To return to the Temple of Vesta, which is always the first object at Tivoli. I shall not attempt to describe the beauties of the ruin, because it has been so often done before, and because no description can do justice to the reality; but I will point out a few particulars in the construction, with which perhaps you are not so familiar. The cell is formed of opus incertum, which has been described by Vitruvius as a masonry of small pieces of irregular shape, fitted together, and united by mortar. Some writers have supposed that by this term he meant the Cyclopean walls, which are constructed of large pieces without mortar, (of these I shall tell you more hereafter) but his description is sufficiently precise to leave no doubt of his meaning. Of this opus incertum we have reason to think that it was in use in the time of Sylla, and probably much before; and the complaint of Vitruvius, that it was in his time giving way to the opus reticulatum, which though neater, was less strong; together with the want of existing remains which are known to be of later date; will justify us in concluding that it was discontinued in the reign of Augustus. There are some letters on the architrave, the remains of an inscription, but all that exists is L. Gellius, L. F. There was, I believe, a Lucius Gellius in the time of Sylla, but I cannot now recollect where I met with the name. Now the construction of the walls, and the forms of the capital very much resemble some fragments remaining at Palestrina, belonging to the temple of Fortune, which we know to have been restored and greatly enlarged by Sylla; and at Pompei there are capitals of a similar taste, but evidently much prior to the earthquake which preceded its final calamity; and putting all these circumstances together we may, with some probability, assign this building to the time of Sylla. These capitals are not ornamented with the leaves, either of the acanthus or the olive, but with some which rather resemble those of the Verbascum sinuatum; and neither they, nor any part of the building, offer the least trace of Greek taste, as distinguished from that of Rome. We do not find at Rome any examples of similar capitals, except an unappropriated fragment or two of peperino, which may have belonged to the same period. Within the cell is a recess, which seems to have been the work of later ages. It has a large doorway, and a window, both of which are considerably smaller upwards. The material of the opus incertum is a sort of tufo, but the dressings which surround the door and window, together with the external order, and the continued pedestal on which it stands, are of a coarse, calcareous, fresh-water deposit, much resembling travertine. This, in the columns at least, and perhaps everywhere else, was covered with a very thin coat of fine, hard stucco, and the opus reticulatum was probably covered with stucco also, but it must have had more substance, or it would not have concealed the little inequalities of the work below. The cornice has no modillions, and the dentil band is uncut; otherwise it would have been a regular Ionic entablature, as directed by Vitruvius. The columns have settled a little outwards, as is evident from the openings in the entablature. Here are sufficient vestiges of steps, to prove that they descended laterally, and were not brought straight out, as they are usually published, but there is not enough remaining to make out distinctly all the particulars. After the temple of Vesta, to which I paid not one, but many visits, I noticed the little square edifice just by, now the church of St. George. Little remains but the back of the temple, and a portion of one flank, with Ionic half-columns very much decayed; showing it to have been a tetrastyle, pseudo-peripteral temple, of the most ancient, and simplest form. It has no beauty in itself, and in some points of view is very much in the way of the other temple, which it almost touches. I should tell you that Lord Bristol bought the circular temple. The bargain was completed, and the owner was just preparing to pull it down and ship it for England, when an order from the government put a stop to the proceeding. This temple, or at least the columns and entablature, has been closely imitated at the N. W. corner of the bank of England, and a portion of its circular form is also adopted.
