Quartier Latin

“ They don the cast-off garments and retail the worn-out epigrams of 240 their fétiches, who are amused by and therefore endlessly indulgent of them. They strut and smirk and rant like children masquerading in the attic frippery of their elders, make as clever displays of superficial knowledge as the most up-to-date members of the most up-to-date women’s clubs, and revert constantly to a previous connection with the university which is not always imaginary. As individuals, these pseudo-connoisseurs and savants come and go in the Quartier Latin: the class goes on forever. ”

“ Michel—the liveliest roadway of the Quarter. Then it seems to become suddenly inoculated with its bustle and life, and from there on is crowded with bourgeoise and animated with the commerce of market and shop.
An Englishman once was so fired with a desire to see the gay life of the Latin Quarter that he rented a suite of rooms on this same Boulevard St. Germain at about the middle of this long, quiet stretch. Here he stayed a fortnight, expecting daily to see from his “chambers” the gaiety of a Bohemia of which he had so often heard. ”

“ For what is also true of the Quartier is this — that, in sunshine or shadow, one finds a soft little hand clasping his, firm, warm, encouraging and kindly, and hears a gay little voice that, in foul weather, chatters of the bright hours which it is so sweet to remember, and, in fair, says never a word of the storms which it is so easy to forget! ”

“ The progress of Romanization in the provinces is clearly marked by the participation of provincials in the literary life of Rome. From the Cisalpine, from Narbonese Gaul, and from Spain, men with literary instincts and ability had been drawn to the capital as the sole place where their talents would find recognition. But gradually some of the provinces developed a Latin culture of their own. The first evidences of this change came from the age of the Antonines, when a Latin literature made its appearance in the province of Africa. ”

“ To the east is the rock Soracte, "the pyramid of the campagna" and the meeting place of Etruscans, Sabines, and Latins; while a score of little townships in both ranges of hills record the feudal families of Rome, and harbour the descendants of the Latin rural plebs. The life led here is not the village life of England, but the life of small, primitive townships, with a mayor, a commune, and the customs of the middle ages. There are no manufactories and no crafts, and there are no cottages, the dwellings being divided into floors as in the big towns. ”

“ Each people had its little territory, its city, and its government. This miniature state was called a city. Thirty Latin cities had formed among themselves a religious association analogous to the Greek amphictyonies. [Pg 206] Every year they celebrated a common festival, when their delegates, assembled at Alba, sacrificed a bull in honor of their common god, the Latin Jupiter.
Rome.—On the frontier of Latium, on the borders of Etruria, in the marshy plain studded with hills that followed the Tiber, rose the city of Rome, the centre of the Roman people scattered in the plain. ”

“ HE street is not fashionable, neither is it shabby. It is a pariah among streets—a street without a Quarter. It is generally understood to lie outside the pale of the aristocratic Avenue de l’Observatoire. The students of the Montparnasse Quarter consider it swell and will have none of it. The Latin Quarter, from the Luxembourg, its northern frontier, sneers at its respectability and regards with disfavor the correctly-costumed students who haunt it. ”

“ We must not, however, take for granted, that because the city was so crowded during the earlier period of the Byzantine empire, the number of inhabitants was necessarily much larger than at present; for till the Latin conquest, much of the space of the ancient city was occupied by churches, monasteries, palaces, and other public buildings. ”

“ The red brick carcases of five small cottages and those huge masses of grey stone all overgrown with ivy, do these constitute all that remains of the once great Roman town? Did Caius, and Lucius, and Publius, and Marcus, and Quintus, inhabit these miserable hovels? The floors are overgrown with weeds, the walls are dilapidated and roofless, yet still it is somewhat strange to remember that the Romans, whom we know only in history, were actually living men and women when these walls were built, just the same as we who now look at them, after nearly two thousand years, are living men and women. ”

“ Rome created the word that denotes this marvellous and monstrous phenomenon, of history, the enormous city, the deceitful source of life and death—urbs—the city. Whence it is not strange that the countless urbes which the grand economic progress of the nineteenth century has caused to rise in every part of Europe and America look to Rome as their eldest sister and their dean. ”

“ The contemplation of the city, however, produces the effect of a vast and solid reading of history. Each of the great representations of the city, always and differently mistress of the world, seems to have chosen its respective quarter—the Rome of the kings and emperors is spread out on the Palatine, Esquiline, and Quirinal; republican Rome occupies the Capitol and Aventine; whilst Christian Rome, isolated and solitary, reigns on the Cœlian and Vatican eminences. ”

“ The Latin type of municipality was that which developed on Italian soil with the extension of Roman domination over the peninsula, and which was given uniformity by the legislation of Julius Caesar. With the Romanization of the western part of the empire it spread to Africa, Spain, Gaul, Britain, Germany and the Danubian provinces. ”

“ The flourishing suburbs, the numerous public squares planted with trees and laid out in the manner of parks, did much to improve the appearance of the city, but a great deal must still have been wanting to make it appear really comfortable to us moderns, or even to the Romans of the Empire. ”

“ The city has been a Babel of foreign tongues, a kaleidescope of foreign faces and costumes. One tastes life as from a goblet filled and brimming over with sparkling, heady wine. That old gogpate, Z——, has let his villa, carriage, servants, even his precious Antonio, the best cook in Rome. ”

“ You found there a blossoming of that ancient sap, peculiar to the soil of Rome, which in all ages has thrown up preposterous edifices, of exaggerated hugeness and dazzling and ruinous luxury. It would seem as if the absolute masters successively ruling the city brought that passion for cyclopean building with them, derived it from the soil in which they grew, for they transmitted it one to the other, without a pause, from civilisation to civilisation, however diverse and contrary their minds. ”

