We entered the Porta del Popolo, crossed the Piazza of the same name, where three streets present themselves to view. In the centre is the street called the Corso, running in a direct line from the Porta across the Piazza. We drove along the Corso till we arrived at a Piazza on our right hand, which Piazza is called della Colonna from the Column of Antoninus, which stands on it. We then crossed the Piazza which is very large and soon reached the Dogana or Custom house, formerly the temple of Antoninus Pius, where vile modern walls are built to fill up the intervals between eleven columns of Grecian marble. Here our baggage underwent a rigorous research; this rigour is not so much directed against the fraudulent introduction of contraband or duty-bearing merchandise, as against books, which undergo a severe scrutiny. Against Voltaire and Rousseau implacable war is waged, and their works are immediately confiscated. Other authors too are sometimes examined, to see whether they contain anything against Mother Church. As the people employed in inspecting books are not much versed in any litterature or language but their own, except perhaps a little French, it is not easy for them to find out the contents of books in other languages. I had Schiller's works with me, a volume of which one of the douaniers took up and looked at; on seeing the Gothic letter he seemed as much astonished as if he had got hold of a book of Cabbala or Magic. He detained the whole work, but it was sent to me the next day, on my declaring that there was nothing damnable or heretical in it; for there was no person belonging to the department who could read German. When the douaniers proceeded to the examination of the books belonging to one of my fellow travellers, the Neapolitan lady, she expressed great repugnance to the procedure; the douaniers however insisted and, behold! there were several livres galants with plates somewhat lubriques, the discovery of which excited blushes on her part and considerable laughter on the part of the byestanders. These books, however, not being contraband, were immediately returned to her, as was an edition of Baffo, belonging to my other fellow traveller, returned to him. Now this Baffo was a Venetian poet and his works are the most profligate that ever were penned or imagined by mortal man. Martial and Petronius Arbiter must hide their diminished heads before Baffo. The owner of this book chose to read out loud, quite unsolicited, several choice sonnets of this poet for our edification during the journey; and this branch of litterature seemed to be the only one with which he was acquainted.
When the examination was over I took leave of my fellow travellers, and repaired to the German Hôtel in the Via de' Condotti, where I engaged an apartment, and sat down to dinner at an excellent table d'hôte at five o'clock. There was a profusion of everything, particularly of fish and game. Mullets and wild boar are constant dishes at a Roman table. The mullets at Rome are small but delicious, and this was a fish highly prized by the ancient Romans. Game of all kinds is very cheap here, from the abundance of it that is to be met with in wild uninhabited wastes of Latium and in the Pontine marshes. Every peasant is a sportsman and goes constantly armed with fire-arms, not only to kill game, but to defend himself against robbers, who infest the environs of Rome, and who sometimes carry their audacity so far as to push their reconnaissances close to the very walls of the city. At the German Hôtel the price of the dinner at table d'hôte, including wine at discretion, is six paoli, about three franks. I pay for an excellent room about three paoli per diem and my breakfast at a neighbouring Caffé costs me one paolo. A paolo is worth about five pence English. There are ten paoli to a scudo Romano and ten bafocchi to a paolo, The bafocco is a copper coin.
ROME, 12th Sept.
A great number of Germans dine at the table d'hôte of Franz's hotel. Among them I distinguished one day a very intelligent Bavarian Jew. I proposed to him a walk to the Coliseum the following morning, as independent of the benefit I derived from his conversation I was curious to see whether it was true or not that the Jews always avoided walking under the Arch of Titus, which was erected in commemoration of the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans under Titus, in the reign of Vespasian. On stepping out of the Hôtel Allemand, the first thing that met my eye was the identical beggar described by Kotzebue in his travels in Italy, and he gives the very same answer now as then to those who give him nothing, viz., Pazienza.
