CHAPTER LXXI.-PROSPECT OF THE RUINS OF ROME IN THR FIFTEENTH CENTURY.-FOUR CAUSES OF DECAY AND DESTRUCTION.— In the last days of pope Eugenius the Fourth, two of his servants, the learned Poggius* and a friend, ascended the Capitoline hill; reposed themselves among the ruins of columns and temples; and viewed from that commanding spot the wide and various prospect of desolation. The place and the object gave ample scope for moralizing on the vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave; and it was agreed, that in proportion to her may be quoted with the same confidence as the Latin text of the Antiquities. 4. Annali d'Italia, eighteen vols. in octavo, Milan, 1753 -1756, a dry though accurate and useful abridgment of the history of Italy from the birth of Christ to the middle of the eighteenth century. 5. Dell' Antichità Estense ed Italiane, two vols. in folio, Modena, 1717. 1740. In the history of this illustrious race, the parent of our Brunswick kings, the critic is not seduced by the loyalty or gratitude of the subject. In all his works, Muratori approves himself a diligent and laborious writer, who aspires above the prejudices of a Catholic priest. He was born in the year 1672, and died in the year 1750, after passing near sixty years in the libraries of Milan and Modena. (Vita del Proposto Ludovico Antonio Muratori, by his nephew and successor Gian. Francesco Soli Muratori, Venezia, 1756, in quarto.) [Gibbon appears in this note to lose sight of the early German origin of the Guelphs. (See vol. v. p. 428.) The name and lands of this ancient house were brought into the family of D'Este by the marriage of the heiress Cunegonda with the marquis Albert Azzo. (See vol. vi. p. 475.) Her son assumed the patronymic and territorial rights of her race; he and his posterity branched off from his father's line and became German princes. Even the marriage of his son with Matilda, countess of Tuscany, gave him no permanent standing in Italy. (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, xiv. 488; xv. 24-37, Venezia, 1790.)-ED.] I have already (note p. 182, in chap. 65) mentioned the age, character, and writings of Poggius; and particularly noticed the date of this elegant moral lecture on the varieties of fortune. [Gibbon forgot here that in his former note he had fixed 1430 as the date of this composition, "a short time before the death of Pope Martin V." -ED.] + Consedimus in ipsis Tarpeiæ arcis ruinis pone ingens porta cujusdam, ut puto, templi marmoreum limen, pluri. masque passim confractas columnas, unde magna ex parte prospectus urbis patet (p. 5) former greatness, the fall of Rome was the more awful and deplorable. "Her primæval state, such as she might appear in a remote age, when Evander entertained the stranger of Troy, has been delineated by the fancy of Virgil. This Tarpeian rock was then a savage and solitary thicket; in the time of the poet, it was crowned with the golden roofs of a temple; the temple is overthrown, the gold has been pillaged, the wheel of fortune has accomplished her revolution, and the sacred ground is again disfigured with thorns and brambles. The hill of the Capitol, on which we sit, was formerly the head of the Roman empire, the citadel of the earth, the terror of kings; illustrated by the footsteps of so many triumphs, enriched with the spoils and tributes of so many nations. This spectacle of the world, how is it fallen! how changed! how defaced! the path of victory is obliterated by vines, and the benches of the senators are concealed by a dunghill. Cast your eyes on the Palatine hill, and seek among the shapeless and enormous fragments, the marble theatre, the obelisks, the colossal statues, the porticoes of Nero's palace: survey the other hills of the city, the vacant space is interrupted only by ruins and gardens. The forum of the Roman people, where they assembled to enact their laws and elect their magistrates, is now enclosed for the cultivation of pot-herbs, or thrown open for the reception of swine and buffaloes. The public and private edifices, that were founded for eternity, lie prostrate, naked, and broken, like the limbs of a mighty giant; and the ruin is the more visible, from the stupendous relics that have survived the injuries of time and fortune."