The next objects were the Waterfall and the Grotto of Neptune. Fontana built a wall to preserve a head of water for the forges, and the use of the city, and the water now tumbles over this, and the rocks upon which it is built, for the height of about sixty feet, and after dashing and foaming for some yards among broken masses, loses itself in a dark and deep recess. A winding path descends by the Ionic temple, presenting a succession of the most romantic views, to the grotto of Neptune. We are astonished to see scenery so wild in the midst of cultivation, and close to, nay almost within the circuit of a town of considerable size. Near the path we are shown the impression of a wheel, which having been buried in the rock deposited from the water, and since decayed, has left the exact mould of a considerable portion of the circumference, and of some of the spokes. All around you, from the top to the bottom of the deep chasm, rather than valley, to which you are descending; a depth I suppose, of not less than 250 feet, you see nothing but the rock thus formed by the river. The water, which had disappeared after its leap down the great cascade, rushes out of the grotto of Neptune in another fall, and when standing to look at it at the distance of 50 or 60 yards, the spray descends like a heavy shower, which a strong wind drives against the face. On the other side, another portion of the river falls from an opening in the rock in the upper part of the chasm, and our position between the two, produces a strange undefined confusion in the head, which it is impossible to describe. The streams unite below us, and after tumbling a little way among rocks, they are lost in another cavern, called the grotto of the Syren; but all these names are modern fancies, which merely serve to distinguish the different places. You may cross the stream over the last-mentioned grotto, and descending on the opposite side, enter into its mouth and look down the abyss. All these caverns are very much inclined in their direction, and the water falls, rather than flows through them. The inequality of the ground renders it necessary to make a long circuit in order to reach the lower part of the river; and in so doing you may observe, or fancy you observe, some remains of the ancient bridge, which stood nearly where is now the grotto of the Syren, deeply encrusted in this universal deposit. Looking upwards, you see the temple, the city, the rocks, the falls, combined in the most magical manner. It is a scene however, which it is difficult to characterize. It might be called sublime, if the objects of beauty were not so numerous; and if its sublimity and beauty were less impressive, you would pronounce it the most picturesque view that was ever beheld. Some parts of the rocks are covered with aloes; their tall flower-stalks rising above the olive groves; and some with the Indian fig; both of which give a singularity to the scene which renders it more attractive. The river after its second disappearance, bubbles up with great force at the foot of a high rock, in a most delightful sequestered spot. It is said to deposit about one inch and a half per annum of its solid tartar; if so it ought to be continually elevating its bed, yet there is a hole thirty or forty feet above its present level, through which it has evidently run, and still higher, another passage; indeed, as I said before, the whole rock to the very summit, is of the same nature, and its formation has forced the water through partial channels at different elevations, instead of always keeping the lowest part of the valley. This deposit only takes place where the water is disturbed, and above the town there is none of it.
From this spot we have to climb again into a road which runs on the slope of the hills opposite to the town; but do not imagine that we have to regret this exertion; every step of the way abounds with such varied beauty, that we are glad of anything which detains us. I shall not attempt to carry you to the numerous villas about Tivoli; you can hardly walk a furlong in any direction without stumbling on some of their ruins, but I shall mention a few of them as they occur. The next object in the usual tour is the Villa of Horace; not that he had any villa on the spot, but there were fragments which wanted a name, and they gave it a very pretty one, not forgetful of his relation to Mæcenas, whose pretended habitation stands on the opposite side of the valley. It is a pity to doubt, but after having examined, you cannot have any confident belief. These ruins, like all the rest, are merely some of the substructions and vaults, made in order to obtain a level surface for the principal apartment, and probably for the court of the villa. Nature has pretty generally denied this about Tivoli, and all the ancient villas in the neighbourhood are on slopes, where works of this sort were necessary, and they were carried to an immense extent. Other constructions followed lower down, to support the gardens and fishponds, forming a succession of terraces, of which the modern Italians have frequently taken advantage to plant their olive-grounds. It seems to me, that the Romans were fond of such situations and modes of construction, as we frequently see them where they might have been avoided without much difficulty, and it is even probable that they often resided in these semi-subterranean apartments, which would be cooler than those exposed all round to the air. There are some peculiarities of disposition and construction in this villa of Horace, as indeed most of the remains have something which renders them remarkable; and it is extremely interesting to stand on the spot, and to speculate on the probable use of the different parts; but this is a gratification which would be lost in description. The vast extent also of these half-ruined vaults impresses the mind with a sort of admiration; we seem to have got among a race whose exertions were not limited by the weakness and poverty of modern man. A little beyond, at the intersection of two roads, is the Villa of Quintilius Varus, one of the largest of these immense places, and I have wandered through, and over the vaults, and on the terraces of the gardens, with an astonishment continually increasing. We may add to the effect of the ruins themselves, that all the situations are enchanting; some command more perfectly the Campagna and distant Rome; others enjoy better the delightful valley of the Anio, where rocks and cultivation, vines, olives, and natural woods, unite to enrich and vary the scene; and the cascatelle pour down the steep and rocky bank in white foam, and occasion a light mist which hangs as a beautiful veil over the surrounding objects. Amongst however, the charms of this valley, I should not omit the Styrax officinalis, which grows abundantly in some parts, and is now covered with flowers; I am assured that the fruit yields an excellent oil, not inferior to that of the olive, and sometimes in greater quantity.
