Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

has been scourged for eighteen centuries. The ravages of man have been greater than those of time; and although a considerable part of the modern city has been built out of its ruins, the pillaged masses are scarcely missed by the eye, and the stupendous pile appears nearly entire. It is about seventeen hundred feet in circumference, of an oval form, and four stories high, of which the first is of the Doric, the second of the Ionic, and the other two of the Corinthian order. An awning was originally stretched across the top, to shield the audience from sun and rain. Its walls, consisting of open porticos in the three lower stories, and enriched with triple ranges of pillars, are constructed of immense blocks of Travertine marble, compactly adjusted without cement, and originally secured by iron clamps, which have nearly all been pilfered by barbarians. The complexion of the material is of a rich reddish-brown, exquisitely mellowed by time. The praise-worthy measures which the Pope and his subjects have taken, and are now taking, to prop, secure, and preserve the time-worn fabric, evince a belief in the oracular prediction of the poet, that

"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
And when Rome falls-the world."

LETTER LVIII.

ROME CONTINUED-FORUM OF TRAJAN-PANTHEON--TOMB OF RAPHAEL--CAMPUS MARTIUS--MAUSOLEUM OF AUGUSTUS—— BANKS OF THE TIBER-BRIDGES-CASTLE OF ST. ANGELOISLAND OF ESCULAPIUS--CLOACA MAXIMA-TEMPLE OF VESTA--PORT AT RIPA GRANDE.

April, 1826.-The ruins which have been described with as much conciseness as possible in the preceding letter, are all in the vicinity of the Forum, and in full view from the tower on the Capitoline Hill. As we are not like the ancient augurs obliged always to look towards one point of the compass, let us shift our position, and turn our faces northward, for the purpose of settling the localities of the city. On the right, the column of Trajan directs the eye of the traveller to the Forum of the same name, which is said to

[ocr errors]

have surpassed even the Roman Forum in splendour. A tríumphal arch led into the area, which was surrounded with porticos and temples, filled with statues. It has shared the

[ocr errors]

same fate with its more celebrated rival already described, having been buried with all its ornaments to the depth of ten or twelve feet. About one half of it has been disinterred, and the old pavement now laid bare, is strewed with fragments of pillars and beautiful specimens of the arts. The other half remains unexplored, and two large churches stand ́ing upon the ground will probably prevent future excavations. Trajan's column stood in the centre of the Forum. It is ten feet in diameter and a hundred and thirty high, composed of thirty-four blocks of marble, fastened together by clamps. The shaft is embossed with bas-relief representations of the Dacian wars, over which a bronze statue of St. Peter, poised upon the top, oddly presides.

Not far hence are the Forums of Nerva and Domitian, both in utter ruin. Four or five Corinthian pillars, of Parian marble, exquisitely wrought, are the sole vestiges. Farther to the left rises the solitary pillar of Antonine, similar in materials, dimensions, and embellishments to that of Trajan. It was once shattered by lightning, and repaired by the Pope, who mounted a bronze statue of St. Paul upon the summit. The two saints are almost within speaking distance, elevated above the battlements of the city, and serving as beacons in traversing its obscure streets.

Still farther to the left, and in one of the most populous districts of the modern city, the Pantheon lifts its beautiful rotunda above the meaner buildings, by which it is surrounded. It fronts one of the public areas, ornamented as usual with an Egyptian obelisk and a copious fountain. This temple, which is justly ranked among the most celebrated and interesting monuments of Roman taste, was built by Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus, and designed as a repository of the statues of all the gods, as its name imports. The porch, seventy feet in length and forty in width, elevated at present only two steps above the Piazza, is supported by sixteen Corinthian pillars, forty feet in height, and five in diameter, the shafts of which are of red oriental granite, and the capitals of white marble. On either side of the door is a large niche—that on the right, once contained a statue of Augustus, and the other, the statue of Agrippa. The bronze

doors were carried off as trophies by Genseric, and buried for ever in the depths of the Mediterranean.

The temple itself is a magnificent rotunda, a hundred and fifty feet in diameter, and nearly the same in height, with a wide aperture at top, through which the bright skies of Italy shed a cheerful light, and give to the interior a charming effect. Originally the outside was covered with gilt bronze, which Pope Urban VIII. melted into cannon for the Castle of St. Angelo, and into ornaments for the shrine of St. Peter, furnishing just grounds for the satirical pun, that the barbarini (the family name of his Holiness) had pillaged what the barbarians had spared. The inner walls are encrusted with the richest marbles, and the pavement is of porphyry blended with yellow antique. Two ranges of niches extend quite round the temple-the upper one for the celestial, the lower for the terrestrial, and the floor for the infernal deities; while Jove with his group of greater gods, occupying the tribune or alcove opposite the door, presided over the whole. Among the latter, at the right hand of Jupiter himself, Julius Cæsar was placed-an extravagant and impious compliment, which Augustus had the good sense to decline.