+ These relics are minutely described by Poggius, one of the first who raised his eyes from the monuments of legendary, to those of classic, superstition. 1. Besides a bridge, an arch, a sepulchre, and the pyramid of Cestius, he could discern, of the age of the republic, a double row of vaults, * Æneid. 8. 97-369. This ancient picture, so artfully introduced, and so exquisitely finished, must have been highly interesting to an inhabitant of Rome; and our early studies allow us to sympathize in the feelings of a Roman. + Capitolium adeo .... immu. tatum ut vineæ in senatorum subsellia successerint, stercorum ac pur. gamentorum receptaculum factum. Respice ad Palatinum montem vasta rudera.... cæteros colles perlustra, omnia vacua ædificiis, ruinis vineisque oppleta conspicies. (Poggius de Varietat. Fortunæ, p. 21.) See Poggius, p. 8-22. in the salt office of the Capitol, which were inscribed with the name and munificence of Catulus. 2. Eleven temples were visible in some degree, from the perfect form of the Pantheon, to the three arches and a marble column of the temple of peace, which Vespasian erected after the civil wars and the Jewish triumph. 3. Of the number, which he rashly defines, of seven therma or public baths, none were sufficiently entire to represent the use and distribution of the several parts; but those of Diocletian and Antoninus Caracalla still retained the titles of the founders, and astonished the curious spectator, who, in observing their solidity and extent, the variety of marbles, the size and multitude of the columns, compared the labour and expense with the use and importance. Of the baths of Constantine, of Alexander, of Domitian, or rather of Titus, some vestige might yet be found. 4. The triumphal arches of Titus, Severus, and Constantine, were entire, both the structure and the inscriptions; a falling fragment was honoured with the name of Trajan; and two arches, then extant, in the Flaminian way, have been ascribed to the baser memory of Faustina and Gallienus. 5. After the wonder of the Coliseum, Poggius might have overlooked a small amphitheatre of brick, most probably for the use of the prætorian camp; the theatres of Marcellus and Pompeyt were occupied in a great measure by public and private buildings; and in the Circus Agonalis and Maximus, little more than the situation and the form could be investigated. 6. The columns of Trajan and Antonine were still erect; but the Egyptian obelisks were broken or buried. A people of gods and heroes, the workmanship of art, was reduced to one eques * [The Capitol was repaired by Q. Catulus 69 B.C. Clinton, F. H. iii. 168. The still existing remains of his substruction and tabularium, with the inscription, are sketched in the Addenda to Sir W. Gell's Topography of Rome (p. 493, edit. Bohn). But it is there erroneously said that these repairs were made in the year when Catulus was consul (A.U.C. 676. B.C. 78). Livy, Pliny, and Cassiodorus, all assign to them a date nine years later. The ruins here referred to belonged to the arx or citadel, at the western end of the Capitoline hill. Yet Catulus extended his operations also to the Temple of Jupiter, the proper Capitol, at the opposite extremity (Livy, Ep. 38).-ED.] [The theatre of Pompey was restored by the Gothic king, Theodoric, who furnished the senator Symmachus with funds for that pur pose. Cassiod. Var. iv. 51.—-ED.] trian figure of gilt brass, and to five marble statues, of which the most conspicuous were the two horses of Phidias and Praxiteles.* 7. The two mausoleums or sepulchres of Augustus and Adrian could not totally be lost; but the former was only visible as a mound of earth; and the latter, the castle of St. Angelo, had acquired the name and appearance of a modern fortress. With the addition of some separate and nameless columns, such were the remains of the ancient city for the marks of a more recent structure might be Jetected in the walls, which formed a circumference of ten miles, included three hundred and seventy-nine turrets, and opened into the country by thirteen gates. This melancholy picture was drawn above nine hundred years after the fall of the Western empire, and even of the Gothic kingdom of Italy. A long period of distress and anarchy, in which empire, and arts, and riches, had migrated from the banks of the Tiber, was incapable of restoring or adorning the city; and, as all that is human must retrograde if it do not advance, every successive age must have hastened the ruin of the works of antiquity. To measure the progress of decay, and to ascertain, at each era, the state of each edifice, would be an endless and a useless labour; and I shall content myself with two observations, which will introduce a short inquiry into the general causes and effects. 