But we must not be so much dazzled with his surpassing glory, or with his magnanimous, his amiable qualities, as to forget the decision of his impartial countrymen :

HE WAS JUSTLY SLAIN.*

48.

ried them to the temple of Romulus. The practice and willing to abandon both his empire and his mis is continued to this day; and the site of the above tress for a sight of the Fountains of the Nile. Such church seems to be thereby identified with that of did Julius Cæsar appear to his cotemporaries and to the temple; so that if the wolf had been really those of the subsequent ages, who were the most found there, as Winkelmann says, there would be inclined to deplore and execrate his fatal genius. no doubt of the present statue being that seen by Dionysius. But Faunus, in saying that it was at the Ficus Ruminalis by the Comitium, is only talking of its ancient position as recorded by Pliny; and even if he had been remarking where it was found, would not have alluded to the church of Saint Theodore, but to a very different place, near which it was then thought the Ficus Ruminalis had been, and also the Comitium; that is, the three columns by the church of Santa Maria Liberatrice, at the corner of the Palatine looking on the Forum. It is, in fact, a mere conjecture where the image was actually dug up, and perhaps, on the whole, nihil percepi, nihil sciri posse dixerunt; angustos omnes pene veteres; qui nihil cognosci, the marks of the gilding, and of the lightning, are sensus; imbecillos animos, brevia curricula vitæ; in a better argument in favor of its being the Cicero- profundo veritatem demersam; opinionibus et instinian wolf than any that can be adduced for the con- tutis omnia teneri; nihil veritati relinqui: deinceps trary opinion. At any rate, it is reasonably selected omnia tenebris circumfusa esse dixerunt." The for the text of the poem as one of the most inte- eighteen hundred years which have elapsed since resting relics of the ancient city, and is certainly Cicero wrote this have not removed any of the imthe figure, if not the very animal to which Virgil perfections of humanity: and the complaints of the alludes in his beautiful verses:

"Geminos huic ubera circum

Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem
Impavidos: illam tereti cervice reflexam

Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua." |

47.

For the Roman's mind

Was modell'd in a less terrestrial mould.

Stanza xc. lines 3 and 4.

What from this barren being do we reap?
Our senses narrow, and our reason frail.
Stanza xciii. lines 1 and 2.

ancient philosophers may, without injustice or affectation, be transcribed in a poem written yesterday.

49.

There is a stern round tower of other days. Stanza xcix. line 1. Alluding to the tomb of Cecilia Metella, called Cape di Bove, in the Appian Way. See Historical Illustrations of the IVth Canto of Childe Harold.

50.

Prophetic of the doom
Heaven gives its favorites-early death.
Stanza cii. lines 5 and 6.
Ον οἱ θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν, ἀποθνήσκει νέος.
Τὸ γὰρ θανεῖν οὐκ αἰσχρὸν ἀλλ ̓ αἰσχρῶς θανεῖν.
Rich. Franc. Phil. Brunck. Poeta

It is possible to be a very great man, and to be still very inferior to Julius Caesar, the most complete character, so Lord Bacon thought, of all antiquity. Nature seems incapable of such extraordinary combinations as composed his versatile capacity, which was the wonder even of the Romans themselves. The first general-the only triumphant politicianinferior to none in eloquence-comparable to any in the attainments of wisdom, in an age made up of Gnomici, p. 231, edit. 1784. the greatest commanders, statesmen, orators, and philosophers, that ever appeared in the world-an author who composed a perfect specimen of military annals in his travelling carriage at one time in a Behold the Imperial Mount! 'tis thus the mighty falls. controversy with Cato, at another writing a treatise on punning, and collecting a set of good sayingsfighting and making love at the same moment,

51.

Stanza cvií. line 9.

The Palatine is one mass of ruins, particularly on the side towards the Circus Maximus. The very soil is formed of crumbled brick-work. Nothing "In essa gli antichi pontefici per toglier la memoria de' giuochi Luper- has been told, nothing can be told, to satisfy the cali istituiti in onore di Romolo, introdussero l'uso di portarvi Bambini belief of any but a Roman antiquary. See Historoppread da infermità occulte, acciò si liberino per l'intercessione di questo ical Illustrations, page 206.

