In spite of pillage and wholesale destruction, there still exist numerous ancient monuments, of which the Pantheon of Agrippa is one of the most marvellous. The Vandals, who are usually charged with the work of destruction, pillaged the city, it is true, but they demolished nothing. The systematical destruction had begun long before their time, when the materials for building the first church of St. Peter were taken from the Circus of Caligula, and from other monuments near it. The same plan was pursued in the construction of innumerable other churches and buildings of every kind. Statues were broken to pieces and used for making lime, and in the beginning of the fifteenth century there only remained six of them in all Rome, five of marble and one of bronze. The invasion of the Normans in 1084, and the numerous wars of the Middle Ages, which were frequently attended by pillage and conflagrations, wrought further havoc, but so large had been the number of public buildings and monuments, that on the revival of art in the sixteenth century many still remained for study and imitation. Since that time the architectural collection enclosed by the walls of Rome has been guarded with the utmost care, and still further enriched by the masterpieces of Michael Angelo, Bramante, and others.

On the Palatine Hill the most curious remains of ancient Rome, including the foundations of the palaces of the Cæsars and of the walls of Roma Quadrata, have recently been laid open. It was on this hill, so rich in precious relics, that the first Romans built their city, in order to afford it the protection of steep escarpments, and of the marshes on the Tiber and Velabro. When Rome grew more populous it became necessary to descend from this hill. The town spread over the valley of the Velabro, which had been drained by Tarquin the Etruscan, and then climbed up the surrounding hills. A small island in the Tiber occupied its centre. This the Romans looked upon as a sacred spot. They enclosed it by a masonry embankment, shaped like a ship, erected an obelisk in its centre to represent a mast, and a temple of Æsculapius upon the poop. This island was likened to a vessel bearing the fortunes of Rome.

There is still another Rome, the subterranean one, which is well worth study, for we learn more from it about early Christianity than from all the books that have been written. The crypts of the Christian burying-places occupy a zone around the city a couple of miles in width, and embrace about fifty distinct catacombs. Signor Rossi estimates the length of the subterranean passages at 360 miles. They are excavated in the tufa, and are, on an average, a yard in width, but they include chambers which served as oratories, and numerous tiers of niches for the bodies. The inscriptions, bas-reliefs, and paintings of these cities of the dead were at all times respected by the pagans, and fortunately the entrances to them were closed up at the time the Barbarians invaded Rome. This saved their contents from destruction, and everything was found intact when they were first reopened towards the close of the sixteenth century. These tombs prove that the popular belief of the Christians of that time was very different from what it is {278} represented to have been by contemporaneous writers, who belonged to a different class of society from that of the majority of the faithful. A serene gaiety reigns throughout, and lugubrious emblems find no place there. We neither meet with representations of martyrdoms nor with skeletons or images of Death; even the cross, which at a later epoch became the great symbol of Christianity, is not seen there. The most common symbols met with are those of the Good Shepherd carrying a lamb upon his shoulders, and the vine decked with leaves. In the oldest catacombs, which date back to the second and third centuries, the figures are Greek in character, and abound in heathen subjects. One represents the Good Shepherd surrounded by the Three Graces. There are two Jewish catacombs, likewise excavated in the tufa, and they enable us to compare the religious notions which prevailed at that time amongst the followers of the two religions.

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Fig. 101.—THE HILLS OF ROME.

By an absurd predilection for mystical numbers, Rome is even now spoken of as the “City of the Seven Hills,” although it lost all claim to such a designation {279} after it had outgrown the walls built by Servius Tullius. Independently of Monte Testaccio, which is merely a heap of potsherds, there are at least nine hills within the walls of actual Rome, viz. the Aventino, to which the plebeians retired during their feeble struggles for independence; the Palatino, the ancient seat of the Cæsars; the Capitolino, surmounted by the temple of Jupiter; Monte Celio (Cælius); the Esquilino; Viminale; Quirinale; Citorio; and the Pincio, with its public gardens. Besides these, there are two hills on the opposite bank of the Tiber, viz. Monte Gianicolo (Janiculum), the highest of all, and the Vatican, which derives its name from the Latin word vates, a soothsayer, it having once been the seat of Etruscan divination.

Faithful to its traditions, the last hill has ever since remained the place of vaticinations. When the Christian priests left the obscurity of the catacombs they established themselves upon it, and thence they governed Rome and the Western world. The Papal palace, abounding in treasures of art, was built upon it, and close to it stands the resplendent basilica of St. Peter, the centre of Catholic Christendom. A long arcade connects the palace with the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, the ancient mausoleum of Hadrian. The guns of this fortress no longer defend the Vatican, for the temporal power of the pontiffs is a thing of the past; but their sumptuous church of St. Peter, with its dome rising high into the air, and visible even from the sea, its statues, marbles, and mosaics, bears witness to the fact that the riches of all Christendom formerly found their way to Rome. St. Peter’s alone cost nearly £20,000,000 sterling, and is only one out of the 365 churches of the city of the popes. At the same time, the admiration which their sumptuous edifice arouses is not without its alloy. A multiplicity of ornaments dwarfs the proportions of this colossal building, and, more serious still, instead of its being the embodiment of an entire epoch of its faith and ideas, it is representative only of a transitory phase in the local history of Catholicism, of an age of contradictions, when the paganism of the Renaissance and the Christianity of the Middle Ages allied themselves in order to give birth to a pompous and sensuous neo-Catholicism suited to the tastes and caprices of the century. How different is the impression we derive from this building from that which the sombre nave of a Gothic cathedral makes upon us ! It is a remarkable fact that the quarter of Rome in which the church of St. Peter is built is the only portion of the city which was laid waste by the Mussulmans in 846, who are thus able to boast of having sacked Papal Rome and taken possession of Jerusalem, whilst the tomb of Mohammed has ever remained in the hands of the faithful. As to the Jews, they did not come to Rome as conquerors. Shut up in their filthy Ghetto near the swampy banks of the Tiber, and not far from that arch of Titus which reminded them of the destruction of their temple, they have been the objects of hatred and persecution during nineteen centuries. They have survived, thanks to the power of their gold, and since their liberation from bondage they contribute even more to the embellishment of the Italian capital than do their Christian fellow-citizens.

Our nineteenth century is not favourable to the creation of edifices fit to rival {280} the Coliseum or St. Peter’s, but there are works of another nature, not less deserving of attention, which may distinguish this third era in the history of Rome. Above all, it will be necessary to protect the city against the floods of the Tiber, and to improve its sanitary condition. The bed of the river will have to be deepened, embankments constructed, and a system of drainage established.

It is well known that the quantity of water supplied to the Rome of the ancients was prodigious. In the time of Trajan nine grand aqueducts, having a total length of 262 miles, supplied about 4,400 gallons of water per second, and this quantity was augmented to the extent of one-fourth by canals subsequently constructed. Even now, although most of these ancient aqueducts are in ruins, the water supply of the capital of Italy is superior to that of most other cities.[92] But if the time should ever come when Rome will occupy the whole of the space enclosed within its walls, if ever the Forum should again become the centre of the city, then the want of water will be felt there as much as in most of the other great towns of Europe.