 81, 24

Sosii Brothers, i. 72, 73

Spencer, Herbert, ii. 225, 226

Stefaneschi, Giovanni degli, i. 103, 282

Stilicho, ii. 323

Stradella, Alessandro, ii. 315

Streets, See _Via_

Subiaco, i. 282

Suburra, i. 39; ii. 95

Suetonius, i. 43

Sylla, ii. 25-29, 36-42

T

Tacitus, i. 46, 254; ii. 103

Tarentum, i. 18, 19

Tarpeia, i. 29; ii. 68, 69

Tarpeian Rock, ii. 67

Tarquins, the, i. 6, 11, 12, 80, 248, 249, 269; ii. 69 Sextus, i. 5, 11

Tasso, i. 188, 189; ii. 147-149 Bernardo, i. 188

Tatius, i. 68, 69

Tempietto, the, i. 264

Temple of-- Castor, i. 27 Castor and Pollux, i. 68; ii. 92, 94 Ceres, ii. 119 Concord, i. 24; ii. 92 Flora, i. 155 Hercules, ii. 40 Isis and Serapis, i. 271 Julius Cæsar, i. 72 Minerva, i. 96 Saturn, i. 194, 201; ii. 94 the Sun, i. 177, 179, 180, 271 Venus and Rome, i. 110 Venus Victorius, i. 270 Vesta, i. 68

Tenebræ, i. 117

Tetricius, i. 179

Theatre of-- Apollo, i. 286 Balbus, ii. 1 Marcellus, ii. 1, 101, 105, 106, 119 Pompey, i. 103, 153

Thedoric of Verona, ii. 297

Theodoli, the, i. 258

Theodora Senatrix, i. 158, 266, 267; ii. 27-29, 203, 282

Tiber, i. 23, 27, 66, 93, 94, 151, 158, 168, 189, 237, 248, 249, 254, 269, 272, 288

Tiberius, i. 254, 287; ii. 102

Titian, i. 315; ii. 165, 166, 175, 188, 278

Titus, i. 56, 86; ii. 102, 295

Tivoli, i. 180, 185; ii. 76, 85

Torre (Tower)-- Anguillara, ii. 138, 139, 140 Borgia, ii. 269, 285 dei Conti, i. 118, 153 Milizie, i. 277 Millina, i. 274 di Nona, i. 274, 284, 287; ii. 52, 54, 72 Sanguigna, i. 274

Torrione, ii. 241, 242

Trajan, i. 85, 192; ii. 206

Trastevere, the Region, i. 101, 127, 129, 278, 307, 311; ii. 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 143, 151

Trevi, the Fountain, i. 155, 186 the Region, i. 155, 187; ii. 209

Tribunes, i. 14

Trinità de' Monti, i. 256, 264 dei Pellegrini, ii. 110

Triumph, the, of Aurelian, i. 179

Triumphal Road, i. 66, 69, 70, 71

Tullianum, i. 8

Tullus, i. 3 Domitius, i. 90

Tuscany, Duke of, ii. 30

Tusculum, i. 158

U

Unity, of Italy, i. 53, 77, 123, 184; ii. 224 under Augustus, i. 184 Victor Emmanuel, i. 184

University, Gregorian, the, ii. 61 of the Sapienza, i. 251; ii. 24, 25

Urbino, Duke of, i. 208, 217

V

Valens, i. 133

Valentinian, i. 133

Varus, i. 46

Vatican, the, i. 127, 128, 147, 165, 189, 278, 281, 307; ii. 44, 202, 207, 228, 243, 245, 249, 250, 252, 253, 269, 271 barracks of the Swiss Guard, ii. 275 chapels in, Pauline, ii. Nicholas, ii. 285 Sixtine, ii. 246, 274, 275, 276, 278-281, 285 fields, i. 274 Court of the Belvedere, ii. 269 Saint Damasus, ii. 273 finances of, ii. 253 gardens of, ii. 243, 271, 287 of the Pigna, ii. 273 library, ii. 275, 276, 282 Borgia apartments of, ii. 282 Loggia of the Beatification, ii. 245 Raphael, ii. 273, 274, 276, 285 Maestro di Camera, ii. 239, 248, 250 museums of, ii. 272, 273, 283, 286, 287 picture galleries, ii. 273-284 Pontifical residence, ii. 249 private apartments, ii. 249 Sala Clementina, ii. 248 del Concistoro, ii. 246 Ducale, ii. 245, 247 Regia, ii. 246 throne room, ii. 247 Torre Borgia, ii. 269, 285

Veii, i. 16, 17

Velabrum, i. 67

Veneziano, Domenico, ii. 185

Venice, i. 193, 296, 306; ii. 35, 205

Vercingetorix, ii. 294

Vespasian, i. 46, 56; ii. 295

Vespignani, ii. 241, 242

Vesta, i. 57 temple of, i. 71, 77

Vestals, i. 77, 80, 133, 152; ii. 99 house of, i. 69

Via-- della Angelo Custode, i. 122 Appia, i. 22, 94 Arenula, ii. 45 Borgognona, i. 251 Campo Marzo, i. 150 di Caravita, ii. 45 del Corso, i. 155, 158, 192, 193, 251; ii. 45 della Dateria, i. 183 Dogana Vecchia, ii. 26 Flaminia, i. 193 Florida, ii. 45 Frattina, i. 250 de' Greci, i. 251 Lata, i. 193 Lungara, i. 274; ii. 144, 145, 147 Lungaretta, ii. 140 della Maestro, i. 283 Marforio, i. 106 di Monserrato, i. 283 Montebello, i. 107 Nazionale, i. 277 Nova, i. 69 di Parione, i. 297 de' Poli, i. 267 de Pontefici, i. 158 de Prefetti, ii. 6 Quattro Fontane, i. 155, 187 Sacra, i. 65, 71, 180 San Gregorio, i. 71 San Teodoro, i. 195 de' Schiavoni, i. 158 Sistina, i. 260 della Stelleta, i. 250 della Tritone, i. 106, 119-122, 155 Triumphalis, i. 66, 70, 71 Venti Settembre, i. 186 Vittorio Emanuele, i. 275

Viale Castro Pretorio, i. 107

Vicolo della Corda, i. 283

Victor Emmanuel, i. 53, 166, 184; ii. 90, 221, 224, 225, 238 monument to, ii. 90

Victoria, Queen of England, ii. 263

Vigiles, cohort of the, i. 158, 170

Villa Borghese, i. 223 Colonna, i. 181, 189 d'Este, i. 185 of Hadrian, i. 180 Ludovisi, i. 106, 193 Medici, i. 259, 262, 264, 265, 269, 313 Negroni, i. 148, 149, 289, 292 Publica, i. 250

Villani, i. 160, 277; ii. 164

Villas, in the Region of Monti, i. 149, 150

Vinci, Lionardo da, i. 260, 315; ii. 147, 159, 169, 171, 175, 184, 188, 195, 200 "The Last Supper, " by, ii. 171, 184

Virgil, i. 44, 56, 63

Virginia, i. 14

Virginius, i. 15

Volscians, ii. 230

W

Walls-- Aurelian, i. 93, 106, 110, 193, 271; ii. 119, 144 Servian, i. 5, 7, 15, 250, 270 of Urban the Eighth, ii. 132

Water supply, i. 145

William the Silent, ii. 263

Witches on the Æsquiline, i. 140

Women's life in Rome, i. 9

Z

Zama, i. 21, 59

Zenobia of Palmyra, i. 179; ii. 150. 

Zouaves, the, ii. 216