Pantheon, Rome

“ Ruin, nearly everywhere in Rome, has to be very patient of the environment; and even the monuments of the past which are in comparatively good repair have not always the keeping that the past would probably have chosen for them. One that suffers as little as any, if not the very least, is the Pantheon, on whose glorious porch you are apt to come suddenly, either from a narrow street beside it or across its piazza, beyond the fountain fringed with post-card boys and their bargains. In spite of them, the sight of the temple does mightily lift the heart ”

“ Fig. 136.—The Pantheon, Rome. Exterior.
The Pantheon is the finest example of a domed hall [166] which we have left. The building, which forms the church of Santa Maria ad Martyres, has been considerably altered at various times since its erection, and now consists of a rotunda with a rectangular portico in front of it. The rotunda was most probably erected by Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus, in B.C. 27, and is a most remarkable instance of clever construction at so early a date. The [167] diameter of the interior is 145 ft. 6 in., and the height to the top of the dome is 147 ft. ”

“ Thousands of Christians in this place suffered martyrdom, by becoming the prey of wild beasts. The picture presents the imposing spectacle of the interior of this monument at the present day. PANTHEON, Rome, Italy.—This is the only ancient edifice at Rome which is still in perfect preservation, as regards the walls and vaulting. The original statues and architectural decorations have long since been replaced by modern and inferior works, but the huge circular structure with its vast colonnade still presents a strikingly imposing appearance. ”

“ In those last years of the fifteenth century, Rome was a city of the Middle Ages. The cupola of the Pantheon, the circular hulk of the Colosseum, and the twin columns of Trajan and Antoninus projected, like the fantastic antiquities of some fresco of Benozzo Gozzoli, above domeless church roofs, battlemented palace walls, and innumerable Gothic belfries and feudal towers. In the theatre of Marcellus rose the fortress of the Orsinis; against the tower whence Nero, as the legend ran, had watched the city burning, were clustered the fortifications of the Colonnas ”

“ The Elysian Fields were vague, wearisome to contemplate; even metempsychosis had no adherents. "After death," said Caesar, "there is nothing," and all the world agreed with him. The hour, too, in which three thousand gods had not a single atheist, had gone, never to return. Old faiths had crumbled. None the less was Rome the abridgment of every superstition. The gods of the conquered had always been part of her spoils. The Pantheon had become a lupanar of divinities that presided over birth, and whose rites were obscene; an abattoir of gods that presided over death, and whose worship was gore. ”

“ Full six centuries after its erection by Agrippa, as the vestibule of his baths in the centre of the Campus Martius, stood what was called the Pantheon, with its [pg 029] superb portico of granite pillars and white marble capitals, untouched in their beauty—the fairest relic of ancient Rome. It had withstood all the inundations of the Tiber: all the devastations of the Gothic war: all the injuries of time. Every winter the floods forced themselves up over its floor: day and night the dome, through its aperture, received the waters of heaven. ”

“ Of late years it has been the fashion to erect monuments affixed to the walls of the interior of the Pantheon to the memory of the great men and heroes of poetry, painting, sculpture and music who were natives of Italy, or for foreigners, celebrated for their excellence in those arts, who have died in Rome. ”

“ Being rather isolated, it shows to better advantage than any other of the monuments of ancient Rome. Even the beautiful Pantheon, whose pagan altars uphold the cross, now, and whose Venus, tricked out in consecrated gimcracks, does reluctant duty as a Virgin Mary to-day, is built about with shabby houses and its stateliness sadly marred. ”

“ The superior neatness and beauty of Tiberius's brick-facing make it easy to distinguish where his work ends and that of the later emperors begins. Owing to the addition of the later wall it requires some care to trace the rows of battlements which belong to the camp.
The Pantheon is the most perfect among existing classical buildings in Rome. The inscription on the frieze of the portico (M . AGRIPPA . L . F . COS . TERTIVM . FECIT) refers to a building erected by Agrippa in 27 B.C., consecrated to the divinities of the Julian house (Mars, Venus, etc.) under the name Pantheon. ”

