Sketches from the Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice

by Edward A. Freeman

"Qua maris Hadriaci longas ferit unda Salonas,

Et tepidum in molles Zephyros excurrit Iader."

Longæ certainly well expresses the way in which the city must have spread itself along the mouth of the river, and the northern side of the bay. And, more than this, the idea of length must have been deeply impressed on Salona by the long walls which, as we shall presently see, yoked the city to something or other beyond her own immediate defences. Salona, like most of the older cities, was not at all like one of our square chesters which rose up at once out of some military necessity. The Dalmatian capital had grown up bit by bit, and its walls formed a circuit almost as irregular as that of Rome herself. The site was a striking one. As we set forth from the comparatively flourishing daughter to visit the fallen mother, the road from Spalato leads us over a slight hill, from the descent of which we look on the bay with its background of mountains, a view which brings before us two strongly contrasted sites of human habitation. In advance of the mountain range stands the stronghold of Clissa, so famous in later wars—a stronghold most tempting in a distant view, but utterly disappearing when we come near to it. The seat of the Uscocs has nothing to show but its site and an ugly fortress; yet the hill is well worth going up, for the site and the view from it, a most instructive geographical prospect over mainland, sea, and islands. We turn to our Imperial guide, and we find that Κλεῖσα was so called because it kept the key of the passage over the mountains. It was the Κλεισοῦρα , so called διὰ τὸ συγκλείειν τοὺς διερχομένους ἐκεῖθεν. He has to tell us how it was taken by invaders, whom he speaks of as the Slaves who were called Avars (Σλάβοι, οἱ καὶ Ἄβαροι καλούμενοι ). The ethnological confusion is like that of another self-styled Imperial personage, who thought that he could get at a Tartar by scratching a Russian. But in both cases the confusion is instructive, as pointing to the way in which Slavonic and Turanian nations were mixed up together, as allies and as enemies, in the history of these lands. Far below, on the bosom of the bay, a group of small islands are covered by a small village, which seems to float on the water, and which well deserves its name of Piccola Venezia. Between the height and the sea lay Salona, on a slight elevation gently sloping down to the water; here, as so often on the Dalmatian coast, it needs somewhat of an effort to believe that the water is the sea. To the right of the road, we see the ruins of the aqueduct which brought water to the house of Diocletian—an aqueduct lately repaired, and again set to discharge its ancient duties. Ancient fragments of one kind or another begin to line the road; an ancient bridge presently leads us across the main stream of the Giadro, Lucan's Iader, which we might rather have looked for at Zara. We mark to the right the marshy ground divided by the many channels of the river; we pass by a square castle with turreted corners, in which a mediæval archbishop tried to reproduce the wonder of his own city; and we at last find ourselves close by one of the gates of Salona, ready to begin our examination of the fallen city in due order.

