On Thursday, January 26th, M. de Montaigne went to see the Janiculum Hill beyond the Tiber and the curiosities of that part; amongst others a great fall of masonry from the old walls which had happened a few days before, and the view of the whole of Rome, which can be surveyed more clearly from this spot than from any other. Thence he went down to the Vatican to inspect the statues set in the niches of the Belvedere, and the fine gallery,[87] now almost completed, which the Pope is adorning with paintings of all parts of Italy. He lost his purse and all therein, and deemed this must have happened while he was giving alms—as he did twice or thrice; the weather was very rainy and unpleasant, and, instead of returning his purse to his pocket, he must have thrust it into the slashing of his hose. At this time he diverted himself entirely in studying Rome. He had at first engaged a Frenchman as guide, but this fellow took himself off in some ridiculous humour, whereupon M. de Montaigne prided himself on mastering by his own efforts the art of a guide. In the evening he would study certain books and maps, and next day repair to the spot and put in practice his apprenticeship, so that in a few days he could have shown his guide the way.
M. de Montaigne affirmed that he could now see nothing more of Rome than the sky under which it lay and the area of its site; that all the knowledge he possessed thereof was of an abstract and contemplative nature, a knowledge in no way to be apprehended by the operation of the senses; that those who affirmed that they might at least behold the ruins of Rome, affirmed too much. The ruins of a mechanism of such terrible power suggested to his own mind reverence and respect rather than comprehension. What he saw was nought but a sepulchre. The world, resentful at her long domination, first broke and shattered all the portions of this marvellous whole, and then, horror-stricken at this spectacle of death, ruin, and disfigurement, entombed the ruins themselves. As to these minor indications of her overthrow which yet lie upon her bier, they have been preserved by fate as a testimony to that immeasurable greatness which all these centuries, all these conflagrations, all these repeated alliances of the powers of the world, have failed to destroy entirely. But it was almost certain that these defaced fragments which survived were those of the least merit, for the rage of the enemies of this immortal renown would surely have prompted them to destroy in the first instance all that was most lovely and most noble. He declared that the buildings of this bastard Rome, which were now being joined on to the ancient masonry (what though they sufficed to kindle the admiration of the present age), reminded him exactly of the nests the martins and crows were building in the roofs and on the walls of the French churches which the Huguenots had destroyed.[88]
THE VILLA OF MECÆNAS
From Piranesi’s Views of Rome
To face p. 98, vol. ii.
Again M. de Montaigne was persuaded, considering the space occupied by this vast tomb, that the present age failed to realise its full extent, and that the greater part of the sepulchre itself must be buried. As to this, one has only to consider the base off-cast of a great city; how out of the fragments of broken tiles and pots from ancient days, a mound has been heaped together of so vast a size that it equals in height and breadth several natural mountains (he compared this mound as to height with the hill of Gurson, and judged it to be double the width).[89] It seemed to represent an express decree of the Fates to make plain to the world how they had conspired to render this city glorious and paramount; to bear witness to its grandeur by so strange and extraordinary a token. He declared it was hard to understand—considering how narrow was the space occupied by some of the hills, and notably by the most famous, the Capitol and the Palatine—how such a large number of buildings could be there bestowed. Looking only at the remains of the Temple of Peace by the side of the Forum Romanum (of which one may still behold the recent ruin, like that of a vast mountain broken up into divers ugly crags), it was apparent that two such edifices could hardly have found room on the entire summit of the Capitol, where there were twenty-five or thirty temples, besides several private houses. But in sooth the various conjectures which have been adopted for the delineation of this ancient city possess scarcely any verisimilitude, seeing that the very site thereof has changed its contour beyond measure, and that certain of its valleys have been filled up. To wit, in the lowest-lying spots, as, for instance, in the Velabrum, which, on account of its situation, received the sewage of the city, and had a lake in its midst, there is now to be found a hill as high as the other natural hills adjacent thereto.[90] All this has come about by the accumulation of the ruins and fragments of the huge buildings, the Monte Savello being nought else than a portion of the theatre of Marcellus. M. de Montaigne did not deem that an ancient Roman would recognise the site of his city were he to behold it.
TEMPLE OF JANUS
From Piranesi’s Views of Rome
To face p. 98, vol. ii.
It would often happen to one digging deep in the earth to come upon the capital of a lofty column which still stood on its base far below; and builders were wont to seek for their erections no other foundations than some mass of ancient masonry, or on arches such as are commonly seen in cellars, or on some old wall or substructure existing on the site. And upon the very wrecks of the ancient buildings, as they fall to ruin, the builders set out casually the foundations of new houses, as if these fragments were great masses of rock, firm and trustworthy. It is evident that many of the old streets lie more than thirty feet below the level of those now in existence.