Stanza CXV. Egeria! sweet creation of some heart Which found no mortal resting-place so fair The respectable authority of Flaminius Vacca would incline us to believe in the claims of the Egerian grotto. * He assures us that he saw an inscription on the pavement, stating that the fountain was that of Egeria dedicated to the nymphs. The inscription is not there at this day; but Montfaucon quotes two lines of Ovid from a stone in the Villa Giustiniani, which he seems to think had been brought from the same grotto. This grotto and valley were formerly frequented in summer, and particularly the first Sunday in May, by the modern Romans, who attached a salubrious quality to the fountain which trickles from an orifice at the bottom of the vault, and, overflowing the little pools creeps down the matted grass into the brook below. The brook is the Ovidian Almo, whose name and qualities are lost in the modern Aquataccio. The valley itself is called Valle di Caflarelli, from the dukes of that name who made over their fountain to the Pallavi. cini, with sixty rubbia of adjoining land. del * «Poco lontano dal detto luogo si scende ad un casaletto, quale ne sono Padroni li Cafarelli, che con questo nome è chiamato il luogo; vi è una fontana sotto una gran volta antica, che al presente si gode, e li Romani vi vanno l'estate a ricrearsi, nel pavimento di essa fonte si legge in un epitaffio essere quella la fonte di Ægeria, dedicata alle ninfe. e questa, dice l'epitaffio, essere la medesima fonte in cui fn convertita. » Memorie, etc. ap. Nardini, pag. 13. He does not give the inscription. † «In villa Justiniana extat ingens lapis quadratus solidus in quo sculpta hæc duo Ovidii carmina sunt Ægeria est quæ præbet aquas dea grata Camænis Illa Numa conjux consiliumque fuit. Qui lapis videtur ex eodem Egeriæ fonte, aut ejus vicinia isthuc comportatus. >> Diarium. Italic. p. 153. There can be little doubt that this long dell is the Egerian valley of Juvenal, and the pausing place of Umbritius notwithstanding the generality of his commentators have supposed the descent of the satirist and his friend to have been into the Arician grove, where the nymph met Hippolitus, and where she was more peculiary worshipped. The step from the Porta Capena to the Alban hill, fifteen miles distant, would be too considerable, unles we were to believe in the wild conjecture of Vossius, who makes that gate travel from its present station, where he pretends it was during the reign of the gings, as far as the Arician grove, and then makes it recede to its old site with the sinking city. * The tufo, or pumice, which the poet prefers to marble, is the substance composing the bank in which the grotto is sunk. The modern topographiers ** find in the grotto the statue of the nymph and nine niches for the Muses, and a late traveller *** has discovered that the cave is restored to that simplicity which the poet regretted had been exchanged for injudicious ornament. But the headless statue is palpably rather a male than a nymph, and has none of the attributes ascribed to is at present visible. The nine Muses could hardly have stood in six niches; and Juvenal certainly does not allude to any individual cave. † Nothing can * De Magnit. Vet. Rom. ap. Græv. Ant. Rom. tom. iv. p. 1507. ** Echinard. Descrizione di Roma e dell' agro Romano corretto I dall'Abate Venuti in Roma, 1750. They believe in the grotto and nymph. « Simulacro di questo fonte, essendovi sculpite le acque ra pie di esso. »> C ** Classical Tour. chap. vi. p. 217. vol. ii. «Substitit ad veteres arcus, madidamque Capenam, Hic ubi nocturnæ Numa constituebat amicæ. been stoutly maintained, * or whether it be a Greek herald, as that great antiquary positively asserted, † or whether it is to be thought a Spartan or barbarian shield-bearer, according to the opinion of his Italian editor, § it must assuredly seem a copy of that masterpiece of Ctesilaus which represented «a wounded man dying who perfectly expressed what there remained of life in him. » () Montfaucon ... and Maffei thought it the identical statue; but that statue was of bronze. The gladiator was once in the villa Ludovizi, and was bought by Clement XII. The right arm is an entire restoration of Michael Angelo. † Stanza CXLI. He, their sire, Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday. Gladiators were of two kinds, compelled and voluntary, and were supplied from several conditions; from slaves sold for that purpose; from culprits; from barbarian captives either taken in war, and, By the Abate Bracci, dissertazione supra un clipeo votivo, etc. Preface, pag. 7. who accounts for the cord round the neck, but not for the horn, which it does not appear the gladiators themselves ever used. Note A, Storia delle arti, thm. ii. p. 205. Either Polifontes, herald of Laius, killed by OEdipus; or