Santo, come di continuo si sperimenta." Rione xii. Ripa accurata e succincta descrizione, &c., di Roma Moderna dell' Ab. Ridolf, Venuti, 1766. Nardini, lib. v. cap. 11, convicts Pomponius Lætus crassi erroris, in putting the Ruminal fig-tree at the church of Saint Theodore: but as Livy says the wolf was at the Ficus Ruminalis, and Dionysius at the temple of Romulus, he is obliged (cap. iv.) to own that the two were close together, as well as the Lupercal cave, shaded, as it were, by the fig-tree.

"Ad comitium ficus olim Ruminalis germinabat, sub qua lupe rumam, hoc est, mammam, docente Varrone, suxerant olim Romulus et Remus; non

52.

There is the moral of all human tales:
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
First Freedom, and then Glory, &c.
Stanza cviii. lines 1, 2, and 3.

The author of the Life of Cicero, speaking of the procul a templo hodie D. Maria Liberatricis appellato ubi forsan inventa no- opinion entertained of Britain by that orator and bila anea statua lupe geminos puerulos lactantis, quam hodie in capitolio his cotemporary Romans, has the following eloquent

videmus." Ola Borrichii Antiqna Urbis Romanæ Facies, cap. 1. See also tap. xi. Borrichius wrote after Nardini in 1687. Ap. Græv. Antiq. Rom. tom. iv. p. 1522.

Donatus, hb. xi. cap. 18, gives a medal representing on one side the wolf in the same position as that in the Capitol; and in the reverse the wolf with the head not reverted. It is of the time of Antoninus Pius.

| En. vii. 631. See Dr. Middleton, in his letter from Rome, who infines to the Ciceronian wolf, but without examining the anbject.

¶ In his tenth book, Lucan shows him sprinkled with the blood of Pharsalia

n the arms of Cleopatra,

Sanguine Thessalice cladis perfusus adulter

Admisit Venerem curis, et miscuit armis.

"Sic velut in tuta securį pace trabebant
Noctis iter medium."

Immediately afterwards, he is fighting again and defending every position.

"Sed adest defensor ubique

Cæsar et hos aditus gladiis, hos ignibus arcet
cæca nocte carinia

Insilifit Cresar semper feliciter usus

Præcipiti cursu bellorum et tempore rapto."

• "Jure casus existimetur," says Seutonics, after a fair eatination of hls character, and making nse of a phrase which was a formula in Livy's time.

Alter feasting with his mistress, he sits up all night to converse with the "Melium jure casum pronuntiavit, etiam si regui crimine insons fuerk, "

Egyptian sages, ad tells Achoreus,

Spes sit mihi certa videndi
Niliacos fontes, bellum civile relinquarn.

[lib. iv. cap. 48,] and which was continued in the legal Judgments pro nounced in justifiable homicides, such as killing housebreakers. See Sueton in vit. C. J. Cesar, with the commentary of Pitiscus, p. 184

↑ Academ. 1, 13,

56.

Egeria! sweet creation of some heart
Which found no mortal resting-place so fair
As thine ideal breast.

Stanza cxv. lines 1, 2, and 3.

passage: "From their railleries of this kind, on the barbarity and misery of our island, one cannot help reflecting on the surprising fate and revolutions of kingdoms; how Rome, once the mistress of the world, the seat of arts, empire, and glory, now lies sunk in sloth, ignorance, and poverty, enslaved to the most cruel as well as the most contemptible of The respectable authority of Flaminius Vacca tyrants, superstition, and religious imposture: would incline us to believe in the claims of the Ege while this remote country, anciently the jest and rian grotto. He assures us that he saw an inscrip contempt of the polite Romans, is become the hap- tion in the pavement, stating that the fountain was py seat of liberty, plenty, and letters; flourishing that of Egeria, dedicated to the nymphs. The inin all the arts and refinements of civil life; yet scription is not there at this day: but Montfaucon running perhaps the same course which Rome it-quotes two lines of Ovid from a stone in the Villa self had run before it, from virtuous industry to Giustiniani, which he seems to think had been wealth; from wealth to luxury; from luxury to an brought from the same grotto. This grotto and valley were formerly frequented impatience of discipline, and corruption of morals;

*

till, by a total degeneracy and loss of virtue, being in summer, and particularly the first Sunday in May, grown ripe for destruction, it fall a prey at last to by the modern Romans, who attached a salubrious some hardy oppressor, and, with the loss of liber-quality to the fountain which trickles from an ority, losing everything that is valuable, sinks gradu-fice at the bottom of the vault, and, overflowing the ally again into its original barbarism."*

53.