The city distinctly consists of two parts. A large suburb has at some time or another been taken in within the walls of the city. This is plain, because part of a cross wall with a gate still remains, which must have divided the space contained within the outer walls into two. This wall runs in a direction which, without professing to be mathematically correct, we may call north and south. That is, it runs from the hills down towards the bay or the river. Now, which was the elder part of the two? that to the east or that to the west? In other words, which represents the præ-Roman city, and which represents its enlargement in Roman times? By putting the question in this shape, we do not mean to imply that any part of the existing walls is of earlier than Roman date. The Roman city would arise on the site of the earlier settlement, and, as it grew and as its circuit was found too narrow, it would itself be further enlarged. The cross wall with the gate in it must of course have been at some time external; it marks the extent of the city at the time when it was built; but in which way has the enlargement taken place? It used to be thought that the eastern, the most inland division, was the elder, and that the city was extended to the west. And it certainly at first sight looks in favour of this view that, in the extreme north-west corner, an amphitheatre has clearly been worked into the wall, exactly in the same way in which the Amphitheatrum Castrense at Rome is worked into the wall of Aurelian. How so keen an observer as Sir Gardner Wilkinson could have doubted about this building being an amphitheatre, still more how his doubts ended in his positively deciding that it was not, seems really wonderful. It has all the unmistakeable features of an amphitheatre, and we can only suppose that a good deal has been brought to light since Sir Gardner Wilkinson's visit, and that what is seen now was not so clearly to be seen then. As amphitheatres were commonly without the walls, this certainly looks as if the eastern part were the old city, and as if those who enlarged it to the west had made use of the amphitheatre in drawing out their new line of fortification, exactly as Aurelian in the like case made use of amphitheatre, aqueducts, anything that came conveniently in his way. But, on the other hand, Professor Glavinič, whom we have already referred to when speaking of Spalato, and whose keener observation has come usefully in the wake of the praiseworthy researches of Dr. Carrara, has pointed out with unanswerable force that the gate has two towers on its eastern side, showing that that side was external, and that therefore the western part must be the older and the eastern the addition. This is evidence which it is impossible to get over. Clearly then the space to the west of it was once the whole city, and the far greater space to the east once lay beyond the walls. The gate must have been a grand one; but unluckily its arches have perished. There was a central opening, along which the wheel-tracks may still be traced, and a passage for foot-passengers on each side. The large rectangular blocks of limestone of which it is built have been encrusted in a singular way with some natural formation, which might almost be mistaken either for plaster or for some peculiarity of the stone itself. In the northern wall of the eastern part is an inscription commemorating the building or repair of the wall in the time of the Antonines. This by itself would not be conclusive; for the wall might very well have been rebuilt in their day and the city might have been enlarged to the west in a still later time. But the position of the gate is decisive, and the position of the amphitheatre is a difficulty that can easily be got over. If, besides the great enlargement to the east, we also suppose an enlargement to the west which would take the amphitheatre within the city walls, this will be quite enough.

We may rule then that the Illyrian city, the earlier Roman city, stood to the west of the cross wall, and that it was enlarged at some time earlier than the reigns of the Antonines by taking in an eastern suburb larger than the original town. The walls of both parts may be traced through a large part of their extent. The outer gate to the east was flanked by octagonal towers, and both a square and an octagon tower may be traced near the north-east corner. But the most remarkable thing about the walls of Salona is that, besides the walls of the city itself, there are long walls, like those of Athens and Megara, reaching from the western side of the city for a mile and more nearly along the present road to Traü. They have not been traced to the end; but there can be no doubt that they were built to make long Salona yet longer by joining the town to some further point of the coast. Nothing is more natural; the water of the bay by Salona itself is very shallow; when the city became one of the great maritime stations of the world, it was an obvious undertaking to plant a dock at some point of the coast where the water was deeper. And to one who comes to Salona almost fresh from the hill-cities of central Italy, from the strongholds of Volscians, Hernicans, and Old-Latins, from Cora and Signia and Alatrium, it becomes matter of unfeigned surprise to find Dalmatian antiquaries speaking of these walls as "Cyclopean." The name "Cyclopean," though as old as Euripides, is as dangerous as "Pelasgian" or "Druid;" but, if it means anything, it must mean the first form of wall-building, the irregular stones heaped together, such as we see in the oldest work at Cora and Signia. Here we have nothing of the kind. The blocks are very large, and the outer surface is not smooth; but all of them are carefully cut to a rectangular shape, and they are laid with great regularity. There seems no kind of temptation to attribute them to any date earlier than the Roman conquest of Illyricum. The style of building is simply that which is made natural by the kind of stone. And the same kind of construction, though with smaller blocks, is that which prevails throughout the walls of Salona, except where later repairs have clearly been made. This has happened with the outer wall to the west, where some earlier fragments have even been built in. Otherwise, by far the greater part of the walls, towers, and gates of Salona, not forgetting a gate which has been made out in the long walls themselves, all belong to one general style of masonry.

Within the walls of Salona the general effect is somewhat strange. The city is pierced by the road from Spalato to Traü; in these later times it has been further pierced by the railway—strange object in Dalmatia, strangest of all at Salona—which starts from Spalato, but which does not find its way to Traü. The greater part of the space is still covered with vineyards and olive-trees; systematic digging would bring a vast deal to light; but a good deal positively has been made out already. The amphitheatre has been already spoken of; the road cuts through the theatre. But, as becomes the history of the city, the greater part of the discoveries belong to Christian times, to the days when the bishopric of Salona was a post great enough to be employed to break the fall of deposed emperors. But we may doubt whether the head church of Salona, the church which held the episcopal chair of Glycerius, has yet been brought to light.

