————Usque ego postera
Crescam laude recens, dum Capitolium
Scandet cum tacita virgine Pontifex.
Yet the poet’s works have already outlived this period fourteen hundred years; and Virgil has transmitted the memory of the friendship and fame of Nisus and Euryalus, the same space of time beyond the period which he himself, in the ardour of poetic hope, had fixed for its limits.
Fortunati ambo si quid mea carmina possunt,
Nulla dies unquam memori vos eximet ævo:
Dum domus Æneæ Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet, imperiumque Pater Romanus habebit.
In the two wings of the modern palace, called the Campidoglio, the Conservators of the city have apartments; their office is analogous to that of the ancient Ædiles. In the main body an Italian nobleman, appointed by the Pope, has his residence, with the title of Senator of Rome; the miserable representation of that Senate which gave laws to the world. The most defaced ruin, the most shapeless heap of antique rubbish in all Rome, cannot convey a feebler image of the building to which they belonged, than this deputy of the Pope does of that august assembly. The beautiful approach to this palace, and all the ornaments which decorate the area before it, cannot detain you long from the back view to which the ancient Capitol fronted. Here you behold the Forum Romanum, now exhibiting a melancholy but interesting view of the devastation wrought by the united force of time, avarice, and bigotry. The first objects which meet your eye, on looking from this side of the hill, are three fine pillars, two-thirds of them buried in the ruins of the old Capitol. They are said to be the remains of the temple of Jupiter Tonans, built by Augustus, in gratitude for having narrowly escaped death from a stroke of lightning. Near these are the remains of Jupiter Stator, consisting of three very elegant small Corinthian pillars, with their entablature; the Temple of Concord, where Cicero assembled the Senate, on the discovery of Catiline’s conspiracy; the Temple of Romulus and Remus, and that of Antoninus and Faustina, just by it, both converted into modern churches; the ruins of the magnificent Temple of Peace, built immediately after the taking of Jerusalem, the Roman empire being then in profound peace. This is said to have been the finest temple in old Rome; part of the materials of Nero’s Golden House, which Vespasian pulled down, were used in erecting this grand edifice. The only entire pillar remaining of this temple, was placed by Paul V. before the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. It is a most beautiful fluted Corinthian column, and gives a very high idea of the temple to which it originally belonged. His Holiness has crowned it with an image of the Virgin Mary; and, in the inscription on the pedestal, he gives his reason for choosing a column belonging to the Temple of Peace, as an ornament to a church dedicated to the Virgin.
Ex cujus visceribus Princeps veræ Pacis genitus est.