And apostolic statues climb To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime. Stanza cx. lines 8 and 9. The column of Trajan is surmounted by St. Peter; that of Aurelius by St. Paul. See Historical Illustrations of the IVth Canto, &c.

54.

Still we Trajan's name adore.

Stanza cxi. line 9.

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 Caffarelli, from the dukes of that name who made over their fountain to the Pallavicini, with sixty rubbia of adjoining land.

There can be little doubt that this long dell is the Egerian valley of Juvenal, and the pausing place of Umbritus, notwithstanding the generality of his commentators have supposed the descent of the sat irist and his friend to have been into the Arician grove, where the nymph met Hippolitus, and where she was more peculiarly worshipped.

The step from the Porta Capena to the Alban Trajan was proverbially the best of the Roman hill, fifteen miles distant, would be too consideraprinces; † and it would be easier to find a sovereign ble, unless we were to believe in the wild conjecture of Vossius, who makes that gate travel from its uniting exactly the opposite characteristics, than one possessed of all the happy qualities ascribed to present station, where he pretends it was during the this emperor. "When he mounted the throne," reign of the kings, as far as the Arician grove, and says the historian Dion, "he was strong in body, then makes it recede to its old site within the he was vigorous in mind; age had impaired none of shrinking city. The tufo, or pumice, which the his faculties; he was altogether free from envy and poet prefers to marble, is the substance composing from detraction; he honored all the good, and he the bank in which the grotto is sunk. The modern topographers § find in the grotto the advanced them; and on this account they could not be the objects of his fear, or of his hate; he never and a late traveller has discovered that the cave statue of the nymph and nine niches for the Muses, listened to informers; he gave not way to his anger is restored to that simplicity which the poet rehe abstained equally from unfair exactions and unjust punishments; he had rather be loved as a man gretted had been exchanged for injudicious orna than honored as a sovereign; he was affable with ment. But the headless statue is palpably rather a his people, respectful to the senate, and universally male than a nymph, and has none of the attributes The nine Muses beloved by both; he inspired none with dread but ascribed to it at present visible. could hardly have stood in six niches; and Juvenal the enemies of his country." certainly does not allude to any individual cave.¶

55.

Rienzi, last of Romans.

Stanza cxiv. line 5.

"Poco lontano dal detto luogo si scende ad un casaletto, del qualen • sono Padrosi 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 Romanl vi vanno l'estate a ricrearsi; nel pavimento di essa fonte si legge in un epitafio The name and exploits of Rienzi must be famil-essere quella la fonte di Egeria, dedicata alle ninfe, è questa dice l'epitafio, iar to the reader of Gibbon. Some details and ined-essere la medesima fonte in cui fu convertita." Memorie, &c., ap. Nardini, ited manuscripts relative to this unhappy hero will pag. 13. He does not give the Inscription. be seen in the Illustrations to the IVth Canto.

The History of the Life of M. Tullius Cicero, sect. vi. vol. ii. p. 102. The contrast has been reversed in a late extraordinary instance. A gentleman was thrown into prison at Paris; efforts were made for his release. The French minister continued to detain him, under the pretence that he was not an Englishman, but only a Roman. See "Interesting Facts relating to Joachim Murat," pag. 139.

"In villa Justiniana extat ingens lapis quadratus solidus in quo sulpta hæc duo Ovidii carmina sunt:

Egeria est quæ præbet aquas den grata Camoenis

Illa Nume conjunx consiliumque fuit.