“ On the southern side of the river, is the Latin Quarter, where there are some celebrated schools and academies, which, for centuries, have been the resort of students. Here we shall find narrow streets, crowded footways, and shops full of all sorts of antiquarian articles, and odds and ends of every kind, some of which seem to have no other value than that they are old, while other things are very valuable, and often very cheap. ”

“ But the distinction between Rome and the mass of the other Latin towns must certainly be traced back to its commercial position, and to the type of character produced by that position in its citizens. If Rome was the emporium of the Latin districts, we can readily understand how, along with and in addition to Latin husbandry, an urban life should have attained vigorous and rapid development there and thus have laid the foundation for its distinctive career. ”

“ He might indeed, if he could afford it, remove outside the walls to a "domus suburbana," on one of the roads leading out of Rome, or on the hill looking down on the Campus Martius, like the house of Sallust the historian, with its splendid gardens, which still in part exists in the dip between the Quirinal and the Pincian hills. [384] But nowhere within three miles or more of Rome could a man lose his sense of being in a town, or escape from the smoke, the noise, the excitement of the streets. ”

“ If no better or more spacious dwelling could be put up in the whole City of Rome than that hut of our Founder, would it not be better to live in huts after the manner of herdsmen and peasants, surrounded by our temples and our gods, than to go forth as a nation of exiles? Our ancestors, shepherds and refugees, built a new City in a few years, when there was nothing in these parts but forests and swamps; are we shirking the labour of rebuilding what has been burnt, though the Citadel and Capitol are intact, and the temples of the gods still stand? ”

“ I shall now endeavour to bring before my readers, in a short chapter, the daily inner life of Rome. First of all, let us take a peep into a Roman dwelling. The mansions of the nobility and the houses of the wealthier classes are built on the plan of the ancient Romans. There is a portal in front, a paved court in the middle, a quadrangle enclosing it, with suites of apartments running all round, tier on tier, to perhaps four or five stories. The palaces want nothing but cleanliness to make them sumptuous. They are of marble, lofty in style, and chaste though ornate in design. ”

“ There are squares, broad footways; lofty white carved buildings yet in the rough, littered with rubbish and fenced off. On every side you find as it were a huge building yard, which the financial crisis perpetuates; the city of to-morrow arrested in its growth, stranded there in its monstrous, precocious, surprising infancy. Nevertheless, therein lies good and healthful work, such as was and is absolutely necessary if Rome is to become a great modern city, instead of being left to rot, to dwindle into a mere ancient curiosity, a museum show-piece. ”

“ Ancient Rome had neither cupola nor campanile, still less had it any of those spires which give life to all the capitals of northern Christendom. It was a widespread aggregate of buildings, which, though separated by narrow streets and open spaces, appeared, when seen from near Aricia, blended into one indiscriminate mass: for distance concealed the contrasts which divided the crowded habitations of the poor and the dark haunts of filth and misery—from the theatres and colonnades, the baths, the temples, and palaces with gilded roofs, flashing back the sun. ”

“ Each community had its modest or sumptuous dwelling, certain districts of Rome were entirely composed of convents, and behind the silent lifeless facades all those people buzzed, intrigued, and waged the everlasting warfare of rival interests and passions. ”

“ As in art and architecture, so also in city-planning, the civilization of Greece and of Italy merged almost inextricably into a result which, with all its Greek affinities, is in the end Roman. The student now meets a rigidity of street-plan and a conception of public buildings which are neither Greek nor Oriental. The Roman town was usually a rectangle broken up into four more or less equal and rectangular parts by two main streets which crossed at right angles at or near its centre. ”

“ But admirable German excavations at Priene, Miletus, and elsewhere declare that much may be learnt about Greek towns and in Greek lands.
The task of collecting and examining these details is not easy. It needs much local knowledge and many local books, all of which are hard to come by. Here, as in most branches of Roman history, we want a series of special inquiries into the fortunes of individual Roman towns in Italy and the provinces, carried out by men who combine two things which seldom go together, scientific and parochial knowledge. ”

“ Plentiful evidence shows that even in Italy and even in towns where men have dwelt without a break since Roman days, the Roman streets, and with them the Roman town-plans, have far oftener vanished than endured. Rome herself, the Eternal City, uses hardly one street to-day which was used in the Roman Empire. Some few Italian towns, described in detail above, have a better claim to be called 'eternal'; half a dozen in northern Italy retain their ancient streets in singular perfection. ”

“ The country around is very pleasant; the village lies on the side of a hill, or rather of a mountain, and at every step the draughtsman comes upon the most glorious objects. The prospect is unbounded—Rome lies before you, and beyond it, on the right, is the sea, the mountains of Tivoli, and so on. In this delightful region country houses are built expressly for pleasure, and as the ancient Romans had here their villas, so for centuries past their rich and haughty successors have planted country residences on all the loveliest spots. ”

“ Then, when the sun shall have absorbed all the pestilence of the old soil, we will rebuild the city ten times more beautiful and ten times larger than it has ever been. And what a city of truth and justice it will at last be, the Rome that has been announced and awaited for three thousand years, all in gold and all in marble, filling the Campagna from the sea to the Sabine and the Alban mountains, and so prosperous and so sensible that its twenty millions of inhabitants after regulating the law of labour will live with the unique joy of being. ”

“ If they were to learn that Rome had been swallowed up by an earthquake, they certainly would not put on mourning. They would go forth to their fields as usual, they would sell their crops for the usual price, and they would pay less taxes. This is what all towns inhabited by peasants think of the metropolis. Every township lives by itself, and for itself; it is an isolated body, which has arms to work, and a belly to fill. The cultivator of the land is everything, as was the case in the Middle Ages. ”