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 Iirri.ISHED BY OUVBiL VBITin. EDTNBURSH 
 
ITALY 
 
 AND 
 
 THE ITALIAN ISLANDS. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 PETKR'b, AND CAsTLE AND BlUrGE OK S. ANGELO. 
 
 OLIVER & BOYD, EDINBURGH. 
 
ITALY 
 
 ITALIAN ISLANDS, 
 
 THE EARLIEST AGES TO THE PRESENT TIME. 
 
 By WILLIAM SPALDING, Esq. 
 
 Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Edinburgh. 
 
 WITH ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD BY JACKSON, AND ILLUSTRATIVE MAPS 
 AND PLANS ON STEEL. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 OLIVER & BOYD, TVVEEDDALE COURT; 
 
 AND 
 
 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., LONDON. 
 
ENTERED IN STATIONERS' HALL, 
 
 Printed by Oliver & Boyd, 
 Tweeddale Court, High Street, Edinburgh. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The plan of this work is founded upon that of its 
 predecessors belonging to the same department of the 
 Edinburgh Cabinet Library. The history of the re- 
 volutions, political, social, and intellectual, through 
 which the Italians have passed, in ancient as well as 
 modern times, is combined with a description of the an- 
 tiquities, the scenery, and the physical peculiarities of 
 the interesting region which they inhabit. 
 
 Although several particulars of this design have been 
 admirably handled by others, yet, in our language at 
 least, there does not exist any popular survey of Italy, 
 embracing, like that which has here been attempted, all 
 its most important relations. If the results of such a 
 survey are clearly arranged, and set forth with suffi- 
 cient fulness, they surely promise both to aid the re- 
 searches conducted by the young student in his closet, 
 and to facilitate the observations of those who become 
 pilgrims to the distant south. 
 
 It is for others, who may favour these volumes with an 
 intelligent perusal, to pronounce a judgment as to the 
 writer's qualifications for his task. He may venture to 
 say, however, that it is one for which, upon undertak- 
 ing it, he was not altogether unprepared. He had re- 
 sided in Italy for a considerable time, in the years 1833 
 and 1834: ; and, not only during that visit, but before and 
 after it, his attention had been earnestly directed to the 
 literature and art of the nation, to its social economy and 
 political vicissitudes. The composition of the work, — at 
 once recalling speculations and images from many de- 
 lightful hours of reading and of travel, and affording a 
 motive for the systematic study of topics previously 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 mastered but in part, — has been throughout its whole 
 progress a genuine labour of love. 
 
 A specification of all the authorities that have been con- 
 sulted would be cumbrous in the extreme. On the other 
 hand, a book of this kind wants half its utility, if it does 
 not guide the student to the principal works iu which 
 he will find more elaborate narratives, proofs, and rea- 
 sonings. These considerations have dictated a rule for 
 the references contained in the notes. Even when origi- 
 nal sources have been most industriously studied, the 
 secondary authorities alone are indicated, if these appear 
 to furnish the reader with adequate assistance. 
 
 Literature, art, and topography — the themes most 
 generally attractive — occupy more than one-third of the 
 whole space. Nearly two-thirds are assigned to the 
 history of the people, recounting their diversified poli- 
 tical changes, and describing the aspects successively 
 assumed by society and national character. In the 
 discussion of all these topics, decided prominence is given 
 to the practical and useful ; a rule suggested equally by 
 the nature of the series with which the work is connect- 
 ed, and by the deficiencies which are most perceptible 
 in the popular books regarding Italy. 
 
 As to literature, indeed, efforts in poetry and its 
 kindred walks of thought are, with few exceptions, the 
 only specimens on which it seemed expedient to be- 
 stow a critical analysis ; but all departments of mental 
 cultivation have been considered as entitled to some 
 attention. 
 
 The development of the fine arts is traced in historical 
 order, with due regard to recent theories and disco- 
 veries ; and the point chiefly kept in sight has been the 
 illustration of the tastes from which those pursuits take 
 their rise, as phenomena in the intellectual progress of 
 the nation. Of the innumerable monuments, however, 
 which fall within the sphere of such a review, — from 
 the castles of the primitive barbarians, and the temples 
 or idols of the Greeks and their Roman scholars, down 
 to the pictures, the sculptures, the churches, and the 
 
PREFACE. 7 
 
 palaces of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, — 
 very many are here pointed out, while not a few are 
 minutely examined. In almost every instance where 
 allusion is made to works of painting or statuary, their 
 late or present place is specified. 
 
 The classical topography derives variety and relief 
 from its union with sketches of natural scenery ; and, 
 although it is impossible to avoid numerous omissions, 
 not only has the selection been carefully conducted, but 
 the present appearance of the most celebrated spots is 
 either slightly noticed or fully described. Repetition 
 has been prevented by limiting the illustrations of mo- 
 dern topography almost entirely to the cities. 
 
 In the sections appropriated to national character and 
 habits, inquiries are instituted into the statistical position 
 of the people, both in the classical and in more recent 
 times ; while fair scope is also sought to be afforded for 
 those dramatic elements which impart life and energy 
 to such a picture. 
 
 In the historical chapters, traversing rapidly a field 
 of vast extent, selection is an imperative duty, in the 
 performance of which it is not difficult to find a rule of 
 preference. Wars, and conquests, and all those other 
 external causes which produce revolutions in states, must 
 be related for the sake of the consequences to which 
 they lead : some minuteness of biographical detail is 
 necessary for awakening an interest in the fate of illus- 
 trious personages. For one period of Italian history, and 
 for one only, it has here been thought advisable to refuse 
 to such themes the ample room which is usually allow- 
 ed to them. In regard to the whole duration of the ancient 
 Roman world, both republican and imperial, all facts of 
 this class are detailed in popular books, and must be 
 familiar, in a greater or less degree, to most readers. 
 A general knowledge of such particulars is accordingly 
 taken for granted ; and the outline of them is de- 
 signed merely for correcting incidental faithlessness of 
 the memory. In the narrative of the events which 
 distinguish all other periods, both the external causes of 
 
8 PREFACE. 
 
 change, and the personal characters of the actors, are 
 treated with as much minuteness as the limits and gen- 
 eral purpose of the work permit. But Italy, which has 
 twice become the teacher of wisdom to the nations, pre- 
 sents, in her chronicles of tw^enty-four centuries, topics 
 possessing infinitely greater importance, and illustrated 
 at every step by materials which, in our own day, have 
 received invaluable accessions. On quitting the times 
 through which we accompany the bold theories of Nie- 
 buhr and his disciples, we reach others for which a 
 clue is furnished by the masterly generalizations of 
 Savigny ; and to the tempestuous scenes which next 
 rise upon our view, picturesque animation is imparted 
 by the fervour of Sismondi, and consistent clearness by 
 the sagacity and the philosophical eloquence of Hallam. 
 To inquiries like theirs, — to the elucidation of political 
 institutions in their growth, their maturity, and their de- 
 cay, — the most prominent place has been allotted in all 
 the chapters belonging to this class. Throughout those 
 chapters, however, endeavours have been used to recon- 
 cile that fulness of information which systematic students 
 are entitled to expect, with other qualities wdiich may 
 awaken sympathy for the incidents of the story. 
 
 Thus much may suffice as to the principles which 
 have governed the choice of topics, and the manner of 
 dealing with them. It will be useful to add some expla- 
 nations in regard to the arrangement. 
 
 The work is divided into Three Parts, devoted respec- 
 tively to the three great stages in the past fortunes of 
 mankind, — the Classical Times, the Dark and Middle 
 Ages, the recent centuries which are assigned to Modern 
 History. 
 
 In the beginning of the First Volume is placed an In- 
 troductory Chapter, which briefly describes the circum- 
 stances marking most distinctively the annals of the 
 Italians, both in politics and in intellectual exertion, 
 together with the principal features in the geography 
 and landscapes of their country. The remauider of the 
 volume belongs to the First Part of the work. It treats 
 
PREFACE. 9 
 
 successively the history of the Roman republic and em- 
 pire, the literature, art, and topography of those times, 
 and the character and habits of the heathen nation. 
 
 The Second Volume opens with the concluding chap- 
 ter of the First Part, which traces the Christian antiqui- 
 ties of Italy till the fall of the Western Empire. The 
 Second Part comprehends the thousand years which 
 elapsed between the usurpation of Odoacer and the conso- 
 lidation of modern polity at the close of the fifteenth 
 century. A connected survey of all the most remark- 
 able characteristics which developed themselves during 
 the Dark Ages, introduces a more circumstantial repre- 
 sentation of Italian vicissitudes daring the eventful times 
 that followed. For each of the two eras into which it 
 has been found convenient to divide the Middle Ages, 
 the historical narrative is united with a sketch of the 
 state of society and manners ; after which literature and 
 art are treated separately. The volume then enters 
 upon the Third Part. The first chapter of this divi- 
 sion continues the history of political changes to the 
 French Revolution of 1789 ; and the fate of literature 
 and art during the same period is afterwards traced. 
 Melancholy lessons abound in the public events of those 
 three hundred years, during which the records of the 
 nation that once ruled the world present but one un- 
 varied tale of foreign and enfeebling servitude. The 
 magnificence of speculative and imaginative achievement 
 which immortalized the sixteenth century, contrasting 
 so painfully with the wretchedness of active life in all 
 its relations, calls for exact inspection and detail. 
 
 The historical portions of the Third Volume are en- 
 tirely confined to the events which have occurred since 
 the French Revolution. The proportional magnitude 
 of the space allotted to so short a period, seemed to be 
 justified not only by the nearness of the facts to our 
 own times, but by their permanent interest and import- 
 ance. The three chapters thus appropriated embrace, 
 in succession, the revolutionar}'- era till the fall of the 
 French republic, the ten years of Napoleon's empire. 
 
10 PREFACE. 
 
 and the generation which has followed the reinstate- 
 ment of the ancient dynasties. An analysis of modem 
 topography holds the next place ; an outline of Italian 
 literature and art in the nineteenth centur}'- occupies a 
 short chapter ; and a very long one illustrates the charac- 
 ter and habits of the modern nation. To this survey 
 succeeds a sketch of the natural history and resources 
 of Italy and its islands. In the treatment of this sub- 
 ject, the writer entertains no aim more ambitious than 
 that of presenting, in a familiar shape, selections from 
 the materials already collected by men of science ; and 
 the facts which their research has unfolded are con- 
 sidered, at every step, with a view to their influence on 
 national industry. The last chapter is exclusively sta- 
 tistical. It contains numerical results under many heads, 
 which, in preceding places, were considered historically ; 
 and to these it adds other particulars which could not be 
 previously introduced, on account of their nature or their 
 want of connexion with public events. This chapter 
 is calculated merely for reference ; but those who may 
 think proper to use it in that way will find, it is hoped, 
 no inconsiderable amount of practical information. 
 
 To the Third Volume is subjoined a copious Index 
 for the whole work. 
 
 With the exception of the three vignette titles, the 
 engravings are maps and plans, the subjects of which 
 have been chosen, not for show, but on account of their 
 real usefulness. 
 
 Edinburgh, February 1841. 
 
CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 The Italians — In Ancient Times — In the Middle Ages — In 
 Modern Times — The Three Illustrious Periods of their History 
 — The Four Second-ary Periods — Inquiry as to their Present 
 Condition and National Character — Prejudices to be overcome — 
 Italy — Political Geography — The Ancient Provinces — The 
 Modern Sovereignties — Coincidences and Discrepancies of the 
 Two Divisions — The Italian Islands — Scenery — Outlines and 
 Vegetation — Buildings — Living Groups — Prominent Physical 
 Features — The Alpine Chain — The Apennines — The Volcanic 
 Mountains — The Rivers and Lakes of Upper Italy — The Rivers 
 of Middle and Lower Italy — The Rivers in the Islands — Phy- 
 sical Advantages and Deficiencies — The Fate of Italy,.... Page 17 
 
 PART I. 
 
 ANCIENT ITALY. 
 
 CHAPTEIl I. 
 
 IHE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN 
 
 REPUBLIC. 
 
 FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TILL A. U. 722, OR B. C. 32. 
 
 First Age : The Primitive Italian Tribes — The Kings of Rome 
 — The Greeks in Italy and Sicily. Second Age : Rome a 
 Republic — Its External History — The Greek Colonies — The 
 Constitutional History of Rome — The Early Constitution — Clas- 
 sification of the Citizens — The Senate — The Two Conventions 
 — Constitutional Pecuharities — Commencement of the Plebeian 
 Struggle — Institution of the Tribunes — Rise of a Third Conven- 
 tion — Prosecution of Struggle— The Twelve Tables — The Lici- 
 nian Laws — The Publihan Laws — The Democracy perfected. 
 Third Age : The Character of the Times — The New Aristo- 
 cracy — The Populace — The External History — The Roman 
 Dominions in Magna Graecia — In Sicily — Abroad — The Punic 
 "Wars — The Constitutional History — Three Stages : — 1 . 
 
12 cox TENTS. 
 
 Changes on the Senate — On the Conventions— 2. The Gracchi — 
 The ItaUan Allies— The Ballot— The Army and Marius— 3. 
 — Sylla's Reign and Policy — The last Republican Times — Pom- 
 peyjCeesar, Cicero, Cato — CsesarKing — His Assassination — Oc- 
 tavius Emperor — The Repuhlican Administration and Finance 
 — The Italian Provinces — The Municipalities — The State Ex. 
 penditure — The Revenues, Page 41 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 
 
 A.u. 722— A. u. 1229 ; or b. c. 32— a. d. 476. 
 Fourth Age : Tlte Heathen Empire — List of Emperors — Their 
 personal Characters— Tenure of the Empire — The Political 
 Franchise lost — The jNIilitary Force — The Financial System — 
 New Taxes and Burdens — j\Iode of Collection — The IVIunicipa- 
 lities — Their Prosperity — The general Decay — The Last Age 
 of Heathenism. Fifth Age : The Chnstian Empire — List of 
 Emperors— Disastrous External History — The Fall of the Em- 
 pire in Italy — State of Public Feeling — Constantine's Admini- 
 strative System — The Land and Poll Taxes — Singular State of 
 the Municipalities, 94 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 the literature of heathen ITALY. 
 PERIOD ENDING A. U. 1059, OR A. D. 306. 
 
 Grecian Literature in Magna Graecia and Sicily — Its Four 
 Centuries — Its Decay after the Roman Conquest. Roman 
 Literature : First Age : The Infancy of Literature — Its 
 Subsequent Progress. Second Age : The Formed Literature 
 of the RepuUic: The Sixth Century of the City— Plautus, Te- 
 rence, and Cato — The Seventh Century — Lucretius — Catullus — 
 Sallust — Cffisar — Cicero's Works and Influence. Third Age: 
 Literature at the Court of Augustus: Poetry — Patronage — 
 Foreign Taste — Toleration— Livy — Propertius and Tibullus — 
 Ovid — Horace's Works — The Character of Virgil's Genius — 
 The Georgics — The Politics of the iEneid — Its Antiquarianism, 
 Topography, and Poetry. Y o\z-R.Tn Agy.: Literature from Au- 
 gustus to the Times of the Antonines : The Character assumed 
 by Literature — The Elder Pliny — Seneca— Lucan's Life and 
 Poem — Statins- Persius, Juvenal, and Tacitus. Fifth Age : 
 Literature from Commodus till the Accession of Constantine : 
 No Native Literature — The Greeks, 116 
 
CONTENTS. 13 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ART IN ITALr AND SICILY BEFORE THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 BY THE ROMANS. 
 
 PERIOD ENDING A. U. 608 ; OR B. C. 146. 
 
 The Connexion of Italian with Grecian Art — Art in the Greco- 
 Italian Colonies. The Infancy of Art in Greece and the 
 Colonies— The Temples — Existing Monuments of Architecture 
 and Sculpture in Magna Graecia and Sicily — The Selinuntine 
 Marbles — Grecian Art after its Complete Development 
 — Painting and Architecture — Extant Decorative Paintings and 
 Mosaics — The Greek Architectural Orders — Ruins in Magna 
 Graecia and Sicily — ScnljJture in Two Eras : — I. The Era of 
 Great Names— Its Two Ages— (1). The Age of Phidias, Poly- 
 cletus, and Myron — Existing Copies or Imitations of their Works 
 — The Amazons— The Jupiter-busts — The Pallas-statues — The 
 Colossi of the Quirinal Mount — (2). The Age of Scopas, Praxi- 
 teles, and Lysippus — The Niobe and her Children — The Fauns 
 — The Cupids — The Venus-statues — The Figures of Hercules — 
 II. The Era of Great Works — Existing Sculptures of this Time 
 — The Venus and Apollo de' Medici — The Borghese Gladiator — 
 The Farnese Hercules — The Germanicus and Cincinnatus. Art 
 IN Etruria and Rome — Recent Elucidations of Etruscan Art 
 
 — Its Character Grecian — Etruscan Fortresses — Temples 
 
 Tombs — Painted Vases — Sculpture and Castings — The She-wolf 
 — The Decline and Revival of Art in Rome, Page 148 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 art in italy from the conquest of greece till the 
 accession of constantine, 
 
 A. u. 608—1059 : or b. c. 146— a. d. 306. 
 The Fate of Grecian Art under the Romans. Roman Archi- 
 tecture — Gradual Innovations on the Greek Style — Eminent 
 Architects — Illustrations from Existing Ruins in Rome — Tombs 
 — Domestic Architecture— Its Rules Illustrated— A Heathen 
 Dwelling-house and Christian Monastery. Ro:\ian Painting 
 — Vases and Wall-paintings — Herculaneum and Pompeii— Fres- 
 coes — INIosaics. Roman Sculpture — Its History till the 
 Times of the Antonines — The Stages of its Progress — Illustra- 
 tive Specimens — The Apollo Belvedere — The Laocoon — The 
 
14 CONTENTS. 
 
 Antinous-statues — The Torso Belvedere — The Pallas-statues — 
 The Diana — The Siibjects of Sculpttire during the same Period 
 — Selection of Classified Specimens — Roman and Greek Portraits 
 — IVIythological Subjects — The Twelve Gods — Venus-statues — 
 Apollo-groups — The Bacchic Legends — The Ariadne — The 
 Dancing Faun — The Barberini Faun — The Fable of Eros — The 
 Borghese Centaur — The Heroic Legends — The Meleager — The 
 Farnese Bull — The Portland and Medicean Vases — The Iliac 
 Table — Menelaus as Pasquin — Doubtful Subjects — The Paetus 
 and Arria — The Papirius — The Dying Gladiator — The Imitativ^e 
 Styles — The Archaic — The Egyptian — Sculpture after the An- 
 tonines — Its Monuments — Chiefly Reliefs on Sarcophagi — Sym- 
 bols — Love and Psyche — Ariadne — Endymion — The Genius of 
 Mortality — Orientalism. The Topography of Ancient Art 
 IN Italy and Sicily — Architecture — Painting and Sculp- 
 ture, Page 179 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 the ancient topography of ROME AND LATIUM. 
 
 Ancient Rome : Position and Aspect — General View of 
 the City — Monuments of the Kings — The Rampart — 
 The Tunnel — The Dungeon — Monuments of the Republic 
 — Tombs — The Circus— The Capitoline Rock — The Roman 
 Forum and Sacred IVay — Ruins covering the Republican Forum 
 — Its probable Position — The Palatine Mount — The Sacred 
 Way — Monuments of the Empire — The Augustan Period 
 — Ruins on the Palatine — On the Campus Martius — Tombs — 
 The Pantheon — The Hill of Gardens — Nero — His Conflagra- 
 tion and New City— Lafer Emperors— Ihe Baths of Titus — 
 The Colosseum — Trajan's Forum — Hadrian's Bridge and Tomb 
 — Monuments of the Decline — Population of Rome. — II. An- 
 cient Latium : Aspect — Monuments near Rome — Aqueducts 
 — Highways — IMonuments of the Kings — Latian Scenes of the 
 j^neid—The Tiber Banks—Ostia— The Island— The Port- 
 Ruins in the Forest — Laurentum — Lavinium — The Stream 
 Numicus— Ardea — The Folscian Coas?— Antium— Astura — 
 The Isle of Circe— Anxur — The Pontine Marshes— The Hills 
 — The Ausonian District — The Csecuban Hills— Towns — The 
 Folscian Frontier — Arpinum — TheHernician District — Cyclo- 
 pean Ruins — The Alhan Mountains — Tusculum — The Mounts 
 — The Lakes — The Prcenestine Mountains — Praeneste — 
 Tibur, 219 
 
CONTENTS. 15 
 
 CHAPTER Vir. 
 
 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHr OF ETRURIA, THE CENTRAL 
 APENNINES, AND UPPER ITALT. 
 
 Etruria : The Plain — Its ruined Cities and Tombs— Recent 
 Excavations — The Inland Region — Veii — Soracte — The Thrasi- 
 mene Lake — Cortona — The River-springs — Faesulse — The Val 
 d' Arno — The Sabellian Apennines : Sabines — Reate — 
 Primeval Ruins — Scenes near Rome — The Valley of the Anio 
 — Marsians — The Lake Fucinus — Its Scenery and Tunnel — 
 Pelignians — Sulmo — Vestinians — The Vale of the Aternus — 
 Samnites — The Caudine Defile — Beneventum — Lake Amsanctus 
 — Umbria and Picenum : Umhria — The Adriatic Coast — 
 The Mountains — The Valley of the Clitumnus — Spoletium — 
 Interamna and the Cataract — Ocriculum — Picenum — Ancona 
 — Asculum— Passes and Summits of the Great Rock of Italy 
 — Upper Italy — Liguria — Genua — Mount Vesulus — Segu- 
 sium — Cisalpine Gaul — The River Po — The Alpine Lakes — 
 Mantua — Verona — Battlefields — Insubrian Towns — Tovrns on 
 the iEmilian Highway — The Disinterment of Velleia — Towns 
 on the Eastern Coast — The Rubicon — Venetia — Patavium — 
 The Baths— /sm'« — Aquileia — Pola, Page 271 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE ancient topography OF LOWER ITALY AND THE ITALIAN 
 ISLANDS. 
 
 Campania— Capua— The City and Bay of Naples — The Phle- 
 graean Fields — Virgil's Tomb — Scenery of his Hades — The 
 Phlegraean Isles — The disinterred Cities — Herculaneum — 
 The excavated Parts of Pompeii — Tombs — The Forum — Temples 
 — Theatres and Amphitheatre — Apulia, Lucania, and Brut- 
 tium: Description — Apulia — Cannae — Mount Vultur — Brun- 
 dusium — Rui7is in Magna Grcecia Proper — The Gulf of Taren- 
 tum — The Scylletic Gulf— iJwms on the Western Coast— The 
 Rock of Scylla — Charybdis — Elea — The Temples at Psestum — 
 The Inland Region — Consentia — The Forest of Sila — Sicily 
 — Aspect — Mountains — Interior — The Hill-fort of Enna — Eaat- 
 ernCoast — JNIessana — Taorminium— Catana — Syracuse — South- 
 em Coast — Troglodyte Town — Ruins of Agrigentum — Selinus 
 — IVestern Coast — Mount Eryx — Northern Coast — ^geste — 
 Panorraus — Corsica and Sardinia — Roman Colonies — Sar- 
 dinian Round Towers — The Isle of Ilva — The Imperial Pro- 
 vinces OF Italy — Augustus — Constantine — The Connexion 
 between the Ancient Provinces and the Modern,.. 293 
 
16 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE CHARACTER, HABITS, COMMERCE, AND 
 PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRY OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 
 
 FIRST PERIOD: Latino-Etruscan : Religion—Education— 
 Agriculture — Mechanical Arts — Trade — INIagna Grsecia and the 
 Islands — Illustrative Examples — Money-making — MoraUty — 
 Miscellaneous Habits. SECOND PERIOD: Italo-Gre- 
 ciAN : Religion — State of Belief — Superstitions — Ghosts — 
 Witches — Morality — Mixed Character of the Republican States- 
 men — Crimes of the Imperial Court — Meanness of the Imperial 
 Senators — jMorality of the People — Ancient Brigands — Illustra- 
 tions of Imperial Epicureanism and Reverses — Intellectual Cul- 
 tivation — Course of Education — Endowed Schools — Libraries — 
 Booksellers — Newspapers and their Contents — Classes of 
 Society — ^Haughtinessof the Nobles — No Middle Class — INIai'kets 
 for Slaves — Their Occupations and Treatment — Their Rebellions 
 — Freedmen — Amusements — TheTheatre and Improvised Drama 
 — The Circus — Gladiators— Wild Beasts — Marine Theatres — 
 Fondness for Spectacles — Aristocratic Amusements — Readings 
 — Iraprovvisatori — Court Pageants — Industry and Commerce — 
 Rural Economy — The Roman Corn-laws — Vicissitudes of Agri- 
 culture — Grazing — Tillage — Labourers and Leases — Crops — 
 Gardens— Orchards — Mechanical Arts and Trade — Stages of 
 Luxury— Native Manufactures — Obstacles to Commerce — Italian 
 Exports — Imports from Europe — From Asia — From Africa. 
 THIRD PERIOD : Greco-Oriental : Pagan Religion- 
 Education — The College of Rome and its Statutes — Spectacles 
 —Illustrations of Character — Foreign Trade — Guilds and Manu- 
 factures — Agricultural Serfs — Misery and Depopulation of Italy 
 — Universal Hopelessness, Page 323 
 
 ENGRAVINGS IN VOL. I. 
 
 Map of a Part of the Carapagna of Rome,... To /ace the Vignette. 
 
 Vignette — S. Peter's, and Castle and Bridge of S. Angelo. 
 
 An Ancient Dwelling-house and JModern Convent, To face page 187 
 
 Plan of Ancient Rome, To face page 221 
 
 Plan of the Roman Forum and its Vicinity, To face page 231 
 
ITALY 
 
 AND 
 
 THE ITALIAN ISLANDS, 
 
 Introductory Chapter. 
 
 The Italians — In Ancient Times — In the Middle Ages — In 
 Modern Times — The Three Illustrious Periods of their History 
 — The Four Secondary Periods — Inquiry as to their Present 
 Condition and National Character — Prejudices to be overcome — 
 Italy — Political Geography — The Ancient Provinces — The 
 Modern Sovereignties — Coincidences and Discrepancies of the 
 TvFo Divisions — The Italian Islands — Scenery — Outlines and 
 Vegetation — Buildings — Living Gtom^s— Prominent Physical 
 Features — The Alpine Chain — The Apennines — The Volcanic 
 Mountains — The Rivers and Lakes of Upper Italy — The Rivers 
 of Middle and Lower Italy — The Rivers in the Islands — Phy- 
 sical Advantages and Deficiencies-^The Fate of Italy. 
 
 It has been the destiny of the Italians, and of no other 
 European people, to be illustrious in each of the tliree 
 periods of human history. Ancient Italy, Italy in the 
 Middle Ages, and the Italy of Modem Times, have suc- 
 cessively, each in its own sphere, outshone the glory of 
 all contemporary nations. 
 
 Ancient Italy has bequeathed to us magnificent me- 
 morials of literature and art. Its true fame, however, 
 lies in the events of its political annals. Art, so far as it 
 was in any sense national, was introduced by the Greeks, 
 a race of settlers sprung from foreign blood, and unlike 
 the older inhabitants both in maimers and intellect. In 
 literature, and even in some departments of philosophy, 
 
 VOL. I. A 
 
18 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 the ancient Italians were more active ; but there also 
 they were pupils of the Greeks ; and few, even of their 
 best writers, did more than repeat eloquently the les- 
 sons which they had learned. The political history 
 presents a picture quite dissimilar. In its scenes, the 
 most imposing which have ever been displayed, we see 
 the nation obeymg its own impulses, and drawing from 
 its own character and deeds both its rise and its decay. 
 The Romans, at first the burghers of a single town, 
 and afterwards no more than one brave tribe among 
 others equally brave, gradually conquered all the petty 
 states of the peninsula, and stamped on the whole 
 country their strong character and their name. Their 
 power then crossed the Alps and the sea ; and the 
 whole known world was proud to serve Rome, and to 
 be called Roman. But their republican period, extend- 
 ing to nearly five centuries, witnessed the infancy, the 
 bloom, and the decline, of their genuine political great- 
 ness. For two centuries more, we linger over the history 
 of Italy, to watch the farther development of literature 
 and art, which grew under the empire like exotic plants 
 beneath an artificial shelter. The ancient period of Ro- 
 man greatness begins with the republic, and ends about 
 the year of our Lord 180. 
 
 The Dark and Middle Ages, which together make up 
 the second great chronological stage in the history of 
 mankind, embrace for Italy ten centuries, commencing in 
 the year of grace 476, and ending about the year 1600. 
 Their last five hundred years, from 1000 to 1500, may 
 be described as the Middle Ages of Italy, a period of acti- 
 vity and transition, very unlike the five dark centuries 
 which had preceded. For the Italians, the Middle Ages 
 were an era of such grandeur as even their ancient 
 history had not paralleled. The vicissitudes of those 
 wild times, and the events which have followed them, 
 resemble one of those gigantic processes, by which 
 nature, the instrument of the Maker, formed in the 
 beginning vast tracts of land in the peninsula itself. 
 Amidst earthquakes, darkness, and lurid bursts of fire. 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 19 
 
 an island rises from the sea. The seasons decompose its 
 cliffs ; the winds and the birds clothe its volcanic soil 
 with vegetation ; and the mariner, whose father saw the 
 rock emerging from the waters, wanders through its vine- 
 yards, and over its grassy hills. From the cunvnlsions 
 which followed the dark ages, modem Europe has derived 
 the elements of political freedom, of literature, and of 
 art ; and those convulsions had in Italy their earliest and 
 most powerful focus. The passions of the people were 
 then nearly as undisciplined, their vices were almost as 
 revolting, as in the palmy days of heathen Rome ; but 
 heroism and virtue were seen in frequent glimpses, and 
 Christianity, ill understood and ill practised, sometimes 
 lifted its voice like music through the storm. The 
 main political event of the middle ages was the forma- 
 tion of the Italian republics, which, successively flourish- 
 ing and withering, transmitted the inheritance of liberty 
 during more than four hundred years, and did not, till 
 late in the fifteenth century, allow it to be entirely lost. 
 Nominally indeed it survived yet longer. Those were 
 the earliest free states of Christendom ; and they teach 
 us inestunable truths by their defects and crimes, as 
 well as by their glory. In literature and art, the 
 Italians were infinitely stronger in that period than 
 they had been in the classical times. They no longer 
 copied foreign cultivation, or plundered its monuments. 
 They were inventors ; and their inventions became the 
 models of all Europe. Their literature, which at the 
 end of the thirteenth century was only in its infancy, in 
 the fourteenth stood forth more vigorous and original than 
 in any age preceding or following. Their art struggled 
 against obstructions for four hundred years ; but before 
 the end of the fifteenth century, it had completely 
 imfolded its principles, and nobly exemplified them. 
 
 Modem Italy is a name which awakens regrets, but 
 also inspires, in the mind of the nation, a well-founded 
 pride. The period to which the term refers, commencing 
 in the year 1500, has now endured nearly three cen- 
 turies and a half, a period during which the country, 
 
20 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 sunk in unredeemed political servitude, has been por- 
 tioned out by foreign sovereigns like a slave plantation. 
 But in the sixteenth century, the first of the modern cycle, 
 Italy was intellectually groat. Her literature attained its 
 highest point of cultivation, and produced its third series of 
 splendid works. Her art stood higher still ; for in sculp- 
 ture, in architecture, and yet more decidedly in painting, 
 her names at that period were the most illustrious of 
 Christian Europe. Even the seventeenth century was 
 not altogether dark ; but its brightness was the reflected 
 light of evening. Indeed, in the sixteenth century itself, 
 no new path was opened ; for the spirit of its literature 
 and art was directly prompted by that which had ruled 
 in the later middle ages. In this want of essential origi- 
 nality, and yet more strikingly in the harvest of fame 
 which it gathered on the ruins of liberty and national 
 character, it formed a close parallel to the Augustan age. 
 
 The points of eminence, intellectual and political, 
 which have been now marked out, constitute the true 
 greatness of Italy ; and on them our attention must 
 be steadily fixed. They are all contained in what we 
 may call The Three Illustrious Periods of Italian 
 history. These comprehend one section in each of 
 the three great chronological divisions which are re- 
 cognised in the history of the world. The Illustrious 
 Period in Ancient Times (b. c. 510 — a. d. 180) em- 
 braces seven centuries : that which extends over the 
 Middle Ages (a. d. 1000— a. d. 1500) includes five 
 centuries: and that of Modern Times (a. d. 1500 — 
 A. D. 1600), endured for one century, and no more. If 
 all records but those which belong to these three periods, 
 and all other monuments, should cease to exist, Italy 
 would still be reverenced as the birthplace of political 
 wisdom, and the cradle of literature and art. 
 
 But, like other countries, Italy has periods of history 
 which must be carefully studied, although they reflect 
 little honour either on her political character, on her 
 morals, or on her intellect. The poet may content 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 21 
 
 himself with looking up at the star when it culminates ; 
 but the astronomer must calculate its rising and setting. 
 It is our duty, and the performance of the duty will 
 bring its reward, to trace the greatness of the nation 
 back to its sources, and to accompany it hastily through 
 its phases of decay. 
 
 These subordinate stages are included in Four Periods, 
 which may be called The Secondary Periods of Italian 
 history. The first two of the Secondary Periods belong 
 to Ancient Italy. The First, the primeval age, precedes 
 tlie Ancient Illustrious Period, and ends at the establish- 
 ment of the Roman republic (b. c. 510). The Second 
 (a. d. 180 — A. D. 476) succeeds the Ancient Illustrious 
 Period, and ends, after an endurance of three centuries, 
 with the fall of the Roman empire in the West, Avhich 
 closes the history of the ancient world. The Third 
 Secondary Period (a. d. 476 — a. d. 1000) belongs to the 
 second great division of liistory. It comprehends the 
 Dark Ages, which intervene between the close of the 
 Ancient History and the Illustrious Period embracing 
 the Middle Ages. The Fourth Secondary Period belongs 
 to Modern Italy. It succeeds the Modern Illustrious 
 Period, and extends from 1600 to the present day. 
 
 The Fu'st Secondary Period is fruitful beyond mea- 
 sure in matters of curious antiquarian speculation, but, 
 being barren in facts and lessons, it may be passed over 
 very rapidly. — In the Second Secondary Period the 
 political annals embrace the decline and fall of the 
 Western empire. During that time the Christian faith 
 silently diffused itself, like a healing odour, through the 
 pestilential atmosphere, and was at length established as 
 the religion of the state. A history of early Christianity 
 in Italy would be an undertaking quite foreign to the 
 purpose of these pages ; but the subject might be fully 
 illustrated, from the apostolic times down to the corrupt- 
 ed age of the Lower Empire, by monuments and scenes 
 which can be still identified. To these, and to the infant 
 Christian literature of the country, our attention will be 
 willingly accorded. — The Third Secondary Period, that 
 
22 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 of the dark ages, was a time of almost unmixed misery 
 and ignorance ; but it has left in Italy numerous records 
 and monuments, which strikingly illustrate the religion, 
 politics, and arts, of the ages which succeeded. It is 
 especially memorable as having witnessed the foundation 
 of the papal sovereignty, temporal and ecclesiastical. — 
 The Fourth Secondary Period would extend, if historical 
 events were to be its measure, from the year 1500 to 
 the present time. "We have already, however, upon 
 other grounds, excepted from it the sixteenth century ; 
 and therefore it will include only the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries, with the portion which has already 
 elapsed of the nineteenth. This period is not barren 
 either in art or literature ; but it derives its chief im- 
 portance from the facts in it which illustrate the pre- 
 sent political state of the country, and the character of its 
 society. Its latest public events, commencing with the 
 French revolution in 1789, will claim minute attention.* 
 
 * In the subjoined chronological table of the periods of Italian 
 history, the divisions anticipate some points which will call for sub- 
 sequent explanation ; but the table may not be without its use 
 as an introductory clue. 
 
 I. Fiii;t Secondary Period — Ancient— Ending in the year b. c. 
 510. 
 
 II. First Illustrious Period — Ancient — From e. c. 510 to 
 A, D. 180 — Seven centuries. 
 
 Pohtical greatness — The Roman republic — b. c. 510 to B c. 
 
 32 — Five centuries. 
 Greatness in art — b. o. 460 to a. d. 180 — Six centuries. 
 Greatness in literature— b.c. 204 to a.d. 180 — Four centuries. 
 
 III. Second Secondary Period — Ancient — From a. d. 180 to 
 A. n. 476 — Three centuries. 
 
 IV. Third Secondary Period — The Dark Ages — From a. d. 
 476 to A.n. 1000— F/i-e centuries. 
 
 V. Second Illustrious Period — The Middle Ages— From 
 A. d, 1000 to A.D. 1500— -F/re centuries. 
 
 Political greatness — The republics — A. d. 1000 to a. d. 1500 — 
 
 Five centuries. 
 Greatness in literature — a.d. 1300 to a.d. 1400 — One century. 
 Greatness in art— a. d. 1400 to a. d. IoOO — One century. 
 
 VI. Third Illustrious Period — Modern — From a. v. 1500 
 to A.D. 1600 — One century. 
 
 Greatness in literature and art— One century. 
 
 VII. Fourth Secondary Period — Modern — From a. d. 1600— 
 Two centuries and a half. 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 23 
 
 We cannot but feel a lively sympathy in the fate of a 
 nation which has done and suffered so much. We must 
 therefore attempt to analyze, so far as our materials 
 will allow us, the political institutions, the state of 
 the church, and of education, religion, and morality, 
 the prevailing habits and character, and every other 
 element which may enable us to form an accurate no- 
 tion of the present condition of the Italians, or to 
 speculate on their future prospects. Many causes con- 
 cur in obstructing the progress of such an inquiry ; but 
 its interest rewards all exertions ; and even imperfect 
 results will be excused, where complete knowledge is so 
 difficult of acquisition. Nothing should be considered as 
 unworthy of notice, which promises to throw even a 
 transitory ray of light on the subject. The lowest of 
 the people will be the class among Avhom our investiga- 
 tion will be most successful ; and, from their deepest 
 superstitions to their gayest diversions, — from the kindest 
 effusions of their warm-heartedness to their crimes and 
 the punishment of them, — from the legends and jests 
 of their leisure to their labours in the cottage or the 
 field, — every new feature of which we can catch a 
 glimpse will aid in filling up the picture. Even dry 
 statistical details will here possess importance ; and it 
 will be desirable to trace as minutely as possible 
 the results of productive industry, their effects on the 
 condition of the various States mto which the peninsula 
 is divided, and the commercial relations which connect 
 the various sections of Italy with the transalpine 
 nations. This last subject of inquiry is particularly 
 interesting to us, from the close relations in trade 
 which subsist between our own country and that which 
 we are examining. 
 
 It is the more necessary to attempt doing justice to 
 the character of the modern Italians, because no people 
 in Europe are so little understood among us. If we hear 
 the subject mentioned, it is for the purpose of contrast- 
 ing modem degeneracy with ancient greatness. There 
 is truth even in our mistake. The melancholy song 
 
24 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 which the shepherds chant m the plams of Rome, tells us 
 that the Eternal City is not what she was.* It is no less 
 true, that the national character is sadly changed, clianged 
 as much by the long absence of freedom, as by the mis- 
 government of despotic rulers. Even if it be decreed 
 that Italy shall not again rise from the dust, the guilt of 
 her degradation will not on that account lie the less heavy 
 on the heads of those who have been the instruments of 
 Heaven's displeasure. But in our floating notions of 
 Italian character, we grievously exaggerate the extent of 
 its deterioration. Our ignorance can alone account for the 
 inaccuracy of our judgment, but several causes unite in 
 creating the wrong impression. One of these is oui* 
 Protestantism, and our consequent want of experience 
 in the practical effects which are produced by the form 
 of religion in Italy. Another cause is our dislike of 
 absolutism in government, which tempts us to over- 
 charge all its evils. We are still farther misled by 
 our o^vn deeply marked character and customs, which 
 spring partly from our political condition, partly from our 
 climate, and partly from our Teutonic blood ; and which, 
 unless strong correctives are administered, disqualify 
 us for fully comprehending the temper and habits of a 
 nation deprived of freedom, descended from a southern 
 race, and inhabiting a Mediterranean country. According 
 to the feeling which happens to rule at the moment, we 
 charge the Italians in the mass, with superstition, igno- 
 rance, indolence, voluptuousness, revengefulness, or dis- 
 honesty ; or, if our knowledge be very small and our fancy 
 very active, we combine all these features of different 
 classes, times, and provinces, into one monstrous carica- 
 ture. The special heads of our accusation, like the general 
 charge, have a little truth amidst much error. This is 
 not the place for details ; but it is impossible to refrain 
 from protesting at the outset against all unjust pre- 
 judices. The upper ranks of the community, the few 
 who can be said to belong to the middle order, the work- 
 
 * Roma ! Roina ! Roma ! 
 Roma non e piu come era prima I 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 25 
 
 ing-people in the towns, and the inliabitants of the rural 
 districts, form four distinct classes, each of which has 
 its own characteristics. Even the first three classes, 
 though very flir indeed from being stainless, are more 
 like the same orders among ourselves than we are apt to 
 believe ; and the peasantry, a very noble race, have been 
 grossly slandered. 
 
 The study of the country itself is not much less valu- 
 able, and not at all less inviting, than that of its inha- 
 bitants. It abounds with spots which are consecrated by 
 historical recollections, with buildings which are the 
 models of architecture, with collections of statues which 
 are the masterpieces of ancient art, and with paintings 
 which are the finest works of modern genius. Its land- 
 scapes are at once lovely and peculiar ; its botany, its 
 zoology, the phenomena of its climate, and its singular 
 mineralogical structure, open a rich field for the specu- 
 lations of the man of science ; and its natural productions 
 possess both interest and importance for those who in- 
 quire into the history of the nation. A short description 
 of its political divisions, the aspect of its scenery, and its 
 most prominent physical features, will be useful here as 
 an introduction to the details of the following chapters. 
 
 The names of the leading political divisions of Italy 
 and its dependencies will furnish us with a vocabulary 
 for describing the scenery and physical geography. The 
 most common of the ancient systems of classification, 
 and the divisions which at present prevail, will answer 
 that purpose. The geography of the middle ages is both 
 too complex and too fluctuating, to be of any use for 
 such an end. 
 
 After the Romans had completed the conquest of the 
 peninsula, the northern frontier of Italy wound along 
 the southern brow of the Alps ; and the differences be- 
 tween that line and the one at present adopted, are not 
 of such consequence as to call for notice. The ancient 
 boundary was terminated on the east by the river Arsia, 
 
26 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 near the modem Fiume ; and it thus included as Italian 
 provinces Carnia and Istria. These now constitute part 
 of the Austrian kingdom of Illyria ; and the present 
 Italian border on the east just shuts out the town of 
 Aquileia. At the western extremity, the maritime Alps 
 at first terminated the Roman frontier of Italy ; but the 
 country was afterwards considered as extending to the 
 river Var, which now separates the Italian district of 
 Nice from Provence. In all quarters except those which 
 have been just named, Italy is surrounded by the sea, 
 forming a long and irregular peninsula. 
 
 The ancient geographical classification usually adopted, 
 takes as its basis the territories of the primitive nations, 
 and may be considered as dividing Italy into the fol- 
 lowing thirteen provinces : — 1. Venetia (with Carnia 
 and Istria) ; 2. Cisalpine Gaul ; 3. Liguria ; 4. Etruria ; 
 6. Umbria, with Picenum ; 6. The region of the central 
 Apennines, including the lands of the Sabini, JEqui, 
 Marsi, Peligni, Vestini, and Marrucini ; 7. The City of 
 Rome ; 8. Latium ; 9. Campania ; 10. Samnium, and 
 the territory of the Frentani ; 11. Apulia; 12. Luca- 
 nia ; 18. The territory of the Bruttii. 
 
 Italy is at present formed into eight sovereignties : — 
 1. The Lombardo- Venetian Kingdom, of which the Em- 
 peror of Austria is kmg ; 2. The states of the King of 
 Sardinia (except Savoy, which is not Italian) ; 3. The 
 Duchy of Parma ; 4. The Duchy of Modena ; 5. The 
 Duchy of Lucca (soon to be suppressed) ; 6. The Grand- 
 duchy of Tuscany ; 7. The Papal States ; 8, The King- 
 dom of the Two Sicilies, including the Neapolitan pro- 
 vinces and Sicily. Two other petty states are nominally 
 independent ; the Principality of Monaco, in the Sar- 
 dinian county of Nice ; and the Republic of San Marino, 
 in the eastern division of the Papal States. 
 
 The first three of the ancient provinces include (with 
 immaterial deviations) the Lombardo- Venetian Kingdom, 
 the continental Italian possessions of the Sardinian mo- 
 narchy, the duchies of Parma and Modena, and the north- 
 eastern comer of the Papal States, ending at Rimini. 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 27 
 
 This region lies wholly between the Alps and the northern 
 side of the Apennines, excepting that part of the Sar- 
 dinian territories composed of the county of Nice and 
 duchy of Genoa, which form a long narrow strip between 
 the southern side of the mountains and the sea. In the 
 dark ages, a small portion of this district, extending from 
 Rimini northward to beyond Ravenna, and westward 
 to the ridge of the Apennines, received the name of 
 Romagna, from its occupation by the exarchs of the 
 titular Roman empu*e. The remainder of the great valley 
 between the Alps and Apennines, derived from its con- 
 querors in the sixth century the name of Lombardy ; 
 and the term is generally used in this sense by writers on 
 the history of the middle ages. But after the sovereignty 
 of Piedmont had reached its utmost limit tovrards the 
 east, and the Venetian provinces had been stopped in 
 their growth westward, the intervening space, compos- 
 ing the duchy of Milan and the marquisate of Mantua, 
 fell first into the hands of the Spaniards, and afterwards 
 into those of the Austrians ; and to this intermediate 
 territory the name of Lombardy is now most usually con- 
 fined. The Austrians, by their latest arrangements, ex- 
 tend the designation to the eastward, so as to take in 
 Bergamo and Brescia, which were formerly Venetian 
 provinces. The whole region described in this paragraph 
 may be considered as Northern or Upper Italy. 
 
 A second historical region, called Middle Italy, may be 
 regarded as stretching from the borders of Upper Italy to 
 the southern slopes of the central Apennines. In this 
 section, the greater part of the ancient Etruria is found 
 under the name of the modern Tuscany ; but the an- 
 cient province, as its frontier on the south-east and south 
 was formed by the Tiber from its source, comprehends 
 also the north-western portion of the Papal States. 
 Umbria and Picenum, on the eastern side of the Apen- 
 nines, are almost entirely in the Domains of the Church ; 
 a small portion only lying within the Neapolitan frontier. 
 The land of the Sabines, included in the sixth ancient 
 province, lies in the Papal States ; and the other moun- 
 
28 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 tain districts of the same province are in the Ahnizzo 
 Ultra within the kingdom of Naples. The name of 
 Latium, originally confined to the plain around Rome, 
 shut in between the Tiber, the nearest mountains, and 
 the sea, spread farther and farther south till it touched 
 Campania at, and afterwards beyond, the mouth of the 
 river Liris or Garigliano. In this region, according to 
 the geography of the middle ages, the Etrurian portion 
 of the Papal State was called the Patrimony of St 
 Peter ; and the March of Ancona nearly corresponds to 
 the ancient Picenum. 
 
 Lower Italy, the third region, lies wholly in the king- 
 dom of Naples, in which, however, two small territories 
 belonging to the Papal See are isolated. None of its 
 ancient districts comcides exactly with any of the mo- 
 dern provinces ; but Campania may be considered to be 
 substantially represented by the Terra di Lavoro ; Sam- 
 nium and the lands of the Frentani by the Principato 
 Ultra and the Abi-uzzo Citra ; Apulia by the Capitanata, 
 the Terra di Bari, and the Terra di Otranto ; Lucaniaby 
 the Principato Citra and the Basilicata ; and Bruttium 
 by the Two Calabrias. Apulia, under its name of 
 Puglia, is important in the history of the middle ages. 
 
 Several islands are geographically connected with Italy. 
 In the Adriatic are no large ones on the Italian shore. 
 The only clusters are two ; the Tremiti isles, oflF the 
 Neapolitan coast ; and the line of shoals at the head of 
 the gulf, having the city of Venice for their centre, and 
 belonging wholly to the Austrian province which bears 
 the same name. The islands on the western side of the 
 peninsula are the largest in the Mediterranean ; and all 
 of them belong to Italy, politically as well as physically ; 
 except Corsica, which has been subject to France for 
 nearly a century ; and Malta, which in 1800 was trans- 
 ferred from its famous order of knights to the British 
 empire. Of the two main groups of these western 
 Italian islands, the more northerly is composed of 
 Corsica and Sardinia, with a few islets attached to the 
 latter, and that cluster between Corsica and Tuscany, of 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 29 
 
 wliich Elba is the largest. The second group consists of 
 Sicily, and the islands which surround it, the only con- 
 sideralDle ones being the Lipari isles on the north, and on 
 the south Pantellaria, with ]\Ialta and its dependent isle 
 of Gozo. The whole of this group, except the two last 
 mentioned, belongs to the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 
 as do Ischia, Capri, and the other islets about the mouth 
 of the Bay of Naples. 
 
 When we first tread the soil of Italy, the loveliness 
 of the landscape absorbs our whole attention. Associa- 
 tion, indeed, does much to strengthen the spell which the 
 scenery throws over us ; and the force of the attraction 
 is greatly increased by the southern sky, with its balmy 
 repose, its magical colouring, and its harmonious combi- 
 nations of light and shadow. All the features of the 
 picture, however, are in themselves both novel and 
 beautiful. The climate and its productions do not, it is 
 true, unfold their full luxuriance till we reach Sicily ; 
 but to the native of northern Europe, the face of the 
 country is new from the very foot of the Alps. 
 
 Italy is divided by nature into two very dissimilar 
 regions. The first is Lombardy, or Upper Italy, bound- 
 ed, as w^e have seen, on the north by the Alps, and on 
 the south by the Apennines. This tract commences, on 
 the north and west, among Alpine heights and glens, 
 whose aspect is that of Switzerland. The. mountains 
 then subside into broad meadow-plains, watered by large 
 rivers, and crossed m every field by rows of poplars sup- 
 porting vines ; while the olive-groves on the lower emi- 
 nences both of the Alpine and Apennine chains, and 
 the scattered cypresses and pines, impart the first charac- 
 teristic images of the Italian landscape. 
 
 Southward of the ridge of the Apennines is the second 
 region, the strictly peninsular portion of Italy. On 
 crossing the mountains wdiich bound it on the north, 
 we immediately lose the broad plains and full rivers 
 of Lombai'dy. The Apennine accompanies us to the 
 extremity of the peninsula, dividing it lengthwise, nar- 
 
30 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 rowing its flats, and forming deep hollows by the pro- 
 montories which it every where sends out. The moun- 
 tains, though in many districts lofty, are rounded in 
 shape ; and the undulating hills, which cluster about their 
 sides, sink down into flat alluvial valleys, like the de- 
 serted beds of lakes. Woods of olive-trees, not unlike 
 in character to the birch, cover the rising grounds with 
 their gray foliage. Towns and villages on the plains, or 
 oftener perched like castles on the hills, peer out from 
 amidst vineyards, or clumps of the dark flat-topped pine, 
 and the tall pillar-like cypress ; and the most unculti- 
 vated and lonely of the vales are clothed with a pic- 
 turesque and almost tropical prodigality of vegetation, 
 in the wild trees and shrubs, the broad leafy masses of 
 the glossy ilex, the rich forms and colours of the 
 arbutus, and the graceful outline of the fragrant myrtle. 
 Tliis aspect of the landscape, which prevails in Middle 
 Italy, suffers some changes as we advance farther south. 
 The date-palm is now seen in sheltered nooks ; in some 
 districts the orange and lemon groves give odour to 
 the air ; and the aloe and cactus grow wild upon the 
 rocks. These features are caught in glimpses, even on 
 the northern side of the Apennines ; they are more and 
 more frequent as we proceed towards Lower Italy, in 
 which they are not indeed the prevailing features, but 
 in several quarters assume prominence in the scene ; 
 and in Sicily the picture unites oriental vegetation with 
 that of the Italian valleys. The panorama of the low 
 country, too, has every where a back ground in the moun- 
 tains, among which, as we climb their sides, the wide 
 woods of chestnut, intermingled with oak and beech, 
 give way to the hardier species of the pine and other 
 vigorous plants, and these to the green pastures which 
 rise to the very summits of the Apennines. 
 
 The landscapes of Italy are excelled by those of nor- 
 thern Europe in several respects, and most of all in ex- 
 tent and gi-andeur of forest scenery ; but every defect is 
 redeemed by the lucid atmosphere, the characteristic 
 luxuriance of the vegetation, the singular beauty of form 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 31 
 
 in hill and vale, and tlie brilliant pictures of rural and even 
 woodland loveliness which we discover in so many spots. 
 
 Italian scenery receives another charm from its build- 
 ings, which in themselves are singularly pictui'esque 
 and add much to the historical and poetical recollections 
 they so often recall. Throughout the whole country are 
 scattered the architectural monuments of the Romans, 
 and in Lower Italy and Sicily many of the finest edi- 
 fices of the Greeks ; most of them now huge piles of 
 ruins, with shrubs and weeds mantling their walls and 
 twining round their broken columns. The perfection of 
 this species of landscape is to be found in the tract which, 
 solitary though within the walls of a modern city, is 
 covered by the ruins of Ancient Rome. The middle ages 
 liave, in the rural districts, left scanty relics ; a few dark 
 towers, a very few castles on the hills, and in Middle Italy 
 some of those villages, whose spacious mansions, falling 
 into decay, attest the former wealth and the present po- 
 verty of the agricultural population. Over the whole 
 peninsula, however, the churches, convents, and habita- 
 tions which rise amidst the vmeyards or olive-grounds, 
 are striking features in the scene. From the mean 
 dwellings of the Lombard peasants, or the few comfort- 
 able homesteads of the fanners, to the thickly crowded and 
 neat houses of the Genoese and Tuscan valleys, and thence 
 again to the ruinous and cheerlessbuildingsof the southern 
 provinces, all is characteristic. The most curious fact is 
 the almost total want of what we should call cottages. 
 Scarcely any where do we discover habitations which 
 might not be classed under one of two lieads : wretched 
 huts, fortunately rare, built perhaps of reeds or logs ; 
 and tall houses bearing a resemblance to those in our 
 small country towns, not unfrequently ruinous, and 
 always inhabited by a population which we should ex- 
 pect to find in far humbler dwellings. These facts re- 
 ceive their explanation from the history of the people. 
 
 We meet, in most districts, with comparatively few 
 villas of the opulent classes, those wliich we do find being 
 commonly grouped together in particular spots. The 
 
32 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 outline of their architecture, which we see successfully 
 caught by many painters, is at once peculiar and 
 beautiful. The long horizontal lines indicate the linger- 
 ing influence of the ancient monuments ; the flattened 
 roofs, scarcely visible, and in Southern Italy quite level, 
 contrast strongly with the buildings on the other side of 
 the Alps ; balconies and terraces open from the sides of 
 the mansions ; and above the Avhole rise one or more of 
 those rectangular towers, which, solid in their lowest 
 division and ending at top in an open story, are covered 
 with a low roof, supported by four square pillars, or by 
 an arcade. The monasteries, which crown so strikingly 
 the brow of many eminences, have the general outline 
 of the villas, but with less ornament, and a more gloomy 
 aspect, derived from their fortress-like compactness, and 
 their great extent of dead wall, pierced by a few diminu- 
 tive windows. The interior of these edifices, forming ranges 
 which enclose courts or cloisters, at once reminds us of 
 the ancient domestic dwellings, and gives us the prototype 
 of the aristocratic residences in the Italian towns ; for no 
 palazzo receives the name unless it has its inner court, 
 entered by a gateway, and surrounded by the buildings 
 which form the mansion. Architecture in the cities has 
 all the features which distinguish it in the country ; and 
 there are many towns which contain edifices of all ages, 
 from the primeval fortifications of the Pelasgians to the 
 villa of the nineteenth century. 
 
 The groups which animate the landscapes of Italy 
 are as picturesque in their aspect as they are inter- 
 esting in a more philosophical light. Amidst many 
 shades of difference, the people have in common the 
 physiognomy and person of their ancestors and their 
 southern climate ; and the dark fiery eye and marked 
 features of the Neapolitan fisherman, or the deep rich 
 complexion, the full tall figure, and the noble classical 
 profile of the Roman female of the western suburbs, are 
 only more distinctive instances of a physical character, 
 which has equally fine examples elsewhere. The 
 costumes of the peasantry complete the eff^ect which 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 33 
 
 their figures, faces, air, and gestures, produce on the 
 minds of foreigners. It is ti-ue that all the rustic dresses 
 are not graceful, and that some are decidedly ugly ; for no 
 one can admire either the boots of the females in Eastern 
 Lomhardy, or the felt- hats which disfigure the beautiful 
 countenances of the Tuscan women. In many provinces, 
 however, the attire of both sexes is remarkably pictur- 
 esque ; and the figures of the ecclesiastics are to us even 
 more striking than those of the country people. The habit 
 of the secular clergy, though distinguishing, is not by 
 any means remarkable ; but the monks and friars, with 
 their shaven cro^^Tls and long cinctured robes, lead the 
 fancy back to the most animating scenes of history and 
 poetry. ]\Iodern Rome owes its peculiarity of aspect in 
 no small degree to its multitude of monastic churchmen. 
 
 When we turn to the details of tlie physical geography, 
 the mountains first attract our notice. The crescent of 
 the Alps embraces the northern bounds in a curve of 
 perhaps five hundred miles ; and the deepest of the val- 
 leys are from 5000 to 8000 feet above the level of the 
 ocean. Of the stupendous peaks which tower between 
 these picturesque passes, the greaternumber stand, accord- 
 ing to political divisions, beyond the frontier of Italy ; 
 the interest which belongs to them is not Italian ; and we 
 but rarely catch a glimpse of some of the loftiest sum- 
 mits closing in the head of the distant ravines. 
 
 At the eastern end of the great chain, on the con- 
 fines of Austrian Germany, two successive groups, 
 the Julian or Carnic, and the Tyrolese Alps, rear 
 their highest peaks far from the Itahan territories. 
 But to the latter range may be assigned the mountains 
 of the Valtelline (now within the Italian boundary), 
 among the most elevated of which we have, on the line 
 of division, the Oertler Spitz, and the Monte d' Oro. 
 The same range sends down on the grand lake of Garda 
 the Monte Baldo, which protects its Veronese or eastern 
 bank ; and in the Bergamasc territory, the principal 
 oflFshoots are the ]\Ionte Adamello on the edge of the Val 
 
 VOL. I. B 
 
3-4 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 Camonica, and the Monte Presolana in the Val Seriana. 
 The next great group, the Rhgetian Alps, which form 
 nearly the whole of the frontier with Switzerland, have 
 also huge promontories, whose peaks surround the Lakes 
 of Como and Lugano, and the Lago Maggiore. Among 
 these are Monte Legnone in the district of Como, and 
 Monte Generoso, which stands between the Val di 
 Maggia and the Lake of Lugano. Passing into Piedmont 
 we find, just within the borders, the Monte Rosa, the 
 second highest of the Alps, which may be regarded as asso- 
 ciated in its structure with the Pennine Alp or Great St 
 Bernard, with which the Swiss frontier ends. The Savoy- 
 ard marches, after passing over the central summits of 
 Mont Blanc, proceed along the Graian Alps, including 
 the lofty Mont Iseran. The Cottian Alp commences 
 with Mont Cenis, which completes the junction with 
 Savoy ; and the rest of the range, between Italy and 
 France, includes the Monte Viso. The Maritune Alps, 
 sweeping round till they dip into the sea in the Gulf of 
 Genoa, are comparatively low, rising nowhere much 
 higher than their fine pass of the Col di Tenda. 
 
 The Apennines, which are regarded as commencing 
 about Savona, continue the chain of the Maritime Alps, 
 and trend nearly west and east till they have almost cross- 
 ed the peninsula, forming thus far the southern bank of 
 the great valley of Upper Italy. Though more elevat- 
 ed than the range from which they directly spring, 
 they are every where far lower than the great Alpine 
 chain. In the portion of them just described, the highest 
 point is the Cimone di Fanano, which stands almost in- 
 sulated in the Duchy of Modena ; and the Monte Radi- 
 coso, the highest pass between Bologna and Florence, is 
 less than 8000 feet above the sea. Before reaching the 
 Adriatic, the Apennine bends round, and from that point 
 forms a ridge running south-east, through the middle of 
 the peninsula, to its extremity. Nor does it terminate 
 there ; for a chain of mountains, which, according to the 
 inferences of mineralogical science, forms a continuation 
 of the range, rises in Sicily. Far north in Tuscany, a 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 35 
 
 branch is sent off towards the west, which, dipping into 
 the sea, reappears successively in Elba, Corsica, and Sar- 
 dinia. Several others project from both declivities of the 
 central chain, the longest being one on the east side, which 
 ends at the Cape of Leuca. 
 
 The principal heights of the Apennmes, in most dis- 
 tricts, stand between 8000 and 5000 feet above the sea ; 
 a few mountains of the range have an elevation consider- 
 ably exceeding 5000 feet ; but none of them reaches 
 10,000. Their highest cluster of peaks, save one, is 
 in the island-chain which shoots off from Tuscany. 
 Among these, Corsica has the Monte Rotondo, and the 
 Monte d' Oro ; and Sardinia, whose hills generally rise 
 from 1000 to 3000 feet, has two much more elevated, the 
 Monte Genargentu, and the Monte Limbarra. The central 
 range, too, begins to rise higher opposite those islands. It 
 presents, among the mountains of U rhino, the Monte 
 Catria, near Cagli, and in Umbria the picturesque Nor- 
 cian group, where the peak of the Leonessa, so conspicu- 
 ous from the plain of Rome, is overtopped by the lofty 
 Mount of the Sibyl. The range thence shoots up into 
 its greatest heights, in the hilly region of the Abruzzo Ul- 
 tra. The highest of the Abruzzese mountains is the huge 
 IMonte Como, called also the Gran Sasso or Great Rock 
 of Italy, which spreads over a wide district of upland 
 glens, and has its finest summits near the town of Aquila. 
 The most remarkable, and probably the loftiest, of the 
 other members of the same group, are the conical Monte 
 Vellno,and the round shapeless mass of the Majella, crested 
 with a knot of castle-like rocks. Both of these overhang 
 the banks of the beautiful Fucine Lake, or Lake of Celano. 
 The Apennines preserve an imposing height in the eastern 
 quarter of the Neapolitan Ten-a di Lavoro, in which are 
 the Monte Meta, and the Monte Miletto near Alife. The 
 southern members of the chara are less lofty. Among 
 the most elevated are, the Monte Sant' Angelo (the 
 ancient IMount Garganus), an offset of the range, skirting 
 the Gulf of Manfredonia ; and Monte Sirmo, in the Basi- 
 licata. The medium height of the Calabrian branch 
 
36 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 seems to be from 4000 to 5000 feet. From the Col di 
 Tenda to the Capo dell' Armi, the total length of the 
 Apennmes is reckoned at 640 geographical miles. 
 
 The mountains of Sicily, if we except the volcanic 
 Etna, are much lower than the peninsular Apennines, 
 and nowhere rise to 4000 feet. The mountain of Dina- 
 mare, above Messina, is one of the highest ; the Neptunian 
 or Pelorian range, which runs southwest from Messina, 
 reaches its greatest elevation in Monte Scuderi, northward 
 from Taormina ; in the same chain, and in the centre o! 
 the island, stands the rock of Castro Giovanni, which is 
 the poetical Enna ; in the Madonia range is the Monte 
 Cuccio, near Palermo ; and the loftiest summit of the 
 island, except Etna, is a peak in the Calatabellotta 
 range, near Castro Nuovo. 
 
 From the banks of the river Ombrone in Tuscany to 
 the south side of the Bay of Naples an interrupted chain 
 of extinct volcanoes runs side by side with the Apen- 
 nines. The first lofty eminence among these is the Monte 
 Amiata, at Radicofani on the Tuscan frontier, which is 
 followed by the Monte Soriano near Viterbo, the highest 
 of the ancient Ciminian liills. The next is Somma, the 
 old crater of Vesuvius, opposite to which is Ischia, crested 
 by Mount Epopeus or San Nicola. The volcanic zone 
 reappears in the Lipari isles, in which the loftiest are 
 Stromboli and Felicudi. It next crowns SicUy with the 
 renowned Mount Etna ; and we trace it once more in the 
 islet of Pantellaria, half-way between Sicily and Africa.* 
 
 The Po is the only Italian river which can be com- 
 pared with those of transalpine Europe. It rises in the 
 Monte Viso, flows through Piedmont and the Lombardo- 
 Venetian territories, and discharges itself into the Adriatic 
 
 • The following table, taken from the most approved authorities, 
 gives the heights, calculated in English feet, to which the principal 
 mountains of Italy rise from the sea. They are arranged in four 
 groups, as they are described in the text: — 1. Those mountains 
 among the Alps which, as being either in Italy or closely bordering 
 on it, may all, without much impropriety, be called Italian ; 2. The 
 Apeniiines, including their offshoots in Corsica and Sardinia; 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 37 
 
 by several mouths, after a slow course of nearly 300 geo- 
 grapliical miles. In its whole progress through the Aus- 
 trian territories, which extends to 136 of those miles, 
 it is navigable for boats, excepting in unusually dry 
 weather, when they are sometimes stopped at Cremona. 
 The Po has for its basin the whole of the great valley 
 between the Alps and Apennines. The tributary streams 
 which descend to it from the latter are comparatively 
 small : but the Trebbia, one of their number, has a classi- 
 cal reputation on account of Hannibal and its monastery 
 of Bobbio ; the Secchia is navigable for boats from Mo- 
 dena downwards ; the Panaro presents the same conve- 
 nience to the extent of thirty miles ; and the Reno feeds 
 a canal which communicates between Bologna and the 
 Po. From the Alps this river receives several large ac- 
 cessions. In Piedmont its principal tributaries are, on 
 the right, the Tanaro, on the left the Dora-Riparia, the 
 
 3. The prolongation of the Apennines in Sicily ; 
 mountains in Italy and the islands. 
 
 I. — The Italian Alps, | Monte Sirmo, 
 Mont Blanc, . . 15,744 Monte Catria, 
 
 4. The volcanic 
 
 Monte Rosa, . 
 Mont Iseran, 
 The Oertler Spitz, 
 Monte Viso, 
 Mont Cenis, 
 Monte Adamello, 
 Monte d Oro, 
 Monte Legnone, 
 Monte Presolana, 
 Monte Baldo, 
 Monte Generoso, 
 
 Monte Velino^ 
 
 Monte d' Oro (Corsica), 
 
 La Majella, 
 
 Monte della Sibilla, 
 
 Monte JMeta, 
 
 II Cimone di Fanano, . 
 
 Monte Miletto, 
 
 5,992 
 6,582 
 5,276 
 4,720 
 3,686 
 2,895 
 
 1 5, 150 1 Genargentu ( Sardinia), 
 13,275 I Monte Sant' Angelo, . 
 12,852 I Linibarra (Sardinia), 
 12,600 j Monte Radicoso Pass, 
 11,460 1 , „ 
 1 980 ■ — Apennines 
 
 10545' LONGED IN SlCIL-V 
 
 8*594 '^^^ Calatabellotta Peak, 
 8 198 Monte Cuccio, 
 7 207 Monte Scuderi, 
 6^282 ^I^"te di Dinamare, 
 
 Col di Tenda (Marit. Alps) 5',884 Castro Giovanni, 
 
 11- — The Apennines. ; IV.— The Volcanic Moun- 
 
 The Gran Sasso d' Italia, 9,460 tains. 
 
 Monte Rotondo (Corsica), 9,061 INIount Etna (Sicily), 
 
 ^^ ' "' " 8,943 Monte Soriano, 
 
 8,697 La Sorama di Vesuvio, 
 
 7,998 Monte Amiata, 
 
 7,495 Felicudi (Isle), . 
 
 7,271 Monte San Nicoh (Ischia),2,605 
 
 6,971 Pantellaria (Isle), . 2,213 
 
 6,742 StromboU (Isle), . . 2,171 
 
 3,690 
 3,329 
 3,190 
 3,112 
 
 2,880 
 
 10,874 
 4,183 
 3,979 
 3,054 
 3,041 
 
38 INTRODrCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 Dora-Baltea, and the Sesia. In Austrian Lombardy the 
 largest rivers which disgorge themselves into it issue 
 from the Lakes. The Lago Maggiore, forty-eight miles 
 long, from four to seven miles broad, and generally 
 more than twenty feet deep, receives the waters of 
 the Ticino and twenty-six other streams, all of which, 
 after passing through the lake, are discharged into the Po. 
 The Lake of Como, thirty-seven miles in its greatest 
 length, and varying in breadth from one mile to four, is 
 traversed by the Adda, which thence flows across the 
 plain to join the same river. The Oglio passes through 
 the Lake of Iseo, and the classical Mincio issues from 
 the fine Lake of Garda, thirty-seven miles long and from 
 four to fourteen miles broad. The Adige, which ranks 
 next to the Po, emerges from the Tyrolese defiles a little 
 above Verona, and flows a very short way through the 
 plain. The Bacchiglione, Brenta, and others of smaller 
 dimensions, are geographically unimportant. 
 
 The rivers of Middle and Lower Italy are more im- 
 portant in history than in geography or commerce. 
 They flow from no large lakes, for of these the only 
 considerable one, the Lake of Celano, which is reckoned 
 thirty -five miles in circuit, has no visible outlet. On the 
 side of the Adriatic, the largest streams are the Metauro 
 and the Tronto in the Papal States, and the Neapolitan 
 Pescara, Ofanto, and Bradano. On the other side, the 
 Magra and the Serchio, the Neapolitan Garigliano, Vol- 
 tumo, and Sele, are all historical names ; but except the 
 Arno and the Tiber none require to be more than mention- 
 ed. These rise within ten miles of each other, in the moun- 
 tainous district of Tuscany called the Casentino. The 
 former, receiving several beautiful streams, and winding 
 extensively in the upper part of its course, flows in all 
 about 150 geographical miles. Its lower valley (Val 
 d' Arno Inferiore) one of the most lovely scenes in Italy, 
 has Florence near its head, and the river is passable 
 for boats from that city to the Mediterranean, a dis- 
 tance of nearly sixty miles. The course of the Tiber 
 is about 190 geographical miles, and its direction is 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERi 39 
 
 southerly, till, after it has received several considerable 
 streams, the Ncra bemg the latest and largest, the 
 Apennines near Tivoli force it westward across the 
 plain. A little before entering Rome it receives the 
 Teverone, the ancient Anio ; and from the Roman 
 wharfs downwards it is navigable for small coasting 
 barks. Within the city, beside the Tomb of Augustus, 
 its breadth is 197 English feet, its depth twenty-one, its 
 medium surface twenty-one feet above the level of the 
 sea, and the distance from its mouth fifteen geographical 
 miles. 
 
 In none of the Italian islands are the rivers geogra- 
 phically important. In Sicily, the chief ones are the 
 Giarretta and the Fiume Salso ; in Sardinia, the Tyrso 
 and the Flumendosa. 
 
 The mountains which have been enumerated yield few 
 valuable minerals. The rivers are nearly useless for 
 commercial navigation, owing to the want of tides in the 
 seas into which they flow. Having hardly any deep in- 
 dentations, the coast affords few facilities for the forma- 
 tion of harbours ; and the position of the peninsula in 
 the Mediterranean, which, as long as eastern commerce 
 was conducted overland to the Levant, favoured its com- 
 munication with the great mart of Asiatic merchandise, 
 has had the very opposite effect since the discovery of 
 the passage by the Cape of Good Hope. Italy is natur- 
 ally an agricultural country, with a fertility of soil and 
 mildness of climate which bestow a plentiful increase 
 even on careless cultivation, and would perhaps, under 
 better laws and better management, make it, as Sicily once 
 was, the granary of Europe. The geographical situation of 
 this fine peninsula, open so extensively to the sea, exposes 
 it to attack on almost every point ; and its seeming ram- 
 parts the Alps, which have never stopped the march of 
 any brave invader, are now traversed by military roads in 
 all directions. Its clmiate, except in a few spots, is 
 healthy ; and, if we are told that it is a cause of degene- 
 racy or effeminacy, we may answer that it is unchanged, 
 
40 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 since the period when its air was breathed in Upper Italy 
 by the Insubrian Gauls, in I\Iiddle Italy by the Romans, 
 in Lower Italy by the fierce Bruttians, and in Sicily by 
 the Syracusan Greeks who humbled Athens. 
 
 In the last few sentences are stated some of the 
 facts which have most strongly influenced the fate 
 of Italy, and will continue to aid m determinmg her 
 place among the nations. The details of her physical 
 structure and aspect, as well as of her history, political, 
 moral, and intellectual, will open themselves to us as we 
 proceed ; while the adventures, the characters, and the 
 monuments, which are to pass in review before us, will 
 constantly suggest interestmg speculations. The thought 
 which first arises in the mind, is that wliich will also 
 the most frequently recur, in innumerable shapes and 
 combinations. . Italy stands unexampled m Europe, 
 — indeed unexampled upon earth. She alone of all the 
 ancient nations, after slumbering through the darkness 
 which for centuries covered the world, awoke stronger 
 than before. The changes of character which distinguish 
 the modern people from the ancient, as well as the 
 numerous points of identity, present the most curious 
 subjects of inquiry. A yet more momentous problem 
 respects their final destiny. The Italians were fallen 
 in the dark ages, and they rose again. They are fallen 
 now : is there yet a second redemption for them I 
 
PART I. 
 ANCIENT ITALY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Political History of Italy till the Fall of the Roman 
 Republic. 
 
 FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TILL A. U, 722, OR B. C. 32. 
 
 First Age (ending a. u. 244) : — The Primitive Italian Tribes — 
 The Pelasgi — The Etruscans — The Latins — The Kings of Rome 
 — The Greeks in Italy and Sicily. Second Age (a. u. 244 — 
 A. u. 468) : — Rome a Repubhc — Its External History — Con- 
 quests — The Greek Colonies — The Constitutional History of 
 Rome — The Early Constitution — Classification of the Citizens — 
 The Hereditary Nobility — Their Vassals — The Free Commoners 
 — The Senate — The Two Conventions — Constitutional Peculi- 
 arities — Commencement of the Plebeian Struggle — Institution of 
 the Tribunes — Rise of a Third Convention — Prosecution of the 
 Struggle— The Twelve Tables — The Licinian Laws — The Pub- 
 lilian Laws — The Democracy perfected. Third Age ( a. u. 468 
 —A. u. 722) :— The Character of the Times— The New Aristo- 
 cracy — The Populace — The External History — The Roman 
 Dominions in Magna Graecia — In Sicily — Abroad — The Punic 
 Wars — Tlie Constitutional History — Three Stages: — ]. (a. u. 
 468 — A. u. 620) — Changes on the Senate — On the Conventions 
 —2. (a. u. 620— A. u. 671)— The Gracchi— The Italian Allies 
 —The Ballot— The Army and Marius— 3. (a. u. 671- a. u. 722) 
 — Sylla's Reign and Pohcy — The last Republican Times — Pom- 
 pey, Caesar, Cicero, Cato — Caesar King — His Assassination — 
 Octavius Emperor — The Republican Administration and 
 Finance — The Italian Provinces — The Municipalities — The 
 State Expenditure — The Revenues — Description of the Taxes — 
 The Administration of the Revenues. 
 
 The liistorical outline wliich is here presented will 
 chiefly invite the reader's attention to two sections in 
 
42 THE POLITICAL HISTOHr OF ITALY 
 
 the annals of the Romans ; namely, the growth of their 
 sovereignty over Italy, and the principles and progress 
 of their political constitution. The chronicles of their 
 wars abound beyond all similar records in vigorous 
 characters and heroic adventures ; but the incidents are 
 familiar to every one, and neither our purpose nor our 
 limits allow us to dwell long on spectacles of bloodshed. 
 The constitution of the republic deserves for many rea- 
 sons to be more closely examined. It is the department 
 in which the revolutions of that extraordinary people 
 possess the highest value as lessons, and in w4iich also 
 our popular works on their history offer least infonna- 
 tion. 
 
 This chapter and the next will delineate the skeleton 
 of the political institutions in the commonwealth and 
 the empire ; and subsequent portions of the volume will 
 attempt to exhibit the most interesting of those other 
 features which, when grouped together, complete in 
 the imagination a picture of the ancient Roman world. 
 The vicissitudes and remains of literature and the fine 
 arts will successively come into view ; those scenes will 
 be described Avhich have become places of pilgrimage for 
 the classical student ; and our inquiry into the state of 
 Heathen Italy will not close till we have surveyed the 
 most characteristic details of private life and manners, 
 with one or two branches of the national statistics. 
 
 The times preceding the foundation of the empire 
 class themselves chronologically in three divisions. The 
 first is that legendary age which we have called the 
 First Secondary Period. Of the other two, compre- 
 hending together the five republican centuries of the 
 Ancient Illustrious Period, the earlier ends with the 
 complete development of the democracy, while the later 
 embraces the decline and overthrow of freedom. 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 43 
 
 FIRST AGE. 
 
 ITALY TILL THE FORMATION OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC : 
 ENDING A. U. 244, OR B.C. 610.* 
 
 The Primitive Inhabitants of Italy. \ — Amidst the tra- 
 ditional obscurity which covers the remotest times of 
 Italian history, the principal fact which may be re- 
 garded as certain is this ; that, besides the race or races 
 which originally occupied the peninsula, the greater por- 
 tion of it was at one period, before the foundation of Rome, 
 possessed by that smgular tribe which, commonly knoAvn 
 by the name of Pelasgi, united with the Hellenes to 
 form the ancient Greek nation. We discover the Pelasgi 
 through the disguise of poetical fable, in the legends 
 both of Grecian and Roman writers. We trace them 
 again in those massive architectural remains which are 
 still scattered over the country, from the northern ex- 
 tremities of Tuscany to the southern slopes of the 
 central Apennmes. Lastly, we recognise their influence 
 and fix them down as having inhabited Latium, when 
 we perceive the Hellenic element which is so copiously 
 infused into the Latin language, and which, it is demon- 
 strable, must have formed part of it in its earliest stages. 
 
 The older Italian nations, on whom the Pelasgians in- 
 truded, and by whom they appear to have been m turn 
 subdued, could not be very briefly classified, nor even 
 enumerated. It is enough to allude to the Ligurians, 
 with those other northern tribes whom the Gauls soon 
 invaded; and to those rude hordes of the south who 
 were speedily hemmed in by the Greek colonies. The 
 
 * By the common reckonintr (after Varro), which is here adopt- 
 ed, the foundation of Rome is placed in the year before Christ 76S. 
 
 t The most authoritative writers of the present age, on the 
 early antiquities of Italy, are Niebuhr, in his History of Rome ; 
 Miiller, in his work on the Etruscans ; and Micali, in his Italia 
 avanti il Dominio de' Romani, 4 vols, 1810, or in his Antichi 
 Popoli d'ltalia, 3 vols, 1832, which is an improved and enlarged edi- 
 tion of the former. Among the older works, the most interesting 
 is Lanzi's Saggio di Lingua Etrusca, 1789. The view in the text 
 is in substance Niebuhr's. 
 
44 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 inhabitants of the intermediate space require more minute 
 notice. The Umbrians are said to have been the abori- 
 gines of Italy, and to have once possessed a very wide 
 territory. The Sabines, a mountain-tribe, were also 
 believed to be extremely ancient, — perhaps Umbrians, — 
 and were certainly the nucleus of several greater nations. 
 Their settlements extended westward as far as Rome, 
 and eastward over Picenum : to the south they seem to 
 have sent out the Hernicians, Marsians, Pelignians, and 
 other tribes of the central Apennines ; and still farther 
 south was the powerful people of the Samnites, the 
 greatest of their colonies. These southern swarms of 
 the Sabines partially dispossessed the Opicians or Oscans, 
 a race whose name disappeared early, but to whose 
 blood belonged the Auruncians, and perhaps the -^quans 
 and Volscians. The origin of these various races is a 
 question to be solved on the narrowest grounds ; but 
 certainly none of them were Pelasgians. These last, 
 however, evidently intermixed with them at different 
 points over nearly the whole peninsula, and were 
 gradually lost in the union. 
 
 These Italian tribes do not emerge from obscurity till 
 they successively appear as contending with Rome, and 
 defeated by her. In the period immediately preceding 
 their fall, they were distinguished for little except that 
 military courage and talent, of which all gave proofs so 
 deadly. In the infancy of the great city, however, the 
 Etruscans, a separate race, whose origin is still quite 
 uncertain, were in a situation remarkably different. 
 They were a powerful, though declining nation ; they 
 were active by sea in commerce and in piracy ; they 
 were wealthy, and had used their riches, and their in- 
 tercourse with the Greek colonies and other foreign 
 states, for the acquisition of a singular proficiency in archi- 
 tecture, painting, and sculpture. At one time, their rule, 
 and perhaps their population, extended from the Alps 
 to Latium or Campania, and across the whole breadth of 
 Italy ; but at the commencement of their struggle against 
 Rome, their dominion was nearly restricted to Etruria 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 45 
 
 Proper. This province was not then united into one state ; 
 hut its different cantons had formed themselves into a 
 federal league, the cohesion of which had hecome very 
 slight. Their confederation is said to have always con- 
 sisted of twelve towns, with the district attached to each ; 
 and their governments were oligarchical, with hut few- 
 exceptions, such as Veil, and perhaps Clusium, which 
 were ruled by kings. The mass of the people are stated 
 to have been serfs in the hands of the nobilit}^ (the Lucu- 
 mones) ; and if it be true that this race invaded the 
 Pelasgians, and reduced them to bondage, the fact would 
 account for the Greek character, which pervades much 
 even of the earliest Etruscan works of art, and also for 
 the Pelasgic style of their antique fortresses.'" The 
 priesthood of Etniria composed no separate class, but its 
 functions were, exclusively m the hands of the nobles, 
 who enveloped their gloomy superstition in a thick veil 
 of ritual observances, and skilfully used these rites and 
 their pretences to the gift of divination, to form the 
 groundwork of an immense power in the state. The 
 Roman chiefs borrowed from the Etruscans both their 
 religious ceremonies and their political application of 
 them ; and the nation at large owed to this singular 
 people the first steps of their civilisation. 
 
 The Latins, and the Origin of Rome. — The Romans 
 traced their immediate descent to the Latins, a powerful 
 tribe, different from any of those now enumerated ; but 
 their national pride and Greek learning have wrapt up 
 the history of these ancestors in a cloud of fable. The 
 most probable account of their origin sets out from the 
 fact, that the Pelasgians at one time occupied the plains 
 of Latium, either as first settlers, or by subduing earlier 
 inhabitants. They were attacked by a race whom the 
 Sabines had dislodged from the mountains, and whom, 
 on a comparison of the non-Grecian part of the Latin 
 language with extant inscriptions, we are warranted in 
 pronouncing to have been Oscans. The Pelasgians and 
 
 * See a paper on Etruscan Antiquities, by Mr Millingen : 
 Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. ii. 1834. 
 
46 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 that people coalesced, and formed the Latin league and 
 the older Latin tongue. Virgil's fable, and some historical 
 facts, indicate that they were at one time divided into two 
 confederations, the southern having its seat at Ardea, the 
 northern at Lavinium or Laurentum. The former dis- 
 appeared early, probably on being conquered by the 
 Volscians. The latter continued to exist ; but Alba be- 
 came its principal town, and attained a power which is 
 attested by its public works, if it be true (and it is more 
 than probable) that the extraordinary tunnel of the 
 Alban Lake, the merit of which is claimed by the Ro- 
 mans, was really executed before they conquered Alba. 
 The Latin league is said to have always consisted of 
 thirty towns, each of which had a senate, and an elective 
 chief magistrate, called a dictator. 
 
 From the conflicting accounts of the foundation of 
 Rome by Romulus we may collect at least a plausible 
 theory of its origin. The first and most important 
 body of its inhabitants, who, it is agreed, had their seat 
 on the Palatine Hill, consisted of Latins belonging to the 
 mixed race of Oscans and Pelasgians. The spot on which 
 they fixed themselves had clearly been occupied before 
 the events with which tradition associates the name of 
 the founder. If the poetical fables have any historical 
 basis, the older town or \Tllage of the Palatine must have 
 been built by the Pelasgians before they merged in the 
 Latin race. At the formation of the town of Romulus, 
 the Sabines, as it is with much probability conjectured, 
 had a settlement covering the Capitoline and Quiriual 
 Hills ; and the Roman legend intimates that this town 
 and that on the Palatine were formed into one, and their 
 citizens into one community, in which the Latin 
 language and influence continued to rule. The original 
 constitution of the dimmutive state thus composed, is 
 represented to have been an elective and limited mo- 
 narchy,* which was forcibly abolished on the misconduct 
 
 * Livii Histor. lib. i. cap. 49. Dionys. Halicarn. Antiquit 
 Roman, lib. ii. cap. 14 ; lib. iv. cap. 80. 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 47 
 
 of its seventh king.* The history of these chiefs, and 
 even the names and existence of some of them, are matter 
 of great doubt, wliile the period assigned to tlieir dynasty 
 is manifestly erroneous. There are strong indications 
 also, that before the expulsion of the kings the dominion 
 of Rome extended much farther than the received ac- 
 count, reaching northward into Etruria and southward as 
 far as Terracina. The new republic lost for a time the 
 greater part of this territory, and therefore the historians 
 concealed the fact that it had ever been acquued. Before 
 the revolution the militaiy spirit of the Romans was 
 formed and the outline of their political constitution 
 developed. 
 
 The Greek Colonies in Italy and Sicily. — While Rome 
 was gradually becoming the head of a powerful state in 
 Central Italy, the southern coasts received a succession 
 of foreign settlers, possessing an amount of wealth, of 
 commercial activity, of skill in the arts, and of literary 
 and philosophical cultivation, which even the Etrus- 
 cans had never approached, and to which all the other 
 Italians were still total strangers. These colonists were 
 the foi^nders of the Greek republican cities, lining the 
 portion of the mainland which was called from them 
 Magna Grsecia, and occupying many points on the coasts 
 of SicUy. Almost all of these were established before 
 the Roman revolution, but no considerable intercourse 
 subsisted between them and Rome tUl they submitted to 
 her armies late in the fifth century of the city. It is neces- 
 sary, however, to remark the existence of these polished 
 communities of foreigners at a time when the natives were 
 so utterly uncultivated. Tradition carried back the 
 origin of Cumse, a colony of Ionic Greeks, to the year b. c. 
 1030 ; and this town, besides giving birth to Neapolis, 
 founded Zancle, afterwards called Messana, the earliest 
 Grecian settlement in Sicily. The aristocratic govern- 
 
 • A. u. L Romulus. a. u. 137. Tarquinius Priscus. 
 37. Numa Pompilius. 176. Servius Tullius. 
 
 80. T'illus Hostilius. 220. Tarquinius Superbus 
 
 114. Ancus Martius. expelled in 244. 
 
48 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 ment of Cumse was temporarily subverted by Aristode- 
 mus, who appears in the liistory of the new Roman repub- 
 lic. Rhegium was another Ionic commonwealth. The 
 Doric Tarentum, planted about the year b. c. 707, became 
 at length the wealthiest of the seaports belongmg to the 
 Italiot Greeks. Croton, and the powerful and luxurious 
 colony of Sybaris, were Achaean. Locri, for which Zaleucus 
 legislated about 660 b. c, was another eminent commu- 
 nity ; and settlers from these to\ATis were spread over the 
 whole southern coast of Ital}^ The territory of the cities 
 in no instance extended far into the interior of the country ; 
 and their ruin was prepared by the frequent attacks of 
 the natives, and by the disunion of the several republics 
 among themselves. 
 
 Down to the time of the Roman revolution, the Greek 
 colonies in Sicily were rapidly increasing in strength and 
 numbers. The Doric Syracuse, the most poweiful of 
 them, planted by Corinthians in the year b. c. 757, was 
 still republican. Gela, also Doric, and dating from b. c. 
 7lo, had sent out emigrants to Agrigentum ; and, besides 
 several smaller cities of the same race, there already ex- 
 isted Naxos, Catana, Taurominium, and other flourishing 
 Ionic settlements. The Carthaginians, whose capital lay 
 within a day's sail of Sicily, had already made establish- 
 ments on its nearest shores, and were about to enter on that 
 attempt to subjugate the whole island which at last em- 
 broiled them with the Romans. The native inhabitants, 
 who evidently belonged to some one or more of the tribes 
 composing the oldest Italian population, appear for a 
 time in the history of the country as useful auxiliaries to 
 their Greek, Punic, or Roman masters, but were finally 
 lost among the foreign settlers. Sardinia, in which the 
 Greeks at an early epoch had planted two colonies, 
 Caralis and Oibia, was now entirely subject to Carthage ; 
 and tills state had also made itself master of one or 
 two havens in Corsica, founded b}" the Etruscans. 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 49 
 
 SECOND AGE. 
 
 THE ROMAN REPUBLIC TILL THE COMPLETE ESTABLISHMENT OF 
 
 THE democracy: 
 A. u. 244-^68, or s. c. 510—286. 
 
 The External Histoiv/ of Borne. — During this age the 
 foreign relations of the new republican state underwent 
 some remarkable vicissitudes, the earlier details of which 
 have not reached us without much obscurity and evident 
 distortion. Besides acquiring, before the revolution, the 
 absolute dominion of a considerable territory, the Romans 
 had contrived not only to obtain a place in the federative 
 league of the Latin towns, but to arrogate the presidency 
 of the confederation. On this prerogative they speedily 
 grounded extravagant claims of superiority. Their en- 
 croachments, and the intrigues of their banished princes, 
 immediately mvolved the republic in wars both with the 
 Latins and with several other neighbouring nations. The 
 earliest of the great military names of the time was that 
 of Quinctius Cincirmatus, who was succeeded in his cele- 
 brity by Marcus Furius Camillas. In the Etruscan war, 
 headed by Porsena, prince of Clusium, to which belong 
 the stories of Codes and Mucins Scsevola, with so many 
 others of the heroic Roman legends, it is quite clear that 
 the city was actually taken, and the commonwealth com- 
 pelled to surrender a large portion of her territory. Her 
 next war with the same tribes, in wliich Camillus was the 
 hero and Veii the principal enemy, was more successful. 
 It ended by bringing back the ceded districts with 
 large additions, while it nearly annihilated the Etruscan 
 league. A few years later Rome was on the brink of ruin. 
 Colonies of Gauls had previously crossed the Alps and 
 established themselves in the north of Italy ; and now 
 either these settlers alone, or more probably a new horde 
 aided by them, invaded Etruria and Latium, and (a. u. 
 365, B. c. 389) took and burned Rome. The Romans 
 purchased, by a heavy ransom, the departure of those 
 barbarians, who probably retired upon Cisalpine Gaul. 
 
50 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 Rome, with that elastic strength which so finely distin- 
 guishes her republican history, quickly recovered from 
 the shock, and pursued vigorously her plan, already 
 matured, for the entire subjugation of Italy. Before 
 tlie end of her fourth century, in spite of internal dis- 
 cord and foreign enemies, she had again reduced the 
 greater part of Latium to a precarious subjection, and 
 had engaged in wars with more distant tribes, including 
 the Volscians, ^Equans, and Auruncans. 
 
 The first half of her fifth century was chiefly occupied 
 by the heroic Samnite war, carried on resolutely, and 
 with complete success, against the bravest of her Italian 
 rivals. She was soon able to strengthen her dominion 
 over almost all the provinces from Samnium to the frontier 
 of Cisalpine Gaul, and only waited for a pretence to 
 attack the Greek colonies and Carthage. 
 
 The half century just named abounds more than any 
 other period of the repubKcan history in deeds of military 
 prowess, and there are no Roman heroes whose characters 
 we can admire so unliesitatingly as those who figure in 
 this series of wars. If we examine deeply into the con- 
 duct of the most prominent persons who flourished in 
 the preceding age, we shall detect in them bad citizens 
 and bad men, oppressors of the people, and unscru- 
 pulous avengers of attacks on their own privileged 
 order. This, which was the character of Cincinnatus, 
 was also, with the addition of avarice and dishonesty, 
 that of the vaunted Camillus. But in the Samnite 
 period, as we shall see, the two orders of the state had 
 been just amalgamated into one : — the fierce quarrels 
 between the noble and the commoner were transmuted 
 into a generous emulation, and the patriotic enthusiasm 
 burnt for a time with a flame so warm and radiant as 
 had never yet shone on Rome, and never afterwards visit- 
 ed her. The devotion to country indeed was in such 
 excess, that self-love and the domestic affections were 
 equally weak against its pressure. The patrician Manlius, 
 a descendant of the unfortunate Marcus, first became ce- 
 lebrated for his filial piety, and then for his single combat 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 51 
 
 with the Ganl on the Salarian Bridge over the Aiiio, 
 where he gained the chain which gave him his name of 
 Torquatus. A few years later, a similar conflict Avith 
 another Gaul in the Pontine Flats, earned the surname 
 of Corvus for the excellent Marcus Valerius. In the 
 same generation, during a war against the Latins, Torqua- 
 tus, then consul, performed near Capua that teiTible act 
 of rigour which is so famous, by executing his own valiant 
 son for a breach of discipline ; and a few days afterwards 
 his plebeian colleague Decius Mus, who had on a pre- 
 vious occasion chivalrously saved a consular army in 
 Campania, crowTied a worthy life by devoting himself to 
 death for the state in conformity with a national super- 
 stition. The self-sacrifice of Decius, inspiring courage 
 and revenge in his soldiers, procured the victory for 
 Rome ; and on another such emergency, in a battle 
 with the Gauls and Samnites in Etruria, his son pur- 
 chased a second victory at a similar price. 
 
 The Greek Colonies. — The Greek cities in Italy and 
 Sicily, like the mother-country, point to this period as 
 the zenith of their glory and the commencement of their 
 decay. In Greece this era embraces the most splendid 
 portion of the republican historj^ extending from the Per- 
 sian war to Philip of Macedon ; and it closes with the for- 
 mation and partition (a. u. 430) of Alexander's empire. 
 To this age belong, in art, Phidias and his successors, and 
 in philosophy, literature, and oratory, that illustrious 
 an-ay of names which begins with Herodotus and ends 
 vi-ith Aristotle. The progi'ess of the Greco-Italians 
 kept pace with that of then- parent-land, with which 
 they were in constant communication. About the time 
 of the Roman revolution Sybaris was destroyed, and, a 
 few years after the death of Virginia, Thiu'ii was found- 
 ed on its mins. Tarentum, the most flourishing city 
 of Magna Graecia, was at the summit of its prosperity 
 from the expulsion of Tarquin till the sack of Rome by 
 the Gauls, and Arch}'tas was latterly the president of 
 its republic. Cumse was subdued by the native Campa- 
 nians, and remained under their dominion; and the 
 
52 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 Syracusans, repeatedly attacking Magna Graecia, took 
 Croton more than once, and destroyed Rhegium, which, 
 however, was rebnilt. 
 
 Sicily underwent various vicissitudes. The Cartha- 
 ginians were actively striving to convert their few colo- 
 nies on the western coast into a sovereignty over the whole 
 island ; and they came into direct communication with 
 Rome by commercial treaties, the first of which, if 
 genuine, is dated a.u. 246. The history of the smaller 
 Greek to%^Tis in that island is dependent on the annals of 
 Agrigentum and Sp'acuse.* The first of these was for 
 some time subject to princes, among whom was Theron, at 
 whose court Pindar appeared, and it then obtained a 
 democratical constitution, which subsisted little more 
 than half a centuiy. During this short period the splen- 
 dour of the city, and its trade with Africa and Gaul, 
 were at their height. It was subdued by Syracuse, and 
 being afterwards (a. u. 840) destroyed by the Carthagi- 
 nians, never recovered its former greatness. Syracuse, 
 in like manner, presents in this age its liighest glory 
 and its decline. Its history contains fii*st, from a. u. 270 
 to 287, the reigns of the good Gelo, of Hiero, Pindar's 
 patron, and of Tlirasybulus. The expulsion of the last 
 of these rulers was followed by a democracy of sixty-one 
 years, raising the state to the greatest power it ever at- 
 tained. During this free period it subdued Agrigentum, 
 and repulsed the famous Athenian invasion under jN'icias 
 and Alcibiades. The -wars witli Carthage followed, and, 
 aided by the dangerous increase of the popular ascend- 
 ency, enabled the elder Dionysius to possess himself first 
 of the army and then of the throne, which he held thirty- 
 eight years, when liis life was brought to a close by poison. 
 In his constant wars against the Carthaginians his success 
 varied, but, at the time of his death, that people possessed 
 by treaty the whole Avestern half of the island from the 
 river Halycus. This struggle prevented him from fully 
 
 * For the political institutions of these two cities, see Miiller's 
 Dorians, book iii. chap. 9 (English Translation, 2 vols, 1830). 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 53 
 
 executing his favourite project, — the conquest of Southern 
 Italy. His weak son, the younger Dionysius, was first 
 dispossessed by the noble Dion, Plato's friend, and, after 
 the murder of that patriot, was ejected a second time 
 by the Corinthians under the stern Timoleon. A short 
 period of republicanism ensued all over Sicily, ending 
 when the sovereignty of Syracuse was usurped by Aga- 
 thocles, who, for twenty-eight years, prosecuted unsuc- 
 cessfully the old designs of expelling the African invaders 
 and reducing Magna Graecia. 
 
 The Constitutional History of Rome. — This age is the 
 most important of any in the history of the political con- 
 stitution of the Roman commonwealth. Its commence- 
 ment exliibits an hereditary nobility, possessing the 
 executive powers of the government to the entire exclu- 
 sion of the commons, and practically exercising an undue 
 influence over the legislature, the functions of which 
 were by the theory of the constitution vested in the 
 nation at large. At the end of this period the distinc- 
 tions between the two orders are completely destroyed, 
 the legislative power of the people is quite uncontrolled, 
 and their influence on the executive begins to be excessive 
 and consequently dangerous. 
 
 The framework of the Roman constitution was con- 
 structed before the establishment of the republic. It 
 recognised two classes of citizens, — the Plebeians or com- 
 monalty, and tlie Patricians, an hereditary nobility, whose 
 privileges belonged to none but persons of pure patri- 
 cian blood. j\Iany of the first class, however, formed in 
 truth a third order, that of the Clients, or hereditaiy 
 vassals of the patricians ; a body of men who, while their 
 political rights were not aff'ected by their vassalship, were 
 individually protected by their respective patrons even 
 against the laws of the state, while, in return, they were 
 legally and hereditarily bound to yield service to their pro- 
 tectors. The notion that every plebeian was indi\4dually 
 attached as a client to some patrician is quite en-oneous, 
 and originates in a misapprehension of the historian Dio- 
 nysius, caused by the altered position of tilings in the last 
 
54 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 days of the republic, when a voluntary and personal 
 clientship, quite different from the hereditary relation of 
 the older vassals, had become very general. In the early 
 ages of the commonwealth, a large proportion of the ple- 
 beians were not clients ; and it is this free body of 
 commoners that we find asserting the claims of their 
 order against the nobility, while the clients invariably 
 supported the prerogatives of their lords. 
 