1. Two bundred years before the eloquent complaint of Poggius, an anonymous writer composed a description of Rome.† His ignorance may repeat the same objects under strange and fabulous names. Yet this barbarous topographer had eyes and ears; he could observe the visible remains, he could listen to the tradition of the people; and he distinctly enumerates seven theatres, eleven baths, twelve arches, and eighteen palaces, of which many had disappeared before the * [Respecting these horses, refer to a note in ch. 39, vol. iv. p. 269, and some further observations, made by Gibbon, near the close of this chapter.-ED.] +Liber de Mirabilibus Romæ, ex Registro Nicolai Cardinalis de Arragoniâ in Bibliothecâ Sti. Isidori Armario IV. No. 69. This treatise, with some short but pertinent notes, has been published by Montfaucon, (Diarium Italicum, p. 283-301) who thus delivers his own critical opinion: Scriptor xiiim circiter sæculi, ut ibidem notatur; antiquaria rei imperitus, et, ut ab illo ævo, nugis et anilibus fabellis refertus, sed, quia monumenta, quæ iis temporibus Romæ supererant, pro modulo recenset, non parum inde lucis mutua bitur qui Romanis antiquitatibus indagandis operam navabit (p. 283). time of Poggius. It is apparent, that many stately monuments of antiquity survived till a late period; and that the principles of destruction acted with vigorous and increasing energy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 2. The same reflection must be applied to the three last ages; and we should vainly seek the Septizonium of Severus,† which is celebrated by Petrarch and the antiquarians of the sixteenth century. While the Roman edifices were still entire, the first blows, however weighty and impetuous, were resisted by the solidity of the mass and the harmony of the parts; but the slightest touch would precipitate the fragments of arches and columns, that already nodded to their fall. After a diligent inquiry, I can discern four principal causes of the ruin of Rome, which continued to operate in a period of more than a thousand years. I. The injuries of time and nature. II. The hostile attacks of the Barbarians and Christians. III. The use and abuse of the materials. And, IV. The domestic quarrels of the Romans. I. The art of man is able to construct monuments far more permanent than the narrow span of his own existence; yet these monuments, like himself, are perishable and frail; and in the boundless annals of time, his life and his labours must equally be measured as a fleeting moment. Of a simple and solid edifice, it is not easy, however, to circumscribe the duration. As the wonders of ancient days, the pyramids attracted the curiosity of the ancients; a hun * The Père Mabillon (Analecta, tom. iv. p. 502) has published an anonymous pilgrim of the ninth century, who, in his visit round the churches and holy places of Rome, touches on several buildings, especially porticoes, which had disappeared before the thirteenth century. [Benjamin of Tudela passed through Rome in 1161. His descriptions are sometimes ridiculously disfigured by his religious preju dices and ignorance of history. Yet a skilful archæologist might sift from them useful information. The "two copper pillars constructed by King Solomon of blessed memory," in the church of St. John in porta Latina, the "statue of Samson, with a lance of stone in his hand," that of Absalom, the son of David, these and other more astounding marvels, indicate works of ancient art remaining at that period, which may be better explained. De la Brocquière speaks only in general terms of what he saw at the same time as Poggio, and tells of "grand edifices, columns of marble, statues, and marvellous monuments." Early Travels, edit. Bohn, p. 66-68. 285.-ED.] On the Septizonium, see the Mémoires sur Pétrarque (tom. i p. 325), Donatus (p. 338), and Nardini (p. 117. 414). The age of the pyramids is remote and unknown, since Diodorug |