ROMAN TOMBS.
"Tombs," observes the clever author of Rome in the Nineteenth Century, "formed a far more prominent feature in ancient communities than in ours. They were not crowded into obscure churchyards, or hidden in invisible vaults, but were sedulously spread abroad in the most conspicuous places, and by the sides of the public ways." Hence we may add, the "Siste Viator" (traveller, stop!) so common upon tombs to this day. But why are not tombs placed by the roadside in our times? "It would seem," says the writer just quoted, "as if these mementos of mortality were not so painful or so saddening to Pagans as to Christians; and, that death, when believed to be final dissolution, was not so awful or revolting as when known to be the passage to immortality. I pretend not to explain the paradox, I only state it; and, certain it is, that every image connected with human dissolution, seems now more fearful to the imagination, and is far more sedulously shunned, than it ever was in times when the light of Christianity had not dawned upon the world."[13]
The high-ways do not, however, appear to have been the earliest sites of tombs. According to Fosbroke, "the veneration with which the ancients viewed their places of sepulture, seems to have formed the foundation upon which they raised their boundless mythology; and, as is supposed, with some probability, introduced the belief in national and tutelary gods, as well as the practice of worshipping them through the medium of statues; for the places where their heroes were interred, when ascertained, were held especially sacred, and frequently a temple erected over their body, hallowed the spot. It was thus that the bodies of their fathers, buried at the entrance of the house, consecrated the vestibule to their memory, and gave birth to a host of local deities, who were supposed to hold that part of the dwelling under their peculiar protection. Removed from the dwelling-houses to the highways, the tombs of the departed were still viewed as objects of the highest veneration."[14]
Our readers may remember that the ancient Romans never permitted the dead to be buried within the city,[15] a practice well worthy the imitation of its modern inhabitants. One of the Laws of the Twelve Tables was
Hominem mortuum in urbe ne sepelito, neve urito,
(neither bury nor burn a dead body in the city.) But this law must be understood with this limitation, that the Senate occasionally granted exemption from it, to distinguished individuals, though so rarely, that a tomb within the walls of Rome seems to have been considered a reward of the most pre-eminent virtue.
The tombs of the Romans were characterized by their impressive grandeur. The Roman satirists, Juvenal and Horace, censure the pomp and splendour of the tombs, particularly those on the Via Appia. "On that 'Queen of Ways,' and way to the Queen of Cities, were crowded the proud sepulchres of the most distinguished Romans: and their mouldering remains still attest their ancient grandeur." Again, "those who have traced the long line of the Appian Way, between its ruined and blackening sepulchres, or stood in the Street of Tombs that leads to the Gate of Pompeii, and gazed on the sculptured magnificence of these marble dwellings of the dead, must have felt their solemnity, and admired their splendour."[16]
Antiquarian writers have carefully classified the Roman tombs. We have, however, only space to remark generally, that the sepulchres were either square, circular, or pyramidal buildings, and with one entrance only, which was invariably on the side farthest from the public road. They usually consisted of a vault in which the urns and sarcophagi were deposited, and a chamber above, in which the statues or effigies of the dead were placed, and the libations and obsequies performed. These sepulchres were usually places of family interment, but sometimes they were solitary tombs. Of the latter description is the Tomb of Caecilia Metella, which is generally acknowledged to be the most beautiful sepulchral monument in the world. It consists of a round tower formed of immense blocks of Tiburtine stone, fixed together without cement, and adorned with a Doric marble frieze, on which are sculptured rams' heads festooned with garlands of flowers. "That they are rams' heads, must be evident to any one who will take the trouble to examine them, though they are usually denominated the heads of oxen, because the tomb itself is vulgarly called Capo di Bove. But this name is obviously derived from an ox's head, (the arms of the Gaetani family, by whom it was converted into a fortress,) which was affixed many centuries ago on the side of the tower next the Appian Way, and still remains there; and, accordingly, the vulgar name is Capo di Bove, 'the head of the ox,' in the singular—not in the plural."
(Tomb of Caecilia Metella.)
