With Totila, the dilapidation of Rome by the barbarians is generally allowed to terminate.
The incursion of the Lombards in 578 and 593 completed the desolation of the Campagna; but did not affect the city itself.
Their king Luitprand (in 741) has been absolved from a supposed violence; but Astolphus (in 754) did assault the city violently; and whatever structures were near the walls must be supposed to have suffered from the attack.
From that period, Rome was not forcibly entered, that is not after a siege, until the fall of the Carlovingian race, when it was defended in the name of the emperor Lambert; and assaulted and taken by barbarians, commanded by Arnulphus, son of Carloman of Bavaria (A. D. 896).
It would exceed our limits were we to enter into a detail of the various causes, which were so long at work in effecting the ruin of the ancient monuments of Rome. If we except the Pantheon, the ancient remains have been so mutilated and destroyed, that even the name is, in many cases, doubtful. If a person, says Dr. Burton, expects to find at Rome such magnificent remains, as he has read of in Athens, he will be grievously disappointed. It is highly necessary to know, that whatever exists at Rome as a monument of ancient times has suffered from various calamities.
Gibbon states four causes of decay:—The injuries of time and nature; the hostile attacks of the barbarians and christians; the use and abuse of the materials; and the domestic quarrels of the Romans. There is great truth in Pope’s remark—
Some felt the silent strokes of mouldering age; Some hostile fury; some religious rage; Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire, And Papal piety, and Gothic fire.
The injuries done by the Christian clergy to the architectural beauty of Rome, may be divided into two kinds: those, which were commanded, or connived at, by the Romans, for useful repairs or constructions; and those, which were encouraged or permitted from motives of fanaticism.
In the year 426, during the reign of Theodosius the Younger, there was a great destruction of the temples and fanes. “The destruction of the idolatrous fanes,” says an ecclesiastical writer, “was from the foundation; and so complete, that we cannot perceive a vestige of the former superstition. Their temples are so destroyed, that the appearance of their form no longer remains; nor can those of our times recognise the shape of their altars. As for their materials, they are dedicated to the fanes of the martyrs. Temples are not found among the wonders admired by Theodoric, except the half-stripped Capitoline fane is to be enumerated; and Procopius confines his notices to the Temple of Peace, and to the Temple of Janus. In the reign of Justinian, the temples were partly in private hands, and, therefore, not universally protected as public edifices. Pagan structures would naturally suffer more at the first triumph of Christianity than afterwards, when the rage and the merit of destruction must have diminished. It is not then rash to believe, that many temples were destroyed or despoiled, and the materials employed to the honour of the new religion. Du Barga asserts that there were marks on the obelisks of their having been all overthrown, with the exception of one, which was not dedicated to any of the false gods of antiquity.”
The destruction of the baths are attributed to the same piety, and those of Diocletian and Caracalla showed, in the eighth century, evident marks of human violence. Pope Gregory III. employed nine columns of some ancient building for the church of St. Peter. The rebuilding of the city walls by four popes, in the same century, was a useful but a destructive operation. Pope Hadrian I. threw down an immense structure of Tiburtine stone to enlarge the church of St. Maria in Cosmedin. Donus I. had before (A. D. 676) stripped the marble from a large pyramid, generally known by the name of Scipio’s Tomb. Paul II. employed the stones of the Coliseum to build a palace. Sixtus IV. took down the Temple of Hercules, and destroyed the remains of an ancient bridge to make four hundred cannon-balls for the castle of St. Angelo. Paul III. and his nephews laboured incessantly at the quarry of the Coliseum. He devastated, also, many other buildings. Sixtus V. threw down several statues still remaining in the capital. Urban VIII. took off the bronze from the portico of the Pantheon, and some of the base of the sepulchre of Cecilia Metella; and Paul V. removed the entablature and pediment of a structure in the Forum of Nerva, and also the remaining column of the Temple of Peace. Lastly, Alexander VII. took down the arch called “di Portogallo,” in order to widen the Corso. The inferior clergy, too, were great depredators; insomuch that a volume of no inconsiderable size has been composed by one of their own order to enumerate the Pagan materials applied to the use of the church.