 Under the kings the Senate was formed, and consisted 
 of three hundred patricians, vacancies in the number 
 being filled up by the prince. The IS'ational Assemblies 
 of the people, embracing eveiy individual possessing the 
 political franchise, whether patrician, free plebeian, or 
 client, w^ere of two kinds. The older foim, the intro- 
 duction of which is ascribed to Romulus, was the con- 
 vention called the Comitia Curiata. The whole body of 
 the citizens was divided into thirty curia; every citizen 
 possessed one vote in his o^^^l curia, and eveiy curia pos- 
 sessed one vote in the convention. The second form was 
 that said to have been established by King Servius 
 Tullius, called the Comitia Centuriata, which, even 
 before the origin of the republic, had nearly superseded 
 the other. For the purposes of this new assembly the 
 citizens were divided into centuries or hundreds, in which 
 each person possessed one vote, while each century had a 
 vote in the general meeting. But the centuries were so 
 arranged as to throw the power of the assembly altogether 
 into the hands of the richer men. The w^hole body of the 
 citizens was arranged in six Classes. The first of these 
 was composed of such persons as possessed the largest 
 amount of taxable property ; the qualification dimin- 
 ished in each succeeding class ; and the sixth, which, 
 perhaps, was not strictly tei-med a class, consisted of 
 those who were not rated in the rolls as possessing any 
 taxable property at all, and neither paid taxes on that 
 ground nor rendered military service in the legions. The 
 whole number of centuries may be stated at about 193. 
 The sixth class, probably a very- numerous one, contained 
 only one century, and consequently had only one vote ; 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. DO 
 
 while the first class, which cannot originally have con- 
 tained many individuals, was divided into at least ninety- 
 eight centuries, — eighty being rated for military service 
 in the infantry, and eighteen, composing the equestrian 
 order or knights (among whom the patricians were pro- 
 bably included), for service in the cavalry. Besides 
 this, the votes of the first class were always taken first. 
 If its centuries were unanimous, the question before the 
 convention was of course already decided : if their votes 
 did not form a majority, the second class was applied to, 
 and the voting scarcely ever went much lower. The 
 amount of taxation and of military service levied on 
 each of the first five classes was proportional to its valua- 
 tion in the roll, with this exception, that military servic? 
 was not exacted from the clients.* 
 
 * The account here given is substantially that which is com- 
 monly received. But an entirely new theory of the original consti- 
 tution of Rome has been propounded by a great historian of the 
 present age. Every student of ancient history is Niebuhr's debtor, 
 and is bound thankfully and admiringly to acknowledge the 
 obligation, however difficult it may be to acquiesce in his leading 
 hypothesis. 
 
 Niebuhr's interesting theory is briefly the following : — The ori- 
 ginal population of Rome consisted exclusively of patricians and 
 their clients ; but the populus, or body of citizens possessing the 
 political franchise, comprehended only the patricians. The patri- 
 cians exercised the franchise in the convention of the curice. 
 Gradually, however, there arose a third class,— the plebeians, — 
 who, though not clients, did not possess the political franchise. 
 This new body may have been composed of various sorts of men ; 
 — of clients emancipated by the extinction of the families of their 
 patrons ; of the children of marriages between patricians and non- 
 patricians ; of the inhabitants of conquered towns ; and of indivi- 
 duals immigrating. The constitution of Servius Tulllus communi- 
 cated the franchise to the plebeians and the clients, allowing them, 
 along wath the patricians, to exercise it in the convention of the 
 centuries — The chief points in which this theory touches the 
 constitutional vicissitudes of the repiiblic will be noticed as they 
 occur. For a minute exposition of Niebuhr's system see his His- 
 tory of Rome, vol. i. pp. 301-331, 398-424 (Hare and Thirlwall's 
 Translation, edition 1831), vol. ii. p. 129-164 (Translation, edit. 
 1832), and both volumes passim. Part of it is illustrated ably in 
 Maldon's uncompleted History of Rome in the Library of Useful 
 Knowledge. Arnold's learned History of Rome (vol. i. To the 
 taking of Rome by the Gauls, 1838), adopts the outline of the theory. 
 In the following sketch much use has also been made of the 
 
56 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 In passing to the political changes of the republic, cer- 
 tain particulars may be noted, in which the Roman con- 
 stitution was opposed to modern opinions, and which are 
 therefore liable to be misunderstood. 
 
 1. Their system of government, like every other in 
 the ancient world, wanted altogether the modem prin- 
 ciple of a representation of the people. Every individual 
 possessing the civic franchise, was held entitled to exer- 
 cise it personally by his vote in all proceedings of the 
 national conventions. 2. The legislative, executive, and 
 judicial functions, were not separated with sufficient 
 nicety, and this defect produced much of the internal 
 discord tliat prevailed. The legislative power, theoreti- 
 cally vested in the people, the sovereign of the common- 
 wealth, was long practically intruded on by the senate ; 
 the executive was loosely shared between the latter body 
 and the officers of state ; and the judicial power was long 
 in still greater confusion, at least in criminal matters. 
 The military character of the republic produced a similar 
 anomaly in the union of civil and military authority in 
 the person of the consul, and afterwards of some of the 
 lower political functionaries. S. The initiative or right 
 of proposing measures was jealously confined. There were 
 frequtnt contests between the senate and the national as- 
 semblies on this head ; but it was an admitted i-ule tliat, in 
 all legislative meetings of the conventions, the initiative 
 
 " Early Roman History" of Waclismuth, an opponent of Niebuhr 
 (Aeltere Geschichte des Romischen Staates, Halle, 1819), and 
 of the excellent treatise " On the Roman National Assemblies" 
 by Schulze, a convert to Niebuhr's doctrine (Von den Volksver- 
 saramlun<ren der Rbmer, Gotha, 1815), Of older foreign works, 
 Beaufort's " Republique Romaine" is exceedingly useful; and 
 much matter may be gleaned from several of the treatises in the 
 Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanarum of Graevius. In English, 
 Hooke and Ferguson must of course be consulted ; but our 
 earliest attempt at a systematic theory of the Roman constitu- 
 tion is Brodie's very original History of the Roman Government 
 (1810). 
 
 Of the numerous ancient sources of information on the subject, 
 by far the most valuable are Livy's Roman Histories, and the 
 Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. 
 
TILL XnE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 57 
 
 belonged to the president alone, who also, in various 
 ways, exercised over their deliberations a control which 
 to modern observers seems extremely unconstitutional. 
 4. The most important and dignified places in the priest- 
 hood, instead of being held by men specially set apai-t 
 for perfumiing the offices of religion, were considered as 
 steps in civil raiik, and filled by persons taking an active 
 share in political business. 5. During the whole period 
 of the republic, every sitting of the senate, and of all the 
 national assemblies (except, as we shall see, the new 
 convention of the tribes), had to be constituted by a 
 preliminaiy religious ceremony, namely, that of the 
 auspices, which consisted in an inquiry by divination, 
 whether the gods were favourable to the purpose of the 
 meeting. The people continued to be superstitious 
 long after they had ceased to be truly pious ; and they 
 scarcely ever refused to adjourn when an evil omen was 
 announced. The laic priesthood, who conducted these 
 ceremonies, could not only prevent the members from 
 entering on business, but even, after their deliberations 
 were over, could declare their proceedings null. In this 
 way they possessed a most dangerous power, and the ex- 
 clusive right to the sacerdotal colleges was the very last 
 privilege which the aristocracy gave up. 6. The right of 
 iniposmg taxes on the communit}', which has been the 
 usual cause of revolutions in modem Europe, was never 
 claimed by the Roman people, who, even in their most 
 democratic times, contentedly left that all-important 
 prerogative in the hands of the senate ; sometimes, in- 
 deed, munnuring against particular burdens, but never 
 questioning the general law. 
 
 These preliminary remarks may save some confusion, 
 and not a little repetition, in the narrative of constitu- 
 tional changes on which we now enter. 
 
 After the aiTangements of the new commonwealth were 
 completed, we find the Patrician Senate and the Conven- 
 tions of the Curiae and Centuries still subsisting. The 
 first magistracy of the state was intrusted to two Consuls, 
 annually elected in the convention of the centuries, who. 
 
OO THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 while they were officially the presidents of the senate 
 and of the national assemblies, possessed with reference 
 to the people powers very extensive and ill defined, but 
 checked by their personal responsibility on the termi- 
 nation of their year in office. The convention of the 
 curiae seldom appears ; and there are obvious reasons 
 why that of the centuries should be considered, as it 
 was, the genuine council of the nation. 
 
 The convention of the centuries had no power to ori- 
 ginate any law, but only to approve or reject resolutions 
 prepared by the senate, and moved by the consuls ; and 
 neither these measures although so approved, nor the elec- 
 tions of the consuls, were valid until a subsequent decree 
 of the senate had confirmed them.* The senators, at this 
 time, also possessed, besides the right of imposmg taxes, 
 the privileges of managmg the treasury, of ordering out 
 the citizens as soldiery of the state, of disposing of the 
 conquered lands and treasure, and even of declaring war 
 and concluding peace ; and they also had the supreme 
 superintendence of religion, and of the laws and their 
 administration. Farther, in all ages of the republic, they 
 claimed and enforced a right of temporarily suspending 
 the constitution on great emergencies, concerning the 
 urgency of which they alone were to judge. This pre- 
 rogative was at first exercised, usually in times of popular 
 discontent, by the nomination of a Dictator, who was 
 entitled to hold office for six months, and possessed, in 
 reference to the purposes specially declared in his appoint- 
 ment, an unlimited power, against which, even in matters 
 of life and death, no appeal lay to the people. At a later 
 period, the senate exercised the same dangerous autho- 
 rity, in a less offensive but really more absolute form, 
 by addressing to the consuls for the time a general man- 
 
 * According to Niebuhr, the resolutions were prepared by the 
 senate; but the approval of them, after they had passed the centu- 
 ries, was by the whole body of patricians in the curiae. The dis- 
 cussion mainly hinges on the word " Patres," which the older 
 historians translate " Senators," and I'.'iebuhr " Patricians." 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. OV 
 
 date,* which as it were put the state under martial law. 
 Both these extreme exertions of prerogative were prac- 
 tised often enough to make them strong as precedents ; 
 but, down to the veiy end of the republic, they were 
 never used without having their legality fiercely ques- 
 tioned.t 
 
 The power thus vested in the senate truly belonged to 
 the patrician order ; because the senate was originally com- 
 posed entirely of that class, and in the whole period now 
 under review, no admixture of plebeians took place wliich 
 at all lessened its aristocratic character or feeling.;}: In 
 the executive, as exercised by the officers of state, the com- 
 moners had no share whatever : they were, in fact, in- 
 eligible to all public offices. From all functions of the 
 priesthood they were also strictly excluded ; for the pedi- 
 gree of the sacrificing priest was required to be as spotless 
 as the colour of the \'ictira. In the convention of the 
 centuries, likewise, the patricians long exercised great 
 influence by their strength of votes, founded on their 
 wealth and that of their clients, though this power gra- 
 dually diminished. The mass of the plebeians were long 
 kept poor by the early laws of the state, which, adopt- 
 ing a policy admirably calculated to form a vigorous 
 army, confined its soldier-citizens to war and agriculture, 
 openly discouraging all trade and manufactures. This 
 rule, however, was not held applicable to the clients. 
 Hence the few commercial speculations which became 
 necessary, especially the transactions in money, fell 
 
 * The well-known formula, " Ut consules operam darent, ne 
 quid respublica detrimenti caperet." 
 
 t The latest case was the execution of Catiline's accomplices by 
 Cicero. 
 
 + The addition of the " Conscripti" to the senate by the first 
 consuls is a knotty point ; but if these were plebeians, it is clear 
 that the revolutionary precedent was not followed to anv farther 
 extent than this ; that, previously to the Licinian law, a few ple- 
 beians may have been enrolled to fill up blanks, the persons chosen 
 being partisans of the aristocracy. The only recorded exceptions 
 to the unanimity of the old senate in opposing the popular demands, 
 were men of pure patrician blood. 
 
60 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 into tlieir hands ; and many of their lords, whose political 
 privileges had largely augmented their fortunes, lent 
 sums at usurious interest, commonly sheltering them- 
 selves under the names of their vassals. 
 
 The early commonalty of Rome* must not he con- 
 founded with the paupers and hirelings who formed the 
 populace of Cicero's times. All the inhabitants of the 
 early conquered to^vns necessarily entered the class of 
 the plebeians, though many of them, the nobles of those 
 states, could boast a lineage older and more honourable 
 than that of the proudest Roman. Nor were the plebeians 
 exclusively indigent ; for, though their order embraced 
 most of the poor, it contained also a good many belonging 
 to the wealthier classes. The history of their struggle of 
 two hundred years for equality of political rights, is, not- 
 Avithstanding some excesses, a distinguished example of 
 spirit guided by forbearance, and presents a humiliating 
 contrast to the conduct of the same order in the later 
 times of the commonwealth. 
 
 This contest soon commenced. The earliest aristo- 
 cratic leaders of the republic, with Junius Brutus at 
 their head, acted with impartiality and moderation : but 
 in a very few years, acts of personal severity or injustice 
 by patricians against plebeians, roused an indomitable 
 spirit of resistance. The commons at first claimed no 
 reform of the constitution. They merely demanded re- 
 dress of specific grievances affecting individuals, and of 
 two in particular. The first was the inhumanity exer- 
 cised under the sanction of the existing insolvency law, 
 which was extremely harsh, allowing the creditor not 
 only to demand that his debtor should judicially pledge 
 his person in security of the debt, but also to apprehend 
 him on failure, to treat him like a slave, and to imprison 
 and scourge him.t The wars of the state both before 
 and after the revolution, constantly compelled the people 
 
 * Justissima et modestissima plebs. — Cicero. 
 t On the bankrupt laws of the republic, see mebuhr (Transl.), 
 vol. i. pp. 601, &c. and Arnold, vol. i. chap. 8. 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 61 
 
 to leave their fanns to serve in the army, which received 
 no pay till the siege of Veii ; and they were thus laid 
 under the necessity of borrowing, for the support of 
 their famihes, money which they could seldom repay. 
 The free plebeians alone were exposed to these evils, 
 the clients being protected both from the military ser- 
 vice which produced the debt, and, through their patrons, 
 from the law in favour of the creditor ; and, as there is 
 no evidence that the severity of the provision was abused 
 by any of the wealthier commoners, the odium rested 
 solely on the richer nobles and their vassals. Instances 
 of cruelty occurred almost immediately after the change 
 in the form of government ; and the wars aggravated the 
 evil, till, a large proportion of the plebeians being involved 
 in debt, many of them had been repeatedly imprison- 
 ed and grossly maltreated. The lands acquired by con- 
 rjuest, being the confiscated portions of the territory of 
 captured towns, which became the Domain of the State, 
 might have been applied to alleviate the general distress : 
 but the fact that they w^ere not so applied constituted 
 the second of the plebeian grievances. The occupation 
 of them was retained exclusively by the patricians ; for 
 when they were not given over to colonists, nor sold for 
 the benefit of the treasury, nor reserved, as parts of them 
 were, for public pasturages, the senate allowed individuals 
 to take possession of them. The right of property in 
 the land so held was never legally transferred to the 
 occupants ; it remained with the state, which was entitled 
 at a moment's warning to eject them ; but as this power 
 was exercised very seldom, or more probably never, many 
 persons were allowed to transmit to their heirs the posses- 
 sion of immense tracts of the public demesne. The ple- 
 beians, who constituted the strength of the armies which 
 conquered these verylands, were strictly excluded, perhaps 
 not in the earlier times, but certainly after the expul- 
 sion of the kings, fi-om all such acquisitions. Nor did 
 the abuse stop here : the state was defrauded as well 
 as the commons. In the original cession of these estates, 
 the patrician possessors were burdened with the annual 
 
62 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 payment to the treasury of a fixed proportion of the pro- 
 duce. This tithe or rent was first loosely exacted, and 
 then ceased to he levied at all.* 
 
 In some of the earliest wars of the new repuhlic, the 
 exasperated plebeians refused to give military service, 
 while the senate, making occasional and evasive conces- 
 sions, repeatedly quelled them by appomting a dictator. 
 The discontent ended in the famous retreat of the com- 
 mons to the Sacred Mount (a. u. 261), the result of 
 which was remarkable, and highly honourable to the 
 men who headed their oppressed fellow-citizens. The 
 circumstance of the revolters being all plebeians sug- 
 gested the idea of providing for the protection of that 
 class in future, b}^ the mterposition of authorized dele- 
 gates. Temporary relief was obtained for the insolvent 
 debtors, though without any alteration of the bankrupt 
 law : and the privileged order agreed to the permanent 
 institution of Tribunes of the Commons, who were to 
 be plebeians, elected annually in the convention of 
 the curias, and confirmed by the senate.t The mode of 
 election was most unsatisfactory ; but the principle 
 was gained ; the patricians likewise were for some time 
 afraid to use their advantage, and when they at length 
 made an attempt, the plebeians extorted an alteration 
 in the form of the appointment. 
 
 By the original conception of the office, the Tribunes 
 appear to have had only the right of interposing for 
 the immediate protection of the persons of commoners 
 against palpable violations of the law : but their duties 
 were speedily extended so as to comprehend the defence 
 
 * jViebuhr, vol ii. p. 129-154. According to Niebuhr's theory, 
 the plebeians had in strict law no right either to claim individually 
 possession of these lands, or to object to the non-payment of the 
 tithe on them. The lands belonged to the " populus," i. e. to the 
 patricians ; and the profits of them went to the "populus," i. e. not 
 into the treasury of the state, but into the common chest of the 
 patrician body. The moral iniquity of the system is the same in 
 either view. 
 
 t Niebuhr maintains that they were elected by the centuries, and 
 confirmed by the-curiae : vol. i. p. 607. 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 63 
 
 of their whole body against illegal acts. They had the 
 right of putting, by their veto, a temporary stop to the 
 proceedings, either of any magistrate, or of any council 
 of the state. Their functions were shielded by a strict 
 personal inviolability : an attack on a tribune, or mo- 
 lestation offered to him in the discharge of his duty, 
 was treason to the state, involving ipso facto outlawry. 
 They likewise soon claimed and exercised the right of in- 
 troducing proposals for new laws, even in those national 
 meetings of which they were not presidents."' 
 
 Within three years after the institution of the tri- 
 bunate, the plebeians (a. u. 263), by an act of injustice 
 and revenge, gained a prerogative which in time altered 
 the whole constitution of Rome. Coriolanus, a patrician, 
 insulted the commons in his place in the senate. The 
 tribunes, whose office entitled them to be present in that 
 assembly, though not as yet to vote or speak, witnessed 
 the affront, and summoned the offender to answer before 
 a court of which we have not yet made mention, — 
 the Comitia Tributa, or Convention of the Tribes. 
 Questions of some difficulty arise regarding it. It al- 
 ways was an assembly whose members were arranged 
 without any regard to property, and were divided 
 neither into curiae nor centuries, but into tribes, a local 
 division like parishes. Every person had a vote in 
 his tribe, and every tribe a vote in the convention, 
 the order in which the tribes should vote being deter- 
 mmed by lot. The tribunes of the commons cited the 
 meeting, and were officially its presidents : and (a most 
 
 * Niebuhr's idea of the tribunate is this : — That the division into 
 tribes by Servius Tullius (which has not yet been mentioned in 
 the text), was a division of the plebeians only, not of the whole 
 people ; that, as indeed older writers have pointed out, each plebeian 
 tribe had its elective president, called a tribune; and that the Tri- 
 buni Plebis were just these ancient functionaries, who now for the 
 first time received the right of appearance as officers of the general 
 body politic. He also maintains, that the Comitia Tributa, which 
 ■we shall immediately meet with, were nothing more than the old 
 ordinary meetings of these plebeian tribes. — Niebuhr, vol. i. 
 p. 398-424, and p. 601-609. 
 
64 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 important feature) it did not require the religious sanc- 
 tion of the patrician priests to constitute it. 
 
 On these points there is no dispute : the difficulty oc- 
 curs on the question who were the constituent members.* 
 It is clear, that on this occasion, and for a considerable 
 time afterwards, the assemblies bearing that name were 
 composed exclusively of plebeians, and probably of those 
 only who were not clients. The truth seems to be, that 
 the step taken by the tribunes was in itself not only ille- 
 gal, but grossly unfair. They knew that whether they 
 attempted the impeachment in the curiae or in the cen- 
 turies, the auspices as well as the prerogative of the patri- 
 cian presidents would be turned against them, and, in the 
 centuries, the influence of wealth. It is possible that they 
 may already have begun to assemble their constituents, 
 of course without any consecration or formal constitution 
 of the meeting : and they now proposed to try the proud 
 senator before a court composed in this way, to which 
 they gave a show of legality, by naming and dividing it 
 according to the tribes, the only recognised classification 
 of the people distinct from those of the other assemblies. 
 It was indeed somewhat startling, that the plaintiffs should 
 propose to sit as judges in their own cause : and perhaps 
 the tribunes may have pretended that their new conven- 
 tion was to comprehend all classes of the citizens. But they 
 were perfectly certain that it would in fact be com- 
 posed of plebeians only, and probably of none who were 
 not free. The patricians durst not sit in the ncAV assem- 
 bly, or acknowledge its legality as a national institution, 
 unless they chose to repudiate the principles on which 
 their political supremacy was founded. If they had 
 consented to attend its meetings, they would thus 
 have acknowledged the right of the tribunes to impeach, 
 which was an unprecedented and dangerous innovation ; 
 they would have recognised the right of plebeians, as yet 
 excluded from every office of state, to summon and preside 
 
 • Compare Wachsmuth, p. 300-309, and Beaufort, 
 p. 18b (Ed. 1766), with Niebuhr, vol. i. p. 307, et se^i. 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 65 
 
 in national assemblies ; and they would have admitted 
 the legality of sucli meetings, though not constituted by 
 those religious rites which were so powerful an engine 
 of their own political monopoly. They resolved, there- 
 fore, to sacritice one man rather than the privileges of 
 their order, or the convenient insolvency laws : and, care- 
 fully abstaining from taking part in the proceedings, 
 they allowed the 2)lebeians to convene their irregular 
 assembly, and pass what invalid resolutions or sentence 
 they pleased. 
 
 The commons, however, held their own act a prece- 
 dent, and followed it. A law of the consul Spurius Cassius 
 (a. u. 267), for remedying the abuses in the occupation 
 of the public lands, was eluded, and its mover was mur- 
 dered by his fellow-nobles. At last (a. u. 281), the 
 tribune Genucius impeached the last year's consuls before 
 the convention of the tribes for not enforcing the law of 
 Spurius. This double danger called for prompt action ; 
 and the tribune was found dead in his bed on the morn- 
 ing m which the trial should have come on.* 
 
 The very next 3'ear, the tribune Volero moved, in the 
 convention of the centuries, a law for amending the 
 election of the Tribunitial College, by transferring it to 
 the convention of the tribes. The patricians violently 
 resisted the attempt, the consequences of which they 
 clearly saw. It was evaded till the year after (a. u. 283), 
 when he again moved the law, and the senate, finding 
 opposition hopeless, consented to it in terrified silence.t 
 
 Mention is made of another very important statute, also 
 passed in Volero's second tribuneship, declaring that the 
 convention of the tribes had a right to deliberate on all 
 matters touching the common weal. The terms of the 
 enactment, as reported, do not amount to an assertion of 
 legislative powers, but only to a recognition of the right 
 
 * Livy says (lib. ii. cap. 54) that the senators openly boasted of 
 the assassination, and that it was reckoned among them an honour 
 to be suspected of having had a share in it. 
 
 t Patresad ultimumdimicationis rati remventuram — Lex silentio 
 perfertur. Liv. lib. ii. cap. 56, 57. 
 
 VOL. I. i> 
 
66 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 to meet and pass resolutions, analogous to our British 
 privilege of petitioning parliament ;* but the measure 
 indicates to us, and ought to have given warning to the 
 patricians, that the plebeians now looked far beyond the 
 redress of personal wrongs. Indeed these two laws of 
 Volero placed the commons in a most advantageous posi- 
 tion. The peculiar form in which their meetings were 
 held was authoritatively recognised as legal, and they en- 
 joyed a free election of their bench of presidents. It is 
 possible that from this time the patricians, with the view 
 of weakening the strength of their adversaries, may 
 have allowed their clients to attend in the electoral 
 meetings of the tribes, though they did not as yet acknow- 
 ledge the legality of their deliberative proceedings. 
 
 But they were soon compelled to recognise these also. 
 In the year of the city 298, the tribune Icilius carried in 
 the tribes a resolution for assigning the ground of the 
 Aventine Hill to the poor plebeians. This vote was laid 
 before the senate, who refused to entertain it even as a 
 petition, maintaining that the second law of Volero, 
 though it allowed the commons to deliberate on questions 
 of public policy, did not compel the higher council to 
 take any notice of their resolutions. After a bitter 
 struggle, the senators consented to take the vote into 
 consideration, and allowed the tribunes to speak in their 
 house in support of it. Both concessions were held to be 
 precedents. 
 
 The next material step was produced by a motion 
 v.'hich had already been introduced by the tribune 
 Terentillus Arsa, for the appointment of a commission 
 to draw up a set of rules for determining the powers 
 of the consuls. Violent disputes ensued, and the pro- 
 posal was altered into that of a general revision of the 
 whole law, both public and private. For this purpose, 
 the Ten Commissioners forming the First Decemvirate, 
 were selected (a. u. 302) exclusively from the patrician 
 order : and as they had not completed the task within 
 
 * Niebuhr, voL ii. p. 217- Wachsmuth, p, 331-342. Dionys. 
 flalic. lib. ix. cap. 43. 
 
TILL THE FALL OP THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 67 
 
 their year, a new Commission was elected, half patrician 
 half plebeian. The fruit of the decemvirates was the fa- 
 mous Code of the Twelve Tables, of whose contents, so 
 far as they related to the public law, we know almost 
 nothing. It is even a disputed point whether any of their 
 constitutional enactments survived the forcible dissolution 
 of the second decemvirate. The whole history of these 
 commissions, indeed, is extremely perplexing : but by an 
 anomaly to which there are several parallels in ancient 
 times, they received, besides full power to legislate, an 
 appointment as sole magistrates of the republic. The 
 second body of commissioners, headed by Appius Clau- 
 dius, forcibly retained office after then- year had expked : 
 the citizen-soldiers took their favourite revenge, by first 
 refusing to enlist, and then allowing themselves to be 
 beaten : the murder of Siccius Dentatus, their leader, 
 was followed by the tragical story of Virginia : the ple- 
 beians for the second time left the city ; and the consular 
 government was restored. 
 
 The patrician Valerius, surnamed Poplicola, one of the 
 consuls for the next year (a. u. 805), besides formally re- 
 cognising the old right of appeal to the people against cri- 
 minal sentences pronounced by the officers of state, carried 
 likewise in a meeting of the centuries a measure as to the 
 proceedings of the tribes, extending the effect of the law of 
 283 and the precedent of 298. This new statute declared 
 resolutions of the plebeians in the tribes to be of equal 
 force with those of the whole community in the centu- 
 ries ; that is, it declared that the Convention of the Tribes 
 was a branch of the legislature, and that its resolutions 
 acquired the force of law on being approved by the 
 senate.* The patricians reluctantly agreed to this new 
 act ; and the convention of the tribes, besides the distinct 
 recognition of its constitutional status, now possessed, 
 through its presidents, the tribunes, the important pri- 
 vilege of the initiative. 
 
 * Ut, quod tributim plebs jussisset, populum teneret. Livii His- 
 toriar. lib. iii. cap. 55. There is much reason to believe, that till 
 416 this law was frequently evaded. 
 
DO THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 The plebeians, as a body, had now hardly any farther 
 political right to demand ; but personally they continued 
 excluded from all the functions of the executive, because 
 the patricians still alleged that tbey lay under a religious 
 disqualification for these offices, from their not possessing 
 the Sacerdotal character, which was essential to the dis- 
 charge of certain duties incumbent on the principal mem- 
 bers of the government. The commons were already re- 
 solved to extort from the nobles the privilege of being 
 eligible to office ; but it cost them a struggle of nearly 
 ninety years. The tribunes began the attack (a. u. 308), 
 by a motion in the senate, for a law to have one of the 
 Consuls elected from each order ; and by another, which 
 they had better have let alone, for giving full legal effect 
 to marriages between patricians and plebeians. The aris- 
 tocracy dreaded the proposal as to the consulship, and a 
 compromise was effected. The office, meantime, was su- 
 perseded by an annual board called Consular Military 
 Tribunes, eligible from either order, and possessing the 
 usual powers of the consuls, but not their rank or per- 
 sonal privileges. The concession seems to have been 
 understood on both sides as only temporary : and it is 
 likely that the senate retained the power of determining 
 annually, whether the magistrates for the ensuing year 
 should be consuls or consular tribunes ; while the lists 
 show, that till the abolition of the consular tribunate, this 
 form of administration was only chosen on occasions of 
 popular excitement, and that during forty years after its 
 institution the commons were only once able to procure 
 a place in the board for one of their o^vn order. The 
 influence of the nobility on the elections was strength- 
 ened by a novel expedient, apparently adopted in the 
 hope of neutralizing the plebeian efforts ; namely, the 
 appointment of patrician Censors, two officers elected 
 by the centuries for a fixed period, to superintend the 
 national revenues and works, to assess the public burdens, 
 and to prepare the rolls both for the payment of taxes and 
 for admission into the senate and centuries. It is sus- 
 pected, on plausible grounds, that the judicial powers of 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 69 
 
 the consuls were also for a time transferred to the 
 censors.* 
 
 From this point we trace no efficient attempt of the 
 commons to gain the magistracies, till 378, when the tri- 
 bune Licinius Stolo introduced his three celebrated mea- 
 sures, wliich he was not able to carry till 387. By his 
 first law the Consulate was permanently re-established 
 as the highest office of the state ; both orders of citizens 
 were declared eligible ; and, with a very necessary pre- 
 caution, it was provided, that one of the Consuls must 
 always be a Plebeian. The nobles were only able to 
 get the judicial functions of these magistrates finally 
 separated from the office, and committed to the praetors, 
 who at first were patricians.t 
 
 The other two statutes of Licinius related to the Bank- 
 ruptcy Law and the Public Domain. During the period 
 which has been last considered, the grievances of the 
 poorer plebeians, in regard to both of these matters, were 
 repeatedly brought forward, and excited several danger- 
 ous commotions. In the course of the fourth century of 
 Rome, at least two eminent citizens expiated with their 
 lives the crime of defending the poor against oppression. 
 Spurius Mselius, a powerful commoner, was the first 
 victim ; and the second was the patrician Marcus ]\Ian- 
 lius, who, after having saved the Capitol from the Gauls, 
 was judicially murdered, on a pretence of his aiming at 
 the sovereignty, but truly for having protested for years 
 against the insolvency laws and their abuse. The his- 
 torians of the republic, and especially Li vy, the strenuous 
 partisan of the aristocracy, would have us to believe, 
 that both suffered deservedly ; and their fame has been 
 overshadowed by that of their celebrated destroyers. 
 For the dictator, by whose command Spurius was slain, 
 was the venerable Cincinnatus ; and Manlius was killed, 
 under a decree of the senate, " ne respublica," by the 
 consular tribunes for the year, at the head of whom 
 
 • Niebuhr, vol. ii. : On the Censorship and Consular Tribunes, 
 t Livii Histor. lib. vi. cap. 35-42; lib. vii. cap. I. 
 
70 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 was Camillus. We cannot now determine the motives 
 either of Spurius or Manlius ; but nothing can be more 
 certain than that the acts for which they died were 
 patriotic and just. 
 
 Licinius was more fortunate. For the first of the two 
 evils Avhich he endeavoured to remove, it was indeed dif- 
 ficult to find a remedy ; since a mere prospective altera- 
 tion of the insolvency law would not have satisfied the 
 wishes of the complainers, while a statute to extinguish 
 all existing debts would have involved an injustice pal- 
 pable even to the Romans, in spite of their characteristic 
 hatred of usury. His temporary law, by which all interest 
 already paid to creditors was imputed towards extinc- 
 tion of the principal, on condition that the balance should 
 be paid up by equal instalments in three years, probably 
 answered its immediate purpose. It however left the 
 sore to fester in the heart of the state, notwithstanding 
 the successive statutes to regulate the currency ; and 
 the distress of the lower classes generated a reckless 
 spirit which powerfully contributed to the deterioration 
 of the national character. 
 
 The Licinian law as to the Public Domain, was one of 
 those which from their subject were called Agrarian, a 
 term which has sometimes been misunderstood.* None 
 of the measures brought forward at Rome under this 
 name contemplated any interference with private pro- 
 perty, or its restriction to any fixed amount. They 
 referred solely to the Public Domain, and to no portions 
 even of that except such as were occupied by indivi- 
 duals on sufferance, in the manner which has been 
 already explained. As new districts were successively 
 
 * See Heyne, Leges Agrariae pestiferae et execrabiles (Opus- 
 eiila Academica, torn. iv. p. 350-373), a discourse written in 1793 
 against the agrarian propositions brought forward in the French 
 republic. The track of inquiry which Heyne indicated was pro- 
 secuted by Heeren in 1794, in his Geschichte der Revolution der 
 Gracchen (Kleine Historische Schriften, vol. i. 1803). The 
 difficulties which still encumbered the subject have been cleared 
 up by Niebuhr, in his Sections (vol. ii.) on the Public Lands, the 
 Early Assignments, and the Law of Spurius. 
 
TILL THE FALL OF TUE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 71 
 
 conquered, and the possession of them by the patricians 
 and their vassal tenantry grow inveterate, the abuse be- 
 came more glaring, and, at the same time, more difficult 
 of redress. The law of Licinius, aided by the accom- 
 panying reforms, appears for some time to have greatly 
 ameliorated the condition of the poor. It had reference 
 both to the public lands which might thereafter be 
 acquired by the state, and to those which it had already 
 conquered. In regard to all these, it enacted, tliat no Ro- 
 man should be allowed to possess on the title of sufferance 
 more than 500 jugera, or about 280 English acres ; that 
 on those tracts which were reserved as common pastures, 
 no one should graze more than a fixed number of cattle ; 
 that, both for the arable ground and the pasturages, the 
 customary tithes and other dues should be strictly levied ; 
 and that the revenue thus arising t-o the exchequer should 
 be publicly farmed out. Of the territory which the 
 state had already acquired, every citizen who occupied 
 any portion of it by sufferance, was allowed to retain 500 
 jugera, but all he possessed beyond that extent was 
 to be taken from him ; and the land so seized was divided 
 among the poorer class, in allotments of seven jugera, 
 or about four acres, to each." We know that the ple- 
 beians, or some of them, thenceforth contrived to obtain 
 large portions of the domain, on the same footing on 
 which such estates were formerly monopolized by the 
 patricians : for Licinius himself was in a few years con- 
 victed of violating his own law, by possessing more than 
 the prescribed amount. 
 
 From the mstitution of the tribunate to the time of 
 this inconsistent reformer, we can trace no constitutional 
 change unfavourable to the commons, except the dismem- 
 berment of the consular functions, and certain alterations 
 on the college of the plebeian tribunes. This board, the 
 original number of which is uncertain, was, probably 
 about the year 297, increased to ten members. At 
 
 • Niebuhr, vol. iii. (untranslated), Romische Geschichte ; 
 Dritter Theil ; Berlin. 1832; p. 13-23. 
 
72 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 first a majority decided on all steps to be taken, and 
 neither the minority nor single members could act in 
 contravention of the resolutions so fixed. There was, 
 however, introduced, between the years 839 and 860,'^ a 
 dangerous rule, which subsisted till the dissolution of the 
 republic ; namely, that any one tribune might, by his veto, 
 stop the proceedings of the magistrates, the senate, or 
 national conventions, and even of his own colleagues. 
 
 But the hereditary aristocracy was already disarmed by 
 the enactment of the Licinian laws : and the subsequent 
 changes of the constitution proceeded with rapidity. In 
 401, the commoners established their eligibility to the 
 omnipotent office of Dictator. In 40C, they gained ad- 
 mission to the Censorship, and, ten years afterwards, the 
 exclusive right to one of the two places at that board. 
 In 420 the Prsetorship followed ; and as the Quaestor- 
 ship had been already gained, they were now eligible to 
 all places of civil trust a-nd honour. 
 
 In 416, the plebeian dictator Publilius Philo, whose 
 office enabled him to overcome the resistance of the 
 patricians, carried in the centuries, and forced the senate 
 to confimi, two remarkable laws. The First of these either 
 simply renewed the Valerian law of 805, constituting the 
 Convention of the Tribes a legislative body, or, at most, 
 it fortified the principle of that measure by some new 
 arrangement. But the Second Publilian law amounted to 
 a radical change in the constitution. It annihilated at a 
 blow the whole control which the senate had held over 
 the Legislative functions of the Convention of the Centu- 
 ries, leaving to it nothing but its veto on the electoral 
 votes of that assembly. Instead of preparing the legisla- 
 tive resolutions, and at pleasure allowing or forbidding 
 them to be proposed to the people, the senate was by the 
 new statute compelled, whenever such a resolution waa 
 regularly laid before it, to pronounce, as matter of course, 
 an edict permitting it to be moved in the convention ; and 
 instead of the old rule, which gave the senate a second 
 
 * Niebuhr, vol. ii. p. 435. 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 7^ 
 
 veto on all such measures after the centuries had ap- 
 proved of them, it was enacted that the legislative acts 
 of the convention should have tlie force of law without 
 being- sent back at all to the upper house.* 
 
 The first fruit of this perilous innovation was a good 
 measure, the Ptetelian law of 420, which abolished im- 
 prisonment and bondage for debt.t 
 
 In 454, the amalgamation of the two orders was com- 
 pleted by the removal of the religious disqualifications of 
 the plebeians, who were now admitted into the two great 
 Collegesof the Priesthood, thatof the Pontiffs, the supreme 
 ecclesiastical council, and that of the Augurs, in whose 
 hands lay the auspices. These boards were at this stage 
 equally divided between the two classes of citizens, 
 but their members were self-elected. [j] The plebeians, of 
 course, entered the priestly colleges m profound ignorance 
 of the mysteries of the craft ; but they seem to have been 
 apt pupils in political slight-of-hand, for, in the same ge- 
 neration, the commoner Titus Coruncanius was the great- 
 est authority in the laws ecclesiastical as well as civil. § 
 
 An attempt of a tribune in the same year was soon 
 after (though the precise date is unknown) confirmed by 
 the law of Miienius, which extended to Elections in the 
 Centuries the provision of the second Publilian law as to 
 the legislative functions of that body.]] Over it the senate 
 had now no control. 
 
 The Publilian and Msenian laws furnished the tribunes 
 with a hint which was speedily taken ; and indeed, for 
 
 * Liv, lib. viii. cap. 12. Compare Niebuhr on the Publilian 
 Laws (vol. iii. p. 167-173), and Schulze, p. 95, with Wachs- 
 muth, p. 441. 
 
 t Eo anno plebi Romana; velut aliud initium libertatis factum 
 est, quod necti desierunt. Livii Histor. lib. viii. cap. 28. 
 
 Ij: Dionys. Halic. lib. ii. cap. 73. Cicero Ad Familiares, lib. iii. 
 ep. 10. The Pontifex Maximus, however, was always nominated 
 by the people. By the Domitian Law of 650, the people received, 
 but were not able permanently to retain, the right of nominating 
 to all the priestly offices. Cic. De Lege Agraria, orat. ii. cap. 7. 
 Velleius Paterculus, lib. ii. cap. 12. Suetonius in Nerone, cap. 2. 
 
 5 Niebuhr, vol. iii. p. 409-413 : On the Ogulnian Law. 
 
 ', Ciceronis Brutus, cap. 14. 
 
74 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 the preservation of consistency and order, it was abso- 
 lutely necessary that, if these laws were to subsist, their 
 principle should be extended to the Convention of the 
 Tribes. Accordingly, in 468, the Hortensian Law com- 
 pleted irretrievably the defeat of the patricians. The 
 senate had never possessed the initiative in the proceed- 
 ings of the Conventions of the Tribes ; but it exercised 
 the veto. The Hortensian law abolished this negative, 
 not, perhaps, on all resolutions of the tribes, but certainly 
 on all questions except those of administration.* 
 
 From this point of the history, the Convention of the 
 Tribes must be considered as in every view a national coun- 
 cil, embracing all orders of the state. It continues to be 
 styled an assembly of the plebeians, and its resolutions acts 
 of that body (plebiscita) ; but the plebs, or commonalty, 
 which in the subsequent times of the republic the tribes 
 represented, was not the old plebs : it was, in fact, com- 
 posed simply of the poorer classes, many of whom might 
 be, — and some, as we know, were, — men of pure patrician 
 extraction ; and the new aristocracy, who kept at a distance 
 from their meetings, and affected to despise them, Avere 
 themselves, with very few exceptions, genuine plebeians. 
 
 * Plinii Histor. Natur. lib. xvi. cap. 10. Auli GelliiNoct. Attic. 
 lib. sv. cap. 27. Livii, epit. lib. xi. Valer. Maxim, lib. vi. cap. i. 
 sect. 9. The terms of the three successive laws as to the Conven- 
 tion of the Tribes (the Valerian, Publilian, and Hortensian), have 
 reached us imperfectly : and we are left to interpret their real mean- 
 ing and extent by the practice which followed. Niebuhr's theory 
 of them, which depends on his great hypothesis, is the following : — 
 The Valerian law enacted, that resolutions of the tribes should be 
 law, on receiving the approval of the curicB. The Publilian law set 
 aside the approval of the curiae, and substituted that of the senate, 
 to be given either beforehand by their sending down a resolution, 
 or after a vote of the tribes, by their adoption of it. The Horten- 
 sian law declared the resolutions of the tribes to be eflFectual, 
 without their either originating in the senate, or being subsequently 
 approved by it : — '* A dangerous absoluteness, against which good 
 sense struggled very long :" Niebuhr, vol. ii. p. 365 — " In the 
 latter centuries of the republic, enactments touching the constitu- 
 tion were entirely independent of the senate : on the other hand, 
 no decree of the plebeians affecting the administration could be 
 promulgated without a previous ordinance of the senate." Niebuhr, 
 vol. ii. p. 221. 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 75 
 
 THIRD AGE. 
 
 THE ROMAN REl'UBLIC FROM ITS COMPLETE DEVELOPMENT 
 TILL ITS FALL : 
 
 A. u. 468—722, OR b. c. 286—32. 
 
 The Character of the Times. — Although this is not the 
 place which has been allotted for our systematic inquiry 
 into the state of society and manners in Ancient Italy, 
 the most prominent moral and statistical features of the 
 period now to be considered must not, even at this stage, 
 be passed over in silence. 
 
 The military success of Rome, in which it is so diffi- 
 cult not to rejoice, was based partly on her political in- 
 stitutions, partly on the personal character and rural 
 education of her burgher-soldiery. Trade was as yet con- 
 fined to the vassals and to strangers ; literary cultivation 
 belonged only to a few, and to these in no high degree ; 
 and till the conquest of Southern Italy was accomplished, 
 simplicity, or rather rudeness, marked the life and man- 
 ners of the whole community. Greece and her colonies 
 communicated to the higher classes of the Romans their 
 literature, their philosophical scepticism, their love of the 
 arts, and their luxury. Riches flowed in toiTents into 
 the pubUc treasury. Individuals, too, became wealthy, 
 some indeed enormously so, by commerce and money- 
 lending, by easy grants of the national lands, b}^ pro- 
 fitable leases of the revenues, and by monopolizing and 
 abusing those numerous and lucrative offices required 
 both at home and abroad, for the administration of a 
 powerful republic. These private treasures lay in the 
 liands of comparatively few, but patricians and ple- 
 beians soon shared in them alike ; and in no long time, 
 as the old patrician families died out, the wealth and 
 power of the republic belonged almost exclusively to the 
 plebeians, and chiefly to the equestrian order or knights ; 
 a subdivision of that class whose status in the latter 
 times of the commonwealth, though perhaps not entirely 
 in the earlier, depended on a property qualification, 
 
76 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 and who now contrived to engross trade and the farming 
 of the revenue. The aristocracy of hirth speedily became 
 insigniiicant : a new plebeian aristocracy arose, founding 
 its nobility on the possession of public offices and seats in 
 the senate, either by the individual or by his ancestors. 
 These new senatorial, consular, and equestrian families, 
 soon taught the poorer classes, that lands, money, and of- 
 fice, can make men quite as tyrannical as old pedigrees can. 
 At the fall of liberty, there existed only fifty houses 
 of patrician blood, and not only do these furnish few 
 of the characters who were great in the later history of 
 the republic, but the few illustrious names of that order 
 belong almost exclusively to families which had been 
 obscure in the earlier times. We lose sight of the patrician 
 families of the Manlii,the Claudii,the Fabii,and the Furii. 
 The patrician race of the ^milii, long unkno\^^l to fame, 
 gives us at length Paulus jEmilius, the conqueror of 
 Macedon, and his son the younger Scipio ; and the Cor- 
 nelian house, the most distinguished of the newer patri- 
 cian families, gave birth in succession to the elder Scipio 
 and to the dictator Sylla. But in the century imme- 
 diately preceding the emph-e, the great men who could 
 boast of old nobility became fewer and fcAver. The Julian 
 house itself, the patrician nursery of the Csesars, was 
 propped by the plebeian Aurelii, to whom belonged the 
 mother of Julius Caesar, and by the plebeian Octavii, 
 one of whom was the father of Augustus, the first emperor. 
 Pompey also belonged to a plebeian race, no member of 
 which was consul till 612 ; the Pisos were descended 
 from the Calpurnii, the Metelli from the Csecilii, Brutus 
 and Cassius from the Junii and Cassii ; all of these being 
 plebeian families.* Some of the greatest Roman states- 
 men, and almost all the eminent men of letters, were not 
 only of the same order, but foreigners, being natives of 
 the other Italian districts. Among the foreign states- 
 men, it is enough to name Cato, Marius, and Cicero. 
 
 * Augustinus de Familiis RomaBorum, and Fulvius Ursinus de 
 Familiis Romanis Nobilioribus : (both treatises in Graevii Thesaur. 
 Antiquitat. Roman, torn, vii.) 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 7/ 
 
 The moral chtaracter of the lower classes degenerated 
 as mpidly as that of the upper ranks, while their penury 
 and indolence exposed them to temptations not felt hy 
 the richer citizens. Early in the seventh century of 
 Rome, the mass of the commonalty in the city were 
 sunk into extreme poverty and vice ; evils which spread 
 during the next hundred years like a pestilence. The 
 whole agricultural population of Italy suffered very 
 severely ; and the starvmg labourers, flocking to the 
 capital, coalesced with its degraded populace. For half 
 a century before the fall of the republic, an immense 
 proportion of the people consisted of paupers, receiving 
 the bounty of the state, and of hirelings who subsisted 
 by selling their votes and their blood to the highest 
 bidder. 
 
 The E.iternal History of Rome. — The history of the 
 Italiot and Sicilian Greeks now merges in that of Rome. 
 Magna Graecia was harassed by the Syracusans, and by 
 the native tribes, who, first led against it by the elder 
 Dionysius, did not forget the lesson. These barbarians 
 reduced several districts of the coast, destroying Psestum, 
 Thurii, IMetapontum, and other towns. Some of the 
 Greeks mcautiously entreated the aid of the Romans ; 
 and tills caused the war with Pyrrhus the Epirote, who 
 had in like mamier been invited by the Sicilians. In 
 A. u. 481 the Romans took Tarentum, and made Magna 
 Graecia one of their provinces. 
 
 The neighbourhood of the Carthaginians in Sicily 
 produced, in the year 490, the First Punic War, which 
 lasted twenty-three years ; and its scene was chiefly in 
 that island, on the coasts of which the Romans trained 
 their new navy. By the final treaty the Africans 
 evacuated all their Sicilian possessions, and paid the costs 
 of the war. The second Hiero had by this time become 
 sovereign of Syracuse, and his submission to Rome 
 secured for his country, during his life, a peace wliich 
 was truly little different from bondage. 
 
 The contest with Carthage was followed by a compara- 
 tively pacific interval of nearly twenty-four years, during 
 
78 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 which the Romans forcibly seized Corsica and Sardinia, 
 entered into friendly communication with Greece on 
 subduing the Illyrian pirates, and extended their Italian 
 garrisons to the north of the Po. 
 
 In 536, Hannibal's celebrated passage over the Alps 
 transferred to the very heart of his enemy's territories 
 the seat of the Second Punic War, which raged for seven- 
 teen years, in Italy, in Spain, in Africa, and in Sicily. 
 This war was a game in which the world was the stake ; 
 and nobly did the gamesters play it. There cannot be a 
 more glorious proof of the political and moral strength of 
 Rome during this period, than the unconquerable courage 
 with which her citizens bore up against the most fear- 
 ful calamities. Their defeats on the Ticinus and Trebia, 
 were followed by that of the Thrasymene Lake and the 
 fatal field of Cannte. Nearly all Italy revolted ; and the 
 Romans stood enclosed like hunted beasts of prey. But 
 the bark of their destiny was steered by two strong spirits, 
 the angel of freedom and the demon of ambition ; and 
 it rode proudly through the stomi. The instrument of 
 their deliverance was Scipio Africanus the elder ; and 
 Rome and Scipio found in Hannibal a worthy foe. By 
 the defeat near Zama in Africa Carthage was ruined. 
 She surrendered her fleet, that is, her commerce and her 
 warlike strength. Italy, from Rhegium to the Alps, 
 trembled and submitted ; and Sicily, already conquered 
 by Marcellus, who took Syracuse in 541, was made 
 formally a Roman province. 
 
 Rome, without a year's delay, commenced that system 
 of interposition in foreign affairs, that mock protection 
 of liberty against tyranny, and of small states against 
 great ones, which gave her a pretence for invasions, and 
 enabled her, before the loss of her o\vn freedom, to form 
 her mighty empire, embracing the fairest portion of 
 Europe, some parts of Asia, and the neai'est coast of Africa. 
 Greece was first attacked, and, by a humiliating dissimu- 
 lation of its conquerors, was proclaimed a free state. Syria 
 was next subdued, Macedonia reduced, and declared a re- 
 public, and Carthage destroyed (a. u. 608), after that 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 79 
 
 desperate struggle of three years, which was called the 
 Third Punic War, and which gave the surname of Africa- 
 nus to Cicero's favourite hero, the younger Scipio. In 
 the same year Corinth was taken, and both Greece and 
 Macedonia were declared provinces of Rome. A large part 
 of Spain was reduced ; conquests in Asia Minor were 
 begun about the same time ; and, after the Social War 
 (ending a. u. 665), successfully prosecuted by the Italians 
 in order to extort the franchise, the Roman dominions 
 abroad were extended by Marius, Sylla, and the soldiers 
 of the last days of liberty. 
 
 The Constitutional History of Rome. — The people were 
 now, in fact, as in theor}^, the sovereigns of the state ; and 
 in their conventions, the meanest citizen acted, and felt 
 that he acted, as a legislator, a judge, and a prince. This 
 erroneous notion as to the nature of the political franchise, 
 while it was the root from which grew up the haughty 
 patriotism of Rome, was also the cause of its speedy de- 
 cline. The personal exercise of the legislative power 
 became more dangerous with every accession to the num- 
 ber of citizens, and with every step which individuals made 
 towards the acquisition of extraordinary wealth. Be- 
 tween the years 594 and 639, we have eight statements of 
 the number of citizens entered on the censor's roUs. The 
 smallest return is 313,823, and the largest 894,336. 
 In A. u. 725, Augustus took a census, and the three au- 
 thorities which give us the returns (Eusebius, Suidas, 
 and the iMonumentum Ancyranum), concur, with minor 
 differences, in stating the numbers at more than four 
 milhons.*-" The political rights vested by law in this 
 immense multitude were in practice exercised for the 
 whole mass, by the few thousands that tumultuously filled 
 the place of meeting in the city. 
 
 The unavoidable ruin of the republic was precipitated 
 by keeping up the Tribunitial College, which the reforms 
 in the constitution had rendered worse than useless ; 
 a board possessing, in the veto of its members, a power 
 
 * Beaufort ; Republique Romaine, livre iv. chap. 4. 
 
80 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 which ought to be lodged in the higher, not the lower, 
 orders of the state, and which, fortified by the in- 
 violability of the tribunes, was greatly extended by 
 then- additional prerogative of presidency in the convo- 
 cation of the tribes. The people, no doubt, required 
 authorized protectors ; but the form of the protection 
 which the tribunate afforded them was altogether defec- 
 tive : it was too weak in good and too strong in evil ; 
 and it tended not immaterially to generate that ruinous 
 spirit of antipathy which soon prevailed between the 
 upper ranks and the great mass of the population. 
 
 During the two hundred and fifty years which pre- 
 ceded the fall of the republic, we may mark distinctly 
 three Constitutional Stages. The first, occupying a 
 century and a half, was, upon the whole, one of order. 
 The second, of fifty-one years, commencing with the 
 Gracchi, and closing with the usurpation of Sylla, was a 
 time of internal struggles, and ended in the temporary 
 destruction of liberty. In the third era, which also lasted 
 fifty-one years, the constitution was dormant or extinct, 
 and oligarchical rule alternated with civil war. 
 
 1 . In the first of these periods two important changes 
 took place. 
 
 The earlier of the two completely destroyed the here- 
 ditary constitution of the senate. The officers of state 
 were originally entitled to a place in that body during their 
 period of office ; and they soon acquired a right, after 
 the expiration of their functions, to claim from the 
 censors enrolment as senators for life. At length, but 
 probably not till after the time of the Gracchi, those 
 officers, whose numbers were now larger, retained their 
 seats without any formal enrolment. Military service in 
 situations of responsibility also gave a claim to admis- 
 sion on the roll ; and the censors filled up the remain- 
 ing vacancies nearly at discretion, giving effect, however, 
 to a property qualification. 
 
 A few regulations of this celebrated council may be 
 specified before we trace it to its fall. The senate could 
 be summoned only by the highest magistrate in town, 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 81 
 
 or by the tribunes. Its regular meetings took place 
 three times a-month ; but it could convene daily, and 
 always sat within consecrated walls. The functionary 
 who had called the meeting (excepting perhaps the tri- 
 bunes), presided in it, called up the speakers, and collected 
 the votes in a fixed order. A certain part of the senators, 
 those probably, in later times, who had not borne office, 
 possessed votes without the right of addressing the assem- 
 bly. The vote was taken by dividing the house. There 
 was a fixed quorum, perhaps 100 members ; and if the 
 number w^as not present, any member could have the 
 house counted out.* 
 
 The second alteration was one which has been gene- 
 rally overlooked, but which clearly took place, and goes 
 far to account for the fact that we read of no collisions 
 between the convention of the centuries and that of the 
 tribes, though in the age of the republic now under 
 review the two were really quite co-ordinate. The 
 former retained only some exclusive privileges, the chief 
 of which was the right of electing all officers of state, 
 except the tribunes and other plebeian functionaries. 
 The important change now to be described annihilated 
 or materially impaired the monopoly of influence wliich 
 the richer citizens had possessed in that convention. 
 
 The division into Classes was retained, but the number 
 of Centuries, assigned by Servius to each Class, was 
 altered. Each of the highest five classes, excepting the 
 first, now received an equal number of centuries ; pro- 
 bably seventy, as we learn that the number bore relation 
 to that of the tribes. This change did not take place till 
 after the year of the city .512, when the number of the 
 tribes had been raised to thirty-five, and there is reason to 
 believe that it was introduced in a. u. 673. The gross 
 majority of votes seems henceforth to have been possessed 
 by the first, second, and third classes together ; and as we 
 do not hear of any rise in the qualification, a large num- 
 
 • Beaufort, Republique Romaine, livre ii. chap. 1. Middleton 
 on the Roman Senate, part ii. 
 
 VOL. I. R 
 
82 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 ber of the citizens must, long before the change, have 
 been admissible into these, through the inilux of wealth 
 into the state, and the depreciation of the cun-ency.* 
 
 2. The first events of the second stage were the com- 
 motions excited by the noble but incautious Gracchi, 
 the grandsons of the great Scipio. The growth of the 
 
 * The subject is curious, and has received little attention. The 
 main proof is to be found in Livy, lib. i. cap. 43. — " It is not 
 surprising," says he, "that the present number of the centuries 
 does not correspond to that established by Servius ; for, after the 
 number of the tribes had been made up to thirty-five, the number 
 of the centuries was so arranged, that for each tribe" (earum 
 refers to trihus, not to centuriis), "there were now two centuries, 
 a senior and a junior." The chief difficulty is, the reconciling of 
 this statement with the known fact that the classes subsisted to 
 the last. An obscure hint, contained in an old note to the passage 
 (Drakenborch's Livy, note of Fulvius Ursinus, derived from the 
 monk Pantagathus, who died in 1494), has been followed out by the 
 celebrated Savigny, in a paper first published in 1805, in Professor 
 Hugo's Civil Law Magazine : (Civilistisches Magazin, Berlin, 
 1812, vol. iii. p. 307). Savigny's theory is the following :— He 
 supposes that each of the first five classes was divided into 70 
 centuries, receiving from each of the 35 tribes a senior and 
 a junior century ; tliat, in addition to the centuries so formed, 
 the equestrian centuries continued to belong to the first class, and 
 that their number was raised also, but only to 35, not to 70, because 
 these centuries, as Savigny holds (founding on a very explicit 
 passage, Quinti Ciceronis De Petit. Consulat. cap. 8), were 
 all juniors, composing not the whole equestrian order, but a 
 body selected from it ; and that the sixth class continued to form 
 only one century. In this way, the first class would contain 105 
 centuries, the second, third, fourth, and fifth 70 centuries each, 
 and the sixth ] ; — making in all 386. (It may perhaps be remarked, 
 that there is no clear evidence that the number of the eques- 
 trian centuries was at all increased ; and Professor Hugo observes ; 
 1st, that probably no citizens of the first class were taken from 
 any of the four Urban tribes ; and, 2dly, that it cannot be assumed 
 as certain whether the subdivision into seniors and juniors extended 
 lower than the first three classes.) The date of this alteration is 
 fixed with much probability by Professor Schulze (Volksversamm- 
 lungen, p. 75). In Livy's history (xl. 51 ; a. u. 573) is a difficult 
 passage, describing an alteration in the mode of voting (sufFragia), 
 which has been usually applied to the convention of the tribes, 
 but which Schulze refers to that of the- centuries, on the ground 
 that we know the former assembly to have never admitted sub- 
 divisions, while the latter always admitted subdivisions of the very 
 kinds which Livy here mentions. ( See Cicero De Legibus, lib. 
 iii. cap. 19.) 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 83 
 
 people's collective power, and that of their personal 
 %vretchedness, had of late kept equal pace. The exer- 
 tions of Tiberius Gracchus, as tribune, were confined to 
 the remedy of personal misery. His first measure, 
 which was carried and allowed to fall asleep, was a 
 new Agrarian Law, reviving that of Licinius, though -wdth 
 several necessary mitigations : his second was an un- 
 successful attempt to procure a grant from the treasury, 
 for enabling the poor to stock the famis which his 
 other act was to give them.* Tiberius, calumniated 
 and intrigued against by the body of the patricians, and 
 weakly aided by his few aristocratic friends, such as 
 Appius Claudius, Scaevola the lawyer, and the orator 
 Crassus, was at length (a. u. 620) deserted by the un- 
 grateful people, and murdered. His younger brother, 
 Caius, stepped into the breach, fired both by patriotism 
 and by a burning thirst for revenge ; and he too fell 
 (a. u. 632), without benefiting the indigent more than 
 Tiberius had done. He procured, indeed, a renewal of 
 his brother's agrarian law, and also caiTied through his 
 other measure ; but both enactments were cunningly 
 eluded. Another law of Caius, wliich experienced the 
 same fate, was one for forming permanent magazines of 
 grain, and delivering their contents to the poor at a price 
 far below their value ; a proposition forming the first step 
 towards that legalized pauperism, which, unaccompanied 
 by political disfranchisement of the paupers, soon became 
 systematic in Rome. In other changes which he ad- 
 vocated, he attacked the prerogatives of the senate and 
 the officers of state ; and, by giving to the equestrian 
 order the exclusive right of serving as judices or jurymen, 
 a privilege formerly belonging to the senators, he at- 
 tempted to unite the fonner into a body having an in- 
 terest separate from that of the senate. 
 
 The last undertaking of Caius which requires notice, 
 
 * Appianus De Bellis Civilibus, lib. i. cap. 9. Plutarchus in 
 Tiberio Graccbo, cap. 8. Heeren, Kleine Schriften, vol. i. 
 p. 179, et seq. Compare Hooke, book vi. chap. 7. 
 
84 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 was likewise intended to strengthen the anti-senatorial 
 party. He proposed that aU the inhabitants of Middle 
 and Lower Italy should receive the Roman franchise. 
 To a few Italian towns and districts citizenship had 
 been granted, always under restrictions, and in most 
 cases without votes. The rest, under various titles, as 
 colonies, prefectures, and the like, were refused all such 
 rights, and treated like conquered enemies: they paid 
 heavy taxes, fi'om which all Romans were exempted ; 
 they had to support expensive establishments of Roman 
 governors, with their troops ; and, besides the various 
 humiliations to which they were subjected, many of 
 them were plundered and oppressed without protection 
 or redress. All classes suffered alike ; and the noblest 
 native of a country town, himself viewed as an alien, 
 might every day see a wealthy Roman manumit hundreds 
 of slaves, and thus raise them into the rank of citizens. 
 These causes of discontent, remaining unremoved, pro- 
 voked, in thirty years after the death of Caius, a general 
 war against the Romans, in which there fell on both 
 sides 300,000 men. In the year 666, the dominant na- 
 tion, at leng-th humbled, passed successive laws, con- 
 ferring the franchise on the whole Italian population as 
 far northward as the Amo and the Rubicon ; and Julius 
 Caesar extended the citizenship to the inhabitants of 
 Upper Italy. 
 
 Before and during the agitation kept up by the 
 Gracchi, the Ballot* was gradually introduced into every 
 proceeding of the National Conventions. The ground 
 assigned for the measure w^as intimidation on the part 
 of the new aristocracy ; and that body yielded to the 
 popular demand, considering this grievance more tolerable 
 than impeachments, or the loss of the public lands. The 
 ballot was first introduced, in a. u. 614, in the voting at 
 elections; and in G16 it was extended to the judicial 
 votes of the people in all criminal causes, except im- 
 
 ■ Tabellam — vindicem tacitse libertatis. Cicero De Lege Agraria, 
 orat. ii. cap. 2. 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 85 
 
 peachments for treason. In 625, during the heat of 
 the agrarian agitation, it was adopted in their legisla- 
 tive votes ; and, finally, in 630, it was applied to 
 trials for treason.* We know that the degradation of 
 the political assemblies proceeded after this time with 
 tenfold rapidity ; that intimidation gave place to bribery ; 
 and that voting became a profitable and easy trade. A 
 new coinage of words became necessary, to describe the 
 machmery of corruption. The " Interpretes" were go- 
 betweens, who closed the bargain with individuals, or 
 with whole tribes or guilds ; the " Sequestres" were the 
 holders of the cash, employed with a view to evade the 
 frequent bribery-laws ; the " Divisores" handed the 
 money to the party, and bore the same name with the 
 officials who delivered the ballots before the vote. The 
 whole class of such agents were termed " Sodales" (good 
 fellows) ; and they and those they bribed were included 
 under the name of " Operge Campestres" (political ope- 
 ratives). For the state offence of which the bribers were 
 guilty, the laAvyers invented the name of " Decuriatio," 
 or "Descriptio Populi."t But other causes of deprava- 
 tion were also at work : the constituency of that place 
 and time was the very worst subject on which the experi- 
 ment could have been tried, even in its application to 
 bodies simply electoral ; and the extension of the ballot 
 to legiskitive and judicial votes, — a vice which the Roman 
 constitution borrowed from the senates and tribunals of 
 the Greek commonwealths, and transmitted to the Italian 
 republics of the Middle Ages, — was a violation of prin- 
 ciple which corrupted the system in every branch. 
 
 The political ingredients of the poison which de- 
 stroyed liberty, were completed by the moral deteriora- 
 tion of the army. Caius Marius, on whose head rests the 
 guilt of the civil wars, being made consul in a. u. 647, 
 received among his troops the lowest class of citizens, 
 
 • Schulze, p. 256. Cicero De Legibus, lib. iii. cap. 16. 
 
 ■f Schulze, p. 162-169 : — Beaufort, Republique Romaine, 
 livre iii. chap. 6. Cicero, in his Third Book De Legibus, dis- 
 cusses at great length the principle and operation of the ballot. 
 
86 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 who had never yet been allowed (for that was the Roman 
 word) to serve as soldiers of their country. The precedent 
 was followed by all the parties who successively possessed 
 political ascendency ; largesses from the general or from 
 the treasury, and promised grants of public lands, soon 
 trained up a mercenary host, no longer the servants 
 of the state, but the hirelings of their captain. The com- 
 mander of the army was hencefoi-th the ruler of the 
 commonwealth ; and if laws continued to be enacted, 
 touching either the constitution or the administration, 
 they were enacted for show, and the great men's obedi- 
 ence to them was purely matter of condescension. 
 
 3. This is in brief the character of the last half-cen- 
 tury of the republic. In reference to the constitutional 
 history of the commonwealth, this age is almost use- 
 less ;* but the Campus Martius and the Forum were 
 never more interesting ; for they were the stage on which 
 appeared Cato, Cicero, Caesar, and Brutus. 
 
 Sylla, playing off the selfish alarms of the rich against 
 the wanton wretchedness of the poor, became by war 
 and murder king of Rome for three years, giving to his 
 military usurpation the old name of the Dictatorship, 
 though without any ground of analogy, t His finn hand 
 protected public order and personal freedom, especially 
 in the harassed provinces ; and he promulgated a code 
 of constitutional laws, which are remarkable as a bold 
 medicine applied unsuccessfully in an incurable disease. 
 He anniliilated the democratic principles of the republic, 
 and made the senate its sovereigns. He strengthened that 
 council by enrolling in it 300 of the wealthiest knights ; 
 he completely restored its judicial functions, and its ini- 
 tiative and veto in all the proceedings of the conventions ; 
 
 * Cicero strikingly characterizes the times in the observation 
 which he says was addressed to his grandfather by the consul Scau- 
 rus, just before the rise of Marius. " AVe do not at present ac- 
 knowledge any laws of the constitution as subsisting : we are either 
 concocting new laws, or trying to reinstate old ones which we have 
 lost," — De Legibus, lib. iii. cap. 16. 
 
 t Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la Prima Deca di Livio, lib. i. 
 cap. 34. 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 87 
 
 and he enlarged its control over the officers of the execu- 
 tive. He re-established the Servian constitution of the 
 centuries, and abolished the assembly of the tribes alto- 
 gether. He deprived the plebeian tribunes of every pre- 
 rogative except the veto, which he restricted to certain 
 cases, probably those of personal aggression ; and he art- 
 fully made their office contemptible, by declaring the 
 holders of it to be ever afterwards ineligible to any public 
 place. He lessened the power and influence of the elec- 
 tive dignities of state, by increasing the number of the in- 
 dividuals holding them ; and introduced a rule (which 
 subsisted in law, if not always in practice, till the end of 
 the republic), that persons should rise to the consulship 
 through the inferior offices by a fixed gradation, and 
 should not be a second time appointed till after an 
 interval of ten years. The system scarcely survived its 
 projector, who voluntarily abdicated in a. u. 678. In a 
 few years the tribunes recovered their wonted influence, 
 and the national assemblies were placed on their former 
 footing. The senate, however, struggled to retain their 
 new privileges, and in most particulars succeeded. 
 
 Every one is familiar with the events which followed, 
 and with the character of the actors. In a. u. G87, 
 Cneius Pompeius, misnamed the Great, having contrived 
 to render the populace manageable by the re-institution 
 of the tribuneship, obtained powers which for a time laid 
 the state at his feet. Three years afterwards, Cicero, 
 elected to the consulship by Pompey's interest, crushed 
 the insurrection of Catiline, with a firmness which his 
 subsequent political conduct wholly wanted. The reso- 
 lute and high-piincipled Cato was next, through the same 
 influence, appointed a tribune of the commons. Julius 
 Cjesar's rise followed : and his unjustifiable league with 
 Pompey and Crassus, called the First Triumvirate, no 
 sooner transpired than the small body of patriots de- 
 serted the new oligarchy. Cicero and Cato were imme- 
 diately punished by exile ; and Pompey's attempt to 
 degrade his rival led to the invasion of Italy by Cfesar 
 at the head of his devoted troops. The battle of Phar- 
 
bo THE POLITICAL HISTORY OP ITALY 
 
 salia crushed the party of Pompey ; and Julius, though he 
 never received the royal title, was truly king of Rome 
 during the four years which closed with his assassina- 
 tion by Brutus and the other republican conspirators. 
 His reign was long enough for the refonn of much that 
 was amiss ; but his usurpation resembled that of Sylla 
 in little except the bloodshed which conducted to it, and 
 the moderation with which the dominion, when once at- 
 tained, was exercised. Caesar unequivocally aimed at 
 the establishment of a military monarchy ; and while he 
 checked the power of the people, and monopolized the 
 public offices, he purposely degraded the senate, by giving 
 seats to his o^^^l dependents, and even to foreigners.* 
 
 The parties which had been recently formed for main- 
 taining the cause of constitutional liberty, had strength- 
 ened themselves by siding with the senatorial aristocracy 
 against the combined forces of the successive oligarchies 
 and their tools the populace. The slayers of Caesar, 
 however, appear to have acted without a fixed plan, and 
 received no efficient support from either of the two great 
 factions. In truth their dream of freedom for Rome was 
 nothing more than a dream. The Romans were fallen ; 
 and it was better they should for a time serve one master 
 than three or a hundred. This was exactly the opinion 
 of the people themselves. The commonalty in the city, by 
 deserting Brutus and his associates, significantly declared 
 themselves unworthy to be free. The rest of the Italians 
 were equally apathetic ; the foreign provincials were posi- 
 tively hostile to the revolution ; and the tyrannicides 
 had to levy forced and heavy taxes from the towns within 
 their reach, in order to pay the hireling soldiers who 
 composed the army of liberty .+ With the two battles of 
 Philippi, in which Brutus and Cassius died, the repub- 
 
 • The Romans resented the intrusion of the strangers, and ex- 
 pressed their anger in pasquinades on Caesar's barbarian senate, 
 several of which have been preserved. One placard in the streets 
 was in the following terras : — '* If any new senator asks the way to 
 the senate-house, it is particularly requested that no one will give 
 him the information." Suetonius in Julio, cap. 80. 
 
 t Taciti Annalium, lib. i. cap. 2. 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 89 
 
 lican party was at an end ; a struggle of eleven years fol- 
 lowed between Caesar's kinsman, Octavius, and his weaker 
 rivals for empire, Antony and Lepidus, who had formed 
 with him the Second Triumvii-ate ; in 722, the battle of 
 Actium destroyed Antony, the last competitor ; and the 
 conqueror founded the imperial power in Rome, becom- 
 ing its first emperor under the title of Augustus. 
 
 The System of Administration and Finance. — During 
 the whole republican period, the interest of Italian his- 
 tory centres in the capital. But the system pursued by 
 the Romans both towards their dependent provinces, and 
 towards the municipalities which, arranged in different 
 classes, abounded in Italy, as well as abroad, opens a 
 field of inquiry in which very important results may be 
 gathered. It is, however, too wide to be fully embraced 
 in a sketch like the present. 
 
 At the end of the republican times, we have to con- 
 sider the Italian peninsula as reduced, for the purposes of 
 general government, into one united province, placed im- 
 mediately under the superintendence of the supreme rulers 
 of the state. Sicily formed a second province, admini- 
 stered by a governor of its own, and subdivided into dis- 
 tricts for judicial and financial purposes : Sardinia and 
 Corsica together composed a third, having its principal 
 seat of authority in the former island.* 
 
 The municipal system in Italy was still complicated, 
 since those towns which possessed a civic constitution 
 continued to be classed as municipia, colonies, or prefec- 
 tures ; distinctions involving differences of local govern- 
 ment and right which are not altogether well ascertained. 
 The municipia, however, the most favoured class, pos- 
 sessed their own curise or town-councils, their magis- 
 tracies, and their funds, separated from the general re- 
 venue of the state, and appropriated exclusively to the 
 public service of the community. The municipalities 
 will present themselves more prominently to our notice, 
 when we glance at the polity of the Lower Empire. 
 
 • Sigonius de Antique Jure Provinciarum, lib. i. cap. 3, 4 : 
 (In Graevii Thesaur. Antiquit. Roman, torn, ii.) 
 
yO THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 The financial system of the Romans must be examined 
 rather more closely.* 
 
 The national religion was supported by lands and other 
 funds set apart for the purpose, and exempted from all 
 public burdens. The heaviest expense of the state arose 
 from the pay of the army and the necessary charges for its 
 support ; besides which, there were the allowances to 
 public functionaries, and the sums required for the 
 purchase of grain in the frequent seasons of scarcity. 
 
 The chief sources from which the public revenues 
 flowed, were the following : — 
 
 There were, in the first place, four principal sorts of 
 impositions which lay primarily and originally on Italy, 
 and may be regarded as having been the only burdens 
 directly affecting those who possessed the full Roman 
 franchise. 1. From the reign of Servius all the citizens 
 were long subject to a property-tax (tributum), which, 
 though not exacted every year, seldom failed to be so. 
 Its amount was determined by the public exigencies 
 for the time, and it was assessed in conformity to the 
 returns made in the census last preceding. On the 
 conquest of Macedon in a.u. 586, this tax ceased to be 
 levied ; and although similar impositions were sometimes 
 laid on in later times, commencing with one exacted by 
 the second triumvirate in the year 711, we may consider 
 the old property-tax to have never systematically revived 
 after its first discontinuance.t 2. In all the seaports 
 
 • Consult, for details on this head, Burmannus De Vectigalibus 
 Populi Romani, 1734; and Hegewisch's excellent Historischer 
 Versuch iiber die Roinischen Finanzen, 1804. A good deal may 
 be learned also from Bnllengerus De Tributis ac Vectigalibus 
 Populi Romani (in Graevii Thesaur. torn. viii. ) ; and from Bosse ; 
 GrundzUge des Finanzwesens im Rbmischen Staate, 1804. But 
 the principle of the leading taxes is distinctly unfolded nowhere, 
 except in an admirable though short paper by Savignyon the Land- 
 tax and Poll-tax of the imperial times, in the Transactions of the 
 Royal Academy of Sciences of Berlin for 1822-1823 : (p. 27-71 : 
 Ueber die Romische Steuerverfassung unter den Kaisern). 
 
 ■f •• The census ceased at the end of the Macedonian war. 
 All later accounts of property-taxes relate merely to insulated, 
 transitory exactions, and to no systematic or permanent regula- 
 tion." — Savigny, p. 56. 
 
TILL THE FALL OP THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 91 
 
 of the Roman dominions, there were collected duties 
 ad valorem on merchandise imported and exported. 
 The owners of the goods were obliged to declare their 
 quantity and value ; undeclared articles were forfeited ; 
 and the rules as to the officials and other matters were 
 not unlike modem custom-house regulations.* In the 
 year of the city 693 these customs were, on the instiga- 
 tion of Pompey, abolished in the Italian ports, and were 
 not re-established there during the existence of the 
 republic. 3. From the year 398, the master of every 
 manumitted slave paid a tax of 5 per cent, on his value ; 
 and this imposition seems to have become very produc- 
 tive. 4. A duty was early imposed on salt, which, ac- 
 cording to a system adopted by some modern governments, 
 was next converted into a state-monopoly. 
 
 A second class of permanent revenues was derived 
 from foreign conquests. 
 
 For imderstanding the provincial taxation, however, 
 we must clear the way by putting out of view those 
 conj&scated lands, usually a third of a conquered province, 
 which formed the Public Domain. The early abuses of 
 these territories in Italy have been described, and it has 
 only to be added, that before the accession of Augustus 
 the whole was irrecoverably alienated. The foreign de- 
 mesnes were less glaringly misappropriated ; for, if arable, 
 they were either sold, remaining subject to a perpetual 
 ground-rent, or let for a valuable consideration, or assign- 
 ed for small annual payments, to the soldiers or other 
 poorer citizens. Pasture-lands, and forests allowing pas- 
 turage, were retained by the government, who le%'ied 
 a fixed sum on every head of cattle that grazed on those 
 tracts. In relation to the domain, in short, the state 
 was in the position of a landlord or proprietor ; and this 
 part of its revenue must be carefully distinguished from 
 that which it derived from the provincial territories as 
 a sovereign. 
 
 We now pass to this second part of the revenue, arising 
 
 * Burmann, cap. v. p. 58, et seq. 
 
92 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 from lands which continued to belong in property to the 
 subjects of the state. After all the Italians bad obtained 
 the rank of Roman citizens, the rule was this, that all 
 lands in Italy were free from taxation. The property- 
 tax, into which the value of the soil, of course, entered, 
 had been long abolished ; and therefore the Italian land- 
 holder paid no tax on account of his estates, and no 
 direct tax whatever except that on manumissions. But 
 the rule farther bore, that all provincial lands should 
 pay taxes ; and Cicero tells us how these were managed 
 in his time.* In all the provinces, except Sicily, the 
 lands were subjected either to a fixed tax in money, or 
 to variable impositions, which were commonly farmed 
 out in Rome by the censors. We know from other 
 sources that these variable imposts, or the chief of them, 
 consisted in proportions of the annual fruits, usually a 
 tenth of grain, and a fifth of oil, wine, and garden produce. 
 Cicero goes on to inform us, that all the estates in Sicily 
 were in one or another of three positions. 1. The 
 greater part of them, including indeed all except those 
 which fall under the second or third heads, paid the same 
 proportions of fruits (called decumas or tithe), with 
 which they had been burdened in the time of Hiero, 
 and the imposition was administered by that prince's 
 rules. It was farmed out, but in small lots, which were 
 set up to lease on the ground, and were usually taken 
 by the tithe-payers themselves, at a very moderate rent 
 or composition. 2. The lands of a few to^vns which had 
 been reduced after resistance, paid the same sort of vari- 
 able proportions of their fruits ; but the returns from 
 these were leased out by the censors in Rome to the com- 
 mon farmers of the revenue. In short, lands of this 
 description were exactly in the same situation as most of 
 those in other provinces. 3. The territories attached to 
 seven towns which had aided the Romans in their wars, 
 were exempted from all land-taxes. 
 
 * Cicero in Verrem ; act. ii. lib. iii. cap. 6, and Savigny's ex- 
 planations. 
 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 03 
 
 These were the usual rules of the provincial land-taxes, 
 which soon became the principal source of the state- 
 revenue. INIines and minerals were taxed separately ; 
 and from the agricultural provinces, the principal of 
 which were Sicily, Sardinia, Africa, and Macedon, ex- 
 traordinary supplies of corn were exacted, when scarcity 
 prevailed at Rome. Customs on merchandise were intro- 
 duced in all the ports of the provinces, on the same system 
 as in the havens of Italy. 
 
 It has been stated at the commencement, that the senate 
 always possessed the prerogative of taxing the people ; and 
 it had also the whole management of the revenue ; for 
 to it the Qufestors or provincial collectors accounted 
 directly, without dependence on the proconsul or prae- 
 tor who was the local governor. The more weighty 
 branches of the revenue were farmed on leases of five 
 years, all the taxes of a province being usually con- 
 tracted for in one lot. The amount of expenditure re- 
 quired for such speculations obliged the equestrian order, 
 the capitalists of the republic, to form copartneries for 
 taking the leases ; and the united wealth of these monied 
 houses accelerated the growth of an undue influence, 
 which its holders abused grossly, both in their political 
 intrigues and in their oppression of the provincials. 
 
94 
 
 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Political History of Italy under the Roman Empire, 
 
 A. u. 722— A. u. 1229; or b. c. 32— a. d. 476. 
 
 Fourth Age : The Heathen Empire (b. c. 32 — a. d. 306)— List 
 of Emperors — Their personal Characters— Tenure of the Empire 
 —The Political Franchise lost— The Military Force— The Fi- 
 nancial System— The Two Exchequers— The Revenue — New 
 Taxes and Burdens— Mode of Collection — The Municipalities — 
 Their Prosperity — The general Decay— The Last Age of Hea- 
 thenism — Fifth Age : The Christian Empire (a. d. 306 — 
 A. D. 476) — List of Emperors— Disastrous External History — 
 The Fall of the Empire in Italy— State of Public Feeling— Con- 
 stantine's Administrative System — The Land and Poll Taxes — 
 Ruin of the Municipalities — Their Constitutions — Singular Posi- 
 tion of their Councillors. 
 
 FOURTH AGE. 
 
 THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN HEATHENISM. 
 
 A. u. 722—1059 : or b. c. 32— a. d. 306. 
 
 32. Octav'ius Csesar, called, from 
 B. c. 27, Augustus 
 
 BIRTH OF OUR SAVIOUR. 
 A. D. 
 
 14. Tiberius Caesar 
 
 37. Caius Caesar, called Caligula 
 
 41 . Claudius Caesar 
 
 64. Nero Caesar 
 
 68-69. Galba, Otho, Vitellius 
 
 69. Flavius Vespasianus 
 
 79. Titus 
 
 81. Domitianus 
 
 A. D. 
 
 96. Nerva 
 
 98. Trajanus 
 117. Hadrianus 
 138. Antoninus Pius 
 161. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus 
 180. Commodus 
 
 193. Pertinax, Didius Julianus 
 193. Septimius Severus 
 211. Bassianus, called Caracalla 
 
 217. Macrinus 
 
 218. Bassianus, called HeHoga- 
 
 balus 
 222. Alexander Severus 
 
UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 
 
 95 
 
 A.D. 
 
 235-237. Maximinus, Gordianus 
 I., Gordianus II., Pupie- 
 nus Maximus, Balbinus 
 
 237. Gordianus III. 
 
 244. Philippus the Arab 
 
 249. Decius 
 
 251-263. Gallus, Hostilianus, 
 Volusianus 
 
 253. iEmilianus 
 
 253. Valerianus 
 
 260-268. Gallienus, and the Re- 
 bels called the Thirty Ty- 
 rants 
 
 A. D. 
 
 268. ClaudiuSjSurnamedGothicus 
 270. Aurelianus 
 
 275. Tacitus 
 
 276. Probus 
 
 282-284. Carus, with Carinus and 
 Numerianus 
 
 284.Diocletianus ; assuming(286) 
 Maximianus as co-em- 
 peror, and (292) Galerius 
 and Constantius Chlorus 
 as Caesars 
 
 305. Galerius and Constantius 
 Chlorus 
 
 The three centuries and a half during which classical 
 paganism was the recognised religion of the empire, 
 embrace deeply interesting events in the personal history 
 of the emperors and other celebrated men. They display 
 extremes of vice and virtue as widely distant as those 
 wliich marked the republican times ; although the sphere 
 in which good men as well as bad now acted, was very 
 different from that wliich had been open to their free 
 ancestors. Augustus, whose real character was seen in 
 the cold-blooded atrocities of his youth, assumed a seem- 
 ing meekness along with the kingly power. The four 
 Csesars who succeeded him were, each in his own way, 
 cruel and worthless despots. Vespasian was a wise man ; 
 his eldest son, Titus, was a good one ; the third emperor 
 of the same family was one of the worst of the Roman 
 tyrants. For more than eighty years after Domitian's 
 murder, the throne was filled by a series of monarchs as 
 prudent and just as the world has ever possessed : Trajan, 
 the second in the list, was a model for sovereigns ; his 
 successor was better as a prince than as a man ; and the 
 two Antonines were better men than princes. But the 
 century and a quarter which elapsed between the acces- 
 sion of Commodus and the end of the heathen period, 
 formed a gloomy age, of whose public wretchedness the 
 shortness of the imperial reigns is one pregnant proof. 
 Some of the autocrats were oppressors ; several, like 
 Alexander Severus, Pertinax, and Tacitus, were vu-tuous 
 and excellent persons; Septhnius Severus, Aurelian, 
 
96 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 Probus, and others, were brave and successful soldiers ; 
 and Diocletian, with whom the period almost closes, was 
 a stem but most able ruler. The personal history of the 
 emperors has been told so often and so well, that there is 
 the less reason for regretting the narrow limits which 
 here forbid more minute details. 
 
 The pagan period commences by exhibiting the em- 
 pire in its highest glory and prosperity ; it embraces two 
 centuries during which the universal dominion of Rome 
 seemed to stand firm ; and then, by a swift descent, the 
 book of its annals leads us to a point at wliich the 
 colossal fabric totters and is ready to fall. A volume 
 would be required for delineating even in the barest 
 outline the facts of those active ages, and the prin- 
 ciples by which the events were ruled.'^^ The purpose 
 which this chapter is designed to serve will be in some 
 degree answered, if we survey in rapid succession a very 
 few pouits, relating to the Tenure of the Imperial 
 Tlirone, the Financial System of the empu-e, and its 
 rules of Provincial and Municipal Government. 
 
 The title by which Augustus pretended to the sove- 
 reignty, was that of a free election by the people, re- 
 newed from time to time. All names, forms, and cere- 
 monies, which the free constitution held illegal, were 
 carefully shunned ; and all that the spirit of liberty had 
 honoured, were protected and brought paradingly for- 
 ward. But the republicanism was a wretched mask 
 through which every man of iaformation saw distinctly, 
 though none was strong enough to tear off the disguise. 
 From the very commencement of the first reign all the 
 powers, both of the senate, the popular conventions, and 
 the magistracies, were virtually and effectually secured to 
 the emperor. The new prince united by degrees in his own 
 
 * Gibbon's Decline and Fall, with all its faults, remains, and 
 probably will always remain, the highest authority on all the great 
 questions of the Imperial History, except indeed one, the very 
 greatest, namely, the rise and progress of Christianity. The an- 
 notations annexed by Mr Milman to a late edition of the work, are 
 well calculated to neutralize its most dangerous errors. 
 
UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 97 
 
 person all the ancient offices of state ; or, at least, though 
 he allowed tlie appointment of colleagTies, he intrusted to 
 them no shai-e of the real administration. He founded, on 
 his a^umption of the tribunesliip, a claim of personal in- 
 violability, and on his title of Imperator, wliich we trans- 
 late Emperor, a prerogative of absolute military com- 
 mand, not only beyond the city, which was the repub- 
 lican rule, but also witliin it ; an extension of powers 
 which directly contradicted the old constitution. His 
 generalship of the armies, indeed, aided by the official 
 weakness and personal subserviency of the senate, con- 
 stituted the true ground on which liis monarchy rested. 
 But in appearance he was only the first of the senators ; 
 the august forms of the assembly were treated with 
 profound respect ; and the sovereign sheltered his ordi- 
 nances under its name. 
 
 The National Conventions were used with equal con- 
 sideration. Their legislative functions, it is true, were 
 immediately allowed to drop, and the people never 
 had spirit enough to insist on claiming them : but for a 
 good many years the citizens were regularly summoned 
 to elect the magistrates of the state ; and, with a flat- 
 tering deference to the distant Italian towns, Augustus 
 framed regulations by which the votes of their muni- 
 cipal councils were taken, and transmitted to Rome in 
 a sealed record, to be counted along with those wliich 
 the inhabitants of the city gave personally in the 
 Campus Martins. But when, in the later years of 
 his reign, the crafty emperor felt his OAvn strength, he 
 restricted the elective franchise to a conge d'elire. His 
 successor, Tiberius, taking from the people even this 
 shadow of privilege, formally presented to them the 
 officer whom he had himself selected, without so much 
 as pretending that his nomination required to be confirm- 
 ed by the meeting. Caligula restored the right of elec- 
 tion, but almost immediately took it away again ; and 
 in his time we may consider the last mai'k of free 
 citizenship to have been blotted out. 
 
 The power of Augustus in the capital was protected by 
 liis body-guards, the famous Praetorian Cohorts. This 
 
 VOL. I. .F 
 
98 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 dangerous band, receiving double pay and honorary dis- 
 tinctions, originally consisted of 10,000 men, afterwards 
 of 15,000 or more, all of whom were Italians. Scptimius 
 Severus remodelled them, increasing their number to 
 60,000, and filling up their ranks almost entirely from 
 the barbarians of the transalpine provinces. Foreigners 
 had been already admitted by Commodus into the legion- 
 ary army ; and the step taken by Severus completed the 
 ruin of military spirit in Italy. The soldiery had long 
 before that time become the electors of the emperors. 
 The family of the Caesars, whose jfiive successive reigns 
 had given to the state the aspect of an hereditary mon- 
 archy, was extinct with Nero ; but even he and his pre- 
 decessor had been placed on the throne by the praetorian 
 guards, on the promise of a large donative, w^hich became 
 indispensable on the accession of every new prmce. Ves- 
 pasian was raised to the sovereignty by the troops whom 
 he had commanded ; Nerva was elevated in the same 
 manner ; and no ruler made any attempt to curb the power 
 either of the legionary soldiers or of the guards. But the 
 influence of the army was sometimes eluded through the 
 expedient introduced by Octavius, who nominated his 
 successor during his own life ; and from the time of 
 Hadrian, the person thus appointed received the honorary 
 title of Caesar, that of Augustus remaining with the em- 
 peror. The weakness of Marcus Aurelius, in giving the 
 throne to his profligate son Commodus, produced a con- 
 test among the soldiery, in the course of which the 
 guards openly exposed the imperial honours to sale, and 
 disposed of them to the highest bidder, Julianus, a rich 
 old lawyer. The legionaries, liowever, immediately 
 bestowed the empire on their commander, Septimius. 
 Till the murder of the amiable Alexander Sevems, in- 
 trigues in the palace alternated with mutinies in the 
 camp in fixing the succession ; but for half a century 
 after that event, every emperor, except Tacitus alone, 
 was merely the general of one or another of the imperial 
 armies, and was carried to the throne from his tent, 
 usually passing over the dead body of his predecessor. 
 Several of the princes thus selected were men of the 
 
UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 99 
 
 lowest origin and grossest ignorance ; some were foreign- 
 ers ; and the list embraces Pannonians, Goths, and an 
 energetic but prudent Arab robber. The fii-mness of the 
 warlike Diocletian, who was the son of a Dalmatian 
 slave, ensured the sovereignty in a regular succession to 
 himself and Maximian, and to their natural or adopted 
 heirs, till the death of Julian. 
 
 Tlie Financial System of the republic was entirely 
 abandoned by Augustus, and a series of important changes 
 at the same time facilitated the growth of the imperial 
 prerogative, and augmented the misery and weakness of 
 the empire.* He readily acknowledged the right of 
 the senate to administer the state-treasury (the ^rarium), 
 and to impose and assess the taxes which were to fill its 
 chests. But, reserving to hunself the military command, 
 he established a second treasury (the Fiscus), which, 
 though supplied from sources pointed out by the senate, 
 was to be administered for the support of the army by 
 the emperor, without control or interference. The fiscus, 
 like the serarium, was theoretically admitted to be the 
 property of the state ; but from the form of its superin- 
 tendence, and the accessions it received, it was, as early 
 as the time of Trajan, regarded as really the property 
 of the sovereigns, its administrators. The provinces 
 were divided into Senatorial, managed by the senate, and 
 Imperial, managed by the emperors. The latter, which 
 were the more productive, delivered their taxes and im- 
 positions wholly into the fiscus ; and even in the other 
 class of provinces, from an early period of the empire, 
 the same exchequer received also all those state-revenues, 
 which, by the practice of the republic, had been usually 
 appropriated to the army. These included the income 
 derived from the public woods and pasturages ; which 
 came in this way to be considered as the Imperial Domain. 
 In foct,the 86 rarium received even from the senatorial pro- 
 vinces nothing except the customs. Farther, every new 
 tax, with no important exception, was made payable into 
 
 * On the imperial finances, consult (besides the authorities cited 
 In the prccedincr chapter) Gibbon, chap. vi. But one indispensable 
 source of information is Savigny's paper formerly referred to. 
 
100 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 the fiscus. From the beginning, the two treasuries were 
 practically under the control of the emperors ; and at 
 last the aerarium completely disappeared, and the whole 
 revenue of the state was delivered into the imperial ex- 
 chequer. The date of this final step is uncertain ; but 
 it was later than the reign of Commodus. The senate 
 continued, till about the time of Diocletian, to possess 
 the right of imposing taxes. 
 
 The System of Taxation may be best considered in two 
 separate periods, the earlier of which terminates about 
 the reign of Marcus Aurelius. During this age the chief 
 sources of the state-revenue were the following, some of 
 which were ancient. The public lands yielded the same 
 kinds of returns which have been already described ; 
 the tax on manumissions was still exacted ; but the com- 
 mon opinion, that the property-tax continued to be levied 
 under the empire, may be unhesitatingly pronounced a 
 mistake, arising from a misapprehension as to the land 
 and poll taxes. Any property-taxes then really raised 
 were merely occasional, and, as we shall see, the plan was 
 soon altogether abandoned. The provinces continued to 
 pay land-taxes or proportions of fruits ; but from the very 
 earliest of the imperial reigns, there are traces of attempts 
 to abolish the proportional impositions, and establish one 
 uniform system of fixed land-taxes in money. The 
 principal new burdens were these. 1. The customs, 
 while they increased prodigiously in the foreign ports, 
 were by Augustus re-established in those of Italy. 
 2. He also introduced a tax on inheritances and legacies, 
 amounting to five per cent, on the capital, and payable 
 in every case, unless the sum was trifling, or unless the 
 successor or legatee was the nearest heir of the deceased. 
 The wealth, the general celibacy, and the profligacy of 
 the Roman nobles, combined to make this impost a most 
 productive one. 3. The same emperor established a ge- 
 neral excise of one per cent, exigible on all articles of con- 
 sumption. 4. He imposed on bachelors heavy taxes, and 
 disqualifications of inheritance, which continued in force 
 till abolished by Constantine. 5. Several minor burdens, 
 such as poll-taxes on provincials and others, and partial 
 
UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 101 
 
 assessments on the industry of traders and artificers, were 
 added by different sovereigns. 
 
 In the second period, extending from the Antonines to 
 Constantine, there were introduced various changes, of 
 which there were two that deserve notice. In the first 
 place, Caracalla conferred the nominal franchise of Rome 
 on all the provincials, in order to make them liable to 
 the inheritance-tax, and other burdens leviable only on 
 citizens. Secondly, a more important revolution, which 
 is of obscure origin, but had commenced before the An- 
 tonines, was, every where except within the Alps, fully 
 accomplished about their times, and altered the entire 
 system of public burdens. The old property-tax, as- 
 sessed on a man's whole means of every sort, was quite 
 abolished ; and there were substituted for it two sepa- 
 rate imposts, a Land-tax, and a Capitation or Poll- 
 tax. All the variable exactions levied on the provinces 
 were gradually commuted for these two fixed ones ; 
 but Italy was long allowed to remain on a different foot- 
 ing, which may perhaps be traced to an early date in 
 the empire. The district which was under the prefect of 
 Rome, called Italia Urbicaria, was entirely free both from 
 land-tax and poll-tax. The rest of the peninsula, styled 
 Italia Annonaria, had to furnish the capital with quantities 
 of corn, certainly not large, and exigible in kind. When 
 Diocletian divided the empire with his colleagues, and 
 Maximian received Italy and Africa as his share, the 
 former country was subjected to the same land and poll 
 taxes as the provinces. But the system will be most 
 conveniently explained when we have reached the next 
 period. 
 
 In the Local Collection of the Revenue, the imperial 
 rule introduced one great improvement. The system 
 of leasing out the returns was at once given up, except 
 in the customs and excise, which were allowed to remain 
 as before. But any amelioration which this partial 
 change might have produced in the condition of the 
 Roman subjects, was more than counterbalanced by the 
 new plan of provincial superuatendence, which was fram- 
 ed with an express view to the collection of the revenue. 
 
102 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OP ITALY 
 
 Although it allowed good administration, if the supreme 
 government was well conducted, it left the people de- 
 prived of all peremptory check over their local rulers. 
 Under the best monarchs, the provinces were much 
 more equitably and kindly governed than in the last 
 days of the republic ; l}ut under the tyrannical ones, 
 their state was worse than it had ever been ; and the good 
 princes had seldom time to repair the mischief done by 
 their predecessors. One proof of general poverty is this ; 
 that the emperors were very frequently obliged to remit 
 long arrears of taxes due by whole countries ; and it is 
 remarkable that such remissions were found necessary at 
 the termination of some of the best reigns. Trajan's is an 
 example ; for Hadrian, on his accession, had to forgive 
 very heavy public debts.* 
 
 Into those provinces which were senatorial, the senate 
 continued to send proconsuls or praetors as Governors : into 
 all of them, however, senatorial as well as imperial, the 
 emperors sent Procurators to administer those finances 
 which fell to the fiscus, naming these officers without 
 consulting the senate. In the smaller provinces, for the 
 sake of economy, the procurator of the fiscus was also 
 appointed governor, with full judicial powers and mili- 
 tary command. Freedmen, that is, emancipated slaves, 
 were frequently, even by Augustus, named to that 
 charge ; and Claudius introduced a yet more ruinous 
 system, granting to all such persons, whether they were 
 governors or not, jurisdiction without appeal in every 
 matter regarding the imperial treasury. The better 
 emperors in the second century of our era limited this 
 authority ; but it was never wholly abolished. Judea was 
 one of those small provinces in which the procurator was 
 also governor ; Antonius Felix, its unprincipled adminis- 
 trator, was the brother of Pallas, the favourite of Claudius, 
 and both of them were freedmen. The historian tells us 
 that Felix ruled with the power of a king and the soul 
 of a slave ; and he was only one of a numerous class.t 
 
 * iElius Spartianus in Hadriano, cap. 7. 
 
 -|- Acts, chapter xxiv. Taciti Annalium, lib. xiL cap. 54: His- 
 toriar. lib. v. cap. 9. 
 
UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 103 
 
 During the imperial times, the Municipalities of Italy 
 suffered changes yet greater than those which took place 
 in other branches of polity. Rome was the first town 
 to receive a new plan of local administration. Under the 
 republic, the internal administration of the capital had 
 belonged to the principal officers of the general govern- 
 ment ; but Augustus erected it and the district extend- 
 ing to the hundredth milestone on each side, into a sort 
 of province by itself, which was placed under an officer 
 appointed by the emperor, and named, in imitation of an 
 old title, the Prefect of the City. This functionary- 
 was the imperial governor of the district, the head of its 
 police, and its supreme criminal judge, to whose juris- 
 diction all, with very few exceptions, were directly sub- 
 ject.* Surrounded by his six lictors, he exercised, with 
 no responsibility save to his master, the united powers 
 of all the republican magistrates. The city was at the 
 same time divided into fourteen regions, each of which 
 had two police superintendents, called Curators, and as 
 many paid informers or Denunciators. Vespasian again 
 subdivided it into vici or wards, of which ever}' region 
 contained seventy-nine or more ; and each ward received 
 four resident inspectors, called Vicomagistri. A formid- 
 able military police (the Vigiles), composed of 4900 
 trained slaves, was organized by Augustus, placed under 
 a prefect, and divided into seven cohorts, each of which 
 acted in two regions of the city. 
 
 The other towns of Italy, as well as of the whole empire, 
 gradually lost their distinctions of rank and title ; and 
 after the abolition of the elective franchise, the name of 
 Municipiumwas indiff"erently applied to all. The term, in- 
 deed, was strictly and generally applicable ; for the muni- 
 cipalities actually rose on the ruins of the commonwealth ; 
 and a new system for their administration, begun by 
 Trajan, and carried on by Hadrian, was completed by the 
 Antonines. The funds of those burgal communities were 
 preserved to them, and augmented by laws which facili- 
 
 * Drakenborch de Prasfectis Urbi, cap. v'l. : De Jurisdictione. 
 
104 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 tated their acquisition of property, botli real and personal ; 
 their wealth enabled them in every instance to execute 
 important public works, without imposing any local 
 taxes ; the members of their Curiae or Town-councils, 
 who were the administrators of the corporations, received 
 honorary distinctions ; and almost the only unfavour- 
 able symptom which showed itself, was the commence- 
 ment of those strict obligations to serve the civic offices, 
 which we shall immediately find to have afterwards 
 become severe and ruinous. The flourishing state of the 
 municipalities has, with much reason, been considered 
 as one of the most influential causes of that strength 
 which the empire so long possessed, notwithstanding 
 . the abuses which were so common in every other de- 
 partment.* 
 
 But the state carried rottenness in its core. Political 
 virtue, as a general quality of the Italians or of their 
 fellow-subjects, was long ago extinct ; religion was dor- 
 mant, and the sceptical philosophy of the educated classes 
 was as immoral as the uninformed superstition of the 
 millions ; the wealth of the empire was in every suc- 
 ceeding century more and more concentrated in the hands 
 of a few, and the mass of the people became constantly 
 poorer and more abject. In the city of Rome, Augustus fed 
 800,000 paupers ; Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, 
 gradually increased the number ; and their successors 
 had a yet harder task to perform in supporting the mul- 
 titudes who had neither possessions nor employment. 
 