The usual tour follows the left-hand of the two roads abovementioned, but I one day took the right-hand path, with a young abate, a relation of the landlord of the inn, to look after Cyclopean walls.
In England, a little more than 200 years carries us back to a distinct and peculiar style of architecture, and we consequently consider its productions as antiquities. In Italy, what does not exceed 400 years is absolutely modern, and a production is hardly considered as ancient, unless it date at least before the destruction of the Roman empire, under the reign of Augustulus, at the close of the 5th century. The buildings of the early emperors have an undoubted claim to the title, and still more those of the republic; but what name shall we apply to those which were erected 1,800 years before Christ. This date is boldly claimed for some of the Cyclopean walls; of which construction, it is said, that there are 108 citadels in Italy, and the thorough-going Italian antiquary, though he is contented to admit, that the oldest were not erected more than 2760 years before the Christian era, yet will not admit that any of them can be more recent than the foundation of Rome. They were, according to him, introduced into Italy by Saturn, but their earliest use in the temple of Hercules, at Tyre, was 2,760 years before Christ. Leaving these suppositions, we may be justified in considering the walls in question as the earliest remains of building in Italy. They are, as you know, built with great irregular blocks of stone, made even on the face, or nearly so, not squared, nor laid in regular courses, but the inequalities are fitted to each other as much as possible, and the interstices filled up with smaller stones. In what is probably the earliest style of all, no tool seems to have been applied to the stone, but the rude masses are merely heaped on one another, taking care in the position of each successive block, to place it where it would most nearly fit into the work, and probably keeping the smoothest side outwards, to form the face of the wall; but the work is always rude and uneven. In the second style, the tool has been used more or less, in order to make the great stones fit with some degree of accuracy; and in both these, one may easily conceive the use of the leaden rule described by Herodotus, which, being bent to the internal angle, left on the top of the wall, would be applied to the external angles of the stone intended to be placed in it. In the third sort of Cyclopean walls, lines nearly horizontal are decidedly more numerous than those in any other direction, and here and there, are some appearances of level courses. These, in later times, predominated more and more, till in the fourth and last style, the only irregularity is found in the unequal thickness of the stones of the same course, corrected sometimes by the introduction of a sloping line, or more often by a notch to let the larger stone into the course above or below. Though I believe this to have been the general progress of the art, yet you must not imagine them as distinctly characterizing different periods; on the contrary, there is hardly any considerable wall of Cyclopean masonry, which does not exhibit in different parts, two of these methods; and sometimes three are found, without any appearance that they have been restorations of different periods; we may however observe, that the second style is most common in Latium, the fourth in Tuscany; the third is perhaps about equally diffused in both countries. At all times, these blocks were used without cement, and all that I have hitherto seen, are mere terrace walls against a hill, and exhibiting in consequence one face only; but I am told of instances where both sides are seen, and that in such cases two walls are built back to back, without any attention to the regularity, or evenness of what was to be the internal part, and without any filling in. No arches, that is, no system of wedges mutually supporting each other, is to be found, though such an arrangement would seem to grow more easily out of these inclined lines, than from regular courses of stones; but where there are openings, (of which I have seen none hitherto) there is a very large stone, worked square, and laid horizontally to cover it; and in one instance, at Arpino (perhaps because the builders could not meet with a stone large enough to cover the opening,) the size of the aperture is reduced by advancing courses, into the form of a pointed arch. There is indeed a real arch at Fiesole, which by some has been supposed to be part of the Cyclopean construction, but