but by the authority of Innocent IV. recovered entire possession in the course of the same year.* The Annibaldi, however, succeeded in driving out their rivals, and held the Coliseum up to the year 1312, when they were compelled to yield it to the emperor Henry VII. In the year 1332 it was the property of the Senate and Roman people. This is the date of the bull-feast of which Ludovico Monaldesco has left an account † transcribed into the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The contrivance of such an exhibition has given rise to a persuasion that the amphitheatre was then entire; but the adaptation of a range of benches round the area would not be difficult even now; and indeed it will be observed, it was resolved to renew the bull-fights even at the end of the seventeenth century.

*

Nibby (Foro Roman. p. 231) thinks that this "half" was all that there remained entire of the Coliseum; but this is only a conjecture, and not a very probable one; for if the other half had been in ruins, the terms of the donation would have, probably, spoken of the whole available building.

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Annali di Ludovico Monaldesco. ap. Script. Rer. Ital. tom. xii. pp. 529, 542. A modester memorialist was never met with. This is all he says of himself :-" 1, Lewis of Bonconte Monaldesco, was born in Orvietto, and was brought up in the city of Rome where I lived. I was born in the year 1327, in the month of June, at the coming of the emperor Lewis; and now I will relate all the story of my times, for I lived in the world a hundred and fifteen years without any sickness except at my birth and death, and I died of old age, having been bed-ridden a twelvemonth. Sometimes I went to Orvietto to see my relations." The narration of his own death is found in all the MSS., and judiciously inserted by Muratori, who bears testimony to the authenticity of this posthumous writer.

It is generally agreed that the porticoes on the south side were the first to give way; and those who assign the earliest date to the destruction of the exterior range

of arcades in this quarter and towards the Arch of Constantine, do not descend lower than the famous earthquake in 1349. It is certain that in the year 1381 a third part of the building and a jurisdiction over the whole was granted by the Senate and Roman people to the religious society of Sancta Sanctorum, who probably formed their hospital in the higher arches blocked up by the Frangipani, of whose walls traces are yet apparent towards the Lateran. Their privileges continued until the

year 1510, and their property was recognized in the beginning of the seventeenth century.* The arms of the S. P. Q. R. and of the above company, namely, our Saviour on an altar between two candlesticks, are still seen on the outside of the arcades towards the church of St. Gregory and the Arch of Constantine, which must therefore have been, as they are now, the external range; but which, before the outer circles had fallen down, were, in fact, the internal arches of the first corridor. This proof seems decisive, that as early at least as the middle of the fourteenth century, the exterior circumference had ceased to be "entire and inviolate," so that Gibbon, by following or rather by divining the mysterious Montfaucon, has made a mistake of two

* Marangoni, ibid., p. 55, et seq. They seem to have made a claim so late as 1714, which was not attended to. Ibid., p. 72.

hundred years in assigning that state of preservation even as low down as the middle of the sixteenth century.*

A letter in the Vatican library from the bishop of Orvietto, legate to pope Urban V. about the year 1362, is said to inform that pontiff that the stones of the Coliseum had been offered for sale, but had found no other purchaser than the Frangipane family, who wished to buy them for the construction of a palace. The editor of Winkelmann was, however,† unable to find this letter; and it is somewhat singular that no search has as yet been able to discover the document which Barthelemy saw in the archives of the Vatican, and which contained a common privilege granted to the factions of Rome of digging out" stones from the Coliseum. The author

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* "The inside was damaged; but in the middle of the sixteenth century, an era of taste and learning, the exterior circumference of 1612 feet was still entire and inviolate, a triple elevation of fourscore arches, which rose to the height of 108 feet. Of the present ruin, the nephews of Paul III. are the guilty agents.”—Decline and Fall, cap. lxxi. p. 424. After measuring the priscus amphithea ri gyrus, Montfaucon (p. 142) only adds that it was entire under Paul III., "tacendo clamat." 66 Muratori, Annali d' Italia, tom. xiv. p. 371, more freely reports the guilt of the Farnese pope, and the indignation of the Roman people. Look into Muratori, you find those words: Per fabbricare il Palazzo Farnese gran guasto diede all' anfiteatro di Tito. Fece gridare il clero e i Popoli suoi per le gravezze loro accresciute.'-Annali ad an. 1549, tom. x. p. 335. The indignation of the people was for the taxes not the destruction of the Coliseum."

