Italian Yesterdays, vol. 1

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

What strange sights those roads must have seen when the long camel trains came plodding through from Persia with their escort of black-bearded, ringletted merchants, raising whirlwinds of dust and eliciting strings of curses from the fair-haired drivers of ox-teams from Gaul, drawing huge loads of fruit and wine to Roman markets! There the vendors of jewels, keen-eyed Jews and Syrians, armed to the teeth, had to draw aside angrily for the passage of bulky wares which one gem from the tiny silk-wrapped packet in their bosoms would have paid for ten times over; here comes a richly draped litter with armed horsemen in attendance—a great noble’s wife? No, only a beautiful woman being carried to the slave market where she will fetch the highest price. Suddenly a solitary horseman dashes through the throng at break-neck pace, heedless of the death his steed’s hoofs may deal. Shall the Cæsar’s despatches wait for the safety of the common herd? With perhaps eight or nine hundred miles of road to cover in a given time, the Imperial messenger sees nothing, knows nothing, but his goal and the shortest way to it. How they rode—those express messengers! There are many wild rides on record, but for swiftness and perseverance I think that of the benevolent Roman official Cæsarius, hastening from Antioch to Constantinople to intercede for the guilty Antiocheans, is the most wonderful. I believe it is Theodoret who attests to the fact that he covered the distance of nearly eight hundred miles through two ranges of mountains and over much broken country, in six days!

Many a century had to pass before all roads could lead to Rome, but, while the city was still a mere fortified hamlet, one spot took on the character which it has kept through the ages and will keep till the last day. Looking over to the further bank of the river, the builders on the Palatine could see, as we see to-day, when the sun has sunk in the west, a long dark ridge rising like a wall to shut out the lower crimson of the sky. It was wooded then, with oak and pine, though now there is but one tree left, the “Doria pine,” to mark where the forest grew. The ridge sunk at its northern extremity, in irregular undulations, heavily wooded and mysteriously dark, and these connected it with a chain of low hills which stretched away along the river’s bank till they were lost in the mist of the Campagna.

The higher ridge very early took on the name of Mons Janiculum; the further hills were more or less nameless till the Renaissance: but the bosky stretch between the two was regarded from the first as sacred ground. Why, one can scarcely say, except for its solitude and its cloistered verdure. Looking towards it now, one asks oneself if there was indeed a time when those who gazed westward from the city’s ramparts at evening, did not behold, across the sea of mist that lays twilight on the streets while the heights are still bathed in gold, that immortal outline of a dome, dark, delicate, and definite, between them and the setting sun? A time when the soil that bears it held only the oaks and ilexes of the grove where the “Vates,” the unapproachable hierophants of high, half-known gods, prayed and prophesied according to their lights? Where the common people came, not too close, and paused, hushed and trembling, under the great trees, to learn the wills and ways of the gods? How gladly they must have sped back, ere night fell, across the one bridge, to their safe, crowded homes within the walls, to lean together across the olive-wood fire and speak in whispers of the oracles they had heard, while the baby rolled naked on the soft goatskin, and the brown-legged youngsters sat on their haunches, sniffing at the goat’s meat bubbling in the caldron on the hook, and the good wife brought out the fern basket of snowy cheese and washed the crisp fennel roots on the doorstep! Were they merely men of their hands, those first Romans, thinking more of comfort and safety than of anything else? A writer who could surely speak with authority tells us that from the first the people of Rome itself have been innately religious, always conscious or subconscious of their city’s destiny. Surely to one, here and there, in some portentous dawn or brooding twilight, the figure of things to be was cast up against the sky! Did not the slowly-moving clouds sometimes pause over that low ridge in the west, to mass themselves in the likeness of a dome, the stars sink down from their courses to foreshadow the gold of a cross?

The Mons Vaticanus, low, and excluded from the city limits, was never reckoned one of the seven hills; of all the Roman district it was considered the least healthy part, the land being swampy and subject, on its lowest levels, to the periodical incursions of the river. The “Vates,” versed as they were in all wisdoms, doubtless discovered means by which to preserve themselves from malaria, for this continued to be their sanctuary, if not their home, for many generations. After the Romans had, at the prayer of their stolen Sabine wives, become reconciled with the men of Sabina—and, in true Roman fashion, first given them part in the land and invited them to assist in government, and then taken them on as masters—the great Sabine Judge-King, Numa Pompilius, established himself among the Vatican groves to compile his books of laws. There he wrote, there he died, and there was buried, commanding that his precious volumes should have a separate tomb near his own. “A man’s works live after him;” the site of Numa’s tomb was mere guess-work, his very existence was scoffed at as a myth, by progressive historians, till accident revealed the still intact sepulchre of his cherished writings, precisely on the spot marked by tradition for some twenty-five centuries. The good law-giver was one of the revered realities of my childhood; with sorrow I saw his memory cast away, when I grew up, on the ever-growing scrap-heap of condemned myths, where the iconoclasts of history throw everything that does not fit in to their small neat conceptions; he has come back to me in these later years, and how welcome the towering luminous figure that hovered so protectingly over my early mind pictures of infant Rome!

