"Au dix-septième siècle, les Savelli exerçaient encore une jurisdiction féodale. Leur tribunal, aussi régulièrement constitué que pas un, s'appellait Corte Savella.[90] Ils avaient le droit d'arracher tous les ans un criminel à la peine de mort: droit de grâce, droit régalien reconnu par la monarchie absolue des papes. Les femmes de cette illustre famille ne sortaient point de leurs palais sinon dans un carosse bien fermé. Les Orsini et les Colonna se vantaient que pendant les siècles, aucun traité de paix n'avait été conclu entre les princes chrétiens, dans lequel ils n'eussent été nominativement compris."—About.
The palace has now passed to the family of Orsini-Gravina, who descended from a senator of A.D. 1200. The princes of Orsini and Colonna, in their quality as attendants on the throne (principi assistenti al soglio), take precedence of all other Roman nobles.
"Nicolovius will remember the Theatre of Marcellus, in which the Savelli family built a palace. My house is half of it. It has stood empty for a considerable time, because the drive into the courtyard (the interior of the ancient theatre) rises like the slope of a mountain upon the heaps of rubbish; although the road has been cut in a zig-zag, it is still a break-neck affair. There is another entrance from the Piazza Montanara, whence a flight of seventy-three steps leads up to the same story I have mentioned; the entrance-hall of which is on a level with the top of the carriage-way through the courtyard. The apartments in which we shall live are those over the colonnade of Ionic pillars forming the third story of the ancient theatre, and some, on a level with them, which have been built out like wings on the rubbish of the ruins. These enclose a little quadrangular garden, which is indeed very small, only about eighty or ninety feet long, and scarcely so broad, but so delightful! It contains three fountains—an abundance of flowers: there are orange-trees on the wall between the windows, and jessamine under them. We mean to plant a vine besides. From this story, you ascend forty steps, or more, higher, where I mean to have my own study, and there are most cheerful little rooms, from which you have a prospect over the whole country beyond the Tiber, Monte Mario, and St. Peter's, and can see over St. Pietro in Montorio, indeed almost as far as the Aventine. It would, I think, be possible besides to erect a loggia upon the roof (for which I shall save money from other things), that we may have a view over the Capitol, Forum, Palatine, Coliseum, and all the inhabited parts of the city."—Niebuhr's Letters.
Following the wall of the theatre, down a filthy street, we arrive at the picturesque group of ruins of the "Porticus Octaviæ," erected by Augustus, in honour of his sister (the unhappy wife of Antony), close to the theatre to which he had given the name of her son. The exact form of the building is known from the Pianta Capitolina,—that it was a parallelogram, surrounded by a double arcade of 270 columns, and enclosing the temples of Jupiter and Juno, built by the Greek architects, Batracus and Saurus.[91]
With regard to these temples, Pliny narrates a fact which reminds one of the story of the Madonna of Sta. Maria Nuova.[92] The porters having carelessly carried the statues of the gods to the wrong temples, it was imagined that they had done so from divine inspiration, and the people would not venture to remove them, so that the statues always remained where they had been placed, though their surroundings were utterly unsuitable.
The Portico of Octavia built by Augustus, occupied the site of an earlier portico—the Porticus Metelli—built by A. Cæcilius Metellus, after his triumph over Andriscus in Macedonia, in B.C. 146. Temples of Jupiter Stator and Juno existed also in this portico, one of them being the earliest temple built of marble in Rome. Before these temples Metellus placed the famous group of twenty-five bronze statues, which he had brought from Greece, executed by Lysippus for Alexander the Great, and representing that conqueror himself and twenty-four horsemen of his troop who had fallen at the Granicus.[93]
The existing fragment of the portico is the original entrance to the whole. The building had suffered from fire in the reign of Titus, and was restored by Septimius Severus, and of this time is the large brick arch on one side of the ruin.
"It was in this hall of Octavia that Titus and Vespasian celebrated their triumph over Israel with festive pomp and splendour. Among the Jewish spectators stood the historian Flavius Josephus, who was one of the followers and flatterers of Titus ... and to this base Jewish courtier we owe a description of the triumph."—Gregorovius, Wanderjahre in Italien.
Within the portico is the Church of S. Angelo in Pescheria. Here it was that Cola Rienzi summoned, at midnight—May 20, 1347—all good citizens to hold a meeting for the re-establishment of "the good estate;" here he kept the vigil of the Holy Ghost; and hence he went forth, bareheaded, in complete armour, accompanied by the papal legate, and attended by a vast multitude, to the Capitol, where he called upon the populace to ratify the Good Estate.
It is said that one of the causes which most incited the indignation of Rienzi against the assumption and pride of the Roman families, was the fact of their painting their arms on the ancient Roman buildings, and thus in a manner appropriating them to their own glory. Remains of coats of arms thus painted may be seen on the front wall of the Portico of Octavia. It was also on this very wall that Rienzi painted his famous allegorical picture. In this painting kings and men of the people were seen burning in a furnace, with a woman half consumed, who personified Rome,—and on the right was a church, whence issued a white-robed angel, bearing in one hand a naked sword, while with the other he plucked the woman from the flames. On the church tower were SS. Peter and Paul, crying to the angel, "Aquilo, aquilo, succurri a l'albergatrice nostra,"—and beyond this were represented falcons (typical of the Roman barons) falling from heaven into the flames, and a white dove bearing a wreath of olive, which it gave to a little bird (Rienzi), which was chased by the falcons. Beneath was inscribed: "I see the time of great justice, do thou await that time."