“ Beyond, in the "Field of Mars"—the site of the densest part of modern Rome—was an almost continuous cluster of public buildings and resorts, of theatres, temples—including the first form of that incomparable edifice, the Pantheon, the only building of ancient Rome which still remains practically whole—of baths, porticoes, and enclosed promenades. ”

“ Here was the last struggle of paganism with the unbelief which itself inspired. The gods of the Pantheon had lost all significance. The worship of abstract qualities, such as Concord and Victory, or of the personification of a local providence in the city of Rome itself, could not satisfy the longing of the human soul. As religion decayed the worship of the gods was superseded by the worship of the emperor. Their statues were decapitated and the head of the emperor was placed upon them. On the statue of Olympic Jove appeared the bust of the contemptible Caligula ”

“ They were generally small compared with the temples of Egypt, or the vast dimensions of Roman amphitheatres. Only three or four would compare in size with a Gothic cathedral, like the Parthenon, the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, and the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. Even the Pantheon at Rome is small, compared with the later monuments of the Caesars. The traveler is always disappointed in contemplating their remains, so far as size is concerned. ”

“ Some of its noblest edifices are huddled into corners, and lost amid a crowd of mean buildings. The Pantheon rises in the fish-market. The Navonna Mercato, which has the finest [Pg 288] fountain in Italy, is a rag-fair. The church of the Lateran is approached through narrow rural lanes. The splendid edifice of St Paul's stands outside the walls, in the midst of swamps and marshes so unwholesome, that there is not a house near it. The meanest streets of Rome are those that lie around St Peter's and the Vatican. The Corso is in good part a line of noble palaces ”

“ It may be said that they began and ended with the Empire, for it was not until the time of Augustus that these magnificent structures were commenced. M. Agrippa was the first who afforded these luxuries to his countrymen by bequeathing to them the thermæ and gardens which he had erected in the Campus Martius. The Pantheon, now existing at Rome, served originally as a vestibule to these baths; and, as it was considered too magnificent for the purpose, it is supposed that Agrippa added the portico and consecrated it as a temple, for which use it still serves. ”

“ He obtained a victory over Sextus Pompey; and in the battles of Philippi and Actium, where he displayed great valour, he contributed not a little to establish the subsequent power of Augustus. In his expeditions afterwards into Gaul and Germany, he performed many signal achievements, for which he refused the honours of a triumph. The expenses which others would have lavished on that frivolous spectacle, he applied to the more laudable purpose of embellishing Rome with magnificent buildings, one of which, the Pantheon, still remains. ”

“ Boni finds the Tomb of Romulus in the Roman Forum, Dr. Evans finds the palace of Minos, and the labyrinth of the Minotaur in Crete.
To comfort-loving persons Rome is the most satisfactory place in the world for the study of man—from the savage of thirty centuries ago in his tree coffin, fished up from the bottom of Lake Trasimeno (now at the Museum Papa Giulio) , to Victor Emmanuel in his tomb at the Pantheon. ”

“ They are so like the best breeds of these animals to-day that one can scarcely believe they were chiseled from stone nearly twenty centuries ago. In Rome, as in Paris, there is a Pantheon in the familiar style of Greek architecture. In the Roman Pantheon is the tomb of Raphael. Cardinal Bembo, in recognition of Raphael's genius, caused to be placed upon his tomb a Latin epitaph which Hope has translated:
"Living, great nature feared he might outvie Her works, and dying fears herself to die." ”

“ The portico is 110 feet long, and 44 feet deep. Sixteen Corinthian columns, 461⁄2 feet high and 5 feet in diameter, support the roof. The Pantheon was converted into a church by Boniface IV. in 609, by permission of the Emperor Phocas, and it was dedicated to the martyrs on November 1st (All Saints' Day) , 830. The doors and grating above, of ancient bronze, with the rim round the circular opening in the vault of the interior, are all that is left of the ancient metal work. The interior is 142 feet in diameter, and 143 feet high, and is lighted by an open space of 28 feet in diameter. ”