We crossed the Piazza di Spagna, ascended the superb flight of steps of the Trinità de' Monti, where there is a French church called the Church of St Louis: near it is the Villa Medici, which is the seat of the French Academy of the fine arts at Rome. We then filed along the Strada Felice till we arrived at the church of Santa Maria maggiore, a superb edifice, the third church in Rome in celebrity, and the second in magnificence. An immense Egyptian Obelisk stands before it. We then, turning a little to the right, made the best of our way to the Coliseum where we remained nearly two hours. I had figured to myself the grandest ideas of this stupendous building, but the aspect of it far exceeded the sketch even of my imagination. In Egypt I have seen the Pyramids, but even these vast masses did not make such an impression on me as the Coliseum has done. I am so unequal to the task of description that I shall not attempt it; I will give you however its dimensions which my friend the Jew measured. It is an ellipse of which the transverse axis is 580 feet in length and its conjugate diameter 480; but it is not so much the length and breadth as the solidity of this building that strikes the traveller with astonishment. The arcaded passage or gallery (on the rez de chaussée between the interior and the exterior wall), which has a vaulted roof over which the seats are built, is broad enough to admit three carriages abreast: and the walls on each side of this gallery are at least twenty feet thick. What a magnificent spectacle it must have been in the time of the ancient Romans, when it was ornamented, gilded, and full of spectators, of which it could contain, it is said, 86,000! The Coliseum has been despoiled by various Popes and Cardinals to furnish stone and marble to build their palaces; otherwise, so solid is the building, Time alone would never suffice to destroy it. At present strict orders are given and sentries are posted to prevent all further dilapidations, and buttresses have been made to prop up those parts which had given way. What a pity it is that the Arena has not been left empty, instead of being fitted up with tawdry niches and images representing the different stations of the Crucifixion! In the centre is an immense Cross, which whoever kisses is entitled to one hundred days indulgence. To what reflections the sight of this vast edifice leads! What combats of gladiators and wild beasts! What blood has been spilled! Was it not here that the tyrannical and cowardly Domitian ordered Ulpius Glabrio, of consular dignity, to descend into the arena and fight with a lion? The Christian writers mention that many of their sect suffered martyrdom here by being compelled to fight with wild beasts; but even this was not half so bad as the conduct of the Christians, when they obtained possession of political power and dominion, in burning alive poor Jews, Moors and heretics some centuries afterwards. Indeed the cruelty of the Pagans was much exaggerated by the above writers and were it even true to its full extent, their severity was far more excusable than that of the Christians in later times, for the efforts of the Christian sect in the times of Paganism were unceasingly directed towards the destruction of the whole fabric of polytheism, on which was based the entire, social and political order of the Empire; and they thus brought on themselves perhaps merited persecution, by their own intolerance; whereas, when they got the upper hand, they showed no mercy to those of a different religion, and Orthodoxy has wallowed successively in the blood of Arians, Jews, Moors and Protestants.
How many a poor Jew or Moor in Spain and Portugal has been burned alive for no other reason than
Pour n'avoir point quitté la foi de leurs ancêtres.
No, no; no sect or religion was ever so persecuting as the Catholic Christians! The Polytheists of all times, both ancient and modern, were tolerant to all religions and so far from striving to make proselytes, often adopted the ceremonies of other worships in addition to their own; witness the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans of old, and the Hindoos and Chinese of the present day. The Jews, ferocious and prejudiced as they were, never persecuted other nations on the ground of religion, and if they held these nations in abhorrence as idolaters, and considered themselves alone as the holy people, the people of God (Yahoudi), they never dreamed of making converts. The Mussulmans tho' they hold it as a sacred precept of their religion to endeavour to make converts to Islam, do not use violent means and only compel those of a different faith to pay a higher tribute. At any rate, they never have or do put people to death merely for the difference of religious opinions. Such were the reflections I made on walking about the Arena of this colossal edifice so worthy of the popolo Re.
On leaving the Coliseum the first thing that meets the eye is the Arch of Constantine, under which the Roman triumphal and ovationary processions moved towards the Capitol. The Arch of Constantine stands just outside the Coliseum. It is of immense size and extremely well preserved. The ground on which it stands being much filled up and only half of the Arch appearing, the rest remaining buried in the earth, it was judged adviseable to excavate all around it in order to come to the pedestal; so that now there is a walled enclosure all around it and into this enclosure it is a descent of at least eighteen feet from the ground outside. Several statues of captive Kings and bas-reliefs representing the victories of Constantine adorn the facade of this triumphal arch. The inscriptions are perfect, and the letters were formerly filled up with bronze; but these have been taken out at the repeated sackings that poor Rome has undergone from friend and foe. At a short distance from the Arch of Constantine is the Arch of Titus, under which we moved along on our road towards the Capitol and my friend the Jew was too much of a cosmopolite to feel the smallest repugnance at walking under the Arch. Our conversation then turned on the absurd hatred and prejudice that existed between Christians and Jews; he was very liberal on this subject and in speaking of Jesus Christ he said: "Jesus Christ was a Jew and a real philosopher and was therefore persecuted, for his philosophy interfered too much with, and tended to shake the political fabric of the Jewish constitution and to subvert our old customs and usages: for this reason he was put to death. I seek not to defend or palliate the injustice of the act or the barbarity with which he was treated; but our nation did surely no more than any other nation ancient or modern has done or would still do against reformers and innovators."
The Arch of Titus is completely defaced outside, but in the interior of the Arch, on each side, is a bas relief: the one representing Vespasian's triumph over the Jews, and the Emperor himself in a car drawn by six horses; the other represents the soldiers and followers of the triumph, bearing the spoils of the conquered nation, and among them the famous candlesticks that adorned the temple of Jerusalem are very conspicuous. These figures are in tolerable preservation, only that the Emperor has lost his head and one of the soldiers has absconded.