CHAPTER I
FALLEN ROME
In the end of the sixth century the old Rome, the lingering remnant of the imperial city, had nearly disappeared. Language, literature, art, science were being crushed out, not so much by inroads of barbarians as by the bigotry of bishops and monks. When the Goths, under Alaric, entered Rome by the Salarian gate in 410 and revelled in pillage for six days, they did little or no damage to buildings or works of art. Half a century afterwards, when Genseric sacked the city for fourteen days, he only carried off the gilt–bronze tiles on the roof of the Capitoline temple of Jupiter and the spoils from the temple of Jerusalem; and during the sack of Ricimer little injury was done to buildings. Rome suffered more from Totila in 546 than from any former sack, half the walls being destroyed and many houses being burnt.
Theodoric the Goth established his capital at Ravenna. He took steps to protect the monuments of Rome, and his reign from 493 to 526 may be considered to have been the period which saw the last of the true Romans. Cassiodorus strove to preserve the rapidly failing taste for the models of classical antiquity. Boethius, the last of the Romans whom Cato or Cicero would have acknowledged as their countryman, threw a flickering ray over the fallen empire. But both Boethius and his learned friend Symmachus were murdered by Theodoric in 526. Long before this the last joyous festivals of old Rome, the Lupercalia, had been abolished through the bigotry of Pope Gelasius, and with them disappeared all living vestiges of the old life. The buildings were imperishable. The shell was there amidst dirt and desolation; the life was gone. Monks pulled down or defaced the edifices and statues raised by genius, and the beautiful temple of Apollo gave place to the cells of Benedict on the summit of Monte Cassino.
Belisarius and Narses recovered Italy for the emperors of the East in 536, and Justinian fixed the capital of his exarch or governor at Ravenna, not at Rome. But the walls of Rome were repaired, and partially rebuilt. Only thirty years afterwards Alboin, with an army of Lombards, conquered Northern Italy without encountering any opposition, established an oppressive aristocracy in the subjugated provinces, and extended his inroads to the gates of Rome. This was the condition of affairs when Mystacon arrived at the mouth of the Tiber with his merchandise. Maurice Tiberius, the best of the Eastern emperors, had ascended the throne at Constantinople in 582. His exarch Romanus ruled at Ravenna. Young Autharis had succeeded Alboin as king of the Lombards in 586, and his armies kept Rome in perpetual fear. The suburbs were constantly devastated. The city was vacant and solitary: the depopulation had been rapid. Famine was frequent, the edifices were exposed to ruin, and the chief person in the city was the Bishop, who exulted over the desolation of idolatry. His name was Pelagius II., but the ecclesiastic who possessed the greatest influence over the miserable remnant of the inhabitants was the Deacon Gregory. He was a native of the city, born in 544, and his parents, Gordian and Sylvia, were of senatorial rank. He was also wealthy, and he had founded a monastery on the Caelian Hill, dedicated to St. Andrew. He was learned in the Scriptures and in the works of the early fathers of the Church, and was a voluminous writer both of letters and of commentaries. While acting as the Pope's nuncio at Constantinople, he had occupied himself in a violent controversy with the Eutychians on the question whether, after the resurrection, the bodies of the faithful would be impalpable like air, or palpable though subtle and sublimed. The former view was the heresy which Gregory, with the important aid of the Emperor, effectually suppressed. He then returned to Rome, and maintained his influence by relieving distress through his great wealth and his organising ability, and also by the power of his pathetic but rude eloquence. But he was a narrow–minded bigot. He hated the monuments of classic genius, destroyed the magnificent baths and theatres, and did more harm to the buildings of Rome than all the barbarians, from Alaric to Totila, put together. The decided progress made by the ancients in astronomy and geography was declared to be contrary to scriptural truth, sculpture was condemned as an ally of paganism, and both science and art disappeared. The belief of Gregory that the end of the world was close at hand also had a mischievous tendency. As a young man he was often tormented with pains in the bowels, and was continually suffering from low fever, and these ailments probably had their effect on his temperament. His zeal for the spread of Christianity perhaps atones for his shortcomings in other respects, and at all events Gregory was the leading figure in the Rome of the end of the sixth century.
The son of the Senator Gordian was not the only wealthy man in Rome, or it would have been no place for Mystacon and his wares. Patricians, with incomes from estates in Campania and Sicily, still lived in some of the ruins of departed greatness on the Caelian Hill. We meet with the names of Decius, Basilius, Olybrius, Orestes, Maximus, Symmachus, and Pamphronius. But the sons and daughters of others were reduced to penury, and many descendants of consuls and senators were begging their bread in the streets.
Pamphronius was one of those who, by flight on some occasions and prompt submission on others, had succeeded in preserving sufficient of this world's goods to enable him to live in a partially–rebuilt villa, and to show signs of comparative wealth. He had a few clients round him, and was a customer of Mystacon.