The Roman emperors, anxious to have an outlet into the sea, ordered a ship canal to be excavated to the north of Ostia. This is the Fiumicino, which the erosive action of the Tiber has converted into a small river. Claudius had huge docks excavated to the north of this canal, and a new Ostia arose near them. Trajan opened another port to the south-east of it, which remained for several centuries the port of Rome. But it, too, has been silted up for about a thousand years, and the alluvium brought down by the Tiber is continually encroaching upon the sea, the rate of progress being about three feet annually at the mouth of the Fiumicino, and ten feet at that of the old Tiber. Extensive ruins of palaces, baths, and storehouses exist near the ancient port of Trajan, and several works of art have recently been excavated there.
The mouth of the Tiber is thus closed by a bar, like that of all other rivers which flow into the Mediterranean; and the Romans, instead of being able to make use of their river for communicating with the sea, are obliged to have recourse to more distant harbours. In former times they kept up this communication with Sicily, Greece, and the Orient through Antium, Anxur (Terracina), and even Puteoli; but since the countries of the North have risen into political and commercial importance, Cività Vecchia has become the great maritime entrepôt of the valley of the Tiber. It is well known that Garibaldi has conceived the stupendous project of converting Rome into a great maritime city. The stagnant waters of the Campagna are to be carried off by means of a huge sanitary canal, the bed of the Tiber is to be deepened, and an artificial harbour capable of receiving the largest vessels is to be constructed far out in the Mediterranean. {274}
The execution of this vast scheme is no doubt attended with immense difficulties, not the least amongst which are the annual floods of the Tiber. Ancient writers tell us that these inundations were dreaded not only because of the damage done directly, but also because of the great quantities of animal and vegetable deposits which remained in the fields after the subsidence of the waters. The nature of these floods has continued the same down to the present time. At Rome, though its distance from the sea is only twenty-two miles, the river frequently rises forty or fifty feet, and in December, 1598, it rose sixty-five feet ! How is this huge volume of water to be disposed of after it has passed beneath the bridges of Rome? If the destruction of the forests in the Apennines is one of the principal causes of these floods, will it be sufficient to replant them? Or would it be preferable to restore some of those ancient lakes into which numerous rivers discharged themselves, which now take their course to the sea? The difficulties are great indeed, for the western slope of the Apennines is exposed to the rain-bearing westerly and south-westerly winds, and the floods of every one of the numerous tributaries of the Tiber take place simultaneously, and combine to form one vast inundation.
It is by no means difficult to account for the great floods of the Tiber which take place in winter, but the condition of the river during summer has for a long time baffled inquiry. The level of the river during the dry season is far higher than could possibly be accounted for by the small quantity of rain which falls within its basin. Its volume in summer is never less than half its average volume, a phenomenon not hitherto observed in the case of any other river. The Seine has a basin five times larger than that of the Tiber, and its average volume is almost double; yet, after a continuance of dry weather, its volume is only a third or fourth of the Italian river. This perennity of the Tiber can only be accounted for by assuming that it is fed, during the dry season, from subterranean reservoirs, in which the water is stored up during winter. These reservoirs must be very numerous, if we are to judge by the numerous “sinks,” or “swallows,” met with on the calcareous plateaux of the Apennines. One of these sinks, known as the “Fountain of Italy,” near Alatri, close to the Neapolitan frontier, has the appearance of a huge pit, 160 feet in depth and 300 feet across. Its bottom is occupied by a forest, and numerous springs give rise to luxuriant herbage, upon which sheep lowered by means of ropes feed with avidity. It is from sinks like this that the rivers of the country, the Tiber and the Sacco, are fed. It has been computed by Venturoli and Lombardini, the engineers, that about three-fourths of the liquid mass of the Tiber during winter are derived from subterranean lakes hidden in the depths of the Apennines. The volume of water annually supplied from this source to the Tiber would fill a basin having an area of 100 square miles to a depth of 80 feet ! [91]
Primitive Rome is to a large extent indebted for her power to the Tiber, not {275} because that river is navigable, but because it traverses the centre of a vast basin, of which Rome is the natural capital. Rome, moreover, occupied a central position with regard to the whole of Italy and the world of the ancients; but, as has already been pointed out, Rome no longer lies upon any of the great high-roads of nations. That city certainly occupies not only the centre of Italy, but of all the countries surrounding the Tyrrhenian Sea; and its climate would leave little to be desired, if it were not for the insalubrity of the Campagna. Still Rome, though the residence of two sovereigns, the King of Italy and the Pope, is not even the principal city of the peninsula, and still less the capital of the Latin race. It is said that during the Middle Ages, when the popes resided at Avignon, the population of Rome was reduced to 17,000 souls. Gregorovius, than whom no one is better acquainted with that epoch in the history of Rome, doubts this; but there can be no doubt that after the sack ordered by the Constable of Bourbon its population was reduced to 30,000 souls. More recently Rome has increased rapidly, but it is still very inferior to Naples, and even to Milan.
From the very first the Romans were a mixed race. The myth of Romulus and Remus, the rape of the Sabine women, and incessant internal conflicts bear evidence to this fact. The remains of ancient cities, cyclopean walls, burial-grounds, urns, vases, and ornaments prove that on the right bank of the Tiber the Etrurians were at least as strong as the Italians. Elsewhere the Gauls predominated, and from an intermixture of all these various peoples sprang the primitive Roman.
When Rome had reached the zenith of her power things wore a different aspect, and thousands of foreigners became amalgamated with the Latins, Gauls, Iberians, Mauritanians, Greeks, Syrians, and Orientals of every race and climate; slaves, freemen, and citizens flocked towards the capital of the world, and modified the character of its inhabitants. Towards the close of the Empire there were more strangers within the walls of Rome than Romans, and when the empire of the West broke to pieces, and the empress-city was pillaged repeatedly by barbarian hordes, the Italians had already become mixed with the most diverse elements. This endless mixture between different races, victors and vanquished, masters and slaves, accounts, perhaps, more satisfactorily for the great changes which have taken place in the course of two thousand years in the character and spirit of the Romans. Still the Romans on the right bank of the Tiber, the so called Trasteverini, have preserved the old Roman type, as transmitted to us in statues and on medals.
Fig. 100.—ROME.
Rome is great because of its past, and its ruins are more attractive than its modern buildings; it is a tomb rather than a living city. These monuments, raised by the former masters of the world, strongly impress the imagination. The sight of the Coliseum arouses an admiration akin to terror, unless we look upon this formidable edifice as a mere heap of stones. The thought that this vast arena was crowded with men who sought to kill each other, that the steps surrounding it were occupied by 80,000 human beings who delighted in this butchery and {276} encouraged it by their shouts, calls up an amount of baseness, ferocity, and frenzy, whose existence could not fail to sap the foundations of Roman civilisation, and make it an easy prey to the barbarian. The Forum awakens memories of quite a different nature. Abominations were practised there, too, but its history as a whole exhibits it as the true centre of the Roman world. It was from this spot that the first impetus was given to the nations of the West; it was here that the ideas imported from every quarter of the world bore fruit. The walls, columns, temples, and churches which surround the Forum relate in mute language the principal events in the history of Rome; and if we search beneath existing edifices we meet with structures more ancient, which take us back to a period still more remote, for edifice has succeeded edifice on this spot, where pulsated the life of the Roman people. And thus it is throughout Rome. Every ancient monument, arcade, or broken column, every stone, bears witness to some {277} historical event, and though it may be difficult sometimes to interpret these witnesses of the past, the truth is elicited by degrees.