One point in his history always puzzled me, the great distance between his home across the Tiber and the grotto where Egeria, the heavenly nymph, instructed him in wisdom. That lay in a fold of the Cælian Hill, and the entire length of the city has to be traversed to reach it from the Vatican. I used to weave many fairy tales for myself about Egeria when, as children, we were taken to spend the day in the lovely spot then known as her “Grotto,” and so exquisitely described by Byron in “Childe Harold” that there seems nothing left for ordinary mortals to tell about it. But—I will take the risk of appearing presumptuous and say that one factor was wanting to Byron for the task—he was not born a Roman, and his sad childhood, unlike my own, held no memories of paradisial hours of play and dreaming round the hallowed fountain, and in the sacred grove.

For sacred the spot remains, although we know now that it was not, as men thought for many centuries, Egeria’s grotto and Egeria’s grove, but the shrine and monument of a merely human love, very strong and pure, the love of a husband mourning a good wife and vowing to perpetuate her memory in beauty and charity. Since this book is not for the learned, but for those who, treading the busy walks of modern life, have no time to pore over history and its romances, I will venture to tell again the story of this true lover.

During the short reign of Nerva (96-98 A.D.), an Athenian gentleman, named Hipparchus, fell into disgrace with the still very Greek government of his native city. I do not know the origin of the trouble, but Athens always dealt rather capriciously with her great ones, and we may infer that the great wealth of Hipparchus had aroused envy in his less fortunate fellow-citizens. His entire fortune was confiscated, nothing being left to him but an apparently worthless plot of ground near the Acropolis. This ground his son, Atticus, undertook with philosophical patience to cultivate, so as to provide some food for the impoverished family. To his amazement the furrow intended to produce leeks and cabbages revealed a hidden treasure of gold, buried there in some forgotten stress of past ages, and so abundant that the young man, after his first joy of surprise, was filled with terror.

The discovery was portentous and the revulsion of feeling almost too much for a mortal to bear. However, he had presence of mind enough to keep the thing secret from all but his own family. One can fancy how, in the blue Athenian morning, he hastily threw the earth and stones back over the precious find, and, abandoning spade and ploughshare, went home to take counsel as to his conduct in regard to it. Did the old man, Hipparchus, die of joy on hearing of his good fortune? It may have been so, for at this point he disappears from the story and returns no more. Atticus remains in possession, but such hazardous possession! If his fellow-citizens heard of the treasure, they would wrest it from him; if the Emperor learnt of it, he, as lord of all soil of the Empire, had the right to claim it for himself. To enjoy it on the spot or to remove it in secret was equally impossible, and Atticus wisely decided to throw himself on the well-known generosity of the Emperor. So he sent him word that he had discovered a fortune on his land, and humbly asked to be directed as to the disposal of it. The Emperor, too busy to give the subject much thought, or else pleased with the man’s honesty, replied that he could use it as he liked. But this casual authorisation was not enough to calm the fears of Atticus. Once more he wrote to Nerva, saying that the treasure was too great for the use of a private person and that he entreated the Emperor to make known his will in regard to it. This time he received a most explicit answer, to the effect that his own good fortune had bestowed the gift upon him and that he was to “use what he could, and abuse the rest.”

Thus fortified in his rights, Atticus did use his wealth royally, and bequeathed it to his own son, Herodes Atticus, who, forgetting past injuries, lavished it in ornamenting with splendid buildings the city of his birth, in all-embracing charities, in providing public games of the greatest splendour, and in the encouragement of art and literature. Then, desiring to see the seat of Empire and enjoy the intellectual atmosphere of the Augustan age, he removed to Rome, and on account of his great learning and attainments, was appointed tutor to Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, the adopted sons of the then reigning Emperor, Antoninus Pius. He left no literary monument of his own for us to admire, but the clear beauty of the style of Marcus Aurelius is doubtless due in great part to the early training received from his Greek tutor.

Standing thus high in imperial favour, Herodes Atticus was enabled to make a splendid alliance. He obtained the hand of Annia Regilla, a daughter of the great Julian House, and thus crowned the long romance of his life by a real love marriage. Annia Regilla was marvellously beautiful, as good as she was fair, and returned her husband’s affection by a love as whole-hearted as his own. In an age when universal selfishness and luxury made it necessary to legislate against race suicide, she bore Herodes child after child, each more welcome to its parents than the last. Was ever a man’s cup of earthly happiness so royally full?