Aventine

“ What would you do?”
“They have a tablet from that young Roman officer,” she said. “A letter to his family in a palace on the Aventine.”
“What of that?” he grumbled.
“I will go to-morrow,” she said, “with the maiden, to see the lady on the Aventine, the young Roman noble’s mother, and tell her all. Perchance she will have compassion on these Christian captives, and help them and us.”
“Thou wilt do what seemeth thee best,” he rejoined, in a tone of oppressed acquiescence. “If we are ruined, we are ruined; and the All-Merciful have mercy on thee and our lost child.” ”

“ As for the wretch who dealt me this last fell, heartless stroke, let the gods deal with him and his. Treasure and time I have lavished in vain search; and, doubtless, I have been robbed through it all. Cunning people, knowing the old man’s ever-green hopes, have worked upon his credulity. The other night on the Aventine was an instance which would have probably cost me my life but for your timely appearance. One of those very villains, whom you scattered, came to me in this very room, with a request from a supposed dying man, purporting to be the fiend who had stolen away my little Aurelia. ”

“ The coincidence at the Aventine of the name, the myth, and the practice, is too striking to be entirely passed over—especially if we cannot find certain evidence of a pure Italian origin, and if we do find traces of all three where Phoenicians and Greeks are known to have been. We may take it as not impossible that the ara maxima was older than the traditional foundation of Rome, and that its cult was originally not that of the characteristic Italian Hercules, but of an adventitious deity established there by foreign adventurers. ”

“ There are no less than four temples consecrated to Hercules in the Forum Boarium, one of the most celebrated places in Rome, devoted to trade and commerce. Beyond still, in the valley between the Palatine and the Aventine, is the great Circus Maximus, founded by the early Tarquin. It is the largest open space inclosed by walls and porticoes in the city. It seats three hundred and eighty-five thousand people. How vast a city, which can spare nearly four hundred thousand of its population to see the chariot-races! Beyond is the Aventine itself. ”

“ Nothing can be more likely than that the remainder of the community had fled, seeking safety, or more likely an unknown death, in less conspicuous quarters of the city than the great palace of the Aventine with its patrician air of wealth and possible treasure. ”

“ Taurus Antinor had all along intended to reach the Aventine by a devious way. Now the crowd had brought him and his companion to the river bank, there where the Tiber winds its sudden curve at the foot of the three hills. That curve of the river would have to be followed its whole way along the bank, and the slope of the Aventine looked so immeasurably far.
But progress had become more easy at last. Taurus Antinor pushed his way along now as quickly as he dared. More than one angry glance followed the tall, powerful figure as it forged a path for its burden, regardless of obstruction ”

“ He seems only to care for one thing besides—these sacred relics of our ancient glory. He also steals in here from time to time, and I have seen the tears on his wrinkled old face, making it look for the moment young again, as if the old days and the old life might come back yet.”
The family stayed all that winter on the Aventine, and more and more Ethne’s heart was drawn [270] to Fabricius and Damaris, with a deep and tender reverence for the old age which seemed creeping on them too soon, as if the dissolution and decay of the falling world around them were gathering them into its shadow. ”

“ He ordered the messenger to be arrested and gave the signal for attack on the Aventine, while at the same time he caused proclamations to be made in the streets that the Government would give to whomsoever should bring the head of Gracchus or of Flaccus its literal weight in gold; and that they would guarantee complete indemnity to everyone who should leave the Aventine before the beginning of the conflict. The ranks on the Aventine speedily thinned ”

“ The Aventine, ever since the auguries of Remus, has been especially the refuge of opposition, and more especially, [Pg 120] perhaps, of religious opposition. In very early times it was especially the hill of the plebeians, who frequently retired to its heights in their difficulties with the patricians, as they had once withdrawn to the more distant Mons Sacer in the Campagna. ”

“ In the end the armies left the Aventine, marched through the city, and made their way to the Sacred Hill, where the seceding commoners had established themselves on a famous occasion long before. Men, women, and children followed them in multitudes. Once more the city was deserted by the plebeians, and the patricians were left to keep Rome together as they could. ”

