The Cloaca Maxima still exists. At its outlet in the Tiber, it is said to be thirteen feet high, and as many in breadth. The ancients always regarded this work as a great wonder. Livy speaks of it in terms of admiration; and Pliny equally so; and Dionysius says that the sewers having been once so greatly neglected that sufficient passage was not afforded for the waters, it cost no less a sum than 225,000l. to put them in repair.
The Pyramid of Cestius, one of the most ancient remains, is the only specimen of a pyramid in Rome. It was erected daring the republic, to the memory of Caius Cestius, one of the priests that provided feasts for the gods. It is of great size, being ninety-seven feet in the base, and one hundred and twenty-four in height; and was erected, according to the inscription, in three hundred and thirty days.
This ancient monument remains entire[158]. It is formed, externally, of white marble. At each corner on the outside was a pillar, once surmounted with a statue. Its form is graceful, and its appearance very picturesque; supported on either side by the ancient wall of Rome, with their towers and galleries venerable in decay, half shaded by a few scattered trees; and, looking down upon a hundred humble tents interspersed in the neighbouring groves, it rises in lonely pomp, and seems to preside over these fields of silence and mortality.
This structure was repaired by order of Pope Alexander VII. in 1663; it having been greatly dilapidated; no less than fifteen feet of rubbish have accumulated above the base. “It is curious,” says Simond, “to see how Nature, disappointed of her usual means of destruction by the pyramidal shape, goes to work another way. That very shape affording a better hold for plants, their roots have penetrated between the stones, and acting like wedges, have lifted and thrown wide large blocks, in such a manner, as to threaten the disjoined assemblage with entire destruction. In Egypt, the extreme heat and want of moisture, during a certain part of the year, hinder the growth of plants in such situations; and in Africa alone are pyramids eternal.”—Close to this is the Protestant burial-ground. “When I am inclined to be serious,” says Mr. Rogers, “I love to wander up and down before the tomb of Caius Cestius. The Protestant burial-ground is there; and most of the little monuments are erected to the young; young men of promise, cut off when on their travels, full of enthusiasm, full of enjoyment; brides in the bloom of their beauty, on their first journey; or children borne from home in search of health. This stone was placed by his fellow-travellers, young as himself, who will return to the house of his parents without him; that by a husband or a father, now in his native country. His heart is buried in that grave. It is a quiet and sheltered nook, covered in the winter with violets; and the pyramid that overshadows it gives a classical and singularly solemn air. You feel an interest there, a sympathy you were not prepared for. You are yourself in a foreign land; and they are for the most part your countrymen. They call upon you in your mother tongue—in English—in words unknown to a native; known only to yourselves: and the tomb of Cestius, that old majestic pile has this also in common with them,—it is itself a stranger among strangers. It has stood there till the language, spoken round about it, has changed; and the shepherd, born at the foot, can read its inscription no longer.”
There is a stern, round tower of other days, Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone, Such as an army’s baffled strength decays, Standing with half its battlements alone. And with two thousand years of ivy grown, The garland of eternity, where wave The green leaves over all by Time o’erthrown; What was this tower of strength? within its cave What treasure lay so hid?—a Woman’s grave.
A little beyond the Circus of Caracalla[159] rises the mausoleum of Cecilia Metella, a beautiful edifice, built by Crassus, in honour of his wife. It is of considerable height and great thickness: in the centre is a hollow space reaching from the pavement to the top of the building. In the concavity was deposited the body in a marble sarcophagus, which in the time of Paul III. was removed to the court of the Farnesian palace. The solidity and simplicity of this monument are worthy of the republican era in which it was erected, and have enabled it to resist the incidents and survive the lapse of two thousand years.
“At the end of the Velabrum,” says Dupaty, “I found myself on the Appian way, and walked along it for some time. I there found the tomb of Cecilia Metella, the daughter of that Crassus whose wealth was a counterpoise to the name of Pompey and the fortune of Cæsar. I entered the tomb, and set myself down on the grass. The flowers which displayed their brilliant colours in the corner of the tomb, and as I may say amid the shades of death; the noise of a swarm of bees who were depositing their honey between two rows of bricks, while the surrounding silence rendered their pleasing humming more audible; the azure of the sky forming over my head a magnificent dome, decorated alternately by flying clouds of silver and of purple; the name Cecilia Metella, who perhaps was beautiful, and possessed of the tenderest sensibility, and who most certainly was unfortunate; the memory of Crassus; the image of a distracted father who strives by piling up stones to immortalize his sorrow; the soldiers, whom my imagination still behold combating from the height of this tower;—all these and a thousand other impressions gradually plunged my soul into a delicious reverie, and it was with difficulty I could leave the place.”
The portico of Octavia stood upon the Flaminian Circus and the theatre of Marcellus; it was erected by Augustus, in honour of his sister Octavia. This portico formed a parallelogram, composed of a double row of two hundred and seventy Corinthian columns of white marble, adorned with statues, enclosing a court, in which were two temples, dedicated to Jupiter and Juno, a library, and a large hall for the exhibition of paintings. A small portion of the portico, being one of the entrances, is all that now remains. Many of the pillars are, however, supposed to be built up in the neighbouring houses.
The general use, porticoes were put to, was the pleasure of walking or riding in them; in the shade in summer, and in winter in the day; like the present piazzas in Italy. Velleius Paterculus, when he deplores the extreme corruption of manners that had crept into Rome upon the conclusion of the Carthaginian war, mentions particularly the vanity of the noblemen, in endeavouring to outshine one another in the magnificence of their porticoes, as a great instance of their extraordinary luxury. Juvenal thus alludes to them:—
On sumptuous baths the rich their wealth bestow, Or some expensive airy portico; Where safe from showers they may be borne in state; And, free from tempests, for fair weather wait: Or rather not expect the clearing sun; Through thick and thin their equipage must run: Or staying, ‘tis not for their servants’ sake, But that their mules no prejudice may take.