Near the north-western corner of the eastern division of the city the foundation of a Christian baptistery has been uncovered. The site of the baptistery, according to all rule, must be near to the site of the great church of the city. Now the baptistery stands near the wall; is it fanciful to think that at Salona, as well as at Rome, it was not thought prudent in the earliest days of the establishment of Christianity to build churches in the more central and prominent parts of the city? The baptistery of Salona keeps—the great basilica must therefore have kept—under the shadow of the wall of the extended city, exactly as the Lateran basilica and baptistery do at Rome. Of the baptistery it is easy to study the plan, as the foundations and the bases of the columns, both of the building itself and the portico in front of it, are plainly to be seen. Many of their splendid capitals are preserved among the rich treasures of the museum at Spalato. These are of a Composite variety, in which the part of the volute is played by griffins, while the lower part of the capital is rich with foliage of a Byzantine type. West of the baptistery, but hardly placed in any relation to it, are the remains of a small church, which seems to have been a square, with columns to the east and an apse to the north. Whatever this building was, it surely can never have been the great church of Salona. That must have been a basilica of the first class; and we may hope that future diggings may bring that to light also. But outside the city to the north, successive diggings have made precious discoveries in the way of Christian burying-places and churches. Since the last researches have been made, it is perfectly clear that here, outside the walls, like the basilicas of the apostles at Rome, there stood a church of considerable size, that it had supplanted a smaller predecessor, and that it had another smaller neighbour hard by. It is now easy—but it is only very lately that it has become easy—to see nearly the whole outline of a church measuring—speaking roughly—about 120 feet long. It ranged therefore with the smaller rather than the larger basilicas of Rome. It had two rows of large columns, which, from their nearness to one another, look as if they had supported an entablature rather than arches, with a transept, with the arch of triumph opening into it, and the apse beyond, to the east. There are also, in front of the arch of triumph, foundations which look most temptingly like those of cancelli, like those of Saint Clement's at Rome, but which seem too narrow for such a purpose. It is also plain, from the base of a smaller column at a lower level, that this comparatively large church was built on the remains of an earlier one. And this is borne out by the discovery of pavements at more than one level, which supported sarcophagi, which are still to be seen, and of which an inscription shows that the lowest level was of the time of Theodosius the Second and Valentinian the Third. This thrusts on the building of the upper and greater church to a later time, surely not earlier than the reign of Justinian. It must therefore have still been almost in its freshness when the last blow fell on Salona. And at such a time we can better take in the full force of the inscription which stood over the west door: "Dominus noster propitius esto reipublicæ Romanæ." The church, it should be noted, has been, at some time or other before it was quite swept away, patched up or applied to some other use. A later wall runs across the western face of the transept. An endless field for guessing is hereby opened; but it is more prudent not to enter upon it.

Another smaller ruined church stands close by, with its apse pointing to the north. This and the eastern part of the larger church are filled with sarcophagi of all kinds and sizes, reminding us of the newly-opened basilica of Saint Petronilla by the Appian Way. Among these is the tomb of an early Chorepiscopus. A crowd of architectural fragments are scattered around, among which one splendid Corinthian capital bears witness to the magnificence of the upper church. But the real wealth of Salona, both sepulchral and architectural, is not to be looked for in Salona itself, but in the museum at Spalato. There are a crowd of superb tombs, pagan and Christian, and the splendid capitals from the baptistery. There are stores of inscriptions, Latin and Greek, which would make the place where they are preserved a place of no small interest, even if that place were not Spalato. But one sarcophagus of pagan date still stays in its place, a little way beyond the city, because, being hewn in the limestone rock, it could not be taken away. This is that which is described by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, which has some of the exploits of Hêraklês carved on its one face, and which has been so oddly changed in modern times into the altar of the canonized Pope Saint Caius. For he, like the Emperor under whom he suffered, passes for a native of Salona. And a no less precious sarcophagus of Christian days is preserved in the cloister of the Franciscan church at Spalato. This represents the crossing of the Red Sea. The Pharaoh looks very much as if he were in a Roman triumphal chariot, trampling a genius or two of the waters under his wheels. His warriors follow, looking, according to the eyes with which we look at them, like Romans in military dress or like Albanians in the immemorial fustanella. The Aryan mind is offended at seeing men of another continent clothed in such a very European garb; it is for Egyptologers to say whether the sculpture is correct. The sea is very narrow; it swallows up the Egyptian chariots with great force, and the rescued Hebrews stand on the other side, Miriam just about to begin her hymn of victory. The subject of the sculpture is obvious; but it seems that nobody understood it till it was expounded by an exalted lady at that royal visit of 1818 which at Spalato is commemorated oftener than enough. The expounder was the wife of the man who had once been the last successor of Diocletian and Augustus; whether his queen had any claim to rank either as a successor of Prisca and Livia or as the doubtful mother-in-law of a conqueror from Ajaccio, we have not looked in any pedigree-book to find out. One would really have thought that the loosing of the knot was so easy that it might have been unravelled by the hand of a subject; but a book which we have before us by a local antiquary goes off into raptures at the surprising keenness of Imperial, Royal, and Apostolic eyes.

