III. Alatri.
The tale of those Hernican cities, fenced in with primæval walls, among which we have been lately sojourning, is worthily brought to an end at Alatri. Among its immediate Hernican fellows that town must certainly claim the highest place; it might on some grounds claim the highest place, even if we throw in Old-Latin and Volscian rivals. Yet it is the one which has the least history. There is very little to say about it, except that Alatrium, like Ferentinum, was faithful to Rome, but preferred to keep its separate Hernican being rather than accept the proffered reward of Roman citizenship. It therefore doubtless remained a distinct commonwealth down to the Social War. And here at least there can be no question about dates. Alatri is not especially rich in mediæval antiquities; it has still less claim to be called rich in Roman antiquities. Nor does it supply us with the work of more or less Romanized Hernicans, like the censors of Ferentinum. At Alatri nearly everything that we care about is strictly primæval. We cannot reasonably doubt that both the circuits of wall at which we now look were there in the days of Spurius Cassius, and were by no means new then.
Alatri seems to have been somewhat of an out-of-the-way place in all ages. Not lying on any of the great roads of Italy, it has no place in the Itineraries, and now it lies much further than Anagni or Ferentino—nay, even than Cori and Norba, from common tracks of going and from the common haunts of men. Yet it cannot be looked on as seriously inaccessible; it may at least be reached without calling in the help of asses and mules. The party whose track we are now following—a party, be it noticed, numbering two ladies among them—reached Alatri in a carriage from Frosinone, having slept there after seeing Ferentino. The old Hernican town of Frusino had scant justice done to it by our wayfarers; as no man or book had pointed it out as a seat of primitive walls, it was treated merely as a resting-place between the wonders of Ferentino and the wonders of Alatri. Frosinone was slept in, but was not examined; yet a glance from its railway station, the point which connects Alatri with the modern world, shows that it at least possesses a by no means contemptible bell-tower. From Frosinone then our travellers made their way to Alatri, and, as Alatri gradually rose before them, they were for a while puzzled, perhaps for a while even disappointed, with what they saw. But it was not for lack of a striking object to crown the Alatrian hill-top. Of all the walls of our series, the inner range of the walls of Alatri, the walls which fence in the arx, are the most prominent in a distant view. Even the circuit of empty Norba, beyond our immediate range, hardly outdoes these defences of a still inhabited town. At Alatri indeed the primæval walls are so prominent that in the distant view no one would suspect them of being primæval walls at all. They are still so nearly perfect that they can and do discharge what may be looked on as a survival of their original function. They still fence in the innermost and loftiest quarter of the town, where, as in so many other cases, the ancient citadel has become the episcopal precinct. But at Alatri the episcopal precinct puts on a distinct and central character which is rarely found in Italian cities. The arx is not in a corner, but in the middle; the lower town, fenced in by the wall of its own outer circuit, lies around it on every side. The arx forms an open, lofty, and airy platform, looking forth from every point of the compass on the mountains which keep watch around—on the little towns, Veroli among them, perched here and there on their heights—on the houses and churches of Alatri, covering the slope of the hill which the arx crowns. It is seldom that we find in an Italian town a church or any other building standing in this way free on a commanding site, not hemmed in on any side by parasitical buildings. These hill-towns are perhaps better off in this respect than most others; at Anagni, at Ferentino, the cathedral churches stand grandly on their heights, comparatively free from all buildings except their own proper companions. But there is not the wide, open space around them which surrounds the church of Alatri. One cannot help wishing that some more worthy building, either the primæval temple itself or some more fitting successor, occupied so noble a site, a site in truth which needs—let us say either the Parthenôn of Athens or the Parthenôn of Lincoln to do it justice. But the only thing that can be said for the cathedral church of Alatri is that the lower part of its wall is part of the cella of the primæval temple. Here we have something even more than can be seen at Segni. We know not what may have been added in the way of a pillared front; but it is plain that, as far as the main walls are concerned, the building which was transformed into a Christian church was actually the house of pagan worship itself. And it was a house going back, not to dated Emperors or consuls, but to the unrecorded age which reared these cities great and fenced up to heaven. There is the terrace, there is the wall of the cella, wrought of the same wonderful masonry as the walls of the surrounding arx, as the walls of the yet again surrounding city. It is strange indeed to see the ordinary rites of Christian worship, the ordinary accompaniments of a Christian church, dwelling, as at Rome and Syracuse, within the temples of a creed, fallen indeed but perfectly familiar. But here we see them within walls reared in honour of we know not what—gods of unchronicled days, gods alongside of whom Jupiter of the Capitol may have seemed as strange and foreign as Mithras and Serapis now seem alongside of Jupiter of the Capitol.