 In Diocletian's time, the emperors had assumed regal 
 and oriental pomp. The public revenues, and the em- 
 pire itself, were held to be their property, and their ex- 
 penditure of the funds of the state for national ends was 
 styled and considered a gift, not the performance of a 
 duty. The nominal limits of the Roman dominion were 
 nearly the same as in the peaceful reign of Augustus, 
 embracing the richest and most cultivated portions of 
 the earth, in the neighbourhood of the Mediterranean. 
 
 * Consult, on the municipalities under the empire, Roth De Re 
 Municipal! Romanorum : Stuttgard, 1801. 
 
UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 
 
 105 
 
 The boundaries, which were never permanently passed, 
 were these : the Rhine and Danube, and the mountains 
 of Scotland, in Europe ; the Euphrates and the Syrian 
 deserts, in Asia ; and the sandy Sahara in Africa. But 
 tliese frontiers were now suiTounded by active and war- 
 like barbarians ; the great migration of the northern 
 tribes had unequivocally commenced ; and the displaced 
 nations, together with some of their invaders, pressed for- 
 ward into the Roman provinces, and even into Italy itself. 
 Under Aurelian, it was thought necessary, for the first 
 time since the days of Servius Tullius, to fortify the im- 
 perial city ; and Diocletian, dividing the administration 
 of the empire, ceased to consider Rome as its capital. 
 
 FIFTH AGE. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN EMPIRE TILL ITS FALL IN ITALV. 
 
 A. V. 1059—1229; or a.d. 306—476. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 306. Constantinus the Great, pro- 
 claimed at York 25th July 
 306 ; sole emperor from 
 323 ; transfers the seat of 
 government to Constanti- 
 nople 330 
 
 337. Constantinus II., Constan- 
 tius, Constans, co-em- 
 
 340. 
 
 perors 
 Constantius, 
 
 Constans, co- 
 
 emperors 
 350. Constantius 
 361. Juhanus the Apostate 
 
 363. Jovianus 
 
 364. Valentinianus I., Valens, 
 
 CO- emperors. Formal di- 
 vision of the empire into 
 Eastern and Western 
 
 367. (Eastern) Valens ; (Wes- 
 tern) Valentinianus I. and 
 Gratianus 
 
 375. (E.) Valeng; (W.) Grati- 
 anus and Valentinianus II. 
 
 379.(E.)Theodosius I. the Great; 
 (W.) Gratianus and Va- 
 lentinianus II. 
 
 383. (E.) Theodosius I., Arca- 
 
 A. D. 
 
 I dius, co-emperors; (W.) 
 
 j Valentinianus II. 
 
 392. (Whole empire) Theodosius 
 
 I I. and Arcadius 
 
 395. (E.) Arcadius; (W.) Ho- 
 norius 
 
 408. (E.) Theodosius II. ; (W.) 
 Honorius 
 
 423. (E.) Theodosius II.; (W.) 
 Johannes 
 
 425. (E.) Theodosius II.; (W.) 
 Valentinianus III. 
 
 450. (E.) Marcianus; (W.) Va- 
 lentinianus III. 
 
 455. (E.) Marcianus; (W.) 
 Maximus, Avitus 
 
 457-474. (E.) Flavius Leo; 
 (W.) Majorianus, Seve- 
 rus, Anthemius, Olybrius, 
 Glycerins 
 
 474. (E.) Flavius Leo IL ; (W.) 
 
 Julius Nepos 
 -174-475. (E.) Zeno; (W.) Ju- 
 lius Nepos 
 
 475. (E.) Zeno; (W.) Romulus 
 Augustulus 
 
 476. Italy seized by Odoacer 
 
106 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 The accession of Constantine the Great was a mighty 
 epoch both for Italy and for the world. He removed 
 the seat of the government to Byzantium, or New 
 Rome, afterwards called Constantinople, being influenced 
 by the double reason, that the residence of the empe- 
 rors was required nearer the disturbed frontiers, and 
 that the Italian peninsula, still substantially a heathen 
 country, was ill fitted to be the centre of a Christian 
 kingdom. He established the gospel as the religion of 
 the state, and paganism never again reared its head, 
 except in the short reign of his able nephew Julian the 
 Apostate. Constantine's own character, it is admitted, was 
 an ambiguous one, and those of his successors offer few 
 points of interest, if we except that of the strong-minded 
 and enlightened Theodosius the Great. The faith of 
 Christ, when it became the creed of the empire, had 
 already received many of those debasing elements which 
 in succeeding times continued to mingle more and more 
 deeply with its essence ; and the imperfect morality of 
 the times in private life was accompanied with but 
 few instances of political wisdom or honesty, either in 
 the rulers or in those whom they governed. 
 
 The external history from Constantine to Augustulus, 
 is composed of intrigues, seditions, and struggles, every 
 year more unsuccessful, against the attacks of the north- 
 em nations. The division of the empire into two, the 
 Eastern and Western, first introduced in the year of our 
 Lord 864, and permanent from 895, restored to Italy the 
 advantage of being one of the seats of government ; but 
 the separation produced no material increase of strength. 
 One invasion followed another in a rapid succession, of 
 which it is useless to enumerate all the steps. The West 
 Goths (Visigoths) under Alaric in 400, were followed 
 across the Alps in 405 by a new army of the same nation 
 under Radagai, and these again were succeeded in 408 by 
 the reappearance of Alaric's host, which, about 410, took 
 and pillaged the capital. Attila the Hun, named the 
 Scourge of God, invaded Italy in 452 ; and in 455, the Van- 
 dals under Genseric plundered the imperial city during 
 
UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 107 
 
 forty days, carrying off the noblest of the citizens into 
 Barbary as slaves. In 472 Rome suffered another sack from 
 Ricimer the patrician, a claimant of the throne for his 
 father-in-law Anthemius. More than one emperor had 
 facilitated the progress of the barbarians by giving them 
 lands within the frontiers ; everyone of them recruited his 
 legions from among these fierce tribes ; and Constantine, 
 imitated by his successors, acted still more unwisely, for he 
 formed them into separate battalions, retaining their na- 
 tional arms and customs, and commanded by their own 
 chiefs. After this step, which enabled the Germanic 
 soldiers to compare themselves with the effeminate troops 
 of the south, it is surprising they did not sooner use the 
 strength of which they wa-e conscious. But most of the 
 northern leaders who invaded Italy in the fifth century 
 had in fact obtained their military education in the im- 
 perial camps ; and at last Odoacer, a prince of the Heruli, 
 a nation which had advanced southward from the Pome- 
 ranian shore of the Baltic, seized the country at the head 
 of an army levied for the service of the emperor and re- 
 ceiving his pay. 
 
 It is impossible to read the epistles and contemporary 
 histories of those times without being struck by one re- 
 markable fact. The Italians and other Roman subjects 
 might, it is true, be terrified by the approach of savage 
 robbers like the African Vandals, but towards the north- 
 ern invaders in general they entertained neither fear 
 nor hatred. They knew, for they learned after one or 
 two trials, Avhat they had to suffer from the so-called 
 barbarians : they knew also what they had to endure 
 under the imperial government ; and they were per- 
 fectly careless which of the two classes of evils might 
 fall to their lot. The paid armies of the emperors, and 
 the tribes of the Teutonic chiefs, were allowed to fight 
 for the possession of Italy, while the children of the 
 soil looked on. This is a fact which by itself condemns 
 the times of the lower empire as ages of misgovem- 
 ment and misery, and such they truly were. All the 
 particulars of their misrule and wretchedness, if united 
 
108 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 in one catalogue, would make the heart turn sick. At 
 present we must content ourselves with indicating a 
 few sources of discontent, in the General and Local 
 Administrations, whose progress during the heathen 
 period has heen already related. 
 
 Constantine divided the empire, after the example of 
 Diocletian, into four great Prefectures. The Prefecture of 
 Italy extended over the Mediterranean islands, and em- 
 braced the countries to the north of the Alps as far as the 
 Danuhe, with lUvricum and the African coast. He far- 
 ther completed Diocletian's plan for separating the civU 
 from the military government. Every prefecture was 
 put under the civil superintendence of a Prefect, who 
 succeeded to the title, as well as to part of the functions, 
 which had recently belonged to the prefect of the Prae- 
 torian Guard ; this office having from Severus till Dio- 
 cletian been the first administrative and judicial as well 
 as military post in the empire. The provinces, of which 
 the four prefectures together contained 116, were under 
 civil Governors, who held different ranks and titles. All 
 of them without exception were lawyers. The army was 
 placed under eight Generals, each having an extensive 
 territory of his own ; and under these were numerous 
 provincial commanders bearing the titles of Comites and 
 Duces (counts and dukes), the former being the name of 
 higher rank. The separation of the civil power from the 
 military helped to secure the throne of the emperois, but 
 it weakened the defence of the state against its foreign 
 enemies, and no change which took place tended in the 
 slightest degree to alleviate the burdens of the people. 
 Oppression and deliberate cruelty had ceased to be the 
 favourite crimes of the rulers ; but extortion and finan- 
 cial injustice, long prevalent and ill checked in the pro- 
 vinces, were now aided in their ruinous effects by new 
 and most severe additions to the public taxes. 
 
 Increased taxation was rendered necessary by the 
 increased expenditure ; an 1 this was occasioned by the 
 wars, the pay of the barbarians and other troops, the 
 shameful extravagance of the luxurious court, the pro- 
 
UNDER THE KOMAN EMPIRE. 109 
 
 vision of corn and similar necessaries for the poor who 
 flocked to the two capitals, and the continued mainte- 
 nance of baths, public spectacles, and other establish- 
 ments for the diversion of the people. The two principal 
 additions were the following : — 1. The Aurum Coro- 
 narium, or Crown-money, was, like our English bene- 
 volences, termed a free gift, but, like them, was truly 
 an enforced tax. It was demanded from the cities 
 and provinces whenever the emperor, finding his ex- 
 chequer empty, chose to intimate some happy event in 
 his person or family, on which it was reasonable that his 
 subjects should offer their congratulations. 2. The Lustral 
 Contribution, the worst imposition of all, Avas a general 
 tax on trade and productive industry, to which even the 
 poorest day-labourer in the land was ruthlessly subjected. 
 One leading regulation regarding this most impolitic 
 exaction, though it bore the appearance of a merciful 
 indulgence, proved the source of incalculable misery. Its 
 collection was not enforced annually, but in the begin- 
 ning of every fifth year the payments for the four years 
 preceding were pressed with extreme rigour. The poorer 
 classes, tempted by the seeming boon of delay, and finding 
 it hard enough to gather the requu-ed sum for each season, 
 allowed the arrears to accumulate, and then were utterly 
 unable to satisfy the claim. Their goods were seized, and 
 they were themselves imprisoned, chained, and scourged. 
 A law of Constantino ascribes these severities to the 
 officers of the exchequer, and forbids the heavier punish- 
 ments, restricting the penalty to confinement under cer- 
 tain regulations. But the practice continued, in spite 
 of his law and those of his sons to the same effect. All 
 the old burdens still remained, except those which 
 had merged in the lustral tax, and in those next to be 
 described. 
 
 About the reign of Constantine the machinery of the 
 Land-tax and Poll-tax, which, after this period, are com- 
 monly spoken of together under the name of the Indic- 
 tion, was brought into full operation in Italy as well as in 
 the provinces, into which latter we remarked its Intro- 
 
110 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 duction during the preceding age. The general prin- 
 ciple was this ; that the Land-tax should be levied on all 
 estates, whoever might be their possessors, and that the 
 Poll-tax should be exacted from every person who had 
 no territorial property, and at the same time no rank or 
 honorary privileges confen-ing exemption. Such exemp- 
 tion belonged to all the different degrees of nobility in- 
 stituted by the later emperors, the lowest rank which 
 bestowed it being that of the decurions of the muni- 
 cipalities. All who were liable to the poll-tax were 
 designated Plebeians, and were composed of three 
 classes : — in the towns, those free citizens who had 
 neither lands nor privileges, and who chiefly consisted 
 of the artisans and labourers ; in the country, the coloni, 
 or peasants attached to the soil, whose position will be 
 explained in another place ; and the slaves both in town 
 and country. The two latter classes were exceedingly 
 numerous in comparison with the free urban inhabi- 
 tants. Some who properly ranked in this new order of 
 Commonalty enjoyed immunity on various accounts, 
 as being the holders of certain public offices, or as 
 soldiers, widows, and nuns ; but it was expressly en- 
 acted that holy orders should be no ground of exemp- 
 tion. For the purposes of the land-tax there was a 
 general register of the lands in the empire, which con- 
 tained returns made by every landholder, under severe 
 penalties, of all particulars necessary for the valuation 
 of his estates, and which specified the sum assessed on 
 them proportionally to their value, the assessment being 
 corrected periodically. But the land-roll contained also 
 returns for the poll-tax ; for the proprietor was com- 
 pelled to give up the names and number of his slaves, and 
 also of his coloni and peasants of all classes. He paid 
 the capitation- tax for every slave, and he also paid it for 
 every colonus, being, however, entitled to recover the 
 amount from the latter, if he could. This union of the 
 two taxes, and the form of the land- valuation, wliich, 
 dividing the ground into spaces called capita, gave the 
 land-tax sometimes the name of Capitation, have been 
 
UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 1 1 1 
 
 the chief causes of the difficulties in understanding the 
 subject. The apparatus used for the indiction was an- 
 noying and arbitrary, the amount of the land-tax was 
 usually excessive, and its exaction was cruelly rigorous. 
 
 The Municipalities fared yet worse than the provinces. 
 As Rome had no civic funds to tempt the government, 
 and as its statues and buildings were the objects of an 
 ignorant pride and admiration, it was for a time pro- 
 tected by a continuance of its old supplies for the poor, 
 and was then gradually abandoned to its o^vn destiny. 
 Its internal administration remained substantially un- 
 changed, and its Prefect, and the prefect of Constanti- 
 nople, were made equal in rank to the four praetorian 
 prefects ; in other words, these six officers held the second 
 place in the empire. 
 
 The other municipal communities were rich ; and 
 though the extent to which Constantine carried his spo- 
 liation of them is doubtful, it has been asserted, with 
 some show of probability, that he seized a part at least of 
 the property of every corporate town in the empire, be- 
 stowing the plunder partly or wholly on the church. 
 At ail events, it is certain that within a few reigns 
 after his, the municipalities of Italy were almost all 
 utterly beggared ; and their depression involved farther 
 consequences. In the first place, their Councils were 
 now authorized to tax the inhabitants for local pur- 
 poses ; a measure which appears for the first time in 
 the Eastern Empire under Arcadius. The system as 
 to the holding of office, which had been growing for 
 centuries, was rapidly brought to maturity ; and, as it 
 presents several very singular features, a sketch of its 
 chief peculiarities in the Western Empire just before its 
 fall wil] be instructive in more respects than one, though 
 the details are involved in some obscurity. 
 
 The Magistracies and Councils still existed ; and till 
 after Constantine the former may be described as having 
 consisted of three classes at most, the Duumvirs, the 
 -(Ediles, and the Curators. The first of these, who in 
 some towns were the only magbtrates, were every where 
 
112 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY 
 
 those in whom was vested the jurisdiction belonging to 
 the corporation as such. In civO. questions tliis juris- 
 diction was confined to sums below a fixed amount ; and 
 in criminal matters, except over slaves, it did not exceed 
 the bounds which were necessary for maintaining the 
 public police.* All judicial acts of the municipal 
 judges were subject to revision by the governor of the 
 province. The -^diles, where they were found as dif- 
 ferent officers from the duumvirs, were nearly the same 
 class of functionaries as those who bore the same name 
 in the republic, or as the deans of guild in Scottish 
 boroughs, though without jurisdiction. The Curatores 
 Reipublicse corresponded to the quaestors of older times, 
 being the treasurers of the corporation. 
 
 But between the reign of Diocletian and that of Valen- 
 tinian I., the emperors transferred the jurisdiction of the 
 duumvirs, with considerable additions, to a new class of 
 magistrates, whom they called Defensors. These novel 
 authorities, and their mode of appointment, deserve espe- 
 cial notice ; because, as we shall hereafter discover, their 
 office formed in the dark ages the basis of the municipal 
 government of Italy, and out of it rose the free states 
 which covered the peninsula for some centuries after 
 that period. By the rule which had prevailed in the 
 Roman municipalities, from the earliest times till the 
 institution of these officers, all the magistrates were 
 elected by the curiae, and none but members of the curiae 
 were admissible to the magistracy. The defensors dif- 
 
 * There is a difference of opinion as to the exact amount of the 
 criminal jurisdiction possessed by the duumvirs ; and the scourging 
 of Paul and Silas by the magistrates of the colony Philippi (Acts 
 xvi, 22) has been cited as a proof that such oflBcers possessed the 
 unlimited right of inflicting corporal punishment on free men. But 
 the just inference from this passage, with the Latin writers and the 
 books of the civil law, is plainly this : The magistrates were 
 entitled to punish corporally all offenders, whether free men or 
 slaves, who were not Roman citizens. In the apostolic times this 
 rule brought far the greater number of the free provincials under the 
 full criminal authority of the municipalities. But, after Caracalla 
 had made the franchise universal, the very same state of the law, 
 continuing unchanged, left the magistracies no such extent of juris- 
 diction except over the slaves. 
 
UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 113 
 
 fered in both respects. Any inhabitant of the place was 
 eligible to the office, excepting indeed the members of 
 the curiae, who at first were held expressly disqualified ; 
 and the election was made by the whole laic commu- 
 nity, to whom Honorius added, as electors, the decu- 
 rions, and the bishops with their clergy. The term of 
 office in the Western Empire, till the time of its fall, was 
 five years. The appointment of the defensors required 
 the confirmation of the prefect ; and that officer, not the 
 governor of the province, was entitled to remove them for 
 misconduct. Indeed, by the definition which is given 
 of their functions, they are declared to have been in- 
 tended as the protectors of the municipalities against all 
 parties, and in particular against the proconsuls and 
 other provmcial functionaries, on whose conduct they 
 were empowered to report to the prefect. 
 
 The Curiae survived the rise of the defensors, but 
 their members, the Decurions, occupied a position which 
 is quite unparalleled in the history of municipal insti- 
 tutions. They received their office either by birth or by 
 election. The former class were those whose fathers or 
 grandfathers had been in place, and who were on this 
 account alone compelled to serve. If the number of this 
 class was not sufficient, according to the particular con- 
 stitution of the city, they filled up their board by elect- 
 ing persons from the community, being however directed 
 to choose men of rank and wealth, when such could be 
 found. Besides administering the public funds and, till 
 the establishment of the defensors, electing the magis- 
 trates (whose appointment required no approval by the 
 governor), the decurions also nominated to all the sub- 
 ordinate places held under the corporation. Among 
 these, it is enough to specify that of the Irenarcha, an 
 officer whose duties of arresting and interrogatmg crimi- 
 nals and transmitting them, with protocols, to the pro- 
 consuls for trial, assimilate the office to that of the 
 procurator-fiscal in Scotland. 
 
 The Decurions enjoyed honorary titles, and ranked as 
 the nobility of their towns ; they were exempted from 
 
 VOL. r. G 
 
1 14 thp: political history of italy 
 
 the torture, from disgraceful punishments, and from the 
 crimmal jurisdiction of the governor of the province, 
 who was bound, when they were charged with oflFences, 
 to transmit them to the emperor for his judgment. 
 They also possessed immunity from most public services ; 
 and, if they became poor, they received allowances from 
 the corporation. But, on the other hand, as soon as 
 the property of the municipalities was confiscated, they 
 l;ecame the subjects of a long series of enactments, surely 
 the most foolishly tyrannical that legislation has ever 
 produced. The whole system, of which law after law 
 developed the links, was intended for the strange pur- 
 pose of making the decurions personally liable for all 
 shortcomings in the municipal funds, which had been 
 seized by the very rulers who made these laws. The 
 older regulations, which had imposed on these func- 
 tionaries severe restrictions in the disposal of their pro- 
 pert}-, and in their transactions with individuals as 
 weU as ^vith the public, were as nothing when compared 
 with the multiplicity of new rules, of which one or two 
 must here suffice as specimens. The decurions w^ere, 
 and indeed had always been, accountable for the very 
 slightest neglect or omission in the discharge of their 
 duties ; but they were now, besides being compelled to 
 take office, bound to find sureties for its due perform- 
 ance ; a father was liable for the acts of his son, unless 
 the latter had been emancipated, or the parent had pro- 
 tested against his election. All the members of the 
 board were responsible for each other's proceedings ; 
 and, in the earlier part of this period, the decurions, who 
 had nominated a magistrate, were jointly and sever- 
 ally held bound as sureties for him. When we re- 
 collect that the only fands of the corporations now 
 consisted in local taxes, to be wrung from an un- 
 willing and impoverished population, and that the im- 
 perial government was accustomed to order the exe- 
 cution of extensive public works, leaving the decurions 
 to find the money as they might, we shall not be sur- 
 prised that the appointment to office was considered 
 
UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE. J 15 
 
 nearly equivalent to a sentence of confiscation, and that 
 the unlucky nominees sought to escape by every sort of 
 pretence, and even by voluntary exile. All such eva- 
 sions were rigorously punished ; and when every method 
 had failed in procuring members for the councils, the 
 emperors took the last steps in their course of legislative 
 folly. By some laws they made the holding of office 
 a title to relief from civil disabilities, as in the case of 
 bastards, who were thereby legitimized : by others they 
 made it a punishment, impressing into the councils, 
 like Valentinian I., the sons of veterans who refused 
 service, or, like Honorius, clergjTnen whom the bishop 
 had suspended. 
 
 In the whole list of emperors from Constantine to 
 Augustulus, none can be named as having legislated for 
 the municipalities with any degree of fairness, except 
 Julian and the two who bore the name of Theodosius. 
 The only redeeming point in the condition of the curiae 
 was, that their evils pressed on a class of persons nume- 
 rically small ; for the richer citizens alone w^ere fixed on, 
 and even of these many were able by money or favour 
 to procure exemptions. The great mass of the people 
 scarcely felt the evils of the municipal laws, and the sys- 
 tem, if viewed simply in relation to its immediate effects 
 on the state of society in general, would not have 
 deserved that minute notice which has been here given 
 to it. But it well merits the closest study, not less 
 on account of its influence on succeeding times, than 
 for its importance as an illustration of that universal 
 misgovemment which harassed the Lower Empire and 
 accelerated its ruin. 
 
116 THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Literature of Heathen Italy. 
 
 PERIOD ENDING A. U. 1059, OR A. D. 306. 
 
 Grecian Literature in Magna Grsecia and Sicily— Its Four 
 Centuries — The chief Writers — Its decay after the Roman Con- 
 quest. Roman Literature : First Age (to a. u, 550, or 
 B. c. 204) : The Infancy of Literature — Its Progress after a. u. 
 500. Second Age (a. u. 550—722, or b. c. 204— b. c. 32) : 
 The Formed Literature of the Republic : The Sixth Century 
 of the City— Plautus, Terence, and Cato — The Seventh Century 
 — Lucretius — Catullus— Sallust — Caesar — Cicero's Works and 
 Influence. Third Age (a. u. 722 — a. u. 767, or b. c. 32— a. d. 
 1 4) : Literature at the Court of Augustus : Poetry — Patronage — 
 Foreign Taste — Toleration— Livy — Propertius and TibuUus — 
 Ovid — Horace's Works — The Character of Virgil's Genius — His 
 National Poems — The Georgics — The Politics of the iEneid — 
 Its Antiquarianism, Topography, and Poetry. Fourth Age 
 A. u. 767 — 933, or a. d. 14 — 180) : Literaturefrom Augustus to 
 the Times of the Antonines : The Character assumed by Litera- 
 ture — The principal Authors — The Elder Pliny — Seneca — Lu- 
 can's Life and Poem — The Works of Statins — Persius, Juvenal, 
 and Tacitus. Fifth Age (a. u. 933—1059, or a. d. 180—306) : 
 Literature from Commodus till the Accession of Constantine : 
 In Italy no genuine Native Literature — The Greeks. 
 
 FIRST AGE. 
 
 TILL THE thorough FORMATION OF THE ROMAN LITERATURE : 
 ABOUT A. U. 550, OR B. C. 204. 
 
 A COMPLETE history of ancient literature in Italy and 
 Sicily would embrace the mental cultivation of the 
 Greeks as well as that of the Romans. For the Helle- 
 nic colonies of the west were not less active in the pur- 
 
THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 117 
 
 suits of learning than the mother-country ; several illus- 
 trious names in Grecian poetry and science belong by 
 birth to the Italiot settlements ; and other Greeks, though 
 natives of the old country, dwelt in Sicily or the adja- 
 cent mainland, chiefly after the Sicilian princes had be- 
 gun to patronise art and letters. The Roman literature, 
 however, must be regarded as the main object in this 
 sketch : and it will be enough if we glance rapidly at a 
 few of the principal literary events which took place in 
 the Greek colonies before their subjugation. 
 
 Ch'eek Literature in Sicily and Magna Grcecia befm-e 
 the Roman Conquest. — If we pass over the early Italiot 
 legislators, whose age is uncertain, we shall find the 
 oldest Greco- Italian names of celebrity in the middle of 
 the second century of Rome ; and hence the duration of 
 Grecian literature and philosophy in those countries 
 extends to about four hundred years. The most ancient 
 of their poets yield in importance to their philosophers ; 
 the list of whom opens with Pythagoras, whose visit to 
 Italy is understood to have occurred about the reign of 
 Tarquinius Superbus, in the beginning of the third cen- 
 tury of Rome. Among his most distinguished followers 
 were Empedocles of Agrigentum, and Timaeus of Locri ; 
 but before these philosophers, and little later than the 
 great teacher liimself, the Ionian Xenophanes had found- 
 ed, at Elea, his celebrated school. Epicharmus, a Coan, 
 who spent his life in Sicily, and is said to have been an 
 immediate disciple of Pythagoras, is also renowned as a 
 poet ; and in his name the Sicilians claimed the honour 
 of having invented comedy nearly a hundred years 
 before it flourished at Athens. Among the Greek comic 
 poets, from Aristophanes down to Menander, several of 
 the most famous were Italiots, of whose works we have 
 only fragments, such as Alexis of Thurii, who was the 
 grandfather of Menander ; Sophron, w^ho in the time of 
 the Middle Attic comedy invented the Mimes ; Carcinus, 
 a Sicilian, and the two Philemons of Syracuse. 
 
 At the end of the third century of Rome, when its 
 inhabitants had hardly escaped from the hands of Per- 
 
118 THE LITERATURE OP HEATHEN ITALY. 
 
 sena^ Syracuse contained more men of high genius than 
 any other city in the world. These were collected at 
 the court of the first Hiero, during his short reign of ten 
 years, and among them were the greatest poets of the 
 age : Pindar, whose odes have immortalized liis Sicilian 
 patrons ; the pathetic Simonides, who was buried in the 
 city by Hiero ; and the sublime ^schylus, who died in 
 the island at an advanced age, and is said to repose near 
 the ruins of Gela. 
 
 Early in the fourth century of Rome, Herodotus the 
 historian, and Lysias the orator, a native of Syracuse, 
 were among the colonists who founded the city of Thurii ; 
 and about the same time Leontium possessed, in its citizen 
 Gorgias, a rhetorician whose fame rivalled that of Lysias. 
 
 The next illustrious names meet us in the last half of 
 .the same century, at the court of the elder Dionysius, 
 prince of Syracuse. Under him and his son, Sicily was 
 honoured by the residence of Plato, though the nation 
 derives no credit from the ingratitude with which its 
 sovereigns treated the great philosopher and his distin- 
 guished friend Dion. The life of Plato was preserved 
 from the cruelty of the tyrant by the renowned mathe- 
 matician Archytas of Tarentum. 
 
 A mathematician of yet greater celebrity, Archimedes 
 the Syracusan, devoted the best efforts of his skill in 
 mechanics to the defence of his native town against the 
 Romans, and was at length killed in the storming of it. 
 Nearly contemporary with him, but chiefly resident at 
 the capital of the Ptolemies, was his fellow-citizen 
 Theocritus, the best known of all the Sicilian poets ; 
 whose imitators, Moschus, also of the same city, and 
 Bion, who at least lived in the island, if he was not born 
 there, probably belong to a time little later than his. 
 
 Immediately on the conquest of Lower Italy by the 
 Romans, Greek began to fall into disuse. In a quarter 
 of a century, more than one author of Grecian origin 
 contributed to the infant literature of the Latins ; and, 
 in the first years of Tiberius, Strabo complained that 
 Magna Grsecia had ceased to be Greece, except in Taren- 
 
THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 119 
 
 turn, Rliegium, and Naples. In these cities, indeed, the 
 language maintained a partial hold during the best times 
 of the empire. In Sicily it kept its place still longer, 
 as the dialect of common life ; and the modern tongue 
 exhibits marked traces of it, mingled with Saracenic 
 words, which at length aided the Latin in driving it 
 out. Literature, however, became Latin at once, both 
 on the mainland and in the island ; and after the sub- 
 jugation of the latter, Greek was not used in the works 
 of any eminent man belonging to those provinces, with 
 the single exception of Diodorus Siculus, who lived in 
 the times of Julius Csesar and Augustus, and composed 
 a history of the world in forty books, of which there 
 remain fifteen and some fragments. 
 
 Roman Literature in its Infancy. — The literature of 
 the Etruscans, if they ever had any writings worthy of 
 the name, is quite lost to us, along with the language in 
 which it was embodied. The Romans borrowed their 
 theatrical representations from Etruria, introducing them 
 for the first time, as it should seem, about the year of the 
 city 889 : but the rude compositions of those ages have 
 wholly perished. TUl the beginning of the sixth cen- 
 tury of Rome, her literature was a blank ; unless we con- 
 fer the name on such rude hymns as those of the Arval 
 Brothers, or on the simple enactments of the Twelve 
 Tables, or on those picturesque traditions which, speedily 
 lost in their original shape even to the people them- 
 selves, are known to us only by their substance, partially 
 preserved in the later histories. 
 
 Before that time, however, the language was de- 
 veloped to an extent which has not been equalled by 
 any other people possessing no native literature ; and in 
 the works of their sixth centur}'', the Latin tongue 
 appears in a purity and nervous simplicity, which the 
 polish of the two succeeding ages injured rather than 
 improved. In every thing, however, which regards both 
 the spirit and the form, the art of composition must 
 be considered as having been in its infancy at Rome 
 during the first half of that century ; and the produc- 
 
J 20 THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 
 
 tions of the time may most fairly be classed separately 
 from those which succeed them. 
 
 The first literature of the Romans, like that of every 
 other nation, was poetical, or rather metrical ; and it 
 assumed three forms, those of the drama, versified an- 
 nals, and satires. The dramatic poems of their sixth 
 century w^ere by far the most numerous. Their chief 
 writers were natives of the conquered provinces in the 
 south ; the subjects and the form of the vrorks, as might 
 have been expected, were close copies fi'om the Greek ; 
 and most of the dramas appear to have been mere transla- 
 tions. Prose writing began nearl}?^ at the end of this period, 
 and was soon applied to history and practical science. 
 
 The earliest author of the time was Livius Androni- 
 cus, an Italian Greek, whose works were chiefly tra- 
 gedies, though he also translated the Odyssey into Latin 
 iambics. His first play was acted in the year of the 
 city 513, and he was alive as late as 546. Cneius Nee- 
 vius, who followed him, was his countryman, being a 
 Campanian, and, besides tragedies and comedies, composed 
 a metrical history of the First Punic War. In his 
 comedies he imitated the personal attacks of the old 
 Attic stage, and, after having been repeatedly punished 
 for his libels by the exasperated Roman nobles, he died 
 in 549. To these names must be added those of Caecilius 
 Statins, a comic poet, a native of Insubrian Gaul ; Mar- 
 cus Pacuvius, a nephew of Ennius, bom at Brundu- 
 sium, and a writer of tragedies ; Lucius Accius or Attius, 
 also a dramatist, about half a century younger than Pa- 
 cuvius ; and, lastly, the most famous author of the age, 
 Quintus Ennius, a Calabrian {horn a. u. 514 — died 584). 
 He was the dear friend of the Scipios and Lselius ; his 
 genius was all but deified by the Romans till the Augus- 
 tan age ; and the best poet of that era did not disdain to 
 copy from him. His chief works were many tragedies 
 and comedies, some epigrams and satires, and eighteen 
 books of metrical annals. 
 
 The successive heads of the Cornelian family were 
 the kindest patrons of literature in those times. The 
 
THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 121 
 
 elder Scipio Africanus was one of the first Romans 
 who set a just value on intellectual cultivation ; and the 
 younger Africanus was distinguished for his successful 
 prosecution of Greek literature, in an age in which that 
 study began to be followed with universal zeal. On the 
 defeat of Perseus, in the year 586 of the Roman era, the 
 Macedonian hostages, among whom was Polybius, the 
 historian, became his cherished friends. The banishment 
 of the foreign teachers, effected soon afterwards by the 
 gloomy Cato, did not damp the ardour either of Scipio or 
 others ; the three great sects of the Hellenic philosophy 
 were represented at Rome, about the end of the century, 
 by the three ambassadors of the Grecian states ; and the 
 enthusiasm for the newly imported literature was in- 
 creased tenfold by the conquest of Greece itself. 
 
 SECOND AGE. 
 
 FROM THE FORMATION OF THE ROMAN LITERATURE TO THE 
 OVERTHROW OF THE REPUBLIC t 
 
 A. u. 550—722, OR B. c. 204—32. 
 
 Of the productions of Ennius, as well as of the lesser 
 poets, who were named along with him, we possess only 
 fragments ; and our collection of complete Roman pieces 
 commences with those of three writers, all of whom be- 
 longed to the latter half of their sixth century. These 
 works possess merit and fame enough to entitle them 
 to be ranked as classical ; and, accordingly, in the analy- 
 tical table which was given in the introductory chapter 
 of this volume, the period of Roman greatness in litera- 
 ture was, in order to include their age, reckoned as 
 commencing about the year of the city 550, or 204 
 years before the Christian epoch. 
 
 About the middle of the century we have the come- 
 dies of the Umbrian, Marcus Accius Plautus (died a. u. 
 569) ; at a time rather later, those of Publius Terentius, 
 a Carthaginian {born about 560 — died 594) ; and during 
 the same age the works of Marcus Porcius Cato the 
 Censor (519 — 607). Of the comedies of Plautus, which, 
 about the time of the Antonines, existed to the number 
 
122 THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 
 
 of 130, we possess only twenty ; but the six plays of 
 Terence still extant are perhaps all that he wrote. The 
 antiquities of Rome have sustained a very grievous in- 
 jury by the loss of Cato's seven books of " Origines," 
 the earliest prose history of the city ; a work in whicli 
 liis antiquarian learning had full scope, and which would 
 have been useful even on account of his violent preju- 
 dices. His remaining treatise on Rural Economy, hav- 
 ing had its diction modernized by later critics, affords 
 us little insight into the state of the language, though 
 it is a very valuable reuord on the subject to which 
 it relates. Plautus and Terence have reached us nearly 
 genuine, and their works convert into certainty that sus- 
 picion of weakness and a defective originality in the new 
 Latin literature, which is suggested to us by the frag- 
 ments of the lost dramatists.* All the scenes of both 
 authors are laid in Greece or its colonies ; their plots, 
 without exception, are borrowed in like manner ; and 
 as to their dialogue, that of Plautus is manifestly an 
 imitation, while Terence's seems even to be, from be- 
 ginning to end, closely translated. Authors who wrote 
 on this system, and patrons who applauded them for 
 doing so, occupied a rank equally low ; but, besides the 
 idiomatic vigour of style which distinguishes the one 
 writer, and the unaffected purity of the other, both have 
 merits of their o^\ti. Terence's delicacy of feeling, and 
 his fine sense of propriety and symmetry, are evident in 
 all liis adaptations of foreign stories and sentiments ; and 
 Plautus, rude and boisterous in manner, has a vein of 
 wild humour to which he sometimes gives full vent, by 
 ingrafting on his Greek fables groups from Roman life, in 
 a style of broad satire approaching to the freedoms of the 
 old Attic comedy. The indecency of the stories, and the 
 cool immorality of the characters^ are common to both 
 poets ; but the vices they depicted were those of Athens, 
 
 * The catalogue of lost tragedies, from which fragments have been 
 recovered, extends, as given by Fabricius (Bibliotheca Latina), 
 to about 125, besides other plays, whose titles are not known. Of 
 the preserved titles, there is not one which does not prove the 
 subject to have been taken from the Greek history or legends. 
 
THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 123 
 
 a luxurious and decaying community, not those of the 
 sterner youth of Rome. 
 
 After the taking of Carthage the diffusion of literature 
 was rapid ; and on the reduction of Sicily, Roman 
 refinement quickly reached its utmost height. In the 
 interval between those two events, we meet with only one 
 famous name, that of the satirist Caius Lucilius, whose 
 works have perished ; but every department of intel- 
 lectual exertion became more and more crowded with 
 labourers. The cultivation of popular eloquence was 
 general ; the Gracchi, in the beginning of the seventh 
 century, were followed by the orator Crassus, who was 
 consul in 658, and by Marcus Antonius, who was mur- 
 dered in the Marian proscription of 667, along with Mu- 
 cins Scsevola, the famous jurisconsult ; and in the end 
 of the century flourished, besides men of smaller note, 
 Cicero's formidable rival Quintus Hortensius. Histo- 
 ries, now lost, were composed by this author, by the 
 accomplished time-server Atticus, by Lucceius, and by 
 Cicero himself, who also, with a few others, studied pro- 
 foundly the philosophy of Greece. 
 
 But the half century which elapsed between Sylla's 
 dictatorship and the fall of the republic has left us 
 more than names. From this period we possess works of 
 the following writers : in poetry, Titus Lucretius Cams 
 (668—702), and Caius Valerius Catullus (born 667— 
 died after 706) ; in philosophy, oratory, and general 
 literature, Marcus TuUius Cicero (647 — 710) ; in plii- 
 lology and practical science, Marcus Terentius Varro 
 (638—727) ; and in history, Caius Julius Caesar (664 — 
 709), Caius Sallustius Crispus (668—719), and Corne- 
 lius Nepos. 
 
 Even the first age of the empire, the most polished 
 era of Roman poetry, possessed no genius superior to 
 Lucretius and Catullus ; and though the former, if con- 
 sidered as an artist, must rank below the writers of the 
 Augustan age, the latter is quite their equal, being not 
 less admirable in the mechanism of his poetry than in 
 its conception. 
 
124 THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 
 
 The only work of Lucretius is his didactic poem " On 
 the Nature of the Universe," in which he expounds the 
 tenets of the Epicurean philosophy. His leading topics 
 are ari'anged nearly in the following order. Commencing 
 \vith the views of elemental nature held by his school, 
 he next describes the properties of matter, and then 
 proceeds to explain the essence of spirit. The theory of 
 sensation follows, and is succeeded by the physical his- 
 tory of the earth, and an account of the rise of society 
 and development of religion ; after which the poem de- 
 scribes and attempts to explain many of the ordinary 
 phenomena of the material world, with some of its tem- 
 porary derangements. These themes, though affording 
 abundant sources of illustration in poetry, are evidently 
 too abstract to form the main subject of any poem, even 
 didactic ; and the work becomes yet more repulsive 
 on account of the sceptical dogmas on which the reason- 
 ing is founded, and the little art which is expended on 
 the plan. Materialism, and the denial of divine exist' 
 ence, lie at the root of the philosophy recommended by 
 Lucretius. His attack on the false theology and super- 
 stitious observances of the Greeks has, in many cases, 
 an overpowering force ; but the temper of liis system 
 infuses a cold spirit into the work, and gives it, at the 
 same time, a character nearly unexampled in classical 
 poetry, by stripping it almost entirely of those decora- 
 tive accompaniments which the ancient mythology so 
 lavishly supplied. The imperfect form of the poem, in 
 which the principles of the sect are dogmatically set 
 forth by the writer in his own person, and relieved only 
 by rare imaginative digressions, is common to it with all 
 didactic poems, except some of our o^vn times, in which 
 the essential imperfection of that anomalous class of 
 compositions has been in part remedied by throwing the 
 work into a narrative shape. Lucretius, however, who 
 had only the gnomologic verses of the Greeks as liis mo- 
 dels, is more constantly argumentative than any philoso- 
 phical poet who has succeeded him, and few tasks can be 
 more tedious than the perusal of his poem from beginning 
 
THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 125 
 
 to end. This labour, indeed, is least irksome to the pro- 
 fessed philologist, who, in the purity of the style and the 
 bold structure of the versification, can forget the weary 
 barrenness of the matter ; but even the student of poetry 
 must frequently bow with delight to the enthusiastic 
 imagination which inspires Lucretius, when he forgets 
 that he is a teacher of philosophy, and is for a time wholly 
 the poet. There occur every where short snatches of ima- 
 gery, warmly and clearly conceived, and expressed with 
 remarkable felicity ; and few things are finer than some 
 passages of greater length, such as the opening address to 
 the Divinity of Beauty, and the description of the rise of 
 primeval religions, — a strain which has been equalled in 
 its kind by no man, and approached by scarcely any.* 
 
 We know little of this author's private life except 
 that he put an end to his existence in utter weariness and 
 despondency. The memoirs of Catullus, an opulent 
 Veronese of the equestrian order, are scarcely less scanty, 
 and he derives little honour from the best accredited 
 incident of his life, his amour with the profligate sister 
 of the unprincipled Clodius. The works of this writer 
 are short poems, chiefly lyrical, in which he for the first 
 time adapted the Greek measures to the Latin tongue. 
 His alleged imitation of the Grecian poets must have some 
 foundation in truth ; but it is scarcely so easy to believe 
 that the chief objects of his study were Callimachus, and 
 the other members of the artificial school of Alexandria. 
 The love -poems, which are not the best, and the epi- 
 grams, chiefly launched at Julius Caesar's minion 
 Mamurra, are chargeable with voluptuousness and 
 coarseness, though scarcely with more of either than 
 belonged to most poets both of this age and the next. 
 His rich imagination, his warm feeling, and his unsur- 
 passed felicity of expression, qualities which form a 
 character of pure ideality quite peculiar to him, are 
 best exhibited in his verses addressed to friends, or com- 
 
 * Lucret. De Rerum Natura, lib. v., sub finem. Compare 
 Wordsworth's exquisite delineation of the same pictures in the 
 Fourth Book of the Excursion. 
 
126 THE LITERATURE OP HEATHEN ITALY. 
 
 memorating favourite scenes, and in his few longer poems 
 on imaginative subjects. Of the more tender class, 
 we have delightful examples in the lines celebrating 
 the Peninsula of Sirmio on the Lake Benacus, whose 
 olive-groves now shade the ruins of the poet's villa ; in 
 the plaintive Invocation written at his brother's tomb ; 
 in the Epithalamium of Manlius and Julia, so full both 
 of passion and fancy ; and in the Acme and Septimius, 
 a short poem whose tone of romantic fondness, and de- 
 licate sweetness of language, are most nearly approach- 
 ed by Coleridge's " Love." Catullus had freer scope for 
 his clear poetic vision in the two mythological subjects, 
 the Atys, and the Marriage of Peleus and Thetis, which 
 form liis longest works. The latter of these is full of fine 
 thoughts and bright lyrical pictures, — a fragment, in- 
 deed, but the fragment of a gem. The Atys is one of the 
 most singular of poems, in the subject, the versifica- 
 tion, and the tone of thought and imagery : all is wild 
 and luxuriant, and its mysterious maenad inspiration is 
 the more deeply felt the more it is studied. 
 
 If the poets of the expiring republic are worthy to 
 be set up against their successors in the first imperial 
 court, the last republican period stands, in prose, infi- 
 nitely higher than the Augustan, which has little that 
 can be compared to the mass and variety of the older 
 works of that class, and no great name but Livy's to 
 rival those of Cicero, Caesar, Sallust, Nepos, and Varro. 
 Varro, the most learned of the Romans, has left us 
 a treatise on the Roman Tongue, and another on Rural 
 Afiairs, both of which, highly useful m their kind, may 
 be passed over with Nepos' work on Celebrated Cap- 
 tains, whose chief merit is in the style. The greatest 
 work of Sallust, which related the history of Rome 
 from Sylla to Catiline, is lost ; and we possess only his 
 short histories of the Jugurthan war, and of the Catili- 
 narian conspiracy. These tracts are written with an 
 antique purity of style, a nervous conciseness and full- 
 ness of sentence, happily borrowed from Thucydides, and 
 a high tone of moral feeling, which contrasted but too 
 
THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 127 
 
 strongly with the life of the author, a favourite of 
 Julius CjEsar, and enabled by his patronage to accumu- 
 late in the provinces wealth which he spent in luxurious 
 debauchery at Rome. The historical works of Caesar, 
 consisting of memoirs or commentaries on the Gallic and 
 on a part of the Civil War, are too well known to require 
 remark ; and theh- perspicuous simplicity, their grasp 
 of thought and quickness of observation, with the purity 
 of their phraseology, at once familiar and elegant, vouch 
 for the truth of the praises confeiTed on him by his 
 contemporaries as being even greater in the closet than 
 in the senate-house or the field. 
 
 Cicero's is by far the first literary name, not only of his 
 own age, but of the ancient Roman world. In its rare 
 union of warmth, practical sense, and astonishing versa- 
 tility, his genius has scarcely any parallel ; and his in- 
 fluence on the philosophical knowledge and opinions of 
 modern Europe has been incalculable. The voluminous 
 works of this great man, composed during the leisure 
 hours of a life involved in the vortex of political conten- 
 tion, embrace a wonderful variety of subjects. His his- 
 tories in Greek prose and Latin rhyme are lost ; and the 
 small specimens of his verses that survive leave no room 
 for regret that we do not possess more. His important 
 works are his Correspondence, his Orations, his Treatises 
 on Rhetoric, and his Philosopliical Dissertations. 
 
 The Correspondence includes letters from his family, 
 and from Brutus, Cassius, Atticus, and other public 
 men. Besides the high literary qualities and personal in- 
 terest of these memorials, the collection is an invaluable 
 fund of information on the history of the time, and the 
 state of society and manners. Of his Orations we 
 possess, in the common editions, fifty-six, of which two 
 or three are incomplete, and one or two spurious. The 
 merit of these compositions is unequal, and those on 
 which the orator's fame must always rest are, besides 
 the defence of Milo, the three sets of discourses directed 
 against Verres, Catiline, and Mark Antony. The seven 
 speeches which contain the accusation against Verres, 
 
128 THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 
 
 the rapacious and tyrannical governor of Sicily, are im- 
 portant not only for their indignant eloquence and their 
 sound political philosophy, hut for the light they inci- 
 dentally throw on ancient art and luxury, and on the 
 corrupt morals as well as the venal government of Rome. 
 The four orations against Catiline soar higher in their 
 vehemence and fiery force ; and the perfection of his 
 eloquence was reached in some parts of the fourteen 
 harangues against Antony, which their author called 
 Philippics, in imitation of the invectives pronounced hy 
 Demosthenes on the conduct of Philip. The second 
 of these, the masterpiece of the series, is a tremendous 
 attack on the clever but vicious Antony, who revenged 
 by Cicero's murder the temporary unpopularity and 
 eternal infamy to which that exposure of his vices 
 consigned him. These three collections of orations, and 
 a few of the others, such as the speech for MLlo, and 
 the partly thankful, partly admonitory address to Julius 
 Csesar on the pardon of Marcellus, are those in which 
 we find most of that full vein of eloquence so admir- 
 able in the author's own hands, and so easily degenerat- 
 ing into tumid verbosit}^ when taken up by his imitators. 
 The Rhetorical works are of great value, exhibitiag the 
 art as it existed in a time and country which made 
 oratory the universal study and indispensable qualifica- 
 tion of its statesmen. The best of these treatises, the 
 systematic essay " De Oratore," the historical work 
 entitled " Brutus," and the illustrative sketch called 
 " Orator," were the fruit of his most vigorous years. 
 
 His Philosophical worlds, however, are those by which 
 he has most benefited his own and subsequent ages. 
 They nearly equal in bulk the collection of his speeches, 
 and traverse a wide field of speculation. In no depart- 
 ment of research was Cicero, in the strict sense of the 
 terra, a discoverer, although his writings contain many 
 observations of a highly original cast. His chief merit 
 therefore consists in his having made himself extensively 
 master of the Greek philosophy, and embodied its most 
 practical branches in a form attractively eloquent, equally 
 
THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 129 
 
 divested of metaphysical abstruseness, and of rhetorical 
 exaggeration. His writings, indeed, form only the por- 
 tico to the temple of wisdom ; but the singular beauty of 
 the approach invites the student, and its ease of access 
 secures his progress to the sanctuary beyond. He was 
 the first Roman, perhaps the only man of his time, who 
 studied Aristotle's works, of which the manuscript lay 
 neglected in Sylla's library ; but the sects whose prin- 
 ciples he most fully elucidated were the Academics 
 and the Stoics ; and, throwing most of his dissertations 
 into the form of dialogues, he expounds the tenets, now 
 of the one sect, now of the other. Some of his philoso- 
 phical works have perished. Petrarch, who possessed the 
 only known manuscript of the treatise " On Glory," lent 
 it to a friend, by whom it was either sold or lost ; and 
 the recently discovered essay " De Republica" has dis- 
 appointed the hopes of scholars. His other tract on 
 political philosophy, entitled " De Legibus," is inferior in 
 interest to his ethical discussions, which, with the theo- 
 logical works, were written after the overthrow of the 
 republic by Caesar had for a time removed the author from 
 active life. The books " De Finibus" expound the ethical 
 doctrines of the three sects of Epicureans, Stoics, and 
 Academics. The essay " De Officiis," one of his latest 
 philosophical dissertations, inculcates the Stoical prin- 
 ciples of moral duty, illustrating them with the finest skill 
 and liveliness ; and the " Tusculan Questions," the most 
 delightful of all his speculative writings, discuss, in the 
 form of dialogues, held at his villa near Tusculum, some 
 of the most important topics, religious and moral, — the 
 duty of subduing the fear of death, of enduring pain and 
 sorrow with courage, of overcoming passion,and of belie v- 
 
 : ing in the all-sufficiency of virtue to secure genuine 
 
 I happiness. 
 
 I THIRD AGE. 
 
 THE COURT OF AUGUSTUS. 
 
 A. u. 722—767 ; or b. c. 32— a. d. 14. 
 The first imperial reign, which is proverbial as the 
 n Golden Age of ancient letters, has bequeathed to us a 
 
 I VOL, I. H 
 
130 THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 
 
 few names and works fully justifying the praises which 
 the era receives. Many of the forms which literature 
 had assumed in the republican times, including all those 
 which connected it with political life, decayed in- 
 stantly, and of course. Oratory took refuge in the 
 schools of the Greek rhetoricians, who could teach the 
 manner of speech, but could neither breathe soul into 
 the speaker nor furnish opportunity for exertion. For 
 orators, therefore, we are no longer to look. Even 
 philosophical and scientific studies, forced into the 
 background, have left us no monuments belonging to 
 the age now mentioned. History has given us only one 
 name, though that one is Livy*s ; and, with this excep- 
 tion, the greatness of the Augustan literature is confined 
 to its poetical compositions. There is much poetry 
 that has a warmer flow than we discover in these, — 
 there is much poetry that possesses an infinitely higher 
 moral worth, from its closer alliance with life and its 
 closer sympathy with the great interests of mankind, — 
 but there is scarcely any single work, and certainly no 
 body of writings, equalling the perfection of the Augus- 
 tan poems as works of art, none which unite so many of 
 the qualities of poetry even in its essence, and none so 
 faultless in the mechanism and outward form. 
 
 The example of Augustus was followed by his cour- 
 tiers, especially Maecenas and Pollio. The native Italians 
 who prosecuted literature with success were liberally 
 patronised, provided always that their knowledge 
 enabled them to gratify the taste for Grecian learning, 
 which was universal among the refined aristocracy. 
 Indeed the nobles made no secret of their contempt for 
 the Latin tongue, — while scraps of Greek occupied the 
 same place in their familiar conversation which French 
 once held in some circles of our own country. Litera- 
 ture was allowed greater license in its politics than in 
 its grammar. This reign, in fact, formed one long 
 comedy, the scene of which was a supposed republic, 
 the emperor being its first citizen, and the ministers of 
 his mUd despotism playing the parts of republicans with 
 
THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 131 
 
 as much gravity as he did. Respect to the common- 
 wealth, and praise of its institutions, were things of 
 course, to be found in books as well as in ordinary life. 
 It was only necessary for the author, as for the private 
 citizen, to recollect that the free state had now for the 
 first time reached perfection, and that, so far as it had pre- 
 viously differed from its new condition, its burghers 
 might be heroes, but its constitution was defective. Even 
 if the understood limits of Augustan repubhcanism were 
 sometimes transgressed by a warm-tempered poet, the 
 crafty rulers let the offence pass, and were right in doing 
 so. The literature of the day never reached the lower 
 orders, scarcely indeed any order except the highest ; 
 and those who did read and were able to understand, 
 were quite incapable, both morall}'' and from circum- 
 stances, of moving one step against the new political 
 system. 
 
 We have lost scarcely any author of this age, except 
 some of those persons of rank, who, like Pollio, wrote 
 with ease. In prose we possess Titus Livius, a native of 
 Patavium or its neighbouring village of Abanum (a. u. 
 695 — 770). In poetry we have Publius Virgilius Maro, 
 born in the neighbourhood of Mantua, and resident for 
 the greater part of his life in Rome (683 — 734) ; Quintus 
 Horatius Flaccus, a native of Venusia in Apulia (688 — 
 745) ; Publius Ovidius Naso, from Sulmo in the Pelignian 
 district (710 — 770) ; Sextus Aurelius Propertius, an 
 Umbrian, and Aulus Albius Tibullus, a Roman, both of 
 noble birth.* The Greek %vriters of the day are beyond 
 our limits. Diodorus, indeed, as a Sicilian, might seem 
 to fall within them ; and Dionj^sius of Halicamassus 
 must be named for his Roman History, and his residence 
 of twenty-two years in the capital, spent in collecting 
 materials for his works, and teacliing oratory to the 
 young nobles. 
 
 • The neglected poem of Gratius Faliscus on Hunting probably 
 belongs to this age, and deserves to be mentioned as proving how 
 feeble and mean it was possible to render the Latin of Cicero and 
 VirgiU 
 
132 THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 
 
 Livy's Roman History consisted of about 140 books, 
 and extended from the foundation of the city to the 
 middle of Augustus's reign. Besides a few fragments 
 and a complete epitome of the work, we possess only 
 thirty-five of those books ; namely, the first ten, which 
 bring the nan-ative down to the year of Rome 460, 
 and the twenty-five which immediately follow the twen- 
 tieth. These embrace half a century, ending with the 
 year 587, the earliest event mentioned in them being 
 Hannibal's siege of Sag-untum, and the latest the con- 
 quest of Macedon. The historical value of Livy's 
 work sufifers considerable diminution from the Grecian 
 taste that prevailed in his day, from his neglect of 
 constitutional questions, and fi-om his open partisanship 
 of the aristocracy. But its literary excellence can 
 scarcely be too highly estimated. In the animation and 
 picturesqueness of the naiTative, in the heartiness of 
 its patriotic feeling, and in its lively portraiture of the 
 Roman character, it possesses qualities which make it 
 the most fascinatmg of stories even to modern readers, 
 and must have rendered it in the author's own age one 
 of the most pleasmg sacrifices ever laid on the altar of 
 national vanity. Of the language either of Livy or of 
 the poets in his time it is needless to speak : their dic- 
 tion is recognised as the standard of the Latin tongue. 
 
 Among the poets who have just been named, Proper- 
 tius and Tibullus, whose works consist of reflective 
 and sentimental verses in the soft monotonous elegiac 
 measure, are not characteristic enough to deserve much 
 notice. Both are palpable imitators of the Greeks, 
 and our preference may be left doubtful between the 
 obtrusively learned imagery and vigour of thought 
 which distinguish Propertius, and the plaintiveness 
 which pervades the love-poems of Tibullus, 
 
 Ovid stands infinitely higher. The careless elegance of 
 his conversational style (the perfection of familiar Latin 
 in its best days), and his sweetly flowing versification, 
 qualified him well to be the poet of a refined society ; and 
 his subjects were not less happy than was his capacity 
 
THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 133 
 
 for treating them. The loose sentiment, moreover, which 
 degrades his amatory poems, was but too well suited to 
 the profligacy of his age. The Metamorphoses, an in- 
 terminable series of narratives drawn from the classical 
 mythology, was, with the Art and Remedy of Love, one 
 of the favourite books in the middle ages, and gave to the 
 modems their first knowledge of the Greek fables. In 
 many parts its richness of fancy, and in a few places its 
 tenderness of feeling, are extremely delightful. The 
 " Heroides," or letters of the heroic times, are artificial 
 in their whole conception, with frequent touches of fine 
 emotion and imagery ; the " Fasti," which detail the 
 Roman legends in their relation to the calendar, are of 
 the greatest use as an antiquarian storehouse ; and the 
 desponding poems written from the poet's place of exile 
 in Pontus, owed the interest which beyond any other of 
 his works they excited in Rome, to his own history and 
 situation rather than to their poetical merits. 
 
 Horace and Virgil, like the rest, derived from Greece 
 the forms of their poetry, much of its materials, and 
 much of its inspiration; but one cannot help per- 
 ceiving that the studies of both were different from 
 those of most men of their time. The later poets of 
 the artificial school of Alexandria had been the models 
 of Propertius and Tibullus, and even of Ovid, while the 
 same patterns had materially injured the far nobler 
 poetry of Lucretius. Nor was this evil eff'ect altogether 
 avoided by the two Augustan laureates ; but their dis- 
 tinguishing characteristic was, that they went back to the 
 old fountains of the Grecian poetical paradise, and from 
 these drew their essential conceptions of the art. Apol- 
 lonius Rhodius might give aids to Virgil, but Homer was 
 his master ; Horace might abandon imitation of Pindar as 
 equally unsuited to the bent of his own intellect and the 
 temper of the age, but that great genius was still the 
 prototype to which he looked back with admiring regret. 
 If Ovid was qualified to please a luxurious generation by 
 holding up to it its own image, Horace and Virgil were 
 able to lead their contemporaries whil j they seemed only 
 
134 THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 
 
 to follow ; and on modem literature these two have 
 exerted a greater influence than any other ancient poets. 
 
 In spirit, though not in form, Horace's odes are as 
 original as his satires. With the light playfulness of 
 the court-poet they unite much of the practical energy 
 which belongs to the man of action ; they frequently 
 rise high in the visionary region of lyrical imagery and 
 feeling ; and they sometimes, though rarely, flame out 
 with a stern moral sublimity. This last and loftiest 
 flight is prompted only by one source of inspiration, — 
 the recollection of Roman greatness. From the imperial 
 terraces of the Palatine Mount the lyrist casts his eye 
 on the Capitol and Forum ; the bitter feeling of the 
 moment is relieved by a burst of indignant scorn, or by a 
 rapid sketch of republican grandeur ; and he then turns 
 away, in homage to the powers he served, to weave again 
 his links of mythologic fancy, or to inculcate with a 
 poet's art his lessons of worldly wisdom. This character 
 of acute observation, which he uses for the purpose of 
 insinuating rather than teaching easy maxims of duty, 
 constitutes the spirit of Horace's Satires. The form of 
 these poems was of his own invention, for neither his 
 own countrymen nor the Greeks possessed writings 
 of the same kind till his time, though both had com- 
 positions which received the same name. These Horatian 
 satires and epistles, travelling a middle road between 
 prose and poetry, are equally admirable in their mecha- 
 nism and in their matter. As portraits of Roman man- 
 ners in the age they describe, they are not more lively 
 than instructive ; as works addressed to the nation whose 
 weaknesses they paint, their skill of execution is un- 
 rivalled. 
 
 Virgil possessed neither Horace's sagacity of observa- 
 tion nor his lively interest in contemporary life and po- 
 litical relations. He was wholly the poet and the artist, 
 endowed with all the qualifications of the latter character, 
 and with many of the most exquisite gifts of the former. 
 As a poet, every feature of his genius is subservient 
 to one leading faculty, his unequalled sense of beauty, 
 
THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 135 
 
 clear, delicate, and ideal, which attuned the flow of his 
 verse, ministered to his felicity of language, and dictated 
 the themes on which his delighted fancy retired to 
 repose itself. Primeval simplicity and grandeur, pas- 
 toral life amidst the luxuriance of rural nature, heroic 
 adventure seen through the mist of time, and antique 
 worth exalted into calm greatness by imagination, were 
 the elements of the world in which his thoughts dwelt ; 
 and the purposes to which he turned these favourite 
 visions, were equally well chosen for creating his fame 
 among his contemporaries, and for preserving it with 
 posterity. 
 
 His Idylls, examples of an ill-invented species of 
 poetry, an illegitimate drama to which no degree of skill 
 can give much interest, were early attempts ; and, though 
 works of high promise, they have much of the false 
 Alexandrian taste, and develop but imperfectly Virgil's 
 highest qualities. Some of them, however, were the 
 means of introducing him to the patronage of Augustus 
 and PoUio, before he had reached his thirtieth year ; 
 and after writing a few more, he retired to the beautiful 
 neighbourhood of Naples, where, in the course of seven 
 years, he completed his Georgics, undertaken, it is 
 said, at the suggestion of Augustus and Maecenas, who, 
 alarmed by the general neglect of agriculture, wished to 
 make the art fashionable. The choice of the subject, 
 and the purely didactic portions of the poem, call for 
 no remark. As a work of art it is superior to any 
 composition of the author, perhaps to all the didactic 
 poems ever written. Every thing is done to idealize 
 the theme ; there is thrown about it a gorgeous veil of 
 mythological and historical imagery ; and the scene is 
 shifted from spot to spot of the most lovely landscape. 
 The Georgics were completed about the time of Antony's 
 final ruin and the elevation of Octavius to the uncon- 
 trolled sovereignty. 
 
 Virgil's last and greatest work, which was com- 
 menced soon after, in the fortieth year of his age, had 
 not received his last corrections when he died at Brun- 
 
136 THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 
 
 dusium, in his fifty-second. Politically considered, the 
 legendary story which the uiEneid tells, was in itself 
 perfectly harmless to the new dynasty ; and it may per- 
 haps have been thought that it would even be useful in the 
 foreign provinces, by magnifying the original greatness 
 of Italy and Rome. In the way in which it was treated 
 it directly served Augustus ; for, by recognising his 
 claim of descent from the fabulous founder of the Greco- 
 Latin race, it reared up in his favour a kind of divine 
 right to the first magistracy of the republic. These 
 pretensions of the Julian family, and the general study 
 of Greek antiquities to the utter neglect of those indige- 
 nous to the peninsula, were sufficient reasons why Virgil 
 should adopt, as even Livy the historian did, the fable 
 of the Trojan descent of Rome, instead of searching 
 among the national legends for another hero and another 
 tale. The true materials of Italian history, however, were 
 clearly known to him ; and he has made most skilful use 
 of his antiquarian knowledge, in the account he gives of 
 the adventures of ^neas, and of the state of Italy in 
 his times. A considerable portion of his historical de- 
 tails, and a little of his supernatural machinery, are 
 native to the soil, though these features are kept in 
 studied subordination to the foreign outline. For 
 some of the most lovely scenes of his beautiful coun- 
 try, Virgil, in this poem, did the same service which 
 Scott has performed for so many places in Scotland. In 
 the neighbourhood of Rome, along the Tiber, and on the 
 coast stretching soiithward from its mouth, which though 
 now a woody marsh, was then covered by a chain of 
 villas, lay numerous spots which thenceforward were 
 irrevocably associated Avith the finest poetry and the most 
 ancient legends of the country. In the vicinity of Naples, 
 likewise, the favourite resorts of the luxurious aristo- 
 cracy were elevated into the rank of mythological scenes ; 
 their sulphureous fountains exhaled the breath of the 
 buried giants ; the oyster-preserves became the lakes and 
 rivers of Hades ; and the fashionable cemetery of the 
 Augustan age, among delightful woods and vineyards, 
 
THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 137 
 
 and below the huge rock of Misenum, was, by the per- 
 fection of flattery, pointed out as the Elysian plains, the 
 habitation of the blessed. It would be an intrusion to 
 enter into minute criticism on the merit of the work, in 
 respect either to its plan or to its most prominent details. 
 With no variety and little force of character ; with a 
 hero about whose fate we remain perfectly indifferent, 
 if indeed we do not rather wish success to his enemies ; 
 with a tone of moral feeling which scarcely ever rises 
 above decent worldliness, and sometimes sinks below it ; 
 with a story whose baldness is only relieved by a few 
 episodical tales, which, though exquisitely pathetic, are 
 really excrescences on its design ; with all these de- 
 fects and many more, the ^Eneid has always charmed, 
 and will always continue to charm, every one who has 
 a heart and fancy for the feeling and imagery of poetry, 
 an ear for its most delightful melody, or an intellect quali- 
 fied to appreciate the symmetry and perfection of its art. 
 
 FOURTH AGE. 
 
 FROM THE DEATH OF AUGUSTUS TO THAT OF MARCUS AURELIUS : 
 
 A. u. 767—933 ; or a. i>. 14—180. 
 
 This period is commonly styled the Silver Age of Ro- 
 man Literature. Reckoned to the death of Marcus 
 Aurelius it endured more than a century and a half, and 
 comprises fifteen reigns. The vicissitudes of learning 
 were even more frequent than the changes of sovereignty, 
 since several emperors patronised letters at one time, 
 and persecuted them at another ; but the era in its lead- 
 ing features was inferior both to the Augustan and the 
 last republican age. Its inferiority in style was not its 
 only defect, for taste in poetry and rhetoric was to a 
 considerable degree corrupted nearly at the beginning 
 of it ; and there usually existed a check on philoso- 
 phical and political speculation, which fettered prose 
 writing of every kind. 
 
 In poetry this period gives us Marcus Annaeus Luca- 
 nus, a Spaniard (a. d. 88 — 65) ; Valerius Flaccus, who 
 
138 THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 
 
 died young, in the reign of Domitian ; Publius Papinius 
 Statins, a Neapolitan (61 — 96) ; Caius Silius Italicus 
 (24—99) ; AulusPersius Flaccus of Volterra (34—62) ; 
 Decimus Junius Juvenalis, a native of Aquinum {ah. 
 40 — ah. 120) ; the Spaniard Marcus Valerius Martialis 
 {ah. 63 — ah. 103) : and the author or authors of the 
 tragedies which go under the name of Seneca. The 
 historians of the time were Caius Velleius Paterculus 
 of Naples {ah. b. c. 18 — a. d. 31) ; Valerius Maximus, 
 who was somewhat younger ; Caius Cornelius Tacitus, 
 born at Interamna in Umbria {h. ah. 67 — d. in Trajan's 
 reign) ; Caius Suetonius Tranquillus, a contemporary 
 of Tacitus ; Lucius Annseus Florus, who wrote under 
 Trajan ; and probably Quintus Curtius, or the author, 
 whoever he was, of the Life of Alexander the Great. 
 The highest philosophical and scientific names of the 
 age are Greek. These commence with Strabo the geo- 
 grapher, who was at Rome in the reign of Tiberius ; 
 they include Epictetus, who was ^e son of a freedman 
 of Nero, and was alive in the time of Hadrian ; and 
 Plutarch, who visited Italy towards the end of Vespa- 
 sian's government, and was not there later than the 
 death of Domitian. At the end of the list of writers who 
 cultivated the Grecian philosophy must also come the 
 name of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who, educated 
 by the celebrated Herodes Atticus, warmly promoted 
 that revival of Greek learning which came to its height 
 soon after his time. The mental science of the Latins 
 13 represented by Lucius Annseus Seneca, who was bom 
 at Cordova {ah. b. c. 1 — a. d. 65) : and their physics by 
 Caius Plinius Secundus, called the elder Pliny, a native 
 of Verona or Comum (28 — 79). To these names may be 
 added those of the Spaniard Lucius Junius Columella, a 
 writer on agriculture, and a contemporary of Seneca ; 
 Sextus Juhus Frontinus, the author of a work on the 
 aqueducts, who flourished in the end of the first and be- 
 ginning of the second century of our era ; and Aulus Cor- 
 nelius Celsus, whose treatise on medicine is still extant. 
 The jurisprudence of the time was more remarkable for 
 its squabbles than its excellence. In rhetoric, Marcus 
 
THE LITERATURE OP HEATHEN ITALY. 139 
 
 Annaeus Seneca, the philosopher's father, scarcely de- 
 serves mention ; but the theory of the art was expounded 
 by Marcus Fabius Quinctilianus, supposed to have been 
 a native of Spain (b. 42 — alive in 117) ; and its practice 
 was successfully followed by the younger Pliny, Caius 
 Plinius Caecilius Secundus (b. 62 — d. probably 114). 
 
 Several of these writers, being of little importance for 
 the purpose now in view, may be dismissed very briefly. 
 In poetry, Virgil was the great model, and his pictur- 
 esque groups and flowing versification were imitated 
 by many men of letters in the imperial court. At the 
 head of these imitations stands an epic on the Second 
 Punic War, composed by Silius, a noble Roman, of ac- 
 curate taste and amiable character, who, devoting to 
 literature the evening of a busy life, was praised by 
 Martial and the other hungry poets whom he fed. The 
 poem of Valerius Flaccus on the Argonautic Expedition, 
 is written in the same taste, though far richer in fancy ; 
 but its merit rests less with the author than with 
 ApoUonius Rhodius, whose plan and much of his mate- 
 rials he borrows. Martial's Fourteen Books of Epigrams, 
 in which he was the first to give to this species of com- 
 position that sharpness of turn which characterizes it 
 in modern times, are full of wit, invective, and ob- 
 scenity ; and while they are clearly the productions of 
 one who could have done far better, their chief value 
 is as illustrations (to be used with due allowance) of the 
 manners and the deplorable licentiousness of Rome in 
 the reign of Domitian. The ten tragedies of the pseudo- 
 Seneca would requhe and reward minute attention in 
 a detailed history of Italian literature ; but as they are 
 mere imitations of the Greek, with occasional infusions 
 of the strong Roman spirit, and much of the lazy de- 
 clamation of the times, it is enough to indicate them 
 as the only existing remains of the nation in a branch 
 of literature in which they never attained to excellence. 
 Among the historians who have been enumerated, the 
 servile Paterculus, the gossiping Valerius, and the 
 epitomist Florus, may be dismissed in the same breath 
 with the credulous and pleasingly rhetorical biographer of 
 
140 THE LITERATURE OP HEATHEN ITALY. 
 
 Alexander. The Lives of the Caesars, by Suetonius, 
 have little literary merit, though great historical value, 
 and are here chiefly to be noticed as the first instance 
 of that rage for personal memoirs, which produced 
 afterwards so many collections of scandalous anecdotes. 
 Quinctilian's Institutions, equally admirable for the 
 soundness of their precepts and criticisms, and for their 
 own high literary excellence, may be allowed to pass 
 with the same hearty praise which is due to the younger 
 Pliny's Panegyric on Trajan, and his interesting, lively, 
 and elegant collection of Letters. 
 
 There still remain the most important literary names 
 of the time, Seneca the philosopher and the elder Pliny, 
 the poets Lucan and Statins, Juvenal and Persius, with 
 Tacitus the historian. 
 
 Pliny's thirst for knowledge, which expatiated over 
 every department of human inquiry, maintained his mind 
 in ceaseless activity, and finally cost him his life in the 
 great eruption of Vesuvius, was a remarkable phenome- 
 non ; but, unaccompanied as it was with creative genius 
 or extensive powers of reasoning, it would not detain 
 us, were it not that his only remaining work seems cal- 
 culated to illustrate forcibly the general narrowness of 
 intellect brought on by the state of the times. The 
 thirty-seven books of his " Historia Naturalis," an en- 
 cyclopaedia of ancient knowledge in natural history, 
 geography, and art, are the only considerable treatise of 
 the kind which the Latin empire has bequeathed to us. 
 The notices contained in it possess importance from 
 their number and variety, as well as from the fact that 
 very many sources whence the writer drew his informa- 
 tion are no longer known ; but the whole is heaped 
 together without order or inference, and the most 
 valuable facts, and the shrewdest observations, stand 
 side by side with extravagant caricatures and foolish 
 drivelling. 
 
 Seneca, whose tutorship of Nero, and his murder by 
 that wicked prince, are familiar to every one, and whose 
 moral character remains soiled after every attempt to 
 
THE LITERATURE OF HEATHlia^ ITALY. 141 
 
 cleanse it, exercised on his age an influence scarcely less 
 than that which Cicero had on the age preceding. His 
 mode of writing was vicious, rhetorical, antithetical, 
 and forced, but its strong colouring was the very thing 
 which gave it an eff'ect in the eyes of an over-refined 
 and declining generation. His overstrained stoical tenets 
 were as well calculated for his age as for his style. 
 His example, it is likely, precipitated the fall of Roman 
 letters ; but in his OAvn days and for some time after- 
 wards, it probably did good rather than harm. 
 
 "We next approach one of the most interesting pheno- 
 mena of Latin literature. The tutor of Nero's childhood 
 introduced to the prince's acquaintance his own nephew 
 Lucan, a boy of noble Roman parentage, bom in Spain, 
 but educated in the capital from his infancy. When 
 the emperor began to rule, his early companion be- 
 came one of his cherished friends. The youth was en- 
 thusiastically devoted to letters, a firm believer in the 
 haughty doctrines of stoicism, and full of those recollec- 
 tions of perished freedom and greatness, which the deceit- 
 ful promise of the new reign tempted him, as well as 
 many others, to express. Besides composmg some poems 
 which are lost, he gave vent to his melancholy aspira- 
 tions in his celebrated epic the " Pharsalia." He there 
 depicted the death-struggle of the Roman republic, and 
 avowed that his only consolation for the wretchedness 
 of that fatal period, was the reflection that the fates had 
 appointed it as the necessary prelude to the happiness of 
 the state under the good Nero. The dream of the em- 
 peror's youthful virtue speedily vanished ; and in the 
 conspiracy of Piso against him, the disappointed poet of 
 liberty took a share. He was put to the torture, sen- 
 tenced to die, and, his vems being opened, bled to death, 
 repeating, as he expired, verses from his own great work. 
 He died at the age of twenty-seven, when his strong but 
 over-fervid intellect had not reached its maturity. 
 
 No literary work has been more severely criticised 
 than the Pharsalia, and certain of the charges against 
 it must be at once admitted. Its plan is inartificial and 
 
1 42 THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 
 
 wanting in invention, and it is meagre in poetical orna- 
 ment of every kind ; it has much of Seneca's exaggera- 
 tion, a little of his false antithesis, and very much of his 
 declamatory tediousness ; it is indistinct in its grouping 
 and incidents, which are seen as through a mist ; it 
 wants variety of passion, and is sadly defective in the 
 delineation of character, its personages, except the three 
 leading ones, being mere shadows, of which each is like 
 the other. In despite of all these heavy faults the poem 
 is one of the grandest in any language ; and in some 
 points of view no ancient Latin poem possesses half its 
 interest and importance. 
 
 The key-note of this Roman song is the sentiment of 
 moral strength, of which Cato of Utica is the represen- 
 tative. He, and not Cffisar or Pompey, is the hero, 
 although he is not brought sufficiently into the fore- 
 ground ; and the work, which is confessedly incom- 
 plete, would conclude with his self-murder instead 
 of reaching to Caesar's assassination, to which it is carried 
 in the continuation by our republican countryman, 
 Thomas May. Cato stands alone amidst ruins, without 
 hope, but immovably firm : he knows that liberty is 
 lost to Rome, and that her citizens have ceased to love 
 it ; he enters into the contest with the feeling of a father 
 at the funeral of his children ;* as his task of life draws 
 nearer to its close, his greatness of soul rises into pious 
 serenity ; the voice of the godhead, which has always 
 spoken in his heart, calls him forward ;t and he hastens 
 to obey and offer the final sacrifice to freedom. But this 
 is not the prevailing religious temper of the poem. The 
 sentiment which emerges when the poet himself speaks 
 of heaven is terrible. He feels as if the gods had aban- 
 doned the earth, or grown too weak to govern it ; and it 
 is this emotion of despair that gives birth to some of those 
 wild exclamations wliich, taken by themselves, sound so 
 
 * Pharsalia, lib. ii. v. 297—303. 
 t Ibid. lib. ix. v. 563—584. 
 
THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 143 
 
 extravagant.* There is no sorrow in the tone of thought. 
 Where grief is meant to be expressed the attempt fails ; 
 and the poet's state of mind, in lookmg to his ideal of 
 moral greatness in Cato, and his ideal of freedom in the 
 fallen commonwealth, is that which he has himself so 
 powerfully described as reigning in a household in which 
 lies a fresh corpse, — a chilly feeling in wliich for a time 
 grief is kept aloof by fear.t 
 
 These are the outlines which determine the character 
 of the poem ; but among the shades of the poetical 
 colouring, none tends to give the Pharsalia so peculiar 
 an air as the originality of its supernatural machin- 
 ery'. The beautifully cold mythology of Greece has 
 here no place ; the supreme powers which hover above 
 the field of civil slaughter are the native divinities 
 and native dead of Rome and Latium. In the begin- 
 ning of the contest terrible portents in heaven and in 
 earth affright the people ; the Etruscan rites elicit no 
 prophetic answer ; a raving woman rushes through 
 the streets of the city prophesA'-ing uncertain horrors ; 
 the ghost of Sylla rises in the field of Mars ; and the 
 dead Marius is seen to break open his sepulchre on 
 the banks of the Anio. The atrocities of the Marian 
 civil wars are brought forward in narrative ; the oracle 
 of Delphi is consulted and remains dumb ; and the last 
 supernatural terrors which close around Pompey are 
 summoned by the spells of a Thessalian witch, whose 
 incantation forms one of the most strongly painted 
 scenes in the circle of poetry. A corpse is taken from the 
 field of battle, and the spirit is forced to re-enter it, and 
 tell what it has seen in the world of death. The tor- 
 tured ghost has beheld the Decii and the Curii, the 
 patriots of Rome, weeping and wailing, and Marius, 
 
 Quis justius induit arma. 
 
 Scire nefas : magno se judice quisque tuetur 
 Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni. 
 
 Lib. i. V. 126—128. 
 
 t Pharsalia, lib. ii. v. 21—28. 
 
144 THE LITERATURE OP HEATHEN ITALY. 
 
 Cethegus, and Catiline, bursting their chaios and shout- 
 ing applauses.* 
 
 The republican Lucan is succeeded by Statius, the 
 court poet and kneeling flatterer of Domitian. Statius 
 seems to have been a man of amiable dispositions and 
 domestic habits ; and we are tempted to excuse that 
 want of public virtue which was common to him with 
 nearly the whole world, and for which the liveliness of 
 his poetical genius makes some atonement. He wrote 
 completely in the taste of liis times, with all their rhe- 
 torical superabundance and tediousness, and all their 
 display of Greek erudition ; and he wrote also with a 
 cautious avoidance of every dangerous topic. His chief 
 work, the " Thebais," an epic poem, in ten books, on 
 the shocking story of the two sons of CEdipus, is by no 
 means his best production, though far the most laboured. 
 It has a want of symmetry and coherence, which, 
 with its long-drawn diffuseness, and its exaggerated 
 monotony of horror and cruelty, makes it more weari- 
 some to read than will be agreeable to any who may 
 wish to criticise it ; and altogether it impresses the mind 
 as the work of a man who has thrown away on it much 
 strong feeling, much fine poetical imagery, and a good deal 
 of very picturesque description. The " Sylvse," five 
 books of miscellaneous poems, chiefly in hexameters, are 
 much superior to the epic ; being less tedious, less arti- 
 ficial, and admitting better the kind of ornament which 
 Statius likes to give. His fertile fancy, and his acute eye 
 for the picturesque, find full play in several very pleas- 
 ing poems of the collection, such as the Epithalamium of 
 Stella, the Sorrentine Villa of Pollius Felix, and the 
 prettily sylvan though somewhat aff^ected verses on the 
 Fountain and Overhanging Tree in the Gardens of 
 Atedius Melior, on the Caelian Mount. The few domestic 
 poems evince extreme goodness of heart, and one of 
 
 * ** Lucan's only Muses," says the cynical author of the Pur- 
 suits of Literature, "were Caesar, and Brutus, and Cato, and the 
 genius of expiring Rome." 
 
THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. ] 45 
 
 them, the Poet's Invitation to Claudia, his wife, is in 
 some passages afFectingly tender. 
 
 The picture of the age closes with the satirists Persius 
 and Juvenal, and the historian Tacitus, all of whom 
 we regard here chiefly as painters of life, in which 
 view they require little illustration. The six satires of 
 Persius, scarcely rising above the level of prose, and 
 disfigured by an annoying obscurity, breathe a tone of 
 upright feeling, which, beheld in the age of Nero, is 
 like a sheltered island in a stormy sea ; and the moral 
 advice of the writer is conveyed in a quiet and gentle 
 tone, which contrasts strongly with the thundered 
 menaces of Juvenal. The latter, an orator and man of 
 business, who began to write verse in his fortieth year, 
 has given us sixteen satires, forming an image of gene- 
 ral depravity on which it is appalling to look, even 
 after all the allowance we can make for overcharged 
 declamation. The tone is invariably unpleasant, alter- 
 nating from bitter sarcasm to indignant invective ; and 
 the poet, with all his force and vehemence, is more 
 strong in exaggerating than successful in painting to 
 the life either action or character. His satires are in- 
 structive and most valuable monuments ; but they are 
 far from deserving the first rank in the class of writings 
 to which they belong. The dark view of society which 
 is taken by him is fully shared by Tacitus, whose histo- 
 rical merits this is not the place to extol, and whose 
 literary excellence as one of the most vigorous of all 
 moral teachers, and of all painters of character, is uni- 
 versally acknowledged, and calls for no proof. He wrote 
 in a fortunate time, for scarcely any emperor but Trajan 
 could have permitted the publication of such facts and 
 observations as are contained both in his History and 
 in his Annals ; and it required some courage even in 
 Trajan to allow such sketches of the abuse of power to 
 be circulated in liis dominions. Altogether, the relation 
 in which Tacitus, and one or two similar writers, stood 
 towards the reigning powers, is one of those anomalies 
 which meet us so frequently in the imperial histor}\ 
 
146 THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. 
 
 FIFTH AGE. 
 
 FROM THE ACCESSION OF COMMODUS TO THAT OF CONSTANTINE : 
 
 A. u. 933—1059, OR A. D. 180—306. 
 
 This period, little shorter than the last, was nearly a 
 blank m the native literature and philosophy of It^y. 
 The only great event in the mental cultivation of the 
 age was the rise of a new philosophical school, that of 
 the Latter Platonists, whose seat was Alexandria. The 
 tenets of this mystical sect acquired their chief import- 
 ance after tlie recognition of Christianity as the religion 
 of the state ; and the influence which the writings of the 
 Platonists had on the later fathers of the Church, makes 
 it necessary here to name, among the Greeks, Ammonius 
 Saccas, Plotinus, his pupil, who was the chief originator 
 of the new opinions, and Porphyrius, whose writings are 
 the text-book of the new Platonic theories. The re- 
 awakening of philosophy among the Greeks did not 
 come alone. Among authors who wrote in their lan- 
 guage about this time, and who were more or -less inti- 
 mately connected with Italy or its literature, we find 
 Longinus, Arrian the annalist and philosopher, Diogenes 
 Laertius, Herodian, whose history descends to the reign 
 of the Gordians, and Dio Cassius, a Bithynian, who carried 
 his Roman history, a useful though not impartial work, 
 down to the year 229. Among the same writers, too, 
 must be reckoned the physician Galen, a native of Per- 
 gamus, who lived long in Rome. 
 
 If none of these Greek names belongs to the first rank, 
 they are yet such as the Latin literature had nothing 
 to match. Among the Roman historians there were 
 Justin, whose epitome is still extant ; the antiquary Cen- 
 sorinus, who wrote in the reign of Gordian III. ; and 
 those collectors of scandal, the authors of the Augustan 
 History, a series of Imperial Memou's, from Hadrian to 
 Carinus and Numerianus, wliich were written by differ- 
 ent authors, and, though most curious as striking illus- 
 trations of the times, are quite worthless when viewed as 
 
THE LITERATURE OF HEATHEN ITALY. ] 47 
 
 literary compositions. Among philosophers the Italians 
 had Solinus, if that writer deserves the name ; in poetry 
 they had the didactic verses of Medicine, written by 
 Samonicus, who was honoured by Caracalla ; and they 
 had the poem of Nemesianus, a Carthaginian, on Hunt- 
 ing, composed in the time of Cams, or of his sons, as 
 were the eclogues of the Sicilian Calphumius. Those 
 who doubt the wretched state of Italian literature in the 
 third century of our era, will be convinced by opening 
 the volumes of any of the writers named in the last sen- 
 tence. The philologist Aulus Gellius, whose amusing 
 " Noctes Atticse" still remain, is of more value ; but he 
 was not an Italian, nor educated m Italy. The African 
 schools, with those of Gaul, were now the most flourish- 
 ing in the Western Empire. In the peninsula itself no 
 branch of philosophy or literature prospered, except 
 jurisprudence, to which in this period belong the famous 
 names of Papinian and Ulpian. 
 
1 48 ART IN ITALY AND SICILY BEFORE THE 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ai't in Italy and Sicily before the Conquest of Greece by 
 the Romans. 
 
 PERIOD ENDING A. U. 608 ; OR B. C. 146. 
 
 The Connexion of Italian with Grecian Art — Art in the Greco- 
 ItaUan Colonies. The Infancy of Art in Greece and the 
 Colonies (ending about a. u. 294) : — The Temples — Existing 
 Monuments of Architecture and Sculpture in Magna Graecia 
 and Sicily — The Selinuntine Marbles. Grecian Art after 
 ITS Complete Development (a. u. 294—608, or b.c. 460 — 
 146) : — Painting and Architecture — Extant Decorative Paint- 
 ings and Mosaics — The Greek Architectural Orders — Ruins in 
 Magna Graecia and Sicily — Sculpture in Two Eras : — I. The 
 Era of Great Names (a. u. 294—454) :— Its Two Ages— (1). 
 The Age of Phidias, Polycletus, and Myron — Existing Copies 
 or Imitations of their Works — The Amazons— The Jupiter- 
 busts — The Pallas-statues — The Colossi of the Quirinal Mount 
 — (2). The Age of Scopas, Praxiteles, and Lysippus — The 
 Niobe and her Children — The Fauns — The Cupids — The Venus- 
 statues — The Figures of Hercules — II. The Era of Great Works 
 ( a. u. 454—608) :— Existing Sculptures of this Time— The Venus 
 and Apollo de' Medici — The Borghese Gladiator— The Farnese 
 Hercules — The Germanicus and Cincinnatus. Art in Etruria 
 AND Rome (till a. u. 608, or b.c. 146) : — Recent Elucidations 
 of Etruscan Art — Its Character Grecian — Etruscan Fortresses 
 — Temples — Tombs — Painted Vases — Sculpture and Castings 
 — The She-wolf— The Decline and Revival of Art in Rome. 
 
 In more than one metropolis northward of the Alps we 
 may examine some isolated sections of classical art, but 
 the southern country which those barriers enclose is 
 still the only one in which we can study the whole 
 
CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS. 149 
 
 magnificent volume. The Roman and Grecian archi- 
 tectural ruins still rise amidst the vineyards of Italian 
 valleys, or on the silent expanse of Italian plains. The 
 galleries of Italian palaces are still thronged with statues, 
 as were the temples on whose fragments they are built ; 
 while ancient painting itself, all but lost for ages, has 
 again come to light, and adorns a modern Italian city. 
 To these treasures we must add the numberless reliques 
 which fill the antiquarian cabinets ; and we must also 
 recollect, that of the masterpieces which enrich the 
 museums in England, Germany, and France, a very 
 large proportion have been discovered on the soil of 
 Rome, or of her Cisalpine territories. 
 
 In ancient Italy ait was always an exotic, — a fact 
 which, in reference to the purpose now in view, will 
 demand from us some knowledge of the history and 
 character of Grecian art, as preparatory to our study of 
 its remains in the former country ; for unquestionably 
 very many of these were executed in Greece, while 
 a large proportion of the rest are the works of artists 
 thence derived, and almost all of them bear a clear im- 
 press of the foreign character. The Greeks, in this de- 
 partment not less gloriously than in others, were the 
 makers of their own fortune ; and they shared the pos- 
 session with their colonies from the shores of Asia to those 
 of Sicily and Magna Graecia. The cultivated domain 
 of literature, philosophy, and art, which their genius thus 
 had won, devolved on Rome like an inheritance, which 
 she, a spendthrift heir, enjoyed but did not augment. 
 
 But these were neither the oldest nor the most direct 
 obligations which Italy owed to the Hellenic race ; for, 
 long before that people became the subjects of Rome, 
 all the arts of design were naturalized among their 
 colonists in the south of the peninsula and in Sicily. 
 The coins of the Greek cities in these districts show 
 art, in its earlier stages, to have advanced more rapidly 
 there than even in the mother-country. To these older 
 pieces, belonging to Sybaris, Tarentum, Caudonia, and 
 Posidonia, succeed those of Syracuse, Leontium, and 
 
150 ART IN ITALY AND SICILY BEFORE THE 
 
 Selinus, and, still later, those of the same cities and of 
 Neapolis, Rhegium, and other towns ; all indicating that 
 art in these settlements still kept pace with, if it did 
 not outstrip, the progress of the nation from which its 
 lessons were learned.* In the higher departments, the 
 free municipalities of Lower Italy, and the princes of 
 Sicily, vied with each other in cultivating native genius, 
 and encouraging artists from JEgina and other schools 
 of Greece. Of the pieces of statuary now remaining, 
 which were confessedly the offspring of Grecian art be- 
 fore the Roman conquest, we can in few instances trace 
 the progress to the capital ; but there is no doubt that 
 very many splendid works were found by the conquerors 
 in Sicily and Magna Graecia. In architecture, numerous 
 monuments still bear witness to the skill of the Italiot 
 Greeks. 
 
 THE INFANCY OF ART IK GREECE AND THE GRECIAN COLONIES : 
 ENDING ABOUT A. 0. 294 ; OB B. C. 460. 
 
 The earliest progress of Grecian art, and the much 
 contested questions as to the aid which it received from 
 the oriental nations, must here be left untouched. It is 
 enough to say that, down to the 50th Olympiad, or about 
 the year of Rome 174, it was marked by a rude and 
 formal simplicity. In architecture, the colossal masonry 
 of the Pelasgians gave way to the most ancient and mas- 
 sive fonn of the Doric order, or to the Ionic, which 
 presented lighter proportions even in its oldest shape. 
 Sculpture was little employed, except in the temple- 
 statues of the divinities, in which the deficiency of 
 skill co-operated with an almost Egyptian reverence 
 for precedents ; and the idols of wood and stone were 
 as unadorned and rude as the hoary shrines in whose 
 niches they were placed. The few antique vases, which 
 alone can with any confidence be referred to this early 
 period, exhibit painting in its very infancy. 
 
 * Specimens of Ancient Sculpture, by the Society of Dilet- 
 tanti, vol. i. 1809 : Preliminary Dissertation, pp. 24, 36, 37- 
 
CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS. 151 
 
 With the 50th Olympiad there begins, hotli in Greece 
 and her colonies, a period of rapid advancement, which 
 in little more than a century placed statuary, painting, 
 and architecture, at the very threshold of perfection. Of 
 this interesting era we possess several splendid monu- 
 ments, both in architecture and sculpture, which chiefly 
 belong to Sicily and Magna Graecia. 
 
 The primitive idea of the Grecian Temple was that 
 of a small chapel (the Cell a) with its sacred image ; 
 and as its size increased, it did not lose the essential 
 character of the closed mysterious sanctuary. The 
 structure, roofed over, had no windows, and received 
 no light but from the single door at its front, while 
 the portico at this extremity, which originally may 
 have formed the only ornament, not only was, in some 
 instances, repeated at the oi3posite end, but enlarged 
 itself into an external colonnade to receive the wor- 
 shippers, and extended to the sides or the whole circuit 
 of the edifice, in a single or double row of columns, 
 forming a covered walk outside the walls. A second 
 colonnade shut in the wide space of consecrated ground 
 around the temple, which stood in the midst, gene- 
 rally elevated on a majestic flight of steps. The cell 
 or body of the fane continued to be a comparatively 
 small building. It was the receptacle of the statue 
 and altar of the divinity, and was accessible to none 
 but the priests ; while the worshippers tlironged around 
 in the sacred precincts, and beneath the porticos. The 
 cell was sometimes circular, but most frequently an 
 oblong rectangle. Its interior gradually underwent 
 alterations, of which the most marked was the intro- 
 duction of columns in this part for the purpose of 
 strengthening the roof, and thus permitting a conveni- 
 ent enlargement ; and these internal colonnades were 
 frequently united with a plan by which the roof ran 
 only round the building, covering the space between 
 the walls and the internal columns, while an area in 
 the centre was left open to the sky. There was thus 
 fonned the species of temple called hypsethral, not unlike 
 
152 ART IN ITALY AND SICILY BEFORE THE 
 
 the arrangement of the courts which composed the 
 principal part of a Greek dwelling-house.* 
 
 Of the hypaethral cell, with its internal colonnades, we 
 have a fine instance in the majestic temple of Neptune 
 at Psestum, which also exhibits, in its short crowded 
 columns and gigantic entablature, the most characteristic 
 specimen of that massy form of the older Doric, which 
 was the ftivourite style among the Sicilian and Italian 
 Greeks.t The desolation of these classical ruins now 
 makes a picture very unlike that which the edifices them- 
 selves must have presented to the ancient world, when 
 the statue and the altar, illuminated by gorgeous lamps, 
 decked the cell, when marbles, gilding, and paintings 
 shone on the walls and fretted ceilings, and votive tablets 
 hung thickly in the porticos without. 
 
 To this period belong the three Sicilian temples in 
 the citadel of Selinus, which are most worthy of notice 
 for the sculptures on the metopes of their frieze, dis- 
 covered among the ruins in 1823.:{: Three of the slabs, 
 it is clear, are far more ancient than the rest, and are 
 the only ones belonging to the age now under review. 
 The first represents a naked Hercules carrying off, in 
 a serio-comic posture, the conquered Cercopes. Th" 
 subject of the second is Perseus killing Medusa, while 
 
 * Quatremere de Quinc)', however, has propounded a theory 
 which, if admitted, overthrows all our established notions as to 
 the form of the ancient temples. He maintains that none of 
 them, not even the largest, were in any part open to the sky ; 
 that Vitruvius, in describing hypaethral temples, speaks of a plan 
 which had never been executed; that the temple of Paestum was 
 roofed entirely over with bronze, and others with flags of stone or 
 wooden beams. He maintains also .that the cells were fully lighted 
 by windows in the roof. Memoires de I'lnstitut Royal de France ; 
 Classp d'Histoire, tom. iii. 1818. 
 
 •f For PfEstum and the Sicilian Tem.ples, except the recently 
 investigated ruins in the citadel of Selinus, consult Wilkins' An- 
 tiquities of Magna Graecia, 1807. 
 
 ^ By jMr Harris and Mr Angell. The marbles were seized by 
 the Neapolitan government, and are now in the museum at Pa- 
 lermo. Casts are in the British Museum ; and a description was 
 published in 1826, by Mr Angell and Mr Evans. See also the 
 Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. ii. p. 144. 
 
CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS. 153 
 
 Minerva stands by. The third, which is much broken, 
 has a female standing and a male kneeling. The 
 reliefs on these tablets, and the figures which, com- 
 pletely detached from the wall, filled the pediments of 
 the temple of Minerva at ^gina, and were discovered in 
 1811, rank among the most curious of all contributions 
 to the antiquities of art.* If we were not entitled to 
 presume that the Attic ^gina may have been in advance 
 of the obscure Sicilian colony, both in the theory and 
 the mechanism of art, the difference which exists be- 
 tween the Selinuntine marbles and the -^ginetic, both 
 in style and execution, might induce us to suspect that 
 the former were considerably earlier works than the 
 latter. Taken together, the two sets of fragments ex- 
 hibit sculpture to us as Phidias found it. In the me- 
 topes of Selinus, while the lines are firm, and the general 
 contour of the human figure is traced with a tolerable 
 approach to truth, the proportions are ludicrously 
 clumsy, the attitudes are stiff and unvaried, and the 
 expression of all the countenances is a slight and almost 
 silly simper. In the iEgina marbles the expression of 
 all the heads is uniform, but it is that of profound repose ; 
 the outlines of the figures are hard, their proportions 
 meagre, and the bones and muscles harshly marked ; 
 but the truth of the details astonishes artists, and there 
 breathe through the whole a strength and simplicity 
 which not unworthily announce the approacliing ex- 
 cellence of the Parthenon. 
 
 ART IN GREECE AND THE GRECIAN COLONIES, FROM ITS COM- 
 PLETE DEVELOPMENT TILL THE ROMAN CONQUEST : 
 
 A. u. 294—608 ; or b. c. 460—146. 
 
 About the 80th Olympiad (b. c. 460), architecture 
 and sculpture reached their highest excellence among 
 
 * The ^gina Marbles, having been restored by Thorwaldsen, 
 are now in the Glyptothek of Munich. Their exact age cannot be 
 easily fixed, but they certainly fall between the 55th and 77th 
 Olympiads. 
 
154 ART IN ITALY AND SICILY BEFORE THE 
 
 the Greeks, and the perfection of their painting belongs 
 to the same epoch, or one very little later. From that 
 time till the taking of Corinth by the Romans, in the 
 third 3'ear of the 158th Olympiad, Greece encountered 
 many political vicissitudes ; but there is little reason 
 to suspect that the disturbances of the country affected 
 the arts to any greater extent than depressing them at 
 one place to raise them at another. None of them, it is 
 true, preserved the transcendent character of the earlier 
 age ; and the artists of the Achaean league were distin- 
 guished by different qualities from those of the great 
 Macedonian dynasty, as the genius of these again had 
 differed from that which illuminated the times of the 
 Peloponnesian war, and the golden reign of Pericles. 
 But though there was change, there was no degradation ; 
 or, if there was, it appeared in architecture only, and 
 even there the deviation from purity of taste was as yet 
 but slight. 
 
 Painting and Architecture. 
 Even after the discoveries of the last century in 
 Campania, it is difficult to seize fully the tme character 
 of Grecian painting, as exliibited by its first masters ; 
 and it goes for little to be told of the accurate and 
 noble drawing of Polygnotus, of the softer and more 
 imaginative beauty which followed it in the works of the 
 Italian Zeuxis, and his rival Parrhasius of Ephesus, 
 or of the union of high theory with mechanical per- 
 fection, which is attributed to the Ionian Apelles and 
 Protogenes of Rhodes, the great painters of the Mace- 
 donian times. In the latter ages of the period, after 
 the foundation of Alexander's empire, this art was 
 extensively applied to the internal decoration of build- 
 ings, when still-life and architectural drawings became 
 common. The practice of painting on terra-cotta vases, 
 formerly so popular, fell into disuse, or was cornipted ; 
 and most of the Apulian specimens, from Canusium, 
 Barium, and other cities, exemplify the artificial man- 
 nerism which then prevailed. On the other hand. 
 
CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS. 155 
 
 Mosaics appeared for the first time at Pergamus ; and 
 the celebrated Drinking Doves, which were the subject 
 of an early composition, have been supposed to be pre- 
 served in an imitation discovered in the Villa of Ha- 
 drian.* A Mosaic lately found, representing one of 
 Alexander's battles, is an example of an animated style, 
 not exactly accordant with Grecian principles ; but it 
 is executed with skill, and is very instructive.t 
 
 In architecture, between the time of Phidias and the 
 siege of Corinth, much was done of which we possess 
 magnificent remains, and very much that has perished 
 without leaving a shadow. The Doric order, in the 
 hands of the Attic artists, attained a simple majesty of 
 grace perfectly true to its original character. The 
 Ionic, invented by the Asiatic Greeks, and developed 
 by them in the form which has been recognised as the 
 rule of the order, was used by the Athenians as a fit 
 subject on which to exercise their fancy and love of 
 ornate beauty ; and about the 85th Olympiad appears 
 the graceful Corinthian column, whose proportions 
 gradually arranged themselves in a light and slender 
 symmetry harmonizing with its style of ornament, 
 in which the Ionic volute became subordinate to 
 rich groups of natural foliage. It is worth while to 
 notice, that in the time of Pericles, the earliest portion 
 of the period now before us, we discover in at least one 
 of the great temples of Greece the keyed arch;:|: an 
 invention which it v/as difficult to unite harmoni- 
 ously with the prevailing horizontal lines of the orders, 
 
 • Capitoline Museum ; Stanza del Vaso, No. 101. 
 
 •f In the museum of Naples : discovered at Pompeii, in the 
 House of the Faun, 10th October 1831. 
 
 X See (at sections 107 and 109) the excellent *' Handbuch der 
 Archiiologie derKunst" (2d edition, Breslau, 1835) : by Miiller, 
 tho celebrated author of " The Dorians," The authorities are, 
 Plutarch, in Pericle, cap. 13, compared with Julius Pollux, ii. 
 54, and Senec. Epist. 90, assigning to Democritus (who died 
 about the 1st year of the 94th Olympiad) what he calls the inven- 
 tion of the arch and key-stone ; though, as the keyed arch unques. 
 tionably existed long before in Rome and elsewhere in Italy, De- 
 mocritus in all likelihood only borrowed it. 
 
156 ART IN ITALY AND SICILY BEFORE THE 
 
 and which, borrowed probably from Italy, the Ro- 
 mans soon received back. The architecture of Greece, 
 when thus perfected, was applied in every conceivable 
 shape. In the free days of the nation, she and her 
 colonies erected fortifications, theatres, odea, stadia, and 
 temples ; and her Macedonian conquerors employed 
 her artists in constructing princely palaces, tombs, and 
 even cities, like those of Alexandria and Antioch. Of 
 edifices not within our proper limits, it will be enough, 
 from the first and purest stage of this period, to call to 
 mind the magnificent group of temples at Athens. 
 
 In Sicily the example was eagerly followed. The great 
 temple at Agrigentum belongs to this period ; some of 
 those at Selinus do so likewise, as well as that of iEgeste. 
 In Magna Graecia all the ruins of Paestum, excepting the 
 temple of Neptune, may be traced to the same age, 
 though several of them scarcely do justice to its spirit ; 
 and to it also may be referred a few less important re- 
 mains in the same region. Both there and in Sicily the 
 Doric order was mvariably used, and the two others are 
 nowhere to be seen, except on coins belonging to those 
 colonies. Domestic architecture attained elegance in 
 Sicily much earlier than in the mother- country.* 
 
 Sculpture, 
 Grecian sculpture, as it appeared from the time of 
 Phidias till the Roman conquest, requires more minute 
 illustration ; and it may be convenient to divide the 
 period into two eras. The first of these reaches from 
 the 80th to the 120th Olympiad ; and, in a duration of 
 about a century and a half, includes two successive ages 
 of art, both adorned by very celebrated names. The 
 second era, of about the same length, from the 120th 
 Olympiad to the 158th, though it furnishes fewer great 
 masters than the former, has bequeathed to us works 
 of the highest excellence. 
 
 * Stieglitz, Archaolonjie der Baukunst der Griechen und 
 Rbmer, vol. i. : Historical Introduction. 
 
CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS. 157 
 
 I. lu the first section of the earlier period five artists 
 must be named, — Phidias, Polycletus, IMyron, Pytha- 
 goras, and Calaniis. All of these had some points in 
 common, and in particular the freedom with which they 
 treated their subjects as compared even with their im- 
 mediate predecessors. That strange union of accurate 
 drawing w^ith stiffness of attitude and design, and other 
 similar contradictions, which are to be observed in so 
 many statues of the age preceding Phidias, have been 
 explained by the best critics, as arising from a designed 
 adherence to older models, the sacred and patriarchal 
 idols of the shrines for which these more modern works 
 were destined. In the Phidian age itself this hieratic 
 style was discarded, even in the simple figures ; and 
 freedom of manner was furthered and perfected by the 
 increased demand which that age made for statues and 
 reliefs, as ornaments for unconsecrated buildings. In 
 the time of Pericles, or very soon after it, art was com- 
 pletely secularized ; for, without being banished from 
 the temples, it was introduced into every public place, 
 and into many private dwellings. For the sacred edifices 
 the artists had to frame images of the gods, and reliefs of 
 mythic legends ; for the agorce, theatres, and porticos, 
 there were similar reliefs or statues, and other statues 
 representing statesmen or athletae ; and for the gratifi- 
 cation of individual taste or vanity, there were ideal or 
 portrait statues, with reliefs and groups from mytholo- 
 gical stories ; while the introduction of sculpture into 
 private mansions became, in the following age, yet more 
 common, and added to its former subjects copies of the 
 celebrated works produced in the era immediately under 
 our notice. While the artists of the generation of Peri- 
 cles were guided by a minute study of the human frame, 
 for which the national costume, modes of life, and public 
 spectacles, afforded them remarkable opportunities, the 
 highest among them differed not less in their favourite 
 subjects, than in their mode of treating them ; and their 
 characteristics exercised a strong influence on art in all 
 succeedins: times. 
 
158 ART IN ITALY AND SICILY BEFORE THE 
 
 Confessedly at the head of sculpture in his age stood 
 the Athenian Phidias, and the Attic school over which 
 he presided. We can scarcely presume that he had 
 quitted the studio of his master Ageladas before the 
 commencement of the 80th Olympiad. Besides giving 
 attention to painting and architecture, he embraced 
 statuary in all its branches, mcluding even the antique 
 but already neglected art of carving on wood. His more 
 usual employments, however, were, sculpture in marble, 
 which had not yet become the favourite material for 
 statues, — the working in metal, both by casting and chas- 
 ing (the latter being in fact the celebrated Toreutic art 
 of the ancients), — and the union of all those modes of 
 procedure in the construction of the Chryselephantine 
 statues, which were compositions of gold and ivory, with 
 other substances, usually gigantic in size and gorgeously 
 decorated.* The number of works attributed to this 
 great sculptor, several of which were colossal, is as in- 
 credible as the number ascribed to Raffaelle ; unless, 
 indeed, we suppose the ancient artist, as well as the 
 modern, to have given his name to productions which 
 he only designed, and allowed his scholars to execute. 
 In all his works which were considered successful, 
 the subjects are such as call for majesty of conception 
 rather than beauty. His Olympic Jupiter, and his 
 Minerva Parthenos for the Acropolis of Athens, both 
 colossal statues, were the embodied images of that 
 mythic grandeur which reigned in the Homeric hea- 
 ven. Polycletus, an artist of Sicyon, and a fellow-pupil 
 of Phidias, led the way in an opposite path of art, 
 and found, many more imitators. He did not reach the 
 sublimity of his rival in the representation of divi- 
 nity ; but his works displayed a completeness of finish, 
 an exactness of proportions, and an ideal beauty, which 
 he delighted in applying to the execution of human, and 
 
 * The explanation of the Chryselephantine works is the im- 
 mediate purpose, though far from occupying the whole discussion, of 
 Quatreraere de Quincy's splendid work, Le Jupiter Olympien ; 
 Paris, 1815, folio. 
 
CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS. 159 
 
 especially of youtliful figures. Myron of Eleutherae, 
 who also studied under Ageladas, resembled Polycletus 
 in his choice of subjects, and was celebrated for his truth 
 to nature, and a perfect imitation of life, without high 
 feelmg or individuality of character. Both Polycletus 
 and Myron executed several celebrated statues of Ath- 
 letfie, as did Pythagoras of Rhegium, who deserves notice 
 here as the greatest sculptor of Magna Graecia. Calamis, 
 the last named of the five great artists of the time, who was 
 perhaps an Athenian, appears to have been rather older 
 than the others, and is charged with betraying more of 
 the antique stifihess than they. To him are ascribed a 
 list of perished works which indicate a love for the devo- 
 tional and elevated, and amongst others an Apollo Pro- 
 tector, erected in the agora of Athens, and supposed by 
 some, with little reason, to have been the prototype, or 
 even the original, of the Apollo Belvedere.* 
 
 With the exception of architectural sculptures, no 
 original works of those great masters are known to 
 exist. But several antique statues are recognised as 
 being copies, or, which is more likely, free imitations, 
 either of their mventions, or of those executed by 
 other less famous statuaries belonging to the same 
 age. The Amazon of Polycletus was publicly adjudged 
 superior to those of Phidias, Ctesilaus, and several in- 
 ferior sculptors. The beautiful Amazon of the Vatican, a 
 figure in the act of springing forward,t with its repeti- 
 
 * Giambattista Visconti : II Museo Pio-Clementino, torn. i. p. 
 27; tav. 14, 15; 1782: but compare his son's remarks in the 
 Musee Francais, Article " L'ApoUon du Belvedere." 
 
 + ISliiller's explanation (Handbuch, §417-2). The statue is in 
 the Museo Pio-Clementiuo, Galleria delle Statue, No. 18 : en- 
 graved in the Musee Fran9ai5. There is a copy in the Capitol, 
 
 and several elsewhere In this and other references to the museums 
 
 of the Vatican and Capitol, the present places of the several an- 
 tiques, and the numbers afiBxed to them, have been verified by a 
 consultation of the only full catalogues of those galleries which 
 have yet been published. These are contained in the 2d and 3d 
 volumes of the German Guide-book to the City of Rome (Beschrei- 
 bung der Stadt Rom), commenced in 1830 under the editor- 
 ship of M. Bunsen, and written by that distinguished scholar, by 
 Gerhard, Platner, Rostell, and other German antiquaries. The 
 
160 ART IN ITALY AND SICILY BEFORE THE 
 
 tions, are also regarded as copies or imitations either of 
 the statue of Phidias, or of that of Polycletus;* and 
 the wounded Amazon of the Capitol,t preserves the 
 idea of the work of Ctesilaus. INIyron's Hercules, and 
 his equally celebrated Cow, have perished ; but seve- 
 ral excellent imitations have given us his Discobolus, 
 a bent figure of great truth and merit. | The concep- 
 tion of the Jupiter-head invented by Phidias may 
 undoubtedly be traced in those noble busts, of which 
 several are extant, with the clear powerful forehead, on 
 each side of which the hair falls backwards like a lion's 
 mane ; the deep, large, majestic eyes ; the placid, finely 
 formed lips, and the full beard descending on the mus- 
 cular breast. § The Pliidian Minerva has scarcely be- 
 queathed us any thing so good ; but there are several 
 statues which retain the leading idea, with many acces- 
 sories of the figure, and three at least may be said to be- 
 long to the age of the sculptor himself, and to preserve " 
 verymuchjindeedjof the graveand dignified beauty which 
 was his characteristic. 1 1 On the brow of the Quirinal 
 
 formidable bulk of this learned work disqualifies it for serving 
 as a popular manual ; but it is almost faultless as a text-book for 
 the systematic student of classical antiquities, 
 
 * Of Phidias : Miiller, ut supra ; Thiersch, in his Epochen 
 der bildenden Kunst unter den Griechen ; 2d edition, Munich, 
 1829. — Of Polycletus : Gerhard, in the Beschreibung, vol. ii. 
 part 2, p. 168. 
 
 t Capitoline IMuseum, ^reat hall, No. 9. A copy, ill-restored, 
 in the Louvre, No. 281 (Clarac's Catalogue, 1830). 
 
 + Among other copies that of the Vatican ; Museo Pio-Clemen- 
 tino, Sala della Biga, No. 10 ; and another, perhaps the best 
 extant, in the British Museum; Room x. No. 41 ; (Catalogue of 
 1832) ; engraved in the Dilettanti Specimens of Ancient Sculp- 
 ture, vol. i. plate 29. 
 
 § In the \'atican, the grand colossal bust from Otricoli, Mus. 
 Pio-Clem. Sala Rotonda, No. 3, engraved in the Musee Fran- 
 cais, and in the Museo Pio-Clementino, torn. vi. tav. i. (1792). 
 Another in the Florentine Gallery. 
 
 II The colossal Pallas of Velletri, now in the Louvre, No 310; 
 engraved in the Musee Francais. The Giustiniani ^Minerva of the 
 Vatican, Mus. Belvedere, Braccio Nuovo, No. 23. The colossal 
 Minerva of IMr Hope's Collection, engraved in the Specimens, 
 vol. ii. No. 9. A duplicate of Mr Hope's statue is in the Museo 
 Borbonico of Naples : JNIarble statues, No. 125 ; (Catalogue of 
 1831.) 
 
CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS. 161 
 
 in Rome still stand two colossal and singularly striking 
 figures in marble, eacli reining in a horse. They give to 
 the hill its modern name of Monte Cavallo, and bear 
 respectively on their pedestals, in Latin characters, the 
 names of Phidias and Praxiteles. Antiquaries entertain 
 very discordant opinions regarding them ; but artists are 
 almost unanimous in declaring them to be copies (one of 
 them excellent) of Greek works in the style of the times 
 to which those mighty masters belong. 
 
 Till within the last quarter of a century, the students 
 of ancient art were compelled to glean their knowledge 
 of the Phidianage from these and a few other antiques, 
 none of them rising above the rank of copies or imitations. 
 But with the removal of the Elgin Marbles to England, 
 and their public exhibition in the British Museum, 
 there opens a new era for our acquaintance with ancient 
 statuary. The most important of these monuments are 
 the admirable sculptures of the Parthenon, consisting 
 of (1.) the reliefs of the metopes, or slabs which, 
 separated by triglyphs, ran along the frieze of the 
 peristyle, or external colonnade ; (2.) the uninter- 
 rupted series of reliefs which adorned the frieze of the 
 cella ; and (3.) the statues of heroic size, completely 
 disengaged from the walls, which filled the tympana, 
 or triangular spaces of the pediments at both ends of the 
 temple. The two sets of reliefs are unequal ; but their 
 design, as well as the superintendence of their execution, 
 undoubtedly belong to Phidias ; and the lofty beauty 
 of the statues of the pediments, authorizes us to assign 
 to him a more immediate share in their production. 
 The study of these wonderful reliques is essential, as a 
 preparative, to the due appreciation of those later pieces 
 of sculpture, which, till the exhibition of the Elgin 
 ^larbles, formed the highest specimens of ancient art. 
 The Phigaleian Marbles, discovered in 1812, and also 
 transferred to the British Museum, are palpably modelled 
 after the metopes of the Parthenon ; but though in- 
 ferior, both in conception and execution, they are works 
 of high excellence, and prove the immediate influence 
 
 VOL. 1. K 
 
J 62 ART IN ITALY AND SICILY BEFORE THE 
 
 which the school of Phidias exercised on the rest of 
 Greece, as some of the recently found metopes of 
 Selinus exhibit its influence on the Sicilian colonies. 
 
 As to the mechanical department, statuary may be 
 considered as having then reached its height ; and while 
 bronze, and the various complex compositions of which 
 that or similar materials formed a part, continued to 
 be the favourites, marble became gradually more com- 
 mon, though for a long time it was not frequent enough 
 to allow us to look for many existing specimens except 
 in architectural ornaments. The application of sculp- 
 ture, however, became every day more extended ; and 
 with the swift rise of the Macedonian monarchy there 
 began a system of patronage, perhaps exceeding in its 
 amount that which had been enjoyed in the days of Peri- 
 cles. The munificence of Philip and Alexander gave 
 birth to that school of art which was marked for us as 
 occupying the second age in the period ending -svith the 
 120th Olympiad. The great names of the time are 
 Scopas, Praxiteles, and Lysippus, of whose works we 
 have some traces, with Leochares and Euphranor, whose 
 character we must take on trust. Scopas and Praxiteles, 
 with Leochares, may be considered as the successors, in 
 spirit as well as in locality, of their countryman Phidias ; 
 while Lysippus and Euphranor in like manner followed 
 the path opened by Polycletus, whose birthplace Sicyon 
 was also that of Lysippus. 
 
 "With decisive differences of character, Scopas, Praxite- 
 les, and Lysippus, had common tendencies. In the style 
 and execution of their works it would be unreasonable 
 to expect the continuance of that broad, massive, severe 
 classicism which marked the newly emancipated age of 
 Phidias ; and it would be hopeless to look for a preservation 
 of the grand and simple spirit of invention and arrange- 
 ment, which had distinguished that master individually 
 from other sculptors of his time. The members of the 
 new Sicyonic, as well as those of the new Attic school, in- 
 spired art ynth a greater softness of design as well as of 
 
CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS. 163 
 
 execution, and, departing from the negative indication of 
 general forms, they for the first time introduced indivi- 
 dual character. But the great feature of their vrorks 
 may he said to have been beauty, — a beauty which, bor- 
 rowing its outward form from the most careful study of 
 nature, was yet the representative of internal loveliness 
 and repose of soul, — a beauty which, while it wanted the 
 sublimity of the oldest races of the gods, still breathed the 
 air of Olympus, — a beauty which had in it more of the 
 expression of human feeling than elder art had allowed, 
 but was too loftily ideal to exhibit the energy of passion. 
 
 Scopas may without hesitation be described as ap- 
 proaching nearest to the spirit of Phidias. We read of his 
 works as embracing subjects from the legends of Venus 
 and Eros, from those of Bacchus and the Maenads, and a 
 magnificent group of Neptune with other sea-divinities 
 and Achilles, which afterwards stood in the Circus Flami- 
 nius at Rome. We do not possess any trace of these 
 masterpieces, unless we conclude that, as is more than 
 probable, the character exhibited by some of the later re- 
 presentations of Bacchus and his Maenad-nymphs is 
 founded in that of his figures. His Apollo, however, in the 
 character of the Lyre-player, which Augustus set up in 
 his temple of Apollo Actiacus on the Palatine, is in all 
 likelihood substantially preserved in the fine statue of the 
 Vatican, in a long flowing dress, almost feminine.* 
 
 The temple of Apollo Sosianus in Rome possessed a 
 group of Niobe and her Children, which the ancients pas- 
 sionately admired, doubting, however, whether it were 
 the work of Scopas or of Praxiteles.t On the assump- 
 tion that the leading figures of the celebrated family of 
 
 * :\Jus. Pio-Clem. Sala delle Muse, No. 17. Found with the 
 statues of the Muses (now in the same hall) in the villa of Cassius 
 at Tivoli. But both Ennio Quirino Visconti and his father suppose 
 the statue a copy of the Apollo which was erected with the Muses 
 of Philiscus in the Portico of Octavia, and was the production of 
 Timarchides, an artist who seems to have flourished a short time 
 before the Roman conquest. II Museo Pio-Clementino, torn. i. 
 p. 30, tav. 16, and IMusee Francais. 
 
 t Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. xxxvi.'cap. 4- 
 
1 64 ART IN ITALY AND SICILY BEFORE THE 
 
 Niobe, which was, in 1588, found at Rome near the gate 
 San Giovanni, and is now in the Florentine gallery, 
 convey to us the character of the classical group com- 
 memorated by Pliny, modern critics are inclined to at- 
 tribute the original to Scopas. Of these sixteen statues, 
 six at least, it is quite manifest, do not in any way 
 belong to the story ; and the opinion is all but universal, 
 that even those which are really parts of the series are 
 only copies or imitations of the work so celebrated in 
 antiquity. Among the figures which may certainly be re- 
 garded as connected with it, we have the mother clasping 
 the youngest daughter to her breast, and looking up to 
 heaven ; a dead son lying on the ground ; a son who has 
 fallen on his right knee ; an older son in flight with his 
 mantle wrapt round the left arm ; a wounded daughter ; 
 a young boy in flight ; another older son in the attitude 
 of the fleeing youth first mentioned ; a daughter in 
 flight ; and finally, the Paedagogus. To these, on the 
 strength of Thorwaldsen's opinion, we may add a statue 
 of the Florentine gallery usually called a Narcissus, a 
 kneelmg youth, whose left hand presses a wound on his 
 back.* The figures now enumerated are of very unequal 
 execution. The daughter on the mother's left, and the 
 dead son, are admirable, being indeed only second to the 
 group of the mother and the youngest daughter. In 
 this sublime composition, the heroic grandeur and ener- 
 getic life of the elder figure, and the fixed air of agony 
 which animates the beauty of its countenance, are per- 
 haps the most exquisite things which Grecian art has 
 
 * See Miiller, Handbuch, § 126 : Thiersch, Epochen, p. 3b8, 
 &c. Of several figures there are good repetitions. The dead 
 son is both at Dresden and Munich. There are several antique 
 busts of the mother, one of which, wonderfully grand, is in Lord 
 Yarborough's Collection : (Engraved in the Dilettanti Specimens, 
 vol. i. plates 35, 36, 37). The fleeing daughter is repeated in the 
 Vatican (IMuseo Chiaramonti, No. 174) ; and the son fallen on his 
 1-nee is in the Capitoline IVIuseum (Galleria, No. 40). A fragment 
 of a group in the Vatican (Mus. Pio-Clem. Galleria delle Statue, 
 No. 40), representing a female figure sunk down and supported by 
 a male, has also been supposed a Niobide group. The Niobide 
 statues are illustrated by the well-designed reliefs of a sarcophagus 
 in the Vatican (Mus. Pio-Clem. Galleria de' Candelabri, No. 36). 
 
CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS. 165 
 
 bequeathed us, and the most characteristic production of 
 that highest age, which united in perfection life with 
 repose, the intensity of feeling with the purest sense of 
 the beautiful. 
 
 Ancient writers mention numerous works of Praxite- 
 les, chiefly, like those of Scopas, in marble ; and they 
 describe several of them with a minuteness which en- 
 ables us to point out some existing antiques as being at 
 any rate coincident with his inventions in subject. A 
 few of these statues are at once so beautiful and so cha- 
 racteristic, that it is not rash to go a step farther, and pro- 
 nounce them to belong to the many productions which, 
 in some cases close copies and in others imitations of the 
 elder masters, were brought forward to gratify the luxury 
 and taste of the later Greek period or the earlier times 
 of Imperial Rome. 
 
 The most celebrated works of Praxiteles belonged 
 to the Dionysiac mythology, to the legends of Venus, 
 or to those of Apollo. In all of them he delighted to 
 represent a tender and expressive loveliness, wliich in 
 the Bacchic scenes partook of the wild enthusiasm of 
 the mysteries, while his Venus and his Amor finely 
 united with their human beauty the dignity of godhead ; 
 and his Apollo, youthful or even boyish, was still the 
 divinity of the temple. Of all these classes of works, 
 we possess in the galleries of Italy at least hints and 
 recollections. In the Dionysiac figures, besides forming 
 that youthful conception of the character of Bacchus 
 which appears in all subsequent statues, Praxiteles is 
 also believed to have invented the poetical figure of the 
 Satyr or Faun, discarding the older monstrous shapes, 
 and retaining little of the animal lineaments except the 
 pleasingly characteristic features and the air of wild 
 playfulness. His Athenian Satyr, it is generally ad- 
 mitted, has been imitated in the figure of the boyish 
 Satyr with the Flute, leaning on the trunk of a tree, 
 which occurs in several repetitions of excellent design.* 
 
 * In the Vatican, Braccio Nuovo, No. 93 ; found at Circeii. 
 In the Capitoline Museum, Galleria, No, 12, 
 
166 ART IN ITALY AND SICILY BEFORE THE 
 
 Of the Apollo Slaying the Lizard there are also several 
 imitations possessing much natural grace.* In the Vati- 
 can is a youthful Cupid, one of the best works of anti- 
 quity, in imperfect preservation, but equally admirable 
 for its skill of execution and for the force and originality 
 of its expression, w^hich is that of a tender, pinmg, al- 
 most sorrowful, beauty. There are strong reasons for be- 
 lieving that this fine torso is an imitation of a Praxitelcan 
 statue, either his Eros of Parion or that of Thespioe.t 
 
 But by far the most famous productions of this master 
 were his statues of Venus, especially the undraped one 
 of Cnidos. This celebrated figure is minutely described 
 by Lucian, and is represented on the coins of the island ; 
 and it is, in the first place, quite clear, that the Venus 
 de' Medici is neither this work nor any copy of it. The 
 coins and the description farther allow us with much 
 probability to fix on two existing specimens as copies or 
 close imitations of the Cnidian Venus ; and these display 
 such unlikeness of character to the Medicean, as to aid 
 the certainty of the conclusion which refers to a later 
 age than that of Praxiteles, the statue in which " the 
 goddess loves in stone." Of these two copies one, not 
 of first-rate merit, is in the Vatican, the other has pass- 
 ed from the Braschi palace in Rome to the Royal Gallery 
 of Munich. ;|: We cannot, however, fairly appreciate the 
 changes of character which the Venus underwent in the 
 liands of the statuaries, unless we begin with the speci- 
 men lately discovered at Melos.§ This admirable work 
 is conceived and executed in the boldest and purest style of 
 ancient art ; and both the broadness of the manner, the 
 
 * In the Villa Borghese of Rome ; a bronze in the Roman Villa 
 Albani : in the Vatican : in the gallery of Florence; and elsewhere. 
 
 t Mus. Pio-Clera. Galleria delle Statue, No. 2. The museum 
 of Naples possesses a much more entire duplicate : Statues, No. 
 312. 
 
 J Mus. Pio-Clem. Galleria delle Statue, No. 38. Glyptothek 
 of Munich, No. 135 (Schorn's Catalogue of 1833). The Munich 
 statue is slightly given in the twenty-second plate to Flaxman's 
 Lectures on Sculpture. 
 
 § Louvre, No. 232 : discovered in 1820, in the amphitheatre of 
 the Greek island of INIilo (Melos) : heroic size. 
 
CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS. 167 
 
 fidelity to nature, and tlie blended loveliness and majesty 
 of the figure, make it far the nearest in character to the 
 Phidian age of all the Venus-statues which remain. If 
 we pass from the partially draped Venus Victrix of Melos 
 to the Cnidian Venus of Munich, we shall remark, in the 
 complete unclothing of the figure practised here by 
 Praxiteles, as by Scopas on another occasion, the first 
 steps in that secularization of art which at length made 
 it the handmaid of luxury or sensuality; but the nudity 
 in this case is excused by the accessories, and the charac- 
 ter of the Cnidian statue is even liigher and purer than 
 that of the Venus de' Medici. Its face and figure are 
 scarcely less beautiful than those of the Florentine statue, 
 but both are nobler, and the head more ideal, while the 
 attitude has more of female dignity and less of female 
 softness. The execution is exquisite ; and, if we must 
 hold the statue of the Vatican to be a copy at second- 
 hand, we are under no necessity of having recourse to 
 this supposition in regard to the other. 
 
 Lysippus, who had the sole privilege of representing 
 Alexander the Great in statuary, as Apelles had in 
 painting, andPyrgoteles in seal-engraving, was celebrated 
 for improvements in some details of art, for his careful 
 study of nature, and for his introduction of a light- 
 ness and slendemess of proportion, which gave to his 
 figures an imposing appearance of height. His works 
 were greatly admired at Rome, and are the subjects of 
 several anecdotes. His athlete-statue, called the Apoxyo- 
 menoSy was placed by Agrippa at the gate of his baths ; 
 but Tiberius carried it ofi^" to the palace, on which the 
 people at the theatre with one voice called for its restitu- 
 tion, and it was restored. His Alexander as a child was 
 gilded by Nero, and destroyed in the attempt to remove 
 the coating of metal.'"^ His numerous works, the sub- 
 jects of which had much of an heroic character, were cast 
 in bronze, and we neither possess any original statue 
 of his, nor probably the immediate imitation of any. 
 
 • Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. xxxiv. cap. 19. 
 
168 ART IN ITALY AND SICILY BEFORE THE 
 
 His portraits of Alexander, however, are the originals 
 of those heads, some of them fine ones, which preserve 
 the features of the Macedonian exalted into ideality by 
 an admixture of the Jove-like hair and form.* The 
 statues of Hercules by Lysippus enjoyed great celebrity ; 
 and one of them, the Colossus of Tarentum, was removed 
 by Fabius Maximus to the Capitol of Rome, whence it 
 passed to Constantinople. Earlier artists, some of whose 
 works remain, had partially fixed the leading character- 
 istics of the Hercules figure, — the strong proportions of 
 the limbs, and the lion- like shape of the head, borrowed 
 from the Jupiter. But under Lysippus the forms 
 assumed both a Titanic massiveness of parts and a vigorous 
 majesty of expression unknown before. The Farnese 
 Hercules of the Neapolitan museum cannot be consider- 
 ed as a close copy from him, and must belong to a 
 time considerably later ; but the character of the hero, 
 as he represented it, may be assumed as generally imi- 
 tated in the Farnese statue, and the expressive grandeur 
 of the head is given with yet bolder proportions, in a colos- 
 sal marble bust found at the foot of Mount Vesuvius.t 
 
 II. In a few years after the death of Alexander we lose 
 all traces of the great names that embellished his reign, 
 and enter on the long period which extends from about 
 the 120th Olympiad to the taking of Corinth. During 
 the greater part of this time art was lavishly patronised 
 by the princes among whom the Macedonian empire 
 was partitioned ; and when some of these d^Tiasties had 
 decayed, the loss was far more than compensated by 
 the temporary revival of freedom under the Achaean 
 League, the last effort of Greek independence. 
 
 * A fine colossal bust in the Capitol (Room of the Gladiator, 
 No. 13), engraved by Winckelmann in the INIonumenti Inediti, 
 No. 175 : a statue of the king arming himself, formerly in the 
 Rondanini palace in Rome, now at Munich (Glyptothek, No. 152) : 
 a small equestrian statue found at Pompeii, m the museum at 
 Naples (Gallery of Bronzes, No. 83). The head of the dying 
 Alexander in the Ducal Gallery at Florence. ( ?) 
 
 t British Museum, Room ii. No. ID : engraved in Combe's 
 Marbles of the British Museum, Part i. No. 11. 
 
CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS. 1 69 
 
 In sculpture those times were astonishingly fruitful 
 and most singularly successful. Without anticipating 
 the dissent which will hereafter he entered to a theory 
 representing this age as the last period of high art, a few 
 facts regarding it are, on any assumption, quite certain. 
 There is sufficient evidence of very remarkable varieties in 
 the spirit of statuary after Alexander ; but, on the whole, 
 it was characterized in its best works by a tone of greater 
 softness and refinement, by a more careful study of 
 anatomy, and by a greater energy of expression, than 
 the schools which had preceded it. The subjects were in 
 many cases original inventions ; in others the artist was 
 a mere copyist of statues, groups, or reliefs, already cele- 
 brated ; and in many other instances he studied some 
 earlier figure of excellence, made himself master of its 
 leading character, and exercised his own genius in exe- 
 cuting a work on the same su])ject, which should retain 
 something of the older model, united with original fea- 
 tures, proportions, or expression. 
 
 The Venus de' Medici, which now adorns the Floren- 
 tine gallery, and once graced the imperial villa of 
 Hadrian at Tivoli, is an example of this last kind. Its 
 author, Cleomenes of Athens, has engraved his name on 
 the pedestal, and it may be inferred that his age fell 
 within a century and a half of the time of Praxiteles, 
 and certainly not later than the 145th Olympiad.'^ 
 Between the reign of Alexander and the entire fall of 
 Greece innumerable figures of the goddess were executed, 
 for temples, for other public places, or for private dwel- 
 lings, and forming either single statues, or groups with 
 Eros, Mars, and other divinities. An immense number of 
 such works have been found both in Greece and Italy, 
 very many of them below criticism, many more of con- 
 siderable merit, and a few of very high excellence indeed, 
 
 * Thiersch, Epochen, p. 288, &c. Miiller, however (Handbuch, 
 § 160), adopting with some strictness Pliny's notion of a decay of 
 art about 01. 120, followed by a revival just before the Roman 
 conquest, places the Venus a little later, but still before the taking 
 of Corinth. 
 
170 ART IN ITALY AND SICILY BEFORE THE 
 
 among which, by universal consent, the Medicean Venus 
 occupies the first rank. This exquisite statue is known 
 to every one. It is not a repetition of the figure which 
 has been already mentioned as identified with the Cnidian 
 masterpiece of Praxiteles. Its attitude is considerably 
 different, and its air has more of a shrinking timid grace, 
 which corresponds well with the delicate proportions 
 of the figure. The lovely countenance has smaller and 
 more finely cut but less ideal features, and the style and 
 execution display a high finish as well as a minute obser- 
 vation of anatomical particulars, which contrast especially 
 with the broader manner of the noble statue of Milo. 
 Of the numerous antiques which, like the Venus de' Me- 
 dici, represent the goddess leaving the bath, and which 
 partake of the same expression, the best is that of the 
 Capitol,* — a figure less ideal and less delicately youth- 
 ful than the Florentine one, but remarkable for its close 
 adherence to nature in form, and for its masterly exe- 
 cution, especially in the imitation of the flesh. 
 
 In the Tribune of the Florentine gallery, which con- 
 tains the Venus, is a beautiful figure of a boyish Apollo, 
 called the Apollino, leaning on the trunk of a tree, 
 and crossing his right arm above his head. This statue, 
 equally admirable for its beauty of form and for its 
 graceful air of repose, has much of the character of the 
 Venus, and may be properly compared with it in a 
 review of the age to which that work is referred. 
 
 Other qualities of art at this time are illustrated by 
 the statue, commonly though wrongly, called the Fight- 
 ing Gladiator, which, like the other chief ornaments of 
 the Borghese gallery, is now in Paris.t This celebrated 
 statue, whose artist, Agasias of Ephesus, has inscribed his 
 name on the trunk which supports the figure, repre- 
 sents a soldier on foot, who defends himself against an 
 
 * Capitoline Museum, Stanza del Gladiatore Moribondo, No. 9. 
 Found in Rome, in a house beside the Suburra, where it had pro- 
 bably been placed in one of the baths. 
 
 •f* Louvre, JNo. 2(32 : found early in the 17th century, among the 
 ruins of the imperial palar.e at Anti^im. 
 
CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS. 171 
 
 assailant placed higher than he, probably a horseman. In 
 point of expression, it forms a marked contrast to the 
 Discobolus of Myron, already cited ; and in execution 
 it exhibits an equally remarkable departure from the 
 broad massive manner displayed in another Discobolus. 
 This other ••■ is a figure in repose, upright, and holding the 
 discus in his hand ; and, clearly belonging to an early but 
 high stage of art, it has been presumed an imitation of 
 a celebrated bronze by Naucydes of Argos, who was a 
 little younger than Polycletus, and perhaps his scholar. 
 This Discobolus of Naucydes is excellent for its propor- 
 tions and its breadth of style. 
 
 The Borghese Gladiator is most minute in its develop- 
 ment of muscles and other details, and this minuteness, 
 admirably true, is united with great force of general effect ; 
 but when we look to its expression, the statue of Myron, 
 which was peculiarly admired for its character of life, 
 seems coldness itself beside the newer work. The mo- 
 ment selected is the very crisis of the fight ; the figure 
 of the warrior is thrown violently forward, and turns to 
 the left, while his face looks upward in the opposite direc- 
 tion ; the shield is held up, and the right arm drawn 
 back for a thrust. Every thing denotes a strained and 
 desperate exertion ; the veins are swollen, the muscles in 
 severe tension, and remarkably developed ; and the coun- 
 tenance, in its fixed eyes and parted lips, is full of eager 
 and breathless watchfulness. 
 
 In leaving this age of Grecian sculpture, it is sufficient, 
 besides referring to the Farnese Hercules, which pro- 
 bably belongs to it, to mention two other specimens. 
 The portrait-statue which has been improperly named 
 Grermanicus, the production of a Cleomenes, the son of 
 another Cleomenes (perhaps the artist of the Venus), 
 is a work of excellent proportions and execution, but 
 little ideality and less expression ; and the so-called Cin- 
 cinnatus or Jason, a bending figure of a man tying his 
 
 •In the Vatican, Mus. Pio-Clem. Sala della Biga, No. 8: 
 found by Gavin Hamilton on the Appian Way. 
 
172 ART IN ITALY AND SICILY BEFORE THE 
 
 sandal, has proportions which seem to indicate that the 
 statue is a portrait, while the air and attitude have 
 induced antiquaries rather to refer it to some ancient 
 heroic fable.* 
 
 We have now traced the fine arts of Greece down to 
 the point at which they merge in those of Rome, and 
 before proceeding farther, we must look back on their 
 progress in the Latin city and her nearest Italian pro- 
 vinces, down to the same epoch ; remarking, meanwhile, 
 that the Greek colonies both in Sicily and in Magna 
 Grsecia, which the Romans subdued before they carried 
 their arms beyond the Adriatic, had recently begun to 
 sink in art as well as in commerce and political strength. 
 
 ART IN ETRURIA AND ROME BEFORE THE ROMAN CONQUEST OF 
 
 GREECE. 
 
 PERIOD ENDING B. C. 146 ; — OR A. U. 608. 
 
 Till the Romans came into immediate contact with the 
 Greeks, first in Lower Italy, and then in the mother- 
 country, they derived their art, in all its branches, al- 
 most entirely from the Etruscans. The history of archi- 
 tecture, painting, and sculpture, among this people, which 
 was long a riddle unsolved in all its parts, has lately been 
 studied in a more intelligent spirit, and with the aid of 
 more insti-uctive monuments. The conclusions which 
 have been reached by the antiquaries of the present age, 
 are on many points yet involved in the old doubts and 
 contradictions ; while several of the most important sub- 
 jects of inquiry are not only deficient in general interest, 
 but would demand a very minute investigation, if they 
 
 * The Germanicus( Louvre, No. 712), is supposed by Clarae to re- 
 present Marias Gratidianus (Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. xxxiii. cap. 9; lib. 
 xxxiv. cap. 6) ; and by Thiersch to represent Flamininus, the con- 
 queror of Greece. In either view, the statue forms, so to speak, 
 the link between the Greek ;md the Greco-Roman sculpture. — The 
 Jason is in the Louvre, No. 710. It derives this name from Winckel- 
 mann (lib. vi. cap. 6), and has smgularly heavy limbs, with a small 
 head (perhaps not the original), and an energetic but undefined 
 expression. Both statues came from the Villa Montalto or Negroni 
 in Rome, where they stood in the gardens of Sextus the Fifth. 
 
CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS. J 73 
 
 were to be discussed at all. A few facts, however, denied, 
 unknown, or very imperfectly apprehended, even by such 
 writers as Winckelniann and Lanzi, may noAv be con- 
 sidered as quite ascertained. In particular, the theory 
 which claimed high originality for the Etruscans, deny- 
 ing or extenuating their obligations to the Greeks, is 
 completely overthrown ; and in painting and statuary the 
 defeat is signal. There are, indeed, many traces and some 
 undoubted monuments of an early species of art peculiar 
 to their province ; but this indigenous style disappears 
 before it has emerged from rudeness ; and in every stage, 
 which claims any regard on its own merits, art in 
 Etruria is to be held strictly as a branch of Grecian art, 
 and was perhaps exclusively practised by artists of that 
 country. It was in this Greco -Etrurian school that the 
 Romans learned the few lessons which they condescended 
 to receive ; but, after the conquest, art was for a time 
 stationary, and then retrograde, except perhaps in archi- 
 tecture ; and even this pursuit made few advances till the 
 conquerors revived it in a new form, along with sculp- 
 ture and painting. 
 
 The most ancient and remarkable of the architectural 
 works of the Etruscans, the fortifications of their towns 
 and citadels, will invite our notice again amidst some of 
 their magnificent ruins, where they exhibit a character 
 which it is generally very difficult to discriminate from 
 that of the Pelasgic walls. But, passing from this obscure 
 question, our attention is next drawn, though only in 
 ancient description, and without existing monuments, to 
 a style of sacred architecture which the people of Etniria 
 taught to the Romans, and which they themselves had 
 undeniably learned from Greece. The Tuscan or Etrus- 
 can order is in principle identical with the Doric ; and, 
 indeed, according to the most probable theory of its 
 origm, it is nothing else than the oldest form of the 
 latter, received by the Italian tribe from its inventors 
 before its rules were fuUy developed.* The Etruscans 
 
 • Stieglitz, part i. section 4. vol. i. pp. 140, 150. 
 
174 ART IX ITALY AND SICILY BEFORE THE 
 
 gave lighter proportions to the columns, placed them on 
 bases, made them support a less heavy entablature, dis- 
 posed them at wider intervals, and altered the forms of 
 some of the component parts both of these members and 
 of those which they sustained ; and the temples, to which 
 the colonnades thus composed communicated their cha- 
 racter, received also modifications in the ground-plan as 
 well as in the internal aiTangements, to suit the purposes 
 of the national ritual. This style was the earliest in the 
 Roman places of worship ; the CapitoUne temple of the 
 Tarquins was a specimen of it ; and that of Ceres, near the 
 Circus Maximus, dedicated in the year of the city 261, 
 was taken by Vitruvius as the model of the order. 
 
 The sepulchral architecture of the Etniscans pre- 
 served, even after they had ceased to exist as a nation, 
 much more of original character. The most remarkable 
 of its remains, wliich are chiefly subterranean, may be 
 easily reduced to a few classes. Most of those, for in- 
 stance, in the Necropolis of Vulci, on Lucien Bonaparte's 
 estate called Canino, are chambers or suites of chambers, 
 excavated in the soft rock, entered by descending gal- 
 leries or staircases, and without any erection rising above 
 the ground. Others, like those of Tarquinii, near Cor- 
 neto, are in the interior similar to the tombs of Vulci, but 
 are covered by larger or smaller mounds of earth. We 
 have an example of a third class in that huge sepulchre 
 or collection of sepulchres at Vulci, which the peasants 
 call the Cocumella ; being a cluster of excavated cham- 
 bei*s, over which is piled one immense tumulus, more than 
 200 feet in diameter, and composed externally of heaped 
 soil, but having internally considerable masses of stone- 
 work. A fourth kind are hevm in the perpendicu- 
 lar sides of cliffs, like those in the forest of Bomarzo, and 
 have either plain entrances or ornamental facades, some 
 of which form complete Doric fronts, with volutes and 
 other decorations foreign to the order.* In the few 
 
 • See Miiller, Handbuch, sect. 170; and consult Micali's work 
 and its plates. 
 
CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS. 175 
 
 which were raised above ground, and composed entirely 
 of masonry, the favourite form seems to have been that 
 of a conical tower, which in some cases contained the 
 sepulchral chambers ; while in others, as in the struc- 
 ture called the Tomb of the Horatii at Albano, it was only 
 an embellishment, and rose from a quadrilateral build- 
 ing, in which the body was laid. 
 
 From those ancient burial- cities we derive most of 
 the knowledge we possess as to the other arts of Etruria. 
 A few painted walls had been early discovered and de- 
 scribed, and sepulchral urns, with some other kinds of 
 monuments, have long been accessible in different mu- 
 seums ; but the discoveries of the last few years have 
 been beyond all comparison rich, and on one estate (that of 
 Canino), as many vases have been dug up in one year 
 as had been placed in all the cabinets of Italy during the 
 preceding century.* The Necropolis of Vulci has as yet 
 been by far the most fertile in antiques, some of which 
 have been carried to Berlm, while several thousand vases, 
 besides similar monuments, are still possessed by the 
 owner of the lands, and a few have been found by other 
 proprietors. Tarquinii has furnished comparatively a 
 small proportion, its sepulchres having been apparently 
 ransacked. Agylla or Caere, now the picturesque and 
 dirty little town of Cervetri, has not been examined with 
 so much attention as its ancient fame deserves ; but a good 
 many painted vases, and other utensils of terra-cotta,with 
 some very richly ornamented tombs, have been discover- 
 ed in its Necropolis. At Chiusi, the ancient Clusium, 
 
 * The discoveries in Etruria are most fully detailed in the Annali 
 and Bullettino of the Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica, 
 a society established at Rome in 1829, under the direction of Ger- 
 mans. The most minute and valuable account which has yet ap- 
 peared in English, is contained in a paper by Mr Millingen, already 
 cited, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol, 
 ii.; 1834, Mr Millingen's interesting communication brings its 
 narrative no farther down than 1829; and for more recent dis- 
 coveries, none of which, however, possess the importance of the 
 early ones, reference must be had to the transactions first above 
 named. Consult also Sir William G ell's Topography of Rome and 
 its Vicinity, vol. i, article " Etruria-" 
 
J 76 ART IN ITALY AND SICILY BEFORE THE 
 
 Porsena's city, many similar remains of early art have 
 been excavated. 
 
 With the exception of the Clusian vases, almost every 
 painting which has been lately discovered, whether on 
 such vessels or on the walls of tombs, is decidedly Grecian. 
 The subjects, embracing mythology, religion, and funeral- 
 ceremonies, symbolical groups, and scenes from ordinary 
 life, have evidently the same origin ; the vases resemble, 
 in every essential particular, those of Sicily and Magna 
 Graecia, to the best of which many of them are quite 
 equal both in design and in execution ; and the names of 
 potters and painters, which, by a peculiarity not previ- 
 ously detected, are inscribed on most of the Vulcian vases, 
 are without exception Greek, many of them Attic, and 
 all written in Greek characters. If there could be a doubt 
 as to the origin of the Etruscan vases, it would be re- 
 moved by a comparison with those of Chiusi, most of 
 which, both designed and executed in an inferior style, 
 are quite different from the Vulcian, and even the clay 
 of which they are formed is coarser ; while besides 
 this, some specimens found in Vulci and elsewhere, and 
 exactly resembling the Clusian ones, have Etruscan 
 inscriptions, though the Clusian have none.* The vases, 
 which we thus recognise as Grecian, exhibit specimens 
 of art in all its stages, from the rudest of the archaic or 
 hieratic paintings to the finest design and finish of the 
 Macedonian times, or, at latest, to the age immediately 
 preceding the Roman conquest. The only material 
 question regarding these monuments which can be con- 
 sidered as still unsettled is, whether they were moulded 
 and painted in Etruria, or merely imported from abroad 
 as articles of commerce. 
 
 The light which these interesting discoveries throw on 
 the painting of the Etruscans, is reflected on their sculp- 
 ture and its kindred processes ; and hence the similarity 
 to the Greek style, both in their bronzes and their terra- 
 
 • The Clusian vases are chiefly in the Grand Duke's gallery at 
 Florence. 
 
CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS. J77 
 
 cottas, is at once explained. But here, as in architecture, 
 the immediate application of art to religious uses pre- 
 serves a greater independence both in the subjects and 
 in their treatment ; and the energy and harsh pro- 
 portions, sometimes reacliing the height of caricature, 
 which are not infrequent in the sepulchral paintings, 
 are much oftener to be traced in the bronze and terra- 
 cotta figures. As examples, it may be enough to cite 
 the Chimaera of Arezzo and the Aruspex or Orator, 
 both bronzes,* and the renowned She- wolf suckling Ro- 
 mulus and Remus, a bronze of the Capitol, a work whose 
 stiff accuracy and strong expression make it an excellent 
 specimen of the time when the Etruscans were most 
 successful in art ; because, if it is not the group which 
 was struck by lightning at Caesar's death, it is probably 
 that which was dedicated in the year of the city 458, 
 and stood beside the Ruminal fig-tree.t Of the Etrus- 
 can skill in chasing, we have farther examples in num8< 
 rous candelabra, paterae (mystic mirrors?), and other 
 utensils of the temples and sepulchres. Terra-cotta was 
 the favourite material, for in the best da^^s of the nation 
 sculpture in stone was little practised, and the few 
 specimens of it which exist belong almost without ex- 
 ception to the period when art began to decline among 
 them. 
 
 This decline soon followed the conquest of the pro- 
 vince by the Romans, and there is sufficient evidence to 
 show that it was attended by a corresponding depression 
 among the conquerors. It has been always known, 
 that, down to their connexion with Greece, the works of 
 art in all its branches which existed in Rome proceed- 
 ed from the hands of Etruscans. But we may now 
 think more highly than we could have done before the 
 recent discoveries, of the buildings and statues which 
 were so executed from the reign of Tarquin to the final 
 conquest of Etruria ; whilst we must also believe, that 
 
 • In the Gabinetto dei Bronzi Antichi of the Ducal Gallery of 
 Florence, 
 -f- Dionys, Halic. lib. i. cap. 79.— Liv. lib. x. cap. "^S. 
 VOL. I. L 
 
] 78 ART IN ITALY AND SICILY, &c. 
 
 after the latter event, the Romans, like their new sub- 
 jects, relapsed into a comparative rudeness, which, for 
 centuries, was interrupted by no improvement that 
 deserves notice. The victorious people condescended to 
 borrow from the conquered their sacred architecture, 
 their roads and bridges ; but in all beyond this they 
 refused instruction. In the court of the early Roman's 
 house, his ancestors were represented by rude waxen 
 images, and the gods in the temples had figures of 
 terra-cotta. The waxen portraits were in time trans- 
 ferred to sliields, and at last a few bronze statues of 
 popular statesmen appeared in the forum.* When, after 
 the Samnite wars, Rome extended her conquests into 
 Magna Grsecia, the stem spirit of the nation was softened 
 by degrees; and the spoils of the enemy, always in part 
 devoted to the temples, were applied to the erection of 
 sacred statues, which none but the artists from the sub- 
 dued towns were found capable of executing worthily. 
 So early as the year 459 of their era, a colossal statue of 
 Jupiter stood on the Capitol ; and the taste for art spread 
 with rapidity, till it was permanently rooted by the con- 
 quest of Sicily, and raised to a passion by the wars in 
 Greece and Asia. 
 
 * The earliest, the statue of Hermodorus, about a.u. 304. The 
 other instances, down to a. u. 448, are collected by Hirt, Geschichte 
 der bildenden Kiinste bei den Alien; Berhn, 1833, pp. 271, 272. 
 
ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE, Ac. 179 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ai't in Italy from the Conquest of Greece till the 
 Accession of Constantine. 
 
 A. D. 608—1059 : or b. c. 146— a. d. 306. 
 
 The Fate of Grecian Art under the Romans. Roman Akchi- 
 TECXURE — Gradual Innovations on the Greek Style — Eminent 
 Architects — Illustrations from Existing Ruins in Rome — Tombs 
 — Domestic Architecture — Its Rules Illustrated — A Heathen 
 Dwelling-house and Christian Monastery. Roman Paint- 
 IKG — Vases and Wall-paintings — Herculaneum and Pompeii — 
 Frescoes— Mosaics. Roman Sculpture — lis History till the 
 Times of the Antonines : (a. u. 608—933, or b, c. 146 — a.u. 
 ISO): — The Stages of its Progress— Illustrative Specimens — The 
 Apollo Belvedere — The Laocoon — The Antinous-statues — The 
 Torso Belvedere— The Pallas-statues— The Diana— T/^e Sxib- 
 jects of Sculpture during the same Period — Selection of Ciassified 
 Specimens — Roman and Greek Portraits — INIythological Subjects 
 — The Twelve Gods — Venus-statues — Apollo-groups — The Bac- 
 chic Legends — TheAriadne — The Dancing Faun — The Barberini 
 Faun— The Fable of Eros — The Borghese Centaur — The Heroic 
 Legends — The Meleager — The Farnese Bull — The Portland 
 and Medicean Vases— The Iliac Table — Menelaus as Pasquin — 
 Doubtful Subjects — The Psetus and Arria — The Papirius — The 
 Dying Gladiator — The Imitative Styles — The Archaic — The 
 Egyptian — Sculpture after the Antonines : (a. u. 933 — 1059, or 
 a. D. 180 — 306): — Its Monuments — Chiefly Reliefs on Sarcophagi 
 — Symbols — Love and Psyche — Ariadne — Endymion — The 
 Genius of Mortality — Orientalism. The Topography of 
 Ancient Art in Italy and Sicily — Architecture — Painting 
 and Sculpture. 
 
 The capture of Corinth presents tlie first remarkable 
 instance of the Roman system of universal plunder. 
 
180 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 Statues and pictures were removed from Greece in thou- 
 sands ; and when the subjugation of that country and 
 its colonies was confirmed, the artists were employed to 
 work for their new masters, while the treasures of art 
 already accumulated seem to have been still unexhausted 
 by all the robberies of consuls and emperors. Archi- 
 tecture was prosecuted with equal zeal, but not quite so 
 exclusively by Greeks. 
 
 In the best times of the empire Italy, but more par- 
 ticularly Rome and some favourite spots in its neigh- 
 bourhood, presented a scene of such magnificence as no 
 other age or region has ever paralleled. Within and 
 around piles of building, whose massive grandeur seemed 
 the product of more than human skill, there were throng- 
 ed, besides many inferior ornaments, statues and paint- 
 ings which peopled the imperial city with the legends of 
 those antique times, whose poetry was religion. Of this 
 unequalled pomp the whole peninsula even at this day 
 abounds with fragments. 
 
 But it is not easy to trace, step by step, the history of 
 Roman art after the lessons received from the Greeks. 
 One or two important facts, however, are quite fixed ; 
 and, in the first place, it is certain that it can, in none of 
 its branches, be traced in any degree of excellence farther 
 down than the time of the Antonines. If we assume 
 the reign of Marcus Aurelius as the last age in which it 
 emulated in any degree its ancient glory, the duration of 
 high art among the Romans, commencing with the siege 
 of Corinth, will extend to three centuries and a quarter. 
 During the whole of this period, we may consider their 
 architecture, though subjected to many changes of taste, 
 as quite worthy of a great nation. Painting we must 
 admit to have decayed, almost from the commencement 
 of the period, and never to have regained eminence. The 
 history of sculpture is not so well ascertained. It has 
 been asserted b}^ some, that its fate was exactly similar 
 to that of painting ; an opinion originating with Winckel- 
 mann, who has the distinguished merit of having first 
 systematized the antiquities of classical art. But a philo- 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTIXE. 181 
 
 sopliical discoverer is often like one who carries the lamp 
 in exploring a mine, and who, from his position, is unable 
 to see objects which the light he holds up makes plain to 
 others. Perhaps no antiquary of the present day asserts, 
 to its full extent, the doctrine of the great archaeologist ; 
 and m our own country, the weight of authority de- 
 cidedly inclines to that opinion which ascribes to the 
 Roman age of sculpture a farther development of the art, 
 and considers many masterpieces as works of that time.* 
 
 * Winekelmann, in his great work, the Storia delle Arti del 
 Disegno presso gli Antichi, refers (besides antiques whose dates are 
 admitted) the so-called Dying Gladiator to the interval between 
 Phidias and Alexander the Great, and the Laocoon to the age of 
 Alexander. To the period between that king's reign and the taking 
 of Corinth, he gives the Farnese Bull, the Torso of the Belvedere, 
 and, with a little hesitation, the Belvedere Apollo. But his hypo- 
 thesis goes farther in its consequences ; for, founding chiefly on the 
 Grecian subjects and style, which he was the first to recognise in 
 the ancient sculptures of Italy, he virtually refuses to assign to the 
 Roman times any work belonging to a high class of art In Ger- 
 many, his system is still substantially held by Meyer, Hirt, and 
 Miiller. The opposite theory, which was first propounded in that 
 country by Thiersch, has been, with some modifications, adopted and 
 illustrated by Gerhard, and is vehemently combated. But Thiersch's 
 theory, however excellently stated, is less original than it appears ; 
 and to students of art among ourselves it probably will not seem at 
 all startling. It is true that no English writer has both stated the 
 elements of such a doctrine, and applied them to a classification of 
 ancient monuments ; but in criticisms on particular works of art, 
 almost all our good connoisseurs have been inclined to bring the 
 dates very far down indeed; and the aesthetical principles w^hich have 
 been lately inculcated in England, may fairly be regarded as having 
 anticipated, or perhaps suggested, Thiersch's view. If we adopt 
 from Fuseli (Tenth Lecture on Painting, Works by Knowles, 
 vol. ii. p. 381-386), the chronological classification of works" of 
 art into three styles, the Essential, the Characteristic, the Ideal, 
 we shall find it impossible to believe that the last step was reached 
 till Ibngafter the conquest of Greece ; and indeed, from the examples 
 which that author gives, he seems himself to have fully admitted 
 this consequence. Flaxman, again, without laying down any broad 
 principle, is quite unequivocal in his critical opinion and his in- 
 stances. " After this time, however," the close of Pliny's list of 
 artists, "the Laocoon, and some of the finest groups and statues, 
 seem to have been executed. Nor can we believe, from the ad- 
 mirable busts and statues of the imperial famihes, that sculpture 
 began to lose its graces till the reign of the Antoniuei." — (Flax- 
 raan's Lectures on Sculpture, 18.29, Lecture III.) " Grecian 
 
182 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The Romans had already adopted the general forms of 
 the Greek architecture ; and it is tolerably clear that 
 they exerted little originality of invention till the times 
 of the Caesars. But Augustus had scarcely ascended the 
 throne, Avhen the first steps were taken in the formation 
 of that mixed style wliich characterized the most remark- 
 able fabrics in Rome. The rules of the Grecian archi- 
 tects were still recognised as the canon of taste ; and in 
 sacred buildings they were not for some time violated 
 unless in particulars of internal aiTangement, which 
 appear to have depended on the ritual of the temple- 
 services, and to have become fixed before the imported 
 system was fully understood. These changes chiefly 
 affected structures of the Tuscan order ; but in no long 
 time, the three foreign orders, the Doric, Ionic, and 
 Corinthian, all but superseded the other style, and were 
 used from or before the time of Augustus, according 
 to precepts drawn from the edifices and writings of the 
 Greeks. The Roman or Composite, which appears 
 for the first time in the Arch of Titus, is a mixture, in 
 the capital and some other members, of the Ionic with 
 the Corinthian, united with even lighter proportions 
 than those of the latter. It does not seem, and certainly 
 does not deserve, to have been ever cultivated so far as to 
 form the groundwork of a new architectural school. 
 
 The characteristic style of the Romans was fashioned 
 on different principles. It was used in those unconse- 
 crated buildings in which religious precedents had no 
 force, and vastness of dimensions was the primary re- 
 quisite. For the people, whom the emperors feared 
 and wished to please, and in a less degree for the adorn- 
 
 genius continued its admirable productions under the Roman em- 
 perors. The fine groups of INIenelaus and Patroclus, Haemon and 
 Antigone, Paetus and Arria, Orestes and Electra, the Toro Far- 
 nese, and the Laocoon, were executed between the latest years 
 of the Roman republic and the times of the last Caesars."— (Flax - 
 man, Lecture VII, j 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE. 183 
 
 ment of the city, were designed the batlis, theatres, 
 amphitheatres, circuses, and some other fabrics more 
 practically useful. The amphitheatres, and similar 
 edifices, demanded an extent both of ground-plan and 
 elevation, which the structures of the Greeks had never 
 reached, and their architecture was ill calculated to 
 admit. The kej'^cd arch was introduced for strength ; 
 and the distinguishing feature of the Roman style 
 was the union of the arch with the Grecian orders. 
 This combination has been censured as a deviation from 
 purity of taste ; but it seems to have ti-uly originated in 
 the peculiar nature of the demands made on the art ; 
 and for a time the arch was not allowed to become a 
 prominent part of the edifice, being used only in the 
 internal construction, while in the external fronts ap- 
 peared the Grecian columns and entablature. 
 
 Of the architects who effected these changes, we know 
 next to nothing. Some of them appear to have been 
 Italians of the native races ; such as the celebrated Vi- 
 truvius, born at Formise ; Cocceius Auctus, who by the 
 command of Agrippa excavated the hill of Pausilypus, 
 near Naples ; Celer and Severus, the architects of 
 Nero's Golden House ; and Rabirius, who built Domi- 
 tian's Palatine Palace. Apollodorus, who erected the 
 grand Forum of Trajan, and was executed by Hadrian 
 for criticising the temple of Venus and Rome, was a 
 Syrian, born at Damascus. To Detrianus are attributed 
 Hadrian's Tomb and the Bridge in front of it. 
 
 In Rome itself we may trace most of the changes in 
 the national style. We see the pure Greek, probably 
 belonging to the last days of the republic, in the church 
 of Santa Maria Egiziaca ; and in the Pantheon we have a 
 splendid example of the richest form of that school, or 
 rather of a form in which the multiplicity and variety 
 of parts overstep the limits of Grecian art, but where 
 the principle of the orders is not infringed except in 
 the arches of the internal recesses. In the Theatres and 
 Amphitheatres the elements of the new architecture 
 are fully developed. Sometimes choosing plains for 
 
184 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 the sites, in opposition to the rule followed by their 
 teachers, the Romans had to rear stupendous masses of 
 masonry in order to gain the huge dimensions required. 
 Here the arch was in its proper place, and vaults rose 
 above vaults in magnificent galleries, forming the body 
 of the fabric, wliich was masked outside by Grecian 
 colonnades. The Circus, an extensive enclosed space, 
 borrowed from the Stadium and used by the Italians 
 from the earliest times for races and other games, fur- 
 nished, though in a less degree, opportunity for the same 
 kind of building as the amphitheatre. In the Triumphal 
 Arch, the same principles exhibit themselves in another 
 shape. The arch becomes not only the essence of the 
 building but its most prominent feature. Square pil- 
 lars support it, and it again sustains the entablature ; 
 but the Greek columns are not wanting. They stand 
 out before the pillars as excrescences, which bear no 
 part of the erection ; and their uselessness is exposed 
 rather than concealed by the statues which are placed 
 on them. In the earliest triumphal arch, that of Titus, 
 the character just described is not quite reached ; but 
 in that of Septiraius Severus it is, and the example is 
 faithfully followed in the construction of the Arch of 
 Constantine. The art, if it was to retain any prmciple 
 of the Grecian, had only one step more to take, that 
 of bringing the column into immediate contact with 
 the arch, and resting the latter directly on the former, 
 — a style Avhich became common after the reign of 
 Titus. The Triumphal Column was a far nobler idea 
 than the arch, and in that of Trajan the architecture 
 leaves little room to wish for improvement, either in 
 design or in execution, although, if such structures are 
 critically analyzed, they must always suggest the notion 
 of something incomplete or fragmentary. In the three 
 huge vaults of the BasUica of Constantine, or Temple 
 of Peace, we see the remains of a buUding on whose 
 character it is not easy to pronounce, but in which, at 
 whatever time it may have been erected, the essence of 
 the Greek style appears to be entirely lost. 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE. IMh 
 
 The Romans, who had perhaps horrowed tlie idea of 
 their gigantic triumphal columns from the diminutive 
 l)illars of the Grecian graves, preferred in their own 
 sepulchral architecture the massive Etruscan piles, to 
 which, however, they generally adapted the parts and 
 ornaments of the several orders. The plain surrounding 
 Lvome is covered with the mins of huge towers erected as 
 jilaces of burial ; and the internal arrangements of the 
 .ave-chambers, with their small niches for urns, or 
 LJieir long recesses for sarcophagi, are illustrated by some 
 of these, and by the Street of the Tombs at Pompeii. 
 
 To this little town of Campania, likewise, we owe all 
 our knowledge as to the domestic architecture of ancient 
 Italy. Some of the more perfect remains enable us to 
 identify the most important parts of a Roman dwelling 
 of the middle class. The exact construction of a huge 
 house in the capital, of the kind which was called an 
 insula, partitioned out among numerous poor families, 
 and rising to the utmost height allowed, we possess no 
 means of determining ; and we have scarcely better 
 materials for describing an imperial palace or villa. 
 
 The Roman houses resembled the Grecian in the 
 smallness and inconvenience of the private chambers as 
 compared with the public apartments, to which the 
 habits of both nations gave so much importance. They 
 agreed also in the want of external ornament, which in 
 the capital was, for a time at least, enforced by law ; the 
 richness of decoration being reserved for the interior. 
 The plan also of these habitations resembled the Gre- 
 cian in those inner courts, partly open to the sky, which 
 foiTQed the central portions, and from which the smaller 
 rooms branched out. But the semi-feudalism of the 
 Italian customs introduced a material alteration in the 
 interior of their dwellings. In a Greek house, one 
 had only to cross a short vestibule in order to reach 
 the peristyle or colonnaded court, which was the central 
 point of the habitation ; and although the women's 
 apartments were shut off from the rest, this was the 
 only division in the mansion, and the whole seemed 
 
186 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 intended for the reception of none but friends and equals. 
 The Romans, on the other hand, whose women were not 
 confined, did not assign to them exclusively one portion 
 of their houses ; but they divided their dwelKngs strictly 
 into a public and a private part, in the former of which 
 the owner received his clients and other dependents, 
 who had no right to penetrate into his domestic re- 
 tu-ement. The public quarter was reached immedi- 
 ately on passing the vestibule ; and it consisted (with 
 occasionally some smaller apartments contiguous) of an 
 Atrium or Cavaedium. This was a court, roofed over, 
 except a space in the midst, which contained a reser- 
 vou- (impluvium) for the rain from the eaves, or the 
 water of a fountain. The atrium in its simplest shape, 
 called the Tuscan, had no columns, and its roof was 
 merel}'' composed of four beams crossing each other, the 
 quadrilateral space betvreen their intersections being 
 left open to the sky ; but in other cases pillars were 
 added, forming, if they were more than four, the Corin- 
 thian atrium, which differed little from the peristyle. 
 In this court the powerful Roman transacted busmess ; 
 and a closed door or curtain, sometimes with the inter- 
 vention of a Tablinum or charter-room, separated it 
 from the private part of the dwelling. In this latter 
 portion there was usually one Perist^^le as in the Greek 
 houses, but sometimes more ; and in the best mansions 
 a portico, at the retired side of the building, skirted 
 a garden, which, though always diminutive, seems to 
 have admitted of being made very beautiful, with its 
 narrow walks, its vases of flowers, its trellised plants 
 supported on stone pillars as at Naples in the present 
 day, and its seats of masonry placed beside fountains, 
 and beneath an ai-bour or awning. 
 
 The piling of one story above another may be con- 
 sidered as ha\ing been almost wholly confined to houses 
 of the lower class. Ai-istocratic residences covered large 
 spaces of ground, and seldom rose higher than one floor. 
 The Ccenacula, or upper chambers, used as eating rooms, 
 in which the Christians so frequently met, in the apos- 
 
.VN CI E ^^ T DAVE L LI^ G HOU SE X- ^ylODER^ COyXTl^ T . 
 
 j ii,,. I. (TRorvB FLAX of- the ffoi'M-: ,<, r. i.vx 1 . ,n /'i):\rPEJi. 
 
 
 
 PtTBlISHED BY OLTVEB i- BOYD, EDINBURGH. 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTIXE. 187 
 
 tolic age, as well as afterwards,* were a late inven- 
 tion, and do not appear to have been ever built in man- 
 sions above the middle rank. When they were added 
 in dwellings on the common plan, they were usually 
 placed in the front portion of the building, above the 
 atrium, wliich in that case was completely covered 
 over. But in no houses, and least of all in those 
 belonging to the first class of society, were the different 
 portions uniform in height, or covered by one roof. A 
 mansion of considerable size, indeed, presented from 
 without, or in a bird's eye view, a very curious scene. 
 The external fronts to the streets were dead walls, 
 pierced, if at all, by only a very few windows or loop- 
 holes, situated far up, and admitting light without pre- 
 senting any prospect. The atrium, and the chambers 
 surrounding it, might be nearly of the same elevation ; 
 but in all other quarters of the edifice, the height of eacli 
 apartment was separately determined by rules drawn 
 from its other dimensions.t The dwelling, therefore, as 
 seen from any higher ground, exhibited a straggling 
 and irregular mass of buildings, with flattish roofs ; 
 and the mean habitations which, let to persons of the 
 lower ranks, composed part of the cluster, towered above 
 all the rest. The atrium, peristyle, and garden, formed, 
 in different quarters, openings which could be overlooked 
 from the flat roofs ::|: while these were in many places 
 disposed in terraces like those modem ones still so com- 
 mon in the neighbourhood of Naples, and were like 
 them converted by vines and other creeping plants 
 into covered walks and bowers. 
 
 The annexed plate will illustrate not only the lead- 
 ing arrangements of an ancient dwelling-house, but the 
 first and principal stages of the influence which these 
 have exercised on the architecture of modem Italy. 
 Figure I. is a ground-plan of the House wrongly called 
 
 • Mark, xiv. 15. Acts, xx. 8. Fleury, ISIceurs des Chretiens, 
 *:r. xiii. 
 
 t Stie2;litz, Archaologie der Baukunst, part ii. sect. 13. 
 I Plauti Miles Gloriosus, act ii. 
 
188 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 that of Pansa, which is the most regular of the private 
 residences disinterred at Pompeii, although several 
 others have a greater variety of parts. Figure II. is a 
 similar plan of the admired Church and Augustin Mo- 
 nastery of Santo Spirito in Florence, which, designed hy 
 the celebrated arcliitect, Brunelleschi, about the middle 
 of the fifteenth century, was completed before the end 
 of the sixteenth. From the monastery to the modern 
 palazzo is a step much shorter than from the ancient 
 Roman dwelling to the monastery of the middle ages.* 
 
 The House of Pansa covers an area of about 800 feet 
 by 100, surrounded by streets on all its sides. The 
 chief entrance is by the door A, Hanked with pilasters, 
 and introducing us by a short vestibule into the Atrium, 
 which is Tuscan, paved with marble, and has in its centre 
 the usual basin, beyond which, at B, is a pedestal for the 
 altar of the household gods. The small apartments C, C, C, 
 on each side of the court, miay have been guest-cham- 
 bers, store-closets, or work-rooms for the female slaves; 
 and D, D, are recesses with stone seats. We shall form a 
 very gorgeous scene if we figure this hall and its chambers 
 in their original condition, with landscapes and historical 
 pieces painted on their walls ; while mosaics, gilding, and 
 marbles decorated the floors, walls, and roofs ; and statues, 
 flower- vases, fountains, and classical furniture, alternated 
 to complete the picture.t 
 
 We now quit the public quarter of the dwelling. Leav- 
 ing on our left the room E, and on our right the dimi- 
 nutive closet F, in which there is still a bedstead, we 
 proceed either through the tablinum G or the narrow 
 passage H, into the large and handsome Peristyle, which 
 
 * The house of Pansa is figured and described in the work of 
 Mazois, and in all the recent Enghsh publications on Pompeii. 
 The outline of the other figure is taken from plate 75 of the Ar- 
 chitecture Toscane (par Grandjean de Montigny et Famin, Paris, 
 1815). — In both of our figures the spaces open to the sky are left 
 white. The plan of the church will aid us a little when we come 
 to the basihcan architecture. 
 
 t See the splendid restoration, in plate 36 of Sir William Gell's 
 Pompeiana, First Series, 1819. 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE. 189 
 
 is adorned ])y a colonnade, and a basin in the central 
 space. The two recesses I, I, beside one of which is a 
 private door to the street, are similar to those at D, and 
 were exedrse, the usual scenes of the afternoon slumber. 
 The sleeping- rooms of the family were J, J; K was the 
 kitchen, which still possesses its stoves, while its scullery 
 L has dwarf walls as stands for the oil jars and cooking 
 utensils : and beyond these is a small court M commu- 
 nicating by a door with the side street. The room N is 
 genei-ally supposed to have been a lararium, or chapel 
 for the images of the household divinities ; is believed 
 to be an eating-room (triclinium) or saloon (cecus) ; 
 and P, a spacious apartment raised two steps above the 
 floor of the peristyle, and opening into the portico by a 
 large window at its farther end, is undoubtedly another 
 banqueting-hall. Either through P, or by the passage 
 Q,, we reach a covered portico of two stories, about 
 which parasitical plants have once been trained. It 
 communicates with the small bedchamber or cabinet P- ; 
 and through its pillars the Roman looked out on his 
 garden, a rectangular area of about 1 00 feet by 85, at 
 present a total wreck, but still showing a ruined reser- 
 voir in one corner. We have now surveyed those several 
 Compartments of the building which composed the resi- 
 dence of the proprietor, excepting the upper rooms, 
 which are all destroyed, but which certainly covered 
 some at least of the apartments on the ground floor. 
 
 The remainder of the edifice, represented in those 
 parts of the figure w^hich are distinguished by the darker 
 of the two shades, and are marked with numerals in- 
 stead of letters, was disconnected, partially or entirely, 
 from the owner's mansion. A small separate dwelling- 
 house 1, in which four female skeletons were found, 
 communicates with the apartment 0, and may have been 
 either leased out, or used as a hospitium or lodging for 
 visiters : the shops 2 and 8, opening into the adjoining 
 rooms of the interior, admitted of being occupied by the 
 master of the house, probably, according to the modern 
 Italian fiishion, for selling the wine and oil produced 
 
190 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 on his lands. All the other external compartments ap- 
 pear to have been quite separated from the principal 
 habitation. The suites of chambers 4, 4, were distinct 
 dwelling-houses, probably possessed by tenants ; 5, 6, 7, 
 and 8, embrace together complete accommodation for a 
 baker's trade, including in their order a wood-cellar, a 
 bakehouse (with its oven, furnaces, tables, troughs, and 
 three handmills), a store-closet, and a shop open to that 
 street in which is the principal front of the mansion ; 
 and 9, 10, compose a smaller baking establishment. The 
 apartments 11 and 12 are shops, in which, as also in 3, 
 are staircases, formerly leading to upper rooms, probably 
 the dwellings of the tradesmen ; and 13, 14, and 16, are 
 small shops of one story, which, like almost all those 
 in Pompeii, have only three side-walls, the front being 
 quite open as in the modern Italian shops, which are 
 closed at night by wide folding-doors, like those of an 
 English coach-house. 
 
 The Coenobite Monasteries, like that in Figiu-e II., 
 bear in some particulars less resemblance to the ancient 
 houses, than is exliibited by those belonging to the Car- 
 thusian and other Eremite fraternities, But the building 
 here represented is at once a celebrated specimen of archi- 
 tecture, and a good illustration of the point which it is 
 intended to explain. 
 
 From a side-chapel of the splendid church, a very 
 fine vestibule A, lined with columns, and erected by 
 Andrea Sansovino, introduces us into the octagonal 
 sacristy B, built, as well as its inner room b, by that 
 architect's master, Cronaca. The same passage opens 
 at one end into a small uncovered court C, and at 
 the other into the monastery, wliich has two principal 
 cloisters. The First Cloister D, D, planned by Parigi, is a 
 covered arcade, enclosing alarge paved court E, open to the 
 sky, and having a fountain in the midst. The poi*tico 
 communicates, at the side nearest the sacristy, with an 
 oratory F, and at the other with the wing G, G, which 
 contains the apartments assigned to the menials of the 
 establishment, for their lodging and the performance of 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE. 191 
 
 their duties. This quarter may he entered from the 
 square in front of the church by a private door leading 
 into the vestibule H ; beyond which, and by the un- 
 covered court K, the wing- is divided into two ranges, 
 till it reaches its terminating pomt in L, the refectory 
 of the lay brothers. The first cloister, touching the 
 church on its third side, is shut in on the fourth by an 
 oblong building of two stories, of which the ground 
 floor M is the refectory of the monks. The covered 
 passages mm at the ends of this edifice conduct us into 
 the Second Cloister N, N, which was commenced in 1564 
 by the famous Ammanati. The portico of this hand- 
 some court is formed by a Doric colonnade, whose en- 
 tablature is broken by three arches on each of its four 
 sides ; and P, the area in the midst, is laid out in grass- 
 plots, surrounding a fountain and pond. At one side of 
 this cloister is Q,, the refectory of the novices, opening 
 into R, a small uncovered court enclosed by a roofed 
 portico with columns. At the opposite side is the long 
 private corridor S, S, leading to the open court T and the 
 great staircase U, by which we ascend to the upper floor 
 of the buildmg M. This floor, not unlike in situation to 
 the ancient coenacula, contains a gallery, along which 
 are disposed the cells of the monks. 
 
 ROMAN PAINTING. 
 
 In Greece the masterpieces of the great artists in this 
 department were easel pictures ; and both vase-painting 
 and painting on walls, were regarded as subordinate 
 branches of the art, or mechanical applications of it. 
 In Rome, the latter alone, in which two natives, Fabius 
 Pictor and Pacuvius, had excelled, was ever in favour. 
 From the time of Augustus downwards, the art indeed 
 was chiefly valued in a form wliicli was just that of mo- 
 dern house-painting ; but to which, thus occupying the 
 highest place in the scale, a dexterity was applied that 
 has left admirable specimens. 
 
 On many vases of Greece and Italy, on the walls of 
 Herculaneum, Pompeii, and of some ruins on the Pala- 
 
192 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 tine and Esquiline Mounts, and also in a few tombs in 
 Rome, Etruria, and elsewhere, have been preserved such 
 examples as leave us indeed doubtful in regard to the 
 precise height of excellence which called forth the admi- 
 ration of antiquity, but yet enable us to pronounce with 
 some confidence on the leading characteristics of this 
 path of ancient ai-t. It had much of the character of 
 sculpture. In those historical pieces which were its 
 highest efforts, the groups were simple, all placed in the 
 foreground, and might hare formed the subject of a 
 bas-relief. When backgrounds were introduced, they 
 were ill-executed, the linear perspective being nowhere 
 accurately observed, and the aerial perspective almost 
 entirely neglected. The objects are exhibited in a clear 
 broad light, with no attempt at those opposed masses of 
 brightness and shadow to which some modern schools owe 
 so much. The relief of single figures, however, is often 
 wonderful, especially when they are painted on dark 
 grounds, like the celebrated Female Dancers ; the draw- 
 ing is often very fine, and, where defective, is skilfully 
 disguised by shaded outlines ; and for grace and expres- 
 sion, many of the paintings from Pompeii and Hercu- 
 laneum, which were no more than furniture pictures of 
 two small country towns, are quite surprising, even 
 after we have allowed for the delicate taste of the nation 
 and the popularity of this particular branch of art. 
 
 It would be useless to enumerate even the best of those 
 historical, mythological, or poetical compositions, which 
 contribute to mal^e up the list of about 1600 ancient pic- 
 tures, now in the Royal Museum at Naples. The subjects 
 are, almost without exception, from the Greek mytho- 
 logy and traditions. The Sacrifice of Iphigenia, and the 
 Parting of Achilles and Briseis, are perhaps the most 
 admirable of the series ; while some Bacchic subjects, 
 especially the Female Dancers, and the Fauns balancing 
 on ropes, are almost equally excellent in design ; and 
 the adventures of Hercules, Ariadne, and Endymion, 
 with other mytliic legends, furnish many very beautiful 
 groups. Landscapes are rather numerous, but not very 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE. 193 
 
 successful, as might have been inferred from the character 
 of the art. They generally include buildings, and thus 
 approach to the style called Scenographia, which con- 
 sisted of architectural designs or perspective views, some- 
 what after the fashion of the ornaments which we see 
 on the outside of the modern Genoese palaces. In the 
 Augustan age, this artificial style became quite fanci- 
 ful, and formed itself into the Arabesque or Grotesque 
 manner, which Vitruvius so bitterly condemns, and the 
 moderns so warmly admire. Of this latter, introduced in 
 Rome by the painter Ludius, of whose architectural land- 
 scapes Pliny gives a lively description, we have many 
 fine specimens in the Neapolitan collection, taken both 
 from the interior of houses and from the garden- walls. 
 
 Without dwelling on the processes of the ancient art, 
 now lost, on which, particularly the Encaustic method, so 
 much has been said, it may be enough to mention, that 
 in no case do either the Greeks or Romans appear to have 
 painted in oils, even in their pictures on wood or canvass ; 
 and that in painting on the plaster of the walls, they 
 certainly used not only w^ater-colour, or distemper, in 
 the ordinary way, but also the fresco process, of which 
 some Pompeian pieces exhibit visible traces. Mosaics are 
 likewise not imcommon ; and although the greater pro- 
 portion of those found in Campania are coarse, and only 
 well-adapted for their purpose, as floors to entrance- 
 halls and the like, yet some are singularly good. 
 
 In leaving the history of the pictorial art,it maybe well 
 to mention the last great masterwhose name has been pre- 
 served. This was Action, who lived in the reign of Ha- 
 drian, and whose picture of the wedding of Alexander 
 with Roxana, so lavishly commended by Lucian, is re- 
 called by the subject, though certainly neither copied 
 nor even imitated in the design, of the curious ancient 
 painting called the Aldobrandine Marriage.* 
 
 * In the Vatican ; lately in the Appartamento Borgia, third 
 room : but understood to have been removed in the summer of 1838. 
 Discovered about the end of the sixteenth century on the wail 
 of an ancient chamber near the arch of Gallienus. 
 
 VOL. I. iM 
 
194 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 ROMAN SCULPTURE. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SCULPTURE TO THE TIMES OF THE ANTONINES : 
 
 A.u. 608—933, OR B.C. 146— a. d. 180. 
 
 We have not many names of artists belonging to this 
 period, and cannot, in any instance but one, peremptorily 
 assign existing works to persons mentioned as famous in 
 their own times. Most of those whose names have been 
 preserved came from Attica. The earliest of them, how- 
 ever, Pasiteles, who flourished in the last century of the 
 republic, was a native of Magna Grascia, and worked both 
 in the toreutic art and in bronze castings, attaining a 
 distinguished reputation as a skilful modeller. This merit 
 belonged in even a higher degree to Arcesilaus, who 
 was likewise a worker in bronze, and constructed in 
 that material the statue of Venus Genitrix, in Julius 
 Caesar's Forum. We know little as to the sculptors 
 of the Augustan age ; but in Nero's reign we find the 
 name of Xenodorus, whose colossal figure of that emperor 
 evinced a decay in the mechanical art of casting in 
 metal, which was either the cause, or more probably 
 the effect, of the preference the Romans gave to marble. 
 To the time of Titus we may safely refer the three Rho- 
 dians, Agesander,Polydorus, and Athenodorus, the artists 
 of the Laocoon ; and it is proper to close the list with these 
 names, since of the statuaries who executed Hadrian's 
 splendid designs we know almost nothing. 
 
 It is enough simply to allude to the practice of sculpture 
 in gems, and to the manufacture of medals and coins, 
 both of which departments attained, under the emperors, 
 a very high degree of excellence. If the best of their 
 medals, and the few exquisite cameos, are excelled by 
 any Grecian works, it is only by a very few belonging to 
 the Macedonian times. 
 
 The opposing theories as to the merits of statuary in 
 the Roman age having been already stated, we may 
 venture to assume, as substantially correct, the opinion 
 which assigns to that period a farther develojjment of 
 Grecian art. 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE. 195 
 
 The progressive changes of sculpture exliibited them- 
 selves in the Subject, the Expression, and those pervading 
 characteristics which are embraced under the somewhat 
 vague term " Style." Its revolutions in all these par- 
 ticulars in the Roman period, and its dissimilarity to the 
 earlier art of Greece, may be illustrated by a very few 
 works of the first class, which can with confidence 
 be set down as executed in the imperial times. 
 
 To the age of Nero belongs the Apollo Belvedere, 
 whose Roman origin has long been generally admitted.* 
 The reign of Titus gives us the Laocoon, whose date 
 is fixed by a passage in Pliny, too long overlooked, + 
 From the time of Hadrian, we have the portraits of the 
 unfortunate Antinous, in all their numerous repetitions 
 and variations.;!: 
 
 The Apollo, a statue of the heroic size, represents the 
 god m the moment when he has shot the arrow to 
 destroy the monster Python, or the giant Tityus ; or ac- 
 cording to another opinion, highly poetical and attractive, 
 it exhibits him in that scene of ^schylus, in which he 
 rescues Orestes and expels the Furies from the sanctu- 
 ary of Delphi. The victorious divinity is in the act of 
 stepping forward. The left arm, which seems to have 
 held the bow, is outstretched, and the head is turned in 
 
 " In the Vatican ; Mus. Pio-Clem. Cortile di Belvedere, No. 96. 
 Discovered, about the end of the fifteenth century, among the ruins 
 of Nero's favourite villa at Antiura. 
 
 t In the Vatican ; Mus. Pio-Clem. Cortile di Belvedere, No. 78. 
 Discovered in 1506 on the Esquiline, beside the ruins called the 
 Sette Sale. Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. xxxvi. cap. 5. The passage, 
 like too many others in Phny, is not absolutely unequivocal ; but 
 violence must be done to the test, before it can be understood as 
 any thing else than a direct assertion, that the three Rhodian artists 
 executed the group expressly for the palace of Titus, and con- 
 sequently during his reign. See Gerhard and Thiersch. " The 
 style of this work, as well as the manner in which Pliny introduces 
 it in his history, gives us reason to believe it was not ancient in his 
 time." — Flaxman, Lecture III. 
 
 J A celebrated portrait-statue in the Capitol, Stanza del Gla- 
 diatore, No. 6; another in the Museum at Naples, Statues, No. 
 392 ; a very fine Bacchus-bust in the same collection, Bronzes, No. 
 46 ; and others innumerable. 
 
196 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 the same direction ; but the poise of tho body is rather 
 the opposite way. The whole is full of life and anima- 
 tion, and both in attitude and proportion the graceful 
 majesty of the statue is unsurpassed. The effect is com- 
 pleted by the countenance, where, on the perfection of 
 youthful godlike beauty, there dwells the consciousness 
 of triumphant power. The excitement of anger has just 
 passed from the eyes, but has left the trace of scorn curl- 
 ing the lips, gently inflating the nostrils, and elevating 
 the head and bust, and the whole glorious figure. 
 
 The Laocoon presents to us the famous scene from the 
 Trojan war, described by Virgil ; although, as one of the 
 most acute of modern critics has convincingly shov\Ti, 
 the sculptor, directed by the principles and limits of his 
 art, has departed widely from that treatment of the sub- 
 ject which might have been suggested by the verses of 
 the poet. The priest, seated on a slab or altar, and 
 his two young sons, are struggling in the folds of the 
 huge serpents, The youths, though good in concep- 
 tion, are indifferently executed ; and it is in the prin- 
 cipal figure that we perceive those qualities which make 
 the group the most intensely expressive of all classical 
 works. Indeed, both in the subject and in its treat- 
 ment, no piece of antique sculpture in any degree 
 approaches its dramatic and tragic force. It displays, 
 with extraordinary skill, the desperate struggle of mind 
 against suffering : the agony is complicated and un- 
 utterable, the endurance is sublime. The serpents are 
 writhed about the body of their victim, and one of 
 them bites fiercely into his left side, which quivers 
 and starts with the pain. Throughout the whole frame 
 the muscles are swollen, the nerves are convulsed, the 
 breath is suffocated in the breast, and the limbs rise 
 in their vain effort to shake off the force that chains 
 them. The face is raised to heaven, and over the lower 
 part of it protracted suffering has spread an appalling 
 exhaustion ; the mouth is sunk, and the nostrils in- 
 flated ; the eyes and eye-brows exhibit the fiercest pang 
 of the struggle between the firmness of the will and 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE. 197 
 
 agony both of body and of mind ; and on the forehead, 
 and over the whole aspect of the head, rests that inexpli- 
 cable expression of strength Avhich is the keynote of the 
 composition. 
 
 Antinoiis died mysteriously, probably the victim of 
 that gloomy superstition which strangely accompanied 
 general scepticism. The affection of Hadrian deified 
 the unfortunate and beautiful youth who had perhaps 
 died to save him ; and the artists filled the Roman 
 empire with images of the lamented favourite. He was 
 represented as a divinity,- in the Greek style as Bacchus, 
 Apollo, or Mercury, or in the fashionable Egyptian 
 taste, as Osu'is ; and numerous statues are either indivi- 
 dual portraits, or heroic and ideal embellishments of his 
 head and figure. Many of them possess the highest 
 merit, in a style of extreme and anxious finish. In 
 very many the likeness is striking, and the character ex- 
 ceedingly remarkable. The breast is broad and promi- 
 nent ; the face is a fine, but wide and somewhat heavy 
 oval ; the eyebrows are massy ; and the full lips and 
 the whole attitude of the figure are inspired by a deeply 
 elegiac air of sadness. 
 
 As to the progress of style indicated by these noble 
 antiques, even the uninitiated can distinguish between 
 the extremes of the series, between the elaborate mi- 
 nuteness and polish of the Antinous, and the compara- 
 tive ease and breadth of manner in the Apollo ; and 
 still more readily can they trace the change from the 
 severity of the Niobe to the style of the Apollo or the 
 Laocoon. Nicer points of difference are for the eye and 
 taste of the artist, or the well informed antiquary ; and 
 there are suffrages enough of both kinds to justify the 
 assertion of a progress, in the order in which the works 
 have now been described. 
 
 The distinction of style admits of yet another illus- 
 tration ; for the first sculptor of the age in which we 
 Live, unhesitatingly pronounces the famous Torso of 
 the Belvedere Hercules to belong to the imperial times, 
 and io resemble in style such works as the Laocoon. 
 
198 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 This incomparable statue is a mere fragment, and much 
 less fitted for the uninstructed lover of the beautiful, 
 than for the accomplished connoisseur. From Michel 
 Angelo to Thorwaldsen, the first artists have regarded 
 the Torso with an admiration, rendered only the more 
 reverential by its state of ruin. The head and arms 
 are wanting, and the legs as far up as the thighs ; while 
 the breast and part of the back are much broken. In 
 the remains of the trunk the character has been uni- 
 versally admitted, since Winckelmann analysed it, to 
 be that of ideal divinity, — the hero after his deification. 
 The accidental parts of the human figure, such as the 
 vems, are invisible, and only the essential characteristics 
 of the frame are indicated. The contours are those 
 of gigantic, overwhelming strength ; the muscles are 
 powerful to a degree surpassing reality, yet flowing and 
 quite free from harshness ; and the proportions are 
 broad and massive in the extreme.* 
 
 The differences in subject and expression are more 
 easily appreciated, and there are ample materials for com- 
 parison. One short series of examples may here suffice. 
 Early sculpture, setting out from the sacred style of the 
 temple-idols, represented its figures in profound repose, 
 as in the Pallas of the Villa Albani : but in the colossal 
 Pallas of Velletri, already described, the stiffness is 
 broken up, the head is gently bent, and the right arm 
 raised ; and in later statues of the same goddess, she is 
 often represented in motion, and sometimes in quick 
 and vigorous action, as in that of speaking (the Pallas 
 Agoraia), or of preparing for combat (Promachos). We 
 
 * Vatican, iMus, Pio.-Clem. Vestibule, No. 1. " Thorwaldsen, 
 although the fact does not weaken his admiration of this master- 
 piece of antiquity, characterizes the style as one which, in respect 
 of the whole system of the muscles, and the mode of treating 
 them, and in respect of a sort of refinement on the most refined, 
 evidently belongs to the later ages of the plastic art. He has not 
 intimated this opinion publicly, i. e. in print ; but 1 have heard him 
 repeatedly express it in conversation, with that clearness and cer- 
 tainty which befits a mind like his, imbued with all the greatness 
 of the antique." — Thiersch, Epochen, p. 332. 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE. 199 
 
 have no representations of Minerva which go much be- 
 yond this ; but in one work of the highest order, the Diana 
 of Versailles,* Avhich may be very fitly contrasted with 
 the Pallas-figures, the attitude is that of humed and 
 eager motion, a liveliness of action not approached by 
 an}'' specimen which can be confidently referred to the 
 ante-Roman times. Now the attitude of this statue 
 much resembles that of the Apollo Belvedere ; the sizes 
 correspond as well as the style of the execution, and there 
 is also a striking general likeness of air and expression. 
 Certain it is that neither of them was designed for a 
 temple ; and it is a pleasing and plausible supposition, 
 though not capable of proof, that the two were fonned as 
 counterparts, and together adorned some magnificent 
 hall of Nero's Antian villa. The animation of expres- 
 sion in the face of the Apollo is not paralleled by any 
 representation of the god, except some busts which are 
 clearly copied from it ; the hasty quickness of the atti- 
 tude is equally in advance of all the other figures ; and 
 the character of the head appears to borrow details from 
 several other antiques, and (excepting busts) to be copied 
 by none. It would be equally impossible to produce 
 any good work of ancient times which treats a subject so 
 actively tragic as the Laocoon. If the Apollo is beyond 
 the calmness of Greek subjects, the Laocoon is as far 
 beyond the Apollo. It hovers on the very verge of 
 that extremity of action, which even modem sculpture 
 would shrink from treating. On the power of expression 
 which it possesses it is needless to say a word. The Niobe 
 is nearest to it in subject : let the two be compared. 
 Both are strong : but the strength of the one is sup- 
 pressed, absorbed, motionless ; that of the other is active, 
 fiery, uncontrolled by any thing except that fine sense 
 of art which Grecian minds never lost, and which even 
 in this later stage preserved an equipoise, contrasting 
 beautifully with the exaggerations of modem statuary. 
 
 * La Diane a la Biche, Louvre, No. 178. The place where this 
 statue was found is not known. 
 
200 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 THE SUBJECTS OF ROMAN SCULPTITRE DURING THE SAME PERIOD. 
 
 In the preceding sketch of the revohitions of ancient 
 sculpture from the age before Phidias to that of Ha- 
 drian, some masterpieces which still exist in Italy, and 
 a few which once adorned her palaces or temples, have 
 been incidentally named as explanatory instances. But 
 the Italian galleries possess many more antiques of sin- 
 gular excellence, and some which scarcely yield to the 
 best of those already specified. Certain of these cannot 
 be passed over, among which, although some undoubted- 
 ly belong to the older Grecian period, a much larger num- 
 ber must be assigned to the ages now under oui* notice ; 
 and it is conceived that by aiTanging such specimens 
 according to their subjects, they will be best apprehend- 
 ed as exponents of thought and illustrations of history 
 and national character. 
 
 Two things must be premised. In the first place, we 
 are not to believe that many of the existing sculptures 
 were devoted to the purposes of worship. The notion 
 flatters the imagination, but is unfounded. The crowds 
 of reliques which, after lying for centuries beneath tlie 
 ruins of ancient palaces, villas, tlieatres, orbasilicoe, have 
 reappeared to adorn the modern galleries, were in almost 
 every instance the ornaments of those secular buildings, 
 and not of temples. The list of sacred images, too, does 
 not perhaps include any one of the highest rank. But, 
 in the next place, we do severe injustice to classical art 
 if we adhere to the opinion, that the very best works we 
 possess are nothing more than copies from older and better 
 efforts of genius. Many admirable antiques, executed 
 with much skill and feeling, are doubtless copies ; but 
 many others certainly are not. The Niobe may be a 
 copy : the Venus is not one, nor is the Apollo, nor the 
 Laocoon. The true state of the case has been already 
 suggested. In the golden age of art there were conceived 
 ideal forms of some of the favourite objects of represen- 
 tation ; and the conceptions so framed, obtaining a sanc- 
 tion almost religious, affected all subsequent works, 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTIKE. 201 
 
 which treated either the same suhjccts, or others cog- 
 nate to them. For the highest artists of every age 
 after Phidias, this was all : a fence was drawn around 
 certain subjects, but within the line there was ample 
 room for original invention. The Venus de' Medici is 
 a work whose inspiration was drawn from the elder statues 
 of Praxiteles and of Phidias, but it is one whose grace 
 and beautA^ are its own ; it was stolen as genius steals 
 from genius, it was stolen as Phidias stole from Homer. 
 
 It is surprising how little nationality Roman art 
 displays, and it is humiliating to discover how little 
 invention there is even in that small section of it which is 
 in any sense native. For the early legends and the later 
 histories of their race the people found poets and annal- 
 ists ; but their sternness of character, aided perhaps by 
 political causes, barred them from finding a sculptor or 
 painter even for the noblest scenes of their annals or 
 then- poetical traditions. The imperial achievements 
 adorned triumphal arches and columns with reliefs, in a 
 style which, notwithstanding much skill of execution 
 and even of design in its earlier efforts, has scarcely been 
 too harshly treated by being compared, in respect of its 
 tameness and dryness of conception, to the paragraphs of 
 a military gazette. 
 
 The statues of the emperors, however, of which the 
 series is tolerably complete, give an extremely favourable 
 view of the progress of sculpture, and strongly confirm 
 the notion of its continued excellence. The Greeks who 
 formed such works, wanted only the inspiration of their 
 own beautiful mythology, and the melancholy remem- 
 brance of their fallen land, to evolve such conceptions 
 as the most exquisite of the imaginative compositions. 
 The imperial statues were sometimes simple portraits, 
 like that of Augustus in his pontifical robes,* and many 
 in the military dress. Of the equestrian portraits the 
 most celebrated is the bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius ; a 
 work remarkable for the dignity of the emperor's figure, 
 
 * In the Vatican, Mus. Pio-Clement. Sala Rotonda, No. 14 
 
202 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 and the uncommon expression of life in the somewhat 
 clumsy horse. This is one of the very few antiques 
 which have never been under ground. We find it 
 mentioned in the Notitia, a work written in the middle 
 of the fifth century of our era, at which time it stood 
 in the Forum near the arch of Septimius Severus, and 
 was called the Horse of Constantine. In 966, Pope 
 John XIII. hanged on it the rebellious prefect Petrus ; 
 and in 974 the corpse of the Antipope Boniface was 
 thrown down beneath it. In 1187 it was transferred to 
 the front of the Lateran, where it stood when Rienzi, on 
 his great festival, made the nostrils of the horse discharge 
 wine for the people. In 1538 Paul III. removed it, 
 under the direction of Michel Angelo, to its present 
 place in the square of the Capitol.* Other imperial 
 statues were ideal and heroic, and generally naked, a 
 class which is best represented by the Antinous ; and 
 some of these works were colossal. There are many 
 admired female busts and statues belonging to the im- 
 perial families, the most interesting of which are certainly 
 those of the elder Agrippina, the unfortunate wife of 
 Germanicus.t 
 
 Portrait sculptures of the republican times scarcely 
 occur. There is, however, amongst other instances, a very 
 remarkable bust full of character, which is recognised as 
 representing Scipio Africanus.:|; The celebrated heroic 
 statue of the Palazzo Spada in Rome, is probably (though 
 the point is disputed) a likeness of Pompey, and perhaps 
 is the figure at the foot of which Julius Caesar fell. 
 The best, and, it may be, the only genuine bust of Caesar 
 himself, is in the collection at Naples.§ As to Roman 
 literary men, we have genuine but not exact busts of 
 
 * Fea, Dissertazione sulle Rovine di Roma, appended to his 
 Translation of Winckelmann (1783-4), vol. iii. p. 410. 
 
 t Extant, if the subject is not misconceived, in several repeti- 
 tions ; especially in Naples, Statues, No 131 ; and in the Capitol, 
 Stanza degl' Imperatori. 
 
 X Capitoline Museum ; Galleria, No. 50. 
 
 § Museo Borbonico, No. 175 ; but see the Museo Pio-Clemen- 
 tino, torn. vi. tav. 38. 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE. 203 
 
 Terence, Sallust, Horace, Seneca, and some others ; many 
 pretended heads of Cicero, and some true ones.* 
 
 There are a few excellent portraits of private or un- 
 known persons, of which the Germanicus already men- 
 tioned is perhaps the best as well as the oldest specimen. 
 Herculaneum has furnished some admirable examples 
 of this class. Three are in Dresden ; and the family 
 of the Herculanean Nonius Balbus are at Naples, and 
 consist of two small equestrian statues and seven figures 
 on foot, of which five are female.t 
 
 Portraits of eminent Greeks of elder times were either 
 copied after likenesses taken from the original, or formed 
 by invention, in a style which was sometimes extremely 
 felicitous. Instances of the former class are very nu- 
 merous. Among the best are some busts, and one or 
 more statues, of Demosthenes; other full lengths of Athe- 
 nian orators ; a very admirable statue which, on most 
 insufficient grounds, has been named Aristides ;X two fine 
 sitting figures in the Vatican, of which one is inscribed 
 as a portrait of the poet Posidippus, and the other, from 
 its likeness to known busts, is believed to represent 
 the more celebrated Menander.§ Of the ideal class the 
 grandest example is the majestic head of Homer, extant 
 in several repetitions ;|| and a highly characteristic crea- 
 tion is the Silenus-like head of Socrates, imagined by 
 Lysippus, and preserved in a good many busts.*!! 
 