Qui lapis videtur ex eodem Egeria fonte, aut ejus vicinia isthuc comportatas.”
Diarium Italic. p. 153.

"Hujus tantum memoria delatum est, ut, usque ad nostram ætatem non aliter in Senatu principibus acclamatur, nisi, FELICIOR. AVGVSTO.cro MELIOR. TRAJANO." Eutrop. Brev. Hist. Rom. lib. viii. cap. v.

* Τῷ τε γὰρ σώματι ἔῤῥωτο...... καὶ τῇ ψυχῇ ἔκμαζεν, ὡς μήθ' ὑπὸ γήρως ἀμβλύνεσθει... καὶ οὔτ ̓ ἐφθόνει ούτε καθήρει τινὰ, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ πάντας τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς ἐτίμᾳ καὶ ἐμεγάλυνε καὶ διὰ τοῦτο οὔτε ἐφοβεῖτό τινα αὐτῶν, οὔτε ἐμίσει......διαβολαῖς τε ἥκιστα ἐπιστεύε, καὶ ὀργῇ ἥκιστα ἐδουλοῦτο· τῶν τε χρημάτων τῶν ἀλλωτρίων ἴσα καὶ φόνων τῶν ἀδίκων ἀπείχετο φιλούμενός τε οὖν ἐπ' αὐτοῖς μᾶλλον ἢ τιμώμενος ἔχαιρε, καὶ τῷ τε δήμῳ μετ' ἐπιείκειας συνεγίνετο, καὶ τῇ χηρουσία σεμνπορεπῶς ὡμέλει· ἀγαπητὸς μὲν πᾶσι· φοβερὸς δὲ μηδενὶ, πλὴν πολεμίοις ὤν. Hist. Rom. 1b. lxviii. cap. ví. et vii. tom. ii. p. 1123, 1124, edit. Hamb. 1750.

De Magnit. Vet. Rom. ap. Grev. Ant. Rom. tom. iv. p. 1507.
§ Echinard, Descrizione di Roma e dell' agro Romano, corretto dall' Absta
Venuti, in Roma, 1750. They believe in the grotto and nymph. "Simula
di questo fonte, essendovi sculpite le acque a pie di esso."
Classical Tour, chap. vi. p. 217, vol. ii.
"Substitit ad veteres arcus, madidamque Capenam,
Hic ubi nocturns Numa constituebat amica.
Nunc sacri fontis nemus, et delubra locantur
Judæis quorum cophinum fœnamque supellex.
Omnis enim populo mercedem pendere jussa est
Arbor, et ejectis mendicat silva Camanis.
In vallem Egerie descendimus, et speluncas
Dissimiles veres: quanto præstantius esset
Numen aque, viridi si margine clauderet undas
Herba, nec ingenuum violarent marmora tophum."
Sat. III.

Nothing can be collected from the satirist but that not thus that our fathers maintained it in the brillsomewhere near the Porta Capena was a spot in iant periods of our history. Prejudice may be which it was supposed Numa held nightly consulta- trusted to guard the outworks for a short space of tions with his nymph, and where there was a grove time while reason slumbers in the citadel; but if and a sacred fountain, and fanes once consecrated the latter sink into a lethargy, the former will to the Muses; and that from this spot there was a quickly erect a standard for herself. Philosophy, descent into the valley of Egeria, where were sev- wisdom and liberty, support each other; he who eral artificial caves. It is clear that the statues of will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot, is a fool; the Mases made no part of the decoration which and he who dares not, is a slave." Preface, p. xiv the satirist thought misplaced in these caves; for he xv. vol. i. 1805. 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 Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long. 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.

58.

Great Nemesis!

