Rome, February, 1817.
In my last I gave you some account of the buildings about the Forum, or perhaps I should say, about the Campo Vaccino, for the ancient forum was of much less extent from N. W. to S. E., which is its present direction, and greater from N. E. to S. W., reaching as far as the circular church of St. Theodore, supposed to have been a temple of Romulus; but not apparently to the building called the temple of Vesta, or even to the arch of Janus; as these stood, not in the great Forum, but in the cattle-market, or Forum Boarium. The church of St. Theodore above-mentioned, is a circular brick building, or at least coated with brick, for the interior is probably rubble. We have no reason to believe any of the present remains to be of very high antiquity, or if there be any thing of the sort, it is concealed by the more recent covering, which is supposed to have been made, or much repaired, at the time the building was converted into a Christian church. According to Manazzale it was ristabilita by Adrian I. in 774, rifabbricata by Nicolas V. in 1450. Among the arguments used to prove it to have been the ancient temple of Romulus, or at least to have occupied its site, is a fancied similarity between St. Theodore (usually called San Toto), and the founder of the Roman state; and the custom still existing, of carrying to it sick children for the recovery of their health, since it appears that the same practice prevailed in ancient times, with respect to the temple of Romulus. This argument is of some value, since the Romans still retain many local heathen superstitions. Behind this building is a small fragment of wall of opus incertum, against the Palatine hill, which we may pronounce more ancient than the temple itself, and probably of a republican period. The pavement of the yard in front, and of a considerable portion of the street, is formed of what is usually called serpentine; but I believe it has no affinity with the stone now so named by mineralogists, but is rather a green porphyry. One finds in Rome, however, another stone called green porphyry, very different from this, and agreeing with the red porphyry in every thing but its colour.
In the neighbourhood of the ancient Forum Boarium, are the remains of five edifices; the first in our route is the Arch of Janus, which I need not be very particular in describing, as it has little pretension to any sort of beauty. The mouldings, without being good, are better drawn, and better executed than those of the arch of Constantine, which were made for the building. One or two fragments seem to have belonged to something else, but in general there is a uniformity of design and execution. Close by this is the Arch of the Goldsmiths, dedicated to Septimius Severus, which, in spite of the name, is in fact, no arch at all, but consists of an entablature supported on two piers, which are ornamented with pilasters of the Composite order; it is covered with a profusion of ornaments in bad taste, but producing, nevertheless, some richness of effect.
The Cloaca Maxima is so little visible that one can hardly form a decided judgment concerning its construction. It is said to be of peperino, or rather of what Brocchi has called tufa litoide, repaired in many places with travertine. We see only two ends of a short piece, running perhaps two hundred yards, from the neighbourhood of the arch of Janus into the Tiber. At the upper end only one course of arch stones, of peperino, or tufa is seen, and the joints seem somewhat loosened by time; in front of this is another arch of brick, springing from a higher level, but apparently of ancient workmanship. The older arch is filled up with silt to somewhat above the springing. Towards the land, the modern sewer varies its direction, and the old one is entirely filled up. Close by the sewer is a good spring of clear water, and a little higher up, another more copious one. They are so far distinct, that the use of the upper as a washing-place does not affect the lower. The upper spring appears from beneath a brick arch, and may therefore be brought from some distance; the lower rises under rocks. The position of this spring is of importance in settling the topography of ancient Rome, as it must have supplied the lake Juturna, and have been the place where Castor and Pollux were seen watering their horses after the battle of the lake Regillus. Some have supposed another spring, in order to put the lake of Juturna, and consequently the temple of Vesta, at the foot of the Palatine, just by the three columns of Jupiter Stator; the arrangement is doubtless convenient, but the evidence is defective. The outlet of the Cloaca into the Tiber has three courses of arch stones of peperino, as perfect as if done yesterday, and of excellent masonry, but in so exposed a situation it is hardly credible, that some restorations should not at times have been necessary. It appears among the remains of an ancient wall, which is also of peperino, or tufa, but of a softer variety and less perfect workmanship. We may suppose all this prior to Augustus, but between the kings and emperors there is a very wide interval, and there seems no mode of fixing a precise date for any of the restorations; what evidence we possess is certainly in favour of its having retained the form and arrangement given to it by the Tarquins.
The next antiquity I shall notice, consists of some columns in the church of Santa Maria, in Cosmedim. The church itself is a basilica of very early date, and presents nothing of pagan antiquities in its general appearance externally, excepting some ancient fragments of architecture in the portico, and a large stone, supposed to have been the covering of a sewer, representing a huge round face with an open mouth. It is called the Bocca della verità, because if you assert a falsehood with your hand in this mouth, it will close upon you.
