for he expressly assigns other fanes (delubra) to these divinities above the valley, and moreover tells us that they had been ejected to make room for the Jews. In fact the little temple, now called that of Bacchus, was formerly thought to belong to the Muses, and Nardini' places them in a poplar grove, which was in his time above the valley.

It is probable, from the inscription and position, that the cave now shown may be one of the "artificial caverns," of which, indeed, there is another a little way higher up the valley, under a tuft of alder bushes: but a single grotto of Egeria is a mere modern invention, grafted upon the application of the epithet Egerian to these nymphea in general, and which might send us to look for the haunts of Numa upon the banks of the Thames.

Our English Juvenal was not seduced into mistranslation by his acquaintance with Pope: he carefully preserves the correct plural

"Thence slowly winding down the vale, we view

The Egerian grots; oh, how unlike the true!"

The valley abounds with springs, and over these springs, which the Muses might haunt from their neighbouring groves, Egeria presided: hence she was said to supply them with water; and she was the nymph of the grottos through which the fountains were taught to flow.

The whole of the monuments in the vicinity of the Egerian valley have received names at will, which have been changed at will. Venuti3 owns he can see no traces of the temples of Jove, Saturn, Juno, Venus, and Diana, which Nardini found, or hoped to find. The mutatorium of Cara

1 Lib. iii. cap. iii.

266 Undique e solo aquæ scaturiunt." Nardini, lib. iii. cap. iii.

3 Echinard, &c. Cic. cit. p. 297-298.

1

calla's circus, the temple of Honour and Virtue, the temple of Bacchus, and, above all, the temple of the god Rediculus, are the antiquaries' despair.

The circus of Caracalla depends on a medal of that emperor cited by Fulvius Ursinus, of which the reverse shows a circus, supposed, however, by some to represent the Circus Maximus. It gives a very good idea of that place of exercise. The soil has been but little raised, if we may judge from the small cellular structure at the end of the Spina, which was probably the chapel of the god Consus. This cell is half beneath the soil, as it must have been in the circus itself, for Dionysius' could not be persuaded to believe that this divinity was the Roman Neptune, because his altar was underground.

57.

Yet let us ponder boldly.

Stanza cxxvii. line 1.

"At all events," says the author of the Academical Questions, "I trust, whatever may be the fate of my own speculations, that philosophy will regain that estimation which it ought to possess. The free and philosophic spirit of our nation has been the theme of admiration to the world. This was the proud distinction of Englishmen, and the luminous source of all their glory. Shall we then forget the manly and dignified sentiments of our ancestors, to prate in the language of the mother or the nurse about our good old prejudices? This is not the way to defend the cause of truth. It was not thus that our fathers maintained it in the brilliant periods of our history. Prejudice may be trusted to guard the outworks for a short space of time while reason slumbers in the citadel: but if the latter sink into a lethargy, the for1 Antiq. Rom. lib. ii, cap. xxxi.

mer will quickly erect a standard for herself. Philosophy, wisdom, and liberty, support 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.

58.

Great Nemesis !

Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long.

Stanza cxxxii. lines 2 and 3.

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 formerly 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 an

1 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 præfect Rufinus was borne about in triumph by the people, the indignity was increased by putting his hand in that position.

2 Storia delle arti, &c. lib. xii. cap. iii. tom. ii. p. 422. Visconti calls the statue, however, a Cybele. It is given in the Museo Pio-Clement. tom. i. par. 40. The Abate Fea (Spiegazione dei Rami. Storia, &c. tom. iii. p. 513.) calls it a Chrisippus.

other. It was the same fear 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 particularly 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.1

The Roman Nemesis was sacred and august: there was a temple to her in the Palatine under the name of Rhamnusia: so great indeed was the propensity of the ancients to trust to the revolution of events, and to believe in the divinity of Fortune, that in the same Palatine there was a temple to the Fortune of the day. This is the last superstition which retains its hold over the human heart; and from concentrating in one object the credulity so natural to man, has always appeared strongest in those unembarrassed by other articles of belief. The antiquaries have supposed this goddess to be synonymous with fortune and with fate: but it was in her vin1 Dict. de Bayle, article Adrastea.

2 It is enumerated by the regionary Victor.

See Questiones Romanæ, &c. Ap. Græv. Antiq. Roman. tom. v. p. 942. See also Muratori. Nov. Thesaur. Inscrip. Vet. tom. i. p. 88, 89, where there are three Latin and one Greek inscription to Nemesis, and others to Fate.

dictive quality that she was worshipped under the name of Nemesis.

59.

I see before me the Gladiator lie.

Stanza cxl. line 1.

2

Whether the wonderful statue which suggested this image be a laquearian gladiator, which in spite of Winkelmann's criticism has 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 shieldbearer, according to the opinion of his Italian editor,3 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."4 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.7

1 By the Abate Bracci, dissertazione supra un clipeo votivo, &c. 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, tom. ii. p. 205.

2 Either Polifontes, herald of Laius, killed by Edipus; 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, &c. tom. ii. pag. 203, 204, 205, 206, 207. lib. ix. cap.ii. 3 Storia, &c. tom. ii. p. 207. Not. (A).

4 "Vulneratum deficientem fecit in quo possit intelligi quantum restat animæ." Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. xxxiv. cap. 8.

5 Antiq. tom. iii. par. 2. tab. 155.

6 Racc. stat. tab. 64.

7 Mus. Capitol. tom. iii. p. 154. edit. 1755.

H H