Stanza cxxxii. lines 2 and 3. We read in Suetonius, that Augustus, from a warning received in a dream, counterfeited, once It is probable, from the inscription and position, a year, the beggar, sitting before the gate of his that the cave now shown may be one of the "arti- palace with his hand hollowed and stretched out for ficial caverns," of which, indeed, there is another a charity. A statue formerly in the Villa Borghese, little way higher up the valley, under a tuft of alder and which should be now at Paris, represents the bushes: but a single grotto of Egeria is a mere mod- Emperor in that posture of supplication. The obern invention, grafted upon the application of the ject of this self degradation was the appeasement epithet Egerian to these nymphea in general, and of Nemesis, the perpetual attendant on good forwhich might send us to look for the haunts of Numa tune, of whose power the Roman conquerors were 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.

cars of triumph. The symbols were the whip and also reminded by certain symbols attached to their 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. The valley abounds with springs,† and over It was the same fear of the sudden termination of these springs, which the Muses might haunt from prosperity that made Amasis, king of Egypt, warn their neighboring groves, Egeria presided; hence his friend Polycrates of Samos, that the gods loved she was said to supply them with water; and she those whose lives were checkered with good and was the nymph of the grottos through which the evil fortunes. Nemesis was supposed to lie in wait fountains were taught to flow. particularly for the prudent; that is, for those whose The whole of the monuments in the vicinity of caution rendered them accessible only to mere accithe Egerian valley have received names at will, dents: and her first altar was raised on the banks which have been changed at will. Venuti owns of the Phrygian sepus by Adrastus, probably the he can see no traces of the temples of Jove, Saturn, prince of that name who killed the son of Croesus Juno, Venus, and Diana, which Nardini found, or by mistake. Hence the goddess was called Adrashoped to find. The mutatorium of Caracalla's circus, the temple of Honor and Virtue, the temple of The Roman Nemesis was sacred and august. Bacchus, and, above all, the temple of the god Redi- there was a temple to her in the Palatine under the culus, are the antiquaries' despair. name of Rhamnusia: § so great indeed was the The circus of Caracalla depends on a medal of propensity of the ancients to trust to the revolution that emperor cited by Fulvius Ursinus, of which the of events, and to believe in the divinity of Fortune, reverse shows a circus, supposed, however, by some that in the same Palatine there was a temple to the to represent the Circus Maximus. It gives a very Fortune of the day. This is the last superstition good idea of that place of exercise. The soil has which retains its hold over the human heart; and been but little raised, if we may judge from the from concentrating in one object the credulity so small cellular structure at the end of the Spina, natural to man, has always appeared strongest in which was probably the chapel of the god Comus. those unembarrassed by other articles of belief. This cell is half beneath the soil, as it must have The antiquaries have supposed this goddess to be been in the circus itself, for Dionysius § could not synonymous with Fortune and with Fate; ¶ but it be persuaded to believe that this divinity was the was in her vindictive quality that she was worshipRoman Neptune, because his altar was under ped under the name of Nemesis. ground.

57.

Yet let us ponder boldly.

Stanza cxxvii. line 1.

tea.

⚫ Sueton. in Vit. Augusti, cap. 91. Cassaubon, in the note, refers to Plutarch's Lives of Camillus and Emilius Paulus, and also to his apothegms for the character of this deity. The hollowed hand was reckoned the las degree of degredation; and when the dead body of the præfect Rufinus was "At all events," says the author of the Academi-borne about in triumph by the people, the indignity was increased by putting cal Questions, “I trust, whatever may be the fate his hand in that position. † Storia delle arti, &c., lib. xii. cap. ii. tom. ii. p 422. Visconti calls the

Dict. de Bayle, article Adrastea.

§ It is enumerated by the regionary Victor.
Fortunæ hujusce diei.

of my own speculations, that philosophy will regain statue, however, a Cybele. It is given in the Museo Pio-Clement, tom. i. par. that estimation which it ought to possess. The 40. The Abate Fea (Spiegazione dei Rami, Storia, &c., tom. iii. p. 513), calle free and philosophic spirit of our nation has been it a Chrisippus. 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 many 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

• Lib. III. cap. iii.

"Undique e solo aqua scaturiunt." Nardini, lib. ii. cap. li Echinard. &c., Cic. cit. p. 297, 298.

Autiq. Rom. lib. ii. cap. xxxi.

