Ruins of Ancient Cities (Vol. 2 of 2) / With General and Particular Accounts of Their Rise, Fall, and Present Condition

by Charles Bucke

It is difficult to say where this system of depredation would have stopped, had not Benedict XIV. erected a cross in the centre of the arena, and declared the place sacred, out of respect to the blood of the many martyrs who had been butchered there during the persecution. This declaration, if issued two or three centuries before, would have preserved the Coliseum entire; it can now only protect its remains, and transmit them in their present state to posterity.

Conflagrations, also, contributed to the destruction of the city. In 312 the temple of Fortuna was burned down. The palaces of Symmachus and Lampadius, with the baths of Constantine, suffered by the same cause.

Nor must the destruction be confined to one element. The Tiber rose, not unfrequently, to the walls, and many inundations are recorded. Indeed, even so early as the second siege of the city by Totila, there was so much uncultivated land within the walls, that Diogenes, the governor, thought the corn, he had sown, would be sufficient to supply the garrison and citizens in a protracted defence.

It is impossible to assign a precise date to the total destruction of the greater portion of the ancient site; but the calamities of the seventh and eighth centuries must have contributed to, if they did not complete, the change. A scarcity in the year 604, a violent earthquake a few years afterwards, a pestilence in or about the year 678, five great inundations of the Tiber from 680 to 797, a second famine in the pontificate of Pope Constantine, which lasted thirty-six months, a pestilence in the last year of the seventh century, and the assault of the Lombards for three months in 755;—these are the events which compose the Roman history of this unhappy period.

Added to all this, the importance of the new city accelerated the ruin of the old; and great was the destruction during the periods in which separate parties fought their battles in the public streets, after the restoration of the empire of the West; in which we must record the ruin, caused by Robert Guiscard, which proved more injurious to the remains of Rome, from 1082 to 1084, than all the preceding barbarians of every age: for the Normans and Saracens of his army, with the papal faction, burned the town from the Flaminian gate to the Antonine column, and laid waste the sides of the Esquiline to the Lateran; thence he set fire to the region from that church to the Coliseum and the Capitol. He attacked the Coliseum for several days, and finished the ruin of the Capitol.

A cotemporary writer says, that all the regions of the city were ruined; and another spectator, who was in Rome twelve years afterwards, laments that although what remained could not be equalled—what was ruined, could never be repaired.

Thou stranger which for Rome in Rome here seekest, And nought of Rome in Rome perceiv’st at all, These same old walls, old arches, which thou seest, Old palaces, is that which Rome men call. Behold what wreck, what ruin, and what waste, And how that she which with her mighty power Tamed all the world, hath tamed herself at last, The prey of Time, which all things doth devour. Rome now of Rome is the only funeral, And only Rome, of Rome hath victory; Ne ought save Tyber, hastening to his fall Remains of all: O World’s inconstancy! That which is firm, doth flit and fall away; And that is flitting, doth abide and stay. Spenser’s Ruins of Rome.

In the annals for 1167, we find that the German Barbarossa assaulted the Vatican for a week, and that the Pope saved himself in the Capitol. The Colonna were driven from the mausoleum of Augustus. After the Popes had begun to yield in the unequal contest with the senators and people, and had ceased to be constantly in the capital, the field was left open for the wars of the senators; that is, of the nobles themselves. The Colonna and Ursini then appear among the destroyers of the city. In 1291, a civil war occurred, which lasted six months; the issue of which was, according to a spectator, that Rome was reduced to the condition of a town “besieged, bombarded and burned.”

At the period in which Henry VII. was crowned Emperor, battles were fought in every quarter of the city. The fall of houses, indeed, the fire, the slaughter, the ringing of the bells from the churches, the shouts of the combatants, and the clanging of arms, the Roman people rushing from all quarters towards the Capitol; this universal uproar attended the coronation of the new Cæsar, and the Cardinals apprehended the total destruction of the city.

The absence of the Popes, also, from the year 1360 to 1376, has been esteemed peculiarly calamitous to the ancient fabrics. Petrarch was overwhelmed with regret. He complained that the ruins were in danger of perishing; that the nobles were the rivals of time and the ancient Barbarians; and that the columns and precious marbles of Rome were devoted to the decoration of the slothful metropolis of their Neapolitan rivals. Yet, it appears that these columns and marbles were taken from palaces comparatively modern, from the thresholds of churches, from the shrines of sepulchres, from structures to which they had been conveyed from their original state, and finally, from ruins actually fallen. The solid masses of antiquity are not said to have suffered from this spoliation; and the edifices, whose impending ruin affected Petrarch, were the sacred basilicas, then converted into fortresses.