Horatius in his harness
Halting upon one knee.”
“Where is it now, Mamma? And Horatius? and the Great Twin Brethren—and the rest of them?”
“Are gone, my darling!”
CHAPTER XV.
On Christmas-Day.
ON Christmas-Day, we went, via the Coliseum, for a long drive in the Campagna. The black cross, at the foot of which many prayers have been said for many ages, has disappeared from the centre of the arena. It was necessary to take it down in the course of the excavations that have revealed the subterranean cells whose existence was unsuspected until lately. These are mere pits unroofed by the removal of the floor of the amphitheatre, and in winter are half-full of water left by the overflow of the Tiber and the autumnal rains. The abundant and varied Flora of the Coliseum, including more than three hundred different wild flowers and such affluence of foliage as might almost be catalogued in the terms used to describe the botanical lore of the philosopher-king of Israel: “Trees from the cedar that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall,”—all these have been swept away by the unsparing hand of Signore Rosa, the superintendent to whom the care of the ruins of the old city has been committed. To the artistic eye, the Coliseum and other structures have suffered irretrievable damage through the measures which, he asserts, are indispensable to their preservation. We who never saw the rich fringe of ilex and ivy that made “the outside wall with its top of gigantic stones, seem like a mountain-barrier of bare rock, enclosing a green and varied valley,” forget to regret our loss in congratulating ourselves that filth has been cleared away with the evergreen draperies. Despite the pools of stagnant water now occupying half of the vast circle enclosed by the scraped and mended walls, the Coliseum is not one-tenth as dangerous to the health of him who whiles away a noontide hour there, or threads the corridors by moonlight as when it was far more picturesque.
The sunlight of this Christmas-Day lay peacefully upon and within the walls, as we walked around the circular arcades, and paused in the centre of the floor, looking up to the seats of honor—(the podium) reserved, on the day of dedication, for Titus, his family, the Senate, and the Vestal Virgins. When, according to Merrivale, “the capacity of the vast edifice was tested by the slaughter of five thousand animals in its circuit.”