“ When they returned to the Aventine from the solemn obsequies of the Shepherd and Father of Rome, Marius said to Ethne—
“Thou hast never been perplexed by anything that seemed doubtful in the great Bishop’s life; not about his contest with Hilary of Arles, nor even about his forbidding the ordination of slaves.”
“Why should I?” she said; “Leo never claimed to be anything in himself. Has he not taught us [310] all to say day by day in our prayers, that ‘we can do nothing good without God’? ”

“ The Aventine being feebly defended, the clivus Publicius, by which one ascended from the Circus, was taken by storm; and now Fulvius sent his son, a fine, handsome youth, to the senate, to ask for a truce. He was sent back the first time; and when he came again, Opimius had him arrested, thrown into a dungeon, and afterwards put to death. When the Aventine was taken, Fulvius, who had hidden himself, was found and slain; Gracchus leaped from the temple of Diana down the sharp steep of the Aventine, and sprained his ankle ”

“ The Aventine has been little touched by time and is still one of the quietest and loveliest spots in Rome. At certain seasons it suffers from malaria—blown up from the marshes near Ostia—and for that reason both mediæval and modern builders have generally avoided it. But it is full of gardens. That of St. Alexis’ Convent, now an Asylum for the Blind, is famous for its orange and [12] lemon trees; and one can trace the dispositions of the terraces and courts of the old house in the approaches to the Church. ”

“ We die to sin when sins die in us; and men become dead to the world, not by the perishing of the senses, but by the death of vices. Let each of you be mindful that the Temple of God is founded in Himself.”
Thus day by day and year by year Ethne and Marius, and all that little company of the Aventine, sought to keep their post in the great battle, contending in Rome against her tyrannies and miseries and sins, and making the plundered palace rich and beautiful again by gathering thither the orphans, the cripples, and the aged left destitute and forsaken by the sack of the Vandals ”

“ They were soon followed by the other army from the Sabine frontier; for [Pg 144] to them Icilius had gone, and Numitorius; and they found willing ears among the men. So the two armies joined their banners, elected new generals, and encamped upon the Aventine hill, the quarter of the plebeians.
6. Meantime, the people at home had risen against Appius; and after driving him from the forum, they joined their armed fellow citizens upon the Aventine. There the whole body of the commons, armed and unarmed, hung like a dark cloud ready to burst upon the city.
Liddell. VIRGINIUS.
1. ”

“ One side would take the Aventine for its base of operations, and another the Palatine....’ After describing very graphically the tactics in vogue, our author goes on to say, ‘The adults of both factions stood by the while and backed up the boys, and often the strife which had begun as boys’ pastime ended in serious maiming of grown up men. ”

“ To Agnes, and to the Scientific Men of the World:
I do not expect you to believe what I have written here, but I only ask that you investigate and you will then learn that what I say is true. And I, Charles David Avison, of There, not of Here—but an equal in mind, ability, and genius of the Charles David Avison who died for science, Here, of whom you already know—I swear to you that it is the truth.
If you do not believe, it is no matter. For even now I feel that perhaps I am doing wrong to add to the knowledge of the world wherein I do not belong. ”

“ Lastly, in Avignon, there's the Pope! greatness, power, magnificence, pomp, and splendor, dominating the earth, and without exaggeration, causing the breath of God to blow upon the banks of the Sorgue.
We learn that the brilliancy and animation of the court at Avignon outshine the glories of Rome, and in language that fairly glitters with its high-sounding, highly colored words. We hear of Petrarch and Laura, and the associations of Vaucluse. ”

“ Into this grotto the rays of the sun never penetrate. I am confident that it much resembles the place where Cicero went to declaim. It invites to study. Hither I retreat during the noontide hours; my mornings are engaged upon the hills, or in the garden sacred to Apollo. Here I would most willingly pass my days, were I not too near Avignon, and too far from Italy. For why should I conceal this weakness of my soul? I love Italy, and I hate Avignon. The pestilential influence of this horrid place empoisons the pure air of Vaucluse, and will compel me to quit my retirement. ”