Cepreas, herald of Euritheus, killed by the Athenians when he endeavoured to drag the Heraclidæ from the altar of mercy, and in whose honour they instituted annual games, continued to the time of Hadrian; or Anthemocritus, the Athenian herald, killed by the Megarenses, who never recovered the impiety. See Storia, delle arti, etc. tom. ii. pag. 203, 204, 205, 206, 207. lib. ix. cap. ii. S Storia, etc. tom. ii. p. 207. Not. (A). () « Vulneratum deficientem fecit in quo possit intelligi quantum restat animæ. » Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. xxxiv. cap. 8. .. Antip. tom. iii. par. 2 tab. 155. Racc. stat. tab. 64. Mus. Capitol. tom. iii. p. 154. edit. 1755. after being led in triumph, set apart for the games, or those seized and condemned as rebels; also from free citizens, some fighting for hire, (auctorati,) others from a depraved ambition: at last even knights and senators were exhibited, a disgrace of which the first tyrant was naturally the first inventor* In the end, dwarfs, and even women, fought; an enormity prohibited by Severus. Of these the most to be pitied undoubtedly were the barbarian captives; and to this species a Christian writer ** justly applies the epithet « innocent,» to distinguish them from the professional gladiators. Aurelian and Claudius supplied great numbers of these unfortunate victims; the one after his triumph, and the other on the pretext of a rebellion. *** No war, says Lipsius, † was ever so destructive to the human race as these sports. In spite of the laws of Constantine and Constant, gladiatorial shows survived the old established religion more than seventy years, but they owed their final extinction to the courage of a Christian. In the years 404, on the kalends of January, they were exhibiting the shows in the Flavian amphitheatre before the usual immense concourse of people. Almachius or Telemachus, an eastern monk, who had travelled to Rome intent on his holy purpose, rushed into the midst of the area, and endeavoured to separate the combatants. The prætor Alypius, a person incredibly attached to these games, gave instant orders to the gladiators to slay him; and Telemachus gained the * *Julius Cæsar, who rose by the fall of the aristocracy, brought Furius Leptinus and A. Calenus upon the arena. ** Tertullian, « certe quidem et innocentes gladiatores in ludum veniunt, at voluptatis publicæ hostice fiant. » Just. Lips. Saturn. Sermon. lib. ii. cap. iii. *** Vopiscus. in vit. Aurel. and, in vit. Claud. ibid. Credo imò scio nullum bellum tantam cladem vastitiemque generi humane in tulisse, quam hos ad voluptatem ludos. » Just. Lips. ibid. lib. i cap. xii. § Augustinus, (lib. vi. confess. cap. viii. ) « Alypium suum gladiatrii spectaculi inhiatu incredibiliter abreptum,» scribit. ib. lib. i. cap. xii. each other; he who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave. » Preface, p. xiv, xv. vol. i 1805. Stanza CXXXII. Great Nemesis ! Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long. We read in Suetonius that Augustus, from a warning received in a dream, * counterfeited, once a year, the beggar, sitting before the gate of his palace with his hand hollowed and stretched out for charity. A statue formely in the Villa Borghese, and which should be now at Paris, represents the Emperor in that posture of supplication. The object of this self degradation was the appeasement of Nemesis, the perpetual attendant on good fortune, of whose power the Roman conquerors were also reminded by certain symbols attached to their cars of triumph. The symbols were the whip and the crotalo, which were discovered in the Nemesis of the Vatican. The attitude of beggary made the above statue pass for that of Belisarius: and until the criticism of Winkelmann * had rectified the mistake, one fiction was called in to support another. It was the same for of the sudden termination of prosperity that made Amasis king of Egypt warn his friend Polycrates of Samos, that the gods loved those whose lives were chequered with good and evil fortunes. Nemesis was supposed to lie in wait particulary for the prudent: that is, for those whose caution rendered them accessible only to mere accidents; and her first altar was raised on the banks of the Phrygian Esepus by Adrastus, probably the prince of that name who killed the son of Croesus by mistake. Hence the goddess was called Adrastea. * * Sueton. in vit. Augusti. cap. 91. Casaubon, in the note, refers to Plutarch's Lives of Camillus and Æmilius Paulus, and also to his apothegms, for the character of this deity. The hollowed hand was reckoned the last degree of degradation and when the dead body of the prefect Rufinus was borne about in triumph by the people, the indignity was increased by putting his hand in that position. * Storia delle arti, etc, lib. xii. cap. iii. tom. ii. p. 422. Vis |