The chapel of Saint Caius, with its heathenish altar, brings our thoughts back to the long walls below it, the walls which yoked the ancient Salona to the deeper sea. It must not be forgotten that, in the days of its greatness, Salona was one of the chief ports of the Hadriatic, the greatest on its own side of it. After shifting to and fro from one port to another, that position has come back, if not to Salona itself, yet to its modern representative. If we distinguish the Hadriatic from the Gulf of Trieste, Spalato is undoubtedly its chief port; but the smallness of Spalato, as compared with the greatness of ancient Salona, is a speaking historical lesson. We see the difference between the place in Europe which is held by the Illyrian lands now and the place which they held in the days of the Roman peace. Then Salona was one of the chief cities of the Roman world, placed on one of the most central sites in the Roman world, the chief port of one of the great divisions of the Empire, and one of the main highways between its eastern and western halves. Such could be the position of a Dalmatian city when Dalmatia had a civilized mainland to the back of it. Salona therefore kept up its position as long as the Empire still kept any strength on its Illyrian frontier. It played its part in both the civil wars. Cæsar himself enlarges on the strength of the city—"oppidum et loci natura et colle munitum." In after-times it was a special object of the regard of its own great citizen, who took up his abode so near to its neighbourhood. According to Constantino Porphyrogenitus, Salona was pretty well rebuilt by Diocletian. Its importance went on in the time of transition, as is witnessed by the growth of its ecclesiastical buildings, and by the high position held by its bishopric. Like the rest of the neighbouring lands, it passed under the dominion, first of Odoacer and then of Theodoric, and it was the first place which was won back to the Empire in the wars of Justinian. Lost again and won back again, it appears throughout those wars as the chief point of embarcation for the Imperial armies on their voyages to Italy. This was the last century of its greatness; in the next century the modern history of Illyria begins. The Slaves were moving, and the Avars were moving with them. Salona fell into the hands of these last barbarians; it was ruined and pillaged, and sank to the state in which it has remained till our own time. Since the seventh century Salona has ceased to rank among the cities of the earth, but the house which had been raised by its greatest citizen stood ready hard by to supply a shelter to some at least of its homeless inhabitants. Things were wholly turned about on the bay of Salona and on the neighbouring peninsula. Down to the days of Heraclius, Salona had been a great city, with the vastest house that one man ever reared standing useless in its neighbourhood. From his day onwards the house grew into a city, and the city became a petty village, where, of all the places along that historic coast, the traveller finds least to disturb him in the pious contemplation of ruins. The only danger is that his meditations may be broken in upon by sellers of coins and scraps of all ages, dates, and values. Coins at Salona hardly need the process once known at the Mercian Dorchester as "going a-Cæsaring." Cæsars seem to be picked up from under and off the ground with much less trouble than hunting for truffles. And even he who is no professed numismatist or collector of gems will be pleased to give a few soldi, perhaps even for a very clear image and superscription of "Constantinus Junior Nob[ilissimus] C[æsar]," much more for any image and superscription of Jovius himself. It may have neither rarity nor value in the eyes of the numismatically learned; but it is something to carry away from Salona itself the head of the foremost local worthy in Salona's long annals.

TRAÜ.