T

Cicero mentions her, de Legib. lib. ii.
DEAE NEMESI
SIVE FORTUNAE

PISTORIVS
RYGIANVS

V. C. LEGAT.
LEG. XIII. G.
CORD.

See Questiones Romane, &c., ap. Græv. Antiq. Roman. tom. v. p. 948. See also Muratori, Nov. Thesaur. Inscrip. Vet. tom. I. p. 88, 89, where there ar three Latin and one Greek inscription to Nemesis, and others to Fate.

59.

I see before me the Gladiator lie.

Stanza cxl. line 1.

credibly attached to these games, gave instant orders to the gladiators to slay him; and Telemachus gained the crown of martyrdom, and the title of saint, which surely has never either before or since Whether the wonderful statue which suggested been awarded for a more noble exploit. Honorius this image be a laquearian gladiator, which, in spite immediately abolished the shows, which were never of Winkelmann's criticism has been stoutly main- afterwards revived. The story is told by Theodore † tained, or whether it be a Greek herald, as that and Cassiodorus, and seems worthy of credit notgreat antiquary positively asserted,† or whether it withstanding its place in the Roman martyrology. § is to be thought a Spartan or barbarian shield- Besides the torrents of blood which flowed at the bearer, according to the opinion of his Italian edit- funerals, in the amphitheatres, the circus, the forums, or, it must assuredly seem a copy of that master- and other public places, gladiators were introduced piece of Ctesilaus which represented "a wounded at feasts, and tore each other to pieces amidst the man dying who perfectly expressed what there re-supper tables, to the great delight and applause of mained of life in him." Montfaucon || and Maf- the guests. Yet Lipsius permits himself to supfei thought it the identical statue; but that pose the loss of courage, and the evident degenerastatue was of bronze. The gladiator was once inty of mankind, to be nearly connected with the abothe villa Ludovizi, and was bought by Clement XII. lítion of these bloody spectacles.|| The right arm is an entire restoration of Michael Angelo.**

60.

He, their sire,

Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday.

61.

Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise
Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd.
Stanza cxlii. lines 5 and 6.

Stanza cxli. lines 6 and 7. When one gladiator wounded another, he shouted, he has it," "hoc habet," or "habet." The Gladiators were of two kinds, compelled and vol-wounded combatant dropped his weapon, and aduntary; and were supplied from several conditions: vancing to the edge of the arena, supplicated the from slaves sold for that purpose; from culprits; spectators. If he had fought well, the people saved from barbarian captives either taken in war, and, him; if otherwise, or as they happened to be inafter being led in triumph, set apart for the games, clined, they turned down their thumbs, and he was or those seized and condemned as rebels; also from slain. They were occasionally so savage that they free citizens, some fighting for hire (auctorati), were impatient if a combat lasted longer than ordíothers from a depraved ambition: at last even nary without wounds or death. The emperor's knights and senators were exhibited, a disgrace of presence generally saved the vanquished; and it is which the first tyrant was naturally the first in- recorded as an instance of Caracalla's ferocity, that ventor. In the end, dwarfs, and even women, he sent those who supplicated him for life, in a fought; an enormity prohibited by Severus. Of spectacle at Nicomedia, to ask the people; in other these the most to be pitied, undoubtedly, were the words, handed them over to be slain. A similar barbarian captives; and to this species a Christian ceremony is observed at the Spanish bull-fights. writer justly applies the epithet "innocent," The magistrate presides; and after the horsemen to distinguish them from the professional gladiators. and piccadores have fought the bull, the matadore Aurelian and Claudius supplied great numbers of steps forward and bows to him for permission to these unfortunate victims; the one after his tri- kill the animal. If the bull has done his duty by umph, and the other on the pretext of a rebellion.§§ killing two or three horses, or a man, which last is No war, says Lipsius, was ever so destructive to rare, the people interfere with shouts, the ladies the human race as these sports. In spite of the wave their handkerchiefs, and the animal is saved. laws of Constantine and Constans, gladiatorial The wounds and death of the horses are accompashows survived the old established religion more nied with the loudest acclamations, and many gesthan seventy years; but they owed their final ex-tures of delight, especially from the female portion tinction to the courage of a Christian. In the year of the audience, including those of the gentlest 404, on the kalends of January, they were exhibit- blood. Everything depends on habit. The author ing the shows in the Flavian amphitheatre before of Childe Harold, the writer of this note, and one the usual immense concourse of people. Almachius or two other Englishmen, who have certainly in or Telemachus, an eastern monk, who had travelled other days borne the sight of a pitched battle, were, to Rome intent on his holy purpose, rushed into during the summer of 1809, in the governor's box the midst of the arena, and endeavored to separate at the great amphitheatre of Santa Maria, opposite the combatants. The prætor Alypius, a person in

