Roman ruins

“ Although fully half the stone has been thus removed, the part of the structure which still remains is the most impressive of all the ruins of the city—a monument of the grandeur and of the moral degradation of Rome. It is an especially rich experience to visit the Colosseum by moonlight, where, seated on a stone at the edge of the arena, we may in imagination, with the aid of the tranquil light, reconstruct the vast interior and repeople it with a Roman multitude breathlessly awaiting the opening of the games or exulting over the triumph of a popular favorite. ”

“ All the successive ages since Rome began to decay have done their best to ruin the very ruins by taking away the marble and the hewn stone for their own structures, and leaving only the inner filling up of brickwork, which the ancient architects never designed to be seen. The consequence of all this is, that, except for the lofty and poetical associations connected with it, and except, too, for the immense difference in magnitude, a Roman ruin may be in itself not more picturesque than I have seen an old cellar, with a shattered brick chimney half crumbling down into it, in New England. ”

“ THE remains of the lofty arcades upon which the aqueducts of ancient Rome were carried to the city have been justly classed among the finest and most picturesque ruins of the Roman Empire. Stretching across the plain eastward of the city, and towering high above the landscape, they are the first objects to fix the gaze and command the admiration of the stranger approaching the home of the Cæsars, and to fill his mind with visions of the strength and grandeur of the nation which mastered the world two thousand years ago. ”

“ He has not seen Rome who has not walked through the streets of its suburbs interspersed with empty spaces, with gardens full of ruins, with enclosures planted with trees and vines, with cloisters where rise palm-trees and cypresses, the first resembling Eastern women, the second mourning nuns. Issuing from these ruins, one sees tall Roman women, poor and handsome, going to buy fruits or to fetch water from cascades of the aqueducts of the emperors and popes. ”

“ The truth is really the other way. The abundance of ruins and fragments—again setting aside the more perfect monuments—proves that destruction has been much less thorough in Rome than in almost any other Roman city. Elsewhere the ancient buildings have been utterly swept away; at Rome they survive, though mainly in a state of ruin. But by surviving in a state of ruin they remind us of their former existence, which in other places we are inclined to forget. Certainly Rome is, even in proportion to its greatness above all other Roman cities, rich in ancient remains above all other Roman cities. ”

“ There are far more grandiose and impressive ruins to be seen in Rome; the city of Timgad in Northern Africa is more complete as a specimen of a Roman settlement than the half-excavated town near Vesuvius; yet here, and here only, can the men of the past stretch hands, as it were, across the barrier of eighteen intervening centuries to the dweller of to-day, and the dead-and-gone spirits of a highly organized civilization can whisper into the living ears of the twentieth century. ”

“ Roman monuments Among the innumerable monuments of architecture constructed by the Romans, how many have escaped the notice of history, how few have resisted the ravages of time and barbarism! And yet even the majestic ruins that are still scattered over Italy and the provinces would be sufficient to prove that those countries were once the seat of a polite and powerful empire. Their greatness alone, or their beauty, might deserve our attention ”

“ The spectator who casts a mournful view over the ruins of ancient Rome, is tempted to accuse the memory of the Goths and Vandals, for the mischief which they had neither leisure, nor power, nor perhaps inclination, to perpetrate. The tempest of war might strike some lofty turrets to the ground; but the destruction which undermined the foundations of those massy fabrics was prosecuted, slowly and silently, during a period of ten centuries; and the motives of interest, that afterwards operated without shame or control, were severely checked by the taste and spirit of the emperor Majorian. ”

“ The excavations of the last few years have thrown an entirely new flood of light upon the existing remains and Roman history, and have proved beyond doubt that there is a great deal more truth in the early history of Rome than has generally been supposed. It has been our privilege to watch the excavations year after year, and elucidate the remains found; and our labours have been rewarded with some not unimportant discoveries. We state nothing without citing classic authority to bear us witness, and the authority so cited agrees in a marvellous way with the ruins discovered. ”

“ Augustus swept away as much of it as he could afford to demolish, and his historians remark that “he found Rome built of brick and left it built of marble.” There were of course ancient temples, venerable with dignity, and no doubt to us they would have seemed beautiful with the picturesqueness of antiquity. But with Gracchans and Marians and Clodians rioting at large through the city, many of these venerable shrines were destroyed by fire. The Roman ruins as seen by the modern traveller are almost all of Imperial times. The great Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol was rebuilt four times. ”

“ Then the great villas, whose ruins now strew the ground everywhere in the neighborhood of Rome, were built. The ancient Roman nobility lived in great numbers in the very places now found so deadly. Their summer homes were placed not only on the sea-shore, but all through the country.
Huge aqueducts supplied Rome with water and irrigated the farms on the Campagna. These are the most conspicuous ruins on the Campagna today. The Gothic army at the siege of Rome in 536 destroyed nearly all the aqueducts, and later on the great country seats were demolished. ”

“ Never, in its bloodiest prime, can the sight of the gigantic Coliseum, full and running over with the lustiest life, have moved one heart, as it must move all who look upon it now, a ruin. God be thanked: a ruin!
"As it tops all other ruins: standing there, a mountain among graves: so do its ancient influences outlive all other remnants of the old mythology and old butchery of Rome, in the nature of the fierce and cruel Roman people. The Italian face changes as the visitor approaches the city; its beauty becomes devilish ”

“ Still awes in ruins, and commands when dead. Centuries have elapsed since the vast fabric was upreared, but they have been centuries rife with the fate of empires.
The most ardent lover of the olden time cannot but startle, as he treads the deserted streets, or enters the unbarred portals of Borcovicus, and other cities of the Wall, at the thought that the Mistress of Nations is now no more, [13] and that the Eternal City is buried in her own debris. The broken column, the prostrate altar, ever and anon obtrude the fact upon him. Another empire has sprung into being of which Rome dreamt not. ”