 But in the art, as in the literature of Rome, subjects 
 
 • Cicero, in the Glypothek of Munich, No. 224; bust from the 
 Mattel palace in Rome, now belontring to the Duke of Wellington. 
 
 f Museo Borbonico, Nos. 65,66 ; "and Nos. 45, 47, 50, 62, 55, 
 57, 60. 
 
 X At Naples ; Museo Borbonico, No. 38S. 
 
 § INIus. Pio-Clem. Galleria delle Statue, Nos. 24 and 25. 
 
 il At Naples, Mus. Borb., No. 348; and British Museum, Room 
 HI., No. 25. Inferior examples ; Capitoline Museum, Stanza de' 
 Filosofi, Nos. 44, 45, 46. 
 
 IT Capitoline Museum, Stanza de' Filosofi, Nos. 4, 5, 6 ; and else- 
 where. The room containing these busts furnishes many examples 
 of Greek portraits belonging to both the classes mentioned in the 
 text. See Visconti, Iconographie Grecque, 1811; tome i. pp. 
 49-59, 163-169. 
 
204 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 from the authentic annals, either of their own nation 
 or of their Hellenic neighbours, bore a very small pro- 
 portion to those derived from the Grecian mythology 
 and legendary history. 
 
 Of the works taken from the circle of the Twelve 
 Olympic Divmities, the most remarkable have been 
 already described. The best are unquestionably the 
 Jupiter, Apollo, Venus, I\Iinerv^a, and Diana ; and the 
 origin of some of these classical conceptions has been 
 traced to the Phidian age or near it. It remains to 
 direct attention, in the first place, to a few others of 
 the best Venus-statues in the Italian galleries. In the 
 Vatican, it is enough to notice the fine Venus Anadyo- 
 mene, and the beautiful though injured Crouching 
 Venus, which bears the name of its artist Bupalus.'* 
 The Neapolitan Museum possesses, in the Venus Victrix 
 of Capua, a statue of the highest ideal beauty ;t and a 
 collection of figures in another room of the same gallery, 
 is useful as exhibiting copies, for the most part indifi^er- 
 ently executed, of almost every kno^^^l character of the 
 goddess. In the Florentme gallery, the fame of the Venus 
 de' Medici has eclipsed at least one very lovely figure, 
 — the half-draped Venus with the Diadem.:|: An equal 
 decline in art and in female modesty is displayed by 
 some existing antiques, which represent Roman ladies, 
 of imperial or princely rank, and of ordinary face and 
 form, invested with the attributes of the Venus, and not 
 shrinking from her exposure of the person. § Before the 
 idea of the Apollo reached the point developed in the 
 masterpiece of the Belvedere, his statues had undergone 
 a series of changes, which set out from a muscular and 
 
 * Braccio Nuovo, No. 42 ; and ]\Ius. Pio-Clem. Gabinetto delle 
 Maschere, No. 5. 
 
 f Mus. Borb. Statues, No. 104. 
 
 i In the small (second) corridor of the great gallery. 
 
 § The Venus and Cupid of the Vatican ; ]\Ius. Pio-Clem. Cortile 
 di Belvedere, No. 46 ; found among the ruins of the so-called Temple 
 of Venus and Cupid in the vineyard of the monastery Santa Croce 
 in Gierusalemme, and believed to represent the wife of Alexander 
 Severus. 
 
 ^ 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTIXE. 205 
 
 manly character, illustrated hy more than one example,* 
 and passed after the i\Iacedonian ages into the more usual 
 representation of a youth who has not yet reached matu- 
 rity. Of the boyish forms of those later times, there are 
 several extremely beautiful specimens ; the best of which 
 are perhaps the Lycian Apollo of the Florentine gallery, 
 a figure of exceeding loveliness and repose ;t and the 
 Apollo with the Lyre and Swan at Naples, probably 
 in its outlines the most perfect of all the statues of this 
 divinity. :|: Of the sculptures representing the god in 
 scenes of his legend, the Apollo Belvedere is far the 
 most successful ; but there appear to have been many 
 groups of this class, none of which remain entii'e. To 
 such we must refer the numerous representations of 
 Marsyas, suspended to the pine-tree ;§ and to the same 
 story the most probable opinion assigns the expressive 
 statue of the Whetter at Florence, || an old man with 
 mean features and a Tartar skull, who crouches down 
 whetting a knife, but looking up with an air of fixed 
 curiosity. Of the Mercury statues, it is enough to cite 
 the celebrated one of the Vatican, long mistaken for an 
 Antinous, and equally admirable for the excellent pro- 
 portions of the ti-unk, and the beauty and godlike repose 
 of the head.^ 
 
 Of the inferior divinities, the classes to which we owe 
 the most interesting antiques are two. The first embraces 
 the Bacchic legends; the second those of Cupid, the Greek 
 Eros. Of all the symbolical fables of ancient times, these 
 two cycles were at once the most profoundly significant. 
 
 * Mus. Capitol. Salonc, No, 7 (in the ancient style) ; anoliier of 
 similar character, but of a later period, in the same museum, 
 Stanza del Gladiatore, No. 17 ; found at the Solfatara near Tivoli. 
 
 t The Apollino of the Tribune. 
 
 J Mus. Borbon. : Statues, No. 72. 
 
 § Two examples in the great gallery of Florence ; western cor- 
 ridor. 
 
 II The Arrotino of the Tribune, called by some the Slave Vindex. 
 The idea in the text belongs to the Abate Fea. See note to his 
 translation of Winckelmann, vol. ii. p. 314. 
 
 'J Mus. Pio-Clem. Cortil? di Belvedere, No, 56. 
 
206 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 and the most poetical. The mysteries, which in their 
 successive stages possessed so much of piety, of imagina- 
 tion, and of vice, were founded on the Bacchic traditions, 
 which abounded in picturesque representations of the 
 physical qualities of the material world. The fable of 
 Eros had, in its most complete form, a more elevated and 
 spiritual design. 
 
 And first, of the Dionysiac or Bacchic legends. The 
 character of the leading divinity himself, was that of 
 youthful, voluptuous, almost feminine beauty ; but of 
 the few good statues in which he appears unaccom- 
 panied, Italy perhaps possesses only one, besides frag- 
 ments.* Several antiques represent him attended by 
 youthful Satyrs, by Eros, Ampelos, or other mythological 
 personages ; and his meeting with Ariadne on the isle of 
 Naxos has furnished, besides pictures and reliefs, one of 
 the finest pieces of sculpture in Italy, the recumbent 
 colossal Ariadne of the Vatican, a statue equally noble 
 in design and execution, and belonging either to the 
 independent age of Greece or to the very earliest period 
 of the Roman sovereignty. t The other actors in the 
 mystic revel are more frequent than Bacchus himself. 
 We have already traced the formation of the figure of 
 the Sat3'rs, wliom the Italians called Fauns ; and to the 
 examples then named we must add two bronzes of the 
 Neapolitan collection, a Drunlcen Faun, and another 
 croNvned with an oaken garland,:|: together with two 
 statues of the Florentine galler}^, namely, a superb 
 Torso, and the celebrated Dancing Faun, so inimi- 
 table for life and grace, and so worthily restored from 
 its ruins. § But Italy has now lost the grandest of all 
 
 * The Bacchus of the Villa Ludovisi in Rome (generally inac- 
 cessible). The fine colossal Torso of the Farnese collection, now 
 at Naples ; M us Borb. Statues, No. 19"). Probably the best per- 
 fect statue is that of the Louvre, No. 154. 
 
 t Mus. Pio-Clem. Galleria delle Statue, No. 51 ; sometimes, 
 though wrongly, called a Cleopatra. 
 
 * Mus. Borb. Bronzi, No. 6 and No. 60. 
 
 § The Torso in the Little Corridor ; the Dancing Faun of the 
 Tribune, restored by Michel Angclo. 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE. 207 
 
 the satyr statues, the colossal Sleeping Faun of the 
 Barberini gallery, a work in the very best style of art, 
 and perhaps belonging to the time, if not to the hand, 
 of Scopas or Praxiteles."^ The Silenus is not rare ; and 
 there are at least three masterly groups of this person- 
 age, carrying in his arms the infant Bacchus, all appar- 
 ently copies of some renowned original.t Pan belongs 
 to the Bacchic scenes, and is represented in some excel- 
 lent statues ;;j; but both he and the female votaries, as 
 well as the Satyrs, and the wildest and most picturesque 
 scenes of the Dionysiac rites, are chiefly to be sought in 
 reliefs. The same thing is true of the figures of Centaurs, 
 which in one view might be ranked in the Bacchic cycle, 
 while, m another, they as properly come into the class of 
 the legends of Eros, who, in several groups, is represented, 
 by a significantly poetical fiction, as taming those fierce 
 and anomalous beings.§ 
 
 The most meritorious of the single statues of Cupid 
 have been abeady alluded to ; and it must be noticed, 
 that in many bas-reliefs, especially of the later ages, 
 Cupids appear in a kind of obscure allegory as genii, 
 represented often with extreme grace, not only in 
 cliildish sport, but in the games of the circus, and in a 
 playful imitation of all the employments of human 
 life. Several sleeping figures may be added to the 
 
 * In IMunich, Glypothek, No. 96. Found at Rome, in the moat 
 of the Castle St Angelo, into which it had probably fallen with the 
 other statues, which, in 637, the Greek soldiers of Belisarius hurled 
 down on the heads of the besieging Goths. 
 
 t The best (from the Borghese gallery), in the Louvre, No. 709 ; 
 Vatican, Braccio Nuovo, No. 126; Munich, No. 115, acquired, 
 like the Vatican statue, from the RuspoH palace in Rome. 
 
 J Pan and Olympus, in the Florentine Gallery, eastern corridor ; 
 the magnificent statue of the Holkham Gallery (from Italy); Speci- 
 mens of Ancient Sculpture, vol ii. plate 27. 
 
 § Vatican, Mus. Pio-Clem. Sala degli Animali, No, 82; Capitol, 
 Salone, No. 2 and No, 4. The last enumerated is an inferior re- 
 petition of the famous Borghese Centaur, Louvre, No, 134. The 
 Capitcline and Borghese Centaurs were found in Hadrian's Villa, 
 and belong to his times ; and the Borghese and second Capitohne 
 groups are curious on account of the head, which is a close imita- 
 tion of that of the Laocoon, both in features and expression. 
 
208 ART IxN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 list ;* and the only other specimens deserving attention, 
 are those taken from the fable of Eros and Psyche, the 
 legend which shadows forth the soul as a lovely female 
 child, wandering through the eartli to seek that heavenly 
 love from which sin has parted her. This is an Italian 
 conception, though built on a Greek foundation ; the 
 representations of various points of the story, which are 
 so common on reliefs and gems, all belong to the Roman 
 times ; and some of the most poetical are of too late a 
 period to deserve notice as achievements of art. In many 
 of them, Eros is represented as tormenting the butterfly, 
 the emblem of Psyche, whose figures always have the 
 wings of that msect ; and in one gem he is portrayed as 
 hunting it, a subject which is also found in one of the 
 Florentine statues. In another group. Psyche kneels 
 to Eros, and is forgiven.i But the works which are at 
 once the most pleasing in composition, and the most 
 successful in execution, are the numerous copies of the 
 graceful embrace of Eros and Psyche, — a scene which 
 became a favourite before sculpture had altogether sunk, 
 and was so often repeated, that almost every great gallery 
 in Europe possesses an antique copy of it. :|: 
 
 Of the legends drawn from the heroic ages, none has 
 furnished so many works of a high order as that of Her- 
 cules. In statuary the most celebrated representations 
 are the Farnese and Belvedere figures already described. 
 Several groups exhibit the infant hero strangling the 
 serpents ;§ others show him in manhood, M'ith Telephus, 
 Omphale, or others. Numerous reliefs as well as paint- 
 ings, but scarcely any good statues, are founded on the 
 fables of Theseus, of the Labdacidae, of the Argonautic 
 adventure, and of Jason and Medea. Among statues relat- 
 
 * Two in Florence, and one in the Royal Gallery at Turin. 
 
 •f Louvre, No. 496 ; Borghese Collection. 
 
 Ij: Museo Capitolino; Stanza del Gladiatore, No. 3 One in the 
 
 Florentine Gallery. 
 
 § A very fine colossal marble in the Gallery of Turin : a repeti- 
 tion of it at Florence : a bronze (No. 69) in the Museum of Naples, 
 which, however, is said to be only a copy made about the sixteenth 
 enturv. 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE. 209 
 
 ing to others of the heroic legends, the best is the Meleager 
 of the Vatican ;* and to the story of the Dioscuri belong 
 the Florentine and other figures of Leda. From the 
 Theban traditions we have many reliefs, and some statues 
 and groups, the most famous of which is the imposing but 
 desperately mutilated group of the Farnese Bull, repre- 
 senting the tragical fate of Direct The Thessalian tra- 
 ditions give the Marriage of Peleus and Thetis as the 
 theme of the reliefs on the celebrated Barberini or Port- 
 land vase, a work of the time of Alexander Severus, but 
 distmguished by the beauty of the material, which is a 
 vitreous composition imitating sardonyx.:}] The same 
 legends introduce to us the incidents of the Trojan war, 
 which are common on reliefs ; and there is one supposed 
 statue of Achilles, with several busts. § The Sacrifice of 
 Iphigenia is figured on the elegant Medicean vase of the 
 Florentine gallery ; and the famous Iliac Table of the 
 Capitol represents in a series of reliefs the chief events 
 of the same war in their relation to the traditional origin 
 of Rome. 11 A group of Menelaus bearing the corpse of 
 Patroclus is extant in several mutilated copies, of which 
 the two least injured are in Florence ;^ there is another 
 Iragment of great merit in the Vatican ;** and a fourth 
 lias undergone a very singular fate, being the battered 
 figure which stands at the corner of the Braschi Palace 
 in Rome, and, under the name of Pasquin, fathers the 
 local witticisms of the modern Romans.tt 
 
 * Belvedere, Mus. Pio-Clem.: Vestibule, third division, No. 1. 
 Found in a vineyaa-d on the Janiciilan Mount, 
 
 ■f" At Kaples. Lately removed from the garden of the Villa 
 Reale to the Court of Inscriptions in the Royal Museum. 
 
 X British IMuseum, Room xi. Found about 1591, vrithin s 
 sarcophagus in a tomb near Rome on the Frascati road. The 
 sarcophagus is in the Capitol (Stanza deli' Urna), and is covered 
 with reliefs representing the adventures of Achilles. 
 
 § The Borghese Achilles in the Louvre, No. 144 ; a copy of 
 ■»ery unequal execution. 
 
 II Mus. Capitol. Stanza del Vaso, No. 37. 
 
 H In the Pitti palace and on the Ponte Vecchio. 
 
 ** Belved. Mus. Pio-Clem. Stanza de' Bnsti, No. 26. 
 
 ff See the Museo Pio-Clementiuo, tom. vi, tav. 19, andtherela- 
 
 VOL. I. Ji 
 
210 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OP GREECE 
 
 The subjects of the works which have been now point- 
 ed out are in most cases certain. There are, however, a 
 great many statues, as well as reliefs, o: which the sub- 
 jects are extremely doubtful. In some of these (and 
 perhaps in more than the antiquaries are willing to 
 admit) the artists seem really to have had nothing far- 
 ther in view than the representation of a fine model in a 
 spirited and expressive attitude, generally taken from 
 some act of familiar life. As instances we may take 
 two delightful figures of Children, one of whom lauglis 
 from beneath a Silenus mask, and the other exerts his 
 pigmy strength in attempting to strangle a goose.* 
 
 In other works, however, the attitudes and grouping 
 are too significant not to have been intended as a picture 
 of some particular event. Of monuments belonging to 
 this class three may be na,nied, all possessing very 
 lofty qualities, — the Paetus and Arria, the Papirius with 
 his Mother,t and the Dying Gladiator.;}; In the first of 
 these groups a beautiful woman, wounded and fainting, 
 is supported by a male figure, of a character neither ideal 
 nor Grecian, who is in the act of plunging a short sword 
 into his own neck. In the second, a majestic female 
 grasps and seems to address a youth, who looks up to 
 her with respect and attention. The third is famUiar to 
 every one, and is incomparable for the pathetic force with 
 which it expresses the pain and lassitude of approacliing 
 death, in the air of the wounded man, fallen to the ground, 
 and feebly propping himself on one arm. 
 
 The names just assigned to these three works are those 
 by which they are best known ; but, since Winckelmann 
 wrote, it is generally admitted that they are wrong, though 
 all the three belong to the period now before us. The first 
 has been named Canace with the Slave ; it has ^vith less 
 
 tive text. Many of these pasquinades are in the form of short 
 dialogues between Pasquino (the IMenelaus), and jMarforio, a 
 colossal river- god, No. 1, in the court of the Gapitoline Museum. 
 
 • Mus. Capitol. Stanza del Fauno, No. 15 and No. 21. 
 
 ■f Both in the Roman Villa Ludovisi. 
 
 :|: Mus. Capitol. Stanza del Gladiatore Moribondo, No. 1. 
 
I 
 
 TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE. 211 
 
 probability been called Haemon and Antigone ; and it 
 has also been supposed to represent a scene from some 
 of the Roman battles, a barbarian killing his wife and 
 himself to escape slavery. Of the theories regarding the 
 second, the most plausible is that which recognises in it 
 Electra tutoring tiie young Orestes for his task of ven- 
 geance. The Dying Gladiator has stronger claims to his 
 old name than either of the others ; and besides the 
 dramatic pathos which belongs to the subject in this view, 
 it would be deeply interesting to conceive a Grecian 
 artist filled with melancholy inspiration by the departed 
 glory of his race, and representing, in this sad composi- 
 tion, one of the most pitiable victims of his stem masters. 
 There are difficulties in the way of this hypothesis, but 
 the figure is imquestionably neither that of a Greek nor 
 of a Roman, and the newest opinion describes it as that 
 of a barbarian wounded in one of the imperial wars, and 
 forming part of a group on some lost monument.* 
 
 THE IMITATIVE STVLES OF SCULPTURE. 
 
 The art has hitheiio exhibited a gradual and natural 
 development ; but a few works of the Roman times dis- 
 play an artificial and forced taste which it is worth 
 while to notice. The reliques of this class are of two 
 descriptions. 
 
 The first consists of pieces which copy the ancient 
 stiflPness and harshness of the Greek archaic or hieratic 
 style. In Greece, even in the best ages of art, this de- 
 signed imitation of antiquity had place to a certain extent 
 in many of the temple-statues. Some Roman efforts of 
 the kind may be accounted for on the same principle ; 
 but in many instances the copying of the ancient man- 
 ner was solely an affair of caprice or fashion, and such 
 specimens, though important to the antiquary in the way 
 of illustration, are apt to create mistakes in the chrono- 
 logy of art. In many cases, however, the imitation is 
 incomplete, and is thus detected. Two instances may 
 
 * See the Beschreibung, vol. iii, part 1. p. 248. 
 
212 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 be sufficient. One is a highly-finislied relief of three 
 female figures in the Vatican : * the other is a remarkable 
 though mutilated quadrilateral altar in the Capitol, 
 beautifully sculptured with reliefs, which represent the 
 labours of Hercules, but which, though strictly antique 
 in some particulars, in others display characteristics 
 that seem to indicate the age of Hadrian.t 
 
 To that time belongs the second class of imitations. 
 These are the reproductions of Egyptian sculpture which 
 were introduced by the emperor's peculiar taste, and of 
 which his villa at Tivoli and some other ruins have 
 furnished great numbers. Such copies are easily distin- 
 guishable from the genuine works of the East. They 
 have no hieroglyphs, — they are highly and minutely 
 finished, — the forms, the anatomy, and the expression, 
 are Greek or Roman, — and, in short, they have little 
 which entitles them to the foreign name, except the sub- 
 jects (chiefly Egyptian divinities) together with the dress 
 and attributes. 
 
 SCULPTURE AFTER THE TIMES OF THE ANTONINES : 
 
 A. u. 933—1059 : or a. d. 180-306. 
 Thus far those works and ages have been reviewed in 
 which sculpture claims study by its own merits. The 
 museums of Italy, however, and particularly those of 
 Rome, are thronged with monuments which, belonging 
 either to the very end of the classical period, or to the 
 centuries which intervened till the fall of the empire, are 
 as productions of art almost universally worthless, but 
 possess great interest as illustrating the prevailing modes 
 of thought and of religious feeling. They are chiefly 
 sarcophagi, the practice of burying the dead having by 
 the time of the Antonines nearly superseded that of 
 burning ; and these stone-coffins are covered with sculp- 
 tures in relief, embracing a great variety of subjects. 
 Some are discovered crowned with portrait-busts ; others 
 
 * Museo Chiaramonti, No. 358. 
 
 ■f Mus. Capitol. Stanza Lapidaria, No. 13 : from Albano. See 
 the Beschreibung, vol. iii. part 1. p. 149. 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE. 213 
 
 have reliefs exhibiting family groups, or scenes which 
 seem to be taken from real life ; and many represent 
 mythological subjects, in which it is difficult to trace 
 any peculiar adaptation to their purpose. But in very 
 many cases the scenes of the sepulchral reliefs have a 
 symbolical meaning easily discernible ; and these give us 
 a most interesting glimpse of the theological notions 
 current in the pagan world during the early ages of 
 Christianity. 
 
 In some the symbolical allusion is direct and simple ; 
 such, for instance, as figure combats of the heroic times on 
 the sepulchre of a soldier, or adorn the grave of a dead 
 youth with the story of the slain Adonis, or of Ganymede 
 carried off by the eagle. In many others the symbol is 
 more abstruse ; as, for example, in those incidents from 
 the fable of Love and Psyche, often so beautifully and 
 tenderly conceived, and yet executed in a style of the ut- 
 most coarseness, which marks the tomb as being literally 
 the worst manufacture of a bad manufactory. Bacchic 
 scenes are also very frequent, in many of which the ini- 
 tiation is assumed as the type of death, and the god as 
 the divinity of the realm of shadows. In some of these 
 the sensual characteristics of the rites are disgustingly 
 prominent ; in others there is a pure poetical pathos. 
 The same idea seems to be the prevailing one in two 
 very favourite subjects ; the Repose of Ariadne and 
 that of Endymion. The sleep is that of death : 
 Dionysos and Luna, the divinities of the dead, approach 
 the sleepers with love and pity; but the slumber of 
 the grave continues unbroken. The idea is also indi- 
 cated by the Cupid-like youth, the Genius of Mortal 
 Life, sleeping, or with his hands crossed above his head, 
 leaning on the cypress-tree ; while in other reliefs he 
 bends over the inverted torch, or holds the butterfly, the 
 emblem of the soul, or the bird, the symbol of the manes. 
 Some sarcophagi have the voyage of the departed spirit 
 to the island of Kronos, and numerous other devices 
 bearing reference to the metaph3^sical notions taught in 
 the later schools of Grecian philosophy. 
 
214 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 In many reliefs we can perceive the solemnity of 
 tliis symbolic and religious meaning gradually losing it- 
 self; and we discover the utter abuse and misappre- 
 hension of it, in such works as those which show us 
 Endymion visited by a female figure whose face is 
 clearly a portrait, or which crown other goddesses with 
 fashionable Roman head-dresses. The complete de- 
 parture from the classical mythology, which had been 
 evinced at an earlier period by the Egyptian copies, now 
 displayed itself in the numerous amulets on gems and 
 rings, and in such reliefs as those representing the Syrian 
 worship of Mithras by the slaying of the bull. These and 
 other scenes were frequent on Italian marbles, about the 
 time when Alexandria is known to have abounded in 
 the cabalistic Abraxas gems. 
 
 TOPOGRAPHY OF ANCIENT ART IN ITALY. 
 
 Ancient Italy, as we have seen, besides importing 
 many works executed in foreign countries, was itself 
 the seat of three distinct developments of the fine 
 arts. There was, first, in Lower Italy and Sicily, a large 
 district where they were practised with high success by 
 Grecian colonists. Secondly, there was another, chiefly 
 comprised in Etruria, in which the indigenous Italian 
 population cultivated them with more or less dependence 
 on Greece. And thirdly, after the fall of that nation, the 
 whole peninsula, but especially the metropolis, became 
 the residence of foreign artists, and the receptacle of the 
 works which they executed for their Roman masters. 
 
 The existing monuments of ancient Architecture are 
 scattered over the whole country. The topographical 
 chapters of this volume will point out the principal re- 
 mains, and make it now almost unnecessary to say, that 
 by far the richest field of this class of antiquities is in 
 Rome and Latium, which contain an extent of classical 
 ruins nowhere equalled within the same space. 
 
 Of antique Painting and Sculpture in all their modi- 
 fications, almost every monument which Italy now 
 possesses has been found on her own soil, having been 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE. 215 
 
 either executed there, or imported before the fall of the 
 emph-e. But the country, especially within the last hun- 
 dred years, has lost an immense number of sculptures, 
 which, though some of them may be found in every 
 kingdom of Europe, are far most abundant in the Louvre. 
 The history of the museums of Italy would form an 
 interesting chapter of illustrations for her political and 
 moral history. Thousands of antiques lay buried for 
 centuries beneath the mins of the buildings which 
 they had adorned, and the few statues and other monu- 
 ments which stood in different parts of Rome in the 
 middle ages, were either neglected or misinterpreted. 
 Even in the bright though short interval of enlighten- 
 ment which shone on the fourteenth century, there still 
 prevailed an ignorance as to archaeology, of which we may 
 take as a specimen the fact, that Petrarch gravely calls 
 the pyramid of Cestius the tomb of Remus. Attention 
 to art revived with the final revival of letters ; and 
 after the excavations commenced by Pope Paul III. in 
 the first half of the sixteenth century, which discovered 
 the Farnese Torso, Hercules, Flora, and Venus Calli- 
 pygos, the search for classical reliqucs was unintermit- 
 ted, and many galleries were formed. The private col- 
 lections have now, with very few exceptions, merged in 
 the public museums, at the head of which stand those 
 of Rome, Florence, and Naples. 
 
 The City of the Popes contains two public Museums 
 of Antiques, those of the Vatican and the Capitol. The 
 former, which has no equal in the world, presents many 
 works of the highest order, and its almost innumerable 
 specimens of a lower class constitute of themselves a 
 most instructive school for the study of heathen mytho- 
 logy and customs. Its chief treasures are contained in 
 the department named the Museo Pio-Clementino, which 
 was opened by Clement XIV., and enlarged by Pius VI., 
 embracing both the monuments previously procured, 
 and very many new acquisitions. A second depart- 
 ment, far less valuable as well as less extensive, derives 
 its name of the Museo Chiaramonti from its founder 
 
216 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE 
 
 Pius VII. A third, and yet smaller one, the Braccio 
 Nuovo, was added in 1821. The finest works of the 
 Vatican are its marble sculptures and its bronzes ; but 
 it contains also some excellent mosaics, a very few 
 ancient paintings, a good many terra-cottas, and an ex- 
 tremely curious gallery of inscriptions, partly heathen, 
 partly belonging to the early Christians. There is a 
 small collection of Egyptian monuments, begun by 
 Pius VII. in 1819 ; and an Etruscan museum has been 
 opened by Gregory XVI. The whole number of antiques 
 in the Vatican falls little short of 4000, without reckon- 
 ing the inscriptions, which amount to upwards of 3000. 
 The Museum of the Capitol, founded by Clement XII., 
 with which may be classed the collection in the Palazzo 
 de' Conservatori on the opposite side of the square, is 
 immeasurably inferior both in extent and value. It, 
 however, contains several masterpieces, and its chief im- 
 portance in other respects consists in its collection of 
 portrait-busts and statues. 
 
 The Private Galleries in Rome are now lamentably 
 fallen. The collection of the Villa Albani still contains 
 many interesting monuments, but most of its treasures 
 are to be sought at Munich and in the Lou\Te. In the 
 latter museum also is the first and most famous collec- 
 tion of the Villa Borghese ; and that which has been since 
 formed is of far inferior worth. The Famese gallery 
 has been transferred to Naples, and that of the Villa de' 
 Medici to Florence. The antiques of the Barberini 
 Palace are chiefly in England and at Munich ; those of 
 the INIattei Palace and Villa, and the Villa Negroni, are 
 principally in the Vatican ; and those of the celebrated 
 Giustiniani Palace are scattered over all Europe. The 
 Villa Ludovisi possesses a few sculptures universally 
 acknowledged as masterpieces. 
 
 The Ducal Gallery of Florence, contained in the build- 
 ing Degli Ufizj, is scarcely less rich in classical sculp- 
 ture than in modem painting. Its best antiques are the 
 statues of the Roman Villa Medici, which include several 
 works of the very highest excellence. Its bronzes and 
 
TILL THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE. 217 
 
 vases are also valuable, its sarcophagi and busts, though 
 less so, are nevertheless interesting, and its collection of 
 Etruscan monuments is large and increasing. 
 
 The Royal Gallery of Naples, called the Museo Bor- 
 bonico, embraces several extremely precious depart- 
 ments. Its splendid collection of marbles amounts to 
 more than 500 pieces. Its bronzes and bas-reliefs 
 are also very important, and it possesses a small Egyp- 
 tian museum. The Borgia, Albani, and other galleries, 
 have contributed, -with the Farnese, to enrich it ; and 
 it has received immense accessions from excavations 
 both in Magna Grsecia and in the neighbourhood of the 
 city, of which the most celebrated and productive 
 are those of Herculaneum and Pompeii. To these 
 two towns it owes its unequalled collection of about 
 1600 antique paintings, which, having been skilfully de- 
 tached from the walls of the disinterred buildings, are 
 preserved under cover in the halls of the museum. 
 
 In Sicily, Palermo and Catania contain some private 
 collections of antiques, and several towns in Italy pos- 
 sess public galleries of moderate extent and worth. The 
 Royal Museum of Turin, established under the direction 
 of Maffei, contains a few good Grecian and Roman 
 marbles, a considerable number of inscriptions, and an 
 excellent Egyptian department, in which has been in- 
 corporated the first of Drovetti's well known collections. 
 At Brescia the recent discovery of an ancient temple has 
 given interest to the formation of a museum ; and that of 
 Verona, although containing little except inscriptions, 
 derives fame from Maffei its founder and historian. The 
 collections of Venice, consisting partly of antiques found 
 in her provinces, partly of works from Greece, are com- 
 paratively insignificant ; and, besides the Public Gallery 
 in the library of St ]\Iark, the most remarkable pieces 
 are the four Bronze Horses, which, however, are more 
 noted for their adventures and undoubted antiquity 
 than for their plastic merit. Brought by the Roman 
 general Mummius from Corinth on its capture, they were 
 removed by Constantine from Rome to his Hippodrome 
 
218 ART IN ITALY FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE. <fec 
 
 at Byzantmm. In 1204, when the soldiers of the 
 fourth Crusade turned against their Christian allies in 
 the east those arms which had been consecrated to win 
 the Holy Sepulchre from the infidels, these renowned 
 figures were, in the sack of Constantinople, appropriated 
 by the Venetians, and sent to decorate the metropolitan 
 church of their island-city. They were next seized, 
 like so many other works of art in Italy, by the French 
 invaders of 1797, and were exposed for several years on 
 a triumphal arch of Napoleon in Paris. They were 
 restored, however, in 1815, and now again crown the 
 great gate of the Venetian cathedral. 
 
THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF ROME, &c 219 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Ancient Topography of Borne and Latium. 
 
 I. Ancient Rome : Position and Aspect — General View of 
 the City — Monuments of the Kings — The Rampart — 
 The Tunnel— The Dungeon— Monuments of the Republic 
 —Tombs— The Circus— The Capitoline Rock— T/ie Roman 
 Forum and Sacred Way — Ruins covering the Republican Forum 
 — Its probable Position — The Palatine Mount— The Sacred 
 Way — Monuments of the Empire — The Augustan Period 
 — Ruins on the Palatine — On the Campus Martius — Tombs — 
 The Pantheon — The Hill of Gardens — iVero— His Conflagra- 
 tion and New City — Ijater Emperors — The Baths of Titus — 
 The Colosseum — Trajan's Forum — Hadrian's Bridge and Tomb 
 — Monuments of the Dechne — Population of Rome. — II. An- 
 cient Latium : Aspect — Monuments near Rome — Aqueducts 
 — Highways — Monuments of the Kings — Latian Scenes of the 
 jEneid—i:he Tiber Banks— Ostia— The Island— The Port- 
 Ruins in the Forest — Laurentura — Lavinium — The Stream 
 Numicus — Ardea — The Folscian Coast — Antium— Astura — 
 The Isle of Circe— Anxur— The Pontine Marshes— The Hills 
 — The Ausonian District — The Csecuban Hills— Towns — The 
 Volscian Froyitier — Arpinum — The Hernician District — Cyclo- 
 pean Ruing — The Alhan Mountains — Tusculum — The Mounts 
 — The Lakes — T7ie Prcenestine Mountains — Praeneste — Tibur. 
 
 ANCIENT ROME. 
 The district in which Rome lies, partly included within 
 the ancient Latium and partly in Etruria, is now called 
 by foreigners the Campagna, and by the natives the 
 Agro Romano. It is an undulating plain, which, 
 reckoned from Civita Vecchia to Terracina, is about a 
 hundred miles long ; while its breadth nowhere exceeds 
 forty mUes, and is m most places considerably less. The 
 
220 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OP 
 
 sea is its boundary on the south-west. On the north it is 
 partly enclosed by the low hills of La Tolfa behind Civita 
 Vecchia ; and farther eastward, in the same quarter, 
 the isolated Mount San Oreste, which is the ancient 
 Soracte, rises near the valley of the Tiber. Beyond that 
 river the north-eastern side of the plain is bounded by the 
 lofty range of the Sabine mountains, which approach 
 nearest to the city at Tibur and Praeneste, and are an off- 
 set of the great Apennine chain. Southward from Prse- 
 neste the high-lying valley of the Hernici, continuing 
 the boundary, separates the Sabine heights from the 
 group of mountains anciently inhabited by the Volscians. 
 These lie nearly north and south, and, dipping into the 
 MediteiTanean at Terracina, hem in between them and 
 the sea the narrow Pontine Marshes, which compose the 
 most southerly division of the Campagna. 
 
 From the modem Tower of the Capitol we com- 
 mand a prospect uniting, in an unexampled degree, 
 the charm of a magnificent landscape with that which 
 springs from historical associations. Through the cloud- 
 less and transparent atmosphere a large part of the 
 Latian plain is visible, though some of its nearest fea- 
 tures have a prominence wliich hides the more distant. 
 Its luxuriant pasturages and its thickets of brushwood 
 fade away, on one side, into the faint line of the distant 
 sea, and rise on the other into the stately amphitheatre of 
 the mountains, steep and lofty, yet green to their toj)s, 
 studded on their sides with towns and villages, and 
 towards their southern extremity clothed with beautiful 
 woods. The Tiber, stained to a deep yellow by the 
 fertilizing soil which it has washed away from its banks 
 after entering the Umbrian and Etruscan vales, glitters 
 like a belt of gold along the plain, in the sunshine that 
 irradiates with Italian clearness the sward, the scattered 
 trees, and the shadowy hills. 
 
 But we are attracted yet more forcibly towards the 
 objects which present themselves in our close neigh- 
 bourhood, — the fallen ruins of the city of the Con- 
 ; uls and Caesars, the domes, palaces, and streets, of the 
 
ivMCIEMT WMM: 
 
 5 - i i ^1 1 "^ I s rl 1 1 1! 
 
 FTTBI.lSaED B?" OLIVER Jc BlTYTl. EDINBURGH: 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 221 
 
 city of the Popes. On the north and west, immediately 
 beyond the Tiber, the horizon is bounded by the Jani- 
 culan Mount and Monte Mario, crested with villas em- 
 bosomed among pines and other evergreens. The former 
 of these heights on the opposite side of the river, and 
 the Pincian Mount on the nearer bank, form a semi- 
 circle', of which our position is the centre ; and this 
 area includes almost the whole of the modern town, the 
 greater part of which, indeed, lies between us and the 
 water's edge, covering the flat surface of the Campus 
 Martius. The ancient city of the Seven Hills, begin- 
 ning with the Capitoline Mount, amidst whose modern 
 buildings we stand, is nearly all contained in the re- 
 maining semicircle, enclosed by the city walls. Almost 
 every spot of it is desert : piles of shattered architecture 
 rise amidst vineyards and rural lanes, exhibiting no 
 token of habitation except some mouldering convents, 
 villas, and cottages. But even the reign of destruction 
 and decay has not quite obliterated the traces of Roman 
 greatness. 
 
 At our feet, and directly in front of us, extend, amidst 
 green turf sprinkled with trees, the Forum and the Sacred 
 Way, on which we may fix our eye as a guiding line. 
 Their triumphal arches and some splendid columns of 
 their imperial temples are still erect, while, beyond the 
 imposing vaults of Constantine's Basilica, the perspective 
 of ruins is closed by the kingly mass of the Colosseum. 
 On the right, this scene of perished grandeur is hedged 
 by the Palatine IMount, the seat of the earliest settlement 
 that bore the name of Rome, and now encumbered by 
 the mighty terraces and prostrate fragments of the Palace 
 of the Caesars, and by the cypresses, the flowers, and the 
 weeds of neglected gardens. Still farther to the right 
 the rocky Aventine Hill rises from the river, steep, bare, 
 and solitary, and surmounted by its secluded convent. 
 Continuing the line of the Sacred Way and Colosseum till 
 the eye reaches the city- wall, we see the church of St 
 John Lateran closing the vista. The statued front of this 
 edifice marks the extremity of the desolate Cselian Mount, 
 
222 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF 
 
 which, thence proceeding towards our station, commu- 
 nicates with the Palatine and Aventine. On the left of 
 the Sacred Way and Colosseum lie the Esquiline, Vimi- 
 nal, and Quirinal Hills. The first of these, which is 
 the most distant, is a gentle eminence, almost unin- 
 hahited, on which we may distiaguish the vaults of the 
 palace of Titus. The flattish surface of the Viminai, 
 which comes next, may be traced among the extreme 
 buildings of the modern city ; and still nearer us the 
 palace and gardens of the Pope crown the heights of 
 the thickly-peopled Quirinal. 
 
 Accumulated soil and rubbish have choked up the 
 Forum to a depth of many feet, which may be estimated 
 by a glance at the few monuments excavated to their 
 bases ; and similar vicissitudes have softened the aspect of 
 those nigged mounts, amidst whose thickets of osiers 
 and forests of oak and beech the dwellings of infant 
 Rome were raised. To recall the primeval aspect of the 
 spot, we must also figui-e a little lake in the deep valley 
 between the Capitoline and Palatine Hills, and another 
 between the latter and the Aventine. In time these 
 tarns were converted into marshes, and the most ancient 
 ruin which remains to us was designed for carrying off 
 their waters. The two valleys were drained, — the woods 
 that overhung them disappeared, unless where sacred 
 groves remained encii'cling the shrines of divinities, — the 
 clusters of buildings grew larger and more numerous, and 
 the steep acclivities, fortified in several places by earthen 
 mounds or walls of stone, became the ramparts of the 
 fastness. 
 
 The Latin settlement on the Palatine, whose founda- 
 tion is ascribed to Romulus, speedily united with the 
 Sabine colony of Tatius, covering the Capitoline and the 
 Quirinal ;* and after this event the joint town spread 
 over the neighbouring eminences by a progress which we 
 
 * See vol. i. book ii. of the Beschreibung der Stadt Rom,— a 
 work already described, which, good in every section, is in its 
 ancient topography of the city altogether unrivalled. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 223 
 
 need not specifically trace, till we find all tlie Seven 
 Hills embraced within a fortification which the legendary 
 history ascribes to Servius TuUius. In the strongest 
 quarters a simple wall seems to have been erected, 
 which naturally disappeared without leaving any visible 
 remains ; but along the noiih- eastern side of the Quirinal, 
 where the hill rose from the plain with a very gradual 
 slope, the defence was formed for nearly a mile by the 
 celebrated mound called the Agger of Servius, which 
 is described as ha\'ing been fifty feet iu breadth, and 
 fenced by a ditch at least an hundred feet wide by 
 thirty in depth. Of tliis remarkable work some striking 
 vestiges may still be seen in the grounds of the Villa 
 Negroni, and in those of the Villa Barberini, in which 
 latter, also, is the site of the Campus Sceleratus, where 
 the unchaste Vestal Virgms, like Christian nuns in the 
 middle ages, were buried alive. The ch'cumference of 
 the Servian town was about six miles. 
 
 With the increasing power of the republic the limits 
 of Rome kept pace. The suburb of the Campus Mar- 
 tius, in particular, was gradually covered with public 
 buUdings, and became in the tune of Augustus the most 
 magnificent quarter of the most splendid city on earth. 
 In the reigns of succeeding emperors, if the population 
 did not increase, the edifices at least stretched out in 
 more than one direction many furlongs into the plain. 
 The ancient walls were lost among the new streets, but 
 no repair or extension of them was ever contemplated. 
 Rome had no enemy to dread, for all the nations of the 
 world were her slaves. At length, nearly a thousand 3-ears 
 after the supposed date of the first fortifications, the 
 Emperor Aurelian (a. d. 271) commenced the erection 
 of a new city-wall, which was completed by Probus five 
 years afterwards. Repeated restorations have taken 
 place from the days of Honorius and Belisarius down 
 to those of Leo XII., and few portions of the lofty 
 rampart which, twelve English miles in compass,* now 
 
 * Hobhouse's Illustrations of Childe Harold, p. 182. 
 
224 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF 
 
 encircles Rome, can be presumed to belong to the time of 
 its original founders ; though the circuit which the walls 
 at present surround is substantially the same they en- 
 closed under Aurelian, no material alteration having 
 been made on the left bank of the Tiber. ^ On the 
 other bank, these walls defended, like a little separate 
 town, a part of the Janiculan Mount, comprehended 
 within the modem quarter called the Trastevere ; but 
 the Vatican Hill with its plain continued to be excluded. 
 Servius Tullius is said to have divided his town into 
 four regions, and no new division has been traced till the 
 time of Augustus. This prince, as we have seen in 
 another place, established a system of police, according 
 to w^hich the city contained fourteen Regions, embracing 
 the whole extent then built upon, both w^ithout and 
 within the Servian wall. It is impossible to determine 
 exactly the boundaries of the district thus partitioned ; 
 but the measurement under Vespasian, as reported by 
 Pliny, gives a circuit of thirteen Roman miles, which 
 differs little from the modern lines Avithin the ramparts. 
 On the left bank of the Tiber, the Campus Martins and 
 Pincian Mount were within the boimdaries ; and on the 
 
 * The dream of Vopiscus, adopted in the present day by the 
 Italian Professor Nibby, that Aurelian's wall embraced a circum- 
 ference of fifty miles, is fellow to the vision of Justus Lipsius, 
 
 who pave the Augustan city a populanon of eight millions Rome 
 
 has now sixteen gates, of which four are shut up : the existing 
 walls are crested by numerous towers, and their height outside is 
 about fifty feet, but inside little more than half. They are 
 strengthened internally almost throughout by buttresses, support- 
 ing a continuous arcade. For details as to the walls, gates, and 
 ancient divisions, consult the Beschreibung, vol. i. book ii. (with 
 its comparative table), and book iv. ; Nibby's Treatise on the 
 "Walls, or his edition of Nardini ; Burton's Description of the 
 Antiquities of Rome, 2 vols, 182S ; or IJurgess' Topography and 
 Antiquities of Rome, 2 vols, 1831. — The annexed ]Map, besides 
 indicating the principal ancient monuments, gives Aurelian's Walls 
 with their Gates, and, within these, marks the circuit of the Ram- 
 part of Servius. In regard to this oldest fortification, however, 
 the line at many places is very doubtful ; and our IMap, chiefly 
 foUowmg Bunsen, will therefore be found to differ in several points 
 from the opinions prevalent among the English topographers. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 225 
 
 other bank were included not only the -walled Janiciilan 
 quarter, but that of the Vatican Mount and its plain. 
 
 In tracing- the vestiges of Roman magnificence, we 
 must here be content to abandon all attempts at any 
 thing like a complete enumeration of monuments. Our 
 purpose will be served by a selection of tliose which best 
 illustrate the history of the people ; and in describing 
 these we shall gain several advantages by following, 
 with few exceptions, a chronological order. 
 
 The western and northern declivities of the Palatine 
 present the chief scene of those poetical legends which 
 glorify the birth of the city ; but the grove and foun- 
 tain of the Lupercal, the Ruminal fig-tree, the altar of 
 Hercules, and the lakes of Curtius and Juturna, had 
 vanished even before the times of the empire ; and we 
 smile without displeasure at the tradition still current,* 
 which calls a hollow in the Aveutuie cliffs the cave of 
 the robber Cacus. 
 
 In the period of the Roman kings were executed 
 several stupendous undertakings, of which only two 
 now offer remains indubitably genuine. T]ie vestiges 
 of one of these, the Servian rampart, have been already 
 noticed : the ruins of the other, — the Cloaca iMaxi- 
 ma, or subterranean tunnel designed for draining the 
 valleys at the foot of the Palatine, — rank among the 
 most remarkable monuments of antiquity, from their 
 impressive massiveness of construction, and their singu- 
 larly perfect preservation after the lapse of twenty-four 
 centuries. The part which can yet be traced runs from 
 the old Velabrum to the river's bank, and presents a 
 vault fourteen feet in width and as many in height, 
 formed by a triple course of arches, composed of massy 
 blocks chiefly of peperine, strengthened with masses of 
 travertine, and exliibiting in some places substructions 
 of tufo. A stream still flows through it, whose waters 
 probably issue from the ancient fountain of Juturna. 
 As the republican and imperial city increased, the sub- 
 
 VOL. I. o 
 
226 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OP 
 
 ordinate sewers from several quarters of it were made 
 to discharge themselves into this passage, which in its 
 original state, commencing near the Forum, appears to 
 have extended not less than a thousand feet. The Mamer- 
 tine Prison of the first kings, to which a lower dungeon 
 was added hy Servius Tullius, may still he visited 
 heneath the floor of the little church of San Giuseppe, 
 on the declivity of the Capitoline Hill, hehind the arch of 
 Severus. From the upper chamber, hewn out of the 
 tufo rock, and faced with uncemented blocks of peperine, 
 a circular aperture communicates with the lower cell, 
 and was the avenue by which persons condemned to 
 death were thrust into this dreariest place of punish- 
 ment. It is not quite certain, however, that the existing 
 remains even of the under vault belong to the earliest 
 period of these prisons ;* and the portion now accessible 
 can have constituted only a small part of those state- 
 dungeons which witnessed the execution of Jugurtha, 
 of Catiline's accomplices, and of Sejanus, and where, if 
 we could allow om-selves to believe the doubtful tradi- 
 tion still commemorated on the spot, St Peter and St 
 Paul were also imprisoned. 
 
 In the sack of the city by the Gauls the edifices of its 
 earlier republican era perished, and Rome had to be 
 built anew. 
 
 The national works of the commonwealth after this 
 epoch were numerous and extensive. Several aqueducts 
 introduced streams of water for general use ; the pon- 
 derous Appian Way served as a model for the cause- 
 wayed Roman roads ; and streets of tombs on this and 
 other highways in the neighbourhood received genera- 
 tion after generation of the citizens. Before the sup- 
 pression of the republic we can enumerate with certainty 
 upwards of fifty tem.ples. Many honorary monuments 
 arose ; numerous porticos in diff'erent places served either 
 for business or recreation ; several public markets had 
 
 * Bcschreibung der Stadt Rom, vol. i. p. 151. 
 
ROiME AiND LATIUM. 227 
 
 been formed ; seven of the buildings called Basilica had 
 been constructed, each of which was used at once as a 
 court of justice and a mercantile exchange ; three Curiaf? 
 had been built for the meetings of public bodies ; and 
 for the general amusement there were four permanent 
 theatres, besides the temporary theatres and amphi- 
 theatre of Curio and Julius Caesar ; while the ancient 
 Circus Maximus had been renovated, and three other 
 structures of the same kind erected. 
 
 It is melancholy to see how insignificant a portion of 
 these works has survived the alterations executed by the 
 emperors and the popes, and the devastations caused 
 by wars and the lapse of ages. 
 
 At the foot of the Capitoline Hill, among modern houses 
 of tlie lowest order, the Tomb of Bibulus, placed within 
 the city in violation of the common rule, can be identi- 
 fied as a republican ruin ; but the chief remains of this 
 sort lie in the quarter where, from the modern gate of St 
 Sebastian, the Appian Way passes out into the solitary 
 plain. For a distance of about five miles the road is 
 edged on both sides by ancient tombs. The entrance to 
 the Servian town, however, lay considerably within the 
 modem walls ; and before we reach the Porta San Se- 
 bastiano, in our progress outwards, we find this street of 
 graves to begin vrith the venerable Sepulchre of the Sci- 
 pios. In one of the most sequestered spots we enter a 
 vineyard, where, on the summit of a mound overgrown 
 with shrubs and weeds, stands a mean dwelling-house ; 
 and at the foot of the eminence, a recent opening admits 
 us to a subterranean vault of peperine, which, from in- 
 scriptions found within it in 1G16 and 1780, is identified 
 beyond a doubt as the burying-place of the heroic Corne- 
 lian family. Six sarcophagi were discovered in the 
 chambers, with indications of a second story above that 
 which has been opened, and remains also of a brick 
 building of several apartments, which appears to have 
 been constructed as an additional cemetery in the times of 
 the emperors. Copies of the epitaphs have been placed on 
 the walls ; and in the IVIuseum of the Vatican are seen the 
 
228 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF 
 
 original sarcophagi and inscriptions, commemorating two 
 Scipios from the fifth century of the city,* one from the 
 sixth, and four from the seventh. But the greatest of 
 the race, Scipio Africanus the elder, did not lay his bones 
 beside those of his fathers ; nor is there any sufficient 
 ground for the opinion which considers a small laurelled 
 bust discovered in the tomb, as representing the poet 
 Ennius, the friend of the younger Afi'icanus. 
 
 Without the gate several tombs belong to the republi* 
 can period, the most remarkable being the celebrated 
 edifice which was the grave of Cecilia Metella, the wife 
 of Crassus. This relic of the last days of the common- 
 wealth contrasts strikingly with the unobtrusive simpli- 
 city of the older sepulchre of the Scipios. It consists of 
 a round tower, about sixty-four feet in diameter, re- 
 gularly constructed, and faced with the yellow traver- 
 tine stone. It is oniamented with a festooned frieze and 
 cornice, and rests on a ponderous square basement. Its 
 strong position on an eminence recommended it in the 
 middle ages to the honour of serving, like so many others 
 of the ancient monuments, as a fortress of the Roman 
 barons ; and the walls of tlie Gaetani still join the clas- 
 sical parts of the structure. Another tomb in the last 
 stage of ruin, two miles beyond the tower of Metella, 
 has been ascertained by an inscription which Canova 
 discovered in 1808, to be the sepulchre of the Servilian 
 family, one of those austere republican buildmgs to 
 which, with the tomb of the Scipios, Cicero proudly 
 points, as a theme of reflection fitted to protect the livmg 
 from their natural fear of annihilation by death.f 
 
 Of the republican Temples the antiquaries can point 
 out only the following, and that with a hesitation which 
 is but too justifiable : — thesmall temple of FortunaVirilis, 
 
 * Lucius Scipio Barbatus (Consul a. u. 456), '* A brave man 
 and wise," and his son Lucius (Consul 494), whose epitaph pro- 
 claims him " The best of Rome's most worthy citizens." none. 
 
 OINO. PLOIKVME. CONSENTIONT. R. BUONORO. OPTVMO. FVISE. 
 
 viRO.: that is, in the later Roman spelling, " Hunc unum plu- 
 rimi consentiunt Romani bonorum optimum fuisse virum." 
 + Cic. Quaestion, Tusculan. lib. i. cap, 7. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 229 
 
 now transformed into the church of Santa I\Iaria Egizi- 
 aca, — the temples of Juno ]\Iatuta, Hope, and Piety, 
 hidden in the walls of San Nicola in Carcere,^' — and, 
 perhaps, in the cloisters of the Somaschi, four broken 
 pillars of the temple of Hercules Gustos, the guardian of 
 the Circus Flaminius.t 
 
 Of the Circus IMaxunus we can still trace the shape, 
 in the hollow between the Palatine and Aventine, but 
 the structure has entirely disappeared ; and the Flaminian 
 Circus is now completely covered by the buildings of the 
 modern city, around the church of Santa Caterina de' 
 Funari, while the Piazza Barberini is supposed to oc- 
 cupy the site of the Circus of Flora. Of the Theatre of 
 Pompey, the foundation arches may be seen in the cellars 
 and stables of the Palazzo Pio ; and it is only necessary 
 to name some remnants of the breastwork of the ancient 
 Quay, and of similar erections on the Island in the river. 
 
 The substructions on the Capitolinc Mount are almost 
 the only other architectural vestiges of the republic. 
 These ruins consist, first, of about eighty feet of peperine 
 wall, under the Palazzo Caffarelli, on the southern sum- 
 mit of the hill, Avhere the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus 
 is generally believed to have stood ; and, secondly, of 
 the vaults under the Senator's Palace on the Inter- 
 montium, or flat between the Uxo summits, the exter- 
 nal wall of these vaults being visible from the Forum, 
 and being ascertained by an inscription to have belonged 
 to the Tabularium or Record-office. On the northern 
 summit stands the Franciscan Church of Ara Cell, 
 where once stood the temple of Jupiter Feretrius ; but, 
 unless some ancient columns in the nave were really 
 found on the spot, there exist no remains of the original 
 shrine. While these fracrments recall to us the citadel 
 
 * For the Temple of Piety, — which, if identified, ascertains the 
 site of the Decemviral Prisons, — we owe gratitude to antiquarian 
 zeal, which here as elsewhere has Hghted the flame on the altar of 
 poetry : — 
 
 • • There is a dungeon in whose dim drear light 
 What do I gaze on ? Nothing ' — Look a^raia I" 
 
 •j- Burgess' Rome, vol. ii. p. 116. 
 
230 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OP 
 
 of Rome and of the world, we have all but lost the 
 fatal Tarpeian Rock, amidst the accumulated rubbish 
 which has gathered about the foot of the hill, and the 
 clusters of old and wretched hovels wliich encumber its 
 southern top. However, on the side nearest to the mo- 
 dern city, one portion of the rock is visible ; and on 
 the opposite side, descending through the houses of the 
 Monte Caprino, we can overlook, from among the roses 
 of a little garden, a cliff overhanghig the Forum, full 
 seventy feet in height, which may fairly represent the 
 " traitor's leap." One is glad to escape from the peril- 
 ous task of determining to which of the two summits 
 belonged one or both of the titles of Citadel and Capitol, — 
 Arx et Capitolium. But the Asylum of Romulus un- 
 questionably occupied the intermediate hollow, now 
 covered by Michel Angelo's splendid square of palaces, 
 the approaches to which have, on the side of the Campus 
 Martins, destroyed the original steepness of the ascent. 
 
 But must we abandon the topography of the Republic 
 without having discovered any vestige of the Roman 
 Forum 1 Our real knowledge of this celebrated spot 
 may be nearly summed up in a single sentence. Of 
 its republican buildings there probably is not one stone 
 standing upon another ; and even of its site we know 
 only this : that a space may be pointed out, beneath the 
 Capitoline and Palatine Mounts, withm which it un- 
 deniably lay ; but we can neither tell with precision 
 what portion of the ground it occupied, nor can we 
 fix with certainty more than one or two of its bound- 
 aries. The spot is now called the Campo Vaccino or Cattle 
 Field. It is a small irreg-ular plain, raised by accumula- 
 tions of rubbish above the ancient pavement, to a height 
 which is nowhere less than fifteen feet, and in some places 
 approaches thirty. An avenue of trees runs obliquely 
 along the area, a large part of which is unenclosed 
 ground, clothed with green sward, from which a few 
 columns and other imperial ruins rise here and there ; 
 around some of these are excavations, still in progress. 
 
THE ROMAN FORUM anil its VICINITY. 
 
 
 
 ,.. peace, 
 
 ^O/^X^^. 
 
 
 PTJBT.TSKED BY OT.TVF.R ft -BOYD. EDrNBTJRsiS. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 231 
 
 forming deep unsightly pits, but laying bare large por- 
 tions of the old foundations ; and the rest of the space 
 is covered by other relics of the empire, interspersed 
 among modern churches and one or two paltry streets. 
 
 In passing, however, to the topography of Imperial 
 Rome, this classical hollow may properly invite a de- 
 viation from strict chronological order.* 
 
 Upon that declivity of the Capitoline Rock which 
 faces the Forum are several interesting monuments. 
 The Clivus Asyli, one of the two paths which led up 
 from the plain, passed the Mamertine Prison at 1 on 
 the accompanying map. The other path, the Clivus 
 Capitolinus, which was a part of the Sacred Way, 
 passed through the Arch of Septimius Severus at 2, and 
 may be conceived as slanting up the hill in the direction 
 3, 3. Of the three celebrated ruins on the slope, one 
 only, standing at 4, can be identified with certainty. It 
 presents but a basement, partly covered by the modern 
 ascent, and belongs to an imperial Temple of Concord, 
 which rose in the place of the republican shrine so cele- 
 brated under the same name. The three fine Corinthian 
 columns at .5, supporting a rich entablature, are usually 
 assigned to a Temple of Jupiter Tonans ; though there 
 are better grounds for Niebuhr's opinion, which declares 
 them to be parts of the Temple of Saturn. There is more 
 reason for doubt as to the tasteless portico, farther down 
 the hill, at 6, which has been oftenest called a Temple 
 of Fortune, but more recently a Temple of Vespasian. 
 
 We now descend into the plain, the tourney-place of 
 the opposing antiquaries, in whose books the Roman 
 Forum has several times shifted its situation. The earliest 
 
 • The current opinions of those antiquaries who have not en- 
 joyed the benefit of the recent discoveries are best represented in 
 Nibby's Foro Romano, and in the Seventh Dissertation of Burgess' 
 Rome. The results of the partial excavations which, within the 
 last few years, have been so wonderfully successful, are stated 
 minutely in the third volume of the Beschreibung, especially in its 
 second part, published in 1838. The accompanying plan of this 
 quarter of Rome, in its modern state, will, it is hoped, make the 
 description in the text more easily intelligible. 
 
232 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF 
 
 topographers, after the revival of the science, consi- 
 dered its length to extend from the Arch of Septimius 
 Severus to the Arch of Fabius, now destroyed, which 
 stood in front of the space afterwards occupied by the 
 Temple of Antoninus, at 7. But in the middle of the 
 seventeenth century there was propounded an opinion, 
 the popular one at the present day, which takes that 
 line for the breadth of the forum, and finds its other 
 angles at the church of San Teodoro (covering the site of 
 the Temple of Romulus), and near the church of the 
 Madonna della Consolazione. The space enclosed by the 
 lines thus terminated is a rectangle about 700 feet by 
 nearly 600. Niebuhr, however, peremptorily returned 
 to the older hypothesis ; and Bunsen has most skilfully 
 turned recent discoveries to account, in developing a 
 theory founded on this suggestion of his master. 
 
 The leading peculiarity of Niebuhr's view is this ; — 
 that he insists on our considering the Comitium of the 
 Republic to have been, not a building, as is usually 
 supposed, but merely an uncovered space, forming a 
 part of the Forum, but separated from the remainder 
 by dwarf-walls or other barricades. In applying this 
 theory to the ground, Bunsen founds mainly on the 
 assumption, — which is fully warranted by the proof, — 
 that a flight of steps, excavated in the end of 1834 in the 
 open space of the plain, at 8 on the map, belonged to 
 the Basilica Julia, so named from its founder the Dictator. 
 That discovery, indeed, and the previous uncovering of 
 the Milliarium Aureum or Golden Milestone of Augustus, 
 at 9, are invaluable facts for those who study the anti- 
 quities of the spot. 
 
 We must, then, according to our guide, consider the 
 Roman Forum as an oblong area, considerably wider at 
 the end nearest the Capitol than at the other, narrowing 
 indeed from 180 feet to about 110, while its length is 
 about 600. The boundaries are laid off with dotted lines 
 upon the plan. Nearly a third of the narrowest part, 
 farthest from the rock, was, as we are told, the Comi- 
 tium ; the remainder, separated from it by an offshoot 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 233 
 
 of the Sacred Way, was the Forum in its most confined 
 sense, the ordinary jjlace of meeting for the plebeians. 
 
 In its earliest history, under the kings, this classical 
 spot presented an open space, interrupted by nothing 
 except the Ruminal Fig-tree and those other monu- 
 ments which stood in the Comitium ; and round it 
 -were the porticoes and shops, which Livy describes the 
 elder Tarquinius as allowing to be there erected. Those 
 on the southern side, on the line marked 10, 10, were, 
 according to Bunsen, the old shops (veteres tabernae), 
 among which we must seek the scene of Virginia's 
 murder ; the "nova? tabernae" extended along the north 
 side, on the line 11, 12. These buildings were in time 
 renewed and ornamented, and at length made room for 
 the Basilicie, the first of which, the Basilica Porcia, was 
 founded in the middle of the sixth century of the city. 
 The Fulvia came next ; the^milia followed ; and these 
 two, having been subjected to extensive alterations, came 
 to bear jointly the name of the latter. The ^Emilia and 
 Porcia stood on the north side of the Forum : on the 
 south side, at 8, rose another building of the same sort, 
 the Basilica Sempronia. But between the Porcia and 
 the Comitium, nearly at the spot marked 12, Bunsen 
 supposes the Curia Hostilia to have been ; while he 
 places the Temple of Vesta on the opposite side, at 13, 
 in front of the church of Santa Maria Liberatrice. In 
 the period now spoken of, the Rostra stood, according 
 to him, at one end of the Comitium, about the point 14. 
 
 In the year 698 the Curia Hostilia was burned to the 
 ground, and Julius Caesar profited by the accident for 
 transforming the place into a new and more splendid 
 shape. He enabled Paulus -^railius to complete the 
 Basilica which bore the name of his family ; and he 
 himself founded his Basilica Julia on the site of the 
 Sempronia, transferring the Rostra likewise to a position 
 in front of his new building. His successor executed 
 another of his plans, the erection of a noble hall for the 
 senate instead of that which had perished in the confla- 
 gration ; and Bunsen maintains that we see the remains 
 of the edifice which Augustus so constructed, in that 
 
234 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF 
 
 massive pile of brick (15) beliind tlie church of Santa 
 Maria Liberatrice, which the antiquaries more com- 
 monly refer to the older Curia. In connexion with this 
 edifice, also, he ingeniously places the celebrated Three 
 Columns of marble, which occupy (at 16 on the plan) 
 the most conspicuous position in the open space. They 
 are singularly fine specimens of the Corinthian order, 
 supporting an ornate yet well-proportioned entablature ; 
 and late examinations have exliibited them as belonging 
 to an extensive and admirably-planned building, whose 
 name, date, and purpose have hardly been stated alike 
 by any two antiquaries.* Our author assigns them to an 
 edifice built by Augustus, which was styfed sometimes 
 the Chalcidicum, and sometimes a Temple of Minerva, 
 but which, at all events, communicated with the Curia 
 of Julius. The Temple of Castor and Pollux is sup- 
 posed by Bunsen to have stood between the Three 
 Columns and the Basilica Julia. 
 
 The Forum, thus for the second time built by Julius 
 and Augustus, suffered severely in Nero's conflagration. 
 Domitian and others erected new edifices, of which the 
 Temple of Vespasian and that of Antoninus are the 
 only ones that have left remarkable ruins ; and we 
 next reach a period in which the corner nearest to the 
 Capitol became the site of a multitude of monuments. 
 The Arch of Septimius Severus is the most conspicuous 
 among these effbrts of decaying art ; another (at 17 on 
 the plan) is the " nameless column with a buried base," 
 which, no longer either nameless or buried, has been 
 proved, by the inscription on its pedestal, to have been 
 erected in the year of grace 608, in honour of the eastern 
 usurper Phocas, having been stolen for that purpose 
 from some edifice of a better time. Tliree shapeless 
 bases, near this pillar, belong to the same era ; as does 
 also, in all probability, a structure somewhat resembling 
 the Rostra, which may be observed between the Arch of 
 Severus and the Temple of Vespasian. 
 
 • See Burgess' Rome, vol. i. note, p. 356 ; and Dublin Review, 
 No. IX. 
 
ROME Ai\D LATIDM. 235 
 
 Here, in the earliest stage of the dark ages, we leave 
 the Roman Forum for a while, to observe the adjoining 
 monuments of the classical times. 
 
 No light is throAvn on the topography or arrange- 
 ments of the Forum Romanum by the other great 
 Fora which lay on the north and east in its immediate 
 neighbourhood. The Forum of Julius Caesar is built 
 over, and its exact site not well ascertained ; those of 
 Augustus and Nerva have left some noble ruins, but their 
 place, choked up by streets, is with difficulty distin- 
 guishable ; and that of Trajan, the finest of all, was 
 intended for purposes quite different from those that 
 were served by the republican prototype. We may, 
 therefore, without in the mean time turning aside to 
 these, finish our survey of the Campo Vaccine. 
 
 Proceeduig from the site of the Arch of Fabius towards 
 the Colosseum, we leave the Forum, and find ourselves 
 on the Sacred Way. On our right rises the Palatine 
 Hill : on our left lie several ruins of much magnifi- 
 cence. We first encounter the circular Temple of Re- 
 mus, an miperial work, which is now formed into the 
 vestibule of a church, dedicated to the Saints Cosmas 
 and Damian. This building is followed by one of the 
 most imposing remnants of ancient grandeur, which is 
 usually called the Temple of Peace ; but is really, as 
 has been clearly established, a Basilica, erected, or rather 
 completed, by Constantine. Three huge vaulted roofs, 
 fretted with coffers, standing side by side, face the road ; 
 and recent levellings, laying open the ground-plan of the 
 edifice, show that these composed one side of a rect- 
 angular building divided into three aisles, and enclosing 
 a space of 300 feet by 230. The ascending road next 
 leads us to the Arch of Titus, the oldest and most 
 elegant of those triumphal edifices now remaining. It 
 possesses an especial interest as having been erected in 
 commemoration of the fall of Jerusalem, the sacred things 
 of whose temple are still seen figured on its frieze. 
 
 Immediately beyond this melancholy monument are 
 the i-uins of the double Temple of Venus and Rome, 
 
236 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF 
 
 built, and even planned, by Hadrian, and still exhibit- 
 ing, notwithstanding the criticism for which the im- 
 perial artist punished the architect ApoUodorus with 
 death, the vestiges of an excellent plan, and of great 
 richness of execution. On a rectangular basement 
 elevated twenty-six feet above the surrounding level, 
 and approached by broad stau'cases at each end, was 
 placed an inner platform raised on seven marble steps, 
 and supporting the temple, round which ran a colon- 
 nade 860 feet in length by 175 in width. Within 
 this peristyle rose the walls of the cella, whicli was 
 entered at each end, by a portico of marble columns 
 leading into a vestibule. The building was divided in 
 the midst by a cross wall, and facing each of the porti- 
 cos was a vaulted and fretted niche, in which sat re- 
 spectively the statues of the two divinities to whom the 
 fane was dedicated. Excavations have discovered very 
 splendid fragments, and allowed the plan to be distinctly 
 traced ; but no part of the temple remains erect except 
 the two niches and portions of the two cellae.'" 
 
 The Sacred Way is believed, after quitting the Forum 
 at the Arch of Fabius, to have passed through that 
 of Titus, and thence to the fountain called the Meta 
 Sudans, which stands in front of the Colosseum. In its 
 course from this last point, round the Palatine and 
 through the Circus iMaximus, it assumed the title of 
 the Via Triumphalis, from the processions to which it 
 was dedicated. 
 
 We may now resume our historical sketch of the 
 vicissitudes of the city. 
 
 The magnificence of Imperial Rome expanded at once 
 under its first emperor, who, with equal liberality, 
 dedicated the public wealth and his own private fortune 
 to the embellishment of his metropolis, while his example 
 stimulated several of the leading men in the state, parti- 
 
 * For an ingenious and instructive restoration of this temple by 
 Pardini, an Italian architect, see Burgess' Rome, vol. i., or the 
 Beschreibung, vol. iii. part 1., and its plates. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 237 
 
 cularly Maecenas and the enterprising Agrippa. Of the 
 edifices of the Augustan period, we still see very remark- 
 able remains, including some of the finest monuments of 
 the city, and one temple the most admired of all. 
 
 On the Palatine Hill Augustus erected the earliest 
 Palace of the Caesars. The dwellings of Hortensius the 
 orator, and the demagogue Clodius, together with Cicero's 
 house overlooking the Forum, made way for this mag- 
 nificent mansion, with its temples, porticos, and libraries. 
 Of a Forum designed by the same emperor, between 
 the Roman Forum and the foot of the Quirinal Hill,, 
 there remain, at the Arco de' Pantani, 600 or 600 feet 
 of a lofty, strong, and nicely finished wall, with columuKS 
 supposed to have belonged to a temple of Mars the 
 Avenger, constructed within the area. No fewer than 
 eighty-five republican temples were rebuilt during the 
 same prince's reign. But his exertions were chiefly 
 directed to the embellishment of the Campus Martins ; 
 and accordingly, it is amidst the streets of the Papal city 
 that we have to search for the relics of his time. The 
 fallen ruins which filled up the mterior of the Theatre 
 of jMarcellus, have raised huge mounds on which is built 
 the Orsini Palace ; and of the external walls, converted 
 into a fortress in the twelfth century, there still stands a 
 portion transformed into dirty shops, and presenting, to 
 the extent of eleven arches, both stories of the ancient 
 elevation. These remains have excited the admiration 
 of architects : the Ionic of the upper story is positively 
 good, and the Doric of the under one is recognised as the 
 best specimen of the indifferent form given by the Ro- 
 mans to that severe order.* The Portico of Octavia was 
 one of the most splendid of the Augustan structures, and 
 became a treasure-house of ancient art, containing many 
 of the most exquisite paintings and statues of the Greek 
 artists.t It was a rectangular peristyle, entered by a 
 magnificent vestibule, and containing two fine temples, 
 
 * Woods, Letters of an Architect, vol. i. p. 351. 
 t Plinii Historia Naturalis, Jib. xxxiv. cap. 6. Lib, xxxv. cap. 
 10. Lib. xxxvi. cap, 5. 
 
238 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF 
 
 besides other buildings. Its remains stand near to the 
 theatre of Marcellus, in and beside the modern fish- 
 market. They consist chiefly of three columns of the 
 temple of Juno, and of a portion of the vestibule, which 
 was originally formed by two Corinthian colonnades of 
 marble, having four columns and two pilasters in each, 
 and supporting an entablature and pediment. Four of 
 the columns and all the pilasters are still erect, with a 
 part of the supported members. 
 
 The vastness which, even in the last age of the repub- 
 lic, had begun to distmguish the sepulchral architecture 
 of Rome, is proved to have subsisted in the Augustan 
 period by several of the tombs on the Appian Way, the 
 most remarkable of which, the Columbarium, or com- 
 mon sepulchre of the household of Livia, has been 
 wantonly destroyed since the middle of last century ;* 
 and the same fact is attested l:>y that huge and gloomy 
 Pyramid Avhich is built up in the city wall, near the 
 gate of St Paul, transmitting to us the name of the 
 obscure Roman Caius Cestius, and casting its shadow 
 over the solitary and beautiful burying-ground of the 
 Protestants. But in a mean quarter of the modern city 
 we find the Mausoleum of Augustus himself, now a 
 shapeless heap of ruins, the interior of which has been 
 converted into an amphitheatre, where are exhibited 
 bull-fights, fireworks, horsemanship and rope-dancing. 
 Strabo describes this building as the most remarkable 
 object in the Campus Martins, as surrounded by a wood 
 with shady walks, raised on a lofty substruction of white 
 stone, planted to its summit with evergreens, crowned 
 by a bronze statue of the emperor, and containing re- 
 ceptacles for his ashes, with those of his kindred and 
 household. 
 
 Agrippa's works vied both in splendour and utility 
 with those of his master. He decorated the city with 
 700 wells, and 105 foun tarns ; he constructed a series of 
 sewers in the Campus Martins ; and he erected a hall 
 
 • Yenuti, Roma Antica, torn. ii. p. 9. Ed. 1763. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 239 
 
 for the mock assemblies of the people. But his other 
 undertakings are eclipsed by his Thermse or Baths, and 
 his celebrated Temple, usually called the Pantheon, 
 which was connected with the foiTner buildings, or com- 
 posed a part of them. The Thenuse of this age gave 
 the hint for those vast edifices which the emperors after- 
 wards constructed for the use of the people under the 
 same name, but with a far wider extension of purpose. 
 Little is known as to Agrippa's baths, except their 
 position among the streets now covering the Campus 
 Martins ; and the insignificant remains which exist 
 throw no light on their plan. 
 
 The Pantheon, according to the inscription on its 
 frieze, was dedicated in the year of the city 727, and was 
 afterwards restored by Hadrian and Septimius Sevenis. 
 Its consecration (a. d. 608) as a Christian church, under 
 the title of Santa Maria Rotonda, has preserved, for the 
 admiration of the modern world, this most beautiful of 
 heathen fanes. It is situated m the filthy herb-market ; 
 the flight of steps which led up to its portico is nearly 
 buried in rubbish ; two hideous modern belfries deform 
 its summit ; emperors, Saracens, and popes, have succes- 
 sively plundered it of its bronzes and marbles ; and the 
 floods of the Tiller periodically inundate its floor. But 
 through degradation, nakedness, and disfigurement, its 
 serene beauty shines out undimmed ; and its name is 
 still the synonjane of architectural perfection. The 
 faultless proportions and striking effect of the portico 
 which fronts the temple, while they cannot be unfelt 
 even by the unprofessional visitant, are most duly valued 
 by the architect ; but, in the interior, every mind 
 which possesses the faculties that appreciate art, must at 
 the same time be entranced and awed. 
 
 The portico is formed b}^ sixteen Corinthian columns 
 of granite, with bases and capitals of Grecian marble. 
 Eight of these stand in front, supporting an entablature, 
 above which rises a pediment, once adorned with bas- 
 reliefs. Through a short vestibule, supported by fluted 
 marble antse and pilasters, we enter the Cell, which con- 
 
240 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OP 
 
 sists of a circular drum sustaining a dome. On the 
 marble door-way hang magnificent gates of bronze, 
 which are probably those of an ancient temple. The 
 pavement of the interior is composed of porphyry and 
 marble, disposed in large alternate slabs. The drum or 
 upright wall, contains seven large niches ; while small 
 ones occur in the intermediate spaces, as well as in the 
 larger recesses. Columns of pavonazzetto and giallo 
 antico flank the main niches ; and above these a beautiful 
 and perfectly preserved cornice runs round the whole 
 building. Over a second story in the drum, formed 
 by an attic sustaining an upper cornice, rises the beau- 
 tiful dome, which is divided internally into square pan- 
 nels, now plastered with stucco, but supposed to have 
 been originally inlaid with bronze ; and in the centre of 
 it a circular aperture admits the only light which the 
 place receives. Christian altars now fill the recesses of 
 the temple of Jupiter the Avenger ; and beneath one of 
 these shrines reposes the dust of Raffaelle d'Urbino.* 
 
 Either to the Augustan age or to the last days of the 
 republic seem to belong the remains of a temple and 
 circus, which stood in the beautiful grounds of the liis- 
 torian Sallust, on the Pincian Hill, named from them 
 the Mount of Gardens. To the former age, too, we may 
 perhaps refer the romantic grotto, which, beyond the 
 walls in the green and wooded valley of the Almo, re- 
 calls the poetical legend of Numa's intercourse with the 
 nymph Egeria. 
 
 The reign of Tiberius is chiefly distinguished in the 
 topography of Rome by the erection of a camp by 
 Sejanus for the Praetorian guards. This huge barrack 
 became truly the citadel of Rome ; three of its sides 
 were taken into the rampart of Aurelian, and the camp 
 was dismantled and its fourth wall thrown down by 
 
 * Dimensions : — Height of columns in portico, 46.^ English feet; 
 diameter of shafts, 3; height of door-way, 39; width, 19 : — Inter- 
 nal diameter of dome, 143 ; internal height from the ground the 
 same, of which height the dome occupies one-half. — Taylor and 
 Cressy's Rome, 1821. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 241 
 
 Constantine. In the Villa Macao, a vineyard of the 
 Jesuits, we still see remarkable specimens of the arches 
 of Tiberius, interspersed with the hasty work of Beli- 
 sarius' fortification, and with modern additions.* 
 
 Caligula extended the buildings of the Imperial Pa- 
 lace on the Palatine, joining that hill to the Capitol by 
 a bridge ; and the unfortunate Claudius erected aque- 
 ducts, of which there are noble remains at the Porta 
 Maggiore, where operations in 1838 uncovered a curious 
 tomb built up in the imperial brickwork. 
 
 From Augustus to Nero, the eastern quarter of the 
 city was the favourite residence of the nobles, whose 
 mansions, placed beyond the old walls, stood in gardens 
 between the great roads. In this district was the palace 
 of Maecenas, and that of the Laterani, destined to be so 
 celebrated in Christian Rome. An inferior class now 
 occupied the three streets, which alone, till the end of this 
 period, deserved the name. These were the Via Sacra, 
 the Carinse, and the Suburra, the two latter of which 
 had been in the republican times the aristocratic quarter. 
 
 But every thing that had been done for the em- 
 bellishment of the city was surpassed by the extrava- 
 gantly magnificent undertakings of Nero. The circus 
 in the region of the Vatican, founded by Caligula, and 
 completed by him, is covered by the sacristy and part 
 of the church of St Peter, and was, beyond a doubt, the 
 scene of the earliest Christian martyrdoms in Rome.t 
 His public market has disappeared, and his splendid 
 baths lie buried beneath modem palaces near the Col- 
 lege of the Sapienza. The Domus Transitoria, which 
 formed his first addition to the palace of the Caesars, 
 was destroyed by the frightful conflagration which he 
 is charged with having wilfully kindled, and which, 
 burning to the ground three of the fourteen regions of 
 
 * The circuit of its three remaining sides measures in all 5400 
 feet. — Burgess, vol. ii. p. 306. 
 
 + Suetonius in Nerone, cap. 22. Taciti Annalium, lib. xiv. 
 cap. 14; lib. xv. cap. 44. Compare the Beschreibung, vol. ii. 
 part 1. pp. 13, &c. 
 
 VOL. I. P 
 
242 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OP 
 
 the city, and almost entirely ruining seven more,* pro- 
 duced a reconsti-uction of Rome under the emperor's 
 plans and superintendence. The streets were made for 
 the first time wide and straight, and were lined with 
 colonnades ; and the height of dwelling-houses, then re- 
 stricted to seventy feet, was afterwards limited to sixty. 
 
 But the elegance of all the new fabrics was eclipsed 
 by the pomp of Nero's huge palace, called the Golden 
 House. On the southern shoulder of the Palatine, where 
 it approaches the Esquiline, stood the main buildings of 
 that mansion, fronted by a vestibule admitting the em- 
 peror's colossal statue, which was probably placed some- 
 where on the site now occupied by Hadrian's Temple of 
 Venus and Rome. The picturesquely wooded grounds 
 extended over a large portion of the Caelian Mount, 
 where, marked by the cypress thicket and the solitary 
 palm-tree of the Passionist convent, massy remains are 
 supposed to belong to the celebrated reservoir ; the arti- 
 ficial lakes of the park filled the valley of the Colosseum ; 
 and its lodges and walks rose on the Esquiline Hill, dis- 
 placing the house, tomb, and gardens of Maecenas, of 
 which, as well as of Nero's erections, the ruins probably 
 exist amidst the later buildings of the Baths of Titus.t 
 
 Vespasian and his vutuous successor haye bequeathed 
 to us these latter monuments, together with the Colos- 
 seum or Flavian Amphitheatre. 
 
 Titus demolished a great part of the stupendous piles 
 of Nero, and availed himself of their substructions on 
 the Esquiline, for the erection of those buildings which 
 still stretch out their intricate corridors on the heights 
 overlooking the Colosseum. From the form of these 
 remains, and from that of the separate reservoir called 
 the Sette Salle, it cannot be doubted that baths consti- 
 tuted, at all events, a part of their plan ; but the design 
 of the edifice, founded on older works, and altered and 
 
 * Taciti Annal. lib. xv. cap. 40. Beschreibung, vol. i. part 1. 
 p. 185-191. 
 
 ■f Beneath these latter ruins, too, lies the grave of Horace. — 
 Sueton. in Vita Horatii. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 243 
 
 extended by the later emperors, especially Trajan, is not 
 easily comprehended, and is even supposed to have been 
 an imperial residence. Its remains, though very strik- 
 ing, have owed their chief interest to the beautiful paint- 
 ings they yet contain. 
 
 The Flavian Amphitheatre, the boast of Rome and of 
 the world, founded by Vespasian, was completed and 
 dedicated by Titus in the eightieth year of our era, ten 
 years after the taking of Jerusalem. It received suc- 
 cessive additions, alterations, and repairs, till the time 
 of Theodoric the Goth, who fitted it up for its former 
 uses in the year 519 ; during the middle ages, it was 
 occupied as a fortress by Roman nobles ; in the fifteenth 
 century, its materials began to be used for the buUdings 
 of Papal Rome, a spoliation which continued two hun- 
 dred years ;* and after a long period of neglect and 
 decay, it was consecrated, in 1750, to the memory of 
 those Christian martyrs who had perished in its arena. 
 Since that time it has been protected from pillage by the 
 reverence due to the crucifix which occupies its centre, 
 to the fourteen stations of prayer which are disposed 
 round its arena, and to the soldiers who sentinel its 
 gates ; and during the present ceq^tury, noble walls have 
 been built by the Popes to prop up the tottering portions 
 of the fabric. 
 
 The gigantic edifice is in form an ellipse ; and its ex- 
 ternal elevation consisted of four stories, presenting 240 
 arches in all. These were disposed in the three lower 
 stories, each of which had eighty arches, supported by 
 half-columns, Doric m the first range, Ionic in the second, 
 and Corinthian in the third ; while the fourth story had 
 externally a solid wall, faced with Corinthian pilasters, 
 and lighted by forty rectangular windows. Of this 
 
 • The materials of the amphitheatre were used in at least the fol- 
 lowing buildings :— the Palace of St Mark (a. d. 1470) ; the Palace 
 of the Chancery (1494) ; some buildingg in the Capitol and else- 
 where (1531— l(j04. — Hobhouse, p. 275); the immense Farnese 
 Palace (1535); and the Barberini Palace (1623), commemorated 
 in the Roman saving, "What the Barbarians did not, the Barberini 
 did."— See Gibbon, chap. 71. 
 
244 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OP 
 
 majestic circuit, scarcely a half now presents its original 
 height ; and throughout a great part of it the travertine 
 arcades are demolished, and the rough wall inside, par- 
 tially erect, and tangled with grass and shrubs, is covered 
 by the modem support. In the interior, the centre is 
 occupied by the oval Arena, under which subterraneous 
 constructions have been lately discovered, apparently de- 
 signed for the gladiators, wild beasts, and other apparatus 
 of the spectacles. Round the arena, and resting on a huge 
 mass of arches rising upon arches, the sloping seats for the 
 spectators, forming the division called the Cavea, ascend 
 towards the summit of the external wall. The Podium, 
 or covered gallery for the emperor and persons of the 
 first rank, formed the lowest partition of the cavea ; 
 behind which rise three successive orders of seats, sepa- 
 rated by perpendicular walls (the prsecinctiones or bal- 
 thei) ; and, above all, an upper gallery reached to the 
 vela, or moveable awning which covered in the whole. 
 This attic, and the uppermost row of seats, have disap- 
 peared ; the second range has been partially preserved ; 
 the lowest is nearly perfect ; but the podium is in a 
 ruinous state, and appears to be an addition made by some 
 one of the many restorers. The Regionaries say that the 
 Amphitheatre contained places for 87,000 spectators.* 
 Architects have professed to discover in the Colosseum 
 little that is worthy of admiration, except the vastness 
 of its dimensions ; but on those who do not pause to 
 ca,lculate by rules of art the impression produced by the 
 mighty ruin is altogether overpowering. 
 
 Passing over Domitian's additions to the Palatine Pa- 
 lace, and just noticing the Forum erected by Nerva, close 
 to that of Augustus, of which some striking remains are 
 yet visible, we reach the glorious reign of Trajan. The 
 Funeral Pillar of this wise sovereign, and the fragments 
 
 * A.mphitheatrum quod capitloca Ixxxvii millia. Publius Victor 
 in Regiou. Urbis ; in Graevii Thesauro, torn. iii. — Dimensions :— . 
 Superficial area, nearly six acres ; major axis, 620 English feet j 
 minor axis, 613 (counted to outside) ; height of outer wall, 157 ; 
 arena, length, 287, width, 180. — Taylor and Cressy. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 245 
 
 of his Basilica, still bear witness to the splendour of his 
 Ulpian Forum, of which they are the relics. The site 
 of the forum is chiefly covered by modern houses and 
 streets ; but a space around the column was excavated 
 by the French to the depth of the ancient pavement, 
 and allows us to trace the plan of the Basilica Ulpia. 
 The column stood in the midst of an oblong court, two 
 sides of which were enclosed by a double colonnade, 
 while one of its extremities was formed by a lateral wall 
 of the Basilica. Besides a portico in the middle of the 
 side opposite the column, the Basilica, like the adjacent 
 square, had a double colonnade dividing its interior ; 
 and the fragments of the fine shafts of Egyptian granite, 
 wliich at present stand nearly in their original places, 
 show the height of each to have been about fifty- 
 five feet. The admiration excited in the ancient world 
 by this magnificent establishment, with its basilica, its 
 libraries, its temples, and its triumphal arch (plundered 
 or destroyed by Constantine), is justified by the existing 
 niins, and by the perfection of the Funeral Pillar, the 
 most beautiful mausoleum which greatness ever received. 
 The proportions of this gigantic column are excellent ; 
 and its series of bas-reliefs contains 2500 human figures, 
 which run in a spiral course up the shaft, and represent 
 the emperor's victories. A bronze colossal statue of 
 Trajan, who has now given way to St Peter, surmounted 
 the capital, and the ashes of this good prince reposed 
 in an urn of gold, supposed to have been placed in the 
 hand of the figure.* 
 
 The taste of Hadrian inclined him to the foreign and 
 the immense. His Temple of Venus and Rome, already 
 described, appears to have been the purest of his edifices : 
 the city of palaces and temples, of which the ruins yet 
 remain in his Villa at Tivoli, was an exaggeration of the 
 solidity and dimensions of the Egyptian architecture ; 
 and his celebrated Mausoleum, which is at this day the 
 citadel and state prison of the Popes, testifies at once the 
 
 * Height of the column 126 feet, besides the statue. 
 
246 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OP 
 
 perfect manual skill possessed by the architects of his 
 time, and their accomplished master's acquaintance with 
 the pyramids of Memphis. The fine bridge, the Pons 
 ^lius, now the Ponte St Angelo, which he built across 
 the Tiber as the avenue to his sepulchre, still remains 
 nearly in its original form, and is the only one of the 
 eight ancient bridges of Rome which has left any vestige 
 worth tracing.* The strong situation of the mausoleum 
 on the bank of the river made it, from the latter days of 
 the empire, one of the most important military positions 
 about the city ; and in the prodigious round tower which 
 now rises on our view, encompassed by modern outworks, 
 and crested by battlements and the armed statue of the 
 Archangel Michael, we can trace little of the Moles Had- 
 riani, which received the ashes of so many Roman em- 
 perors. Operations, however, executed since 1825, have 
 brought to b'ght extremely interesting particulars re- 
 garding its construction. The building was circular, like 
 the modem tower, and rested on a square basement. Its 
 solid mass contained at most two small sepulchral cham- 
 bers in the centre, which were reached by spiral passages ; 
 the under one, which is still accessible, was lighted by 
 two windows perforated in the thickness of the wall, 
 while the galleries received light through deep perpen- 
 dicular pyramidal openings ; the internal workmanship 
 is of the very best kind, and traces remain of a remark- 
 able richness of ornament.t 
 
 The Antonines have left us the structures already 
 noticed in the Forum, — the colonnade of the Temple of 
 Antoninus Pius, now walled up in the papal Custom- 
 
 * Some of our English antiquaries represent the bridge as re- 
 built by Nicholas V., having, it is said, been destroyed in the jubi- 
 lee of 1430. Bunsen's assertion, that the accident of that year, in 
 which were lost 200 lives, produced no effect on the bridge, except 
 inducing the Pope to take down the booths which covered it like 
 the shops on Old London Bridge, is quite borne out by his autho- 
 rities : — Stephani Infessurae, Senatus Populique Romani Scribee, 
 Diarium Urbis Romae ; apud Eccardum, Corpus Historicmn 
 MediiiEvi,LipsiaB, 1723; torn. ii. pp.1885, 1886;— Platina de Vitis 
 Pontificum, in Nicolao V. 
 
 ■f Beschreibung, vol. ii. part 1. p. 404-422, with plans. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 247 
 
 house, — and the Column of Marcus Aurelius in the 
 Piazza Citoria, an inferior copy from that of Trajan. 
 We might perhaps refer to the same period the beautiful 
 circle of columns round the little church of Santa Maria 
 del Sole on the Tiber bank, usually styled the Temple 
 of Vesta ; and the picturesque and sequestered decagonal 
 ruin on the Esquiline, which is known as the Temple of 
 Minerva Medica. 
 
 From this period to the reign of Constanttne, the most 
 remarkable buildings of which we possess remains are, 
 besides several honorary arches, the Baths of Caracallaand 
 those of Diocletian. Both edifices, tliough in utter de- 
 cay, are amongst the most immense and striking archi- 
 tectural monuments in Rome. In general arrangement 
 they nearly resemble each other ; and in them we behold 
 fully developed the luxury of those establishments, the 
 peace-offerings of despots to a degraded people. The 
 Baths of Diocletian possess a religious interest, from the 
 tradition of their having been mainly built by Christian 
 slaves during the celebrated persecution ; and this cir- 
 cumstance, leading to the consecration of parts of them, 
 has preserved several of their buildmgs, particularly the 
 spacious halls converted into the rich church of the 
 Angioli. The low state of art, however, at that time, 
 renders it useless to look for any great architectural 
 merit in those ruins ; and the Baths of Caracalla at once 
 lead us back to a higher stage of art, and, in the midst 
 of their nakedness, aflPord a more distinct notion of their 
 plan and execution. This immense fabric lay on the 
 south-eastern slope of the Aventine, and was about a mile 
 in circumference. It was not completed till the time of 
 Alexander Severus ; and the writers of the period de- 
 scribe in rapturous terms the splendour of its construc- 
 tion and decorations. The Baths consisted, first, of an 
 extensive quadrilateral edifice, chiefly devoted to the 
 purpose which gives name to the establishment ; tliis 
 edifice had around it an open space, of which a part was 
 appropriated as an arena for races and similar recrea- 
 tions ; the whole was surrounded by a quadrilateral range 
 
248 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OP 
 
 of buildings of various construction, some being evi- 
 dently reservoirs for the baths, and others being meant 
 as seats for spectators ; several halls and porticos appear 
 to have served as academies, lecture-rooms, or places for 
 gymnastic exercises ; and the use of an infinite num- 
 ber of small apartments in the external quarters can 
 only be conjectured. The walls of the fine hall, once 
 vaulted, which forms the centre of the internal building, 
 still remain ; we may wander through a labyrinth of 
 other chambers, and ascend by a broken staircase to the 
 summit ; and every where the statues, urns, mosaics, 
 and other decorations, which have been excavated for 
 centuries, attest the magnificence of the imperial mur- 
 derer and his successors.* 
 
 From the age of Constantine we have the Circus on the 
 Via Appia, noticeable as the only specimen of that kind 
 of structure which has left any considerable remains. 
 In the beautiful gardens of the Colonna Palace on the 
 steep ascent of the Quirinal, are extensive ruins, con- 
 sisting of walls, vaults, and porticos, belonging to the 
 same emperor's Baths. Among them lie several frag- 
 ments, two of which, being portions of a cornice and 
 pediment, are inexplicable from their vastness of size. 
 Constantine's Basilica has been already noticed ; and his 
 Triumphal Arch, beside the Colosseum, is chiefly remark- 
 able for having been constructed from the plundered 
 materials of the Arch of Trajan, the bas-reliefs of which 
 adorn it at this day. Constantine's mother, the English- 
 woman Helena, erected Baths, of which insignificant 
 remains may be seen near the church of Santa Croce. 
 
 Between the foundation of Constantinople and the fall 
 of the Western Empire, the deserted metropolis of Italy 
 suffered a gradual and uninterrupted decline. We read 
 of scarcely any new structures except Christian churches, 
 some of which were formed by altering imperial basilicae, 
 
 • It. is enough to name the Torso of the Belvedere, the trunk of 
 the Farnese Hercules, the Bull of the Museum at Naples, and the 
 Venus Ka^.kiTvyo;. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 249 
 
 while others were erected from the materials of heathen 
 temples. The natural decay of the ancient buildings 
 was accelerated by utter neglect, by inundations of the 
 river, by accidental fires, and more than once by the 
 violence of armed enemies.* Three centuries after the 
 victory of Odoacer, Rome had sunk to a miserable town 
 of a few thousand souls ; but there is reason to think 
 that, down to about the beginning of the fifth century 
 of our era, artificial aid had preserved to it a large pro- 
 portion of the inhabitants whom it had contained in its 
 most glorious days. Its population under Augustus can- 
 not be estimated at less than a million and a half, and 
 perhaps exceeded that number. About the year of grace 
 400 it has been calculated at upwards of a million. The 
 giantess had grown old and weak ; but the life-blood still 
 circled through herveins,ina full though taintedstream.t 
 
 ANCIENT LATIUM. 
 
 This name, comprehending, in its oldest sense, that 
 part only of the Roman plain which constituted the terri- 
 tories of the Latins and Rutulians, received a gradual ex- 
 tension of meaning with the waxing conquests of the re- 
 public, and was yet again enlarged by the usage of speecli 
 
 * See Hobhouse, Illustrations of Childe Harold ; and Beschrei- 
 bun^ der Stadt Rom, vol. i. book ii. 
 
 t The first of these estimates is less than that of M. Bunsen, in 
 the Beschreibung, vol. i. book ii. His calculation is founded on 
 the Monumentum Ancyranum, the genuineness of which is undis- 
 puted, and in which Augustus relates, among the acts of his reign, 
 a donation to the populace of the city (plebs urbana), in number 
 320,000. Females did not share in such donations; but, under 
 Augustus (Dio Cassius, lib. i. cap. 21 ; and Sueton. Aug. cap. 41), 
 the males of all ages did so. Hence, taking the plehs of both sexes 
 at (320,000 4- 320,000) 640,000, and adding 10,000 for senators 
 and knights with their families, and others not receiving charity, 
 we should have 650,000 as the number of free citizens. It is far 
 too low a calculation which allows only one slave to every freeman 
 of the imperial times ; so that we thus have 1,300,000 as the least 
 supposable number; and Bunsen thinks two millions may be nearer 
 the truth — The second calculation is that of Gibbon; who, from 
 the number of dwellings given in the " Notitia," mfers the popu- 
 lation in the Theodojian age to have been about 1,200,000. 
 
250 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHr OF 
 
 under the early emperors. The province will here bo 
 described according to its widest limits, which enclose 
 three regions exceedingly dissimilar. The first comprises 
 the broad plain from the Tiber to Antium, with the nar- 
 rower one of the Pontine Marshes. This district, which 
 lay beneath our view when we stood on the Tower of the 
 Capitol, is not less remarkable for its natural fertility 
 and loveliness, than for its present state of positive deso- 
 lation. The second region is a hilly tract, embracing 
 the country of the Hemicians, with the inland part of 
 that which once belonged to the Volscians. It is not very 
 productive, but presents much fine mountainous scenery, 
 with a few well- wooded vales and declivities. The third 
 and most southerly region, is that of the early people 
 called the Ausonians, bordering on the sea. In ancient 
 times, it contained among its dales some of the best vine- 
 yards in Italy : and it still preserves no small share of 
 its former fruitfulness and beauty. 
 
 In sketching the topography of Latium, however, it 
 will be inadvisable to follow strictly these divisions. 
 After inspecting some of the most interesting monuments 
 and spots in the neighbourhood of Rome, we may visit 
 the scenes of the ^neid about the mouth of the Tiber, 
 and thus be led southward along the coast, till, inter- 
 rupting our progress only by a hasty glance at the nearest 
 hills in one quarter, we have passed through the whole of 
 the delightful Ausonian district. "We shall thence re- 
 turn northward through the inland passes of the Volscians 
 and Hemicians, and close our survey among the moun- 
 tains which approach most closely to the Imperial City. 
 
 Even in the times of the empire, the Roman who 
 studied the history of his country might search in vain 
 for the localities and the ruins belonging to most of those 
 states with which her infant power contended. The 
 account we have of the environs of the city reminds us 
 of the mighty arms which our British capital throws 
 out to the land and to the sea. We read of lines of villaa 
 stretching from Ocriculum to Rome, and edging the 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 251 
 
 banks of the Tiber to its very mouth. When the sites of 
 ancient towns possessed no local advantages, they sank 
 into the earth, leaving scarcely a vestige, like Collatia 
 or Labicum ; and it was only when their position was 
 useful or picturesque, that they were covered by imperial 
 edifices, like the Ostia of Ancus Martins or the Pelasgic 
 Tibur. These more ornate fabrics in their turn de- 
 cayed ; and it is beneath the ruins of the empire, or of 
 the middle ages, that we have now to search for those of 
 the republic and of the days which preceded it.* 
 
 In the plain, few modem dwellings interrupt our in- 
 vestigations. The pest, which always clung to this 
 remarkable district, and which only a close population 
 and an active agriculture had power to check, having 
 resumed its reign since the decline of the country, has 
 driven the natives to the slopes of the mountains. A 
 few ruinous villages still keep their hold of the ground ; 
 sev^eral of them are habitable for the whole year without 
 much danger to health ; others must be abandoned on the 
 approach of summer. The Campagna is chiefly covered 
 with natural pasturages, interrupted by woods and by 
 patches of tilled land, with some marshes. 
 
 On issuing from any of the eastern gates of Romcj the 
 stranger's eye is first caught by the prodigious arches 
 which rise in lines along the plain ; the remnants of 
 those ancient aqueducts which were perhaps the most 
 extraordinary works of an extraordinary people. These 
 structures conveyed a body of water for which pipes, an 
 invention well known to the Romans, would have been 
 utterly insufficient, and therefore they were formed of 
 strong masonry : they distributed water to the suburban 
 hamlets and villas, and therefore they ran in winding 
 
 • The best works on the topography of Latium are West- 
 phal's Romische Kampagne, Berlin, 1829 ; and Sir ^yilliam Gell's 
 Topography of Rome and its Vicinity, 2 vols. London, 1834. 
 Each of the two treatises has an excellent map. Consult also 
 Nibby's Viaggio Antiquario ne' Contorni di Roma, 2 tom. Roma, 
 1819. — A map is inserted in the present volume. 
 
252 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF 
 
 lines, instead of passing straight from their mountain 
 springs to the city. Within the walls they supplied 
 the household wants of the inhabitants, the luxury of 
 the immense baths, and occasionally the entei-taiuments 
 of the naumachiae or marine theatres. 
 
 The following is the list of aqueducts enumerated by 
 Frontinus as existing in the reign of Nerva or Trajan, 
 to which four or five others had been added before 
 the invasion of the Goths. The first five are republican, 
 the last four imperial. 
 
 1. A. u. 442. Aqua Appia, from a spring near the side 
 of the road to Praeneste, — length more than eleven miles : 
 no remains. 
 
 2. A.u. 481. Anio Vetus, from the Anio, — length 
 forty-three miles : remains above Tivoli. 
 
 3. A.u. 608. Aqua Marcia, from two springs in the 
 valley of the Anio, — length nearly sixty-one miles ; more 
 than six miles, near Rome, carried on arches. In a. u. 
 747 the Aqua Augusta united with it : remains near 
 Tivoli, and a stupendous line of arches for about two 
 miles on the left of the road to Albano. 
 
