claim to that elevation. An earlier topographer mentions a church of St. Salvator in Maximis, looking* towards the west, as occupying the site of the temple, and such a title, if existing now, might aid us in our conjectures. But no such church now remains.

The revolutions of Rome were first felt on this hill. The Sabines, the Gauls, the republicans, the imperialists, the citizens of papal Rome, have all contended for dominion on the same narrow spot. After the repairs of Domitiant it appears that the citadel was lost in a mass of golden-roofed fanes, and the word Capitol seems to have been synonymous with the temple. From that

time the triumphs and studies of peace were celebrated and pursued amidst the trophies of victory. Poets were crowned with oaken wreaths,§ libraries were collected, schools opened, and professors taught rhetoric, from the reign of Hadrian to that of Theodosius the Younger. It is possible that part of the establishment mentioned in a law published by Valentinian III. and Theodosius II. may refer to Constantinople. There were, however, public schools in the Capitol. Three Latin rhetoricians,

* Fabricius :-" In ea Capitolii parte quæ occasum versus forum Holitorium respicit.”—Descrip. Urb. Rom., cap. ix. That is, on the side exactly contrary to Aracœli.

†The gilding alone cost 12,000 talents, above two millions and a half sterling. See note 45 to cap. xvi. Decline and Fall, tom. ii. p. 413, 8vo.

+ "Auratum squalet Capitolium."-Hieron. in loco cit.

§ Decline and Fall, cap. lxx. notes 10, 11, tom. xii. p. 327. Tiraboschi, Storia della Lett. Ital., tom. ii. lib. iv. p. 387.

five Greek sophists, ten Latin and ten Greek grammarians, formed a respectable university.

The change of religion bedimmed the glory of the Domitian Capitol, but did not destroy the structures, as Winckelmann heedlessly supposed.* The first despoilment is, however, to be attributed to the piety or rapacity of Stilicho. Genserick is the next recorded plunderer; but Theodoric does not appear to have missed the gilding of the doors, or the tiles of the half uncovered roof of the great temple, or the chain of the goddess Rhea. In his time "the ascent of the High Capitols furnished a sight surpassing all that the human imagination could conceive." How long these wonders were spared is unknown. It is probable that the robbery of the Emperor Constans extended to the ornaments of the capitoline temples; but an antiquary of great note has thought himself able to discover the temple of Jupiter as late as the eighth or ninth century.‡

The hill does not reappear for ages, but seems to have been put to its ancient use, if it be true that the anti-Pope, John, was thrown from the Tarpeian rock at the end of

* Storia delle Arti, &c., lib. xii. cap. iii. tom. ii. p. 419, note a. He went solely on the words of Saint Jerome, on which Baronius had observed long before, "Verum non sic quidem concidisse affirmat Capitolini Jovis templum, quod dirutum hoc anno fuerit, sed quod ornamentis tantum modo expoliatum."-Annal. Eccles. ad an. 389, tom. vi. p. 51, edit. Lucæ. 1740.

"Capitolia celsa conscendere hoc est humana ingenia superata vidisse."-Cassiod. Form. comitiv. formar. urbis, lib. vii. p. 113. Bianchini: but he gives no reason for his conjecture.

the tenth century.* It was again a strong place, and the Corsi family had fortified it, or occupied its fortifications, in the course of the next hundred years. Their houses on the hill were thrown down by the emperor Henry IV. in 1084, and Guiscard soon afterwards levelled whatever remained of the fortress.t

In 1118, however, it was still the place of assembly. The friends of Pope Gelasius II. and the Heads of the regions are said to have mounted into the Capitol, to rescue him from Cencio Frangipane. In that century the Capitol is crowned with churches, and in the possession of monks. Aracoeli and St. John the Baptist, the monastery of the Benedictines (who were settled there by the anti-Pope Anaclete II. about 1130 or 1134), some gardens and mean houses and shops had succeeded to the pagan temples and to the feudal towers.§

At the revolution of Arnold of Brescia (1143, 1144), in the same century, the Capitol was naturally selected for the restoration of the senate and the equestrian

* Dissertazione sulle Rovine, p. 330, note A. There seems some doubt here. Muratori, ad an. 998, tom. v. p. 509, is much amused at a story of Peter Damian's, that the anti-Pope had his eyes bored out, his ears cut off, and his tongue also cut out, and being then put on an ass, with his face to the tail, which he held in his hand, was paraded about Rome, and obliged to exclaim, "Such is the deserving punishment of him who endeavours to expel the pope of Rome from his seat." Damian tells this, with the exception of the tongue cut out; a Saxon annalist tells it with the exception of the exclamation; so that the joke is only in Muratori's confusion.

† See previous account of the destruction of Roman Remains. Annali d'Italia, tom. vi. p. 389.

§ Dissertazione, &c., p. 357, 358.

order. The hill became the seat of the revolutionary government, and we find Pope Lucius II., in 1145, repulsed and killed with a stone in an attempt to drive the people from their post.* The rebuilding of the capitoline citadelf was part of the proposed reform, and appears to have been carried, partially at least, into effect. From this period the Capitol resumed something of its importance, and, if those who saw it may be trusted, of its splendour. The people held a consultation there‡ before they attacked Frederic Barbarossa in 1155.

It appears in the transactions of the subsequent centuries as the centre of the city. The duties and ceremonies of the recovered senate, or senator, were rendered more respectable by being performed on the site of ancient dominion, and whilst the tomb of Hadrian was regarded with jealousy and affright, the tenant of the Capitol was looked upon as the lawful master of Rome. Here Rienzi planted the standard of the good estate-here Petrarch was crowned. The popular assemblies were convoked on this hill. The bell of the great tower was the signal of alarm, and was thought to watch over the new liberties of the Romans. The tolling is often heard in the night of those unhappy ages.

The importance of this station was fatal to the new

* Annali d'Italia, tom. vi. p. 480.

"Andava costui (Arnold of Brescia) predicando che si dovea rifabbricare il campidoglio."—Annali d' Italia, tom. vi. p. 481. Annali, &c., tom. vi. p.

517.

citadel, which, after being frequently assaulted and taken in the quarrels of the barons and the people, and the popes, seems to have lost all appearance of a fortress in the beginning of the fifteenth century. But the people were still summoned to the hill in the tumults. which followed the death of King Ladislaus* in 1414, and a house for the tribunals of the senator and his conservators was built upon the ancient enrolment office of Catulus.† Hear what was then the condition of the hill from a Roman, who, after describing its ancient glories, exclaims, "But now, besides the brickhouse built for the use of the senator and his assessors by Boniface IX.,‡ and raised upon ruins, and such as an old Roman citizen of moderate fortune would have despised; besides the church of Aracoeli, belonging to the brothers of the blessed Francis, constructed on the foundation of the temple of the Feretrian Jupiter, there is nothing to be seen on this Capitoline, or Tarpeian mountain, adorned once with so many noble

* Vendettini. Serie cronologica, &c., p. 75, 76.

At the angle where the prisons now are a portion of the old structure is still preserved; and a still better specimen may be seen within the doorway immediately leading to the prisons. The portico of the Tabularium is so cased in the modern wall that, although distinctly seen, and one of the few certain remains, it produces less effect than any of the Roman antiquities.

The towers of the Capitol were the work of this Pope, the fortifier of the Castle of St. Angelo; and an inscription under his picture, in the Borgian apartments at the Vatican, boasts of this exploit as the true foundation of the papal power.