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The first idea of building such a magnificent theatre seems to have been suggested to Pompey by his visit to the theatre at Mitylene, whither he went after the Mithridatic war to be present at a contest of rival poets held in his honour. Only one attempt had before been made to build a permanent theatre in Rome. The Censor C. Cassius Longinus in the year B.C. 154 had entered into a contract for the construction of a stone theatre near the Lupercal, but the senate, by the advice of Scipio Nasica, a rigid Puritan of the old Roman school, and jealous of the introduction of Greek luxury, ordered it when half finished to be demolished, and the materials sold. The same decree inflicted penalties on any one who should, either in the city or within a mile of its wails, venture to place any seats for spectators at the games, or sit down while looking on at them. Tacitus states that even in Pompey’s time the conservative Romans retained the same dread lest indolence and luxury should be promoted by the construction of permanent theatres.[88] In carrying out this grand design Pompey was assisted by his freedman Demetrius, who had amassed immense riches during his master’s campaigns, and took this opportunity of paying his acknowledgments to the author of his wealth. The capabilities of the theatre must have been very great; nor need we be surprised to hear that it contained 40,000 seats, for the remaining fragments show that it comprehended the whole space between the Via de’ Chiavari which corresponds nearly to the line of the scena, the Via di Giubbonari, the Campo di Fiore and the Via del Paradiso. Eastwards from the Via de’ Chiavari stretched the long ranges of colonnades of which the Capitoline plan gives the outline, and beyond them the Curia and a temple, with a variety of offices and shops, as far as the Via di Torre Argentina, including the modern Teatro Argentina within their compass. In this theatre Nero gave the grand entertainment to Tiridates, on which occasion not only the scena but the whole interior of the theatre and its furniture was covered with gilding, and a purple velarium stretched over it, upon which Nero himself was represented driving his chariot in the character of the Sun God, with golden stars glittering around him. The scena was burnt in the great fire in A.D. 80, but restored again by Vespasian. Two other conflagrations and restorations are recorded in the first half of the third century, one in the reign of Philippus in A.D. 249, and a second in that of Diocletian.[89] An inscription was found in the Via de’ Chiavari in 1551, which commemorates the restoration of one of the colonnades under the name of Jovius, a title which Diocletian often assumed, and in the time of Ammianus Marcellinus the theatre could still be reckoned among the Mirabilia Urbis.[90] Another inscription given by the anonymous writer of the Einsiedlen MS. records a rebuilding by Arcadius and Honorius about A.D. 395. At the time the Notitia was compiled, the number of seats had diminished from 40,000, as given by Pliny, to 27,580 or even less, and the theatre was therefore probably in a ruinous state when the last mentioned restoration took place. The building naturally suffered much in the Gothic wars, and we find that it was again restored by Symmachus in the time of Theodoric, after which it is again mentioned under the right name of Theatrum Pompeii by the anonymous writer of Einsiedlen in the 9th and by the Ordo Romanus in the 12th centuries; but in the 13th the Orsini family had occupied it, and so changed the building that at the beginning of the 14th century it is called in the Mirabilia, Palatium Pompeii. The Florentine Poggio saw the ruins of the outer wall still standing in the Campo di Fiore in the 15th century, but the name of Pompey was then no longer connected with them, until Marliani, Fulvio, and Fauno the topographers of the 16th century revived the right designation. Canina, in his work on the buildings of the ancients, has taken the greatest pains to give a full description of the ruins now left, and it is from him that most of our information is derived.

Ponte S. Sisto.

The bridge now called Ponte S. Sisto, near the ruins of the Theatre of Pompeius, stands on the site of an ancient bridge, which was most probably the one named Pons Aurelius in the Notitia. There is no conclusive proof that this was the Pons Aurelius, but the situation of none of the other bridges seems to suit this name, while it is peculiarly applicable to the bridge in question, because it was the principal passage over the Tiber to the Porta Aurelia and the Aurelian road along the coast to Civita Vecchia.

The name frequently given to it by topographers, Pons Janicularis, appears to be a mere invention, as it is not found in any trustworthy authority; and another name Pons Antoninianus, by which we find it called in the Middle Ages, seems to have arisen from the mistaken name Theatrum Antonini, formerly given to the Theatrum Balbi, which is not far distant, and also from the well-known fondness of Severus and Caracalla for the trans-Tiberine pleasure grounds. Marliani gives an inscription which is said to have existed formerly upon this bridge commemorating its restoration under Hadrian by Messius Rusticus, the Conservator of the Tiber. The bridge must therefore have been originally built before Hadrian’s time, and cannot be a work of the Antonines.

CHAPTER VI.

PANTHEON, COLUMN OF MARCUS AURELIUS, MAUSOLEUM OF AUGUSTUS, MAUSOLEUM OF HADRIAN, AND NEIGHBOURHOOD.