 4. A. u. 627. Aqua Tepula, from springs below Tus- 
 culum : remains near the city- walls. 
 
 5. A. u. 719. Aqua Julia, from a spring above the 
 source of the Tepula : remains within the walls, called 
 the Trophies of Marius. 
 
 6. A. u. 733. Aqua Virgo, from springs eight miles 
 from Rome on the road to Collatia : repaired and used 
 for supplying the fountain of Trevi in the city. 
 
 7. A. u. 803. Aqua Claudia, from two springs in the 
 valley of the Anio, — length forty-six miles ; seven miles 
 on arches nearest the city : remains between Tivoli and 
 Subiaco, and fine arches near and in Rome ; the arches 
 partly used for the Aqueduct of Sextus V., called the 
 Acqua Felice. 
 
 8. A. u. 803. Anio Novus, — ^length nearly fifty-nine 
 miles : remains in the valley of the Anio. 
 
 9. A. u. 862. Aqua Trajana, Alsietina, or Sabatina, 
 from the lakes of Martignano and Bracciano, — length 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 253 
 
 twenty-two miles : the branch from Bracciano (the 
 Lacus Sabatiniis), renewed, and called the Acqua Paola, 
 supplies the district beyond the Tiber, the Vatican Palace, 
 and St Peters. 
 
 Remains of the old Roman roads are visible all round 
 the walls, and for miles over the plain. Several of them 
 are still in some places passable for foot travellers ; 
 and one or two form at intervals parts of the modem 
 carriage ways. But we have to seek most of them in 
 abandoned tracks, where they appear as broken heaps 
 of masonry, partly overgrown with weeds and rubbish, 
 and partly sunk into morasses. All the ancient high- 
 ways of Latium, however, are still discoverable, though 
 not without many antiquarian disputes as to their 
 identity. For some miles from Rome the most entire 
 of them is that which is also the oldest ; namely, the 
 Via Appia, laid dowm in a. u. 442 by the censor Appius 
 Claudius Caecus, who carried it to Capua, whence, pro- 
 bably by Julius Csesar, it was prolonged to Brundusium. 
 At a depth of several feet, we find, in the Appian Way, a 
 pavement of hard whitish stone, wliich appears to have 
 been the original work of the censor. Above this layer 
 is a bed of pebbles and coarse gravel, on which rests the 
 surface pavement, composed of polygonal stones with 
 hewn edges, from one to two feet long, and fitted to each 
 other with the utmost exactness. This upper stratum 
 belongs chiefly to the times of Nerva and Trajan ; and 
 is a favourable specimen of the most massive and elabo- 
 rate sort of Roman highways. The strata on which it 
 is elevated illustrate also the mode in which these are 
 Ibund to have been foraied elsewhere. The next oldest 
 of the great roads was the Via Aurelia, laid down in a.u. 
 512, which led to Centumcellse, and was thence continued 
 along the Mediterranean, under the name of the Via 
 Emilia Scauri. It is still traceable, as is likewise the 
 more frequented Flaminian Way, which, opened in a.u. 
 533, led through Etruria and Umbria, over the Apen- 
 nines to Ariminum. It was thence, under the name of 
 the Via iEmilia Lepidi, continued to Placentia and Mi- 
 
254 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF 
 
 Ian on one side, and to Aquileia on the other. Its mam 
 branch was the Cassian Way, which diverged from it at 
 the Milvian Bridge of the Tiber (now the Ponte MoUe), 
 and ended at Sutrium. Of the other great roads leading 
 from Rome, the most famous was the Via Latina, w^hich, 
 passing between Prseneste and the Alban range, was car- 
 ried through the country of the Hernici, and joined the 
 highway of Appius at Casinum. 
 
 Following the sepulchral Appian Way outwards from 
 the gate of St Sebastian, we see the tombs crowding 
 more thickly as we advance : and about five miles 
 from the city, on a height, where they are most nume- 
 rous, we are on or near the Fossa Cluilia, the camp of the 
 King of Alba, and the Sacred Field of the Horatii. Ex- 
 tensive ruins called Roma Vecchia, which lie not far 
 from us, are the remains of a splendid imperial villa : 
 but a wall in the neighbourhood, 240 feet in length, 
 constructed of huge uncemented quadrilateral blocks of 
 tufo, clearly belongs to the remotest ages of the coun- 
 try, and has been believed to indicate the site of the 
 Roman or Alban camp, and the consecrated spot where 
 the Curiatii and their antagonists were buried.* 
 
 We have to search for memorials of the Tarquins by 
 following the broken road towards Prseneste to the dis- 
 tance of eleven miles from the modem gate. Passing the 
 fragments of a villa of the Gordians, and a picturesque 
 ancient bridge of seven arches, we reach the naked banks 
 of the volcanic lake of Gabii, where the site of this Alban 
 town, proverbial for desolation as early as the Augustan 
 age,t presents the simple, austere ruin of the Temple of 
 Juno, the semicircle of its theatre, and the under portion 
 of its uncemented walls, while a tower of the middle ages 
 occupies the place of its citadel. In this district, too, we 
 should look for Collatia, the dwelling of Lucretia ; but 
 its site eludes our search, unless we are content, after 
 wandering through the delightfully wooded dell watered 
 by the Osa, to sit down at Lunghezza on the summit of 
 
 • Sir William Cell's Topography, vol, i. p. 142. 
 
 t Horat. Epistol. lib. i. 12, v. 7 Juvenalis Satir. vj. v, 66. 
 
HOME AND LATIUM. 255 
 
 a rock which overhangs the stream, and imagine that 
 the marble fragments which lie scattered beneath the 
 ruined tower belong to the town of CoUatiniis. 
 
 There are, however, some districts of Latium which 
 merit a more minute survey, and assuredly none is 
 more interesting than the region about the mouth of 
 the Tiber, the scene of the last half of the -^neid. In 
 the magic mirror of poetry, we have beheld the glades 
 of the Laurentinc forest ; and we shall tread with solemn 
 pleasure those solitary woods and meadows which the 
 power of genius has peopled with heroic beauty. In the 
 flourishing times of the empire the whole coast, from the 
 margin of the river to Antium and beyond it, was a 
 continuation of that series of patrician dwellings and 
 gardens which adorned the valley of the Tiber. Even 
 under the republic, the beggars, we are told, were wont 
 to throng about the gate which led to this road, as being, 
 from its multitude of passengers, particularly favourable 
 to their trade.* The ancient towns on the coast, how- 
 ever, had declined, almost without exception, at an early 
 period of the empire ; and with the decay of Rome the 
 villas of her nobles likewise lost their splendour. The 
 pestilential influence of the climate once more revived ; 
 invasions of the Saracens in the middle ages aided the 
 progress of destruction ; and we have now to seek, amidst 
 unpeopled woods, noxious swamps, and pastures on which 
 graze buffaloes, for the cities of Latinus, Turnus, and 
 ^neas. 
 
 The banks of the Tiber below Rome gradually sink 
 as they approach the flat coast. Accompanying the 
 river in its course, we soon enter a region of unmitigated 
 desolation, where we are reminded of life by nothing save 
 one or two wattled huts standing on the edge of thickets, 
 or the walls of some ancient mansion or tomb. At last, 
 on reaching the brow of an eminence, we perceive a salt 
 marsh appearing through copse- wood ; we descend and 
 
 * Plauti Capteivorum, act. i. sc. i. v. 22. 
 
256 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OP 
 
 cross a corner of it, and immediately, at the distance of 
 thirteen miles from Rome, reach a gloomy fortress, 
 surrounded by a few wretched old hovels, which com- 
 pose the papal to\%Ti of Ostia. The sea at its nearest point 
 is now three miles distant from the modern houses ; 
 but the land has encroached on the waters, and at the 
 castle we are little more than half-a-mile from the spot 
 where was the ancient mouth of the Tiber. A little 
 beyond the town, the site of the classical Ostia, a city of 
 80,000 inhabitants, is marked by a tract of grassy knolls, 
 and by a few unimportant ruins. At the farthest extre- 
 mity of these we may overlook, from a tower of the 
 middle ages, the left branch of the two into which the 
 river is here divided, being tliat by which ^neas is re- 
 presented to have approached. The Sacred Island, a flat 
 sandy meadow ten or twelve miles in circuit, divides 
 this arm from that on the right, called Fiumicino, by 
 which barks now enter the Tiber ; and beyond the isle are 
 visible the basin and other remains of Portus Trajanus, 
 the harbour constructed by Claudius and improved by 
 Trajan, which superseded that of Ostia. 
 
 Proceeding southward, we cross a reedy canal which 
 communicates between the marsh and the sea ; and we 
 then enter a wood which, broken up by glades and mea- 
 dows, is here separated from the Mediterranean by sandy 
 hillocks, and extends backwards on the plain two or 
 three miles from the beach. In several places, how- 
 ever, it spreads up nearly to the roots of the Volscian 
 mountains ; and southward it stretches with little inter- 
 ruption as far as Terracina, a distance of at least fifty 
 miles. In the region which is nearest to us, the majesty 
 of the Laurentine Forest is still represented by noble 
 groves of the pine and dark -leaved ilex, the former, 
 about the mouth of the Tiber, skirting the sea like a line 
 of gigantic columns ; while the laurel, the myrtle, the 
 arbutus, and wild olive, form in many spots impervious 
 thickets with the ivy and heaths.^ We may chance to 
 
 « VirjT. 2Eu. lib. ix. v. 381-383. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 257 
 
 traverse these Italian prairies for days w-itliout seeing a 
 human face. Our path, at most, will be crossed by a 
 stray villager on his road to Rome, a few charcoal- 
 burners among the brakes, or an armed hunter in the 
 marshy depths, periling health and life for a wretched 
 and precarious pittance. 
 
 In various places on this solitary shore ancient ruins 
 are seen, but none of them have been satisfactorily iden- 
 tified with either of the two objects which possess most 
 interest in the history of the district, — Laurentum the 
 city of Father Latinus, or the Laurentine villa of the 
 Younger Pliny, described by him with so eloquent a 
 delight. Castel Fusano, an old turreted mansion, situ- 
 ated in a clump of tall pines a little to the south of 
 the swamp, has been fixed on by most antiquaries as 
 Pliny's abode ; while some would rather place the re- 
 treat of this friend of Trajan at Tor Paterno, about eight 
 miles southward on the coast ; and others wish to find 
 the spot at some intermediate point, among the unex- 
 plored recesses of the woodland. The common opinion 
 identifies the site of Laurentum with Tor Paterno, which 
 is a tower situated in an opening among the trees, on a 
 meadow slightly raised above morasses, which nearly 
 surround it, and less than a mile distant from the sandy 
 beach. The tower itself is partly antique, and remains 
 of a reservoir and other Roman works are observable 
 beside it ; while an aqueduct and fragments of a paved 
 road are seen in glimpses through one of the most beauti- 
 ful vistas of the forest." 
 
 Leaving the Laurentine shore to its frogs, t we pursue 
 the windings of the wood yet farther southw^ard, among 
 the tracks of the charcoal carts ; and about five miles 
 from Tor Paterno, we reach the village of Prattica. 
 Inscriptions discovered on the spot have identified this 
 
 * Sir William Gell demurs to this opinion, chiefly on account of 
 the flatness of the ground, which he conceives to be contradictory 
 of Virgil's description of the " lofty walls" (Mn. lib. xii. v. 745), 
 and of the royal mansion " in the uppermost part of the city " 
 {Mn. lib. vii. v. 171). Topography of Rome, vol. ii. p. 59. 
 
 t Martialis Epigr. x. 37. 
 
 VOL. I. Q 
 
258 THE ANCIEiVT TOPOGRAPnv OP 
 
 hamlet beyond a doubt with the town of Lavinium, 
 which the legend describes to have been founded by 
 ^neas, and to which, in the time of the Caesars, was 
 transferred the remaining population of the decayed 
 Laurentum.* The position and vicinity of Prattica are 
 romantic. It occupies a flattish tongue of land, five or 
 six hundred yards in length, little if at all elevated above 
 the surrounding woody ground, but entirely separated 
 from it by deep and precipitous glens, except at one 
 end, where a solid bridge of rock joins it to the plain. 
 It lately contained about fifty sickly inhabitants ; and 
 a large baronial mansion in it has a lofty tower, which 
 commands a magnificent view, embracing nearly the 
 whole Campagna. The existing ruins of classical build- 
 ings are extremely insignificant.t 
 
 A walk of six miles farther in the same direction we 
 have been already pursuing, brings us to the capital of 
 the Rutuli. The country is rather more hilly, the 
 larger trees less frequent, and the forest more open ; and 
 we remark some cultivation, with one large farm-house. 
 About half way on, an easy leap carries us across the 
 Rio Torto, a marshy little stream, supposed to be the 
 Numicus, in which ^neas is said to have been drowned.:}: 
 
 * Nibby, \'^iaggio Antiquario, torn. ii. p. 262. 
 
 t Sir William Gell says the villagers of Prattica complained to 
 him strongly of the climate of the spot. The same desponding 
 spirit was manifested, in a different form, during a visit which the 
 present writer paid to the hamlet in 1834, in the course of a jour- 
 ney through the forest. While a knot of the people were gathered 
 in the kitchen of the wretched tavern, a man arriving from Albano 
 told them that an inhabitant of the village, who had retired to the 
 mountains for change of air, had just died there of fever. The 
 hearers absolutely seemed to feel a kind of gloomy satisfaction in 
 being allowed to believe that their own epidemic distempers were 
 not unknown in other places ; and the innkeeper's wife, a miser- 
 able victim of malaria, appeared even willing to infer from the fact 
 the falsity of the charges against the chmate, whose insalubrity 
 was weighing herself down to the grave ; for she exclaimed hastily, 
 with an air of triumph which was really revolting ; " E poi si dice 
 che in Prattica si muore !" (And yet they will have it that people 
 always die at Prattica !) — What is likely to have been the state of 
 the climate when .^Lneas first settled on the rock with his colonists ' 
 
 J Hajc fontis stagna Numici. iEnnid. lib. vii. v. 150. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 259 
 
 In tlie district we are now exploring, rather perhaps 
 than at Tivoli, we ought to search for the Oraclo of 
 Faunus, the sacred fountain of the nymph Albunea, and 
 her mephitic grove, " greatest of woods."* One ima- 
 ginative traveller believes that he has found the oracular 
 spring, at the Solfatara on the road between Ardea and 
 Rome.t Ardea, though as unhealthy now as it was in 
 the days of Strabo, still retains its " mighty name," and 
 about threescore inhabitants. The village is nearly four 
 miles from the sea, and is situated on a commanding 
 rock, naturally insulated except on one point, at which 
 three deep ditches axe cut in the tufo. Its strength was 
 increased by very ancient walls, the remains of which, 
 composed of quadrilateral uncemented blocks, may be 
 traced on the edge of the cliffs ; but recent examina- 
 tions have shown that this eminence was only the citadel, 
 and that the town extended widely on the flat beneath, 
 being defended partly by natural ravines, and partly by 
 mounds similar to the Agger of Servius at Rome.:}: 
 
 Continuing still our journey in a line with the coast, 
 we now enter the ancient territory of the Volscians. 
 
 The woods of oak, ilex, cork, and myrtle, become 
 thicker and more picturesque, and stretch farther up 
 into the bare downs which lie at the foot of the moun- 
 tains : we follow sandy tracks crossing each other with 
 bewildering frequency ; and, about sixteen miles from 
 Ardea, we reach Nettuno, the only modem place on the 
 
 * sub nocte silenti 
 
 Pellibus incubuit stratis, somnosque petivit. 
 
 yEneid. lib. vii. v. 87. 
 The bull was slain : his reeking hide 
 They stretched the cataract beside : 
 
 » s • 
 
 Couched on a shelve beneath its brink. 
 Close where the thundering torrents sink, 
 'Midst groan of rock and roar of stream, 
 The wizard waits prophetic dream. 
 
 Lad)' of the Lake, canto iv. 
 t Bonstetten, Voyage sur la Scene des six derniers Livres de 
 I'^neide: Geneve, An 13 (1805). 
 
 T Cell's Topography of Rome, vol. i. p. 172. 
 
260 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OP 
 
 Latian coast deserving the name of a town, but now 
 containing scarcely more than 1000 inhabitants. Just 
 before reaching it, however, we see on the right a for- 
 tress, occupied as a prison for the galley slaves, and 
 standing on the rocky promontory called Capo d' Anzo ; 
 fragments of masonry project from knolls formed by 
 fallen buildings ; and the remnants of two immense 
 arched moles, the one about 2700 feet in length, the 
 other 1600, run out into the sea, while a small modern 
 harbour, attached to a little decayed town, named Porto 
 d'Anzo, is constructed with the aid of one of them. We 
 are among the ruins of " the pleasant Antium," the Vol- 
 scian capital, the spot where Coriolanus, " too proud to 
 be so valiant," stood upon his enemy's hearth, and swore 
 revenge against Rome. Under the emperors the Vol- 
 scian town became a splendid city ; and Nero, in 
 particular, being attached to it as his birthplace, adorn- 
 ed it with magnificent fabrics, beneath whose over- 
 thrown walls have been found some of the noblest works 
 of ancient art. Cicero, too, had a villa here, and another 
 which he describes as delightfully situated almost in the 
 water, at Astura, within sight both of Antium and Cir- 
 ceii.* At the present day, we see from the Port of 
 Anzo, at a distance of about seven miles, a solitary 
 tower of the middle ages, in that dice-box shape which 
 is so frequent. The edifice is placed on the extremity 
 of a lofty promontory, and retains, as well as the river 
 which flows past it, its ancient name of Astura. In the 
 thirteenth century, one of the Roman Frangipani, then 
 the owner of the tower, made its vaults the scene of an 
 act tragically disgraceful,— -the betrayal of the princely 
 boy Conradin into the hands of his murderer, Charles of 
 Anjou. 
 
 For about twenty-two miles beyond Astura, lines of 
 sandy hillocks, with several long but narrow and swampy 
 lakes, compose a bulwark between the sea and the wide 
 forest, which hides from us the Pontine Marshes. At the 
 
 * Cic, Epistolar. ad Atticum, lib. xii. Epist. 19. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 261 
 
 end of this tract, on an angle of the coast, a picturesque 
 mountain rises almost perpendicularly from the water's 
 edge. It stands like an island between the sea and the 
 Pontine Flats. Its length is not less than three miles, 
 its breadth one, and its summit, which is a long narrow 
 ridge, commands a magnificent prospect, reaching from 
 Rome to Vesuvius. 
 
 The inhabitants of the little town of San Felice, 
 which lies at the foot of the ascent on its south side, will 
 tell us, if questioned, that the mount is haunted. In 
 ancient times, say they, a sorceress inhabited a castle 
 on its highest peak, and, sitting on the cliff, drew mari- 
 ners towards the coast by the fascination of her eye. 
 She gave them a magic draught, which robbed them of 
 their senses ; but she possessed another charmed potion 
 capable of acting as an antidote to the first. Two 
 brothers sailing along the shore were attracted by her 
 spell : the younger swallowed the deleterious draught 
 and became a drivelling idiot ; the elder feigned himself 
 asleep, seized the enchantress as she approached him, 
 and broke the enchanted cup. He compelled her to dis- 
 close the secret of the counter-charm, and to give up to 
 him the second potion, from which he forced his brother 
 to drink and then slew the witch. The name of the en- 
 chantress is Circe, and the tradition is older than Homer. 
 The promontory still bears the name of Circello, and its 
 identification with the spot which the Romans believed 
 to be Homer's Island of Circe is undoubted, while it 
 seems highly probable that it was also the spot which 
 the Grecian poet meant to describe. 
 
 The topography of the Monte San Felice cannot in- 
 deed be exactly adjusted to the description of the " ^aean 
 Isle," in the Tenth Book of the Odyssey ; and though 
 the mountain certainly was once insular, it seems clear 
 that, long before Homer's age, it must have ceased to be 
 so. Its appearance, however, from the sea is said to be 
 quite that of an island ; and the poet's loose topography 
 in all his Italian scenery, bears the strongest marks of 
 having been borrowed from the inexact stories of Grecian 
 
262 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF 
 
 mariners, who described it to him in the aspect which 
 it had presented to themselves.* 
 
 Remains of the rude uncemented walls of a citadel are 
 to he seen on the height, and ruins of Roman villas at 
 its base ; but no traces have been discovered which pre- 
 cisely ascertain the site of the Volscian town of Circeii, 
 besieged by Tarquinius, by Coriolanus, and by Sylla. 
 
 Turning eastward along the coast fi-om Circello, we 
 cross the mouth of a canal which discharges into the sea 
 the united waters of Virgil's rivers Ufens and Amasenus, 
 and immediately reach Terracina, the ancient Anxur or 
 Tarracina, placed a little beyond the extremity of the Pon- 
 tine Marshes. Remains of its harbour may be traced, and 
 considerable ruins, partly Pelasgic, pai-tly Roman, and 
 some belonging to the dark ages, surmount the noble rock 
 which rises from the palm-trees of its hanging gardens. 
 
 The broad swamp which extends between the neigh- 
 bourhood of Terracina and the station of Cistema on the 
 road to Rome, a length of full thirty miles, once con- 
 tained, it is said, twenty-three Volscian cities. The 
 waters rose even during the republic, and attempts were 
 made to drain the marshes : Augustus, notwithstanding 
 Horace's obsequious commendations, appears to have 
 been but partially successful : further works were exe- 
 cuted till the time of Theodoric : and several popes have 
 undertaken the Herculean task. The ambitious pontiff 
 Pius VI. found leisure before the first French Revolu- 
 tion to execute his singular road through the flats, as 
 also the canal which inins by its side for twenty miles in 
 a line as straight as an arrow. A large tract was rendered 
 capable of cultivation ; but, the waters having again 
 gradually overflowed, the plain is again pestilential.t 
 
 * ^'Eneid. lib. vii. v. 9. See Westphal, pp. 59, 60 ; and the in- 
 teresting excursion of Brocchi the mineralogist, described by him 
 in the Biblioteea Italiana of Milan, vol. vii. ; 1617. 
 
 t See Forsyth's Remarks on Italy : " Journey to Naples." 
 The expense of the late papal works is stated at 1,622,000 Roman 
 crowns (£337,900), and the sum annually required for the insuf- 
 ficient keeping up which the works receive, at 4000 crowns (£830). 
 See Westphal, p. 47. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 263 
 
 Among the Volscian mountains skirting the marshes 
 several towns present ruins, particularly Cori, the 
 ancient Cora, and the village of Norma, once Norba, 
 near both of which are very grand remains of prmieval 
 fortifications, besides two temples at the former place. 
 Setia also exhibits very fine walls at the town of Sezze ; 
 and Piperno has preserved the name, but not the exact 
 site nor any considerable vestiges, of the patriotic Pri- 
 vernum. We have entirely lost Corioli, where Caius 
 Marcius earned his glorious surname ; although its site 
 must lie near Lanuvium, the birthplace of MUo and of 
 the actor Roscius, which is identified with Civita La 
 Vigna ; as Velitrae, the native town of Augustus, is with 
 the modem Velletri. 
 
 Returning southward from those hills to Terracina, 
 without pausing to search in its neighbourhood for the 
 temple of Feronia and its fountain, in which Horace 
 performed his ablutions on finishing his voyage across 
 the marshes, we leave the territory of the Volscians, and 
 enter the modern kingdom of Naples, by a strong pass 
 which leads into the ancient Ausonian district, com- 
 mencing with the lake and town of Amycl^, afterwards 
 named Fundi, and now represented by the filthy place 
 called Fondi. Beyond the plain we cross the line of 
 hills anciently known as the Caecubus Ager, and descend 
 into the lovely ba}'' of Gaeta, where we again encounter 
 ^neas, and perhaps also Ulysses. 
 
 The fortified town of Gaeta, seated on the abrupt rocky 
 promontory which shuts in the bay, and crowned by a 
 circular Roman tomb, now entitled the Tower of Or- 
 lando, was the ancient Caj eta, which received the marble 
 um of ^neas's foster-mother. The fine bluffs head- 
 land stands on our right ; before us extends the sea, in 
 whose darkly blue waters we already see imaged the 
 skies of Pai-thenope ; and around us, rich orange groves, 
 Csecuban vineyards, embowered gardens, and rural lanes, 
 slope downwards in beautiful luxuriance to the rocky 
 shore and the little town of Mola di Gaeta. We per- 
 
264 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OP 
 
 haps stand near the spot where Ulysses, landing in the 
 country of the Lestrygonian giants, climhed the lofty 
 rock ; or on the path by which the daughter of the pas- 
 toral prince Antiphates descended, bearing her pitcher 
 on her head like the modern Italian maidens, to the 
 " fair-flowing fountain" of the nymph Artacia. An 
 inscription over a well in a pleasant garden by the 
 shore still reminds us of the poetical legend ; but if we 
 fail in identifying the Homeric scenery, we are at least 
 certain that we are on the site of the ancient town of 
 Formiae, where lay one of the most delightful and be- 
 loved of Cicero's country villas. Near this place, also, 
 lie was murdered. A picturesque sepulchre, consisting 
 of a circular tower placed in a vineyard on the side of the 
 road overlooking the coast, and overhung by a carob-tree, 
 is pointed out without any good ground as the orator's 
 tomb ; and one of those undefined piles of Roman reti- 
 culated work, which fill the gardens along the shore, 
 is declared upon as slight reasons to be his vaunted For- 
 mian villa. 
 
 Southward along the Gulf of Gaeta stretches a culti- 
 vated plain, on which, nine miles from Mola, we see a line 
 of arches of an aqueduct, with the fragments of a theatre 
 and amphitheatre. These indicate the town of Min- 
 turnse, celebrated for the adventures of Marius. Here 
 also stood the sacred wood and temple of the nymph 
 Marica, the mother of Latinus ; and the slow river 
 Liris or Garigliano, whose waters " laved the oaken 
 groves of the fair-haired nymph," is crossed by an iron 
 bridge erected in 1882.* 
 
 Near the southern frontier of Latium, Aquinum, 
 Juvenal's birthplace, is the modern Aquino ; and 
 beneath a magnificent isolated hill, surmounted by the 
 celebrated monastery of Monte Cassino, the little town 
 of San Gemiano exhibits the site, and some vestiges of 
 
 * ^neid. lib. vii. v. 47. Claudiani Panegyric. De Probo et 
 Olybrio Consulibus. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 265 
 
 Casinum. These were Volscian fastnesses, as was Arpi- 
 num, an inconsiderable municipality, two of whose citi- 
 zens, both meanly born, and one of them a peasant, ruled 
 in their turn the destinies of Rome. Caius Marius was 
 one of the two " ignoble Arpinates," and Marcus Tullius 
 Cicero was the other.'" The country is woody and 
 mountainous, and through fine valleys we ascend to the 
 hill on which stands the modern town of Arpino, co^'-er- 
 ing a portion of the ancient one, and still containing frag- 
 ments of its more solid constructions, while the height 
 which overlooks the houses presents some ponderous 
 ruins of its primitive citadel. An antique tomb placed 
 outside the walls receives from the inhabitants, by one of 
 those whimsically distorted classical recollections which 
 so often amuse us in the mouths of the Italian pea- 
 santry, the ambitious title of the Sepulchre of Saturn. 
 Cicero was not bom in Arpinum, but on a spot which 
 we reach by crossing into the valley of the Liris, being 
 a small flat islet formed by the stream Fibrenus, a little 
 before its junction with the larger river. The philosopher 
 has described his birthplace with a proud anticipation of 
 its renown, in a dialogue of which the scene is laid here. 
 The bank is still green, though less shady than when his 
 pleasure grounds covered it : the seats on which he sat 
 with his brother and Atticus have crumbled away ; but 
 the " lofty poplars" may yet be found, and " while Latin 
 literature shall continue to address us, the place will not 
 want a tree which may be named the Oak of Marius."t 
 The columns and fragments of Cicero's paternal man- 
 sion lie scattered in the cloisters and kitchen-garden of 
 the little church and monastery of San Domenico Abate. 
 
 From the neighbourhood of Arpinum the road north- 
 ward to Rome, in the line of the Via Latina, enters 
 the territory of the Hernici, a flat alluvial valley sur- 
 rounded by rocky and wooded mountains, from wliicb 
 
 • Juvenalis Sat. viii. v. 237-250. 
 
 t Cicero, De Legibus, lib. i. cap. 1, 4. 
 
263 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF 
 
 streams descend into the river Trerus or Sacco, while 
 several abrupt hills shooting down from the main ridges 
 were the sites of ancient towns. Frosinone the ancient 
 Frusino, Verulae now Veroli, Alatrium now Alatri, Fe- 
 rentiniim represented by Ferentino, and Anagnia by 
 Anagni, are built in these strong and picturesque posi- 
 tions ; and while all of them present ruins, tliose of Alatri 
 and Ferentino are especially interesting. These remains 
 are portions of the walls of the old towns or their 
 citadels, — specimens of that rude and massive style 
 which leads us back to the primeval ages, when Rome, 
 if it existed at all, was still the village of Satumia. 
 The remarkable monuments of this class, which present 
 themselves on heights throughout the whole of Central 
 Italy, have been the subject of lively discussion among 
 antiquaries, and have contributed to furnish materials 
 for speculation as to the origin of the early Italian 
 nations. The cu'cumstances common to all these antique 
 fortifications are the great size of the blocks of which 
 they are formed, and the want of cement to unite them. 
 In some instances they are formed of polygonal pieces, 
 not adjusted to each other, the interstices between them 
 being filled up with smaller stones : in other specimens, 
 also polygonal, the huge masses are carefully cut, and 
 fitted together with surprising exactness : and in some 
 mins we remark that the polygonal blocks are arranged 
 with something like an approach to regular courses. 
 Other walls are composed of rectangular stones, placed 
 horizontally, but irregularly ; while, in others, blocks 
 of this form are accurately disposed in horizontal layers, 
 one resting above another. These different arrangements 
 appear to indicate a progress in skill of execution. Re- 
 mains at Arpino and Ferentino are remarkable examples 
 both of the fitted polygonal and of the rectangular walls 
 and gates. At Alatri the majestic rock of the ancient 
 citadel is defended at one angle by a vast rampart, about 
 sixty feet in height, and yet composed of not more than 
 fifteen courses of immense blocks ; while several gates, 
 one particularly huge, and many portions of the walls, 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 267 
 
 both of the citadel and of the town, pierced with sub- 
 terranean passages, afford one of the most instructive 
 and picturesque specimens of those aboriginal for- 
 tresses. 
 
 At the head of the valley of the Sacco, we emerge 
 among the mountains which surround the Roman plain ; 
 and the beautiful Alban range first presents itself, rising 
 to the west of the Hernician frontier. The white houses 
 and embowered villas of Frascati cover a slope of the 
 heights facing Rome ; and behind them a steep ascent 
 leads us to the prostrate ruins of the town and citadel of 
 Tusculum. This ancient city, one of the favourite re- 
 treats of the Romans during their ages of refinement, 
 existed till the middle of the twelfth century, when it was 
 destroyed in a feud with its Papal neighbour. The visible 
 remains are those of its earlier times, — paved streets, 
 reservoirs, theatres, and fortifications, with the galleries 
 and terraces of superb dwellings. Cicero's residence, 
 the scene of the Tusculan Dialogues, has been by some 
 antiquaries placed among the plane-trees which surround 
 the fortified monastery of Grotta Ferrata, in the valley 
 which separates the hill of Tusculum fi-om the higher 
 Alban range ; but the prevalent opinion places this clas- 
 sical mansion and its grounds on the Tusculan height. 
 Beyond the valley (the ancient Vallis Albana) stands a 
 mountain group, of which the eastern portion bore the 
 name of Mount Algidus, while the western and higher 
 elevation, rising into the conical Monte Cavo, was the 
 renowned Alban Mount, the seat of the great national 
 worship of the Latin confederacy. The sides of this 
 noble mountain are covered with fine woods, principally 
 chestnuts ; a modern village, named Rocca di Papa, 
 stands picturesquely on a projecting spur not far below 
 its summit ; and on the platform in which it terminates, 
 the fragments of the temple sacred to the Latian Jupiter 
 are visible beside the walls of a Christian convent. The 
 view from the peak is infinitely grand ; and the two vol- 
 canic lakes of Albano and Nemi, the old Lacus Albanus 
 
268 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF 
 
 and Speculum Dianae, which lie among woods at the 
 foot of the Monte Cavo, may yet be reached by a descent 
 on the remains of the ancient Triumphal Road. 
 
 Few spots are more beautiful than the Alban Lake and 
 its vicinity. Its circular basin lies buried among steep 
 crags mantled with, coppice : the houses and gardens of 
 Castel Gandolfo overlook it from the high bank opposite 
 to the mountain ; and from this quarter towards the north 
 we may descend into the wooded dell of Marino, to find 
 the fountain of the Aqua Ferentiiia, the muster- place of 
 the Latin tribes, in whose waters the brave Herdonius 
 was drowned ;'^ or, turning to the south, we may proceed 
 beneath the dknopy of an avenue of the finest old oak and 
 ilex, to the modern town of Albano, the site of Pompey's 
 Alban villa, beyond which lay the lovely Aricia, now 
 called La Riccia. The celebrated tunnel (Emissario) of 
 the Alban Lake still discharges its waters into the plain 
 in a stream about two feet deep. It is cut in the 
 volcanic tufo which composes the rock of Castel Gan- 
 dolfo, at a depth of about 480 feet beneath the summit 
 of the cliff. Its length is fully a mile and a half, its 
 width every where at least four feet, and its height from 
 seven and a half feet to ten. Livy's well-known tale 
 of the oracular command to form this outlet is an inven- 
 tion, or, if it be historically true, was a fraud of the laic 
 priesthood ; but, from authorities and an examination 
 of the spot, sufficient proof has been collected that the 
 waters of the lake did really at one time stand about 200 
 feet higher than their present level, and discharged 
 themselves by a gully, artificially widened into a broad 
 canal. The site of Alba Longa, so renowned in the 
 legendary history of Rome, is still disputed. The com- 
 mon opinion places it at the papal villa of Palazzuolo, 
 on the eastern bank of the lake, where is a remarkable 
 excavated tomb ; while the antiquary cited below con- 
 fidently assigns to this poetic city some ponderous ruins 
 among bushy knolls on the northern bank, at the point 
 
 * Livii Histor. lib. i. cap, 50, 51, 52. 
 
ROME AND LATIUM. 269 
 
 nearest to Marino, and not far from the outlet above 
 alluded to.* 
 
 The Montes Praenestini, bemg the Ime of steep moun- 
 tains that skirt the Campagna of Rome from Palestrina 
 to Tivoli, are extremely majestic. A platform among 
 their highest ridges is covered by Guadagnolo, a con- 
 siderable village ; while other hamlets are scattered on 
 heights among the lower ravines, often in extremely 
 wild situations ; and villages or trifling ruins among 
 the grassy glens about the roots of the mountains may 
 be plausibly identified with some of Liv3^'s Latin fast- 
 nesses. The modern Palestrina, an ill-built town of 
 about 3500 souls, occupies the lofty site once held by 
 the city of Prseneste, or by its celebrated Temple of 
 Fortune, built by Sylla, of which several arched gal- 
 leries may still be seen. From the town a very steep 
 ascent of about 800 feet lands us on a peak covered by 
 the fragments of the ancient Praenestine citadel, remark- 
 able for its siege by Sylla, and commanding a glorious 
 prospect over the Roman plain, of which both Hannibal 
 and Pyrrhus are said to have availed themselves. Near 
 Tivoli we pass, at the foot of the hills, that wide wilder- 
 ness of confused matted ruins which once composed the 
 celebrated villa of Hadrian. The spot is very pleasing, 
 though its architectural monuments are unintelligible 
 to all but the professed antiquary, who disdains to be 
 thrown out by any obstacle. + Tivoli, the ancient " Tibur 
 supinum," lies on the extremity of the mountainous 
 ridge, and reaches' to the very edge of those precipices 
 at which the river Anio, called by the modern Italians 
 the Teverone, forms its celebrated waterfalls. Repeated 
 inundations have changed again and again the face of 
 this richly beautiful scene ; a severe flood in 1826 in- 
 jured the rocks, and destroyed part of the town ; and 
 two tunnels, since excavated in the Mount Catillus to 
 carry off" the surplus waters, have not sufficed to protect 
 
 " Cell's Topography of Rome, vol. i.; articles " Albano (Lake)," 
 and " Alba Longa." 
 
 t Nibby, Viaggio Antiquano, rora. i. pp. 120, &c. 
 
270 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OP ROME, &c. 
 
 the spot from recent devastations. But the rocks are 
 still wild and bold, the grottos, " the echoing habitation 
 of the Naiad," are still dark and tangled, and the orchards 
 green and irrigated ; the headlong river still pours from 
 its cliffs ; and round, above, and beneath, the sacred woods 
 of Tiburnus wave " their thick tresses." * The position 
 of the circular ruin, commonly called the Temple of the 
 Sibyl, on the height facing the principal cataract, is 
 indescribably grand ; one of the lesser falls discharges 
 itself through the extensive corridors of an ancient 
 villa, usually styled that of Maecenas ; and several other 
 imperial monuments are scattered near the town. 
 
 * Horatii Carm. lib. i. od. 7 : lib. iv. od. 2. 
 
THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF ETRURIA, 8cc. 271 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 I Tlie Ancient Topography ofEtruria, the Central Apennines, 
 and Upper Italy, 
 
 Etrcxria: The Plain— Its ruined Cities and Tombs— Recent 
 Excavations — The inland Region — Veii — Soracte — The Thrasi- 
 mene Lake — Cortona — The River-springs — Faesulse — The Val 
 d' Amo — The Sabellian Apennines : Sahines — Reate — 
 Primeval Ruins— Scenes near Rome — The Valley of the Anio 
 — Marsians — The Lake Fucinus— Its Scenery and Tunnel^ — 
 Pelignians — Sulmo — Vestinians — The Vale of the Aternus — 
 Samnites — TheCaudine Defile — Beneventum — Lake Amsanctus 
 — Umbria and Picenum: Umbria — The Adriatic Coast — 
 The IVIountains— The Valley of the Clitumnus— Spoletium— 
 Interanina and the Cataract — Ocriculum — Picenum — Ancona 
 — Asculum— Passes and Summits of the Great Rock of Italy 
 — Upper Italy — Liguria — Genua — Mount Vesulus — Segu- 
 sium — Cisalpine Gaul — The River Po — The Alpine Lakes- 
 Mantua — Verona — Battlefields — Insubrian Towns — Towns on 
 the ^milian Highway — The Disinterment of Velleia— Towns 
 on the Eastern Coast — The Rubicon — Venetia — Patavium— 
 The Baths — Istria — Aquileia — Pola. 
 
 Many of those natural features wliicli characterise the 
 extensive and diversified territory set down for exami- 
 nation in this chapter, will offer themselves more pro- 
 minently to our view hereafter. But the leading 
 peculiarities of the several districts ought to be well un- 
 derstood, even for the study of our present subject. 
 
 Upper Italy, as we learned at the commencement of 
 tliLs volume, assuming its northern boundary among the 
 Alps, embraces that rich alluvial valley which forms 
 the basin of the Po, with the mountains which on each 
 
272 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF ETRURIA, 
 
 side collect the waters that irrigate it ; end to this wide 
 scene of fertility it adds the narrow shores of Liguria, 
 rocky and romantic in aspect, but yielding few natural 
 productions of any importance. This division of the 
 peninsula holds, in ancient history, a position very un- 
 like the commanding one which we shall find it bearing 
 in times nearer to our own. 
 
 The remainder of the country here to be surveyed, 
 comprehends the whole of Middle Italy except Latium ; 
 but a small portion of Lower Italy likewise is in- 
 cluded in it, for the sake of convenience and historical 
 connexion. In the centre of our region stand the wildest 
 and highest of the Apennines, encu'cled on aU hands by 
 huge niountain ranges, among whose inequalities we 
 discover every variety of landscape, from the barren 
 sublimity of the rocky desert to the cheerfulness of the 
 village with its cabins and its gardens. Amidst the 
 forests and passes of these glens, the warlike tribes 
 that almost destroyed Rome have given place to the 
 peasantry, and sometimes to the robber-hordes, of the 
 Papal Sabina and the Neapolitan Abruzzi. Descend- 
 ing yet lower, on the south, we find ourselves among 
 the woods and defiles of Samnium ; or, turning to the 
 east, we see the heights sinking abruptly down into 
 the Adriatic, but still sheltering among their roots the 
 rushing streams, the waving corn-fields, and the olive- 
 groves, which attest the fertility of the old Picenum. 
 On the same side of the Apennine we enter a less valuable 
 district, composing a part of Umbria ; while a moun- 
 tainous and very picturesque quarter of that province in- 
 troduces us, on the western declivity of the hills, to those 
 richly beautiful Umbrian valleys which are watered 
 by little rivers flowing into the Tiber. Etruria, which 
 thence extends towards the norfh and west, has four- 
 fifths of its surface covered by mountains, bare and 
 d.esolate in some places, thickly wooded in others, and 
 subsiding into chains of hills, on which wide olive- 
 grounds are interspersed with vineyards. The low 
 country, composing the remainder of this province, 
 
THE CENTRAL APExXNINES, AND UPPER ITALY. 273 
 
 subdivides itself into two regions ; the valleys vi^atered 
 Ijy the Tuscan rivers, and the plain which borders the 
 Mediterranean. Several of the vales, and in particular 
 that of the Arao, the largest of all, rank at once among 
 the loveliest and most productive districts in Italy. The 
 Etrurian plain closely resembles that of Latium ; but, 
 although almost equally unhealthy and much less fer- 
 tile, it is far from being so completely deserted, and 
 even contains some considerable towns. 
 
 ETRURIA. 
 
 In reviewing the classical topography of this import- 
 ant province, a few of the ruined cities of the plain will 
 first engage our attention ; after which we may proceed 
 northward from Rome to the upper valley of the Arno, 
 and thence downwards along the course of that river. 
 
 The Etruscan Maremma, or plain on the sea-coast, 
 extends, with very few lofty elevations, from the Tiber 
 to Pisa. The recent investigations by antiquaries in this 
 quarter have produced abundant discoveries, of which 
 some account has been given in the first chapter on art ; 
 and to it, with the authorities there cited, together with 
 Passeri, and other older sources, recourse may be had for 
 details regarding the monuments. A few topographical 
 features of the district may however be here added. 
 
 Proceeding from Rome, on the road to the port of 
 Civita Vecchia, which was the ancient Centumcellffi, 
 we reach, by a journey of about thirty miles, a ruinous 
 village called Cerveteri, where may be seen some re- 
 mains of the city of Agylla or Csere, which, " s. ated on 
 its ancient rock," taught the Romans the religion of 
 Etruria. But the most remarkable of the Etruscan 
 ruins exist near Corneto, eleven miles northward from 
 Civita Vecchia, at a spot called Turchina, which was 
 the site of the old Tarquinii. Besides portions of the 
 rectangular blocks of limestone that composed its walls, 
 and still line some places of its steep bank, a hill on 
 the opposite side of a valley is covered with tombs, of 
 which more than 300 may be counted. Excavations are 
 
 VOL. I. R 
 
274 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF ETRURIA, 
 
 still prosecuted there, and also proceed, though less 
 systematically, at various other places in the papal ter- 
 ritory, especially at the Ponte dell' Abbadia, a few miles 
 north of Coraeto, on the site of the ancient Volci or 
 Volcium. At Chiusi, which was Clusium, Porsena's 
 capital, investigations are also carried on. The ruined 
 walls of some obscure cities in this district are exceed- 
 ingly curious specimens of the primitive architecture. 
 Such are Volsinii, now Bolsena, on the beautiful lake 
 of the same name, — Rusellae, now Rosselle, — and Cossa, 
 on a deserted hill not far from Orbitello. In several 
 places, likewise, have been found considerable remains 
 of fortresses whose ancient names are uncertain. An 
 especial interest attaches to the ruins of two other 
 cities, — Populonium, the only seaport of ancient Etruria, 
 which lay to the north of Piombino, — and Volaterrse, 
 whose walls, sepulchres, and other works of art, con- 
 tained in Volterra, a modern town of some note, ex- 
 ceeded any tlmig that had been discovered in the pro- 
 vince till the excavations of Corneto. 
 
 In the inland region of Etruria, the first spot for which 
 we must look after lea\ing Rome is the site of Veil. 
 So early as the reign of Augustus the shepherd blew 
 his horn among the ruins of this renowned city ;* and, 
 although an imperial town afterwards covered part of 
 the ground, its real situation has been the subject of in- 
 finite dispute. Since 1810, however, inscriptions have 
 fixed it at the ruined and unhealthy hamlet of Isola 
 Farnese, about twelve miles from Rome, between the 
 Cassian and Flaminian Highways. If we approach the 
 place from the Tiber, we turn off, near the sixth mile 
 stone, into the glen of the Valca, which is the renowned 
 stream Cremera. Green hills, with clumps of copse- 
 wood, enclose the valley, and beautiful holms of pas- 
 ture-land, with scattered trees, fill the hollow below. At 
 a point where two rivulets unite to compose the Valca, 
 
 • Propertii lib. iv. Eleg. 10, v. 29 
 
THE CENTRAL APENNINES, AND UPPER ITALY. 275 
 
 the hi]Is give place to steep precipices ; and the table- 
 land, four miles in circuit, wliich stands between their 
 two ravines, was the site not only of the Etruscan Veii, 
 but of the Roman colony and municipium, which suc- 
 cessively occupied part of the ground it had covered. 
 Remarkable fragments of squared stones may be dis- 
 covered among the bushes, with which the crags are 
 matted ; sepulchral tumuli appear on the ridges around, 
 and hewn tombs with niches are visible among the cliffs. 
 At the farthest extremity of the walls, one of the rivu- 
 lets forms at a mill a very beautiful cascade of fifty feet ; 
 and near this nook rises an isolated height, from which 
 the deserted manor-house of Isola looks down ou a little 
 city of excavated sepulchral caves and niches. This 
 was probably the Necropolis, or public burying-ground, 
 and the celebrated citadel was on a rock near the junc- 
 tion of the two brooks.* 
 
 Thirty-five miles from Rome we arrive at Civita Cas- 
 tellana, situated most picturesquely above a precipitous 
 dell, and occupying the site either of Falerii, or of Fes- 
 cennium.t Interesting remains of a town surrounding a 
 deserted church, called Santa Maria de' Faleri, near Ci- 
 vita Castellana, certainly belonged either to the Etruscan 
 Falerii, or to the Roman colony which took its name. 
 A few miles to the south-east of these ruins a long but 
 steep mountain, peaked at its summit, rises isolated from 
 the plain. San Oreste, a little town of 1000 inhabitants, 
 occupies a platform more than half way up, giving its 
 name to the mount ; and a wood with an abnipt rocky 
 path leads to a cluster of churches which stand on its 
 summits, the highest of these being covered by the con- 
 vent of S. Silvester. This mountain is the ancient 
 Soracte ; the wood, once consecrated to Apollo, became 
 the refuge of Silvester, a persecuted Christian bishop, 
 
 " Nibby, Viaggio Antiquario, vol, i. p. 54. Cell's Topography 
 of Rome, vol. ii. art. " Veii ;" a highly interesting analysis of this 
 classical spot, accompanied with a plan. 
 
 -'r Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. i. p. 226 ; and Gell's Topo- 
 graphy, vol. i. articles " Civita Castellana" and " Falerii." 
 
276 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF ETRURIA, 
 
 and the hermitage of Carloman, the devout son of a 
 Christian king. On the east of Civita Castellana, 
 among the hills near Ronciglione, we find the Ciminian 
 Lake, but there are few traces of the Ciminian forest, 
 whose impassable defiles so long checked the Roman 
 conquests. After a further journey inland we again 
 meet the Tiber, now a clear and pebbly highland stream, 
 beside which, on a magnificent wooded mountain, in 
 one of the noblest positions of any town in Europe, 
 stands Perugia, more celebrated for its appearance in 
 the annals of modern art than its Etruscan predecessor 
 Pei-usia for its spirited resistance to the Romans and the 
 Goths. 
 
 Proceeding northward from this interesting city, we 
 soon begin to ascend among woods and defiles, and, reach- 
 ing the brow of a lofty hill, look down through the 
 trees on the celebrated and beautiful Lake Thrasimenus. 
 On the west of it, the eminences are inconsiderable and 
 gentle ; on the east, two abrupt heights, one at each 
 extremity of the basin, shut in, between them and the 
 water, the plain in which the Roman army, like a 
 herd of wild beasts, was baited by Hannibal. Vineyards 
 cover the flat ; the village of Passignano is presumed to 
 indicate the hottest scene of the battle ; and the streamlet 
 Sanguinetto reminds us of the carnage. Beyond the 
 boundaries of the lake, Cortona, seated on a lofty and 
 very steep hill, retains some singularly splendid remains 
 of the fortifications which encompassed the ancient city 
 of the same name, whose origin is lost among the mists 
 of fable. The Clusine Marshes, now converted into the 
 richly cultivated Val di Chiana, lead to Arezzo, the old 
 Arretium, near which we enter the upper valley of the 
 Arnus or Arno. Winding between rising banks, which 
 are covered with vineyards and olive groves, and are 
 crowned on the right by the grand mountain of the 
 poetic Vallombrosa, the waters of the Tuscan river flow 
 to wash the walls of Florence. 
 
 This beautiful city boasts, under its Roman name 
 Florentia, of having been founded either by Julius 
 
I 
 
 THE CENTRAL APENNINES, AND UPPER ITALY. 277 
 
 Caesar or Sylla ; but its antiquity is eclipsed by the 
 huge Etruscan ramparts of the neighbouring Faesulge. 
 The steepest, but most lovely of pleasure-paths, conducts 
 through viny woods and white villas to the elevated 
 spot which these ruins occupy, on the delightful " top 
 of Fiesole." The square of the little village is known 
 to cover an ancient forum ; and, from the corridors 
 of a convent, once the citadel, the eye wanders over 
 one of the most enchanting landscapes that ever minis- 
 tered to the heart and imagination of a poet. In the 
 lower Val d' Amo, the richest scenes of Tuscan cultiva- 
 tion, interspersed with hamlets and little towns perched 
 on eminences, accompany us to the plain where Pisae, 
 for which Virgil claims a Grecian origin, has made 
 room for the silent streets and ecclesiastical ruins of the 
 modem Pisa. Luca, the scene of a conference between 
 the members of the first triumvirate, retains its name 
 nearly unchanged in the modern Lucca. The bus}" port, 
 whose Italian title of Livoi-no the English have cor- 
 rupted into the barbarous Leghorn, seems to be indebted 
 to a mistake for the claims to classical antiquity that 
 have been advanced in its favour. 
 
 THE DISTRICTS OF THE SABINES, MARSIANS, PE- 
 LIGNIANS, VESTINIANS, AND SAMNITE.-. 
 
 The territory of those Sabellian tribes, which are 
 here classed together, includes the central heights and 
 valleys of the Apennines, with a portion of the plains 
 that lie along their southern roots. The greater part of 
 the robber-country of the Abruzzi is contained in its 
 northern quarter. Its mountain-scenery is at once rich 
 and wild beyond all other regions in Italy, and its anti- 
 quities illustrate well the primitive history of the Italian 
 nations. 
 
 The Sabines. 
 
 At the northern extremity of Sabina is found, far up 
 among the recesses of the hills, the town of Norcia, in 
 ancient times called Nursia, and noted as the seat of 
 
278 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF ETRURTA, 
 
 the imperial Flavian family. On the river Velinus, in 
 the beautiful plain of Rieti, are recognised those " rosy 
 fields" of Reate, on which the Latin poets bestowed 
 the Grecian name of Tempe. Their neighbourhood 
 abounds, beyond almost any other district, in ruins of 
 fastnesses belonging to the earliest ages of the country. 
 In the valley of one little river alone (the Salto), ex- 
 tending from this quarter towards Alba Fucentia, there 
 have been found polygonal walls in at least twelve 
 different spots.* Lista was the chief place of the Abori- 
 gines, and Palatium is said to have given its name to the 
 Palatine Hill of Rome. The Pelasgic ramparts of both 
 are visible in the same neighbourhood. The deep lake 
 of Cutiliae, anciently termed the central point of Italy, 
 and now called Pozzo Ratignano, still spreads out its 
 blue, cold, acidulated waters, in a green plain beneath a 
 village, nine miles eastward from Rieti ; loose masses of 
 reeds represent its celebrated floating islands ; and a 
 Roman terrace, and vestiges of baths, remind us of the 
 sick emperor Vespasian, who retired thither to die.i 
 Probably the pasturages of Varro's Gurgures Montes 
 may be found somewhere among the heights surround- 
 ing the grand peak of the Leonessa, wliich is a promi- 
 nent object even when viewed from Rome. 
 
 Proceeding southwards, and approaching the Tiber, 
 we find, at a hamlet called Correse, the Sabine Cures, 
 which gave birth to Numa Pompilius. Eleven miles 
 from the capital, on the Via Salaria, near the left bank of 
 the Tiber, we have to seek the fatal rivulet Allia ; but 
 it is still doubtful which of the insignificant streamlets 
 or ditches that cross the highway in this quarter has 
 the just right to the " ill-omened name." Nomentum, 
 now the village of La Mentana, pleasingly secluded 
 among woodlands, and adorned by a romantic baronial 
 
 " For details of the investigations lately carried on among those 
 hills, chiefly by Mr Dodwell and Sir William Gell, consult Gell's 
 Topography of Rome. 
 
 -f Senec. Natur. Quaest. lib. iii. cap. 23 ; Plinii Hist. Natur. 
 lib. ii. cap. 95, and lib. iii. cap. 12; Suetonius in Vespasiano, 
 cap. 24. 
 
THE CENTRAL APENNINES, AND UPPER ITALY. 279 
 
 castle, retains considerable sepulchral and other ruins ; 
 as does Fidenae, at the mount of Castel Giubileo, on the 
 main road, nearer the city. The site of Crustumerium is 
 doubtful. 
 
 At the conflux of the Anio with the Tiber, we reach 
 the extreme point of the Sabine territory, and, skirting 
 the sandy hillocks of the famous Mons Sacer, turn east- 
 ward towards the mountains. Not far from the edge of 
 the plain, and near the ancient quarries, we enter a de- 
 solate shrubby flat containing three little sulphureous 
 lakes (the Acque Albule), which, with their tiny float- 
 ing islets, and their strong mephitic odour, have long 
 laid claim, perhaps erroneously, to the honour of re- 
 presenting Virgil's Albunea and oracle of Faunus. The 
 Sabine comer of the Roman plain is here bounded by- 
 three pretty hills, which, in ancient times, were the 
 Montes Comiculani ; and the S. Angelo, the most north- 
 erly of the three, is the probable site of Comiculum, the 
 birthplace of Scrvius Tullius. Behind these eminences 
 stands the Monte Gennaro. Its steep ravines are finely 
 diversified with woods and pastures ; and Horace's 
 Lucretilis is either this mountain itself, or the range of 
 which it is a part. 
 
 The obscure Sabine fortresses, which have left so 
 many fragments among the glens about Tivoli, must be 
 abandoned to the antiquaries ; * and we thence pro- 
 ceed up the deep and picturesque valley of the Anio till, 
 passing Vicovaro, the ancient Varise, we reach a point 
 where the river receives the stream Licenza. This rivulet 
 is Horace's chilly brook Digentia ; the short vale which 
 it waters presents some of the loveliest scenery about 
 Rome ; the precipitous height of Rocca Giovine may be 
 declared the site of the mouldering temple of Vacuna ; 
 Bardella is perhaps Mandela ; and in a pleasant woodland 
 spot, beneath the hill and hamlet of Licenza, the slight 
 remains of a Roman villa are pointed out as belonging 
 to Horace's Sabine dwelling. Two beautifully situated 
 
 • Consult Nibby's Viaggio Antiquario, vol. i. 
 
280 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF ETRURIA, 
 
 springs, one of them a considerable way up a mountain- 
 dell, discharge their waters into the Licenza near the 
 village ; but it is an undetermined point whether either 
 is the poet's glassy fountain of Bandusia. 
 
 A short way above the influx of the Licenza into the 
 Anio, we are diverted from our classical researches by 
 reaching the Benedictine monastery of San Cosimato, 
 boldly seated among cypresses *n the edge of a magnifi- 
 cent cliff, which overlooks a dark and fearful gorge of 
 the river, crossed by a Roman bridge. Near the source 
 of the stream, Subiaco, the ancient Sublaqueum, exhibits 
 equally attractive scenery and equally sacred monastic 
 retreats. 
 
 The Marsians, Pelignians, and Vestinians. 
 
 From the fountains of the Anio, at Treba, the hills 
 may bo crossed to the sources of the river Garigliano, 
 or Lu'is, where we find ourselves again on poetic ground 
 in the region of the Marsians, Virgil's enchanters and 
 serpent-charmers. 
 
 A little to the south-east of these springs lies the 
 mountain-lake Fucinus, which derives its modern name 
 from Celano, a considerable town on its banks. This 
 fine and extensive sheet of water is in shape elliptical ; 
 a narrow plain wearing the aspect of one continued 
 orchard interspersed with villages, skirts most quarters 
 of it ; and behind these soar on two of its sides some of 
 the loftiest of the Apennines, including the conical 
 Mount Velino, and the round Majella, crowned with 
 huge shapeless rocks. The scene is in an unusual degree 
 both pleasing and picturesque ; and numerous spots of 
 antiquarian interest surround the lake. One of these, at 
 the foot of Mount Velino, is Alba Fucentia, the St He- 
 lena of ancient Rome, to whose prisons dethroned kings 
 were sent to die. A little hamlet covers a portion of its 
 rocky hills, and among these are still to be seen consid- 
 erable remains of its very massive polygonal walls, with 
 many brick fragments of its Roman buildings, a few 
 ruined tombs, and in the church some good columns of a 
 
TUE CENTRAL APENNINES, AND UPPER ITALY. 281 
 
 temple. Virgil's grove of Angitia seems to have given 
 name to Luco, not far from Alba. But the most singular 
 monument of the region, — indeed, one of the most curious 
 in Italy, — is the great subterranean Canal of Claudius, 
 which extends from the bank of the lake to the valley of 
 the Liris. It has recently been cleared out and repaired 
 by the Neapolitan government, to fit it for its original 
 purpose of protecting the borders of the lake from those 
 sudden inundations, to which the want of any visible 
 outlet for the waters has always exposed them.* The 
 length of this tunnel is 6917 English yards, or nearly 4 
 miles ; its breadth in most places is 7 feet 4 inches ; its 
 height almost throughout is 13 feet 10 inches ; and the 
 longest of the shafts sunk perpendicularly to the tunnel 
 from the surface of the earth has a depth of 432 feet.t 
 
 The pastoral and beautifully undulating valley of the 
 Liris, in which stand several obscure ruins, belongs to 
 the Marsian district as far down as Sora. Eastward 
 from the lake were the lands of the Peligni, in which, 
 beyond the Majella, the Neapolitan town of Sulmone, 
 lying among the roots of the mountain, represents Sul- 
 mo, the birthplace of Ovid. Corfinium is to be found near 
 Popoli, on the river Pescara, the Roman Aternus. The 
 valley of this river, which constituted the territory of 
 the Vestini, has its left bank formed by the heights of 
 the Monte Corno or Gran Sasso, near the foot of which 
 on the west, not far from the interesting modern town 
 of Aquila, a rurally situated village, called San Vittorino, 
 contains a theatre and other ruins belonging to Amiter- 
 num, one of the most ancient Sabine towns. Between 
 
 • The ancients believed that this lake supplied by a subterra- 
 neous passage the springs of the Anio, or at least those of the Aqua 
 Marcia, There are two places near the border of the lake at which 
 a part of its waters does seem to disappear. A tradition mentioned 
 by Pliny (Hist. Nat. lib. iii. cap. 12.), of a town named Archippe, 
 swallowed up by the lake, was repeated to the writer by some in- 
 habitants of Avezzano, who call the town Marsiglia, and assert 
 that its buildings may still be seen under water. They attribute 
 its disappearance to magic. 
 
 ■f Official Report in the Biblioteca Italiana of Milan, voL xlvii. 
 1827, p. 391. 
 
282 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF ETRURIA, 
 
 the fruitful valley of the Aternus and the Lake of Celano 
 extends one of the bleakest tracts of the Apennines, a 
 bare moorland region, broken up at several points by 
 savagely wild passes. 
 
 The Samnites. 
 
 Samnium is chiefly mountainous, and partially woody. 
 The situation of the Caudine Defile, where the brave 
 Samnites inflicted so disgraceful a defeat on the Romans, 
 is strongly controverted. The opinion now prevalent, 
 fixes this historical event in the valley of Arpaia, be- 
 tween Arienzo and Benevento ; though other antiquaries 
 follow the older decision, which places it farther west, 
 in a ravine near Sant' Agata de' Goti.* At Benevento, 
 which, under its name of Beneventum, attained in the 
 dark ages to the rank of a royal residence, are seen a fine 
 honorary arch of Trajan, a ruined theatre, an obelisk, 
 and fragments of a bridge. 
 
 To the east of that city, about three miles from the 
 village of Frigento, in a bare volcanic country, are Vir- 
 gil's tremendous Valley and Lake of Amsanctus, of 
 whose poetical horrors there still remain its sulphureous 
 odour and the jets of its waters. t 
 
 UMBRIA AND PICENUM. 
 
 Umhria, 
 
 The quarter of this province wliich lies eastward of 
 the Apennine, has little that ought to detain us. At 
 Rimini, the Roman Ariminum, are an imperial bridge, 
 a triumphal arch, and portions of an ampliitheatre. To 
 the south of Pesaro, occupying the place of the ancient 
 Pisaurum, the Metauro falls into the sea ; and the 
 battle-field, on which the Romans defeated Asdrubal, 
 may be sought near Urbino, known of old as Urbinum 
 
 • Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. ii. p. 238. Cluverii Italia An- 
 tiqua, p. 1196. Craven's Tour, Appendix. 
 
 ■\ Daubeny on Volcanoes. Swinburne's Travels in the Two 
 Sicilies, sect. 15. 
 
THE CENTRAL APENNINES, AND UPPER ITALY. 283 
 
 Hortense. The pass of Furlo, formed with great labour 
 by the Romans, who called it Petra Pertusa, leads 
 through a striking defile of the Apennine ; and Gubbio, 
 representing the obscure town of Iguvium, is cele- 
 brated for possessing the inscribed Eugubian tablets of 
 bronze. 
 
 On the western side of the mountains, the beauty of 
 the scenery compensates for the want of remarkable his- 
 torical monuments, Civita di Castello, not far from the 
 source of the Tiber, is Pliny's Tifemum Tiberinum ; 
 and near it must be the site of his secluded Tuscian villa, 
 which he has so delightfully described."- Farther down 
 the river, on an abrupt hill, the singularly interesting 
 monastic town of Assisi, named in the imperial times 
 Assisium, contains a Roman temple-portico ; and be- 
 neath the neighbouring Spello lies, near the site of the 
 old Hispellum, an amphitheatre close to the highway. 
 Foligno, the ancient Fulginia, still occupies its position 
 on a beautiful level, and is recovering from the effects 
 of a severe earthquake which, on the 13th of January 
 1832, shook the whole of this district. 
 
 Southward from Foligno, Virgil's river Clitumnus 
 bursts from its springs at the foot of a rocky hill, whose 
 cypresses, commemorated by Pliny, have given place to 
 ragged coppice. The chill waters still form a full and 
 wide stream the moment they issue from the clifF ; and 
 the cream-coloured cattle browse on the rich meadows 
 that form the banks immediately beyond ; but the 
 decorated temple, which, from a beautiful rock, now 
 overlooks the little valley, cannot be that primeval 
 shrine whose religious simplicity Pliny describes.t Be- 
 vagna is Mevania, the birthplace of Propertius ; and 
 Spoleto, celebrated, under its name of Spoletium, for 
 its repulse of Hannibal, stands on a picturesque hill, 
 separated by a dell from the higher Apennines, and 
 
 * Plinii Epistolarum, lib. v. ep. 6. 
 
 -f- Plinii, lib. viii. epist. 8. Of doubters, see Forsyth, " Jour- 
 ney to Ancona;" of believers, Hobhouse's " Illustrations of Chikle 
 Harold," p. 35. 
 
284 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF ETRURIA, 
 
 exhibits an honorary arch of Drusus, the portico of a 
 temple, and a Roman gate. 
 
 A beautifully wooded ascent of the Apennines carries us 
 across into the valley of the Nar or Nera, on which, be- 
 low the conflux of that river with the classical Veli- 
 nus, stands Terni, on the site of the ancient Interamna, 
 the birthplace of Tacitus the historian. A romantic 
 walk of four miles from the town up the valley of the 
 Nera, among the evergreen ilexes of the open field or 
 the orange-groves of a modern villa, leads to the tre- 
 mendous Fall of the Velino, the finest cataract in Europe, 
 whose " hell of waters," and the colossal grandeur of its 
 tangled cliffs, Childe Harold has deprived all succeeding 
 travellers of the right of describing. 
 
 In Tuder, now Todi, are remains of walls and of a 
 fine Doric temple. The primitive ramparts of Amelia 
 (Ameria), farther down the Tiber, are excellent speci- 
 mens of the fitted polygonal construction. On a steep 
 rock overhanging the Nera stands Narni, the ancient 
 Narnia ; and at the entrance of the romantic ravine be- 
 neath, between whose wooded rocks the river winds 
 slowly along,* are seen the marble niins, still very 
 striking, of a bridge built by Augustus. Numerous but 
 shapeless fragments, on a plain close to the Tiber, be- 
 neath the modern Otricoli, indicate the site of Ocriculum, 
 and have furnished, especially during the pontificate of 
 Pius VI., many inscriptions and admirable monuments 
 of sculpture. t 
 
 Picenum, 
 
 Ancona retains its Grecian name, and its strong posi- 
 tion on a bluflF headland, up whose side the city rises to 
 the platform occupied by its singular cathedral. Its 
 Roman Mole, built by Trajan, forms a part of the modem 
 harbour, and is suiTQounted by a slender and elegant 
 
 * Claudianus, De Sexto Consulatu Honorii, v. 615-519. 
 
 •\- For some interesting details on the topographical antiquities of 
 Umbria, stated to have been derived from inspection of the ground, 
 see the Quarterly Journal of Education, No. XIV. April 1834. 
 
THE CENTRAL APENNINES, AND UPPER ITALY. 285 
 
 honorary Arch. Among the numerous towns which 
 skirt the shore of the March of Ancona, it is sufficient 
 to notice Fermo, the old Firmum Picenum. The river 
 Tronto is the ancient Truentus ; and on a wide rocky 
 platform, inclosed between it and the Castiglione at their 
 conflux, stands the dismal and decaying town of As- 
 coli, representing Asculum Picenum. The situation is 
 infinitely beautiful, among rocks, and woods, and wa- 
 ters ; and along the upper valley of the Tronto, the 
 horizon is confined by lofty serrated peaks of the Apen- 
 nines, running backwards towards the Mountain of the 
 Sibyl, which perliaps combines the Mounts Severus and 
 Tetricus of Virgil. Shapeless brick walls and broken 
 arches, on an eminence within the city, seem to belong 
 to the Roman times. On the southern bank of the 
 Tronto commences the luxuriant little plain in which, 
 on the river Tordino, stands Teramo of the Abruzzo, the 
 ancient Interamna Praetutiana. 
 
 Westward and southward from Teramo, the Apen- 
 nines swell ujjwards in huge masses, encircling the feet 
 of their monarch, the Gran Sasso d' Italia. Nearly the 
 whole of this magnificent mountain is included within 
 the Picentine frontier. Its southern side ascends in tre- 
 mendous precipices from the green valley of the Atemus ; 
 while on the west and north its snowy top sinks more 
 gradually down upon the wilderness of woody heights, 
 deep rocky dells, and dashing torrents, Avhich skirts the 
 plain of Teramo. This solitary and almost inaccessible 
 tract, here richly grand, and there savagely desolate, 
 is the very wildest and most picturesque district of the 
 Neapolitan Abruzzi, and has more of the Alpine char- 
 acter than any other of the Apennine landscapes.* 
 
 • The wild passes which lead over the shoulder of the Gran 
 Sasso, from Aquila to Teramo, were crossed by the writer in 
 1834 ; and a short account of the excursion was published in Black- 
 wood's Magazine for November 1835. 
 
286 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF ETRURIA, 
 
 UPPER ITALY ; COMPREHENDING LIGURIA, CIS- 
 ALPINE GAUL, VENETIA, AND ISTRIA. 
 
 Liguria. 
 
 Interesting as this province is, for its majestic land- 
 scapes and its vicissitudes in the middle ages, no portion 
 of it is remarkable in the ancient history of Italy. 
 
 Genoa has nearly retained its Roman name of Genua, 
 and borrowed from the town which bore that title its 
 active commercial industry. NorthAvard from the coast, 
 the chain of the maritime Alps leads us up towards the 
 Monte Viso (Mons Vesulus), among whose piny glades 
 is the source of the classic Padus or Eridanus, equally 
 celebrated by its modern name, the Po. This moun- 
 tain, however, belongs to the next range of the Alpf, 
 whose southern valleys, following some of the classical 
 geographers, we may consider as included in Liguria. 
 This group derived its title of Cottian from a chief 
 of the country, whose town of Segusium, now Susa, 
 in the beautiful pass leading down from the Mont 
 Cenis into Piedmont, is stUl ornamented by a triumphal 
 arch, erected by him m token of his submission to Au- 
 gustus. Turin has taken its modern name from its old 
 but obscure title of Augusta Taurinorum ; and a few 
 leagues north-east from it, near Ven-ua, were disco- 
 vered, in 1745, ruins and many antiques, belonging to 
 the equally obscure town of Industria. 
 
 Cisalpine Gaul. 
 
 The delightful valleys which descend from the Alps 
 in the whole length of their Italian chain, present few 
 spots of historical importance ; but the fertile plain, 
 formed by the Po and its tributaries, was the scene of 
 many remarkable events. 
 
 On the southern side of the Alpine crescent, the hol- 
 lows are watered by fine rivers forming numerous lakes, 
 which are better known to modern travellers than they 
 were to the soldiers and politicians of heathen Rome. 
 
THE CENTRAL APENNINES AND UPPER ITALY. 287 
 
 The Lacus Verbanus is merely mentioned by one or 
 two ancient geographers. Under its modern name of tlie 
 Lago Maggiore, it is world-renowned for the beauty 
 of its shores, varying from the softest loveliness of rural 
 landscape to the stupendous precipices of the Alps ; and 
 the islands which gem its breast have become the seat 
 of Italian villas. That on the Isola Bella, with its ter- 
 raced pyramid of gardens adorned with statues, offends, 
 indeed, the taste of the fastidious connoisseur, but de- 
 lights the fancy of those who are willing to give play 
 to poetical and romantic associations. The Lake of 
 Lugano, which the topographers call the Lacus Ceresius, 
 was never named till the middle ages. The magnificent 
 Lake of Como, however, known to the Romans as the 
 Lacus Larius, allures both by the ornate grandeur of 
 its mountain shores, and by its classic recollections of 
 Virgil and the younger Pliny. Modern country-houses, 
 convents, and hamlets, scattered among its precipitous 
 woods, have covered the sites of Pliny's villas ; and even 
 his two favourite seats, his "Comcedia" and " Tragcedia," 
 have entirely disappeared. At the pomt of Torno, 
 however, is an intermitting fountain, which answers 
 fairly to the description of such a phenomenon given 
 in one of his letters ; but Pliny's spring may or may not 
 have belonged to his own villas, and therefore it cannot 
 fix the situation of either.* Comum, his native town, 
 is the modern Como, situated on the western branch 
 of the lake, at its southern extremity. 
 
 Continuing to skirt the lower valleys of the Alps we 
 reach Bergamo (Bergamum), whose citadel, placed on 
 one of the extreme eminences of the mountains, over- 
 looks the beautiful plain of Lombardy ; and a farther 
 journey through a closely cultivated district leads to 
 Brescia, formerly Brixia. Antiquities have been found in 
 both towns ; but the discoveries made at the latter since 
 1820 have been the most remarkable, embracing, besides 
 numerous statues and inscriptions, a marble temple of 
 
 • Plinii, lib. ix. ep. 7 ; lib. iv. ep. 30. 
 
288 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF ETRURIA, 
 
 excellent construction. Eastward from Brescia appears 
 the noble Lake of Garda, the Benacus of the Georgics, 
 enclosed by steep mountains, except at its southern end. 
 The scenery on the lower part of this inland sea pre- 
 sents much of that fine union of horizontal lines with 
 sloping elevations, which distinguishes Italian land- 
 scape ; and the olive plantations and orange gardens of 
 the Bay of Salo are singularly beautiful. From its 
 southern shore, Catullus' beloved promontory of Sir- 
 mio* shoots out a low and reedy slip of land, ending in 
 a steep rock, which is covered by groves of olives and 
 wild shrubs twining among the broken arches of a 
 Roman villa. The Benacus discharges itself into the 
 slow Mincio, the Mincius of Virgil, whose waters, after 
 flowing far between cultivated hills gradually sinking, 
 spread into the marshy lake on which stands the classi- 
 cal Mantua. Emerging from the gloomy streets of this 
 decaying to%vn, we may wander among the ditches and 
 round the outworks of its impregnable fortifications, till, 
 among the pollarded trees of the swampy plains, about 
 three miles from the walls, we reach the little hamlet 
 of Pietola, slightly raised above the morass. This place 
 offers nothing remarkable in its aspect, but every thing 
 in its recollections ; since a tradition, which, if not ab- 
 solutely certain, is at least older than Dante, identifies 
 it with the Roman village of Andes, the birthplace of 
 the poet of the ^Eneid. 
 
 The celebrated city of Verona is very beautifully and 
 strongly situated on the lower ridges of those hills which 
 form the bank of the Adige, the ancient Athesis. Be- 
 sides the modern interest which attaches to it, its clas- 
 sical antiquities are numerous. It contains a portion 
 of a Roman bridge, a well-built gateway in one of its 
 streets near the citadel, and remains of other arched 
 gates. Its most remarkable ruin, however, is the famous 
 Amphitheatre ; an edifice which is supposed to have been 
 erected at least as early as the reign of Trajan. In the 
 
 * Catull. Carmen xsxi. 
 
THE CENTRAL APENNINES, AND UPPER ITALV. 289 
 
 middle ages, its gladiatorial shows had given place 
 to judicial duels ; and in place of these, the imperial 
 walls now echo the declamation of strolling players, 
 who pace a wooden stage occupying a portion of the 
 arena. TJie seventy-four arches of its external wall have, 
 with the exception of four, entu-ely disappeared : mean 
 shops have been constructed in some parts of its circuit, 
 hut modem stone-seats enable the interior to present in 
 some degree its ancient aspect. The position of the edi- 
 fice, in a large open square, is commanding, and its mass 
 is exceedingly imposing.* 
 
 Returning to the great plain of the Po, we may search 
 for three celebrated battle-fields. The spot where 
 Marius defeated the Cimbri has not been identified. t 
 There is more certainty as to the sites of Hannibal's 
 two victories, — the one on the Ticinus, and the other 
 on the Trebia. The former took place on the right 
 bank of the first river, to the south of Novara, and the 
 latter on the left bank of the other, a few miles above 
 Piacenza.;]: 
 
 Milan stands on the site of Mediolanum, which was 
 first the cliief seat of the Insubrian tribe of the Gauls, 
 then a flourishing municipal town of the Romans, and 
 afterwards, in the reign of Diocletian and Maximian, the 
 metropolis of the Western Empire. It has been destroyed 
 twice at least, since the commencement of the dark ages, 
 and preserves few vestiges of its ancient grandeur. The 
 very existence of Trajan's palace in the city is apocry- 
 phal ; § and though sixteen Corinthian columns, at the 
 church of San Lorenzo, are elegant, the edifice to which 
 
 ' Dimensions in English feet :— Longitudinal axis, 512; con- 
 jugate axis, 410; circumference, 1469; height remaining, 100; 
 longitudinal axis of arena, 249; conjugate axis, 147. Woods, 
 Letters of an Architect, vol. i. p. 226 ; Maffei Degli Anfiteatri, 
 in Poleni Thesauro Antiquitat. Roman, tom. v. 
 
 •f- Cluverius (Italia Antiqua, lib, i.) hesitatingly places it be- 
 tween Novara and Vercelli : D'Anville, with equal doubt, on the 
 other side of the Ticino, ten miles north-west of Milan. 
 
 J Cramer's Description of Ancient Italy, vol. i. pp. 54, 80. 
 
 § Alciati Historia Mediolanensis, lib. ii. ap. Graeviuaj, The- 
 saur. Antiquit. Ital. tom. ii. part. 1. p. 43. 
 VOL. I. 
 
290 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF ETRURTA, 
 
 they belonged is unkno^vn. The Roman mmucipium 
 of Tieinnm is represented by Pavia. Cremona retains 
 its old poetical name, and that of Placentia is slightly 
 changed in the Italian Piacenza. 
 
 The ^milian Way, on which Piacenza stands, passed 
 through several other ancient cities, whose modern re- 
 nown has eclipsed that of their earlier days : — Parma. 
 Reggio (Regium Lepidi), Modena (Mutina), and Bo- 
 logna, first known under its Etruscan title of Felsina, 
 and next by the Romans called Bononia. 
 
 In 1760, an exceedingly curious discovery was made, 
 close to the base of the Apennines, betvreen Parma and 
 Piacenza. At a village called Macinesso, overshadowed 
 by steep hills, the finding of a few antiques tempted the 
 Duke of Pamia to excavate ; and at a depth of many 
 feet, covered by successive layers of soil and rocks, were 
 disinterred the remains of an extensive town, to which its 
 inscriptions gave the name of Velleia. It had perished 
 by a landslip, supposed to have occurred in the fourth 
 century ; and the number of skeletons that lay among 
 the ruins, showed that the catastrophe, which piled the 
 first strata above the unhappy town, had been sudden 
 and fatal. But the ancient writers are alike silent on 
 the history of Velleia, and on its fate ; its antiquities, 
 also, are mere fragments ; and these causes, joined to 
 the remoteness of the place from the great roads, have 
 been the excuse of travellers for generally neglecting it. 
 
 On the coast of the Adriatic, on the left bank of the 
 Po, stood Adria, which gave its name to the gulf, but 
 sunk into decay on the conquest of the province by 
 the Romans. Spina, situated at the most southerly 
 mouth of the great river, encountered a similar fate. In 
 the imperial times, the only flourishing seaport of Gaul 
 within the Po (Cispadana), was Ravenna, built on piles 
 amidst morasses. The interest, however, which attaches 
 to this renowned city, does not arise till after the classi- 
 cal period. Proceeding southward from it, we reach the 
 frontier between Gallia Cisalpina and Umbria, which 
 in the republican era, though not exactly in the later 
 
TUE CENTRAL APENNINES, AND UPPER ITALY. 291 
 
 ages of the empire, was formed by the celebrated river 
 Rubicon. For a mile from the sea, a little stream called 
 Fiumicino is certainly the Rubicon ; and of the several 
 brooks which unite higher up to form this rivulet, the 
 prevalent opinion designates the Urgone (otherwise Ri- 
 gone) as the leading one. 
 
 Venetia. 
 
 Vicenza, under its Roman name of Vicentia, Avas an 
 unimportant municipality ; but the ancient Patavium, 
 now Padua, renowned as the first town of the district, is 
 still more so for having given birth to Livy, and to the 
 family of the Pajti, — Csecinna Paetus, whose wife Arria 
 has immortalized his fate by her heroic affection ; and 
 Thrasea Petus, the victim of Nero, whose name was 
 another word for virtue, while his spouse, the younger 
 Arria, was worthy of her noble mother. " 
 
 Patavium, which, in the earliest imperial ages, was 
 the greatest and most prosperous city of Upper Italy, 
 noted for its commerce and woollen manufacture, and 
 numbering, besides 500 Roman knights, 20,000 other 
 fighting men, was three times destroyed before and dur- 
 ing the dark ages, — by Attila, Totila, and Agilulf the 
 Lombard. t Its situation between two small rivers, the 
 Brenta or Meduacus Major, and Bacchiglione or Me- 
 duacus Minor, is no way striking, and its academical 
 arcades and mosque-like churches present no traces of the 
 classical times. Inscriptions however have been found 
 without number, several of which relate to the family of 
 the Livii ; and one sarcophagus of that house, found in 
 1413, was boldly proclaimed to be the tomb of the his- 
 torian, and transferred in procession to the town-hall, 
 where it yet stands. Another sarcophagus, raised on 
 four columns before the church of San Lorenzo, is an 
 imposing object ; though it will scarcely receive credit 
 for being what its inscription (set up in 1298) declares 
 
 * Plinii, lib. iii. epist. 16. Taciti Annal. lib. xvi. cap. 21,34. 
 -f- Scardeonius de Antiquitate Urbis Patavii ; ap. Graevium, 
 Antiq. Ital. torn. vi. part. 3, p. 27. 
 
292 THE ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF ETRURIA, &c. 
 
 it to be, — the grave of the Trojan Antenor, fabled to 
 have been the founder of the city. 
 
 Six miles from Padua are the celebrated oracular and 
 medicinal springs, which the- Romans called the Aquae 
 Patavinse. The largest of these, the Pons Aponus, has 
 given to the spot its modem name of Abano ; and near it 
 are remains of the ancient Baths, whose repairs can be 
 traced as low as the time of Theodoric. The hot foun- 
 tains are still used for their former purpose, the bath 
 being generally taken in the form of mud ; and another 
 spring, dedicated to Saint Helen, beautifully situated at 
 the neighbouring village of Battaglia, at the foot of a 
 lovely hill adorned by a romantic villa, is a still more 
 fashionable resort. Este, in the immediate neighbour- 
 hood, gives its title to a princely house, celebrated in 
 history from the middle ages till our own days, and 
 occupies the site of the Roman Ateste. 
 
 Istria. 
 
 On the Istrian side of the gulf few places require 
 notice. Aquileia, which possessed an extensive carrying 
 trade till the fall of the empire, and was levelled with 
 the ground by Attila in the year 452, preserves only its 
 name_, with a few sepulchral cippi and inscriptions. The 
 inland town of Civita di Friuli is the ancient Forum 
 Julii, where remains of considerable consequence have 
 been discovered since 1817. Trieste is the Roman Ter- 
 geste, and Capo d' Istria is -^Egida. Pola, on the promon- 
 tory of the same name, possesses splendid monuments 
 of antiquity ; among which are a richly decorated gate, 
 two temples, and a large and tolerably preserved am- 
 phitheatre. 
 
ANCIENT TOPOGRAPnY OF LOWER ITALY, &c. 293 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 The Ancient Topography of Lower Italy and the Italian 
 Islands. 
 
 Campania— Capua— The City and Bay of Naples— The Phle- 
 pfTsean Fields — Virgil's Tomb — Scenery of his Hades — The 
 Phlegraean Isles — The disinterred Cities — Herculaneum — 
 The excavated Parts of Pompeii — Tombs — The Forum — Temples 
 — Theatres and Amphitheatre — Apulia, Lucania, and Brut- 
 TiDM : Description — Apulia — Cannae — Mount Vultur — Brun- 
 dusium — Ruins in Magna Grcecia Proper — The Gulf of Taren- 
 lum — The Scylletic Gulf — Ruins on the Western Coast— Th.e 
 Rock of Scylla — Charybdis — Elea — The Temples at Paestum — 
 The Inland Region — Consentia — The Forest of Sila — Sicily 
 — Aspect — Mountains — Interior — The Hill-fort of Enna — East- 
 ernCoast — Messana — Taorminium — Catana — Syracuse — South- 
 ern Coast — Troglodyte Town — Ruins of Agri^ntum — Selinus 
 — Western Coast — Mount Eryx — Northern Coast — -dilgeste — 
 Panormus — Corsica and Sardinia — Roman Colonies — Sar- 
 dinian Round Towers— The Isle of Ilva — The Imperial Pro- 
 vinces or Italy — Augustus — Constantine — The connexion 
 between the Ancient Provinces and the Modern. 
 
 CAMPANIA. 
 Campania extended eastward from the sea to Mount 
 Tifata, which separated it from Samnium, and south- 
 ward from the Massic Hills, the final boundary of La- 
 tium, to the river Silarus, the modem Sele, which form- 
 ed the frontier of Lucania. Its most famous vineyards 
 were on the Massic heights, and in the Falernian terri- 
 tory, stretching from them to the river Vulturnus, now 
 Volturno ; but its delightful climate and its luxuriant 
 cultivation embraced the whole plain of the modem 
 Terra di Lavoro. In the interior there can still be traced 
 
294 ANCIEXT TOPOGRAPHY OF LOWER ITALY 
 
 a good many cities known in the heathen times. Capua 
 has given its classical name to the Neapolitan Capoa ; 
 but the latter is built on the site of Casilinum, and the 
 ruins of the ancient Capua are found among the fields 
 at some distance, comprehending one of the largest and 
 best preserved of the Roman amphitheatres.* 
 
 The Bay of Naples, of which the Italians say, that it 
 is a piece of heaven fallen down upon earth, is certainly, 
 with its mountains, its gardens, its sea-clifFs, and its 
 countless dwellings, one of the most enchanting spots in 
 the world. It is beautiful in the broad sunshine, when 
 the purity of the atmosphere is reflected on its darkly 
 blue waters ; beautiful when the verdure is tinged by 
 the golden lights of evening and the ocean kindles into 
 twilight purple ; and not less beautiful when its con- 
 tours are half veiled in moonlight, when red torrents 
 of fire gleam on the side of Vesuvius, and when the 
 waves catch phosphoric flashes from the boatman's lifted 
 oar. 
 
 Within the circuit now filled by the immense metro- 
 polis lay the sites of two Grecian towns, the first of 
 which, Palaepolis, sunk into decay on the conquest of 
 Campania by^the Romans, while Neapolis, the other, 
 long contmued remarkable for its foreign manners, its 
 luxury, and literature. So early as the time of Strabo 
 the shores of the bay off'ered, as they do at present, the 
 aspect of one continuous city. The magnificent line of 
 mountains, which forms its southern bank, was not 
 neglected ; the lovely and salubrious little plain of Sur- 
 rentum or Sorrento, the birthplace of Tasso, and now the 
 retreat of English invalids, was celebrated by Statins ; 
 and the majestic island of Capreae, the modem Capri, 
 whose yellow rocks rear their towering masses from the 
 sea beyond the Surrentine promontory, still contains 
 the ruins of those villas that witnessed the crimes of 
 Tiberius. 
 
 * Dimensions in English feet: major axis, 478; minor axis, 
 390; major axis of arena, 218; minor axis, 130. — Mazocchius de 
 Amphitheatru Campano ; ap. Polenum, tom. v, pp. 637, 638. 
 
AND THE ITALIAN ISLANDS. 295 
 
 The favourite resort, however, was that portion of the 
 gnlf which lies to the west of the city, where the volcanic 
 fires, scarcely extinct in the times of the Roman republic, 
 have since repeatedly broken out, and even smoulder 
 sullenly at the present day. This district was called the 
 Phlegraean Fields, and was pointed out as the scene of 
 some of the oldest Grecian fables ; while one of its lakes, 
 the Avernus, either in consequence of its name, or receiv- 
 ing the name for the occasion, was declared to be the 
 theatre of the Homeric Nekuia, that awful vision of the 
 dead which passed before Ulysses at the barriers of the 
 earth. Not content with peremptorily identifying the 
 spot, which the poet carefully left undefined, the Roman 
 men of letters proceeded to trace m its neighbourhood 
 all the features of the realm of shadows, — features which 
 Homer does not describe, since he represents the wan- 
 derer, not as perambulating Hades, but as cowering 
 in the midst of his magic circle, round which the ghosts 
 arise and hover. Virgil, in his great poem, readily adopt- 
 ing the notion which held out the Neapolitan Lake as 
 the entrance to the world of spirits, skilfully blended 
 wuth it the local tradition of the Sibyl of Cumse. His 
 hero performs an actual journey through Hades (a con- 
 ception every way inferior to Homer's shadowy proces- 
 sion of spectres) ; — but that he intended any description 
 of the actual features of the district is a supposition 
 which, in itself unlikely, does, to those vrho have both 
 read his work and examined the ground, seem altogether 
 incredible. We may, however, be content to take hi3 
 verses as our guide in strolling through the vineyards, 
 and skirting the lakes, of this beautiful scene. 
 
 Our road from Naples leads us beneath the Tomb, said 
 to be that of Virgil, picturesquely placed on the brow 
 of the precipice of Posilypo, and close above the 
 entrance of its singular Roman tunnel, which pierces 
 for half-a-mile through the heart of the tufo rock. 
 On the Bay of Baise, now Baia, we first encounter, at 
 Pozzuoli, the ancient town and harbour of Puteoli ; 
 with its mole, temple of Serapis, amphitheatre, and villa 
 
29G ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF LOWER ITALY 
 
 of Cicero. Other temples, mansions, and baths, are scat- 
 tered round the shore, and on the opposite heights stands 
 the finely placed Castle of Baia. Beyond Pozzuoli, a 
 causeway divides from the sea a shallow pool, which 
 is all that is left of the Lucrine Lake, identified in the 
 belief of the Romans with one or another of the lakes 
 or rivers of Hades. Close behind it lies the Avernus, 
 now a circular shee't of water, surrounded by high banks, 
 covered with thickets and smiling vineyards. Its my- 
 thologic gloom may have partially disappeared even at 
 the formation of Agrippa's Julian Harbour ; but the 
 features of the spot have been completely changed by 
 the celebrated eruption of 1588, which threw up the 
 iiill called the Monte Nuovo, and nearly filled the basin 
 of the Lucrinus. In the steep bank of the Avernus, there 
 still exists a long excavated passage, which the people 
 call the Sibyl's Grotto. 
 
 We shall find the real grotto,however, by taking a short 
 vv'alk Avestward, which, after passing on the plain consid- 
 erable remains of the remarkable city of Cumse, will lead 
 to a tall rock standing detached near the sea, on which 
 were placed the Citadel of that toA\Ti and its Temple of 
 Apollo. The subterranean galleries used, in the oracular 
 responses, still perforate its western side. To the north 
 of the Rock of Cumse stretches a flat and sandy tract, 
 spotted with lakes or marshes, beside one of which (that 
 of Patria) a tower on the beach marks the supposed 
 tomb of Scipio Africanus. To the south lies a royal 
 chase skirting the shore, and separating the Mediterra- 
 nean from the Lake of Fusaro, which, celebrated in 
 these days for its oyster-fishery, was equally so in the 
 time of Strabo, for representing the Acherusian Marsh 
 of the Grecian legends. Its " silent groves " are now 
 vineyards ; and a smaller lake, called the Acqua Morta, 
 communicating with the Fusaro and the sea by sluiced 
 canals, and backed by a range of rocks and a rude dice- 
 box tower, must be the Cocytus. From this point the 
 journey of ^neas carries him to the Elysian Fields, 
 passing w^hat may be termed the heathen purgatory and 
 
AND THE ITALIAN ISLANDS. 297 
 
 place of punishment. The ground at present exhibits a 
 monotonous scene of vineyards : the plain in which the 
 two lakes lie, continues for a sliort distance ; it then 
 contracts into a valley between sloping hills, in whose 
 narrowest gorge is a straggling hamlet, with a double 
 row of Roman tombs ; and it finally opens out again into 
 a wide plain, which, on our system of identification, 
 must be that of Lethe. This is the most beautiful spot 
 of the district. The bottom of the hollow is quite flat ; 
 and an extensive shallow lake, the Mare Morto or Lethe, 
 filling a large part of it, communicates with the sea to 
 the south. On the west a smooth beach succeeds to the 
 steep hill round whose shoulder the road has led us ; 
 and this strand, or some place in the neighbourhood, 
 must have been, in Virgil's view, the anchorage of the 
 Trojan fleet. At the southern extremity of the beach 
 rises an " aerial mountain," which still nearly retains 
 its ancient name of Misenus, together with the ruins of 
 the town of the same name (Misenum) at its foot, and its 
 rugged shape, di2zy paths, and perforated gallery now 
 called the Dragonara. On the east of the Mare Morto, a 
 lower hill rises from the water's edge ; houses, thickets, 
 a church, and vineyards, are clustered on its side ; and 
 along its western base runs a line of antique tombs, 
 pointing it out as a Roman burying-gTound, the Pere-la- 
 Chaise of the Augustan age. This sepulchral spot pre- 
 serves the name of the Elysian Fields ; and if Virgil 
 must be supposed to have borrowed from the reality any 
 traits of his poetical landscape, the retired wood and 
 winding valley of Lethe may have been figured by the 
 hollow now covered with vineyards ; while space for 
 the athletic games, for the crowds which listened to the 
 primeval bards, and for the laurel thickets which har- 
 boured the pious and the patriotic, would be found on the 
 lone summit of the rising ground of Bauli, now Bacoli, 
 stretching towards the frowming rocks that dip into the 
 Bay of Baia. This high ground contains several ruins of 
 ancient villas, particularly two remarkable subterraneous 
 buildings, probably reservoirs ; the Cento Camerelle, a 
 
298 ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF LOWER ITALY 
 
 triple course of vaults, and the Piscina Mirabile, a vast 
 hall, supported by no fewer than forty-eight arches.* 
 
 The Romans extended their Homeric topography 
 to the islands about Naples. Three rocky islets, now 
 called I Galli, which may be seen on climbing from the 
 orange-groves of Sorrento to the heights on the south, 
 were identified as the haunt of the Sirens, and are so 
 styled by Virgil. Prochyta, now Procida, and the 
 larger island of Ischia, formerly ^Enaria or Pithecusa, 
 and poetically Inarime, were fixed on as the prison of 
 the giant Typhaeus, and are recognised as such by all the 
 Latin poets. These tales owed their origin to the 
 Ischian volcano Epopeus, the modern Monte San Nicola. 
 
 Vesuvius and the eminences which are grouped around 
 it, nearly fill up the eastern shore of the Gulf of Naples ; 
 but there will be a fitter opportunity for describing them, 
 when we come to the natural history of the district. 
 
 The disinterred cities at the foot of Vesuvius have 
 excited the liveliest curiosity, less from their own im- 
 portance, than from their presenting on their discovery 
 the spectacle of ancient habitations and theu' contents, 
 as little disturbed as if we were transported back to the 
 first century of the Christian era. Tradition ascribed 
 to the Greeks the foundation of Herculaneum as well 
 as Pompeii : the Etruscans and Samnites by turns pos- 
 sessed both ; both were subdued by Sylla in the Social 
 War ; and both, but particularly the latter, appear 
 to have prospered under the Roman dominion. Both 
 towns are stated to have been injured by earthquakes 
 previously to the great eruption ; and traces of the de- 
 vastations, which Pompeii suffered by the convulsion in 
 A.D. 63, are still visible in its existing remains. The ter- 
 rible catastrophe of the year 79, in which Pliny the natu- 
 ralist perished at Stabiae, near the modem Castellamare, 
 is described by his nephew, in two letters with which 
 
 * See the Canon Andrea de Jorio's Viaggio di Enea all' Inferno 
 ed agli Elisii, secondo Virgilio ; Napoli, 1831, 3d edition. 
 
AND THE ITALIAN ISLANDS. 299 
 
 every scholar is familiar.* The unfortunate towns were 
 destroyed in that eruption, not by streams of lava, but by 
 showersof stones and ashes discharged from the mountain. 
 Herculaneum, however, has since become imbedded 
 to the depth of eighty or a hundred feet in solid volcanic 
 masses, and its total disinterment is consequently hope- 
 less. Galleries have been cut to fomi approaches to some 
 portions of it, and the spaces which were laid open 
 have been generally filled up again after the moveables 
 were carried off. Its celebrated paintings and manu- 
 scripts, its statues, mosaics, household utensils, and other 
 antique treasures, must now be sought in the Royal 
 Museum at Naples ; and, with the exception of some 
 partial excavations which were lately in progress, the 
 only accessible part is the Theatre, of which the stage 
 and the adjoining compartments may be imperfectly 
 viewed by torchlight. Over Pompeii, on the other hand, 
 lay nothing but the loose bed, in few places so deep as 
 twenty feet, formed by the showers which originally 
 destroyed it ; its excavation was comparatively easy, and 
 the portions uncovered have been left open to view. 
 
 In 1711, a peasant in sinking a well at Portici disco- 
 vered the earliest traces of Herculaneum ; and the govern- 
 ment unrolled the first of the mutilated manuscripts in 
 1752. In 1592, a water-course, cut across the site of 
 Pompeii, came on several basements, but without attract- 
 ing attention ; towards the end of the seventeenth 
 century other monuments were discovered ; about 1748, 
 the position of the city was identified, and a few years 
 later the systematic excavations commenced. The 
 French, after the conquest by Napoleon, disinterred the 
 largest part of those buildings which we now see, 
 and ascertained the circuit of the walls, a sweep of 
 about two mUes. Not one-third of the town is yet laid 
 bare, and the operations which now go on are a mere 
 mockery. Outside the ramparts one suburban street has 
 been uncovered. The streets and areas excavated within 
 
 ♦ Plinii Epistol. lib. vi. Epp. 16, 20. 
 
300 ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF LOWER ITALY 
 
 the walls comprehend, besides minor public edifices, an 
 amphitheatre, two theatres, eight temples, two basilicae, 
 and baths, besides numerous fountains in the streets and 
 houses. Upwards of eighty private mansions have been 
 discovered, a great number of shops, and in the outskirts 
 many tombs. 
 
 From the side nearest to Herculaneum, Pompeii is ap- 
 proached by a disinterred suburb which has been named 
 the Street of the Tombs. In this interesting spot, the 
 first remarkable object is the Suburban Villa, which has 
 been called that of Arrius Diomedes, in one of whose 
 vaults seventeen skeletons lay huddled together ; while 
 two others, one bearing a key, and supposed to have been 
 the master of the house, were found stretched in the 
 garden.* Two of those in the vault were the skele- 
 tons of children, whose fair hair was still preserved ; 
 most of them were those of females ; and the impression 
 of one shape on the volcanic sand indicated youth and 
 singular beauty. The plan of this villa, with its courts, 
 chambers, baths, staircases, galleries, and gardens, can 
 be easily traced. In the window of one apartment in it 
 four panes of glass were found, and proved for the first 
 time that the Romans had applied glass to that use. The 
 Tombs which, as we walk on, succeed the villa, are 
 structures of various forms, and more or less orna- 
 mented ; some of them, being solid (a few of these mere 
 cippi or monumental pillars), cannot have contained 
 ashes or bodies ; others are calculated for one person, 
 and a third class are pierced with niches for the urns of 
 the family and dependents, the appearance of which, 
 resembling that of pigeon-houses, gave such buildings the 
 name of Columbaria. The tombs are generally placed in 
 a vacant space enclosed by walls, and the picture which 
 their mutilated range produces is unusually attractive. 
 One painted chamber, open at the top, and containing a 
 
 * The whole number of skeletons yet discovered in Pompeii does 
 not, it is believed, amount to 300 ; and the disappearance of valu- 
 ables from some quarters indicates that the inhabitants had attempt- 
 ed, after the catastrophe, to recover part of their possessions. 
 
AND THE ITALIAN ISLANDS. 301 
 
 triclinium or triple seat, a monumental column, and a 
 pedestal for a table, was designed for the funeral feasts. 
 Near another semicircular bench were found the skeletons 
 of two children embracing, and of a female holding an 
 infant in her arms ; and in a niche close by the gate 
 was the skeleton of a soldier with his weapons. 
 
 The streets of the town are narrow, the very widest 
 scarcely exceeding thirty feet, and are paved with irre- 
 gular blocks of lava, in which the ruts of carriage 
 wheels are visible. The Forum, however, had originally 
 a pavement of marble. The houses are built of lava, 
 plastered over, and frequently pauited, while inscrip- 
 tions indicate the names of the owners, and together with 
 emblematic signs intimate the kind of merchandise sold 
 within, or convey salutations to expected visiters. The 
 dwellings externally were little ornamented, not one of 
 them possessing a portico ; and the large mansions of 
 the wealthier inhabitants were chiefly suiTOunded by 
 shops. The aspect of the streets is gloomy, the houses 
 are low, and their fronts usually consist of an under 
 portion of dead wall, above which are small windows 
 serving a part of the first floor, the principal lights, 
 however, being admitted from the inner courts. The 
 roofs have of course disappeared, no upper floor is in 
 existence, and few of the buildings appear to have had 
 any. The interior of the better residences was beauti- 
 fully decorated with columns, mosaics on the floors, and 
 paintings of landscape, figures, and arabesques, on the 
 plaster of the walls. Most of these ornaments, including 
 the paintings and mosaics, are now in the Museum. 
 
