Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

been shown on high classical authority that the city did not give its name to the ridge, but the ridgethe lunga-to the city, and the name would be inapplicable unless the ridge had been winding or serpentine.

The Alban people are, like many other people of Italy, still what their fathers were.

The art of manufacture of the gold metal-work of Etruria has been preserved, while their cities, religion, and constitutions, and even the cities, religion, and constitutions of their Roman conquerors, have gone; and this art is still practised in a secluded valley, and the Etruscan women still decorate themselves with its products. The bronze water vessels which I saw at Rocca di Papa I saw nowhere else in Italy; they appear locally made.

The Alban people, who were not coerced into Rome, occupy to this day a similar site-a similar narrow sinuous ridge, also partly surrounding a lake-and they are there still, living in light wooden dwellings or wattled huts like those described by Caesar and Strabo as being in Britain. To the east of the lake, as at Alba Lunga, and known as the people of Gabii, i. e. the people of the baskets, no doubt from these dwellings, from which word we get our "gabions " from the Italian gabbione.

The city is said to have had a Greek origin, but the name appears Latin.

Those of the Alban people who increased and required greater space than their quarters in Rome allowed, spread their slight dwellings along the windings of the Janiculum, the crest of which, with its two similar ascents which bear evidence of

scarping, are almost identical in form with those of the great agger, and so they revived a recollection of their old traditions by naming the serpentine course between the Tiber and the sinuous hill, Lūngara and Lungaretta, each being now, like the Via de Serpenti, a street of houses.

The house of Romulus, "Casa Romuli," was a wooden hut, which Dionysius of Halicarnassus states still existed on the arx or capitol on the Palatine Hill in his time. As little more than half a century elapsed after his publishing his 'History' before Caractacus made his memorable address in the presence of Claudius, it is not improbable that the sight of that British-looking hut in the midst of the Roman triumph suggested his comparison, and it is quite possible that the same cause made his observation so powerful that his freedom was at once ordered. This and the wattled huts of the Gabii probably represent the houses of the Albans, whose temples and altars only would have been of stone, of which alone fragments exist there.

I have frequently in my papers before various societies pointed out the curious feature of triple mountain peaks as accompaniments to serpent emblems, as that at Loch Nell, near Cruachan, Argyleshire. Here it is a prominent feature also, and as an Etruscan emblem I have already mentioned it in connection with Trinita de'Monti. I am led to the conclusion that it originated in the serpent-worship of ancient Etruria.

About due east of the Arx of Alba Lūnga, i. e. of the head of the great serpent form, is Tusculumevidently an old high place of worship; and again,

VOL. XX.

8

due east of Tusculum, is the highest point, the Arx, or head of Mont Dragonè.

Here are the three mounts or peaks. But the latter is in itself an object of great interest. Like the serpent form at Loch Nell, and also of Alba Lūnga, it has been extensively scarped to increase its natural likeness to a dragon. This even to producing legs, as showing it distinct from the serpent.

In short, it is a representation of the Etrurian typhon, who was also represented with the body, head, and arms of a man. It was the terrible deity of Etruria and Latium; and as Tusculum was connected with the Greeks through Ulysses, it is not improbable that this figure was so elaborated from a natural similitude to perpetuate to the Trojans of Alba Lunga the remorseless sack of Ilium, the more so as the Latin poets alone vilify Ulysses.

It has no dwellings at or near it, but a solitary inn or osteria shows it to be still a resort of the natives on fête days, in remembrance of former rites or traditions, as is the case with all these places. It is much overgrown since I first saw it.

Sir William Gell gives another name to this mount, which he must have obtained locally,— Fenaria.

There seems no such word in Italian or Latin (but fenero, to take advantage of in usury), but it is clearly Scandinavian, and from Fenris, the demon wolf. It seems a chimera with a scorpion depending from its neck, and formerly may have had two hind legs, as it now has two fore-legs.

We have also Dragonè, by Trojer, where the Trojans first landed in the Tiber.

It seems an invariable Trojan emblem.

In conclusion, the horror of Constantine at the worship of the living man and the asserted union with and parentage of the dragon was such that he evidently looked on Rome as doomed, leading him to found a new Imperial City, which with the same decision which led him to persist in his vision of the Cross, induced him to maintain that in defining the boundaries of Byzantium he simply followed a spiritual guide invisible to any but himself, and thus fortified succeeding emperors to maintain the new faith and abolish the Latin paganism.

A question of some interest arises from the dragon being worshipped in China and Pelasgic Italy, and under the same name Lung or Lūnga, and being also connected with imperial power. The Pelasgi were the earliest recorded inhabitants of Greece, and were in communication with the Scythians, who were geographically about equidistant from Latium and China, and intercommunication was not improbable.

The Romans in their warfare in Asia would find much to confirm them in the worship of the Dragon as the representation on Trajan's Column of the Draconarius illustrates that emblem as the ensign of other Asiatics besides the Parthians, and Ctesias's description of a temple in Babylon shows it was also worshipped there; while the terraced hills in Latium, Etruria, Rome, and Britain seem equivalent to the terraced temples of Babylon which was deficient in natural elevations. The

Pythonic cobra was dominant between Babylon and China, in India.

It may be well to point out also that the various "hills" in Rome, being really only promontories of large elevations, did not permit the circular ascents as on Monte Museno, the Alban Mount, Soracte, Pisa, &c. ; but the scarpings and terraced ascents, as on the Capitoline, near the palace of the Caesars, show the ancient customary cutting even of hard hills of rock to produce the same effect for processions, military displays, &c., and with the zigzag ascents would produce the same spectacular effects. Such a procession was ascending by a winding road on my first ascent of Monte Cavo.

« AnteriorContinuar »