Dissertazione, &c., p. 399.

"Et præterea, si omnes concordarent de faciendo Tiburtino quod esset commune id quod foderetur."-Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xxviii. p. 585, also published separately.

of Anacharsis, however, can hardly be suspected of an imposture; and the exaggeration of Poggio, who says that in his time the greater part of the amphitheatre had been reduced to lime,* bespeaks some terrible devastation not at all reconcileable with that integrity which Gibbon affirms to have been preserved up to the time of Paul III. The historian quotes both the document of Barthelemy and the lamentation of the Florentine, and there is no way of accounting for his error except by supposing that he applied all dilapidation previous to that period solely to the interior elevation, which, however, would be also a mistake. Blondus has besides left a memorial of the ruin a hundred years before the pontificate of Paul III.† In fact we have seen that Paul II. had before employed many of the blocks of travertine for his palace of Saint Mark, and Cardinal Riario for that of the Chancellery.+ Theodoric thought a capital city might be built with the

"Ob stultitiam Romanorum majori ex parte ad calcem redactum."-De Variet. Fortun. in loco cit. Poor Marangoni interprets this folly to be their rebellion against, not the amphitheatre, but the pope. “Non oscuramente attribuendo queste rovine alla stoltezza de' Romani ribellati contro il Pontefice."-Ibid., p. 47.

† Both he and Lucius Faunus and Martinelli attributed the ruin to the Goths, mistaking an order of Theodoric to repair the walls of Catania with the stones of an amphitheatre, as if it applied to the Coliseum.-Marangoni, ibid., p. 44.

"Paulus II. ædes adhuc Cardinalis ad S. Marci amplissimas extruere ceperat : quas deinde cum Pontifex ædificaret ex amphitheatri ruinis uti postea Raphael Riarius et Alexander Farnesius fecisse dicuntur."-Donatus, lib. iv. cap. ix. This is but a delicate phrase if Paul III. had really thrown down the outside ranges.

wealth expended on the Coliseum,* and indeed some of the noblest palaces of modern Rome have been constructed out of a small portion of the ruins. There appears to have been a sale of some of the stones in 1531, and in the next century others were employed in one of the buildings on the Capitol.+

But all lesser plunder has been obliterated by the more splendid rapine of the Farnese princes. The Baths of Constantine, the Forum of Trajan, the Arch of Titus, the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, the Theatre of Marcellus, added their marbles to the spoils of the Coliseum; and the accounts of the Apostolic chamber record a sum of 7,317,888 crowns expended between the years 1541 and 1549 upon the gigantic palace of Campo di Fiore alone. Whether the progress of decay was anticipated and aided, or whether such blocks only as had already fallen were applied to the purposes of construction, is still a disputed point. Martinelli § has dared to believe in the more unpardonable outrage, whilst Marangoni has stepped forward to defend the Popes, but

* Cassiod. epist. xlii. lib. iv.

† In 1604 these facts are stated from the documents in Marangoni, p. 56.

Dissertazione, &c., p. 399, note c. The mention of the Theatre of Marcellus has beenad ded from Venuti, Roma Moderna, in his account of the Farnese palace.

§ Roma Ricercata nel suo sito, giorn. 6, Marangoni, ibid. p. 47. Martinelli says Paul II. cut down the arches towards St. John and St. Paul; but Platina, who had been imprisoned by that pontiff, and would not have been silent (perhaps), notices no such attack in his life of Paul.