“ But others lie broken, and most of them are gone entirely. This is all that is left of the porches where men used to walk and talk of business and war and politics and gossip.
At one end of the forum is a high stone platform and wide stone steps leading up to a row of broken columns in front of a fallen wall. This is the ruin of the temple of Jupiter, the great Roman god. Daily, men used to come here to pray before a statue in a dim room. Here, in the ruins, the excavators found the head of that statue—a beautiful marble thing with long curling hair and beard, and calm face. ”

“ The ruined Roman sits among the ruins; he flies to no green garden; he does not look to heaven; if his intent is defeated, if he is less than he meant to be, he lives no more. The names which end in "us," seem to speak with lyric cadence. ”

“ Our country was a forest when these works were undertaken: Italy was highly cultivated, and divided into private estates, and this perhaps has in many cases given rise to the windings, both of the roads and aqueducts: indeed it is difficult to account for the abrupt turns of the latter on any other principle. By the sides of these aqueducts there are other ruins occupying a considerable extent, but no one of them announces any building of much importance. There are 49vaults, domes, and arches, and one of those great niches so common in the Roman ruins ”

“ In such a city a few special monuments may be kept in a perfect or nearly perfect state; but it is impossible that large tracts of ground can be left covered with ruins as they are at Rome. Now, it is the ruins, rather than the perfect buildings, which form the most characteristic feature of Roman scenery and topography, and they have been preserved by the decay of the city; while in other cities they have been swept away by their prosperity. ”

“ Near springs and the fountain-heads of rivers especially, the ruins of Roman shrines to the Genius of the fountain are found, as at Banias. Fortresses too, where Roman garrisons used to be located, can still be traced, in a ring or an oblong trail of loose stones. Such ruins crown the height of Tabor, the summit of Gerizim, and many another hill. But these shew little trace of their former meaning. Here and there the acropolis of a Greek or Roman town may retain its ancient embankment, built on the steep slope of the hill, as if shoring up the plateau above where the temple once stood. ”

“ We pass every day ruins, ruins of the Old Empire, of the Middle Empire, of the Ptolomies, of the Greeks, of the Romans, of the Christians, of the Saracens; but nothing seems ancient to us any longer except the remains of Old Egypt.
We have come to have a singular contempt for anything so modern as the work of the Greeks, or Romans. Ruins pointed out on shore as Roman, do not interest us enough to force us to raise the field-glass. Small antiquities that are of the Roman period are not considered worth examination. ”

“ Passing over this haunted ground along the remains of the mediæval walls, we come to those beautiful ruins called the Roman baths. We are glad to see that the Prussian government has taken measures for purchasing some of the surrounding land, so that the excavations may be continued, and it is probable that valuable discoveries will be made. Nothing can be fairer than the aspect of these ruins in their summer dress; they show to perfection how beautiful an effect may be gained by variegated courses of bricks and tiles. ”

“ Where the Roman people saw temples erected to [Pg 245] perpetuate their exploits; and where the Roman nobles vied with each other in the magnificence of their dwellings, we see now a few isolated pillars standing amongst some broken arches. Or if the curiosity of foreigners has investigated what the natives neither think nor care about, we may, perhaps, see the remnant of a statue, or a column, extracted from the rubbish. Where the Comitia were held, where Cicero harangued, and where the triumphal processions passed, we have now no animated beings, except strangers, attracted by curiosity ”

“ The Romans, although not themselves, either by the gift of Heaven, or by their own tastes, artists, were great patrons of art. Many a rich Roman citizen had the court of his house converted into a kind of forum, which he adorned with his favourite portrait statues. From the precious ruins of Ancient Rome—from her temples, palaces, villas—countless statues and busts have been dug out. Her tombs also were furnished with portraits, busts, and statues, recumbent, or in other postures.
In all times, and in all countries, we note a desire to perpetuate the memory of the dead ”

“ Relentless war has poured around thy wall,
And hardly spared the traces of thy fall.
There are several shapeless and uninteresting masses of Roman remains composed of bricks, one of which seems to have been a bath, resembling, in some respects, that of Dioclesian at Rome, but little more than the lower walls and foundations are remaining. The only Grecian ruin which, at present, remains at Corinth, is that of a Doric temple. When Du Loir travelled there (1654) , there were twelve columns of this temple standing. In the time of Chandler there were also eleven; but now there are only seven. ”

“ In looking at this bank of the Tiber it is easy to believe [Pg 132] that of old the road all the way from Rome to Ostia ran past the habitations of men. Amongst other ruins we saw, about midway and on our left, a very beautiful tomb of a Roman prætor with an inscription quite perfect thereon. In Rome, the ruins, as a rule, only manifest themselves to us by the massive solidity of their construction. The ancients built thick walls of brick, and these they lined either with strips of marble or some other white stone, or with a kind of cement, or with thick tiles set thereupon. ”

“ If we turn from the capital, we have, on our right, the Palatine hill, which once contained the whole Roman people, and which was afterwards insufficient for the house of one emperor, and is now occupied by a few gardens, and a convent. On the left, there is a range of churches, formed out of ancient temples; and in front, we discover at a considerable distance, through the branches of trees, and the ruins of buildings, the mouldering arches of the Colosseum. ”

“ The ruins of many tombs are found on the Campagna. Roman family vaults contained a funeral banquet hall, on a level with the road, and a crypt below, where the ashes were kept in urns, or the bodies laid to rest in sarcophagi.
The sites of the cities of Veii, Fidenæ, and Gabii, once the rivals and equals of Rome, are now almost deserted. In sea-coast towns of Ardea, Laurentum, Lavinium, and Ostia, at one time well populated, are practically empty. The inhabitants are haggard and fever stricken. ”