Humanity, those wretches armed unwillingly against each other, and dying to divert a brutal populace.
These reflections upon Pagan days and classical cruelties do not disturb however the peace of an old hermit, who has chosen one of these close-concealed recesses for his habitation, and accordingly dwells, dismally enough, in a hole seldom visited by travellers, and certainly never enquired about by the natives. I stumbled on his strange apartment by mere chance, and asked him why he had chosen it? He had been led in early youth, he said, to reflect upon the miseries suffered by the original professors of Christianity; the tortures inflicted on them in this horrible amphitheatre, and the various vicissitudes of Rome since: that he had dedicated himself to these meditations: that he had left the world seventeen years, never stirring from his cell but to buy food, which he eat alone and sparingly, and to pay his devotions in the Via Crucis, for so the old Arena is now called; a simple plain wooden cross occupying the middle of it, and round the Circus twelve neat, not splendid chapels; a picture to each, representing the various stages of our Sa
viour's passion. Such are the meek triumphs of our meek religion! And that such substitutes should have replaced the African savages, tigers, hyænas, &c. and Roman gladiators, not less ferocious than their four-legged antagonists, I am quite as willing to rejoice at as the hermit: They must be better antiquarians too than I am, who regret that a nunnery now covers the spot where ambitious Tullia drove over the bleeding body of her murdered parent,
Pressit et inductis membra paterna rotis:
That nunnery, supported by the arch of Nerva, which is all that is now left standing of that Emperor's Forum.
I must not however quit the Coliseum, without repeating what passed between the King of Sweden and his Roman laquais de place when he was here; and the fellow, in the true cant of his Ciceroneship, exclaimed as they looked up, "Ah Maesta! what cursed Goths those were that tore away so many fine things here, and pulled down such magnificent pillars, &c." "Hold, hold friend," replies the King of Sweden; "I am one of those cursed Goths myself you know:
but what were your Roman nobles a-doing, I would ask, when they laboured to destroy an edifice like this, and build their palaces with its materials?"
The baths of Livia are still elegantly designed round her small apartments; and one has copies sold of them upon fans; the curiosity of the original is to see how well the gilding stands; in many places it appears just finished. These baths are difficult of access somehow; I never could quite understand how we got in or out of them, but they did belong to the Imperial palace, which covered this whole Palatine hill, and here was Nero's golden house, by what I could gather, but of that I thank Heaven there is no trace left, except some little portion of the wall, which was 120 feet high, and some marbles in shades, like women's worsted work upon canvass, very curious, and very wonderful; as all are natural marbles, and no dye used: the expence must have surpassed credibility.
The Temple of Vesta, supposed to be the very temple to which Horace alludes in his second Ode, is a pretty rotunda, and has twenty pillars fluted of Parian marble: it is now a church, as are most of the heathen temples.
Such adaptations do not please one, but then it must be allowed and recollected that one is very hard to please: finding fault is so easy, and doing right so difficult!