“ But in truth I could never have paused to ask what in such a case oath or law permitted, "Listen, Eunané," I said, "and be calm. Not only Eveena, not only I, but hundreds, thousands, of the best and kindliest men and women of your world hold this faith as fast as we do. You feel what Eveena is. What she is and what others are not, she owes to this trust:—to the assurance of a Power unseen, that rules our lives and fortunes and watches our conduct, that will exact an account thereof, that holds us as His children, and will never part with us. ”

“ Take the Abbé Maury, proud as a duke, insolent as a lackey, son of a shoemaker, more aristocratic than the son of a great lord.
We have said, Avignon, Roman city; let us add, Avignon, city of hatreds. The heart of the child, born elsewhere free from the taint of hate, came into the world in the midst of hereditary hatred, bequeathed from father to son, and from son to son in turn, a diabolical inheritance for his children. In such a city every one was forced to make definite choice, and act a part in accordance with the importance of his position. ”

“ I answered, sadly enough, for my conscience was as ill at ease as hers, with deeper cause, "I don't tell you that your jealousy was not foolish and your petulance culpable; but I do say that neither Eveena nor I have the heart—perhaps I have not even the right—to blame you. It is true that I love Eveena as I can love no other in this world or my own. ”

“ EVANDER (Gr. Εὔανδρος, “good man”) , in Roman legend, son of Mercury and Carmenta, or of Echemus, king of Arcadia. According to the story, Evander left the Arcadian town of Pallantion about sixty years before the Trojan War and founded Pallanteum or Palatium on the hill afterwards called the Palatine. This is only one of the many Greek legends adopted by the Romans for the purpose of connecting places in Italy with others of like-sounding name in Greece. To Evander was attributed the introduction of Greek rites and customs into his new country; of writing, music and other arts ”

“ We must ask you to tell us that, Sir Evelyn, for though he is supposed to be a Roman, he seems to have lived most of his life in your country. As silent as an owl and as inscrutable as a sphinx. Nobody in Rome knows certainly who his father was, nobody knows certainly who his mother was. Some say his father was an Englishman, some say a Jew, and some say his mother was a gipsy. A self-centred man, who never talks about himself, and cannot be got to lift the veil which surrounds his birth and early life. ”

“ I can well believe how her tender bosom thrilled with a hope that was almost an agony, as she in fancy beheld the magnetic flame of life animate the marble and reveal the present god. Ah, me! poor child—and is she the only one 123of her sex who has lived, and loved—aye, and died for a shadow—a phantasy? Are we not all doomed to make idols, and, sooner or later, to “find them clay?”
Evelyn and myself agreed that, on leaving these galleries, as it were, “drunk with beauty,” every one we met appeared to us plain and homely. Rome is rather unfavorable to the development of the tender passion. ”

“ The people, being anxious to show their intention of respecting the papal authority, had dispatched to Avignon as ambassador of the republic, in 1343, a man destined to make much noise in the world. This was Cola di Rienzi, son of a Roman innkeeper, a notary, and an impassioned student of the Bible, the fathers, Livy, Seneca, Cicero, and Valerius Maximus. Thoroughly imbued with a half pagan, half Christian spirit, he believed that he had a divinely inspired mission to revive the ancient glories of Rome. ”

“ But Eveena evidently caught both the sound and the meaning, and I was glad that they should convey to her a confidence which seemed to myself no better founded than her alarms. To me its only value lay in the friendly relation it established with one I had begun greatly to like. I relied on my own strength and nerve for all that human exertion could do in such peril as we might encounter; and, in a case in which these might fail me, I doubted whether even the one tie that has binding force on Mars would avail me much. ”

“ The moment we look into life and examine the weft a little, what a mystery it becomes, how occult the design, and out of what impenetrable darkness the shuttle passes, weaving a strange pattern, harmonious in a way, and yet deducible to none of our laws! This little adventure, the little fact of his becoming Evelyn's lover, was sown with every eventuality.... If, instead of his winning her to agnosticism, she should win him to Rome! They then would have to separate or marry, otherwise they would burn in hell for ever. ”