NO. XXI.—ROME.
To seek for Rome, vain stranger, art thou come, And find’st no mark, within Rome’s walls, of Rome? See here the craggy walls, the towers defaced, And piles that frighten more than once they pleased: See the vast theatres, a shapeless load, And sights more tragic than they ever show’d. This, this is Rome! Her haughty carcass spread Still awes in ruin, and commands when dead. The subject world first took from her their fate; And when she only stood unconquer’d yet, Herself she last subdued, to make the work complete. But ah! so dear the fatal triumph cost, That conquering Rome is in the conquer’d lost. Yet rolling Tiber still maintains his stream, Swell’d with the glories of the Roman name. Strange power of fate! unshaken moles must waste; While things that ever move, for ever last.—Vitalis.
As the plan of this work does not admit of our giving any thing like a history of the various trials and fortunes of Rome; we must confine ourselves, almost entirely, to a few particulars relative to its origin, summit of glory and empire, its decay, and ultimate ruin.
There is no unquestionable narrative of facts, on which any writer can build the primitive history of this vast city and empire; but in its place we have a mass of popular traditions and fabulous records. On the taking of Troy, Æneas, a prince of that city, quitted his native land, and after a long period, spent in encountering a variety of vicissitudes, he arrived on the coast of Italy, was received with hospitality by the King of Latium, whose name was Latinus, and afterwards obtained his throne, from the circumstance of having married his daughter.
Æneas after this built the city of Lavinium, and, thirty years after, his son founded that of Alba Longa, which then became the capital of Latium. Three hundred years after, Romulus founded Rome.
ROME.
Though Livy has given a very circumstantial account of the origin of this city, sufficient data have been afforded, since his history was written, to justify our doubting many of his statements. The first author in modern times, that led Europe to these doubts, was, we believe, Dr. Taylor; who, in a work written about sixty years ago, entitled Elements of Civil Law, has the following passage:—“It was not peculiar to this people, to have the dawn of their history wrapped up in fable and mythology, or set in with something that looked like marvellous and preternatural. There is scarce a nation, that we are acquainted with, but has this foible in a greater or lesser degree, and almost pleads a right to be indulged in it. “Datur hæc venia antiquitati, ut miscendo humana divinis primordia urbium augustiora faciat.” (Liv. I. Præf.) Indeed the Romans themselves had some suspicion of their own history. They generally dated their periods not AB U. C. but began their æra from their consuls, by whom they always reckoned. The records of Rome were burned at the irruption of the Gauls: they had nothing for it but tradition before that period. Nor was there an author extant of that age, or near it, at the time that Livy compiled his history. Diocles Peparethius (the father of Roman history, since Fabius Pictor, the first historian that Rome produced, and all his followers, copied him implicitly) was a writer of no very great credit. The birth and education of Romulus, is the exact counter-part of that of another founder of a great empire; and Romulus, I am satisfied, could not resemble more his brother Remus, than his brother Cyrus. The expedient of Tarquin’s conveying advice to his son, by striking off the heads of flowers, is given with the minutest difference, by Aristotle to Periander of Corinth, and by Herodotus to Thrasybulus. Which similarity is very ill accounted for by Camerarius. This was one of those ambulatory stories which (Plutarch in his Greek and Roman Parallels will furnish us with many such) seem confined to no one age, race, or country; but have been adopted in their turn, at several periods of time, and by several very different people, and are perhaps, at least some of them, true of none. And, lastly, one would imagine, that the history of the seven kings, which has such an air of romance in it, was made on purpose for Florus to be ingenious upon in his recapitulation of the regal state of Rome.”