THE RUINS OF ROME
The Campagna
ONE
The Roman Campagna was the cradle of a mighty race. How did the little handful of men who founded Rome, and their descendants, become masters of the world? Livy, the great Roman historian, believes it was due to the location of the city of Rome. “Not without reason,” he says, “did gods and men choose this site for Rome: healthy hills, a river equally adapted for inland and maritime trade, the sea not too far distant, … a site in the middle of the Peninsula, made, as it were, on purpose to allow Rome to become the greatest city in the world.”
However healthy the climate of the Campagna may have been in those times, today it is about the most unhealthy in the world. It is a district containing a great many closed valleys and depressions in the soil, without outlet for the waters that accumulate. Natural watercourses are impeded: Under the top soil are marl and stiff clay, which hold the water after it has filtered through the soil, and let it ooze out to the lower parts of the country, where it is mixed with rotting vegetable matter. Barriers of hills prevent movement of the air. Malaria runs rampant.
But this could not have been so formerly. In the early history of the Campagna towns were scattered over its surface. Later these towns disappeared, and the great estates, worked by crowds of slaves, occupied the land. Then the great villas, whose ruins now strew the ground everywhere in the neighborhood of Rome, were built. The ancient Roman nobility lived in great numbers in the very places now found so deadly. Their summer homes were placed not only on the sea-shore, but all through the country.
Huge aqueducts supplied Rome with water and irrigated the farms on the Campagna. These are the most conspicuous ruins on the Campagna today. The Gothic army at the siege of Rome in 536 destroyed nearly all the aqueducts, and later on the great country seats were demolished.
Six miles from Rome on the Flaminian Road, at the spot now called the Prima Porta, Empress Livia had a country house, which has been excavated. It was well decorated and comfortable. There were found in the house a statue of Emperor Augustus and the busts of several members of the royal family.
The ruins of many tombs are found on the Campagna. Roman family vaults contained a funeral banquet hall, on a level with the road, and a crypt below, where the ashes were kept in urns, or the bodies laid to rest in sarcophagi.
The sites of the cities of Veii, Fidenæ, and Gabii, once the rivals and equals of Rome, are now almost deserted. In sea-coast towns of Ardea, Laurentum, Lavinium, and Ostia, at one time well populated, are practically empty. The inhabitants are haggard and fever stricken. The children are gaunt, hollow cheeked, and sallow in complexion. Men who work there in the fields fear to pass the night in the country because of the fever. They return to Rome every evening. Forsaken towers and buildings, which stand rotting everywhere about the Campagna, tell the same story of a pestilence-stricken district. Now for the most part only foxes, bears, and other wild animals tenant the ragged pastures and wild jungles of the Campagna.