 From the Herculaneum gate a winding street runs 
 towards the Forum, and on this line are several of the 
 largest and most remarkable of the private mansions, espe- 
 cially those called the houses of Sallust, Pansa, and the 
 Tragic Poet. Immediately before we reach the Forum 
 we find the Public Baths, disinterred in 1824. In this 
 establishment, which occupies a space of about 100 square 
 feet, the walls, many of the vaulted roofs, the paintings 
 and the mosaics, are in tolerable preservation. 
 
302 ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF LOWER ITALY 
 
 The Forum is an oblong area of nearly 500 feet by 
 120, surrounded by a Doric colonnade. At one end of 
 it, a Corinthian temple, which has been called that of 
 Jupiter, projects into the open space, and is elevated on 
 a very lofty basement, — a peculiarity distinguishing all 
 the temples of Pompeii, and producing, with the long 
 flight of steps by which the portico is faced, a very im- 
 posing effect. Round the colonnade stand the remains 
 of other sacred buildings, and of some whose purposes 
 are uncertain ; but they apparently include a senate- 
 house, a prison, in which were found two skeletons of 
 men in fetters, a basilica, and another structure of a 
 similar kind, which, according to its inscription, was 
 erected by a female named Eumachia. An edifice near 
 one side of the temple of Jupiter, adorned with singu- 
 larly well preserved paintings, and containing numerous 
 cells or chambers, with a central space in which stand 
 twelve pedestals in a circle round an altar, has been 
 called the Pantheon. Shops encompass it, and one range 
 of these faces the Fomm ; in which, on the side opposite 
 to them, is a large temple, supposed to be that of Venus. 
 
 Beyond the Forum is the quarter of the Theatres, 
 which embraces shady porticos, and spacious areas for 
 gardens. A large triangular space, approached by an 
 Ionic vestibule, and enclosed by a Doric colonnade, 
 contains a remarkable temple, called that of Hercules, 
 and pronounced the most ancient building in Pompeii. 
 This portico opens to the greater Theatre, beyond which 
 is the smaller one. The larger of the two, which may 
 have contained 5000 spectators, is semicircular like the 
 other Roman theatres, and is built on the slope of the 
 hill. It seems to have been faced with rich marble, of 
 which some slabs still remain ; and its plan, excepting 
 that of the stage, can be distinctly traced. The small 
 Theatre has its semicircle truncated by walls running at 
 right angles to the stage, and, on the authority of an in- 
 scription, is said to have been roofed. Beside it is a large 
 rectangular area, surrounded by a Doric colonnade, and 
 containing a number of small apartments resembling 
 
AND THE ITALIAN ISLANDS. 303 
 
 shops. It has been called the Provision-market (Fo- 
 rum Nundinarium), or Soldiers' Quarters, and may have 
 served both purposes, besides others connected with the 
 places of amusement. A court behind the great theatre, 
 enclosed by a portico, contains a small Corinthian Tem- 
 ple of Isis, well preserved and curiously ornamented. 
 
 The Amphitheatre stands at the south-eastern corner 
 of the town, just within the walls. It is as usual ellip- 
 tical ; its dimensions externally are 480 feet by 335, and 
 it could admit perhaps 10,000 spectators. It was chiefly 
 constructed internally of rubble work, — the opus incer- 
 turn of the ancient writers, — the facing of which with stone 
 has chiefly disappeared, but the outline is quite entire. 
 
 APULIA, LUCANIA, AND BRUTTIUM. 
 This extensive and highly interesting country varies 
 exceedingly in its natural features. Apulia chiefly con- 
 sists of a wide and long level, passing at its southern 
 extremity into a branch of the Apennine. Its plains 
 have lost much of their Roman cultivation, and most 
 of the forests in which the Italian princes of the middle 
 ages hunted have disappeared ; a great part of them be- 
 mg now reduced to pasturage, whose general barrenness is 
 relieved only by luxuriant brushwood, with a few strag- 
 gling clumps of forest ground. That large district of 
 Lucania which is embraced in the Basilicata is more 
 hilly, but is far from being either fertile in soil or beau- 
 tiful in scenery. On the western side of the Gulf of 
 Tarentum, however, the Apennines rise higher, and fill 
 nearly the whole remainder of the peninsula to its 
 southern headlands. This region of Italy is Avild 
 and romantic in the extreme. The forms of the moun- 
 tains are more abrupt and varied than in the northern 
 districts of the great chain, and their summits are in 
 several quarters covered with never-melting snows ; 
 magnificent forests clothe the ravines on their sides, 
 their rivers are ton-ents leaving dry channels in sum- 
 mer, and the glens which cluster among their roots 
 display a contini^ally recurring alternation of desolate 
 
304 ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF LOWER ITALY 
 
 wastes with the richest vegetation. The picturesque- 
 ness of the landscape is aided by the position of the 
 towns and villages, which, placed almost universally on 
 detached hills, differ from the similarly situated towns 
 in the north in this respect ; that, instead of covering 
 the top of the eminence, they usually rise as it were in 
 eteps from its base, converting it into a pyramid or cone 
 of buildings. 
 
 The ancient history of southern Italy derives its 
 chief interest from the Grecian settlements, of which 
 Apulia possessed but few. The group of Mount Garganus 
 at its northern extremity, takes its modem name of 
 Sant' Angelo from a miraculous grotto haunted by the 
 archangel Michael. In the middle of the thirteenth 
 century the population of Sipontum, at the foot of this 
 mountain, was transferred to the new town of Man- 
 fredonia. Southward from this place the river Ofanto 
 is the Aufidus, on whose banks was fought the battle 
 of Cannae. The precise scene of this murderous conflict 
 cannot be fixed without some hesitation ; but ruined 
 tombs and other edifices not far from the right bank of 
 the river, about eight miles from Barletta, are supposed 
 to belong to the village of Cannas, and thus to indicate 
 the neighbourhood of the battle ; and Canosa, twelve 
 miles from the river-mouth, is Canusium, which appears 
 in the same page of the Roman history. Between Ve- 
 nosa (Venusia) and the river, the town of Melfi occupies 
 the summit of a fine, conical, isolated mountain, which, 
 with the woody ravines formed by it, is poetical ground, 
 being the Mons Vultur, which sheltered Horace's in- 
 fant slumbers. Southward from Barletta stands Bari, 
 the ancient Barium ; and Brindisi is Brundusium, the 
 most celebrated port of ancient Italy, and the scene of 
 Virgil's death. Its situation is marshy, its excellent 
 harbour is nearly choked up with sand, and its strong 
 castle is a prison for convicts. Otranto partially pre- 
 serves the name of Hydrus or Hydruntum ; and Gallipoli, 
 a stirrmg port, that of Callipolis, on the Gulf of Taren- 
 tum. 
 
AND THE ITALIAN ISLANDS. 305 
 
 The eastern side of this grand basin is terminated by 
 the lapygian or Sallentine promontory, called by the 
 Italians the Capo di Leuca ; and at this point commences 
 that line of coast to which most of the ancient geo- 
 graphers restrict, somewhat capriciously, the name of 
 Magna Grscia. In its strict application, the term com- 
 prehends only that part of the eastern shore which ex- 
 tends southward from the lapygian promontory to the 
 Zephyrian (the Capo di Bruzzano), or, at farthest, to 
 the promontory of Hercules (Capo Spartivento), or to 
 Leucopetra (the Capo dell' Armi), the two southern 
 extremities of the peninsula.* It would be more con- 
 venient to use the name as a collective one, embracing 
 all the Greek settlements in Italy. 
 
 But within the limits thus laid down were certainly 
 founded the most powerful of the Italo-Grecian states. 
 It will be sufficient to notice particularly Taras or 
 Tarentum, Metapontum, Heraclea, Sybaris, Thurii, 
 Croton, and Locri Epizephyrii. The first six of these 
 splendid cities stood on the Gulf of Tarentum, bounded 
 between the Lacinian and lapygian promontories, on 
 the rocks of the former of which still stands the last 
 column of the temple of the Lacinian Juno, giving to 
 the headland its modern name of Capo delle Colonne. 
 The town of Taranto, occupying the site of Tarentum, 
 but possessing few of its remains, is situated very de- 
 lightfully, on a neck of land which nearly divides the 
 main gulf from a small inner bay that forms its 
 head. Around a solitary house, called Torre di Mare, 
 near the right bank of the Bradano, the old Bradanus, 
 an uncultivated plain, covered with tamarisks and other 
 coppice-wood, extends to the sea ; and on an eminence in 
 this flat are the sole vestiges of Metapontum, being the 
 ruins of a Doric temple, of which fifteen columns with 
 their architrave are still erect. Heraclea lay to the south 
 of Metapontum, but not a fragment of it remains ; though 
 inscriptions, medals, and the celebrated Heraclean tablets 
 
 • Cluverii Italia Antiqua, p. 1321. 
 VOL. I. T 
 
306 ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF LOWER ITALY 
 
 of bronze, dug up in 1753, have fixed its site at Policoro, 
 a mansion near the shore, in the plain of the river Sinno, 
 which is the ancient Siris. At the south-western angle 
 of the Gulf of Tarentum, commencing at the sea on the 
 frontier between Lucania and Bruttium, and extending 
 southwards into the latter province upwards of fifty 
 miles, is a valley watered by several streams, and in many 
 spots singularly fertile and beautiful. In the neigh- 
 bourhood of the coast rich corn-fields and fine pastures 
 are scattered among woody hills, while jagged moun^ 
 tains, closing the distance, descend at several points in 
 steep precipices to the water's edge. Two of the rivers 
 of this vale are classical. The Crati, its main stream, is 
 the Crathis, whose waters were fabled to turn the hair 
 to the colour of gold ; and the Coscile is the Sybaris. 
 These two rivers, whose beds appear to have undergone 
 violent changes, now unite about six miles from their 
 mouth ; and in the district which they embellish stood 
 the two cities of Sybaris and Thurii, the former famous 
 for its luxurious prosperity, the latter both for its public 
 annals, and for the share which the historian Herodotus 
 is said to have taken in its foundation. Of the first, no 
 remains need be sought ; for its destruction was as re- 
 markable as its existence. The people of Croton anni- 
 hilated it by turning the waters of the Crathis into a new 
 channel, from which they flowed over and covered it. 
 Even of Thurii, which was founded in its stead, no certain 
 trace lias been discovered. The magnificent Croton, the 
 residence of Pythagoras, stood either on the exact site of 
 the present Cotrone, or between it and the extremity of 
 the Lacinian promontory, where there lately were con- 
 siderable ruins." The classical banks of the Neacthus, 
 now called Neto, have lost the verdant beauty which dis- 
 tinguished them in the days of Theocritus. 
 
 The inlet which opened between the Lacinian pro- 
 montory and that of Cocynthum (Capo di Stilo), was 
 termed the Scylletic Gulf from the colony of Scylle- 
 
 • Riedesel's Travels, Forster's Translation, 1773, p. 163. 
 
AND THE ITALIAN ISLANDS. 307 
 
 tium, on whose site stands Squillace, a decayed town, 
 which however furnishes the modern name of the bay. 
 On the remaining part of the coast of Magna Graecia was 
 the famous city of Locri, whose lawgiver was Zaleucus, 
 and its poet Pindar. Its Grecian ruins have entirely 
 disappeared. Roman remains, however, are visible on 
 a plain of five miles, which intervenes between the sea 
 and the commanding height (an offshoot from a mag- 
 nificent labyrinth of precipices and forests), on which 
 stands the Saracenic town of Gerace. 
 
 On the western coast only four Grecian settlements 
 demand especial notice. The town of Reggio, prettily 
 situated on the Strait of Messina, amidst orange groves or 
 vineyards, and embosomed among winding hills, occupies 
 the site of Rhegium, creditably distinguished in the his- 
 tory of Magna Graecia for its institutions and the spirit of 
 its public policy. At the northern end of the strait, the 
 well-built town of Scylla covers picturesquely a little 
 headland, terminating in a cliff which dips sheer into 
 the water, and is crowned by a considerable fort. Be- 
 yond the point, at the foot of the perpendicular precipice, 
 a fantastically shaped crag of no great elevation faces 
 the sea, and is the classical Scylla. Charybdis is an 
 eddy called the Galofaro, on the opposite Sicilian coast, 
 near the citadel of Messina, at the distance of three miles 
 and three and a half furlongs.* A town called Scyllaeum 
 stood on the isthmus. Proceeding along the coast into 
 Lucania, and passing the promontory of Palinurus, we 
 find near the shore the ruins of Elea or Velia, a city 
 which has many claims to remembrance ; more especi- 
 ally for having had its early history told by Herodotus ; 
 for having founded, in the persons of Zeno andParmenides, 
 the Eleatic school of philosophy ; and for having been the 
 resort of Cicero and of Horace. 
 
 Inland from Elea rises the lofty range of Mount Al- 
 burnus, between which and the sea, a few miles farther 
 
 * From Scylla Rock to the Lighthouse Tower of Messina, 6047 
 English yards. — Smyth's Sicily, p. 107. 
 
308 ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF LOWER ITALY 
 
 north, extends the low, marshy, pestilential level, on 
 whose deserted surface rise the magnificent remains of 
 the Greek town of Posidonia, now best known by its 
 Roman name of Paestum. The impressive majesty of 
 these noble ruins is unequalled in Italy, perhaps un- 
 surpassed in Europe. Every thing combines to increase 
 their solemnity and grandeur : their position on the un- 
 inhabited plain, " between the mountains and the sea ;" 
 their dimensions, much greater than those of any other 
 standing ruin in the peninsula ; the patriarchal simplicity 
 of their architecture ; and even the warm hues of the 
 yellow calcareous stone of which they are built, harmo- 
 nizing with the brightness of the Italian sky. Portions 
 of the walls and gates, of an amphitheatre and tombs, are 
 still visible ; the circuit of the city can be traced, but 
 its mass of buildings has crumbled into furzy hillocks ; 
 and three temples alone stand erect. That which is be- 
 tween the two others, and which has been by conjecture 
 designated the Temple of Neptune, the tutelary divinity 
 of the place, is by far the finest of the three, and is one 
 of the most characteristic of Grecian ruins. It consists 
 of an external colonnade, supporting a massive entab- 
 lature, within which was a wall enclosing the cell ; 
 while in the inside of the cell is a second colonnade, 
 formed by two stories of smaller columns, divided by an 
 architrave. The building is almost entire, excepting the 
 walls of the cell, of which little remains ; and the co- 
 lumns are unusually short for their thickness, and 
 crowded very closely together. The edifice which, by a 
 manifest error, has been called a Basilica, is nearly in 
 as good preservation, but presents a style of architecture 
 much inferior, and probably later ; and its plan is re- 
 markable for having a row of columns running longi- 
 tu dinally through the middle of the interior. The colon- 
 nade of the smallest ruin, called the Temple of Ceres, 
 is not dissimilar to that of the great temple, either in 
 proportions, or in general effect.* 
 
 • Dimensions in English feet :— I. The Temple of Neptune : 
 length of platform, 195-4; breadth of platform, 78 10 ; diameter 
 
AND THE ITALIAN ISLANDS. 309 
 
 No Roman structures rose to contrast with the severe 
 simplicity of the Dorian shrines ; for, on the colonization 
 of Posidonia by the Romans (b. c. 272), it sunk at once 
 into decay : the inhabitants, lingering awhile among 
 its dwellings, held an annual day of lamentation for 
 their lost freedom ; and tlie conquerors soon knew the 
 name of the city only as belonging to the spot, where 
 grew the roses which flowered twice a-year. It was, 
 however, an inhabited town in the ninth century, when 
 the Saracens plundered it ; Robert Guiscard the Norman 
 repeated the spoliation in 1080 ; and Paestum has ever 
 smce been a heap of ruins. 
 
 The interior of the district, of which the circuit has 
 just been made, presents even fewer points of interest 
 in ancient than in modem history. Consentia, the 
 capital of the Bruttii, is now Cosenza ; and to the south- 
 ward of this town the mountainous centre of the penin- 
 sula is occupied by a wild and thick wood, which, 
 extending continuously in the old times southward to 
 Rhegium, received the name of the Brettian Forest or 
 Forest of Sila. 
 
 SICILY. 
 
 This extensive island, equally remarkable for beauty 
 of landscape and for the value of its natural productions, 
 is likewise unusually interesting from its classical recol- 
 lections and its magnihcent remains of antiquity. 
 
 Its ancient history resembles that of Lucania and 
 Bruttium, in presenting to our notice a chain of foreign 
 colonies which occupied its shores, and maintained pos- 
 session alternately against new mvaders from without, 
 and against the native inhabitants of the mountainous 
 
 of columns, 6-10 ; height of columns (with capitals), 28- 1 1 ; height 
 of entablature, 12-2 ; diameter of internal columns, 4-8 ; height of 
 internal columns, 19 9. — II. The Pseudodipteral Temple or Basi- 
 lica: length, lt)7-9; breadth, 80; diameter of columns, 4-9; 
 height of columns, 2 1 . — III. The Temple of Ceres : length, 107-9 ; 
 breadth, 47-7 ; diameter of columns, 4-2 ; height of columns, 20-4. 
 — Wilkins' Antiquities of Magna Graecia, — A fourth temple, which 
 has been called that of Juno, was discovered in 1830, but is an 
 utter wreck. 
 
310 ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF LOWER ITALY 
 
 districts in the interior. Here, therefore, as in the 
 south of the peninsula, it is on the coasts (and chiefly 
 on the east and south) that we have to look for classi- 
 cal ruins. 
 
 The shores of the island are rugged, and in most 
 places highly picturesque, owing as well to their fine 
 outlines as to the richness and oriental aspect of the 
 vegetation. The central regions are chiefly mountainous, 
 but open oiit into numerous beautiful valleys, and into 
 some extensive plains ; forests, though less widely than 
 of old, spread themselves over the hills ; and the hol- 
 lows present a delightful variety of meadow and arable 
 land, of which the greater part is cultivated, however 
 imperfectly. Etna is the loftiest mountain in Sicily ; 
 and the others form two great ranges. The Madonia 
 chain, the ancient Montes Nebrodes, faces the northern 
 coast, and retires thence into the middle of the country ; 
 and the range anciently called Pelorus, or Mons Nep- 
 tunius, forms the north-eastern shore from Messina in a 
 southerly direction. Towards the south-western side the 
 i; eights gradually shelve downwards. 
 
 In the interior one spot only requires to be traced, — 
 a spot whose fabled beauty has suggested to Milton an 
 emblem of the garden of Paradise.* Enna appears in 
 history as an impregnable fastness, and as the seat of 
 a magnificent temple of Ceres, plundered by the infa- 
 mous Verres ; and its site is satisfactorily identified with 
 that of Castro Giovanni, a hill-town of 11,000 inhabi- 
 tants, in the very heart of the island. The ancient 
 historians and geographers vie with the poets in their 
 enthusiastic descriptions of this enchanted region, whose 
 natural outlines were even more beautiful than the 
 luxuriant woods and flowery turf which clothed it. 
 
 * That fair field 
 
 Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers, 
 Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis 
 Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain 
 To seek her through the world. 
 
AND THE ITALIAN ISLANDS. 311 
 
 The sacred meadow occupied a ridge, round which 
 sank deep precipices, and the odour of its flowers, 
 especially its violets, was believed to throw dogs off the 
 scent ; groves, pasturages, and parks, encompassed the 
 rock ; and in the midst of these was the Lake Pergusa, 
 with a cave through which Pluto was fabled to have va- 
 nished with his prey. The description which travellers 
 give of the modern aspect of the spot is humiliating : the 
 mountains, though still grand, possess neither trees nor 
 verdure ; and the lake is a marsh four miles in circuit, 
 filled with reeds, sku-ted by naked banks, and rendered 
 pestilential by the flax which is steeped m it. The tem- 
 ple has disappeared ; and a Saracenic castle in ruins covers 
 one of the two heights, and a broken cross the other.''' 
 
 On the eastern coast the first ancient town is Mcs- 
 sana or Zancle, which gave occasion to the second Punic 
 war. Messina, situated on the beautiful strait to which 
 it gives its name, and backed by magnificent mountains, 
 covers the site o£ Zancle, and conceals its few remains. 
 Taurominium, to the south, is less celebrated for its clas- 
 sical history than for the splendid ruins which it has left 
 at Taormina, in one of the most romantic landscapes 
 conceivable. Its principal relic is its theatre, placed on 
 a rocky hiH, whence from amidst broken arches and tall 
 palms we look out on one of the finest views of Etna. 
 Under the foundations of Catania, near the foot of the 
 great volcano, lie the buried wrecks of Catana, whose 
 little stream the Amenas, and its name of Etna, tempo- 
 rarily conferred on it by Hiero, have been immortalized 
 in the odes of Pindar. Still farther to the south, Len- 
 tini represents Leontium. 
 
 In a noble bay, forming its harbour, stands the forti- 
 fied town of Syracuse, less interesting from its modern 
 history or state, than from the classic recollections its 
 
 * Livii, lib. xxiv. cap. 37-39. Cicer. Orat. iv. in Verrem. 
 Claudianus, De Raptu Proserpina?, lib. ii. Diodor. Sicul., lib. v. 
 sub init. Cluverii Sicilia Antiqua, lib. ii. cap, 7. Saint Non, 
 Voyage Pittoresque, 1781, torn. iv. p. 120-125. 
 
312 ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF LOWER ITALY 
 
 name awakens, of science and poetry, of heroism and 
 oppression, of Plato, Hiero, Pindar, Theocritus, and 
 Archimedes, of Dionysius, Dion, and Timoleon. Mar- 
 cellus, on his conquest of it, though he wept over its 
 fall, removed to Rome its treasures of art ; and its an- 
 cient greatness ends with that event, unless the robberies 
 of Verres be worthy of a place in its story. The five 
 regions of this most splendid and famous of Sicilian 
 cities were comprehended in a triangle more than twelve 
 miles in compass ; and their sites, with vestiges of their 
 buildings, can still be traced. The modern town, occu- 
 pying the peninsula of the quarter called Ortygia, be- 
 tween the smaller and greater harbours, contains the 
 poetic fountain of Arethusa. Acradina, the largest and 
 most populous quarter, lay on the shore, and retains 
 only fragments of rubbish ; while Tyche, situated behind 
 it, Las left still less. An avenue of tombs cut in the preci- 
 pice leads to the elevated site of Neapolis, where remain 
 an amphitheatre, and a well constructed theatre, through 
 which passes the stream of an ancient aqueduct, turning 
 a mill-wheel, amidst shrubs and trees. The fifth quarter, 
 called Epipolae, was formed by the commanding heights 
 behind Tyche and Neapolis, now covered by a village 
 named Belvedere. This position was fortified by Nicias, 
 in his unsuccessful siege of the city ; and some huge 
 fragments of uncemented blocks are supposed to be- 
 long to a wall erected by Dionysius. Either in this 
 quarter, or in the portion of Neapolis nearest to it, were 
 the celebrated Latomiae, stupendous excavations origin- 
 ally made as quarries, and afterwards, from at least as 
 early a date as the defeat of the Athenians, used as 
 prisons. The ground is now covered with vineyards and 
 olive-groves ; the picturesque garden of a Capuchin con- 
 vent occupies the largest of the hollows ; and another, 
 called the Paradiso, contains the singular excavated 
 passage, in the form of a Roman S, which has been 
 called the Ear of Dionysius, and supposed, without much 
 reason, to have been constructed as a listening place. 
 The temple of Minerva has become the cathedral, and 
 
AND THE ITALIAN ISLANDS. 3J3 
 
 that of the Olympian Jupiter has left some fallen co- 
 lumns ; but we have lost once more the tomb of Archi- 
 medes, which Cicero was so proud of finding. 
 
 The southern coast commences with Cape Passaro, 
 the ancient Promontorium Pachynum, to the west of 
 which, near Modica, in the deep rocky valley of Ispica, 
 are cliffs cut out into numerous habitations, consist- 
 ing, in several instances, of two or three stories, with 
 doors and windows.* This curious Troglodytic city, 
 still occupied by a few peasants, must have been form- 
 ed by the earliest inliabitants of the island. It has 
 no historical name, and was probably abandoned when 
 the foreign colonists first gained possession of the coast. 
 In the neighbourhood, excavations on a rocky hill, sur- 
 mounted by a Moorish tower, have disclosed antiquities 
 supposed to belong to the Greek town of Camarina ; 
 and similar buried remains, near Terra Nuova, are the 
 sole vestiges of Gela, whose immense piles Virgil 
 represents as having been seen by -lEueas in his voyage 
 towards Carthage, and in whose plains, the Geloi Campi, 
 the poet ^schylus died. 
 
 Acragas, a colony of Gela, called by the Romans Agri- 
 gentum, has been more fortunate ; for its ruins, beside the 
 modern Girgenti, are among the most splendid and in- 
 teresting of all classical monuments. The river Gir- 
 genti, the Greek Acragas, bathes the foot of a beautiful 
 slope, now clothed with gardens and orchards, and marked 
 by the temples and tombs of the ancient city. The 
 summit of the mountain, once covered by the citadel, 
 now by the modern town, and approached by a hoUow 
 way, is 1240 feet above the level of the sea, and the 
 picturesque richness of the scene is described as superb. 
 The two elevated ledges, on which stood Agrigentum, are 
 surrounded by abrupt precipices ; the river divides itself 
 into two branches, forming wooded ravines ; and the vine- 
 
 * Travels of Kephalides, vol. i. letter 57 ; Houel, Voyage Pit- 
 toresque, tomes 3, 4. 
 
3 14 ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF LOWER ITALY 
 
 yards, and groves of olive and almond trees, separate:! 
 by hedges of the aloe and Indian fig, stretch to the sea, 
 mantling a beautiful declivity of more than four miles 
 square. The principal ruins stand on the ridge of one of the 
 precipitous heights, perhaps the Athenian Rock (Rupes 
 Athenaea) of Acragas. On this platform are remnants of a 
 theatre, — of a little temple, now a convent-church, — 
 columns of a beautifully proportioned Temple, called that 
 of Juno, built of the common brown stone, and placed 
 among carob and olive trees near the edge of the cliff, — 
 and two other less distinct fragments of temples. The 
 same rock presents another temple, named that of Concord, 
 the best preserved monument in Sicily, whose columns 
 (tliirteen in depth, and six in width) are entire, while the 
 walls of the cella, and the entablature and pediments of 
 both fronts, are nearly so. The building is exceedingly 
 beautiful, though connoisseurs pronounce its architecture 
 inferior to that of the temple of Juno.* Farther down the 
 slope lie the huge piles of ruins called the Temple of the 
 Giants (Tempio de' Gigauti), vouching for the correctness 
 of the description which Diodorus gives of the shrine of 
 Jupiter Olympius, but which was totally disbelieved till 
 these remains were discovered. This structure is now one 
 vast mass of fallen fragments, composed of the coarse- 
 grained brown stone which is found in all the Sicilian 
 edifices. Its half-columns have been built up in regular 
 courses of masonry, eight blocks in each course. The 
 foundations of two immense piers remain, dividing the 
 interior into three naves ; pieces of shafts, capitals, and 
 entablatures, are scattered about, with some of the sculp- 
 tures which the historian commends so highly ; and the 
 enormous substructions, of which he also speaks, have 
 been partially exposed by excavations. This colossal 
 Doric temple was the largest which the Greeks erected ; 
 and its remaining wrecks, applied to the known rules of 
 their arcliitecture, have enabled an eminent antiquary to 
 
 * Dimensions ; entire length, 128i English feet ; breadth, 64^; 
 length of cell, 48^ ; breadth of cell, 24.^ ; height of columns, 22 ; 
 their base-diameter, 4 feet 7 inches. — Smyth's Sicily, p. 210. 
 
AND THE ITALIAN ISLANDS. 315 
 
 offer a restoration, from which we learn its dimensions 
 with an exactness almost complete. Of all the Grecian 
 buildings, the nearest to it in size was the great Sicilian 
 temple of Selinus, which was only ten feet shorter ; 
 the Parthenon had exactly two-thirds of its extent ; 
 the temple of Neptune at Psestum was little more than 
 half as large. Dionysius says, that a man could hide 
 himself in one of the flutings of its columns ; and the 
 modem measurements prove this assertion to be strictly 
 true.* On a separate rock, apparently the ancient Ne- 
 cropolis, are innumerable tombs ; and the spring of 
 naphtha, mentioned by Pliny, still flows. As to the 
 aqueducts and reservoir, with the remains of the forum, 
 circus, and camps, a simple allusion is enough. 
 
 The only other to^\^l requiring notice on this shore is 
 Selinus, — Virgil's " city of the palms." Its palm-trees 
 have died out, and its site, on a lonely plain mantled with 
 brushwood, between the rivers Belici and Madiuni, the 
 Grecian Hypsa and Selinus, is covered by a wilderness 
 of immense prostrate walls, columns, and entablatures. 
 This place and Segestc, which have left some of the 
 most striking ruins that exist in the island, are chiefly 
 remarkable in ancient history for their desperate ani- 
 mosity to each other. Selinus was taken and rased 
 by the Carthaginians ; but the singularly regular posi- 
 tion in which most of its fallen ruins lie, appears to 
 indicate that earthquakes have aided in its destruction. 
 The remains occupy two parallel ridges, separated by 
 a sandy valley; and the most important of them are 
 fragments of six temples, three on each ridge, of which 
 one is, as has been just stated, the largest of all the 
 
 * Quatremere de Quincy, in the M moires de I'lnstitut Royal 
 de France ; classe d' Histoireetde Litterature Ancienne, torn. ii. 
 1815. The dimensions calculated in the restoration proposed in 
 the Memoir are the following, in English feet and withovit frac- 
 tions : length of the temple externally, 351 ; breadth externally, 
 191 ; height of the columns, 62; height of the entablature and 
 pediment, 52 ; total height, 121 ; circumference of the columns 
 at the base, 39 ; diameter of each fluting at the base, 2 feet. 
 
316 ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF LOWER ITALY 
 
 Grecian buildings, except the temple of Agrigentum, 
 the ruins of which indeed are far less imposing.* 
 
 On the western end of the island few points possess 
 much antiquarian importance. Marsala, on the site of 
 Lilyhaeum, the great fastness of the Carthaginians, retains 
 some antiquities. Trapani covers the ancient Drepanum, 
 where Virgil places the tomb of Anchises ; and the abrupt 
 Mount San Giuliano, a little to the eastward, is the 
 classical Eryx. On its summit stood the celebrated 
 temple of Venus Erycina, surrounded by the fortifica- 
 tions of the citadel belonging to the to^vn, which lay on 
 the steep ascent. Among the ruins of a Moorish fort, 
 polygonal walls and a few granite pillars belong to the 
 primitive, Grecian, and Roman periods. 
 
 The coast about Mount Eryx is poetic ground, as 
 being the scene of the fifth book of the ^neid ; in 
 which the poet attributes to the Trojans the foundation 
 both of the magnificent temple on the height, and of the 
 town of -(Egeste, called by the Romans Segesta, which 
 is the first remarkable spot on the northern shore of the 
 island. 
 
 -^geste is best known for the invitation it gave Athens 
 to interpose in the dissensions of Sicily, and for the 
 mean artifice by which its rulers imposed upon the Athe- 
 nian envoys an exaggerated idea of its wealth. Its sins 
 were punished by Agathocles of Syracuse ; and only 
 one fine temple- and the traces of a theatre remain to 
 attest either its Grecian splendour, or its short-lived pro- 
 sperity as a Roman colony. The ruins stand near the 
 gulf of Castellamare, about eight miles from Alcamu, 
 in a lonely and sterile plain, v/hose only shade is a soli- 
 tary fig-tree overhanging a well, while noble mountains 
 rise behind. The temple is placed on a craggy hill, 
 
 * Dimensions of the temple of Jupiter at Selinus : length, 331 
 English feet ; breadth, 161 ; diameter cf columns at the base, lOi 
 feet ; height of columns, with the capitals, 48^ feet. — Wilkins 
 Magna Graecia, pp. 46, 47. 
 
AND THE ITALIAN ISLANDS. 317 
 
 and its peristyle is almost entire, though the walls of 
 the cell are wanting. The columns are not fluted, the 
 structure has evidently heen left uncompleted, and its 
 architectural merit is not of a high order.* The beau- 
 tiful city of Palermo, the modein capital of the island, 
 stands on the site of Panormus, which, though a naval 
 station of the Carthaginians, acted no leading part in 
 the ancient history of Sicily, and has left no remarkable 
 relics. Termini, Avhich enjoys a romantic situation on 
 the rocky coast, eastward from the metropolis, occupies 
 nearly the place of Himera, a Greek city of note, but 
 early destroyed. Its Thermas have left some vestiges ; 
 and it is not unworthy of notice, that these buildings 
 gave name successively to a new Grecian settlement, to 
 a Roman colony, and to the modern town. In the 
 beautiful gulf of Patti, at the summit of a striking moun- 
 tain-pass, are the ruins of T^Tidaris, often mentioned 
 in Cicero's attacks on Verres. 
 
 CORSICA AND SARDINIA. 
 
 The antiquities of these islands have been quite over- 
 looked by most students of Italian topography ; but 
 neither is believed to contain any remarkable monu- 
 ments of the classical architecture, and their history 
 makes few spots interesting for their own sake. Both 
 are mountainous, Corsica wholly so, except a district 
 running along its eastern coast. 
 
 In Corsica, called by the Greeks Cyrnos, the modern 
 capital of Ajaccio is on the site of the old Uranium; 
 and at Bastia, the other chief town of the island, was 
 the ancient Mantinorum Oppidum. The two principal 
 Roman colonies were that of Marius, called Mariana, 
 an inland settlement north-west from Bastia, and that 
 of Sylla, called Aleria or Alalia, a seaport on the eastern 
 coast, whose ruins now, by encroachments of the land, 
 are half a lea^rue from the water. 
 
 * Dimensions of the temple of JE^esfe : length, English feet 
 lyO: breadth, feet 7ti-8. — Wilkins' Magna Graecia. 
 
318 ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OF LOWER ITALY 
 
 In Sardinia, which the Greeks called Sardo, Sanda- 
 liotis, or Ichnusa, the modem capital Cagliari occupies 
 the site of the ancient Caralis ; and the ruins of the port 
 Olbia exist near Terranuova. Around Porto Torres, 
 which was the Roman Turris, are more numerous ves- 
 tiges of antiquity than in any other part of the country. 
 But this island has a class of monuments of its own, 
 probably belonging to its earliest mhabited periods, in 
 the Round Towers, called Nuraggi, which rise, to the 
 number of several hundreds, on hills all over its surface. 
 They are conical buildings, vaulted like the Grecian 
 treasure-houses, and composed of uncemented blocks of 
 stone, generally disposed in horizontal layers. A wind- 
 ing staircase, carried up in the inside of the structure, be- 
 tween two concentric walls, usually conducts from an 
 arched chamber below to an upper one precisely similar. 
 The largest of these towers, which stands in the district 
 of Busachi, eastward from Oristano, is called " Lu 
 Nuraggi lungu," and is nearly sixty feet in height.* 
 
 The rocky but valuable isle of Elba, which belongs 
 to the group of Corsica and Sardinia, was known to the 
 Carthaginians and Romans by the name of Ilva or 
 ^thalia. 
 
 THE IMPERIAL PROVINCES OF ITALY. 
 The preceding classification of the Italian territories, 
 in which the occupation of districts by the ancient tribes 
 is taken as the basis, has been generally adopted by 
 modern Avriters, and connects itself far better than any 
 other with the facts of the Roman histor3^ But the 
 student, especially if his attention is likely to be direct- 
 ed either to the writings of the Lower Empire, or to 
 the vicissitudes of Italy itself after the irruption of the 
 barbarians, should be acquainted with certain other 
 arrangements introduced by successive emperors for the 
 purposes of administration. 
 
 We have seen, that at the fall of the republic the penin- 
 
 * Cluverii Sardinia et Corsica Antiquae ; in Grfflvii Thesaur. 
 Siciliae, torn. xv. — Smvth's Sardinia. 
 
AND THE ITALIAN ISLANDS. 
 
 319 
 
 sula was governed as one undivided province, while Sicily 
 composed a second, and Sardinia with Corsica a third. 
 This simple plan was abandoned by Augustus, who divided 
 the whole of Italy, from the Var to the Arsia, and from 
 the heights of the Alps to the southern seas, into Eleven 
 provinces. No new nomenclature seems to have been 
 introduced, each province being merely called a Region, 
 and distinguished by its number, from the first to the 
 eleventh. Each was placed under a governor of con- 
 sular dignity, and therefore all of them ranked as Roman 
 provinces of the highest class. The following were the 
 Augustan Regions, in the order in which they were 
 named, as they are described by Pliny. 
 
 1. Campania, to which, as we are told, Latium was 
 added. We must recollect, however, that the authority 
 of the prefect of Rome extended not only over the whole 
 of Latium, but northward into Etruria, and southward 
 a short way across the older Campanian border ; so that, 
 even under the early imperial system, this extensive 
 district was, in regard to jurisdiction and civil govern- 
 ment, cut off from the provmces on both sides of it. 
 2. Apulia, with the Hirpinian district taken from Sam- 
 nium. 8. Lucania and Bruttium. 4. The remainder 
 of Samnium, and the region of the Central Apennines. 
 5. Picenum. 6. Umbria. 7. Etruria. 8. The Cis- 
 padane part of Cisalpine Gaul, separated from Umbria 
 by the river Rubicon, and bounded on its other sides by 
 the Apennine, the Po, and the Adriatic. The name of 
 Flaminia, which some modern geographers give to this 
 province, seems to rest on no early authority, and is 
 objectionable, if invented, from its tendency to create 
 mistakes between this region and one which really bore 
 the same name afterwards. 9. Liguria. 10. The region 
 which Cellarius aptly calls the Transpadana Maritima. 
 It was chiefly composed of Venetia and Istria ; but to 
 these was added that district of Cisalpine Gaul which 
 had been occupied b^'- the Cenomanni, so that it included 
 Brixia, Cremona, and Mantua. 11. The Transpadana 
 Subalpina of Cellarius, which, with the exception just 
 
320 ANCIENT TOPOGRAPnY OF LOWER ITALY 
 
 specified, embraced the whole portion of Cisalpine Gaul 
 that lay between the Po and the Alps. 
 
 The administrative an-angement which next followed, 
 possesses much interest as to the subsequent history of 
 Italy ; since it was, directly or indirectly, the groundwork 
 of all the most important political divisions established 
 in the middle ages, and of some that have survived till 
 the present day. Several of its details, however, are 
 but imperfectly known, and, as some authorities refer 
 it to Hadrian, even its origin is disputed. We may here 
 be contented with learning, that the plan was completely 
 developed by Constantino, that it formed a part of that 
 great system of his which has been explained in another 
 place,* and that it remained unchanged at the fall of 
 the Western Empire. 
 
 Constantine, adding to the former Italian territories 
 some regions beyond the old Alpine frontier, divided 
 Italy and its islands into seventeen provinces. The new 
 districts were three : — 1. The Alpes Cottiae, or region of 
 Mount Cenis, having for its chief town Segusio or Susa ; 
 2. and 8. Rhetia, chiefly contained in the Grisons and 
 Tyrol, and divided into two provinces. 
 
 The provinces embraced in Italy itself were Eleven, 
 to which the Notitia Utriusque Imperii, a treatise be- 
 longing to the Theodosian age, gives the following names. 
 — 1. " Venetia and Istria." This province seems to have 
 substantially coincided with the tenth region of Augus- 
 tus ; and part of it continued united in the dark ages, 
 forming the duchy or march of Friuli. 2. " Liguria." 
 Under this name was included not only Liguria Proper, 
 but the whole, or nearly the whole, of Transpadane Gaul. 
 The seat of the local government was at Milan ; and 
 in the sixth century of our era the province became the 
 kernel of the Lombardic kingdom in Italy. 3. " jEmilia." 
 This province, which retained its new title for several 
 centuries, contained the modern duchies of Parma and 
 Modena, with the extensive territory that once belonged 
 
 * See Chapter II. of this part, p. 108 of the vohime. 
 
AND TUE ITALIAN ISLANDS. 321 
 
 to the city of Bolog-ra. 4. " Flaminia and Picenum 
 Annonarium." The former of these two regions, and 
 that which precedes it in the list, derived their names 
 from the great Roman highways which traversed them 
 respectively. Flaminia became, as one portion of the 
 Exarchate of Ravenna, the last stronghold of the Grecian 
 emperors in the West ; and afterwards, passing to the 
 Popedom, it was called Romagna from its previous occu- 
 pants.'^ The second region of the same province cannot 
 be identified with perfect certainty, but there is not 
 much reason to doubt that, without including any part 
 of the Picenum of classical times, it consisted of that por- 
 tion of the ancient Umbria which lay on the eastern side 
 of the Apennine, and is chiefly covered by the duchy of 
 Urbino. 5. " Picenum Suburbicarium." In tills pro- 
 vince was included a part, oi more probably the whole, 
 of the Roman Picenum, which in the dark ages was 
 called the Pentapolis, and afterwards the march or mar- 
 quisate of Ancona. The difficulties which occur in fix- 
 ing the boundaries of this and the preceding province 
 arise chiefly from the fact that, after the fall of the 
 empire, the whole tract which is composed of them was 
 never for any considerable period placed under separate 
 masters. 6. " Tuscia and Umbria." Both of the two 
 beautiful districts here classed together have always con- 
 tinued to feel the effects of their new^ arrangement. The 
 latter comprehended not by any means the whole of the 
 ancient Umbria, but merely that portion of it which Lay 
 on the western side of the Apennine. The duchy of 
 Spoleto, formed in the dark ages, corresponded almost 
 exactly to the boundaries thus indicated. Tuscia was 
 the name for Etruria ; but this old province was dismem- 
 bered like the other, for the new one included only that 
 
 • Some writers state Romagna to be identical with Emilia, 
 which is manifestly wrong ; although the territory of the Exarchate 
 did, at more than one point of time, extend into iEmilia ; and 
 although, likewise, the popes asserted that Bologna and other 
 parts of Emilia were included in the deed by which Pepin granted 
 to them the Exarchate. 
 
 VOL. 1. U 
 
322 ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY OP LOWER ITALY, &c. 
 
 northern part of it Avhich makes up the modern Tuscany. 
 The reason for the separation is easily found ; for the dis- 
 trict of the City-prefect embraced the southern parts of 
 Etruria, and this imperial office accordingly forms one 
 step in the progress of events which gave half of that pro- 
 vince to the Papal See. 7. " Valeria." An obscure town, 
 now altogether lost, gave rise to this appellation, which 
 comprised all those districts so often mentioned already 
 as embracing the Central Apennine. 8. " Samnium." 
 This region, contained substantially within its ancient 
 limits, became in later times the duchy of Beneventum, 
 which, however, speedily extended itself on all sides 
 far beyond the Samnite borders. 9. " Campania ;" 
 10. "Apulia;" 31. " Lucania and Bruttium." These 
 three provinces retained their ancient limits as well as 
 names ; and the second of them, receiving the title of 
 Puglia, formed in the dark ages the earliest seat of the 
 kingdom of Naples. 
 
 The three islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, 
 making one province each, complete the number stated 
 at the commencement. 
 
 These provinces were of different classes, according to 
 their relative size and consequence. Those which are 
 numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9, together with Sicily, stood 
 in the first rank, having Consular governors ; the pro- 
 vinces 10 and 11 were in the second order, and governed 
 by Correctors ; and 7 and 8, with the three Alpine dis- 
 tricts, as well as Corsica and Sardinia, were administered 
 by Praesides, and belonged to the lowest class. 
 
CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY, &c 323 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Illustrations of the Character, Habits, Commerce, and 
 Productive Industry of the Ancient Italians. 
 
 FIRST PERIOD: Latino-Etkuscan : Religion— Education- 
 Agriculture — Mechanical Arts — Trade — Magna Graecia and the 
 Islands — Illustrative Examples — Money-making — Morality — 
 MisceUaneous Habits. SECOND PERIOD: Italo-Gre- 
 ciAN : Religion — State of Belief — Superstitions — Ghosts — 
 Witches — Morality — Mixed Character of the Republican States- 
 men—Crimes of the Imperial Court — Meanness of the Imperial 
 Senators — Morality of the People — Ancient Brigands — Illustra- 
 tions of Imperial Epicureanism and Reverses — Intellectual Cul- 
 tivation — Course of Education — Endowed Schools — Libraries — 
 Booksellers — Newspapers and their Contents — Classes of 
 Society — ^Haughtinessof the Nobles — No Middle Class — Markets 
 for Slaves — Their Occupations and Treatment — Their Rebelhons 
 — Freedmen — Amusements — TheTheatre and Improvised Drama 
 — The Circus — Gladiators — "Wild Beasts — Marine Theatres — 
 Fondness for Spectacles — Aristocratic Amusements — Readings 
 — Improvvisatori — Court Pageants — Industry and Commerce — 
 Rural Economy — The Roman Corn-laws — Vicissitudes of Agri- 
 culture — Grazing — Tillage — Labourers and Leases — Crops — 
 Gardens— Orchards — Mechanical Arts and Trade — Stages of 
 Luxury — Native Manufactures — Obstacles to Commerce — Italian 
 Exports — Imports from Europe — From Asia — From Africa. 
 THIRD PERIOD: Greco-Oriental: Pagan Religion- 
 Education — The College of Rome and its Statutes — Spectacles 
 — Illustrations of Character — Foreign Trade — Guilds and Manu- 
 factures — Agricultural Serfs — Misery and Depopulation of Italy 
 — Universal Hopelessness. 
 
 The preceding chapters exhibit an outline, which we 
 must fill up for ourselves by the study of ancient writ- 
 ings and monuments. Such research will at every step 
 
324 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 unfold truths with which it is essential to store the 
 mind, if we would rightly apprehend the position of the 
 Romans as political legislators and votaries of literature 
 and science, or if we would appreciate those works of 
 art which in the classical ages received birth or shelter 
 in Italy. Of those numberless illustrations, some have 
 been indicated incidentally as we proceeded ; but, before 
 we quit the heathen times, we must combine these with 
 additional elucidations in one view, and suggest a few 
 facts which throw light on secondary though important 
 sections of the Roman annals.* 
 
 Proceeding to traverse this ground, we may regard the 
 character, manners, and industry of the nation, as having 
 passed through three successive stages. 
 
 The earliest, which may be carried down through the 
 first five centuries of the city, will be found to end soon 
 after the triumph of the democracy ; and its aspect will 
 be substantially described if we style it the Latino- 
 Etruscan period. It developed much of the evil that was 
 in the national character ; but it also created and put in 
 action all the elements of its primitive gi-andeur. By 
 the native influences of this age, and probably in that 
 part of it when the Latins and Sabines alone constituted 
 the state, was formed the husbandman-soldier of Rome, 
 with his rude and stem patriotism, his inaptitude for 
 receiving new impressions, his love of agriculture and of 
 war, his thirst for freedom, and his pride. The charac- 
 teristics afterwards derived from the Etruscans were at 
 first ingrafted on the ruling class only ; but both the 
 
 • The references made in this chapter, whether to classical or 
 secondary authorities, are mainly intended for leading the student 
 to a few of the most useful sources of information. An acknow- 
 ledgment of all the obligations which the present sketch owes, both 
 to general treatises on Roman Antiquities and to such as illustrate 
 special sections, would be equally cumbrous and unnecessary. But 
 a recent work of high continental celebrity, Schlosser's Geschichte 
 der alten Welt und ihrer Cultur (9 vols. 1826-1834), must be 
 named as having, both here and elsewhere, suggested many views 
 and indicated many materials. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 325 
 
 guperstition of Etruria and its useful arts spread in time 
 through the whole nation ; and when its character had 
 received these new features, it was ready to fulfil its 
 destiny of conquering the world. 
 
 The second period, which may be called the Italo- 
 Grecian, continued till about the extinction of the An- 
 tonines. Although, throughout the whole duration of 
 ancient history, the political relations and institutions of 
 Rome preserved an aspect strictly Italian and independ- 
 ent, yet this was far from being true as to the structure of 
 private life and manners, which, from the commence- 
 ment of this second era down to the fall of the empire, 
 underwent a strong, constant, and increasing amalgama- 
 tion with foreign elements. In the age now spoken of, 
 the Greek admixture was evidently the most powerful. 
 Most things, also, that were changed in the national 
 character between the time of Cato and that of Marcus 
 Aurclius, were altered for the worse : the nation became 
 not only weaker but more immoral ; the age was one of 
 wealth and voluptuousness. The wealth was ill divided ; 
 but yet it flowed far around, oftenest as the price of sin, 
 paid for by the rich and committed by the poor : the 
 voluptuousness diffused itself still more widely, and, in 
 an incalculable degree, more ruinously ; for the state 
 suffered infinitely less from the expensive luxury of the 
 great, than from that appetite for debasing amusements 
 and that unprincipled idleness, which infected the whole 
 mass of the beggared populace. But even in this age 
 the ancient martial spirit still survived ; and no other 
 nation has ever continued to be vigorous so long after 
 having become sensual and utterly corrupted. 
 
 The third period, extending between the Antonines 
 and Odoacer, saw the last spark of Roman greatness 
 quenched in darkness. The evident tendency of this 
 age entitles us to describe it as the Greco- Oriental ; for 
 there was much less of Italian in it than of Greek, and 
 less of Greek than of the effeminacy, the cowardice, and 
 the superstitions of the Asiatics. A debasing weakness 
 had long been flowing in as an under-current ; but 
 
326 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 about the time of Septimius Severus it floated up, and 
 thenceforth constituted the body of the stream. The re- 
 mainder of the Roman annals composes as melancholy 
 a page as any in the book of human history. Virtue, 
 learning, and freedom had perished together ; and the 
 feeblest nation of the east never crouched lower beneath 
 the scourge of despotism, than did those who trod daily 
 on the graves of Manlius and the Gracchi. 
 
 THE FIRST PERIOD: 
 
 ENDING A.u. 500, or B.C. 254. 
 
 The Latin and Sabine legends, and the ritual of the 
 Etruscans, united in forming the primitive religion of 
 Rome. These three tribes took as much from the 
 Grecian religion as might satisfy us, though there were 
 no other proof, that, in one sense or another, they and 
 the Greeks had a comm^on origin. But the Italian 
 mythology possessed a peculiar nomenclature, as well as 
 many other distinctive features. 
 
 The Sabines and Latins worshipped the powers of 
 external nature in a less disguised form than the Hel- 
 lenic race, and with much of a very beautiful symbolic 
 ceremonial. For many centuries the Roman, who by 
 night crossed the Forum, was reminded of the elemental 
 worship of his ancestors by the gleam of the many 
 lamps which illuminated the open temple of the Moon 
 on the Palatine Hill. "' The Sun, too, and the Earth by 
 the name of Ops, had each a shrine ; and to the same 
 system belonged the adoration of Vesta, with that of 
 Volcanus the god of the central fires. The divinities 
 of the fields, the woods, the springs, and the mountains, 
 had their worship made at once local and useful by 
 ceremonies which identified themselves with the history 
 of the people. Such were, for the gods of the forest- 
 pasttires, the sacrifices of the Lupercal priests ; and 
 
 • Varro De Lingua Latina, lib. iv. ; edit. Bipont. 1788, p. 20. 
 Taciti Annal. lib. xv. cap. 41. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 327 
 
 for the deities of agriculture, the hymns of the Arval 
 Brethren. The evil spirits were likewise propitiated. 
 Among these may be instanced Robigus, the god of 
 mildew ; and the gods of the dead, who, under the name 
 of Lares, were made the guardians of life and of the 
 'household-hearth. The elemental faith and the hero- 
 worship were mixed up yet more intimately in such 
 legends as those of the prophetic Latian king Picus, of 
 king Faunus and the nymph Marica, of Juturna, Fero- 
 nia, with other Latian and Sabine goddesses, and of the 
 wise and fair Egeria, who rose nightly from her fountain 
 to speak with Numa. The Sabine religion had likewise 
 a strong allegorical turn, which was instanced in the 
 worship of Salus, of Fortis Fortuna, and of the three 
 gods of good faith, Semo, Fidius, and Sancus, who had 
 a joint temple on the Quirinal. 
 
 From the Etruscans came the few mystical cere- 
 monies of the Roman religion, all its gloomiest supersti- 
 tions, and the whole of that most important section of it 
 which sought to predict future events in the moral world 
 by the observation of their types in physical nature. 
 Tills last branch fonned the system of the Auspices and 
 Auguries. Rome, too, like the Etnirian tov/ns, had a 
 mysterious name, Avhich could not be pronounced with- 
 out sacrilege ; and it w-as also under the especial protec- 
 tion of one guardian spirit ; but his name likewise was 
 concealed, from a fear, as it was alleged, lest the enemies 
 of the state should practise against it a ceremony used by 
 the early Romans themselves, of evoking the gods of a 
 besieged town and inviting them to migrate to the home 
 of the invaders.""'" The Etruscans also taught their neigh- 
 bours to appease the angry divinities by human sacrifices. 
 Prisoners of war were, during the first six centuries of 
 the city, repeatedly buried alive in compliance with this 
 cruel superstition ; and for ages afterwards the primi- 
 tive rite of casting living victims into the Tiber was 
 commemorated annually in May by the Vestal Virgins, 
 
 • Plinii Histor. Natur. lib. iii. cap. 5; lib. xxviii. cap. 2. 
 
328 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 who threw wicker figures into the water from the Sub- 
 lician Bridge.'" A kindred belief founded that terrible 
 self-sacrifice which was executed by the two Decii. 
 The victim, in a set form of prayer, called down on liim- 
 self the anger of the gods ; after which he plunged 
 among the enemy, and the curse which had descended- 
 on his head passed to those who slew him.t 
 
 Till the end of the fifth century of Rome, the religion 
 of the nation may be viewed as having commanded 
 general respect and belief. The faith in omens spread, 
 tUl every accident of life had its predictive meaning ; 
 and to the auguries of the Etruscans was added judicial 
 astrology, for Chaldean soothsayers are mentioned in 
 the sixth century as already common.;}: Magical rites 
 also were practised from a very early age. The people 
 believed that sorcerers could raise spirits ; and a demon 
 much dreaded, but much courted for his prophetic com- 
 munications, was Jupiter Elicius, who appeared in tem- 
 pest and lightnings, and slew TuUus Hostilius. The 
 framers of the Twelve Tables provided for the punish- 
 ment of malicious wizards, especially those who wrought 
 spells to injure the harvest, or to transport a standing 
 crop from one field to another. § But charms and 
 amulets were lawful for averting magic, and for all 
 purposes not injurious to others. Cato gravely recom- 
 mends, that for the cure of dislocated limbs certain cere- 
 monies should be used, and certain magical gibberish 
 muttered, according to forms of which he gives us three 
 separate sets : though he also prudently advises that the 
 spell be helped by the application of splints to the injured 
 member. 1 1 Talismans, to protect the wearer from the 
 
 • Ovidii Faster, lib. v., v. 621 ; Varro, lib. vi. ad vocem 
 " Argpi." 
 
 ■f Livii Histor. lib. viii. cap. 9; lib. x. cap. 28. 
 
 Z Cato De Re Rustica, cap. v. : " Villici Officia." 
 
 § Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. xxxiii. c. 2. Servius in Virgilii Eclo- 
 gam viii., v. 99. 
 
 y Cato De Re Rustica, cap. 16'0. The following is one of thn- 
 forms : " Huat haut haut ista sis tar sis ardaiinabon dunnaustra." 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 329 
 
 evil eye and other perils, were in general use throughout 
 the whole ancient period of Italian history. 
 
 During this age the state did nothing for public in- 
 struction, except sending a few patrician boys annually 
 into Etruria to learn the rites of divination. This prac- 
 tice naturally made the language of that district an aristo- 
 cratic accomplishment ; and it was so considered till the 
 Greek superseded it.* Attendance in the forum and the 
 senate, -with the instructions of parents at home, com- 
 pleted the education of the young nobles for political 
 life ; and athletic exercises, followed by an early enrol- 
 ment in the army, prepared them to act as soldiers and 
 commanders. The little learning which fell to the lot 
 of the people at large was communicated in public 
 schools, frequented by the boys and girls of all ranks, 
 and situated, in early times, as we see from the story of 
 Virginia, in the quarter of the forum where stood the 
 tradesmen's shops. 
 
 Agriculture was the business of the whole nation, 
 from which their incessant wars furnished to them such 
 a relaxation as the chase did to the barons and vassals 
 of the middle ages. Indeed, in the earliest centuries of 
 Rome, the town could scarcely be considered as the proper 
 residence of its citizens. Its constant population included 
 few besides the magistrates and other functionaries, 
 the artisans, who were far from being numerous, and 
 some of the public and private slaves : the rest of the 
 people had their dwelling-houses on the farms around 
 the walls, and entered the city only for the markets or 
 to attend meetings. But agriculture itself was long very 
 imperfect in the adjoining region. In the oldest repub- 
 lican times, the poorer citizens cultivated their narrow 
 allotments of land chiefly as kitchen-gardens ; and though 
 the small space unoccupied by esculent herbs enabled 
 the husbandman to raise a little grain, yet the quantity 
 
 * Cicero De Divinatione, lib. i. cap. 41. Valerius Maximus, 
 lib. i. cap. 1. Livii Histor. lib. ix. cap. 36. 
 
330 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 produced in the whole district scarcely ever sufficed to 
 support its inhabitants. In the first century of the 
 commonwealth, eight years of dearth and six pestilences 
 taught the Romans how precarious was their position:* 
 indeed they could not have lived but for the pillage of 
 their wars, and the contributions exacted from conquered 
 tribes. The richer citizens, however, soon joined the 
 rearing of a few cattle to the husbandry of grain and 
 herbs ; and in the fourth century, when the territory of 
 Rome had beg-un pennanently to extend itself, agricul- 
 ture rapidly improved. To its former objects it added 
 the general cultivation of the vine, the olive, a few 
 fruit-trees, and some new sorts of corn ; the flocks and 
 herds were also large and lucrative ; but the more 
 valuable plants of Italy were still subordinate to the 
 kitchen-garden, the sheep-pasture, and the corn-field ; 
 and even these, the favourite branches of rural economy, 
 continued to be managed very unskilfully. 
 
 On the early state of the mechanical arts in Middle 
 Italy, our information must be gleaned from the few 
 monuments still remaining of architecture and the other 
 liberal pursuits. We learn something, but not much, 
 from the history of the guilds of tradesmen in Rome, 
 nine of which were traditionally ancient. Eight of these 
 comprehended the goldsmiths, the bronzesmiths, the car- 
 penters, the potters, the dyers, the shoemakers, the skin- 
 ners, and the musicians ; and all the remaining classes of 
 artisans were united in a ninth. The guilds, after suf- 
 fering several checks, were formally recognised in the 
 laws of the Twelve Tables; and thenceforth they 
 flourished and increased. In the years of the city 259 
 and 816 were formed two merchant-companies, or rather 
 societies of petty shopkeepers, the guild of Mercury and 
 the Capitolme. 
 
 The commercial dealings of the native Italians w^ith 
 foreign countries were still very limited. The fleets of 
 the Carthaginians swept the Mediterranean ; and at the 
 
 * Dearths, a.u. 246, 261, 263, 313, 315, 321, 322, 344 : Pes- 
 tilences, a. u. 291, 301. 320- 321, 323, 328. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 331 
 
 beginning of the first Punic War, one of tlieii* leaders 
 declared that lie would not let the Romans so much as 
 wash their hands in the seas of Sicily. Several treaties, 
 however, had already settled terms on which the latter 
 were allowed to trade, both with Carthage itself and with 
 its settlements in Barbary and the Italian Islands. The 
 severity of the conditions evinces the weakness of the 
 new Latin state ; and the irregular laws of ancient com- 
 mercial navigation are illustrated by the uniform tenor 
 of those compacts ; for though they are all aimed against 
 piracy, yet none goes farther than to stipulate that 
 neither party shall plunder on the coasts belonging to 
 the other or its allies. 
 
 But in agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, we 
 must recollect that Southern Italy and Sicil}^ then flou- 
 rished even more than Greece. Carthage, inhabited by 
 wealthy merchants, was the best market for the Greek 
 cities, particularly for the wine and oil which were grown 
 in their neighbourhood, and for the corn of Sicily and 
 Sardinia. The latter island also, it is not improbable, 
 furnished from its mines materials to the ingenious metal- 
 workers of Barbary ; the Lipari isles sent their resin ; 
 Corsica exported its wax, its honey, and its hardy moun- 
 taineers as slaves ; and Elba not only worked its cele- 
 brated iron mines, but smelted the ore before it was 
 exported. The Carthaginian merchants, usually sailing 
 in their own vessels, frequented in crowds Syi'acuse and 
 the other Grecian harbours ; and before the end of the 
 fifth century of Rome, their wares had entered the 
 city. Captive negroes from the interior of Africa were 
 a principal branch of their exports to the Italian coasts ; 
 %vhich also received their gold, precious stones, and 
 manufactures ;* and the Romans seem moreover to 
 have purchased from them agricultural tools, with 
 other articles of smith work.t 
 
 * Heeren, Historical Researches : The African Nations (Enghsh 
 translation), vol. i. ; Carthage, chapters ii. and v. and Appendix. 
 
 + Plautus in PcBnulo, act. v, so. 2 ; in Aulularia, act. iii. so. 6, 
 V. 30. 
 
332 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 In the third century of the city, the warlike husband- 
 man of Rome had his representative in the proud patri- 
 cian Cincinnatus. Two hundred years later, the same 
 qualities were united with more honesty in the persons 
 of Fabricius and Curius Dentatus, the adversaries of 
 Pyrrhus and the Samnites ; and the national character 
 then began to undergo a change, which, before the 
 middle of the sixth century, had ended in a complete 
 disappearance of the early rudeness. But even in that 
 altered age, the primitive temper existed in all its 
 original strength, with a little of its good and very much 
 of its evil, in the person of Cato the Censor, the last of 
 the ancient Romans. This celebrated man's supersti- 
 tion has been already noticed ; but, like every other 
 feeling in his mind, it was modified by his practical, 
 shrewd, calculating temper. In his agricultural treatise 
 he gives minute directions for offerings to Silvanus to 
 secure the health of the cattle, and for propitiating the 
 woodland divinities before pruning or cutting down 
 timber-trees. But he peremptorily forbids the overseer 
 to be religious on his o^vn account ; he is to consult no 
 diviners or magicians, and to offer no sacrifices for him- 
 self except the Compitalia to the household gods, which 
 were a prerogative of the slaves.* We are initiated at 
 once into the groundwork of the old Roman character, 
 and into the details of an ancient household, when we 
 read the Censor's directions for building his country- 
 mansion, with its offices and fences, his extracts from 
 the family receipt-book, his advice to the master of the 
 establishment, his summary of the duties of a bailiff, his 
 list of places where agricultural purchases may be best 
 made, and his frequent rules of homely and even nig- 
 gardly thrift.t 
 
 If we investigate the morality of those early ages, 
 we shall discover far more to blame than to admire. Still 
 
 • Cato De Re Rustica, cap. 5, 84, 135, 140, 142; also Colu- 
 mella De Re Rustica, lib. i. cap. 8. 
 t Cato De Re Rustica, cap. 1, 2, 4, 6, 14, 15, 136, 142, 143. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 3li3 
 
 the old Roman was commonly pure in the bosom of his 
 family ; and the domestic virtues offer us some beauti- 
 ful pictures from the first republican times. Severe 
 laws limited the freedom of the female sex, and con- 
 stituted the head of a family the judge and king of his 
 own house, with the power of life and death over his off- 
 spring and even his wife. But the feelings and habits 
 of the nation disarmed those legislative enactments : the 
 Roman father was his children's patron and friend ; 
 the Roman matron, living openly in the midst of her 
 family, and mixing freely with their associates, was 
 the companion and adviser of her husband and her chil- 
 dren. The laws made divorce easy; and yet there was 
 no recorded case of their application till the year of the 
 city 520.* But even of the vices of later times we see, 
 towards the end of this period, some alarming indica- 
 tions, accompanied by circumstances characteristic of the 
 proud and fierce temper of the republican state. Poison- 
 ing appeared for the first time in 422, while the self- 
 devoting patriotism of the Samnite war was at its height. 
 One hundred and seventy women of rank in the city 
 were apprehended on a charge of having conspired to 
 destroy the males of their families, several of whom had 
 died suddenly. Twenty of the females, accused as the 
 prompters of the crime, consulted together, and ofi^ered 
 to prove their innocence, by drinking the medicaments 
 said to be poisoned : they swallowed the draught, and 
 expired in convulsions ; the rest, being condemned, were 
 executed within the walls of the prison. t 
 
 The public virtue of the Romans, vaunted by their 
 own historians and applauded by modern writers, was too 
 often nothing better than the spirit of pride, faction, 
 and ambition. The conduct of Cincinnatus and that of 
 Camillus are two pregnant examples ; and deeds of pa- 
 triotism, pure from this taint, are very rare in the early 
 history of the commonwealth. It is still more difficult to 
 
 * Auli Gellii Noct. Attic, lib. iv. cap. 3. 
 ■f Livii Histor. lib. via. cap. 18. 
 
334 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 discover an act or a character which exhibits generosity, 
 or even common equity, in the connexion of the Ro- 
 mans with the neighbouring Italian tribes. The policy 
 of the state, unsparingly put in force by its soldiers, 
 did indeed derive some excuse from the savage rules 
 common in all ancient wars ; but it was still sufPxiently 
 shocking, and often dishonest, even in comparison with 
 the conduct of contemporary nations. Their cruelty 
 was glaringly exhibited in the celebrated processions of 
 triumph. Besides the plunder of the conquered enemy, 
 there were exhibited the prisoners of vrar, men, women, 
 and children, led through the streets in chains, insulted 
 and misused. When the train reached the forum, it 
 stood still ; on which the victorious general from his 
 chariot ordered the chief captives to be led into the 
 adjoining Mamertine prison and despatched : and the pro- 
 cession then climbed the Capitoline Hill, but paused 
 again on its brow till the executioners reported that 
 their victims were dead.* Pontius, the brave and 
 generous captain of the Samnites, died thus by the 
 headsman's axe in the year 462, after having feasted 
 the eyes of the savage multitude. This horrible bar- 
 barity seems to have arisen out of the unjust and inso- 
 lent maxim of the Romans, that all their Italian adver- 
 saries were to be considered as subjects in rebellion. 
 The rule, however, of executing at least the com- 
 mander of the enemy, subsisted long after the wars of 
 the nation were carried on in foreign countries ; and, 
 till the time of Pompey, the populace marvelled, if 
 they did not murmur, at the forbearance of a general 
 who spared all his prisoners. Those who were not 
 executed became slaves, they and their children, to the 
 last generation. In the earlier centuries, indeed, the 
 enslaved captives were treated more kindly than in later 
 times ; for the Roman citizens were then less haughtily 
 reserved, and less pampered by luxuries ; the prisoners 
 
 • Onuphrius Panvinius De Triumpho, cap. 1 : ap. Graevium, 
 Thes. Antiq. Rom. torn. ix. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 335 
 
 were Italians like themselves, and were not yet so nu- 
 merous as to he feared. But the precarious situation 
 of the slaves is proved hy a single sentence in Cato's 
 treatise. Sell, says the hard-hearted Censor, sell for 
 what they will hring, old oxen, diseased sheep, worn- 
 out ploughs and iron tools, aged or sickly slaves, and all 
 such useless lumher.* 
 
 Nothing can aid us hetter in forming an image of 
 early Roman manners, than those miscellaneous pictures 
 which are presented in some scenes of Plautus, and which, 
 though they were painted from life in the sixth century 
 of the city, are more nearl}^ akin to the age preceding 
 their own date than to that which followed it. The old 
 dramatist gives us satirical descriptions of the haunts 
 frequented in Rome by the usurers, the victuallers, 
 the diviners, and the other ministers of growing luxury ; 
 he jests dryly on the combinations of the provision- 
 traders, and the roguery of the bankers ; he describes 
 the fishmongers carrying about stale fish on lame 
 asses, butchers as selling ewes' flesh for lambs', and 
 bakers as creating a nuisance by the herds of swine in 
 their back-courts ; he presents to us the hired slave- 
 cooks and music-girls, with the v/hole other apparatus 
 which an entertainment called into action ; he gives a 
 comically-caricatured list of the artists who even in his 
 time were laid under contribution to set forth a Roman 
 lady's wardrobe ; he relates the police regulations of 
 the streets and of the theatres ; and he delineates a most 
 lively picture of the merry side of life in slavery, with 
 some touches of its sadder colours, and continual exem- 
 plifications of its demoralizing consequences.t 
 
 * Cato De Re Rustica, cap. 2. 
 
 •}• Plautus in Curculione, act. iii. so. 1, act. iv. sc. 1 ; inTrucu- 
 lento, act. i. sc. 1 ; in Capteivis, act. iii, sc. 1, act. iv. sc. 1 ; in 
 Aulularia, act. ii. sc. 4-9, act. iii. sc. 1, 5 ; in Amphitryone, 
 Prologo, act. i. sc. 1 ; in Poenulo, Prologo ; in Persa, passim ; in 
 Trinummo, act. iv. sc. 3 ; in Bacchidibus, passim. 
 
336 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 THE SECOND PERIOD: 
 
 A.u. 500—933, OR B.C. 254_A.D. 180. 
 
 As this second period of Roman character and society 
 embraces the leading events recorded in the political 
 annals, it will furnish a convenient opportunity for 
 describing in detail the most remarkable of the national 
 habits and customs. 
 
 Religion. 
 
 The religion of Rome, which resembled all other 
 pagan creeds in relying on a series of gross frauds, 
 went farther than any of them in the boldness of its 
 interference with active life. Tliis policy for a time 
 strengthened the system by nourishing general super- 
 stition ; but, as speculation gi-adually went abroad, the 
 very same cause began to produce the opposite effect. 
 The people became indifferent, not only through fami- 
 liarity, but through suspicion of deceit and imposture ; 
 the educated men treated with contempt, or with posi- 
 tive hostility, a mummery which, as statesmen, they 
 liad taken a share in inventing ; and long before the fall 
 of the republic, faith in the national creed w^as extinct 
 among the higher ranks. We cannot more fairly esti- 
 mate the tone of religious feeling in the last age of the 
 commonwealth than from the wavering and temporiz- 
 ing mind of Cicero ; and no better example can be 
 selected from his works than the contradiction between 
 that opinion as to the auspices and auguries Avhich, 
 talking as a politician, he gTavely expresses in his trea- 
 tise on Laws, and that which, throwing aside views of 
 expediency, he ventures to propound in his philosophical 
 work on Divination. 
 
 The temples still abounded in miracles, which the 
 men of letters regarded with as little respect as the 
 rites of the diviners. A Falerian family, called the 
 Hirpi, walked barefoot over burning coals at the an- 
 nual sacrifice on Mount Soracte : Varro flatly asserted 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 337 
 
 that they previously anointed their feet.* At Egnatia, 
 in Apulia, the fire on an altar lighted itself ; and on 
 that of the Lacinian Juno, standing in the open air, the 
 ashes lay unmoved by the highest winds. Horace is 
 outrageous in his mirth at the expense of the self- 
 igniting flame ; and both of it and the Lacinian miracle 
 Pliny quietly says, that the phenomena seem to be facts, 
 but are to be accounted for by causes purely natural.t 
 Even in the republic, and still more decidedly under 
 the empire, the old traditions and their rites fell into 
 utter neglect, unless they happened to be susceptible of 
 practical and political application. An interesting in- 
 stance is furnished by Juvenal's lamentation over the 
 desecrated Fount of Egeria.:}; Chapels and artificial 
 grottos had been built in the wood and the sacred 
 valley ; but the altars were deserted and broken, and 
 the unfurnished buildings were inhabited by a few 
 starving Jews, the gipsies of imperial Rome, who slept 
 upon hay- trusses spread on the ground. 
 
 But neither instructed men nor the multitude could 
 bear to want religion. The former took refuge in the 
 metaphysical theologies of the Greek philosophers ; the 
 latter indemnified themselves for the absence of a com- 
 mon and stable faith by a thousand superstitions of 
 their own, in many of which the better-informed class 
 did not disdain to join them. The omens multiplied 
 incredibly ; and no historian, either of the republic of of 
 the empire, neglects to devote entire chapters to them ; 
 for while Livy's credulity is notorious, Tacitus is as 
 minute in his details of marvels as Suetonius or the 
 compilers of the Augustan History. Foreign rites, like- 
 wise, akin to those of the national religion, repeatedly in- 
 truded. The earliest remarkable instance, in the year of 
 the city 567, was the horrible story of the Bacchanalian 
 Mysteries, whose infamous debaucheries were promptly 
 
 ' Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. vii. cap. 2. Servius in Virgilii -^neid. 
 ib. xi. V. 785. 
 t Horat. lib. i. sat. v. v. 97 : Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. ii. cap. 107. 
 :J: Juvenalis Satir. iii. v. 11-20. 
 VOL. I. X 
 
338 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 expelled ; but in the imperial times the Egyptian Isis 
 had her permanent temples beside those of Bellona and 
 Cybcle ; and these three sets of fanes, frequented by 
 females of rank, were the scenes of gross depravity.* 
 Oriental astrologers and interpreters of dreams were to 
 be found every where ; and under the emperors the 
 latter trade was chiefly exercised in the apartments of 
 the Roman ladies by poor Jewish women.t When a 
 star shot from the sky, the populace believed that at 
 that moment the person expired, on whose birth the 
 bright orb had taken its place in the heavens.;}; The 
 emperor Tiberius, who was skilled in astrology, watched 
 the stars from the cliffs of his island of Capreae ; and 
 Nero was a yet more ardent student of supernatural 
 secrets. An eastern wizard initiated him in the banquets 
 of the Magi ; and, when an evil conscience had raised 
 the ghost of his murdered mother, his sorcerers strove 
 in vain, by mysterious rites, to banish the angry shade.§ 
 The power of magicians to raise the dead was long 
 doubted or denied by the learned ; and the elder Pliny 
 mentions with merriment that he had seen the Greek 
 Apion. This man had discovered the marvellous root 
 osy rites (perhaps the mandrake of the middle ages), which 
 was a preservative against poisons, but cost life to him 
 who pulled it ; and he had evoked the shade of Homer, 
 to question him as to the place of his birth, but professed 
 that he durst not repeat the answer which the spirit 
 had given. 1 1 On the other hand, it was never doubted 
 that ghosts vv^ere wont to rise of their own accord. 
 The same writer avows his belief of such occur- 
 rences, after relating gravely, as an incident really super- 
 natural, a palpable trick played by Sextus Pompeius 
 in his campaign against Julius Caesar ; and Pliny's 
 
 • Livii Hist. lib. xxxix. cap. 8, &c. Juvenalis Sat. vi. v. 510, &c. 
 -j- Juvenalis Satir. vi. v. 545. 
 X Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. ii. cap. 8. 
 
 § Taciti Annal. lib. vi, cap. 21. Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. xxx. cap.2. 
 Suetonius in Nerone, cap. 34. 
 
 11 Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. xxx. cap. 2. 
 
or THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 339 
 
 nephew is still more unequivocal In the confession of 
 faith -wliich he makes in telling several stories of 
 apparitions, one of which happened to a freedman of his 
 own, and is the most foolish of the series.* One of his 
 legends, the well-told adventure of Athenodorus at 
 Athens, with its haunted house advertised, its mur- 
 dered man buried in the court, and its chains clanking 
 at midnight, is in every particular a ghost-story suited 
 to modern times ; and, indeed, it is little more than an 
 amplification of the lying tale invented by the roguish 
 slave Tranio in Plautus, in which we detect the original 
 of Ben Jonson's Alchemist.t 
 
 Even before Augustus, witchcraft in Rome had be- 
 come, in some of its most gloomy features, very like what 
 it was in the middle ages. Love-charms and philtres 
 were dangerously common ; and a draught of this kind 
 is said to have driven Caligula mad.;}: For destroy- 
 ing an enemy, a waxen figure was exposed to a slow 
 fire, with ceremonies closely resemblmg those which 
 were practised for the same end a thousand years later. 
 Vu'gil's description of the love-spells, mdeed, is too 
 poetical, and too Grecian ; but Horace has some pic- 
 tures which, though highly coloured, are evidently 
 sketched from the life.§ His witches are described as 
 burying an unhappy boy to the neck in the court-yard 
 of their house, that he might die of hunger, and his 
 heart be infused in a love-potion ; and in another scene 
 we behold them practising the charm for killing an 
 enemy. An extensive area on the outer declivity of the 
 Esquiline Mount, not far from the place now covered 
 by the ruins of the Baths of Titus, was, in the republi- 
 can times, a burying-ground for slaves and executed 
 criminals ; and some tombs of a higher class lay also in 
 the same quarter of the hUL Maecenas, it is true, had 
 
 • Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. vii. cap. 52. Plinii, lib. vii. ep. 27. 
 -f- Plauti Wostellariae, actus ii. scena 2. 
 J Suetonius in Caligula, cap. 60. 
 
 § Virgilii Eclog. viii. sub finem. Horatii Epodon od. 5, 17, 
 18 ; lib. i. satir. viii. 
 
340 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 enclosed the whole within his splendid gardens ; but the 
 hags, accustomed to collect there the hones of the dead 
 and the magic herbs, are represented as still resorting 
 to the spot. The moon goes down behind the sepulchres 
 while they dig a ditch, kill a black lamb in it, chant 
 shrill and melancholy spells to raise the ghosts, and 
 light a fire before which the waxen image of their 
 victim melts away. 
 
 Morality. 
 
 A correct estimate of the state of morality in this 
 long period could not be made, without a detail of 
 particulars far too numerous for these pages. A very 
 few facts must suffice to preface those incidental illus- 
 trations, which will present themselves as we rapidly 
 review the state of public instruction and general read- 
 ing, the divisions of society, the nature of the public 
 spectacles, and the system of rural economy, manufac- 
 tures, and foreign trade. 
 
 The two centuries of the republic which still remain 
 to be considered, display a quick progress towards the 
 immorality of the empire ; and indeed, though vice 
 was never in the free state so monstrously triumphant 
 as under the bad emperors, yet before the accession of 
 Augustus scenes of equal guilt were acted on a smaller 
 stage. The purity of private life was all but extinct in 
 the last days of the commonwealth ; and the few re- 
 corded instances of domestic virtue soon became excep- 
 tions amidst a prevailing dissoluteness, to which the most 
 depraved society in Christian times has been immeasur- 
 ably superior. But while licentiousness thus increased, 
 cruelty waxed strong likewise. The depravation of 
 Roman morals has been said to have been caused, or 
 at least most fatally accelerated, by two powerful 
 agents. One was the profligate example of the court in 
 most ages of the empire, which diffused through the 
 whole body of the state those vices that previously had 
 been chiefly confined to the wealthier classes : the 
 second was the barbarous nature of the favourite spec- 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 341 
 
 tacles, which familiarized the people to blood long be- 
 fore the fall of the republic. But it must be emphati- 
 cally added, that domestic slavery had a stronger demo- 
 ralizing tendency than either, and united the bad effects 
 of both. 
 
 If we examine the character of the great statesmen 
 of the republic in their relation to the commonwealth, 
 we shall discover, in undecayed strength, the old spirit 
 of proud factiousness. It was this very temper that 
 trained a mind like that of Julius Csesar, in so many 
 points noble and generous, to enslave his country 
 without remorse or hesitation ; because he had learned 
 to consider the state, and saw every other leader ready 
 to consider it, as justly the property of any man or any 
 faction possessing power and courage enough to seize 
 it. It was the same temper that baffled the plans of 
 Augustus for founding an hereditary empire, and made 
 Rome under his successors an elective despotism in the 
 hands of the soldiery. This cast of mind had in it a 
 kind of irregular grandeur, which is apt to dazzle the 
 imagination, — an appearance that deceives many of us 
 in those last acts of the great Scipio Africanus, which 
 truly sprang from the evil principle in its most active 
 operation. When Scipio was charged (no doubt 
 falsely) with having embezzled the public money in the 
 war with Antiochus, the tribunes asked him in the 
 senate whether he possessed accounts to vouch his 
 transactions. He replied that he did, held up a scroll 
 which, he said, contained the information they wanted, 
 and tore it to pieces before their eyes. Afterwards, on 
 his impeachment, when he rose to answer his accusers, 
 he reminded the people that the day was the anniver- 
 sary of the battle of Zama ; and, without adding a 
 word as to the charge against him, summoned them to 
 accompany him, and thank the gods in the Capitol. 
 
 The bad spirit which dictated this scornful resistance 
 to the laws, and which, in the end, ruined the com- 
 monwealth, was in Scipio palliated by many admirable 
 
342 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 qualities, and by more and loftier talents and virtues in 
 some other men who did honour to the period of the 
 civil wars. That age cannot be too minutely studied ; 
 and the spectacle which it offers of high intellect and 
 cultivation, united with ability in action and courage 
 in the midst of danger, is one to which no other era in 
 the history of the world has presented a parallel. 
 
 In passing to the character of the imperial times, we 
 must unfortunately dismiss in haste, as rare exceptions, 
 such men as Thrasea Psetus and Agricola ; with such 
 females as the elder Agrippina and Arria the elder and 
 younger. For the aspect of the times in general, it 
 may be enough to take one isolated feature fi'om each 
 of the three great sections of national life, — the court, 
 the senate-house, and the haunts of the people. 
 
 The reign of crime in the imperial palaces during the 
 worst times, was a fearfully exaggerated prototype of 
 those horrors which stained the petty courts of Italy in 
 the later of the middle ages. The Roman series of execu- 
 tions and confiscations, indeed, prompted solely by sus- 
 picion or avarice, has had no equal since its own days ; 
 but there have been repeated likenesses of the imperial 
 mixture of lewdness, cruelty, unbridled passions, and 
 extravagance of refinement. There was much of a mo- 
 dern taste in Nero's favourite amusement of scouring 
 the streets by night, insulting every one he met, and 
 sometimes returning to his palace soundly beaten ; a 
 recreation emulated successively by the emperors Otho, 
 Commodus, and Heliogabalus. But we can conceive 
 ourselves studying the history of the Sforza or the 
 ducal Medici, when we turn to the darker pages of 
 Nero's annals ; — when we see him in his closet with 
 the hag Locusta, trying experiments upon poisons ; 
 when he enters the banqueting-hall, and in the midst 
 of his court sees his victim Britannicus drink the po- 
 tion, and fall on the floor in convulsions ; when we 
 watch the speechless horror of the spectators, and be- 
 hold among them the unfortunate Octavia, the sister of 
 the murdered man and the wife of the murderer ; and 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 343 
 
 when, in the same night, amidst darkness, rain, and 
 tempest, we follow the corpse to the Campus Martins, 
 and see it thrust into its nameless grave.'^ 
 
 The general reputation of the imperial senate may be 
 gathered from two sources ; from the younger Pliny's 
 contemptuous description of their monument on the 
 Tiburtine road in honour of Pallas, the freedman of 
 Claudius, with their act in honour of the same worth- 
 less favourite ; and from the bitter but well-merited 
 satire of Juvenal, in which he represents the Fathers of 
 Rome as called together by Domitian to deliberate on 
 the best way of dressing a turbot.t One other example, 
 a simply told fact, will teach us how far official subser- 
 viency could carry the degradation of personal character. 
 While Tiberius was on the throne, Titius Sabinus, an 
 associate of the murdered Germanicus, was enticed by 
 one of his own friends to enter his house, and there 
 express his indignation against the tyrant. Three sena- 
 tors, hidden between the ceiling of the chamber and the 
 roof of the mansion, were allowed to overhear the con- 
 versation ; and, as soon as Titius had quitted the place, 
 the four traitors concocted a memorial to the emperor, 
 in which they set forth the seditious words they had 
 heard spoken, and boastingly related the infamous mean- 
 ness by which they had purchased their knowledge.;]: 
 
 The populace we shall better understand when we 
 come to examine the public amusements, for these wera 
 their sole occupation. If they received their allow- 
 ance of food and had the circus and amphitheatres 
 opened to them, they were contented and most loyal sub- 
 jects : for these reasons they did not hate the bad empe- 
 rors ; on the contrary, they usually liked them better 
 than the good ones. Most of those extravagant and pro- 
 fligate despots scattered their treasures freely among 
 the mob, while their cruelty exliausted itself on the rich 
 
 ' Taciti Annal. lib. xiii. cap. 15, 16, 17. 
 •j- Plinii lib. vii. epist. 29 ; lib. viii. epist. 4. Jiivenalis Sa- 
 tira iv. 
 
 X Taciti Annal. lib. iv. cap. 69. 
 
344 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 and noble. These the emperors might always destroy 
 with impunity ; but it was not so safe to attempt exe- 
 cuting any member of their own household ; it was still 
 less safe to provoke the imperial guard ; and, pampered 
 and wretched as the Roman populace were, an attack 
 on them would have been the most hazardous adventure 
 of any. Nero, with his mad jollity, his shameless ex- 
 hibitions of himself, and the unequalled splendour of 
 his spectacles, was the idol of the rabble, who long 
 hung garlands on his tomb upon the Pincian Mount ; 
 believing for many years that he was still alive, and 
 would return to punish his enemies and restore the 
 regretted days of license.''^ 
 
 In the year of grace 69, the troops of Vespasian 
 storijied Rome, which was held by Vitellius. The two 
 parties fought in three divisions ; in the Gardens of 
 Sallust, among the streets of the Campus Martins, and 
 at the rampart of the Praetorian Barrack. At all these 
 points the populace of the city swarmed out and looked 
 on, cheering the combatants as they would have done 
 in the amphitheatre ; the wine-shops and other scenes 
 of guilt stood open in the middle of the fight ; the 
 people resorted to them to spend the money which 
 they plundered from the dying and the dead ; and, 
 when the battle was over, they hurried to the Aven- 
 tinc to see the capture of Vitellius, their late favourite, 
 followed him w^hile he was dragged, with his hands 
 bound, across the Forum to the Gemonian Stairs, and 
 shouted as they beheld the soldiers kill him.t 
 
 These were scenes too common to be punished as 
 offences ; but in Rome, and throughout Italy, there 
 were outrages in abundance which the imperial police 
 durst not overlook. As examples, we may select 
 crimes which seem to have together formed a profession 
 practised by numerous bands of miscreants ; kidnap- 
 ping, highway-robbery, and housebreaking. The first 
 
 • Suetonius in Nerone, cap. 67. Taciti Histor. lib. ii. cap. 8. 
 f Taciti Historiar. lib. iii. cap. 72, 73, 74, 75. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 345 
 
 of these offences is mentioned in the last ages of tlie 
 republic as committed on travellers ; it again occui-s 
 repeatedly under the emperors ; Hadrian attempted to 
 stop it by an ordinance for shutting up the private slave- 
 prisons, in some of which the robbers contrived to conceal 
 their captives ; but the private dungeons and the crime 
 lasted as long as the empire.* The vict^s appear to have 
 been sometimes detained for years at hard laljour ; but the 
 frequency of the outrage can scarcely be accounted for, 
 unless we believe that the banditti held their prisoners 
 to ransom, like the modern Italian robbers. One of the 
 most noted haunts of the ancient highwaymen was the 
 Pontine Marshes, which lay conveniently near the high- 
 road from Naples to Rome ; and another, not less in- 
 fested, was the Gallinarian Wood, which stretched north- 
 ward from Cumts, and, by its situation, enabled the 
 bandits to sally out on those persons of rank who spent 
 the summer months on the coast of Campania. When 
 the military police scoured those forests, and guarded 
 their outlets, they produced by their vigilance another 
 and worse evil ; for the villains then fled to Rome, hid 
 themselves amidst the labyrinth of the overgrown city 
 (as modern thieves find themselves safest in Paris or 
 London), and committed daring robberies by night on 
 the persons and dwelling-houses of the citizens.t 
 
 We may drop, in the mean time, our inquiry into 
 the morality and happiness of imperial Rome, after we 
 have peiTised two sepulchral inscriptions, both of which 
 are still preserved in the city. 
 
 The first was found in 1797, on the hills of Decima, 
 north-east from Ostia.;}; It tells its own tale of heartless, 
 thoughtless, and un])lushing selfishness. " I who speak 
 from this marble tomb was born at Tralles, in Asia. Often 
 did I repair to Baiae, to enjoy its tepid baths and wander 
 
 • Suetonius in Augusto, cap. 32, with the notes of Casaubon 
 and Gruter. Suetonius in Tiberio, cap. 8. iElius Spartianus in 
 Hudriano, cap, 18, with the notes of Salmasius. 
 
 t Juvenalis Satir. iii. v. 302-314. 
 
 J Westpbal's Romische Kampagne, p. 6. 
 
346 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 in its delightful neighbourhood by the sea. My heir, 
 ihindful of this my honourable life, and of my last re- 
 quest, employed a part of my Avealth in erecting this 
 receptacle for the bones of me and my descendants, 
 this temple sacred to our shades. But thou who readest 
 these lines, of thee I request only that thou wouldst 
 breathe this prayer for me : * May the earth lie lightly 
 on thee, Socrates, son of Astomachus.' " 
 
 The second inscription is taken from a square marble 
 cippus, which stands in the court of the Palace of the 
 Conservators, in the Roman Capitol.* " The bones of 
 Agrippina, daughter of Marcus Agrippa, granddaughter 
 of the divine Augustus, wife of Gemianicus Caesar, 
 mother of the august prince Caius Caesar Germanicus." 
 The high-spirited and virtuous woman whose name this 
 epitaph records, was a strange instance of the caprice 
 of destin3^ Her grandfather w^as the first emperor ; 
 her father was one of the most honest and enterprising 
 public men of his time ; her husband, a brave and 
 generous soldier, was poisoned by his jealous uncle 
 Tiberius ; the same tjTant murdered her children, all 
 except two, and banished herself to the Isle Panda- 
 taria, now Pantellaria, where, broken-hearted and soli- 
 tary, she starved herself to death. Her two surviving 
 children achieved an immortality of disgrace. The 
 daughter bore her name, and became the licentious 
 and wretched mother of Nero. The son, ascending the 
 throne, erected this stone and other memorials to his 
 mother's memory ; but, under his nickname of Caligula, 
 he is perhaps the most infamous of all the Roman 
 princes. 
 
 Intellectual Cultivation. 
 
 The public schools, which have been already described 
 as of very ancient date in Rome, continued to exist 
 throughout the period of the empire. There were taught 
 
 * The original Latin is in Gruter's Corpus Inscriptionum, torn. i. 
 p. 237. No. 4. 
 
OP THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 347 
 
 in them, however, only reading and writing, with a little 
 arithmetic. They were frequented by all the children 
 of the higher ranks, except those of the few families that 
 preferred an education strictly private, and it is likely 
 that they were also attended by a few children from the 
 lower orders. Of the actual amount of the information 
 convej^ed in them, or possessed by the people at large, it 
 is impossible positively to judge ; but it appears to be a 
 fair inference from many scattered hints and facts, that 
 reading at least was, in the later days of the republic and 
 the earlier ages of the empire, no rare accomplishment. 
 Many of the slaves, mdeed, educated at home for the 
 service of their owners, possessed much more than this. 
 Columella, in enumerating the qualifications of a slavc- 
 bailifF on a country estate, is disposed to prefer an illi- 
 terate one, as being least able to cheat his master ; but 
 Varro insists on his bailiff being able to read, write, 
 and keep the accounts of the establishment.* With 
 these branches of knowledge, then, at the utmost, the 
 instruction of the common peoj^le assuredly stopped, and 
 for them literary study in any shape was altogether 
 impracticable. 
 
 The children of the higher classes passed through 
 several subsequent courses of learning, all of which, how- 
 ever, were not matured till the imperial times. First 
 came a series of reading with a Grammarian, or one who 
 gave lessons in the elements of literature. These men 
 originally occupied themselves chiefly in teaching Greek, 
 but afterwards that language and its writmgs were in- 
 trusted to one tutor, and the Latin tongue was given to 
 another. Some rich individuals bought learned slaves, or 
 hired free teachers, exclusively for their own families ; 
 and it was thus that Augustus engaged Verrius Flaccus 
 to live in his house on the Palatine, devoting his whole 
 time to Caius and Lucius, the emperor's nephews ; but 
 Orbilius, Horace's severe schoolmaster, was less fortu- 
 
 • Columella De Re Rustica, lib. i. cap. 8. Vorro De Re Rus- 
 tioa, lib. ii. cap. 10. 
 
348 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 nate, and in one of his writings jested on his residence 
 in a garret.* These teachers of grammar and literature 
 were generally at first native Greeks, though sometimes 
 Italiots or Sicilians. The Rhetoricians, or professors of 
 oratory, who appeared an age later than the grammarians, 
 and were at first treated with alternate suspicion and ridi- 
 cule, were also foreigners, and continued longer than the 
 others to be selected from that class. Those Greeks who 
 attempted to introduce then- philosophy at Rome, met 
 with yet stronger opposition, not being able to establish 
 themselves permanently till towards the last age of the 
 republic.t Nevertheless, from the time of Augustus 
 rhetoric and philosophy were among the most promis- 
 ing paths to honour and wealth ; and amidst many pre- 
 tenders to illumination and much false science, there 
 was knowledge sufficient to make the class highly re- 
 spectable. Among the teachers of rhetoric it may be 
 enough to mention Quinctilian ; although, if we are to 
 include Greeks who taught in the metropolis, we shall 
 be entitled to add Hermogenes in Hadrian's reign, with 
 many others of less note afterwards. 
 
 No instructor of any kind received public endowment 
 till the time of Vespasian. That emperor conferred sala- 
 ries on a few Greeks and Italians, who gave instructions 
 in literature and eloquence. Soon after his reign it be- 
 came not uncommon for municipal corporations to settle 
 allowances on public tutors ; and the younger Pliny, 
 ■vNTiting to Tacitus, describes a school he had been able 
 to establish in his native town of Como, by promising for 
 its support one-third in addition to whatever sum the in- 
 habitants should raise among themselves. Hadrian and 
 other emperors extended the scheme of endowment ; and 
 Antoninus Pius introduced every where into the prin- 
 cipal towns, both in Italy and the provinces, seminaries 
 where all the higher branches of education were taught 
 
 * Suetonius De lUustribus Grammaticis, cap, 9, 17. Horatii 
 lib, ii. epist. i. v. 70, 
 
 ■f Plauti Curcul, act, ii, sc. 2. Capteiv. act. ii. so, 2. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 349 
 
 by salaried professors.* His successor founded a splendid 
 philosophical academy at Athens ; and that establish- 
 ment, the medical school of Alexandria, and the literary 
 academies at Autun and other places in Gaul, were the 
 most celebrated of the time. Rome continued to maintain 
 its place as the great school of law ; but its teachers were 
 still the practising jurisconsults, who, holding no open 
 prelections, merely admitted pupils to their consultations 
 and studies at home. Attendance on these lawyers and 
 in the courts, with travels in Greece, were considered, 
 from the time of Augustus to that of Marcus Aurelius, 
 as completing the education of a young man of senato- 
 rial birth. Mathematics and natural science were almost 
 universally neglected, and no teacher of these branches 
 ever received a public salary. 
 
 While the rich accumulated considerable libraries, of 
 which Cicero's is one of the earliest examples, the poorer 
 men of letters had access to public collections in Rome, 
 said to have at length amounted to twenty-nine.t The 
 oldest of the latter class was the celebrated one which 
 belonged to Aristion, the prince of Athens, captured by 
 Sylla, and placed by him in the Capitol ; the next was 
 that of Lucullus, in his beautiful gardens on the Pincian 
 Mount, overlooking the Campus Martins, where its hall 
 became the favourite resort of the Greek scholars ; and 
 in the Augustan age was founded the library of Asinius 
 Pollio, which he formally presented to the Roman people. 
 But these, as well as the later establishment which 
 Vespasian attached to his Temple of Peace, and those 
 less choice collections which were usually placed in the 
 public Thermae, were eclipsed by the two magnificent 
 foundations of Augustus and Trajan. The former con- 
 sisted of two departments, — a Greek and a Latin, — and 
 was arranged in halls annexed to the Temple of Apollo, 
 
 • Suetonius in Vespasiano, cap. 18. Plinii lib, iv. ep. 13. 
 Capitolinus in Antonino, cap. 1 1 . 
 
 ■f Publius Victor, De Regionibus Urbis : ap. Graevium, torn, iii, 
 p. 49. 
 
350 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 which again was connected with the emperor's mansion 
 on the Palatine. The second, the Ulpian Library, was 
 deposited in the Temple of Trajan in his forum, from 
 which, however, Diocletian removed it to adorn his 
 baths. Its halls became, after the Tabularium, the chief 
 receptacle of the national records and archives. 
 
 Under the republic, books could be procured only by 
 purchase from abroad or by employing private copyists ; 
 but bookshops, appearing for the first time in the reign 
 of Augustus, soon became common in the city, and in a 
 century and a half were to be found, though certainly not 
 numerous, in several provincial towns.* The younger 
 Pliny mentions the public sale of his works at Lyons, 
 and Gellius relates, with all the delight of a modem bib- 
 lio-maniac, his discovery of some rare Greek manuscripts 
 on a stall at Brundusium.t We read of a book-shop 
 at Rome, in the Argiletum, near the Juhan forum ; of 
 one beside the Temple of Peace ; of several in the Sigil- 
 laria ; and of another unknown street, the Vicus Sanda- 
 liarius, which was full of them. Some of the metropolitan 
 booksellers, like Quinctilian's publisher Tryplion, kept 
 copyists and illuminators in constant employment ; and 
 they covered the columns or posts of their doors with 
 the titles of the volumes they had for sale.;}: In the 
 Augustan age, and much later, authors did not usually 
 derive any direct profit from their works; and poor poets, 
 a class in which the epigrammatist Martial is a curious 
 example, made dedications and flattery a regular and 
 degrading trade. The earliest notice of literary property 
 which we discover in Italy is contained in a comedy of 
 Plautus, one of whose buffoons proposes to bequeath his 
 jest-book as a portion to his daughter. But in the last 
 age of the republic the grammarian Pompilius Androni- 
 
 * See Schuftgen De Librariis et Bibliopolis : in Thesauro 
 Poleni, torn. iii. 
 
 -|- Plinii lib. ix. epist. 11. Gellii Noct. Attic, lib. ix. cap. 4. 
 
 X Martialis lib. i. epig. 2, 4, 118. Gellii Noct. Attic, lib.' v. 
 cap. 4. Galenus De Libris Propriis, in Prooem. Horatius De 
 Arte Poetica, v. 372; lib. i. satir. iv. v. 72. Quinctiliani Institut. 
 Orator., Praefat. ad Tryphonem. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 351 
 
 cus contrived to save himself from starving by disposin ; 
 of a manuscript ; and such sales became more common 
 after the time of the elder Pliny, wlio was offered in 
 Spain a large sum for his encyclopaedia.* 
 
 The Romans, though we are apt to overlook the fact, 
 had registers of politics and intelligence, vs^hich were 
 really not unlike our own newspapers in their contents, 
 but immeasurably inferior in the mode of circulation.+ 
 
 The journals of the Senate and National Conventions 
 long contained little more than entries resembling those 
 in our collected acts of parliament. These furnished 
 most of the materials from which, till 625, the pontiffs 
 compiled their annals ; and there is also proof that, after 
 the republic had extended its dominions, those official 
 journals were regularly copied and transmitted to public 
 men living at a distance,;}: But these sources were not 
 enough. Every man abroad had his correspondents in 
 Rome ; and when the task of collecting news became more 
 difficult, several persons assumed newsmonging as a trade, 
 taking in shorthand notes of the proceedings at public 
 meetings, and selling copies of them, as well as of the 
 common gossip of the day, and the official journals. 
 Julius Caesar, in 694, established a regular system for 
 recordmg the deliberations, both of the senate and the 
 conventions, in a form much like our reports of parlia- 
 mentary debates ; and he allowed these accounts to be 
 copied and freely circulated. Although Augustus stop- 
 ped the publication of the reports,§ the restraint was 
 soon afterwards withdrawn ; and ever after their intro- 
 duction by Julius, these and all other archives of the 
 
 * Plautus in Persa, act. iii, scon. 2. v. 60-68. Suetonius De 
 Ulustribus Graminaticis, cap. 8- Plinii lib. iii. epist. 5. 
 