to Cadiz. The death of one or two horses completely satisfied their curiosity. A gentleman present, observing them shudder and look pale, ne• By the Abate Bracci, dissertazione supra un clipeo votivo, &c. Preface, ticed that unusual reception of so delightful a sport pag. 7, who accounts for the cord round the neck, but not for the horn, which it to some young ladies, who stared and smiled, and does not appear the gladiators themselves ever used. Note A, Storia delle continued their applauses as another horse fell Arti, tom. ii. p. 205. Either Polifontes, herald of Laius, killed by Edipus; or Cepreas, herald bleeding to the ground. One bull killed three of Euritheus, killed by the Athenians when he endeavored to drag the Hera-horses off his own horns. He was saved by acclaelida from the altar of mercy, and in whose honor they instituted annual mations, which were redoubled when it was known games, continued to the time of Hadrian; or Anthemocritus, the Athenian he belonged to a priest.

herald, killed by the Megarenses, who never recovered the impiety. See
Storia delle Arti, &c., tom. i. p. 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, lib. ix. cap. ii.
Storia, &c., tom. li. p. 207. Not. (A.)

§ "Vulneratum deficientem fecit in quo possit intelligi quantum restat

anime." Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. xxxiv. cap. ii.

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

Racc. stat. tab. 64.

Mus. Capitol. tom. ill. p. 154, edit. 1755.

An Englishman, who can be much pleased with

Augustinus (lib. vi. confess, cap. viii.) “Alipium suum gladiatori spectaculi inhiatu incredibiliter abreptum," scribit. ib. lib. i. cap. xii.

Hist. Eccles. cap. xxvi. lib. v.

Cassiod, Tripartita, I. x. c. xi. Saturn, ib. ib.

§ Baronius, ad. ann. et in notis ad Martyrol. Rom. 1, Jan. See Maran

tt Julius Caesar, who rose by the fall of the aristocracy, brought Furius goni delle memorie sacre e profane dell' Anfiteatro Flavio, p. 25, edit. 1746. Leptinus and A. Calenus upon the arena.

"Quod? non tu Lipsi momentum aliquod habuisse censes ad virtutem? 1 Tertulian, "certe quidem et innocentes gladiatores in ludem veniunt, et Magnum. Tempora nostra, nosque ipsos videamus. Oppidum ecce unum Voluptatis publica hostæ fiant." Just. Lips. Saturn. Sermon. lib. ii. cap. iii.alterumve captum, direptum est: tumultus circa nos, non in nobis ; et tamen Vopiecus, in vit. Aurel, and in vit. Claud. Ibid.

"Credo Imò acio nullum bellum tantam cladem vastitiemque generi aumano intullisec, quam hos ad voluptatem lados." Just. Lips. luid. lib. i.

tap. xii.

concidimus et turbamur. Ubi robur, ubi tot per annos meditata sapientia studia? ubi ille animus qui possit dicere, si fractus illabatur orbis?" &c. Ibid. lib. ii. cap. xxvi. The prototype of Mr. Windham's panegyric on bull-baiting.

seeing two men beat themselves to pieces, cannot) bear to look at a horse galloping round an arena with his bowels trailing on the ground, and turns from the spectacle and the spectators with horror and disgust.

62.

Like Laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head.
Stanza cxliv. line 6.

Suetonius informs us that Julius Caesar was particularly gratified by that decree of the senate, which enabled him to wear a wreath of laurel on all occasions. He was anxious not to show that he was the conqueror of the world, but to hide that he was bald. A stranger at Rome would hardly have guessed at the motive, nor should we without the help of the historian.

63.

While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand. Stanza cxlv. line 1. This is quoted in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; and a notice on the Coliseum may be seen in the Historical Illustrations to the IVth Canto of Childe Harold.