Within side are nine large columns, which have evidently formed part of the peristyle of a temple, and probably remain in their original position. Seven of them have very beautiful Composite capitals, which may probably be considered the best examples of that order in Rome. The church contains a very rich pavement of the sort called Byzantine, composed of tesselated marbles, and there are about twenty other small marble columns, the spoils of various buildings, with capitals of all ages, from the time of Titus to that of Constantine, and perhaps later. From some appearances, one might imagine that the larger columns were shaken by an earthquake. One of their capitals was wanting, and has been supplied from some other ancient building; but even this alteration must have been prior to the date of the present church, in which neither columns nor capitals are of any value. There are some walls of the ancient temple behind the choir. This church also preserves its ancient marble pulpit and reading-desk; and there is an ancient picture, which we are told floated of itself by sea from Greece, about the year 800.
I shall now proceed to a more beautiful and more perfect remain, usually called the Temple of Vesta. The antiquaries here are pretty generally agreed that it has no right to the appellation, though there are some arguments in its favour, and rather assign it to Hercules Victor, built A. U. C. 480. For my part I doubt, as every body must be content to do, who troubles himself with the names of the Roman antiquities, and believes only according to evidence. It is a small cell, partly of brick, and partly of stone; the latter ancient, the former modern; surrounded by a peristyle of twenty elegant Corinthian columns of white marble, some of which have capitals in the Greek taste, and some rather more in the Roman. I believe I have already noticed this distinction, but I will now in a few words endeavour to explain to you in what it consists. In the Greek order, the abacus is not cut off at the angles; the general form of the capital more or less resembles that of a bell; and in the foliage of the leaves, one part does not lie over the other, but the divisions merely touch each other at the points. In the Roman, the angles of the abacus are cut off; the general form is that of a funnel; and the lower divisions of the leaves usually lie over the upper. What I here call Greek foliage is frequently designated as consisting of the leaves of the acanthus; while the Roman is considered to be imitated from olive leaves; there is little resemblance to either, yet the olive branch may have suggested the idea of the Roman ornament; while the Greek resembles some sorts of thistle, rather than the acanthus of Linnæus, but it is probable that the Greeks intended a thistle by the name acanthus, though the mollis Acanthus of Virgil seems to belong to some other plant, and his evergreen acanthus must again be different.
When the Romans first began to feel the beauties of Grecian architecture, they probably were obliged to make use of Greek artists for its execution, and to such a period I attribute the present edifice. About the time of Augustus, the Romans had formed to themselves a style decidedly their own, and differing in many particulars from their Greek models. From that emperor to Trajan, or perhaps later, we do not find any capital, or other ornamental part of public buildings, in which the taste of the details is Greek; but as skill in the fine arts seems to have utterly disappeared in Italy, sooner than in Greece, the Romans of the latter age had again recourse to the chisel of Greek artists. In the time of Trajan indeed, Apollodorus grecised, but in a different manner. The forms of the mouldings in the forum of Trajan approach to those of the Greeks, and they are executed with Grecian truth and delicacy of workmanship, but the ornaments are such as were usual at Rome. In the temple of Vesta the ornament is Greek, but it is not particularly well executed. The entablature is entirely gone, nor are there any fragments by which to restore it. Pieces of the soffite of the portico however, are found, and some antefixæ have been dug up, which perhaps belonged to this edifice. The bases are in the Roman taste, and well designed, though rather smaller than usual; they have no separate plinths, but are set on one which is continued round the building, and forms the upper step.
Before the first volume of the Ionian antiquities, published by the Dilettanti Society, had made us acquainted with really fine specimens of the Ionic order, the Temple of Fortuna Virilis was cited as one of its best examples. As usual, the Roman antiquaries are agreed about nothing but that this edifice is misnamed. It is of a clumsy overcharged architecture, but looks rather better in reality than in the drawings, because the relief of the ornaments is very small. Part of the old work having been much defaced, new mouldings have been badly executed in plaster, without the ornaments.
I have mentioned a sepulchre of Pontius Pilate at Vienne, in Dauphiné. His palace is at Rome, if you believe tradition, and a very curious palace it must have been, whimsically made up with fragments of better times. The edifice has been more reasonably supposed the habitation of Rienzi, tribune of the people in the fourteenth century, whose curious history you have read in Gibbon. The authority for this is an inscription which states it to have been erected by Nicolas, son of Crescentius and Theodora.