 ■Y Consult Dothvell, Praelcctiones Camdenianae (Oxon. 1692) : 
 Praelect. xi. et Appendicis Prsefat. — Eschenbach De Scribis Ve- 
 terum, ap. Polenum, torn. iii. — Ersch und Gruber, Encyclopadie, 
 ad vocem " Acta."— Ze!l in tbe IMorgenblatt, June 1835. 
 
 4: Cicero De Oratore, lib. ii. cap. 2; Ad Familiare?, lib. i. 
 epist. 2. (a. v. 697). See al-o Cicero's Letters cited afterwards. 
 
 § Suetonius in Julio, cap. 20 ; in Augusto, cap. 36. 
 
352 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 state were so unreservedly open to the public, and their 
 contents were diffused in so many shapes, that we are 
 often uncertain whether the sources to which the Roman 
 authors refer are these official reports, or the notes of 
 professional shorthand writers, or, finally, those collec- 
 tions of common news that were handed about with the 
 other pieces of information. 
 
 But we are less curious to disentangle this confusion, 
 than to learn some of the subjects which were discussed 
 in the news-journals. The accounts of the political de- 
 bates embraced the acts and resolutions, the rescripts of 
 the emperors, the reports of magistrates or committees, 
 the names of the voters (like that of Thrasea Psetus, 
 whose silent dissent was watched with such eagerness by 
 the provincials), the speeches, their reception, and the 
 squabbles of the debaters."' Stray articles of law-intel- 
 ligence seem to have found their way into these collec- 
 tions.t There were likewise occasional notices extracted 
 from the local registers of births, and announcements 
 of marriages, divorces, deaths, and funerals,^ as also 
 descriptions of new public buildings, shows of gladiators, 
 and such ordinary themes.§ Julius Caesar, who read 
 the news-sheets every morning, gave strict orders that 
 Cicero's witty sayings should be regularly added to the 
 other current matter. || The joumals, too, like our 
 own, were the receptacles for all tragical and marvellous 
 occurrences, and Pliny derived from them many of the 
 odd stories inserted in his encyclopaedia, among which 
 the following may be cited. The gazettes related that 
 
 * Cicero Ad Atticum, lib. vi. epist. 2; Ad Fatniliares, lib. n. 
 ep. 15, lib. xii. ep. 23; Philippica Prima, cap. 3. Taciti An- 
 nal. lib. xv. cap. 74 ; lib. xvi. cap. 22. De Claris Oratoribus, 
 cap. 37. Plinii lib. v. epist. 14 ; lib. vii. ep. 33 ; lib. viii. ep. 6. 
 
 -|- Cicero Ad Familiares, lib. ii. ep. 8 (a. o. 702). Taciti Annal. 
 lib. vi. cap. 47. 
 
 + Suetonius in Tiberio, cap, 5 ; in Caligula, cap. 8. Juvenalis 
 Satir. i. v. 136. Seneca De Beneficiis, lib. vii. cap. 16. Taciti 
 Annal. lib. iii. cap. 3. 
 
 § Cicero Ad Familiares, lib. ii. ep. 8; lib. viii. ep. 1, 2. 
 Taciti Annal. lib. xiii. cap. 31. 
 
 II Cicero Ad Familiares, lib. ix. ep. 16. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 353 
 
 on the day when Cicero defended Milo there fell a 
 shower of hricks ; that under Augustus a burgher of 
 Fcesulae walked to the Capitol in a procession formed by 
 his own sixty- three descendants ; that when a slave of 
 the unfortunate Titius Sabinus had been executed by 
 Tiberius, his dog watched the corpse, carried food to its 
 mouth, and, on its being thrown into the Tiber, swam 
 after it, and strove to bring it to land ; and that in the 
 reign of Claudius a phoenix from Egypt was publicly 
 exliibitcd in Rome ; which last story, however, Pliny 
 truly pronounces to be a manifest invention.* 
 
 As the contents of the gazettes became more objection- 
 able, their popularity increased in due proportion, and 
 was especially high among the females of rank, many of 
 ■whom acquired a taste for this sort of amusement, 
 while some even maintained readers or secretaries, of the 
 other sex as well as their own.t It was the fashion of 
 the emperors publicly to keep diaries of their personal 
 history ; and Augustus, the earliest of the imperial 
 autobiographers, went so far as to attempt imposing 
 some laws of decency on the women of his house- 
 hold, by ordering an officer of the palace to write a regu- 
 lar journal of their transactions. The noble Romans 
 imitated the example of their masters, and the pomp- 
 ous folly which distinguished many of those patrician 
 memoirs is wittily exposed by a debauched but most 
 observant contemporary of Nero.;]: The monarch's cha- 
 racter and that of his satellites being matters of para- 
 mount importance, the professed news-writers greedily 
 gleaned on this head all they could, as well from the 
 journals as from the communications of the slaves in 
 
 * Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. ii. cap. 56; lib. vii. cap. 13; lib. viii. 
 cap. 40; lib. x. cap. 2. 
 
 -f- Juvenalis Satir. vii. v. 104 ; Satir. vi. v. 480. Pignorius 
 De Servis, ap. Polenum, torn. iii. p. 1203. Gorius De Libertorura 
 Liviae Columbario, Inscript. Ko. 100. 
 
 X Suetonius in Augusto, cap. 64, 85 ; in Tiberio, cap. 61 ; in 
 Claudio, cap. 41. Historiae Augustae Scriptores : in Hadriano, cap. 
 16; in Commodo, cap. 15; in Septimio Severe, cap. 3. Petronius 
 Arbiter in Satyrico. 
 
 VOL. I. Y 
 
354 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 the imperial and noble families. The newspapers, the 
 pasquinades which we see to have been common from 
 Julius downwards, and the graver annals, became more 
 and more like each other, till all were completely amal- 
 gamated in the scandalous collection entitled the Augus- 
 tan Histories. 
 
 Classes of Society. 
 
 It has been already necessary to mention, as a fact in 
 the political history of the empire, the early disappear- 
 ance of a middle class in society. The relations of the 
 lowest order to the highest are best explained by exa- 
 mining the position of the slaves and freedmen, with the 
 nature of the public spectacles ; and to the facts which 
 will thus gradually evolve themselves, it needs only to be 
 added, that haughtiness and distance towards dependents 
 speedily rose to a height at once foolish and most deeply 
 perilous. We conceive Msecenas himself to have been 
 a very aristocratic personage from the tardy condescen- 
 sion with which he requited Horace's humble devoirs ; 
 and, if there is a little spleen in Juvenal's description 
 of the treatment which the rich gave to their poorer 
 associates, that other picture is unexaggerated and good- 
 humoured which Pliny draws of the table of a rich 
 acquaintance, where we behold a ceremonial correspond- 
 ing to that old one of the seat below the salt in our own 
 country."^ But if the indigent citizens in the imperial 
 times were numerous and the rich few, the slaves com- 
 posed a multitude amidst which the whole free popula- 
 tion was a mere handful. 
 
 From the seventh century of the city the market- 
 places in Rome were, on the days of sale, not at all 
 unlike what an eastern slave-bazaar is at present. The 
 slave-merchants, a class notorious for dishonesty, and 
 strictly watched by the police, kept their victims in large 
 
 • Horatii lib. i. Satir. vi. v, 52-65. Juvenalis Satir. v. Plinii 
 lib. ii. epist. 6. 
 
OF THE AN<:;iENT ITALIANS. 355 
 
 •warehouses, whence they were brought out in crowds, 
 and exhibited in barred cages, with descriptive labels 
 hung round their necks. If a slave had been recently 
 made captive, a circumstance which greatly increased his 
 price, he had his feet chalked ; if he was not warranted 
 sound, a cap was put upon his head ; and, if a customer 
 desired it, he was made to come out of his den and show 
 his paces on the pavement of the porticos.* There were 
 three regular sources from which Italy was supplied 
 with these unfortunate beings. The first was opened by 
 the frequent M^ars of the republic and empire, from all of 
 which were derived large numbers of prisoners. There 
 was, secondly, an established slave-trade, which had its 
 principal marts in the islands of Greece, on the coast of 
 Syria, and in Egypt, receiving its supplies partly from 
 the incessant wars of the Asiatics, and partly from kid- 
 napping and piracy. There were, thirdly, the slaves 
 already imported, whose descendants were retained in 
 the families of their proprietors. 
 
 If the bondmen were brought from a distance, their 
 birthplace had great influence in fixing their reputation, 
 their price, and the nature of their work.t The natives 
 of Asia Minor were the usual attendants on feasts and 
 the wretched ministers of their masters' debauchery ; 
 the Alexandrian Greeks were thought to make the best 
 buffoons ; the Greeks of the continent were most fre- 
 quently employed as teachers, artists, or artisans ; the 
 errand-porters, litter-carriers, and other labourers, were 
 selected from all nations, but oftenest from the northern 
 regions both of Asia and Europe ; the Dacians, Getae, and 
 other Germanic tribes, were the favourite gladiators ; and 
 the barbarians of Britain, whom the Italians were pleased 
 to think a tall and handsome race, commonly figured as 
 assistants and supernumeraries in the theatres.;}: The 
 
 * Propertii lib. iv. eleg. 5. v. 51. Juvenalis Satir. i. v. 111. 
 Persii Satir. vi. v. 77. Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. xxxv. cap. 17, 18. 
 Gellii Noct. Attic, lib. vii. cap. 4. 
 
 ■f Pignorius De Servis, ap. Polcnum, torn. iii. p. 1138-1308. 
 
 X Virgilii Georgic. lib. iii. v. 25, with the note of Servius. 
 
356 CHARACTER, HABITS, A>'D INDUSTRY 
 
 mountaineers from the half-conquered islands of Corsica 
 and Sardinia were considered the fiercest and most useless 
 of all menials : indeed they very frequently destroyed 
 themselves ; and the natives of the latter were con- 
 temptuously characterized in a current proverb.* 
 
 The Romans left to slaves, or at least to those who 
 had once been such, several of the employments which 
 modern nations regard as liberal and honourable. The 
 medical profession, in all its branches, was almost exclu- 
 sively in the hands of these persons, even as late as the 
 Christian ages of the empire ;t and they were also the 
 common secretaries, librarians, shorthand writers, and 
 copyists of manuscripts. Grecian captives, and after- 
 wards slaves bom in the house and educated for the pur- 
 pose, tended the Roman children, and were their earliest 
 teachers ; and it was no rare thing to find among those 
 " Pffidagogi" men of learning and talent, who in time 
 opened public schools of literature or oratory. Slaves 
 also discharged the office of Nomenclators, waiting on 
 their master in public places, or when he gave audiences 
 at home, and whispering in his ear the names of those 
 who approached him. Under the republic, when every 
 man aimed at being popular, and none could possibly 
 recollect all the inhabitants of the overgroAvn city, such 
 officers were not merely important but quite indispen- 
 sable ; and though the use of them afterwards declined, 
 they are mentioned by both the Plinys as being still 
 kept by private persons of rank, and the emperors and 
 public functionaries retained them much later. But 
 they at last acted as seneschals or masters of the cere- 
 monies.:}: The superintendent of the household slaves 
 was styled the Atriensis or hallkeeper ; and the duties 
 and swaggering airs of such a servile dignitary are 
 whimsically caricatured in one of the old comedies.§ 
 
 * " Sards to sell, each one worse than his neighbour." — Cicero 
 Ad Familiares, Ub. vii. ep. 24. 
 
 •f- Cod. Just. lib. vii. tit. 7, leg. 1. 
 
 •*: Senecae Epist. xxix. Ammiani Marcellini Hist. lib. xiv. cap. G. 
 
 I Plauti Asinarise act. ii. seen. 2, seen. 4. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 357 
 
 The Ostiarius or doorkeeper had his station in the vesti- 
 bule beside the watchdog ; and the man, like the beast, 
 was usually chained to his niche in the wall. Such a 
 post is said to have been once filled by Pilitus, who 
 afterwards taught oratory to Pompey the Great.* The 
 slaves who attended the grandees in their public appear- 
 ances made up a legion of charioteers, muleteers, litter- 
 bearers, carriers of fans and umbrellas, mounted couriers 
 and running footmen, among whom were many negroes. 
 In the palaces, besides the numerous divisions which, 
 classed like the cohorts of the army, laboured or loitered 
 in the kitchens, the halls, the eatmg-rooms, the baths, 
 the picture-galleries, and the gardens, — there were, even 
 under the republic, dwarfs and domestic jesters. Julia, 
 the granddaughter of Augustus, had two favourite 
 dwarfs, one of each sex ; Seneca describes his wife's 
 female fool ; and most Roman writers mention male 
 buffoons, among whom Saraientus, the pet of Julius 
 and Augustus, was the most famous.t Unfortunately 
 eunuchs were equally common from the times of Ju- 
 venal till those of Constantino ; and the trade in those 
 unhappy beings, after it had died away in the western 
 half of the empire, was allowed under limitations by the 
 laws of the east. 
 
 But besides those slaves who, in these various ways 
 and in many others, acted mainly as ministers of luxury 
 and pomp, a numerous class of them were so educated as 
 to yield a direct profit to their masters. Most land- 
 holders opened shops in their palaces, or in other places 
 of the city, where a slave sold the produce of theu- estates, 
 just as the Tuscan gentleman of the present day disposes 
 of his wine and oil at a wicket in the wall of his house 
 in Florence. Many others caused their slaves, both male 
 
 • Ovidii Amorum lib. i. eleg. 6. Columella De Re Rustica, 
 lib. i. cap. 2. Suetonius De Claris Rhetoribus, cap. 3. 
 
 ■f Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. vii. cap. 16. Suetonius in Tiberio, 
 cap. 61. Lampridius In Alexandre Severo, cap. 61. Senecae 
 Philosophi Epist. 50. Herat, lib. i. Satir. v. v. 51, et seq. 
 Juvenalis Satir. v. v. 4. 
 
358 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 and female, to be trained as artisans or manufacturers, 
 
 and sold the fruit of their labours in public warehouses. 
 Indeed, throughout the whole of the period, there was 
 probably very little manufacture in Italy save what was 
 conducted in this manner. Yet another branch of the 
 trade, and one which many proud nobles were not too 
 proud to practise, was the training and hiring out of bands 
 of those performers whom we are immediately to see 
 employed in the public spectacles. 
 
 If we ask what was the treatment of the Roman bond- 
 men, we shall be best informed by a visit to an ancient 
 villa. It always contained as one of its most necessary 
 buildings an Ergastulum, which was a workhouse or 
 prison for the " Vincti " or slaves under punishment. 
 This dungeon, partly excavated under ground, was light- 
 ed by narrow loopholes placed high in the wall ; but 
 the builder was directed to make it as healthy as might 
 be. It was the nightly retreat of refractory wretches, who 
 during the day were condemned to the severest labour, 
 such as digging in sand-pits or cutting in mines and 
 quarries, where their work was quickened by the lash.* 
 They were clothed in a peculiar dress, their legs were 
 put in heavy fetters, their heads were half-shaved, and, 
 when their offence was heinous, they were often branded 
 on the forehead with a redhot iron.t The capital punish- 
 ment which the magistrates usually inflicted on crimi- 
 nals of this class was ci-ucifixion ; and another, which 
 arose during the last two centuries of the republic, was 
 the compelling of the convict to fight in the amphitheatre 
 with beasts or with other men. Runaways were very 
 usually condemned to the arena ; but Constantine, pro- 
 fessing to mitigate the law, enacted that the fugitive 
 should only be sent to the mines or have his foot cut off. 
 For centuries, however, the master had the uncontrolled 
 power of life and death over his slaves, whom Hadrian 
 
 * Columella De Re Rustica, lib. i, cap. G. Plauti Capteivorura 
 act. iii. so. 5 ; act. v. sc. 4. 
 
 ■j- De Burigny, sur les Esclaves Remains, Memoires de I'Aca- 
 demie d'Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, torn, xxxv., 1770. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 359 
 
 first subjected in capital cases to the jurisdiction of the 
 imperial judges alone, though subsequent laws reserved 
 to the proprietor full right to punish by the scourge and 
 imprisonment. Antoninus imposed on every owner who 
 killed his slave a civil fine, as if the mui'dered man 
 had belonged to another person ; and Constantine made 
 it homicide to put any one of this class to death whilst 
 inflicting corporal chastisement on him."^ 
 
 When the slaves were abused beyond -endurance, 
 they had only one refuge, the altars of the heathen 
 temples, to which in later times succeeded those of the 
 Chi-istian churches. The former kind of sanctuaries 
 was often violated, the latter much more seldom. It 
 may be granted that the conduct of those bondmen 
 frequently made extreme severities necessary, for their 
 degraded state ruined their moral character ; and, by a 
 judicial retribution wliich has followed slavery wherever 
 it has been permitted, their vices infected every depart- 
 ment of society. It is indeed cheering to remark cases, 
 in which mild treatment by the ov/ner was recompensed 
 by heroic devotion in the object of his kindness : the 
 proscriptions of Marius and Sylla, and that of the se- 
 cond triumvirate, furnish noble instances of such con- 
 duct ; the same spiiit was often displayed in the mas- 
 sacres of the Caesars ; and the benevolence of a good 
 master in more peaceful times is pleasingly exemplified 
 by the behaviour of the younger Pliny, t But the general 
 rule was based on harshness and even cnielty ; and one 
 other illustration will complete the description. A law 
 of very ancient date enacted that, if a citizen were mur- 
 dered in his house, all the slaves who were under the 
 roof at the time should be executed without exception. 
 The statute was horribly enforced in the story now to 
 be related ; and the comments on it which abound in the 
 
 * Spartianus in Hadriano, cap. 18. Dig. lib. i. tit. 6., De his 
 qui sui. Cod. lib, ix. tit. 14. 
 
 ■f Valerii Maximi lib. vi. cap. 8. Appianus de Bello Civili, 
 lib. iv. Macrobii Saturnalium lib. i. cap. 11. Plinii lib. iii. 
 epist. 19; lib. viii. epist. 16. 
 
360 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 Roman law-books had no other tendency, than that of 
 makmg its provisions more refinedly savage.* About 
 the middle of Nero's reign, Pedanius Secundus, the pre- 
 fect of the city, was assassinated by one of his household, 
 an accomplice in his profligacy. The rest of his slaves, 
 four hundred in number, men, w^omen, and children, 
 were instantly hurried to prison ; the mob, seized with 
 an unusual compassion, tried to rescue them ; the senate 
 met to suppress the sedition ; and the speech by which 
 the senator Cassius urged the enforcement of the law is 
 at once frightful and instructive. His argument is this : 
 that the slaves constituted in the heart of Italy a foreign 
 and hostile population, overwhelming in numbers if 
 compared with their masters ; that this domestic enemy 
 could be kept down by no means but mortal terror ; 
 and that it was right a few should die for the whole 
 people. A majority voted for acting on the law ; the 
 populace threw stones at the senate-house, and threaten- 
 ed to bum it ; the soldiers were ordered out, drove back 
 the crowd, and lined the street ; and between their ranks 
 the four hundred innocent victims were dragged to exe- 
 cution. 
 
 The feeling of the slaves themselves is indicated by 
 their frequent insurrections, which also show their over- 
 powering multitude. In the seventh century of Rome 
 there were three of these revolts, none of wliich was 
 suppressed till the insurgents had repeatedly routed the 
 armies of the commonwealth. The first of these Servile 
 Wars, which broke out in Sicily in 615, was not put down 
 for six years : Eunus, the Syrian bondman who headed 
 it, was said at one time to command nearly two hundred 
 thousand men, and possessed half of the Sicilian towns, 
 together with the most fertile districts of the island. The 
 second war of this sort, raised in the same country, lasted 
 from 649 till 652, and the revolters, led by a Cilician 
 household -slave and a Greek diviner, numbered in one 
 
 • Taciti Annal. lib. xiv. cap. 42-45. Dig. lib. xxix. tit. 5, De 
 Seaatusconsulto Silaniano. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 361 
 
 campaign forty thousand men. But the most dangerous 
 of all the insurrections was the tliird, which was kept 
 alive in Italy during the years 680 and 681 by the brave 
 Thracian Spartacus, a fugitive gladiator from the school 
 of Capua. This captain, collecting at least a hundred 
 thousand men, ravaged the peninsula from Rhegium to 
 the Po, and defeated several consular armies. 
 
 Even in those ages some private persons possessed 
 extraordinary numbers of dependents belonging to this 
 class, and such wealth became yet more common under 
 the emperors. Augustus, in a dearth, gave freedom to 
 twenty thousand slaves of his own, and manned the 
 corn-ships wdth them ; and an obscure person who died 
 in his reign lamented in his testament the disturbances 
 of the civil wars, which had reduced the number of his 
 slaves to four thousand.* 
 
 Notwithstanding all their miseries this most unjustly 
 treated portion of the Italian people possessed one power- 
 ful consolation, — the prospect of becoming Roman citi- 
 zens by manumission, which was either granted for 
 favour or bought by the slave from his savings. When 
 the master was a man of character and generosity, this 
 hope could be made a strong incentive to good conduct, 
 and there are instances of freedom worthily bestowed 
 and gratefully requited. But it often happened that 
 emancipation, if it was not the wages of vice, gave at least 
 occasion to rapacity and insolence. The list of affluent 
 and haughty frcedmen, beginning with Pompey's slave 
 Demetrius, includes a host of other unprincipled persons, 
 who, themselves debased by servitude, revenged their 
 own wrongs on their new dependents. When the Empe- 
 ror Claudius once complained that his exchequer was 
 empty, he was sarcastically told that he might retrieve 
 his fortune if his two freed slaves. Narcissus the secretary, 
 and Pallas the treasurer, would receive him into partner- 
 ship. The latter of these worthies, after his patron's 
 
 • Seneca De Tranquillitate Animi, cap. 8. Suetonius in 
 Augusto, cap. 16. Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. xxiiii. cap. 10. 
 
362 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 death, was accused of having communicated to some of 
 his domestics a plot against Nero. The upstart answered 
 with scorn that the fact was impossible, — that he never 
 condescended to speak to any one in his service, but gave 
 his ordinary commands by signs, and wrote down those 
 directions which required explanation.* Narcissus we 
 shall soon encounter again. 
 
 Amusements. 
 
 From whatever point of view we regard the amuse- 
 ments of ancient Rome, one fact is both the most strik- 
 ing and the most important. Intellectual recreation, 
 after repeated attempts to find a place, was overpowered 
 by gaudy spectacles, nourishing the fiercest and foulest 
 passions. The diversions of the imperial times may be 
 divided into two classes. There were, first, those which 
 were common to all ranks of the people, and injurious 
 to the morality of all, but most active in their operation 
 on the populace. They consisted of the recreations fur- 
 nished in the therms, and the scenic exhibitions given 
 in the theatre, the amphitheatre, and the circus. There 
 were, secondly, those divertisements that were confined 
 to the imperial court, or at farthest did not extend 
 beyond the palaces of the nobles. These were infinitely 
 varied ; but their character may be understood by a 
 glance at those forms of them which were most nearly 
 literary or theatrical. The amusements common to the 
 whole population must be first noticed. 
 
 The early state of the Boman Theatre is matter of 
 curious research, both from its own peculiarities, and 
 because we can plausibly trace in it the original of the 
 improvised comedy in modern Italy. We know, it is 
 true, disappointingly little as to the extemporary Satur- 
 nian verses, the indigenous Latin Satires, the Atellan 
 Fables, the Fescennine Songs, or those Mimes which 
 
 • Suetonius in Claudio, cap. 28. Taciti Annal. lib. xiii. cap. 23. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 363 
 
 supplanted all the older scenic pieces, and, as we are told, 
 united the best qualities of each. But all these, we may 
 safely assert, were chiefly nothing more than extempo- 
 raneous exhibitions of the old Italian fluency and hu- 
 mour. All of them disappeared very early from the stage 
 of Rome ; an attempt was made to supply their place by 
 the Greek tragedies and comedies, translated and altered ; 
 and in the Augustan age botli the native and the foreign 
 dramas gave way to the Pantomime, which was a ballet 
 of action, voluptuous and vicious, but, from all that can 
 be learned of it, performed with uncommon skill and 
 significance. It may be believed, however, on strong 
 grounds of likelihood, that throughout the whole period 
 of the empire, the mimes or Atellan farces, with their 
 masked and unchangeable characters, their old costumes, 
 and their unpremeditated ribaldry, lingered in their 
 native Campania and among the villages of other rural 
 districts ; and that, as the modern Italian Zanni receives 
 his name from the ancient Sannio, so the Neapolitan 
 Pulcinella is, in a direct and uninterrupted line, the 
 descendant and representative of the Oscan Maccus, 
 whose costume is still to be seen in the paiirtings of 
 Pompeii.* But in Rome, as early as the Mithridatic 
 triumph of Pompey, we see that to the other degrada- 
 tions of the theatre had been added, in theu- coarsest 
 and most sensual form, the glare of decoration and 
 variety of spectacle which belonged to the circus and 
 the amphitheatre ;+ and if Cicero was disgusted then. 
 
 * There's many a part of Italy, 'tis said, 
 
 Where none assume the toga, but the dead. 
 
 There, when the toil foregone and annual play 
 
 Mark from the rest some high and festal day. 
 
 To theatres of turf the rustics throng, 
 
 Charm'd with the farce which charm 'd their sires so long ; 
 
 While the pale infant, of the mask in dread, 
 
 Hides in his mother's breast his little head. 
 Gifford's Juvenal, Sat. iii. v. 251-258 (original, v. 171-176) 
 Bullenger De Theatre, cap. 44, ap, Graevium, torn. ix. Quadrio 
 Storia d'ogni Poesia, torn. v. p. 212-220. 
 ■f Cicero Ad Familiares, lib. vii. epist. 1 (a.u. 269). 
 
364 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 other men of refinement must much more readily have 
 been so afterwards. Indeed all the men of genius 
 despairingly left the drama to its fate ; and poets or 
 patrons like Nero were unlikely to reform it either in 
 taste or morality. The actors, although infamous by 
 law, amassed fortunes and were loaded with imperial 
 favour and popular applause ; for the inscription quoted 
 below is only one of many cases in which public honours 
 were prostituted to vicious slaves.* But the tragic 
 gesture of Bathyllus or Paris, and the lascivious dances 
 of Greek youths and Spanish girls, became at length 
 wearisome to the pampered Romans ; and before the 
 empire had endured three centuries, the populace de- 
 serted the theatres for the booths of the forum, and even 
 brought on the stage troops of fire-workers and mounte- 
 banks. Before the days of Constantine, elephants, we 
 are assured, walked on the tight-rope ; learned dogs 
 told fortunes ; vaulters exhibited feats of strength, and 
 thi*ew innumerable somersets ; satyrs danced on stilts ; 
 and conjurers swallowed swords, tossed and caught 
 daggers, and played at thimble and ball. 
 
 The Usual spectacles of the circus and amphitheatre 
 were of four kinds : — Chariot-races ; Combats of Gladia- 
 tors ; Venationes, wherein wild beasts fought with 
 men or with each other ; and Naumachise, in which, 
 on the arena of the circus or amphitheatre temporarily 
 flooded, or in a permanent lake dug and fenced for the 
 purpose, small galleys engaged in races or imitations of 
 sea-fights. 
 
 The chariot-races were the oldest of the games ; and 
 the circuses, originally constructed for them, seldom 
 witnessed any of the other sports after permanent amphi- 
 
 • " The Municipal Senate and Burgesses of Lanuvium attest, 
 that, by an act of the corporation, the freedom of their city has 
 been conferred on Acilius Septemtrio, Freedman of Marcus Aure- 
 lius Augustus, the First Pantomimist of his Age, Priest of the 
 Synod of Apollo, Imperial Client of Faustina, Introduced to the 
 Stage by the Fortunate and August Emperor Marcus Aurelius 
 Commodus Antoninus Pius."— BuUenger De Theatre, p. 94S. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 365 
 
 theatres had been built. The emperors allowed these 
 exhibitions to act as a safety-valve for the fiery pas- 
 sions of the multitude. The pharioteers were divided 
 into four Companies or Factions, — the Green, Blue, Red, 
 and White. Their stables, near the Flaminian Circus 
 in the Campus Martins, were a fivourite haunt of the 
 people and of many nobles, as well as of some emperors ; 
 and the mob, splitting into parties which favoured each a 
 particular colour (the green and blue being the favour- 
 ites), fought out their quarrel even to bloodshed. The 
 charioteers were slaves, or at best freedmen ; but as 
 early as the reign of Alexander Severus, it was found 
 prudent to explain authoritatively, as not extending to 
 them, the law which made actors and other ministers of 
 the public pleasures infamous.* 
 
 The gladiators were kept in large buildings, usually 
 called Ludior schools. The ^milian School was very 
 near the Forum ; the Mamertine was beside the old 
 prison ; the Great School and the Dacian (named from the 
 people which furnished its usual inmates) were in the 
 quarter of the Baths of Titus ; and the Gallic and Matu- 
 tinal were on the Caelian Mount.t Each gladiator was 
 lodged in a separate cell like the ordinary slaves, and 
 every school had its arena and apparatus for exercise, 
 its surgeon, and numerous attendants. Its Lanista 
 or superintendent, usually a veteran gladiator himself, 
 was in some cases the servant of the emperor or of a 
 rich noble, but was more frequently the proprietor of 
 the establishment, making his profits by letting out his 
 men for the public games or for the entertainment of 
 private parties. He recruited his band in various ways. 
 He either purchased young slaves (usually refractory 
 ones), prisoners of war recently taken, and exposed chil- 
 dren, or he received from the magistrates condemned 
 
 * Dig. lib. iii. tit. 2. , De his qui infamia notantur. 
 
 + Lipsii Saturnalium Sermonum lib. i. cap. 14; ap. Graevium, 
 torn. ix. Panvinius et Pancirollus De Urbe Roma; ap. Graevium. 
 torn. iii. pp. 285, 298, 333. 
 
366 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 criminals ; but lq the worst times of the empire many 
 profligate persons voluntarily sold themselves to those 
 dealers in blood. The unhappy captives looked on the 
 arena with the utmost horror, and, careless as the Romans 
 were about their fate, writers have preserved some pain- 
 ful stories which prove the vehemence of their despair.* 
 
 The gladiatorial combats were for some time con- 
 fined to funerals, and were first introduced into Rome 
 from Etruria in 490, when Marcus and Decius Brutus 
 made three pairs of swordsmen fight, at their father's 
 interment, in the Forum Boarium. In Cicero's time 
 Milo and Clodius each kept his troop ; and the two bands, 
 defying the power of the magistrates, fought daily in the 
 streets of Rome. Julius Ca?sar in his sedileship is said 
 to have produced 640 combatants ; and several of the 
 emperors exhibited them in thousands. Wild beasts 
 were first brought into the Roman circus in 502, the 
 elephants taken from the Carthaginians being the animals 
 then introduced. Lions and panthers soon succeeded ; 
 bears were also produced in the republican era, and tigers 
 for the first time in the reign of Augustus.t The human 
 victim, usually allowed weapons to sell his life dear, vras 
 sometimes thrust amongst the famished beasts unarmed, 
 or even tied to a stake. 
 
 All those huge tanks which the emperors excavated 
 for naumachiae in and near Rome have disappeared ; but, 
 in pomp as well as in atrocity, every spectacle of this sort 
 was eclipsed by one which Claudius exhibited in the 52d 
 year of the Christian era, on a natural stage, the pictur- 
 esque Fucine Lake, surrounded by the snowy peaks of 
 the Abruzzo. On the mountain-sides, as on the steps of 
 a colossal theatre, were thronged multitudes of country- 
 people, burghers from the neighbouring to^^^ls, visiters 
 from Rome (includhig the elder Pliny), and the swarm 
 of satellites which composed the imperial court. Nineteen 
 
 * Seneca, epist. 70. Taciti Annal. lib. xv. cap. 46. Zosi 
 Historiarum lib. i. cap. 71. Symmachi lib. ii. epist. 46. 
 -f- BuUenger De Venatione Circi; ap. Grsevium, torn. ix. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 367 
 
 thousand slaves and criminals manned two fleets of 
 galleys of fifty sail each ; the nondescript emperor, half 
 a learned man and half an idiot, sat with his infamous 
 wife Agrippina, his stepson Nero, and his minion Nar- 
 cissus, near the bank of the lake, at the mouth of the 
 vast tunnel already described, which was that day to be 
 opened. The combatants were marched along the shore 
 by their guards the Praetorian cohorts ; and, as they 
 passed the imperial gallery, the whole army of wretches 
 caught up and repeated the shout of some one amongst 
 them, " Hail, emperor ! dying men salute thee !" The 
 blundering dotard answered the greeting ambiguously ; 
 the unhappy convicts, imagining that he had pronounced 
 their pardon, broke out into tumult and exultation ; 
 and the provoked Claudius himself, gouig down to the 
 water's edge, had to assure the victims that they had 
 mistaken his meaning, and to make his troops goad 
 them on board. The guards, posted thickly on scaffold- 
 ings round the place of battle, prevented escape ; the 
 disappointed prisoners slaughtered each other valiantly ; 
 and when the royal party was sick of blood the fight was 
 stopped. But after the canal was opened, the levels 
 were found to be wrong, and the water, undermining the 
 bank on which the court sat, drove them away in conster- 
 nation. Agrippina reproached Narcissus with greed and 
 incapacity ; the spoilt slave retorted by charging her 
 with presumptuous meddling, and with plotting to 
 make her son emperor ; the weak Claudius in vain strove 
 to reconcile his two domestic rulers ; and the first act of 
 the empress, when Nero ascended the throne, was to 
 revenge herself for the affront of that morning by 
 starving the favourite to death in prison.* 
 
 These various spectacles, each in its own way demora- 
 lizing, were a passion with the Romans, which theu* rulers, 
 afraid lest their minds should turn to more dangerous 
 thoughts, anxiously encouraged. We can scarcely trace 
 
 • Taciti Annal, lib. xii. cap, 56, 57 ; lib. xiii. cap. 1. Suetonius 
 in Claudio, cap. 21. Dionis Cassii Historiarum lib. Ix. cap. 33. 
 Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. xsxiii. cap. 3. 
 
368 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 any attempt by anemperor to check this popular fondness. 
 When Marcus Aurelius once ventured to enrol a large 
 number of gladiators in the army, the measure had 
 almost excited an insurrection ; and we see the prince 
 immediately obliged to atone for his imprudence by 
 renewed liberality to the public shows.* In Rome the 
 games were exhibited on innumerable pretexts, of reli- 
 gious festivals, imperial births, marriages, triumphs, and 
 funerals, or (with permission) remarkable occurrences 
 in the person or family of wealthy nobles. But scarcely 
 any considerable town in Italy wanted its theatre or 
 amphitheatre, and many possessed both, in which the 
 rich burghers treated the populace with shows of 
 gladiators, athletes, or wild beasts. When the place had 
 no theatre a temporary scaffold served the pui-pose. 
 The persons wlio gave the entertainments advertised 
 them beforehand, by distributing written bills, and 
 chalkmg up inscriptions in the streets, which intimated 
 the day of the proposed exliibition, its nature and dura- 
 tion, and the conveniences which would be furnished, 
 such as awnings and perfumes ; and similar bills, naming 
 the gladiators and other pcrfonners, were circulated 
 among the spectators while the sports were proceed- 
 ing. The Court of the Baths at Pompeii stUl contains 
 one of the public announcements. The attention of the 
 public was yet more anxiously courted, by pamtings on 
 canvass stretched out on frames like those of our booths 
 at fairs, and set up in porticos or at the comers of streets ; 
 and for these there were occasionally substituted rude 
 drawings in chalk or coal, representing the same subjects, 
 fights of swordsmen, or the like.+ The spectators were 
 admitted on presentmg tablets of bone or other mate- 
 rials previously distributed among them, on which was 
 engraved a notice of the nature of the exhibition, and of 
 
 * Capitolinus in Marco Antonino Philosopho, cap. 21, 23. 
 
 -f- Lipsii Saturnalium lib. ii. cap. 18. Ciceronis Philippica Se- 
 cunda, cap. 38. Ovidius De Arte Amandi, lib. i. v. 23. Plinii 
 Hist. Nat. lib. xxxv. cap. 7. Horatii lib. ii. Satir. vii. v. 96. 
 Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Pompeii, vol. i. p. 148. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 369 
 
 the day on which it was to take place. The inscription 
 wliich is copied below is taken from a small bone ticket 
 of this sort, and announces for the 4th of March in the 
 year of the city 673, the appearance of a favourite 
 Etruscan gladiator.* Pompeii, in its own ruins, and in 
 the pages of Tacitus, curiously illustrates the import- 
 ance which the people attached to their spectacles. A 
 coarse schoolboy group of figures, scratched on a wall in 
 the street of the Mercuries, is explained by an inscrip- 
 tion in an almost illegible hand and in bad Latin, as re- 
 ferring to a story told by the historian.t About three 
 years before the first earthquake which shook Pompeii, 
 a quarrel took place, at an exliibition of gladiators there, 
 between the townsmen and some visiters from the 
 neighbouring Nuceria. Several of the strangers were 
 killed, and their municipality complained to Nero and 
 his senate, who found the Pompeians in the wrong, and 
 gravely punished them by depriving their city of all 
 public spectacles for ten years. These bloody dissen- 
 sions of the circus had likewise their comic side. The 
 newspapers related that, at the funeral of a favourite 
 charioteer of the Red Faction, one of his partisans, in 
 despair, threw himself into the pile, and was consumed ; 
 but the other factions, jealous of so triumphant a testi- 
 mony to the merit of the deceased, spread a malicious 
 report that the man, having been made giddy by the 
 perfumes, had fallen into the flames by accident.;}: 
 
 When we turn to those recreations that consumed the 
 time of the rich and noble in the empire, we find the 
 common spectacles of the theatres and circus as eagerly 
 attended by them as by the poor. But there still 
 remained a taste for literature, which, never extinct, 
 
 * BATO-ATTALENI. SVectatus Ante Bie^n IV ^onas 
 MAR^m.v Lucio SVL/a Quinto METello ConsuHhus. Catalogue 
 du Musee Dodwell, Rome, 1837. The Roman capitals alone are 
 on the tablet : the Italic letters are those which we have to supply 
 in order to complete the sense. 
 
 ■f Taciti Annal. hb. xiv. cap. 17. 
 
 X Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. vii, cap. 53. 
 
 VOL. I. Z 
 
370 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 acquired great power during some reigns, and these 
 not always the best. The gazettes already described, 
 the constant pasquinades, and the scandalous memoirs 
 which speedily arose, ministered a debasing aliment to 
 the taste for reading ; though the libraries were gradually 
 less frequented by the nobility in general, and fewer 
 auditors were attracted by those recitations of poetry, 
 which Horace describes with such affected hoiTor, 
 Juvenal with such morosely-sincere contempt, and Pliny 
 with so much quiet pleasantry.* 
 
 But the recitations subsisted longer in a peculiar form, 
 which is too curious to be left unnoticed. There w^ere 
 many Improvvisatori among the ancient Italians as well 
 as among the modern : and the drama was not the only 
 species of extemporaneous poetry, nor the low actors the 
 only fluent declaimers. "We can trace the improvised 
 versification at court and in the palaces of the great 
 through the whole duration of the empire, and the list of 
 its votaries includes several illustrious names.t We find 
 among them the old satirist Lucilius, the emperors 
 Augustus and Titus, the poet Lucan, and, as the most 
 famous and most ready of all, the poet Statins. Tlie 
 Eumolpus of Petronius, by his impassioned recitations in 
 the picture-gallery and at the banquet, fills up the only 
 link required to complete the analogy between the classi- 
 cal and the modern improvvisatori, by showing that the 
 ancient extemporized verses were occasionally declaimed 
 on the spot without being written down. When they 
 were committed to -writing, they formed such collections 
 as the Sylvae of Statius, which are genuine specimens of 
 this class. 
 
 It is interesting to remark one other feature in the 
 favourite amusements of the palace and the nobles, 
 namely, their theatrical turn and aspect, which are well 
 illustrated by the court-pageants in the reign of Nero. 
 
 * Horatii lib. i. Satir. iii. v. 85-89. Javenalis Satir. i. ad init. 
 Plinii lib. i. epist. 13. 
 
 ■\- Raoul-Rochette, L'Iraprovisation Poetique chez les Romahis 
 Memoires de Flnstitut Royal : Classe d'Histoire, torae v., 1821. 
 
OP THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 3/1 
 
 "We may take, as the first instance, a sort of masque 
 which that ingenious debauchee exhibited shoi-tly before 
 he set fire to the city ; and though the licentiousness of the 
 scene must be passed over without description, its pic- 
 turcsqueness was very striking. In the Gardens of 
 Agrippa, covering tlie ground behind the Pantheon, lay 
 a large excavated lake, skirted by groves and pleasure- 
 houses. Nero launched on the water an artificial float- 
 ing island, representing a foreign landscape, through 
 which he and his courtiers wandered amidst groups of 
 exotic birds and rare quadrupeds. Galleys adorned with 
 gold and ivory, and rowed by beautiful youths, towed 
 the raft round the lake, on whose margin, as evening 
 fell, innumerable lamps were suddenly lighted up, and 
 illuminated the green alleys, where nymphs appeared 
 singing and sporting beneath the shade.* The rage 
 ibr masking which then prevailed is caricatured with 
 great force in Trimalchio's feast in Petronius; and 
 one other example will set it in a difi^erent light. A 
 good many women of rank, weary of restraint, and not 
 indisposed for the wildest license, caused booths to be 
 erected in the avenues of trees which lined the wharf of 
 Augustus, between the Aventine and the city- wall ; and 
 they then opened these booths as public taverns, in 
 which they themselves attended, disguised as waiting- 
 girls. Nero, delighted with the whim, not only carried 
 his whole court to patronize the new pleasure-gardens, 
 but distributed money with injimctions that it should 
 be spent there. The disgraceful incidents which accom- 
 panied this wicked jest, were beheved by contemporaries 
 to have done more than any other folly of that reign to 
 deteriorate the morality of Rome.t 
 
 Industry and Commerce. 
 We may now glance at the industry of the ancient 
 
 • Taciti Anna), lib. xv. cap. 37. 
 •f Ibid. lib. xiv. cap. 15. 
 
372 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 Romans, and, in the first place, at their rural eco- 
 nomy."'" 
 
 The state of the laws in relation to agriculture must 
 be understood before we inquire as to the practice of 
 the art. In every respect but one the Roman legislators 
 left husbandry unfettered ; and this partial freedom 
 enabled every branch of rural industry, except that on 
 which the burden directly pressed, to bear up for 
 centuries against many disadvantages. All over Italy 
 the chase was free; there were frequent markets in 
 every considerable village, but no one was obliged to sell 
 his crops there ; the transport of produce from one part 
 of the country to another was subject to no taxes, tolls, 
 or prohibitions ; the roads were numerous and excellent ; 
 and the system of posts established under the empire, 
 though it did not directly help any one besides the rulers, 
 was beneficial indirectly by enforcing the preservation of 
 the highways. But unfortunately those ancient lawgivers, 
 like many modern ones, had no conception of the inde- 
 pendent energy possessed by commerce and agriculture, 
 when both are exempted from the interference of govern- 
 ments. Alarmed by the early experience of the republic, 
 without being able to discern where the root of the evil 
 IdLj, they lived in constant terror of famine ; and, to avert 
 this scourge, they adopted in legislation a principle as 
 unlike as possible to what might have been expected 
 from a senate of landholders, but yet as injudicious as 
 any body of men could have possibly invented. They 
 were much given indeed, at all periods, to fixing maxi- 
 mum prices on provisions of every sort, but in respect to 
 com they did what was even worse. Turning their atten- 
 tion exclusively to the means of procuring the imme- 
 diate supply, and being most easily able to effect this 
 end by importations from their own dependencies abroad, 
 they not only unhesitatiogly adopted this method, in 
 
 * Consult the Scriptores Rei Rusticcp (Cato, Varro, Columella, 
 and Palladius), and Plinii Historia Naturalis. Dumont, Re- 
 fherches sur TAdininistration des Terras chez les Remains, 1779. 
 Dickson's Husbandry of the Ancients, 1788. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 373 
 
 itself unobjectionable, but blindly sacrificed, in order to 
 maintain their system, all tlie interests of the cultivators 
 and owners of land in Italy. As early as the third cen- 
 tury of Rome the senate began to import large quanti- 
 ties of foreign grain, which they either distributed gra- 
 tuitously among the great mass of the people, or sold at 
 a heavy loss, sustained by the exchequer. This measure 
 was practised with extreme frequency, and with an 
 undiscriminating liberality that prevents us from regard- 
 ing it in the light of an ordinary poor-law ; the Gracchi 
 attempted to make the gratuitous supply permanent by 
 law ; and Cicero's enemy Clodius effected the purpose 
 by two acts which, passed in the year of the city 695, 
 were kept in force by the emperors, and probably ex- 
 tended to several towns besides the metropolis. The 
 direct loss to the treasury was the least evil. The 
 price of Italian corn was never allowed to rise so high 
 as to yield a fair profit ; its cultivation was always 
 more and more neglected ; and, in the first age of the 
 empire, Italy was already dependent on foreign countries 
 for her very subsistence. The latest attempt that need 
 be noticed, for reviving the culture of grain by statute, 
 was of a piece with all which had gone before it. It 
 was an edict of Domitian (which of course remained 
 inoperative), that in the peninsula no new vines should 
 be planted, and in the provinces half of those already 
 growing should be cut down.* 
 
 Those who would trace Roman agriculture through 
 all its stages from the point at which it was first syste- 
 matically developed, may do so in the works of contem- 
 j)orary writers. Cato the Censor describes the art in 
 the sixth century of the republic, when the imperfection 
 in rural economy was more than compensated by the 
 smallness of the estates, — the usual residence of the pro- 
 prietors, — and the existence of a free peasantry. Varro 
 treats of the seventh century, when the production of 
 
 • Contarenus De Frumeotaria Romanorum Largitione, cap. 2, 3" 
 ap. Graevium, torn. viii. 
 
3/4 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 wine and oil was at its height, the rearing of fruit-trees 
 in rapid advance, and Italy, planted from sea to sea and 
 from Calabria to the Alps, looked like one beautiful 
 orchard ;"^ but when, also, the growing of corn was 
 rapidly sinking, the landholders were crowding to the 
 towns, and the rural districts were covered by an increas- 
 ing population of slaves. Columella wrote his treatise 
 in the first century of the empire ; and to his description 
 Pliny has added from the succeeding age much curious 
 information, and Palladius a few details. 
 
 The great evil of the imperial times was considered 
 by the most intelligent Romans themselves to be the 
 overgrown size of estates, which certainly had reached 
 an extravagant pitch, when, as in the reign of Nero, half 
 of the coast of Barbary belonged to six men. But Pliny 
 and others af»suredly overrated the had. effects of this 
 circumstance, which, by itself, may be quite consistent 
 with high agricultural prosperity. The relation, how- 
 ever, which this fact bore to others in the state of society, 
 did in truth render it most powerful in effecting the 
 ruin of the country, for it was one compartment of a 
 structure rotten from the foundation. The class of 
 petty landholders whom the princely aristocracy of the 
 empire had annihilated, might, with great benefit to the 
 state, have either sunk into the position of agricultural 
 tenants, or migrated into the towns, there to become 
 artisans, manufacturers, or traders. But no such outlet 
 was open for them. Most of them settled as paupers in 
 Rome and the other great cities, while the lands which 
 they had been compelled to abandon were tilled by thou- 
 sands of slaves. All the parts of this system, it is true, 
 hung together as necessary concomitants, but the evils 
 which their union wrought were lamentable and uni- 
 versal. The production of grain in Italy at length 
 scarcely repaid the cost, and it was seldom grown at all 
 except to be cut green as fodder for the cattle : the im- 
 portation of foreign com was incessant, and Rome was 
 
 • Varro De Re Rustica, lib. i. cap. 2. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 375 
 
 again and again on the brink of annihilation by famine.* 
 The slave-labourers, likewise, wanted both skill q,nd 
 zeal, and every department of husbandry decayed rapidly 
 in their hands. 
 
 The agricultural writers of Rome divided their sub- 
 ject into three branches. The first and most profitable 
 was the grazing of cattle, sheep, and goats ; the next, 
 which was peculiar to those times, consisted in the 
 feeding of certain small animals for the shambles ; and 
 the third and least lucrative was the tillage of the 
 ground, including both field-husbandry and the culti- 
 vation of gardens and orchards.t 
 
 Tlie ancient grazing, when pursued on a large scale, 
 was exceedingly like that of modern Italy. Most of 
 the animals were pastured during the w^inter on the 
 sheltered grounds of the plains, and shifted for the 
 summer to the woody sides of the Apennines. Sheep 
 and goats were by far the most common, and were kept 
 for the sake of their wool and hair ; for linen, long 
 unknown in the country, was little used for clothing 
 till late in the empire, and goat-hair and wool were uni- 
 versally worked into sailcloths, ropes, and such other 
 ai-ticles as are now made of flax or hemp. The native 
 breed of sheep composed the migrating flocks, Avhich 
 were far the most numerous. Another variety yield- 
 ing finer wool, originally derived from Magna Graecia, 
 and afterwards recruited from France, were considered 
 more delicate : they were fed in the stall, covered with 
 housings, not allowed to travel, and otherwise treated in 
 a manner differing widely from modern practice.:}; The 
 pasturages were, in some cases, private ground, belong- 
 ing to the o^^^lers of the sheep, or hired by them ; but 
 more frequently they consisted of the extensive public 
 
 * Columella, lib. i. Prooem. Taciti Annal. lib. iii. cap. 63, 54; 
 lib. xii. cap. 43. Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. xviii. cap. 6, 
 
 j- Varro De Re Rustica, lib. iii. cap. 1. Columella De Re Rus- 
 tica, lib. vi. Prooem. Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. xviii. cap. 5. 
 
 X Varro De Re Rustica, lib. ii. cap. 2. Columella De Re 
 Rustica, lib, vii. cap. 2. 
 
376 CHARACTEK, HABITS, AN1> INDUSTRY 
 
 lands, found in every province, and usually rented 
 from the municipalities. The shepherds, like their 
 modem representatives in the same regions, were all 
 mounted on horseback ; and when, after the battle of 
 Cannae, the Romans bought slaves and made soldiers 
 of them, the troops thus raised included 270 Apulian 
 herdsmen, who were drafted into the cavalry, and did 
 gallant service.* The horned cattle were not nume- 
 rous, being only reared for the plough, and as victims 
 for sacrifice. Horses were scarcely considered necessary, 
 except for the chariot-races and for mounting soldiers ; 
 mules were used for the draught in every way, and for 
 the pack-saddle ; but asses were seldom bred, except by 
 the traders, who had troops of them for carrying agri- 
 cultural produce to the neighbouring towns. All these 
 animals were migratory like the native sheep. Swine 
 were kept on the farms and in the woods ; their flesh 
 was more generally consumed for food than any other ; 
 and it, with that of a few calves, lambs, and kids, fur- 
 nished, during several centuries, the only articles of 
 animal sustenance which the Romans allowed to intrude 
 on their vegetable diet. The ancient Italians, like the 
 modern ones, fed their cattle as much as possible on 
 the leaves of trees ; and the elm was every where planted 
 as a fence, because its leaves were best relished. 
 
 The rearing of small animals for the shambles was not 
 systematized till the imperial times ; the farm-yards 
 and their towers at first containing only our common 
 barn-door fowls and pigeons. There next appeared 
 geese, ducks, teal, peacocks, and swans ; and dormice, 
 hedgehogs, and snails, were also fattened as delicacies. 
 Aviaries were built, the birds, among which thrushes 
 were the favourites, being intended for the table ; and 
 besides these were reared quails, turtle-doves, blackbirds, 
 partridges, beccaficos, cranes, and pheasants. Parks, far 
 smaller than ours, enclosed various sorts of wild animals, 
 
 • Le Beau Sur la Legion Roraaine, Memoire xi : Memoires 
 de I'Acaderaie d'Inscriptions, tome xxxv. p. 203. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 377 
 
 also for the kitchen ; the most ordinary species being 
 roe- deer, wild-boars, rabbits, and hares. Ponds of vast 
 size were filled with fishes, both freshwater and marine. 
 
 The tillage of the ground, to which we next come, 
 was injured by several misapprehensions, the conse- 
 quences of which the husbandmen often exerted much 
 industry in remedying. The great fault was a prejudice, 
 expressed very strongly by the Latin writers, that agri- 
 culture ought to be kept quite distinct from the rear- 
 ing of cattle.* The great extent of the public domain 
 was another check. The plough was bad, and, till the 
 best days of the empire were over, the whole process 
 was performed by means of oxen. The secret of pre- 
 venting deterioration by changing the seed-corn was still 
 undiscovered. The reaping was executed awkwardly 
 by two separate operations ; and the grain, instead of 
 being threshed, was either passed under heavy rollers, 
 or trodden out by cattle on such open floors as are still 
 to be seen in Italy. Water-mills, though sometimes 
 used, were not common, while those moved by wind were 
 quite unknown ; and the corn was ground in small mills, 
 turned by a slave or an ass, and usually attached to the 
 bakers' shops. Manures, both animal and vegetable, 
 were industriously collected. Of mineral ones the 
 Romans made little use, though they knew that marl 
 was applied in Gaul and Britain, and some of their 
 agriculturists at length introduced lime. 
 
 Most of the large estates were cultivated by the pro- 
 prietor on his own account. On extensive farms, the 
 common practice was, that the ordinary labour should 
 be executed by slaves kept on the ground ; but that, for 
 the occasional work, including in particular hay-making, 
 vintage, and corn-harvest, the owner hired free labourers, 
 who chiefly came down from the Apennines, as the 
 mountaineers do at the present day in Italy, as well as 
 in our owd. island. It was one of the taunts flung on 
 
 * Varro De Re Rustica, lib. ii. ProcEm. Columella De Re 
 Rustica, lib. vi. Prooem. 
 
37B CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 Vespasian, that his earliest ancestor known at Rome 
 was a Gaul from beyond the Po, who had become 
 wealthy by furnishing on contract bands of those poor 
 highlanders to the landowners of Latium.* The slaves 
 on a large manor were accurately classed and trained in 
 different departments ; the males being usually employ- 
 ed in the field-labour, while the females, confined within 
 doors, manufactured clothing and other articles for the 
 establishment or for sale. 
 
 Leases became more common under the emperors, 
 and were of two kinds. There was, first, the tenant who 
 paid a fixed rent in money or produce ; but from this 
 class of occupiers it is very clear that besides such pay- 
 ment personal services were commonly exacted : and, 
 in the later times of the empire, the leaseholder usually 
 received the apparatus of the vintage and oil manufac- 
 ture as what we call in Scotland steelbow.f The other 
 kind of tenant was the Colonus partiarius, the metayer 
 of France, who can be traced in Italy from the time of 
 Cato down to the present day. This class paid as rent 
 a part of each crop, the proportions being different for 
 corn, wine, and oil, and varying infinitely in different 
 quarters ; but it may be confidently inferred, from the 
 large share usually exacted, that the landlord must gene- 
 rally, as among the modern Italians, have supplied the 
 live stock for tilling the land. 
 
 In the early times of the republic the Romans had no 
 other grain besides barley, which, after the introduction 
 of various sorts of wheat, they no longer cultivated, ex- 
 cept for the cattle. Oats, unknown till the period of the 
 empire, were used only as fodder. Draining and irriga- 
 tion were extensively practised, both for the arable land 
 and the pastures. The grass meadows were usually 
 sown with clover, to which vetches were added in re- 
 newing old pasture-lands ; and, for the same uses, there 
 
 * Suetonius in Vespasiano, cap. ii. 
 
 i* Schneider's Rei Rusticae Scriptores (Lips. 1794) ; Com- 
 mentar. in Catonis cap. 136-137. Columella, lib. i. cap. 7. Dig. 
 lib. xix. tit. 2 leg. 19, Locati, conducti. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 379 
 
 •were also sown lucerne, fenugreek, and other plants, 
 among which was the cytisus, a shrub not yet identi- 
 fied. But these artificial kinds of fodder seldom, and 
 the grass-lands never, were included in the ordinary 
 course of cropping on the farm. The occupier, raising 
 no more food for cattle than his own working animals 
 required, let out his meadows to graziers, who culti- 
 vated them for themselves. In a system like this, the 
 rotations on the arable land Avere of necessity exceedingly 
 imperfect ; and indeed the common course, and the 
 only one which the greater part of the land was con- 
 sidered capable of bearing, consisted of a year's cropping 
 and a year's bare fallow alternately. In some districts 
 the fallow was introduced every third year only ; and on 
 the very finest soils, which were hardly to be discovered 
 except in the volcanic region of Campania, it was found 
 possible to dispense with it altogether, by substituting 
 the use of fertilizing agents, and following a carefiil 
 rotation of three or four 3^ears.* 
 
 The leguminous plants, which were usually intro- 
 duced in these modes of tillage, were the lupin, the 
 common bean (which the poor mixed in flour with their 
 wheaten bread), the vetch, the kidney-bean, and the 
 pea. The Romans also cultivated in large fields, and 
 ranked as articles of farm produce, roses and violets ; 
 both being used for perfumes, for giving their flavour 
 to wine and oil, and the former not only for chaplets 
 but for seasoning food. The most famous rose-gardens 
 were those of Campania and the neighbourhood of 
 Prseneste. The simple arrangements of the kitchen- 
 garden, described by Cato, speedily disappeared ; a 
 sort of green-houses and forcing-frames became ex- 
 tremely common ; and Pliny mentions hotbeds for 
 cucumbers, which, moving on wheels, could always be 
 turned to face the sun.t From the date of the earliest 
 foreign conquests there was a continual introduction of 
 new exotics of this kind, chiefly Asiatic, one of these 
 
 * VaiTO, lib. i. cap. 44. Columella, lib. ii. cap. 9. Virgilii 
 Georpic. lib. i. v. 71. Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. xviii. cap. 21, 23. 
 f Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. xix. cap. 5. 
 
380 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 being tlie melon. The plants used in modem manu- 
 factures were little cultivated ; but the best flax was 
 grown in Lombardy and the Bolognese, the best hemp 
 among the Sabine mountains ; and the poor people near 
 the towTis, particularly about Rome, gained something 
 by raising madder and teazle. 
 
 The importation of fruit-trees was still more exten- 
 sive than that of herbs. In Julius Caesar's days, the 
 Romans had none but standard-trees in their orchards ; 
 and the following list comprehends all, or nearly all, the 
 common sorts of fruit : figs (much used as a cheap 
 food), walnuts, apples and pears, filberts, quinces, 
 myrtle-berries, service-berries, and chestnuts. The 
 common plum, the damson, and other wild plants 
 native to the soil, but long neglected, were after- 
 wards carefully improved, and all orchards began to 
 abound in those foreign trees which were first im- 
 ported towards the end of the republic. Among these 
 were the lemon and other species of the genus citrus ; 
 the cherry was brought from Pontus by Lucullus 
 in the year of the city 680, and found its way to Britain 
 about a centur}'' afterwards ; the almond was another 
 such exotic ; and the Latin names confessed the foreign 
 origin of the pomegranate (Malum Punicum), and the 
 peach (M. Persicum). 
 
 But the vine and the olive continued to be the only 
 fruit-trees extensively reared. Pliny reckoned a hun- 
 dred and ninety-five principal sorts of wine, eighty of 
 which were good, and four-fifths of the eighty were of 
 Italian growth. By far the most common method of 
 cultivating the grape was the primitive one (which still 
 keeps its hold in the country), of training the plants to 
 trees, the ends of the vine-branch being thence carried 
 down towards the ground, and fixed to long props, or 
 else led along from one trunk to another by horizontal 
 poles. The ground between the trees which supported 
 the vines was sown with grain or vegetables. Some 
 vines however were kept low, and propped like the 
 modern French ones ; others were carried round a ring 
 of poles; and the poorest peasants allowed theirs to 
 
 I 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 
 
 381 
 
 trail on the ground. There were many modes of ai-ti- 
 ficially preparing the wines, and giving them foreign 
 flavours : the passum was made from raisins ; the sapa 
 and defrutum were made (like the modern Italian vino 
 cotto, and the Frencli vin cuit) from grape-juice boiled 
 before it was allowed to ferment. The ancients were 
 quite unacquainted with the process of distillation. After 
 the year of the city 500, the olive oil of Italy was cheap 
 and abundant ; and, till the second or third century of 
 the empire, it was considered the best in Europe, and 
 was exported largely. 
 
 Forest-trees were little attended to ; but there were 
 many natural forests, chiefly of oak, elm, beech, larch, 
 and pine, which were preserved for their timber. 
 Copse- wood was also grown for fuel ; and osiers were 
 planted in millions, being used for binding the vines, 
 and for making baskets, as well as many other domestic 
 utensils. 
 
 From the rural economy of the Romans we turn to 
 consider their progress in the mechanical arts, and the 
 state of their foreign trade.* 
 
 But, as an introduction to this inquiry, we ought, 
 perhaps, to require a minute answer to the question 
 which occurs, as to the habits of expense common in 
 the nation, and the direction which those habits in 
 different periods assumed. After the earliest con- 
 quests abroad, this feature of the national character 
 underwent several marked changes. The first stage was 
 that in which the plunder of the wars was faithfully 
 
 * Meursius De Luxu Romanorum, and Kobierzyckius De Luxu 
 Romanorum ; ap. Grjevium, torn, viii. De Pastoret Sur le Com- 
 merce et le Luxe des Romains, et sur leurs Lois Coniinerciales et 
 Somptuaires ; Memoires de I'lnstitut Royal, Classe d'Histoire, 
 tomes iii. v. vii. Heeren, Historical Researches into the Politics, 
 Intercourse, and Trade of the Principal Nations of Antiquity (trans- 
 lations) : The African Nations, 2 vols. 1832 ; The Asiatic Nations, 
 3 vols. 1833. Mengotti Del Commercio de' Romani dalla Prima 
 Guerra Punica a Costantino; in vol. xliii. of the Collection of 
 the Italian Writers on Political Economy 48 volumes. Milan, 
 1803-5. 
 
382 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 preserved for the state ; and the statues, jewels, precious 
 metals, and marbles of Sicily, Greece, and Macedon, 
 adorned the public edifices of the city. The Scipios, 
 Marcellus, ]\Iummius, Paulus -iEmilius, and Flamininus, 
 were all remorseless spoilers, but none of them pillaged 
 on his own account : on the contrary, they all lived 
 frugally and died poor. In the next era, the generals 
 and provincial governors plundered for themselves, as 
 Avell as for the public ; the love of splendid buildings, 
 furniture, and works of art, now developed itself fully ; 
 and there appeared magnificent private houses and 
 delightful gardens. Marius and Sylla were robbers, the 
 latter, indeed, one of the worst the republic ever saw ; 
 and the evil was at its height in those wai's that pre- 
 ceded the contest between Caesar and Pompey. Pecu- 
 lation and wealth had then three noted representatives ; 
 the infamous Verres in Sicily ; Lucullus, the conqueror 
 of Mithridates, whose Roman and Neapolitan palaces 
 were the most gorgeous works of the commonwealth ; 
 and the unfortunate triumvir Crassus, who was wont to 
 say that no man should be called rich if he could not 
 maintain an aimy from his ordinary income. There 
 still, however, reigned great personal plainness, which 
 even in the succeeding age was exemplified in Augustus 
 and his son-in-law Agrippa. But the Romans were 
 now rapidly approaching the habits which they reached 
 under Tiberius, when those who gave the law in extra- 
 vagance lavished their v>^ealth most willingly on clothing 
 and food. Apicius the epicure belonged to this age, 
 v/hen the male sex were seen, likewise, to adopt the 
 materials of the female dress ; for Tiberius had to pro- 
 hibit the wearing of silks by men, which, joined with 
 other most effeminate fashions, speedily became universal. 
 In the last age of the period now under review, the per- 
 sonal example of the emperors checked these forms of 
 luxury, though they were never quite suppressed, being 
 already ingrafted on the character of the people. The 
 pomp of architecture and art, as we have already dis- 
 covered, flourished through all changes ; and the ideas 
 of imperial projectors became more and more gigantic. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 383 
 
 Caligula was unable to execute his plan of building a 
 city on the summit of the Alps ; * but his palace on tlie 
 Palatine and his enormous bridge, in themselves not 
 unfit preparatives for such extravagant undertakings, 
 were worthily emulated by Nero's Golden House and 
 the Tiburtine Villa of Hadrian. 
 
 Such habits could not be satisfied by the natural 
 resources of Italy, nor by the skill of its inhabitants. 
 The soil, indeed, besides those articles of agricultural 
 produce which have been above described, supplied some 
 of the less mipoi-tant materials which are still derived 
 from it ; such as sulphur, saffron, and the iron of the 
 mines in Lombardy. For using the native wool, as well 
 as the finer varieties from foreign lands, large manu- 
 factories were established in all parts of the country ; 
 there were also considerable iron- works, chiefly in the 
 north ; and the branches of skilled industry required 
 for the common uses of life, maintained themselves at 
 the height they had already reached in other nations, 
 but did not gain a single step. The results of the useful 
 arts, in a few of the most durable materials, are exem- 
 plified in many extant specimens of ancient furniture 
 and utensils ; and the most instructive fact derived from 
 inspecting such relics is, the great difference between the 
 ornamental articles and those which are merely useful. 
 In the foi-mer, designed for the rich, the utmost me- 
 chanical dexterity is displayed ; in the latter, which were 
 to be sold to the poor, or, at all events, to be kept out 
 of sight, every thing is coarse, clumsy, and ill finished. 
 Beautiful lamps, braziers, and vases, are to be found 
 without number ; but a well-made hinge, a neat lock 
 and key, or an accurately fitted hand-mill, are things 
 quite unknown. Those manufactures flourished most 
 which were connected with the fine arts ; and these, 
 chiefly in the hands of foreigners, as directors if not as 
 workmen, spread out in an infinite variety of depart- 
 ments. But, with ail these aids, many articles of every- 
 
 • Suetonius in Caligula, nap. 21. 52. 
 
384 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRr 
 
 day use were still drawn from distant shores ; and com- 
 merce necessarily extended itself. 
 
 It is curious to trace the revolutions of Roman 
 opinion regarding trade. Their laws always discouraged 
 it as an occupation for the higher classes, and the ages 
 we are now considering show as little knowledge of its 
 public advantages as those which had preceded. At 
 the end of the second Punic war, when the Carthagi- 
 nians delivered up a large ileet of merchant harks, the 
 conquerors, instead of founding commercial greatness 
 on this valuable acquisition, burned every one of the 
 vessels, and employed none of the mariners. They 
 destroyed the captured ships of Antiochus eleven years 
 afterwards, and in 585 gave away to their industrious 
 allies in Greece and its islands the mercantile navy of 
 the Illyrians.* A century later they undertook, for the 
 first time, a war which had the extension of commerce 
 for its purpose : this was Julius Caesar's invasion of 
 Britain, where for some time they seemed to expect 
 a second Spain or Sicily. In the reign of Augustus 
 trade and manufactures had nearly reached their utmost 
 limit. But the philosoj)hers would not be converted ; 
 and Cicero, wishing to speak well of commerce^ could 
 devise nothing more commendatory to say of it than 
 that it was one way, and not the most reputable, whereby 
 a person might acquire the position which the great 
 man himself was so vain of being supposed to occupy, 
 that of a wealthy country gentleman. t 
 
 The progress of commerce was impeded by mechanical 
 obstacles as weighty as the moral ones.:|: There was no 
 established or convenient trade in money. The naviga- 
 tion of the ancients was, in all its arrangements, nothing 
 better than a tedious creeping along the coasts. The 
 carriage of goods overland was entirely performed, so 
 far as regarded the rich Asiatic countries, by caravans 
 
 * Livii Histor. lib. xxx. cap. 43; lib. xxxviii. cap. 38, 39; 
 lib. xlv. cap. 43. 
 
 -f- Cicero De OfBciis, lib. i. cap. 41. 
 
 :J: Heeren, African Nations : Introduction, On Ancient Com- 
 merce. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 385 
 
 like those of the middle ages ; — a mode of intercourse 
 evidently destitute of all the means that are indispen- 
 sable for the conveyance of bulky articles ; such, for 
 instance, as the rice, sugar, and saltpetre, which India 
 could have furnished to the Romans. Ancient commerce 
 may be described as having been confined chiefly to the 
 following commodities : corn, for the transportation of 
 which the facilities were imperfect ; wine, which was 
 exported to a limited extent ; oil, which travelled more 
 readily ; stuffs for clothing, chiefly the fine oriental 
 fabrics, but very little of the raw material ; and the 
 precious productions furnished by the East, as well as 
 by the mines of the Avhole known Avorld. 
 
 The exports of ancient Italy were always extremely 
 inconsiderable. So long as its manufactures maintained 
 some degree of prosperity, the country itself was its only 
 available market ; and of its natural productions, it 
 possessed none in an excess capable of forming the 
 basis of an extensive trade, except its wine, which was 
 sent abroad for a century or two, and its oil, which was 
 an article of foreign commerce during a period con- 
 siderably longer. When, therefore, we speak of the 
 commerce of ancient Italy, we mean its imports. The 
 most valuable of these was the foreign corn ; for which 
 the chief granaries, under the emperors, were Sicily, 
 Barbary, and Egypt. The first of these countries, be- 
 sides supporting long a considerable share of Grecian 
 skill in the arts, maintained its agriculture throughout 
 several centuries of the empire, and exported largely both 
 its wine and its oil. Smaller supplies of corn came from 
 Sardinia, Spain, ]\Iacedon, Asia Minor, Syria, and the 
 coasts of the Black Sea. The other objects of Roman 
 commerce, and the mercantile relations between Italy 
 and the various nations subject to its government or influ- 
 ence, will be best understood if we cursorily glance at 
 each of the principal states in succession. 
 
 The greatest part of Europe was open to Rome before 
 the fall of the republic. Greece and the surrounding 
 countries maintained with Italy a more extensive com- 
 merce than any other region of the west, furnishing 
 
 VOL. I. 2 A 
 
386 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 metals wrought and unwrought, marbles, honey, wine, 
 wax, some minerals and spices, a little fine wool, and 
 the purple cloths of Laconia. Gaul yielded metals, 
 horses, fine wool from the territory of Narhonne, woollen 
 cloths, and salted provisions. Spain exported large quan- 
 tities of metals, and other minerals, with some wines. 
 Germany, and the remaining countries of continental 
 Europe, were in those ages unfit to supply almost any 
 exchangeable commodity. Britain, neglected by Au- 
 gustus, and reconquered by Claudius, still disappointed 
 its invaders ; but it yielded (besides some corn) timber, 
 cattle, furs, coarse pearls, and the valuable iron, tin, and 
 black lead of its mines. Ireland was long overlooked, 
 and Diodorus calls its inhabitants cannibals ; though the 
 Romans had acquired rather a more accurate knowledge 
 of it before the days of Tacitus. 
 
 But, during the luxurious times of tlie imperial 
 government, far the most important commerce enjoyed 
 by Italy was that with the Asiatic nations. From the 
 countries of Asia Minor were received several valuable 
 articles both for use and ornament, including the marbles 
 of Phrygia, the iron of Pontus, and the fine wools of 
 Ionia. From the coasts of Syria, as the mart or the place 
 of production, came very large quantities of those spices 
 and aromatic preparations which the ancient habits of 
 the people rendered indispensable, v/ith the purple cloth 
 of Tyre, wines, precious stones, and the bitumen of 
 Palestine. The myrrh, the amomum, and the nard, 
 were brought from the odoriferous forests of Arabia, 
 which also produced precious stones, pearls, marble, gold, 
 and wine from its marvellous city Petra. India sup- 
 plied pepper, ginger, cinnamon, and other spices, to- 
 gether with those delicate cotton fabrics, for which that 
 country was then quite as famous as now, and which 
 included muslins, calicoes, shawls, and all the varieties 
 of goods which are at present sent to Britain. Through 
 Hindostan, too, the Romans received the spun silk and 
 silk stufis of the country called Serica, that is, the modem 
 Chma, with the regions on its western border ; and 
 thence also they had the malabathrum, wliich has been 
 
OP THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 387 
 
 suspected, though probably without sufficient reason, to 
 have been the leaves of the tea-plant.'"' 
 
 Africa was of course no farther accessible than along 
 its coasts. Alexandria, however, the port of Egypt, was 
 the main depot for all Asiatic merchandise ; and the 
 land of the Pharaohs itself yielded cotton, flax, glass, 
 marbles, precious stones, wines, perfumes, papyrus, some 
 medicinal herbs, and a few minerals. From the ports 
 on the northern shores of Africa came the productions 
 of Barbary, together with those articles of commerce 
 which were procured from the interior by barter with 
 the negro tribes, or by the robbery of their villages. 
 The list included gold and gold-dust, ivory, cotton, pre- 
 cious stones, marble, several sorts of ornamental wood 
 for furniture, and large droves of black slaves. 
 
 THE THIRD PERIOD: 
 
 A. u. 933—1229, OR a. n. ISO— 47G. 
 
 During the three centuries that preceded the dissolu- 
 tion of the western empire, the political world was a 
 scene where gradual decay was interrupted only by de- 
 structive convulsions. The morality of the people was 
 as bad as their general weakness of character permitted 
 it to be ; and their old religion, which waned and 
 sank during those ages, was succeeded by a form of 
 Christianity already too corrupted to struggle success- 
 fully against the growmg vice and misery. The pagan 
 features of the times are those which it is here intended 
 to illustrate ; but, in speaking of Italy, we may safely 
 borrow much, for this purpose, from its history after the 
 reign of Constantine, because in that country the ancient 
 character and the ancient faith possessed a stronghold 
 which was the last the}' evacuated. 
 
 If we wish to study the religion of the learned pagans 
 in the Lower Empire, we should principally use as our 
 
 * De Pastoret, Memoire iii. Heeren, Asiatic INations, vol. 
 iii. chap. 2. Historical and Descriptive Account of China (Edin- 
 buij>ii Cabinet Library), vol. i chap. 4. 
 
388 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 text-books the writings of the Latter Platonists of Alex- 
 andria, which lie beyond the scope of these pages. But 
 we may glean something as to the philosophical theo- 
 logy, and much as to the belief of the people, from 
 other sources less scholastic ; and four popular treatises, 
 all belongmg either to the earliest age of this period, 
 or to the last of that preceding, throw a strong light on 
 the new shape which had been assumed by the hea- 
 then superstitions.* We trace little or nothing of the 
 native mythology of Italy ; but the Greeks diffused 
 throughout that country new and often scandalous ver- 
 sions of their o-svn legends. As instances, may be quoted 
 the Aedon of Antoninus, which is an exaggeration of the 
 horrors of Progne's tragedy ; and his Cephalus and Pro- 
 cris, in which that touching story is disgustingly debased. 
 Original fictions also were invented with new names ; 
 and there appeared a class of ghost-stories altogether 
 unexampled. Their costume is decidedly oriental, their 
 tone of feeling is gloomy and overwrought, and their 
 apparitions have an unclassical materialism which is 
 sometimes absolutely harrowing. Such is Phlegon's 
 tale of the cannibal-ghost of Polycritus the -^tolarch, 
 which is a demon standing, as it were, half-way between 
 the Arabian goule and the Levantine vampire. An ex- 
 ample still more characteristic is a fragment of the same 
 writer, which relates the fatal adventure of the youth 
 Machates with the dead gh-l Philinnion ; a romance of 
 the Avildest outline, whose spectral voluptuousness Goethe 
 has closely imitated in his ballad of the Bride of Co- 
 rinth. Apollonius gives us oriental fables ; like that of 
 Hermotimus, whose soul wandered through space, leav- 
 ing its body senseless on the ground ; of Aristeas, whose 
 ghost traversed Sicily after his death at Proconnesus ; 
 and of Epimenides of Crete, who slept fifty-seven 
 years. While the science of reading dreams made every 
 thought of the mind symbolical, the actual phenomena 
 
 * The Book of Marvels, by Hadrian's favourite, Phlegon of 
 Tralles ; the Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis ; the Invented 
 Histories of Apollonius Dyscolus, a fellow-student of Marcus Au- 
 relius ; and the Dream-Book of Arteraidorus. 
 
OF THE ANCIEiNT ITALIANS. 389 
 
 of the material world were looked on as equally signi- 
 ficant, and those most eagerly reported were the alarm- 
 ing and the unnatural. Monstrous births were described 
 and exaggerated ; and there were nimours of earth- 
 quakes which laid bare the skeletons of buried Titans. 
 In those last ages of paganism, magic became more com- 
 mon than ever, and its rites were never more shocking. 
 The Syrian emperor Heliogabalus, who in his youth 
 was the priest of Gabal, or the sun, at Emesa, tore the 
 noblest Italian boys from their parents, slew them with 
 his own hand on the altar of his god, and attempted 
 with the aid of oriental diviners to read the will of 
 heaven by those hon-ible sacrifices.* Astrology con- 
 tinued to flourish, and alchemy, its new ally, was in 
 vain attacked by edicts of Diocletian. 
 
 Education became for a time, in form at least, more 
 complete for the few, but it died away almost entirely 
 for the many. The schools in the small towns decayed 
 or were shut up altogether ; and, about the reign of 
 Theodosius, we see the emperors even distrusting the 
 public seminaries, and withdrawing the liberty which 
 every man till then enjoyed of opening a place of in- 
 struction wherever he chose. But repeated laws, from 
 Hadrian downwards, directed the decurions of the towns 
 to examine and license a fixed number of teachers in law 
 and literature, promising to these professors exemptions 
 and salaries. The most famous academies of the West- 
 em Empire were those of Africa and Gaul ; and that of 
 Milan was esteemed the second in Italy. In the East, 
 Alexandria maintained its reputation ; and the law- 
 schools of Berytus and Constantmople rivalled, from the 
 fourth century, the fame of the Roman jurisconsults. 
 In Rome, however, in the year 425, Theodosius II. and 
 Valentinian founded a regular college, assigning to it 
 halls in the Capitol, and fixing its number of professors 
 as follows : ten teachers of the Latin grammar and lite- 
 rature, with three for Latin eloquence ; ten teachers of 
 the Greek grammar and literature, and five of Greek 
 
 • .Elius Lampridius in Heliogabalo, cap. 8. 
 
390 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 eloquence ; two teachers of law, and one of philosophy. 
 This new establishment, and all others, were subject to 
 strict regulations, which had been fixed in the year 370 
 for the academies then existing, and continued long 
 with little or no alteration. As the edict which con- 
 tained these is our oldest attempt at framing university- 
 statutes, a few of the rules may be described. No student 
 was to be admitted to the schools either of Rome or 
 Constantinople, unless he exhibited certificates from the 
 government of his province, attesting his birth, domicile, 
 and character, and unless he also declared what studies 
 he meant to pursue. The city-magistrates were charged 
 to keep strict watch over the young men, their lodgings, 
 their industry, their associates, and their behaviour in 
 all companies ; and if any one conducted himself impro- 
 perly, they were entitled to whip him publicly, and 
 send him home. All students were to be forced to 
 leave the city on the completion of then- twentieth year. 
 The public teachers enjoyed extensive exemptions from 
 personal serv^ices and burdens ; similar privileges were 
 extended to the ph^'sicians ; and in every town a certain 
 number of these received a public allowance of provisions, 
 or equivalents for them, in consideration of their attend- 
 ance on the poor. In Rome there were two classes of 
 privileged medical men ; the physicians of the imperial 
 household, and the fourteen appointed to practise in the 
 fourteen regions of the city.* 
 
 Of the pubhc spectacles in ancient Rome, it only re- 
 mains to notice the ultimate fate. The Christian eccle- 
 siastics protested vehemently against all of them ; but the 
 abuse long resisted both the church and the emperors. 
 Constantine abolished the religious processions which 
 used to commence the games ; and after his accession 
 we hear of no more real fights in the naumachise ; but 
 he was unable to effect any thing more. His law pro- 
 hibiting: the combats of dadiators remained a dead letter 
 
 * Heiueccii Antiquit. Roman, ad Institut. Prooem. ; ad Instit. 
 lib. i. tit. 25. Conringius De Studiis Liberalibus Urbis Romae 
 et Constantinopoleo? Gothofredus ad Cod. Theodos. lib. xiii. 
 tit. 3. Cod. Justin, lib. x. tit. 62 ; lib. \i. tit. J8. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 391 
 
 till the year 404, when, amidst the triumph of Honoriua 
 on the retreat of Alaric, Telemachus, an eastern monk, 
 rushing into the arena of the Colosseum, strove to part 
 the swordsmen. The populace, in fury, tore up the stone 
 seats and murdered the holy man ; but they speedily 
 grew ashamed of their cowardly deed, and submitted 
 quietly to a prohibition of the combats, which the em- 
 peror seized the opportunity of issuing. The races, the 
 mock sea-fights, and the theatrical exhibitions, survived 
 the fall of the Western Empire. 
 
 The character of the Italians in those gloomy times, 
 offers little over which there is any temptation to linger. 
 The foolish parade and sinful extravagance of the court, 
 or the pride and indolence of the nobles, are not more 
 disheartening than the moral and intellectual darkness 
 of the people at large. Society in Rome during the 
 fourth century of our era, when its population was still 
 substantially pagan, has been described by a contempo- 
 rary, cynically rude, but observant and strictly honest, 
 from whose sketches one or two groups may be copied . 
 
 The first scene which attracts our notice might have 
 been painted from life in the streets of the papal city in 
 the middle ages. In the year 855, Leontius, the prefect, 
 raised a sedition by imprisoning one of the favourite 
 charioteers for a misdemeanour ; and warm weather, 
 aided b}' the dearness and scarcity of wine, co-operated 
 with the original offence to rouse the populace again. 
 They assembled tumultuously in the hollow between 
 the Cselian and Palatine Mounts, where their position was 
 covered by the Nymphseum of Marcus Aurelius, and the 
 Septizonium or sepulchre of Septimius Severus. The 
 magistrate drove into the midst of the crowd, sitting in 
 his chariot, and surrounded by his guards : he addressed 
 them, and was interrupted by shouts of defiance. He 
 fixed his eye on a tall man who was particularly active, 
 and whom he recognised as being one who had been de- 
 nounced as dangerous. The fellow, being asked his name, 
 avowed it with insolent triumph ; on which Leontius 
 instantly ordered him to be seized, stripped, tied to 
 
392 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 a pillar, and scourged in the midst of liis followers. The 
 mob, terrified by their governor's resolution, looked on 
 a while in silence, and then slowly dispersed.* 
 
 The same historian has painted roughly, and with 
 exaggeration and disfavour, a portrait of the populace of 
 Rome in his own times, and another of the nobility.t 
 Many features of his description are the common char- 
 acteristics of a state of society in which the people are 
 poor, numerous, indolent, and vicious, and the few nobles 
 rich, sensual, and haughty. But some particulars 
 have more individuality. The multitude were still pau- 
 pers, and from the time of Aurelian then- laziness was 
 more favoured than ever ; for thenceforth, instead of 
 monthly allowances of corn, they received every day 
 loaves of a specified weight, on presenting the govern- 
 ment tickets at the bakers' shops. Their time and 
 their pittance of money were divided between the wine- 
 shops, the dice-table, the bagnio, and the places where 
 the public shows were exhibited. In the theatres, when 
 they were tired of hissing the actors, they cursed tlie 
 foreigners whom they saw around them, and clamoured 
 for their expulsion ; although, as their historian sarcasti- 
 cally observes, they and their city could not, but for these 
 very foreigners, have continued to exist. Those degene- 
 rate Romans had personal pride, too, as well as national : 
 walking barefoot, and in rags, they aped their superiors 
 in assuming sonorous appellations, which their ignorance 
 conceived to be classical ; and the Cimessores, Statarii, 
 SemicupsB, Pordaci, and TruUae, held their heads higher 
 for reflecting that they represented the ancient plebeians. 
 The nobles set them the fashion of effeminacy, licen- 
 tiousness, gaming, and pride of idle words. They had 
 their gradations of honorary titles bestowed by the 
 court ; they had family names heaped one upon another, 
 and formed with a barbarism which the historian's 
 fictitious examples do but slightly caricature. J Their 
 
 * Ammiani Marcellini Historiarum lib. xv. cap. 7. 
 ■f- Ibid. lib. xxviii. cap. 4. Gibbon, chapter xxxi. 
 J See the Indices to Gruter's Inscriptions. There are few pages 
 that will not furnish instances. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 393 
 
 conduct towards the commonalty was worthy of a race 
 who, while they boasted that they were tlie only pri- 
 vileged class in the state, were not ashamed to be 
 slaves in their relation to the sovereign. When we read 
 of the wanton outrages which they perpetrated with 
 impunity on the burghers, and of that haughty con- 
 tempt which they would have had their inferiors to ac- 
 knowledge as condescending indulgence, we wonder that 
 human patience was not worn out, and that universal 
 revolution did not avenge insults which the law was 
 powerless to punish. But when we recollect how de- 
 graded were the oppressed class themselves, we feel that 
 the regeneration of society, if it was to take place, must 
 come to such a people from other hands than their own. 
 And the bloody consummation drew rapidly near. 
 Amidst those fallen patricians, and that insolent yet 
 spiritless populace, there were mixing, more and more 
 thickly, in every corner of the land, groups of the bar- 
 barian mercenaries who composed the armies of the state : 
 and scenes were not unfrequent, which, like menacing 
 visions, presignified to the Romans the approaching ruin 
 of their name. The great Theodosius himself had to 
 court the Gothic captains, whose tribes followed him ; 
 and those rude borderers from the Danube feasted daily 
 in the imperial halls among the refined Italian and Greek 
 nobility. Two of the chiefs, Fraust and Priulf, quarrelled 
 at the emperor's table, and in his presence ; and he was 
 compelled to break up the banquet. The Goths left the 
 palace in hot dispute, and Fraust, suddenly drawing his 
 sword at the gate, cleft his enemy's skull. The dead 
 man's retainers attacked the assassin, who was rescued, 
 after a bloody fight, by the palace-guards. Theodosius, 
 the very best and bravest of the later Roman princes, 
 dared not either to prevent this act of bloodshed, or to 
 avenge it.* 
 
 "We have still to glance at the statistics of Italy m tne 
 Lower Empire. The inquiry has been partially unti- 
 
 • Zosimi Historiarum lib. iv. cap. 56. 
 
394 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 cipated in the sketch already given of the municipal 
 system in those times ; and our view of the position held 
 by the burghers of the Italian towns will be as exten- 
 sive as it is here possible to make it, if we learn a few 
 particulars regarding the condition of the artificers and 
 traders, and the decline both of manufactures and 
 foreign commerce. The disheartening picture will be 
 completed by a slight outline of the state of agriculture 
 and of the rural population. 
 
 The account already given of the foreign trade of 
 Italy, may be strictly applied to a considerable part of 
 the period now under review. But among the changes 
 which took place, the old Roman dislike to commerce 
 at this time both revived, and grew stronger in a new- 
 shape. It now assumed the form of that prejudice 
 which, in most modern nations, considers trade degrad- 
 ing to tlie aristocracy ; the legislature at last adopted the 
 ruinous oj^inion ; and an edict of Honorius prohibited 
 the nobles from engaging in commerce, alleging, how- 
 ever, for the reason, a wish to preserve it as a monopoly 
 to the plebeians."" Still the habits of the Italians con- 
 tinued, for a time, to create a demand for foreign luxu- 
 ries, which, notwithstanding much impoverishment and 
 the constant downfal of ancient families, cannot be said 
 to have diminished till the fifth century. The ports of 
 the Eastern Empire derived much of their prosperit}^ 
 from their trade in precious commodities, with which 
 they supplied the provinces of the West ; and, till the 
 reign of Augustulus, the nobles wore dresses made of 
 Asiatic silks, and of cloths embroidered with silver and 
 gold. 
 
 The manufactures which ministered to these and 
 other requirements of luxury, gave employment to con- 
 siderable bodies of artisans in the larger towns ; and the 
 guilds, long regarded as dangerous by the emperors, some- 
 times suppressed and always discountenanced, at last ac- 
 quired a general recognition, which may be fixed as early 
 at least as the reign of Alexander Severus. Thenceforth 
 
 * Cod. Justin, lib. iv. tit. 63. leg. 3. 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 395 
 
 there were numerous authorized societies of this kind, 
 each of which had its office-bearers, its chapel or religious 
 ceremonies, its common fund, its by-laws, its processions, 
 and its standards. 
 
 The curious details of the laws describing the cor- 
 porations would not to any extent aid us in determining 
 the comparative prosperity of the several branches of 
 industry. Indeed, any conclusion to which they would 
 carry us is unfavourable to the state of the crafts enu- 
 merated : for with regard to the architects and other 
 persons practising the liberal arts, the decay of skill and 
 scarcity of students are expressly set forth as the causes 
 which make it necessary to confer privileges, in the hope 
 of producing a revival. Several of the finest branches 
 of manufacture were carried on in imperial establish- 
 ments, which enjoyed a monopoly of supplying the 
 army and all public servants. As to most of the other 
 practical pursuits, especially those which related to the 
 necessaries of life, the facts are yet more discouraging ; 
 for the laws in regard to them established some of the 
 very worst principles wliich we have seen adopted in 
 reference to the town-councils. The mariners, bakers, 
 and some others, were not only bound in their own per- 
 sons to follow^ their trade for life, within their own town 
 or its district, without being freed from this slavery by 
 any possible means ; but the obligation was transferred 
 and made binding on every one connected with them, no 
 matter how remotely. The son and grandson entered 
 by compulsion their father's craft ; marriage with the 
 daughter of an artisan bound the son-in-law to the same 
 calling ; the inheritance of private property had a similar 
 eflFect ; and even a purchase of lands for an adequate 
 price exposed the buyer to find himself forced into the 
 trade of the baker, shipowner, or cattle-dealer, who had 
 been the seller. It may interest us to learn, that there 
 are strong reasons for believing this wretched constitu- 
 tion of the guilds to have been introduced by the Romans 
 into our own country."' 
 
 • Gothofredus ad Cod. Theodos. lib.xiii. tit. 4, 5, 6; lib. xiv. 
 tit. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8. PanciroUus De Corporibus Artificum, ap 
 
396 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 When we survey the agricultural population of Italy 
 under the Christian empire, we see the number of 
 slaves rapidly diminishing. They make room for a new 
 class, standing midway between freedom and slaverj^ and 
 known by various descriptive names : — Coloni, Origi- 
 narii, Adscriptitii, Inquilini, Tributarii, Censiti. Their 
 status was the origin of the Italian serfs or villeins of 
 the dark and middle ages.* The prominent features of 
 their position were the following. They were nominally 
 freemen, and most of them Roman citizens ; but they 
 were subject to the same corporal punishments as slaves, 
 and, — which was the pivot upon which their lot turned, 
 — they were ii-removably attached to the soil of the estate 
 where they were born, and bound for life to cultivate a 
 prescribed portion of it, the fruits of which they them- 
 selves enjoyed, paying the proprietor a fixed rent in 
 money or kind, though yielding no personal services. As 
 they durst not leave the lands, so the proprietor could 
 not remove them ; but if he sold the ground, the coloni 
 were necessarily transferred to the purchaser along with 
 it. They could possess property of their ovm, which the 
 owner of the estate (their patronus) was not entitled to 
 touch ; but he was usually empowered to prevent their 
 alienating it, that his lands might have the advantage of 
 it as agricultural capital ; though some classes of coloni 
 could dispose of their goods at pleasure. They were, as 
 we have seen, subject to the poll-tax ; but the patron 
 was responsible for it to the treasury, and paid it in the 
 first instance. There is no trace of any process of manu- 
 mission for them, nor of any possible mode of dissolv- 
 ing the bonds by which they were rivetted to the soO, 
 except a prescriptive absence, of thirty years for men, 
 and twenty for women ; which absence, if spent in 
 freedom, made the parties free, and, if spent in service 
 
 GrfEvium, torn. iii. Heineccii Opusculorum Sylloge i. Exercitatio 9. 
 Palgrave's English Commonwealth, part i . chapter x. 
 
 * See, on this interesting but neglected subject, a most satisfac- 
 tory and minute dissertation by Savigny (Ueber den Rbmischen 
 Coionat), in the Transactions of the Academy of Sciences of Ber- 
 lin for 1822-3; and, also in that volume, the same writer's paper 
 on the Imperial Taxation. 
 
OF TIIE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 397 
 
 on other lands, transferred them to the new manor. If a 
 colonus became a priest (for they were held capable of 
 receiving ordination), the patron was still entitled to 
 retain him on the estate, and exact the accustomed 
 rent and labour from him. These peasants, so strangely 
 situated, were protected by their annexation to the soil, 
 and by a rule which prohibited the imposition of new 
 burdens, or a rise of rents ; and it was also law, that if 
 a domain were divided among joint proprietors, there 
 should be no separation of married people, parents and 
 children, or even near kinsfolk. 
 
 Instances of a class thus constituted were to be found 
 in Italy as early at least as the time of Constantino ;* and 
 this date, with other facts, makes it impossible to account 
 for their rise in that country on the theory which has 
 been proposed as to the villeins of our own islands, — 
 that they were a native population enslaved by invaders. 
 The Italian coloni bore some likeness to the old Roman 
 clients, and a stronger one to the serfs of the ancient 
 Germans, as they are described by Tacitus ; but neither 
 can they be traced to either of these sources. There 
 is equal difficulty in supposing them to have originally 
 been, as one hypothesis bears, slaves emancipated under 
 conditions of villeinage. Another theory, the most 
 plausible of all, — though it likewise is subject to ob- 
 jections as a general rule, — is suggested by facts which 
 are described by a priest of Marseilles in the middle of 
 the fifth century, as actually taking place in Gaul be- 
 fore his own eyes.t Salvianus says that the free husband- 
 men who cultivated small farms belonging to themselves, 
 were crushed to the dust by taxes, at once oppressive 
 and dishonestly levied ; that numbers of them abandoned 
 
 * Cod. Theodos. lib. xiii. tit. 10, De Censu. Cod. Justinian, lib. 
 xi. tit. 47, 1. 2 (an edict addressed to the governor of ^Emilia). 
 
 't* Salvianus De Gubernatione Dei, lib. v, Bibliotheca Patrum, 
 Lugd. torn. viii. particularly p. 359-361. The whole book is full 
 of curious statistical notices. The leading passage is quoted in Du- 
 cange's Glossary (ad vocera " Colonus") ; and the facts are stated 
 and animadverted on by Savigny, who, however, does not consider 
 the theory as of general application. 
 
398 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY 
 
 their possessions, and took from the rich landholders 
 either these or other lands, to be cultivated by them as 
 coloni,on conditions \vhich saved them from the severities 
 of the tax-gatherer, but left them scarcely a vestige of 
 either property or personal freedom. 
 
 In the hands of this class, agriculture fell yet lower 
 than it had sunk even with the slaves. The wines of 
 Italy were already worthless ; the olives now decayed 
 likewise ; and the whole peninsula yielded little beyond 
 a few cattle, some mineral produce, and the last timber of 
 its magnificent old forests. It was a starving country : 
 the people thronged into the large towns, especially 
 Rome, to cry for bread ; and the emperors, who seldom 
 resided in that city, or even within the Alps, had to ship 
 corn oftener than ever, as the only means of saving the 
 ancient metropolis from becoming equally desolate with 
 the waste which already stretched for miles around its 
 walls. We possess the correspondence of Symmachus, 
 who was prefect of the city under the first two Valenti- 
 nians, Theodosius, and Honorius. Writing to his friends, 
 he describes his Italian estates as going to utter wreck, 
 the government as neglecting all measures of prudence 
 and justice, the populace as hungry and clamorous, the 
 crops as failing all over the peninsula, and the munici- 
 palities as in vain imploring aid from the court. To the 
 emperors he addresses officially, year after year, and 
 strengthens by deputations, the most vehement entreaties 
 for speedy help. In one letter he represents the whole 
 population of Rome as fed by the charity of a few rich 
 men, who, however, had nothmg to give except spoilt 
 corn, which was every where generating disease ; the 
 provinces, he says, fail in delivering the rations assigned 
 to the city from the government taxes ; the emperors 
 promise while the people are famishing ; and the position 
 of Italy is described as one in which good fortune alone 
 can bring relief, and where human wisdom is powerless. 
 But in the midst of this universal misery, and v/hile the 
 prefect reproaches his friends with hunting and spendmg 
 their days in mirth, he himself writes eagerly for wild 
 beasts to appear at his games ; and, in the same breath in 
 
OF THE ANCIENT ITALIANS. 399 
 
 which he prays Thcodosius not to forget to save the Ro- 
 mans from starving, he conjures him not to insist on 
 shutting up the Cii'cus and the Theatre.* In Campania 
 itself, the orchard of the south, Honorius was compelled 
 in the year 395 to expunge from the tax-roll, as become 
 utterl}'- waste, more than three hundred thousand acres 
 of land. Rutilius, writing a quarter of a century later, 
 describes Tuscany as degenerating into a wide forest 
 without dwellings, its fields as uncultivated, its Aure- 
 lian highway as flooded and impassable, and the bridges 
 as every where broken down and left unrepaired. 
 
 The last age of the empii-e in Italy presented, in all 
 its relations, a scene that tempted men to despair ; and 
 from every record w^hicli it has left, from the works of 
 historians, lawgivers, statesmen, philosophers, and divines, 
 might be collected a volume of gloomy forebodings. 
 Two men of eloquence and learning, who in the latter 
 half of the fourth century stood opposed to each other 
 in the face of Europe, the champion of the old faith and 
 the priest of the new, concurred in the despondency with 
 wliich they contemplated the aspect of the \vorld.t 
 The one was Symmachus, the heathen senator and pre- 
 fect of Rome. Over the reflections that saddened 
 him, he throws his favourite veil of classical allusion. 
 ''' You complain," says he, in a letter to a friend, " that 
 I send you no narrative of public events. What if 
 I answer, that it is better to let them pass unnoticed 1 
 The ancient oracles have grown dumb ; in the grotto 
 of Cumae are read no mystic characters; no voice 
 issues from the tree of Dodona ; no chanted verse 
 is heard amidst the vapours of the Delphic cell. And 
 we, mortal and impotent, who owe our very existence 
 to tlie act of a rebellious demigod, may most wisely 
 leam from the silence of heaven, and ponder in quiet 
 
 * Symmachi Epistolarum ad Diversos, lib. ii. ep. 7, 52 ; lib. iv. 
 ep. 18, 68; lib. vi. ep. 14 ; lib. x. ep. 21, 26, 34, 38, 43, 55, 57. 
 
 t Symmachi lib. iv, epist. 33. Sancti Ambrosii Epistolarum 
 classis i. ep. 39. (Edit. Parisiis, 1690.) 
 
400 CHARACTER, HABITS, AND INDUSTRY, &c, 
 
 over that sad history of our race, for which the book 
 of prophecy has no longer a leaf!" The Christian 
 bishop, Saint Ambrose of Milan, expresses the same 
 feelings in a different tone. He describes a journey in 
 which are passed successively Bologna, Modena, Reggio, 
 and Piacenza. Those ancient cities lie half-ruined and 
 half-unpeopled ; among the valleys of the Apennines 
 stretch wide uncultivated wastes, where of old the land 
 bloomed like a garden ; and on the surrounding heights 
 the site of once flourishing villages is marked by moul- 
 dering and roofless walls. The pious churchman speaks 
 of the grief which we feel for departed friends, as soften- 
 ed by our trust that they have passed to a purer life ; 
 but for his country he has jio such hope of renewed 
 existence : her prosperity is sunk for ever. 
 
 Both the Pagan and the Christian misinterpreted the 
 sig-ns of the times. Italy was doomed to endure a penance 
 of centuries ; but her destiny among the nations was not 
 to be fulfilled, till she should again have guided Europe 
 to political wisdom and intellectual activity. 
 
 END OF VOLUME FIRST. 
 
 Printed by Oliver & Boyd, 
 Tweeddale Court, High Street, Edinburgh. 
 
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