What says Lord Byron in regard to this celebrated city?—“I am delighted with Rome. As a whole—ancient and modern—it beats Greece, Constantinople, every thing,—at least that I have seen. As for the Coliseum, Pantheon, St. Peter’s, the Vatican, &c. &c., they are quite inconceivable, and must be seen.”
We close this article with a fine passage from Middleton’s Life of Cicero:—“One cannot help reflecting on the surprising fate and revolutions of kingdoms; how Rome, once the mistress of the world, the seat of arts, empire, and glory, now lies sunk in sloth, ignorance, and poverty, enslaved to the most cruel, as well as the most contemptible of tyrants, superstition and religious imposture; while this remote country, anciently the jest and contempt of the polite Romans, is become the happy seat of liberty, plenty, and letters; flourishing in all the arts and refinements of civil life; yet running, perhaps, the same course which Rome itself had run before,—from virtuous industry to wealth; from wealth to luxury; from luxury to an impatience of discipline and corruption of morals; till, by a total degeneracy and loss of virtue, being grown ripe for destruction, it falls a prey at last to some hardy oppressor; and, with the loss of liberty, losing every thing that is valuable, sinks gradually again into original barbarism.”
See the wild waste of all-devouring years: How Rome her own sad sepulchre appears! With nodding arches, broken temples spread! The very tombs now vanish’d like their dead! Imperial wonders raised on nations spoil’d, Where mix’d with slaves the groaning martyr toil’d: Huge theatres, that now unpeopled woods, Now drain’d a distant country of her floods: Fanes, which admiring gods with pride survey, Statues of men, scarce less alive than they![195] Pope’s Epistle to Addison.
NO. XXII.—SAGUNTUM.
Proud and cruel nation! every thing must be yours, and at your disposal! You are to prescribe to us with whom we shall make war; with whom we shall make peace! You are to set bounds; to shut us up between hills and rivers: but you—you are not to observe the limits which yourselves have fixed. Pass not the Iberus. What next? Touch not the Saguntines. Saguntum is upon the Iberus; move not a step towards that city.
HANNIBAL’S SPEECH TO HIS SOLDIERS.
Saguntum was a celebrated city of Hispania Taraconensis, on the west side of the Iberus, about a mile from the sea-shore. It was founded by a colony of Zacynthians, and by some of the Rutili of Ardea[196].
Saguntum, according to Livy, acquired immense riches, partly from its commerce both by land and sea, and partly from its just laws and excellent police.