both the arch and the fragment on which it rests are obviously of a date much posterior. There are many remains of Cyclopean walls both at Tivoli and Palestrina, and as according to Virgil, Tibur and Præneste were founded about the time that Æneas landed in Italy; this epoch has been assigned to their construction, but it must be confessed, that the argument is not altogether conclusive. It is held essential to Cyclopean walls, that there should be no cement, and à fortiori, no rubble-work employed in their composition; but in this neighbourhood, at what is called the villa of Brutus, which I shall shortly mention to you; there is a wall of Cyclopean masonry, resting for its whole length, and apparently backed in its whole extent by a wall of rubble. This Cyclopean wall has been faced by another of opus reticulatum, so common in the time of Augustus, and in that of the first emperors, and which may be seen in almost all the villas about Tivoli. It seems that the Romans did not like the appearance of these large irregular blocks, and covered them with a masonry of small fragments more suited to their taste. These circumstances render it probable that none of these walls are so late as the time of the emperors, but we have no proof that they were not in use a century before that period.
There are some of these walls in the villa attributed to Ventidius Bassus, which appear to rest on a rubble-work, held together by cement; but without digging, I could not be quite certain. We continued our walk considerably farther, and found at Vetriano other considerable fragments of Cyclopean walls, but always built to support the earth behind them, and to support terraces. The stones are worked with some approach to horizontal courses and the wall strengthened by buttresses. There are breaks enough to show that it is backed by emplecton, or rubble-work, for its whole extent, and this emplecton is perfectly rude, and without any appearance of having been laid by hand, so that it destroys a theory I had formed which pretended to distinguish the rubble-work connected with the Cyclopean walls from that of a later period. Here are some mosaics quite on the surface: they seem still to be very numerous about Tivoli, notwithstanding the quantities which have been removed or destroyed, but in general it is necessary to dig for them. Not far from Vetriano, there are Roman constructions in brick, and the foundations and mosaics of a Roman villa have been found by digging in the vineyards. Here also is an oil-mill, and it appears evident that the oil has corroded the stone. Nearer to Tivoli there is another considerable Cyclopean wall, which is distinctly rusticated, and has large and solid buttresses.
From Vetriano I continued my way alone (the abate returning to his dinner), to the quarries of travertine, where I was shewn two great blocks going to England in the shape of the eagles of the villa Borghese. The part they are at present working has the appearance of being a deposit, filling up an ancient excavation. The quality of the stone is exactly like that of the Lago de Tartari, except that it is much more compact; but it is as evidently a fresh-water formation. The quarryman assured me that the bones of a Christian had been found there. These quarries extend to within a moderate distance of the Solfatara, already described. The ancient quarries are in the same bed, but on the opposite side of the road to Rome. They are now filled with bushes, and form a hollow near the river, perhaps two miles round, an excellent harbour for game. In crossing from one to the other I passed two aqueducts, one of which divides itself into two branches. The length, the number, and the winding course of these aqueducts, render it extremely difficult to trace them, or to comprehend their disposition; indeed, for a passing stranger, it is impossible, and it could only be done by a most careful survey, and an accurate determination of the position, and the level of every fragment. The nature of the tufo, or deposit on their sides, would perhaps yield some assistance. We are surprised at this point to observe their rapid declension: about Tivoli we see them winding along, to accommodate themselves to the form of the hill, and to maintain their elevation; here they are almost on the level of the upper part of the Campagna, at least 300 feet lower than those which are observed at a distance of not more than two miles. After leaving the quarries, I passed over the Ponte Lucano, and by the Plautian monument, and leaving Hadrian’s villa on the right, and the road to Tivoli on