The markets are rich with colour and well looked after. Officials go round constantly testing the articles of food sold, while the women (who are generally the sellers) look on with anxiety. A dozen or more, men and women, will bring in their wares on a cart, 10 or 15 ft. long, each putting a hand to the work.
The city existed in antiquity. Strabo knew it as a Carnian market-town. Various derivations of the Latin name "Tergeste" have been suggested, of which perhaps the most probable is from the Celtic "twr," water or sea, and "geste," colony, establishment. The fact that it was the only city held by the Carni on the sea-coast increases the probability. A Roman colony was established here in 129 B.C. The amount of tribute paid by the various cities is an index of their importance; both Pola and Parenzo paid more than Trieste. The Triestines were enrolled in the tribe Pupinia. The city was the landing-place for Roman troops, as was the case in Trajan's campaign against the Dacians. The fulling establishments of both Trieste and Pola were known far and wide.
The Romans made the hill of S. Giusto the centre of their colony, adding to the defensive works the temple of the Capitoline divinities, reconstructed with a magnificence worthy of the increased importance of the city by Clodius Quirinale, prefect of the fleet of Ravenna. Remains of it are the seven columns within the campanile (built in 1337 and restored in 1556), still bearing architrave, frieze, and cornice, and fragments of architectural carving and inscriptions encrusted in its walls, or preserved in the civic Museo Lapidario. There was an antique theatre at Trieste also; its shape only can be traced, though the name of the street is still "Rena Vecchia."
PLAN OF THE CATHEDRAL, TRIESTE
S. Hermagoras is said to have planted a church here about 50 A.D., by means of missionaries sent from Aquileia. S. Giusto, one of the patron saints of the city, probably died about 303. The other two are S. Sergio, a soldier, whose halberd still appears in the arms of the town, and S. Servolo, a pious youth who lived at one time in a grotto not far from this place, where they both were martyred. There is said to have been a bishop in the fourth century, but the list of authentic bishops begins with Frugiferus in the sixth. When Christianity triumphed, a church was built on the Capitol on the ruins of the ancient temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, dedicated to the Virgin of the Assumption. This was the part to the north of the present church (see plan), now the nave of the Holy Sacrament, "del Santissimo," in the apse of which are the mosaics of the twelve Apostles, probably earlier than the sixth century; while those in the vault, together with the border, are later. Till some twenty years ago a difference in the level of the floor between the three columns farthest east on each side (where the pulpit stands) marked the place of the original choir. The walled-up clerestory windows of the right side are ancient. The fourteen columns have been plastered over to make them uniform, but are evidently of different thicknesses, suggesting the use of older material. The caps are for the most part rough imitations of Corinthian, and the bases are stilted Attic in type. Of the baptistery nothing remains but the hexagonal font of marble in the chapel of S. John the Baptist, where there is also an ancient well and the apparatus for baptism by ablution, not now used. In the time of Justinian, the second, smaller, church (probably dedicated to SS. Giusto and Servolo) was erected at the south side by Bishop Frugiferus, about 550, as the monogram at the left of the apse shows. The mosaics in the apse are late Byzantine. Four great columns support a cupola in front of the presbytery, by means of four round arches, pendentives, and a drum, round which is an arcade of sixteen stilted round arches with foliated caps and prominently projecting abaci, which it is thought may belong to the original building, though the cupola itself is later. The small apse of the south aisle, with vaulted roof, also belonged to the first building. In front of the apses is a solea with a wagon vault, except in front of the small aisle apse, where it is quadripartite. The aisle is raised a step above the nave. The arcades are uniformly round-arched and stilted, and the caps generally have super-abaci. The north aisle has pointed arches at intervals and a flat roof; the nave of the Santissimo also has a flat roof with beams and brackets. There is a triumphal arch and one blocked window in the apse, with mosaic on the splay of the jamb.
FIGURE OF S. GIUSTO, CAMPANILE OF THE CATHEDRAL, TRIESTE
The mosaic in the semi-dome is probably an eleventh-century restoration of an older work, itself very carefully restored in 1863. The Virgin, robed in blue and holding the Divine Child to her bosom, is enthroned between the archangels Michael and Gabriel, who hold lilies and are robed in priestly costume. The Child blesses with the right hand in the Greek fashion. Below, on the wall, are figures of the Apostles, of a very early date, for SS. Peter and Paul are without their usual attributes, and the white draperies shaded with pale colours are early Christian in arrangement. Between the figures are palm-trees and conventional plant ornaments. The church is very dark, but the details of the mosaics may be studied in the careful copies in the museum. Above the altar of S. Giusto, to the right, in the semi-dome, SS. Giusto and Servolo stand on each side of our Saviour, beneath whose feet are two monsters, asp and basilisk. The central apse was reconstructed in the seventeenth century. The main reconstruction took place in the fourteenth century. The aisle walls of the two churches were demolished, and a nave built reaching from the pillars of one church to those of the other, thus uniting them under one roof, the western wall being placed contiguous to the campanile, and chapels added at each side. The memorial of the Gens Barbia was sawn in two and used as jambs for the west door, and inscriptions from the pedestals of statues and classical ornamental fragments were used in the campanile, both round the openings and close to the niche which encloses the statue of S. Giusto holding a model of the cathedral and castle. The consecration took place in 1385, Bishop Henry of Wildenstein officiating. Below the S. Giusto mosaics are wall-paintings of the fourteenth century, in niches of a much earlier date, with slender antique columns of precious marbles; in the centre the saint stands with a model of the city in his hand—the earliest record of its appearance extant; the other niches show his sufferings. In the niche of S. Apollinaris are remains of frescoes of two dates found in 1892, and thought to belong to the sixth and the tenth centuries; other remains of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, found under whitewash, prove that the whole church was ornamented with painting as the "Acts" relate. When the roof was raised the exterior of the drum of S. Giusto was enclosed within the church. The trilobate roof of the nave was mediæval, but has lately been restored. The façade also was restored in 1843, and the gravestones ranged along its base were then removed from the floor.