Forsyth refers to this tomb as the only one of the ancient structures that bears the name of its tenant; this does not appear to be correct. The beautiful tower rests upon a square basement, which has been despoiled of its exterior coating by Popes and other purloiners, but the greatest part of it is buried beneath the soil. The wall of the tower itself, the interior of which is entirely built of brick, is 20 feet at least in thickness. The sepulchral vault was below the present level of the earth, and it was not until the time of Paul III. that it was opened, when the beautiful marble sarcophagus of Caecilia Metella, now in the Palazzo Farnese, was found in it. A golden urn, containing the ashes, is said to have been discovered at the same time. That Caecilia Metella, for whose dust this magnificent monument was raised, was the daughter of Metellus, and the wife of Crassus, is all we know. "Her husband, who was the richest and meanest of the Romans, had himself no grave. He perished miserably with a Roman army in the deserts of the East, in that unsuccessful expedition against the Parthians which has stamped his memory with incapacity and shame."[17] The rude battlements on the top of the tower, and all the old walls and fortifications which surround it, are the work of the Gaetani family, who long maintained their feudal warfare here. Forsyth observes:—"Crassus built this tomb of travertine stone 24 feet thick, to secure the bones of a single woman; while the adjoining castle had but a thin wall of soft tufo to defend all the Gaetani from the fury of civil war." Eustace says: "The solidity and simplicity of this monument are worthy of the republican era in which it was erected, and have enabled it to resist and survive the lapse and incidents of two thousand years."[18]
Next is the grey pyramidal Tomb of Caius Cestius, in the fields called Prati del Popolo Romano, on the western side of the Aventine Hill. This ancient monument remains entire, an advantage which it owes partly to its form, well calculated to resist the action of the weather, and partly to its situation, as it is joined to the walls of the city, and forms part of the fortification. Its base is about 90 feet square, and it rises, according to Eustace, about 120 feet in height. It is formed, or at least encrusted, with large blocks of white marble; a door in the base opens into a gallery terminating in a small room, ornamented with paintings on the stucco, in regular compartments. In this chamber of the dead, once stood a sarcophagus that contained the remains of Cestius. "At the base of the pyramid stand two marble columns, which were found beneath the ground, and re-erected by some of the popes. One foot, which is all that remains of the colossal statue in bronze of Caius Cestius, that formerly stood before his tomb, is now in the Museum of the Capitol."[19] The situation of this tomb is one of melancholy picturesqueness. The meadows in which it stands are planted with mulberry-trees. They were, as implied by their name, formerly a resort of the Roman people in hours of gladness: they are no longer devoted to the enjoyment of the living, but to the repose of the dead; "bright and beautiful in the first days of the year was the verdure that covered the meadows of the Roman people."[20] They are now the burial-place of Protestants, and consequently, of foreigners only: by far the greatest part of the strangers interred here are English.
(Tomb of Caius Cestius.)
Time has changed the colour and defaced the polish of the marble pyramid. The grey lichen has crept over it, and wild evergreens hang from its crevices. But, what it has lost in splendour it has gained in picturesque beauty; and there are few remains of antiquity within the bounds of the Eternal City, that the eye rests upon with such unwearying admiration as this grey pyramid.
Lastly is the reputed Tomb of the Horatii and Curatii.
Its identity has been much controverted, and the Cut shows it to be a ruinous pile capped with luxuriant foliage. It will, nevertheless, serve to illustrate the stupendous character of the ancient Roman tombs.
(Tomb of the Horatii and Curatii.)
The theatre of the celebrated combat between the Horatii and Curatii lies about five miles from the city of Rome. Several tombs stand on the side of the hillock that borders these fields, but no one in particular is there pointed out as belonging to the unhappy champions. The monuments, however, existed in Livy's time, and Eustace supposes that "as their forms and materials were probably very plain and very solid, they must have remained for many ages after, and may be some of the many mounds that still stand in clusters about the very place where they fell." This explanation will not, however, refer to the above engraving, as the buildings in the distance will show.