Old Rome: A Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the Campagna

by Robert Burn

Library.

Opening from this school, towards the north-east, is a building in the form of two concentric circles. Between the two circular parts there was a canal filled with water. This edifice was probably a swimming-bath. It appears to have been very highly ornamented with precious marbles and sculptures, most of which were taken to Rome by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, and others to Tivoli by Cardinal Ippolito d’Este. The ruin commonly goes by the name of Theatrum Maritimum. A little farther to the north-east is a quadrilateral court, 200 feet wide, which was surrounded by a portico with Corinthian columns. On the north-west side of this court are the buildings usually supposed to belong to the library, and called the Greek and Latin libraries. They consist of a large number of rooms, more or less preserved, which may have been ante-rooms and chambers for the attendants and librarians. In the centre of the north-western side of the court is a well-preserved Nymphæum, and on the north-east a long corridor with windows towards the south, which may be called a Helio Caminus, or room for basking in the sun, from its resemblance to the place so called by Pliny at his Laurentine villa. The ruins to the north-east of these, towards the Valley of Tempe, are thought by Nibby to be the remains of a suite of rooms belonging to one wing of the imperial palace, but their plan is very imperfectly known.

Palace.

The great mass of the imperial apartments were farther to the south-east, and were grouped round three large courts of dazzling magnificence. The most splendid of those, which afforded spoil for generations of plunderers, is called by Piranesi, from the richness of its decorative work, the Piazza d’Oro. Round the courts were numberless suites of rooms and several large recesses, a basilica, and a great hall now called Eco Corintio, formerly supported on vast granite columns, and cased with slabs of the choicest marbles.

Stadium.

The Stadium lies in a direction at right-angles to the southern side of the Pœcile. The curved end is towards the south. Between the swimming-bath and the northern, or square end of the Stadium, are some bath-rooms for the use of the athletes, and on the west side stands a temple surrounded by a sacred enclosure formed by two vast semicircular walls ornamented with niches. On the eastern side are more rooms, and a magnificent quadrilateral covered way.

Thermæ.

The Thermæ stand between the Stadium and the Canopus. Numerous pipes and conduits for water, and also the arrangement of the various parts of the buildings, show that they have been rightly placed here. There seem to have been two distinct sets of bath-rooms, which are generally called the Terme virili and the Terme muliebri by the Italian antiquaries. The northern group of buildings is connected with the curved end of the Stadium, and contains the usual number of halls and an elliptical Laconicum. The Laconicum of the southern wing is circular, and is connected with a grand central hall similar to that in the Baths of Caracalla at Rome.

Canopus.

The place called Canopus lies to the south of the Thermæ, and close to a mass of buildings now utterly destroyed, but in Piranesi’s time thought to be a vestibule of the villa. The Canopus itself consists of an oblong pool of water or euripus excavated in the tufa, with a row of buildings on the west side, and a magnificent nymphæum at the southern end, containing a great number of niches for statuary, and holes for jets of water. At the back of the Nymphæum is a hall called the Sacrarium, in which it is supposed the statue of Serapis stood. A passage of Strabo explains the idea which Hadrian had in forming this canal and Nymphæum. He says that on the grand festival of Serapis, whose temple and oracle were at Canopus, 120 stadia from Alexandria, immense crowds of men and women go down to Canopus from Alexandria by boats on the canal, on the banks of which are pleasant houses of entertainment, where the worshippers stop on their way to feast and dance.[158] The long, broad pool was intended to represent the Canopic canal, and the rooms ranged along the side, the houses of refreshment. A confirmation of this is derived from the character of the statues found here which were almost all those of Egyptian deities.