By the exercise of plenary indulgence, the Pantheon has been cleansed of all its heathenish impurities, and converted into one of the thousand churches at Rome. Half a dozen shrines, more splendid than the idols of antiquity ever found, rise round the walls, enriched with statues and pictures. Among the former, is a vestal in a sitting posture, with a child by her side. She was found, with many other works of art, amidst the rubbish of the temple, and in the general conversion was christened St. Anna, receiving at the same time the appendage of a bambino, to show that she had ceased to belong to the ancient sisterhood. Suspended at the side of one of the altars, are great numbers of votive tablets, a dozen of which exhibit rude drawings of stilettos and pistols, making the bloody weapons still more hideous, and evincing that assassinations are ranked among the common accidents of life-by no means a comfortable idea to a traveller, who has not full faith in the miraculous intervention of a saint, to rescue him from the hands of banditti. During one of our visits to this beautiful temple, two female ~ pilgrims came in, and knelt on the splendid mosaic before one of the shrines. They were clad in black robes, hoods

and hats decorated with shells, and each bearing a long staff. One of them was recognized as the same we had passed on the road, in climbing the heights of Monte Somma. She was probably journeying from the shrine of Loretto to Rome. But the Pantheon has some associations of a more elevated character, than such gross superstition can impart. Here were the tombs of many of the most distinguished men of modern Rome, most of which have been removed, for what reason I know not. Those of Annibal Caracci and RAPHAEL are still left, consisting of plain tablets on the wall, by the side of one of the altars. The latter died in April, 1520, at the age of 37. His epitaph is brief, comprised in the two following lines:

"Ille hic est Raphael, timuit, quo sospite, vinci,
Rerum magna parens, et moriente, mori."

:

which may be thus translated :- "Here lies that Raphael, during whose life nature feared a rival, and at his death, that she also might expire." If any name could justify such hyperbole, it is that of an artist, who in his brief and brilliant career, in an age deemed by us comparatively barbarous, filled the galleries of Italy with pictures, which it may be said with truth nothing but the hand of nature herself can surpass. On the tablet below is another inscription, less extravagant in idea, and more classically expressed-" Cujus spirantes prope imagines"-" whose images almost breathe”—a compliment as just, as it is poetical.

The eye searches in vain for the precise limits of the old Campus Martius, which extended from the bases of the Capitoline, Quirinal, and Pincian Hills, to the left bank of the Tiber, and is now covered by one of the most populous districts of the modern city. It is intersected by the Corso, and we sleep every night on the borders of the Martial Field, to dream over the scenes of other ages. Near its northern and ancient boundary, (for in the time of Nero it was extended to the Milvian Bridge,) stands the mausoleum of Augustus and his family. It is an obtruncated Rotunda perhaps a hundred feet in diameter, and has actually been converted into an amphitheatre, for the exhibition of bullbaiting, and fire-works. It is interesting merely from its associations, and remarkable for a very perfect echo and whispering gallery--a curiosity which seems to have escaped the indefatigable researches of book-makers. In one of

my several visits, I repeated the pathetic elegy of Virgil on the young Marcellus, which melted Octavia into tears and made the fortune of the poet. Echo seemed enamoured of the verse, and sent back, in garrulous reverberations from her profaned retreat, the name of the Roman boy, whose ashes sleep below.

We must not omit the apochryphal hills of Mons Marius, the Vaticanus, and the old Janiculum, which range along the right bank of the Tiber from the north-east to the southwest, in the order they are mentioned, adding much to the bold outlines of the city. The first of these eminences is a solitude, with the exception of a white villa or two seated upon its brow. On the summit of the second, stands its name-sake, the Vatican, consisting of that miracle of architecture, the church of St. Peter, and the monstrous Palace of the Popes, covering more acres than the corse of the giant Tityus, and expelling from its gloomy dominions every trace of those sylvan charms, which once responded in echoes to the lyric Muse.* But let us not pause at present to look even at the peerless dome, which may always be regarded as the most elevated and conspicuous object, within the circumference of the Campagna di Roma. My readers will have enough of it hereafter. The Janiculum is a large and bold hill, thinly peopled, covered with extensive, woody gardens, and studded with palaces.

It may be as well to mention here by way of episode, and for the sake of disposing of other localities with all convenient despatch, that I have twice navigated the channel of the Tiber--the first time as far as the bridge of St. Angelo, and a second time from the Ripetta to Ripa Grande, the whole extent of the city. The current within these limits is contracted to the width of about two hundred feet, (little more than half its width at the Milvian Bridge,) and so rapid as to become turbulent, resembling both in the complexion of its waters and its whirlpools an American river during the floods of spring. So strong were its boilings and vortices, as sensibly to affect our row-boat, of the ordinary size, which at some points became almost unmanageable. There cannot be the least doubt, that the bed of the river, besides being confined to half its breadth, by entrenching upon its

[blocks in formation]

1

« AnteriorContinuar »