Where the præhistoric temple has thus become the cathedral church, it is not out of keeping that the wall of the præhistoric arx should become the wall of the cathedral close. This is the wall which we see from afar, a wall which seems so straight and regular, so clearly furnished with a modern finish at top, that it is not till we can distinguish the mighty blocks of which it is formed that it has the air of a wall even of Roman, even of mediæval, antiquity. Shall we say it? As we looked up at no very amazing distance, the wall of the arx of Alatri had a good deal of the air of the wall of a modern prison. We could not yet see the construction, and the outline seemed more regular and rectangular than it proves to be. Nowhere do we better see than at Alatri the nature of these primitive walls. They are seldom walls in the same sense as the later walls of Rome or of other places, walls built on the ground and standing up clear on both sides. Their business commonly is, as is perhaps more clear at Alatri than anywhere else, to strengthen by masonry the scarped side of a hill. Hence they have little or no height within, and the gateways are necessarily reached from within by a steep descent. The open space at Alatri allows this arrangement to be studied with unusual ease. The wall is eminently a wall against a hill, and its arrangements are made with no small art. The weak corner has its double defence; the way up from the town at this point is carefully sheltered. And what stones they are with which the hill of Alatri is strengthened; above all, what stones they are which are piled together to form its main gateway. Nowhere indeed in the walls of Alatri, whether of temple, arx, or city, do we find anything quite so rude as the rudest part of the wall of Cori. All the stones, of whatever shape—and they are of many shapes—have clearly been cut; they are all laid according to some kind of system, though the system according to which they are laid is not the same in every part of the wall. In some parts they seem almost to take the shape of constructive arches, at least of attempts at arches, such as may be seen in gateways and roofs at Segni and elsewhere. The true arch, it is hardly needful to say, is nowhere found in the original work; nor do we find even any of the attempts at the arch in that position where we should have most naturally looked for them, in the gateways. The great gateway of the arx at Alatri is indeed a wonderful work. Its builders either knew the arch and despised it, or else the thought of the arch had not come into their heads. It is as pure an example of the lintel-construction as any gateway at Athens or Mykênê. We suppose that the lintel-stone of the great treasury is yet vaster than the huge lintel-stone at Alatri; but the Anakim of Alatri were at least rivals whom those of Mykênê could not have despised. But, except in vastness of construction, we must not compare the gateway at Alatri, perfectly plain, a mere piling, though a very skilful piling, of huge blocks with the really artistic work of the Mykênaian treasuries. It goes rather with the lion-gate; only there are no lions. The builders of Alatri could carve, as is shown over one of the smaller gateways of the arx. But they chose to carve quite other subjects than lions. On the great gate however they carved nothing; that is left in the stern majesty of the vast blocks which form it. And here we may distinguish between the cut blocks of the gateway itself and the far ruder blocks just within it, which merely formed part of the foundation, and which, when the steep path went down to the gate, would not have stood above ground. Even the builders of primæval walls clearly drew a line between what was meant to meet the public eye and what was not.
But we must remember that the walls of which we have been speaking, the walls which first catch the eye, are not the whole of the walls of Alatri. They fence in only its inner and higher circuit. Their effect in the distant view is so imposing that the visitor will most likely be tempted to go to them first, instead of doing things in a more regular order by first tracking out the walls of the town itself. But these last, except that they do not supply anything like the primæval gate, are just as well worthy of study as the walls of the arx itself. They remain perfectly round the greater part of the circuit of the city, and they are of the same general construction as the walls of the arx. At some points a singular contrast is made by mediæval additions to the defences; good thirteenth century work, with the characteristic windows of the time, stands out as projections from the primæval wall. And, as in some of the other places, we have something thrown in in the way of what the walls contain, besides the attractions of the walls themselves. From the arx of Alatri we look down on several bell-towers and rose-windows, and one church at least, that of Santa Maria Maggiore, though hardly equal to its namesake at Ferentino, is quite worthy of examination. But, next to its walls, the strong point of Alatri lies in its domestic buildings. Very seldom, in Italy or out of it, do we see graceful windows, chiefly couplets with a divided shaft, more thickly gathered together, than in its crooked and narrow streets. Alatri, in short, is, to the antiquarian eye, satisfactory in every point save one. There should have been some decent building, pagan or Christian, crowning the noble site of its arx, the noblest in our whole range.
With Alatri we end one main stage of our iter, that of the hill-cities. We shall henceforth pass by places which lie more in the world, some of them in the thick of modern communication. But if we had turned back at Alatri, we should have done a good stroke of work. A journey to the walls of the Hernicans is in every way pleasant and profitable. And in truth, even if we throw in the Old-Latins and the Volscians, it is not a journey of hardships. The little inns are very humble, very simple, but they may be fed in and slept in without anything very frightful to endure. It may perhaps be well to mention that the Locanda d'Italia, at Anagni, recommended in various guide-books, has ceased to exist for some years. Still a day and a night at Anagni are no hardship, and a guide may be found, shirtless and letterless, who knows what is really worth going to much better than many in England who boast at once more clothes and more learning. Indeed, the men of the walls seem altogether a kindly and well-disposed race. Some say that is because they are said to be reclaimed brigands, perhaps on the principle that a reformed rake used to be said to make the best husband. There are indeed more beggars among them than need be; but on this head a wise rule was laid down by a young Volscian, or he might be a Hernican—we cannot always be exact among these obsolete nationalities—"Give to the halt and the blind; but not to anybody else."