64.

Spared and blest by time.

Stanza cxlvi. line 3.

The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves
The Latian coast, &c. &c.

Stanza clxxiv. lines 2, 3, and 4.

The whole declivity of the Alban hill is of unrivalled beauty, and from the convent on the highest

"Though plundered of all its brass, except the point, which has succeeded to the temple of the Laring which was necessary to preserve the aperture tian Jupiter, the prospect embraces all the objects above; though exposed to repeated fires, though alluded to in the cited stanza; the Mediterranean; sometimes flooded by the river, and always open to the whole scene of the latter half of the Eneid, the rain, no monument of equal antiquity is so and the coast from beyond the mouth of the Tiber well preserved as this rotunda. It passed with lit- to the headland of Circæum and the Cape of Terratle alteration from the Pagan into the present wor- cina. ship; and so convenient were its niches for the Christian altar, that Michael Angelo, ever studious of ancient beauty, introduced their design as a model in the Catholic church."-Forsyth's Remarks, &c., on Italy, p. 137, sec. edit.

65.

And they who feel for genius may repose
Their eyes on honored forms, whose busts around

them close. Stanza cxlvii. lines 8 and 9.

The site of Cicero's villa may be supposed either at the Grotta Ferrata, or at the Tusculum of Prince Lucien Bonaparte.

The former was thought some years ago the actual site, as may be seen from Middleton's Life of Cicero. At present it has lost something of its credit, except for the Domenichinos. Nine monks of the Greek order live there, and the adjoining villa is a cardinal's summer-house. The other villa, called Rufinella, is on the summit of the hill above Frascati, and many rich remains of TuscuThe Pantheon has been made a receptacle for the lum have been found there, besides seventy-two busts of modern great, or, at least, distinguished, statues of different merit and preservation, and men. The flood of light which once fell through the large orb above on the whole circle of divinities now shines on a numerous assemblage of mortals, some one or two of whom have been almost deified by the veneration of their countrymen.

66.

seven busts.

From the same eminence are seen the Sabine

hills, embosomed in which lies the long valley of Rustica. There are several circumstances which tend to establish the identity of this valley with the "Ustica" of Horace; and it seems possible that the mosaic pavement which the peasants uncover by throwing up the earth of a vineyard may belong to There is a dungeon, in whose dim, drear light. his villa. Rustica is pronounced short, not accordStanza cxlviii. line 1. ing to our stress upon "Usticæ cubantis."-It is This and the three next stanzas allude to the more rational to think that we are wrong than that story of the Roman daughter, which is recalled to the inhabitants of this secluded valley have changed the traveller by the site, or pretended site, of that their tone in this word. The addition of the conadventure, now shown at the church of St. Nicho-sonant prefixed is nothing: yet it is necessary to be las in carcere. The difficulties attending the full belief of the tale are stated in Historical Illustrations, &c.

67.

Turn to the Mole, which Hadrian rear'd on high. Stanza clii. line 1. The castle of St. Angelo. See-Historical Illustrations. 68. Stanza cliii.

aware that Rustica may be a modern name which the peasants may have caught from the antiquaries.

The villa or the mosaic, is in a vineyard on a knoll covered with chestnut trees. A stream runs down the valley, and although it is not true, as said in the guide books, that this stream is called Licenza, yet there is a village on a rock at the head of the valley which is so denominated, and which may have taken its name from the Digentia. Licenza contains seven hundred inhabitants. On a peak a little way beyond is Civitella, containing three hundred. On the banks of the Anio, a little before you

This and the six next stanzas have a reference to turn up into Valle Rustica, to the left, about an the church of St. Peter's. For a measurement of hour from the villa, is a town called Vicovaro, the comparative length of this basilica, and the another favorable coincidence with the Varia of the other great churches of Europe, see the pavement poet. At the end of the valley, towards the Anio, of St. Peter's, and the classical Tour through Italy, there is a bare hill, crowned with a little town called vol. ii. page 125, et seq. chap. iv. Bardela. At the foot of this hill the rivulet of Li.