“ Mommsen, History of Rome, Eng. tr. 1894, i, 285-300 (bk. i, ch. xv) .
[401] "No people has ever possessed a vaster pantheon," observes M. Boissier, while noting the slightness of the characterisation (La religion romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins, 4e édition, i, 8) . The lack of characterisation would seem to have encouraged multiplication. ”

“ In 1101, another anti-pope, Sylvester IV., was elected here. Pope Martin V., after the return from Avignon, attempted the restoration of the Pantheon by clearing away the mass of miserable buildings in which it was encrusted, and his efforts were continued by Eugenius IV., but Urban VIII. (1623—44) , though he spent 15,000 scudi upon the Pantheon, and added the two ugly campaniles, called in derision "the asses' ears," of their architect, Bernini, did not hesitate to plunder the gilt bronze ceiling of the portico, 450,250 lbs. in weight, to make the baldacchino of St. ”

“ Of all the temples of the Romans, the Pantheon is by far the most original and typical, and as a rotunda it is unmatched in the ancient world. There is a simplicity about its proportions, the height being exactly equal to the width, and in the mode by which it is lighted through a single aperture in the roof, which gives it a character of grandeur that redeems the clumsiness of detail, which would nearly spoil any edifice less grand in conception. ”

“ Is Pantheism to absorb Rome, and, if so, what sort of a religious formula is to be the result? or is Rome so to modify her dogmas that the Pantheist can join her without doing too much violence to his convictions? We who are outside the Church's pale are in the habit of thinking that she will make little if any advances in our direction. The dream of a Pantheistic Rome seems so wild as hardly to be entertained seriously ”

“ Roads were pushed in every direction,—broad, level ways, over which armies might be marched or intelligence quickly carried. They were chains which bound her possessions indissolubly together. Some of them remain today a monument of Roman thoroughness, enterprise, and sagacity,—the wonder and admiration of modern road-builders. By these means did Rome fasten together the constantly increasing fabric of her empire, so that not even the successes of Hannibal caused more than a momentary shaking of fidelity, for which ample punishment was both speedy and certain. ”

“ They seem to us as grotesque as Orcagna’s Day of Judgment in Santa Maria Novella at Florence, and the Dantesque Hell of the Campo Santo of Pisa, whereas the Latin Pantheon reflects for ever the image of a well-organised society. The gods of the Romans were like themselves, industrious and good citizens. ”

“ Not only did the Peter’s Pence impose hard servitude upon Leo XIII but he was also the prisoner of papal tradition—the eternal King of Rome, riveted to the soil of Rome, unable either to quit the city or to renounce the temporal power. The fatal end would be collapse on the spot, the dome of St. Peter’s falling even as the temple of Olympian Jupiter had fallen, Catholicism strewing the grass with its ruins whilst elsewhere schism burst forth: a new faith for the new nations. ”

“ The obelisk stood erect in the bright moonlight, and its tall, slender shadow was imprinted on the wall of the church. The rising road, leading to the Villa Medici and the Pincio, was quite lustrous. They bent over the high parapet of the square, whence so many melancholy visitors have gazed upon Rome in the hours of twilight. But Rome was very dimly visible, shrouded in a white, moon-washed vapour, which almost seemed a continuation of the sky, a slant of the horizon covering houses, bell-towers, and cupolas.
'One can see nothing. What a pity!' exclaimed Donna Elena. ”

“ Peter’s affords the best sample of modern art in Rome178, so does the Pantheon exhibit the most satisfactory and best-preserved specimen of ancient art; for, notwithstanding the injuries it has sustained by the hands of barbarians of all ages, no signs of natural decay are yet visible; and with this magnificent model before their eyes, it appears strange, that the architects of St. Peter’s should not have accomplished [Pg 276] their task more worthily. The Pantheon seems to be the hemispherical summit of a modern temple, taken off and placed on the ground ”