the left, went directly up the hill to look after more Cyclopean walls, and to see the villas of Brutus and Cassius. The remains of these are of immense extent, but they are only substructions like the rest; by substructions, however, you must not understand mere foundations of walls just peeping above the surface; they consist of long walls and vaults, sometimes parallel with the direction of the hill, and sometimes in that of the slope, supporting terraces covered with earth, and olive-trees. The lower terrace of the villa of Brutus must be above 400 feet long, and the wall which supports it near 40 feet high. The second is nearly of the same length, and about 30 feet in height, but interrupted. The third is also considerable; that of Cassius was larger, but not so regular. The ilex, the lentiscus, and various other shrubs, hung about these ruins; and the broad deep green leaves of the fig, contrast with the light silvery gray spray of the olive. Indeed, in this neighbourhood, every waste spot of ground presents a collection of beautiful shrubs, most of which are now in flower. Higher up the mountain, the gray rocks are principally covered with the Spanish broom, and a large coarse grass (Arundo ampelodesmus) though not without a mixture of the humbler growth of cistuses and helianthema. All this sounds very beautiful, and in fact it is so, but the features are so much hid by the continued grove of olive-trees, that they are almost lost in the effect of the general scenery, and you may pass through the country, and see very little of it.
This digression has entirely carried me away from the usual tour, which was the first I made, and which I had begun to describe to you. I left it just at the villa of Quintilius Varus. From every opening in this part of the walk you have a view of the long portico of the villa of Mæcenas, crowning the opposite hill, on lofty arched substructions, and of the Cascatelle, rushing down the slope in sheets of foam, into the valley beneath. We may leave the road soon after the bifurcation, where I took the right-hand track, and keeping still more to the left, than the left-hand path, descend to the bottom of the hill, to enjoy more fully the view of the Cascatelle. The prospect varies at every step of the descent. We first lose the distant Campagna, which is disclosed from the upper part of the slope, and soon afterwards the olive-groves beyond the villa of Mæcenas; while the villa itself seems more majestically placed; the water falling in various directions becomes of more consequence; and the rich woods of the high bank opposite to us display all their beauties. The great Cascatella furnishes a considerable mass of water, but though the fall is much higher than any that I have before described, yet as it occupies a much more open situation, the character of the scenery has less of the sublime than that about the grotto of the Syren, and more of the beautiful.
There are a great many other fragments of villas about here, but as they have nothing very characteristic, I shall not stop to enumerate them. We will therefore pass on to the Ponticelli, or Ponte Acquorio, but before crossing it, I will mention a beautiful spring called Acqua Aurea, which rises by the side of the river, just above the bridge, and gives to it the latter name: the former is thought to be a corruption of Pons Gellius. You are told that a scheme was once in agitation to carry this water to Rome, but on taking its level, it was found to be too low. This does not seem to me at all probable. The Teverone is a pretty brisk stream; and in a course, which, including the windings, must equal twenty-five miles, it can hardly fall less than 75 feet, in which case the Acqua Aurea might enter Rome, not indeed at the Porta Maggiore, but 50 feet above the level of the Tiber. The Lea, from Hertford to Stratford, runs about the same distance, and I think not more rapidly, and though we have to remount the Thames from thence to London, we find the reservoir of the New River 84 feet above the tide.
The ancient road to Tivoli passed over this bridge, and some fragments of the ancient work remain. At a very small distance is a cavern, partly, if not entirely artificial, with some niches on the side, called the Temple of the World; and on ascending the hill, we find a domed, octagonal hall, denominated Tempio della Tosse, but supposed by antiquaries to have derived its name from an ancient Tivolese family. Its ancient destination is unknown, but in after-times it appears to have been converted into a church, and retains some traces of such an appropriation.