Palestrina is quite a different type of place from all the others we have seen, and its people, unlike the courteous peasants we have hitherto met with, are lawless and avaricious. Can the bitter warfare of reprisal, of which both ancient Praeneste and mediaeval Palestrina have been the scene, be setting its mark still upon the inhabitants? for perhaps few places have been more often besieged, none more often utterly ruined and destroyed. Praeneste, 'quid montibus praeest,' says the grammarian, Festus, is one of the towns of fabulous origin. Virgil ascribes it to Caeculus, the son of Vulcan :-- 'Nec Praenestinae fundator defuit urbis, Vulcano genitum pecora inter agrestia regem -Aen. vii. 678. Strabo gives it a Greek origin, and says that it was first called Πολυστέφανος. Pliny also says that it was called Stephane, a name which is supposed to have been derived from the appearance of the castle on the top of the hill being like a mural crown. Servius derives the name from the πpîvo, ilexes, which grew here. Even in the time of the Siculi, Virgil describes Praeneste as having been governed by a king called Herilus, who fell in defending his country against the Latins. Livy declares that eight towns were dependent upon it. It was reduced to the condition of a Roman Colony upon the failure of the struggle in favour of the Tarquins. T. Quinctius Cincinnatus conquered the town and took from it the statue of Jove which then was placed in the Capitoline Temple. After the defeat at Sacri-portus of Caius Marius, the younger, who killed himself within its walls, Praeneste fell into the hands of Sulla, who ferociously annihilated population and city alike: 'Vidit Fortuna colonos Praenestina suos cunctos simul ense recepto, But Sulla rebuilt the town with the utmost magnificence, and erected the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia so sumptuously that the Athenian philosopher Carneades said he had never seen a Fortune so fortunate as that of Praeneste.' Its glories were celebrated by several of the Latin poets. It was in fact the life of the town. 'Aedificator erat Cetronius, et modo curvo Culmina villarum, Graecis longeque petitis Marmoribus, vincens Fortunae atque Herculis aedem.' 'sacrisque dicatum Fortunae Praeneste jngis.' -Sil. Ital. viii. 366. 'Cicero gives a curious account of the institution of the divination called the Sortes Fortunae Primigeniae Praenestinae: "Numerius Suffucius having, in consequence of frequent dreams, excavated in a rock, found a piece of oak, on which the necessary ceremonies seem to have been inscribed in ancient characters. The place was inclosed, honey flowed from an olive tree on the spot, and the Temple of fortune was erected on or near the site." (De Divin. II. xli.) In the time of Cicero, the credit of the Sortes Praenestinae had much diminished.'-Gell, 'Topography of Rome.' Its coolness, which was an agreeable change after the heat of Rome, made Praeneste a favourite summer resort to the emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Nero, Domitian, and Hadrian. Suetonius describes Angustus as employing two days on the journey hither from Rome. Horace alludes to the freshness of the climate, while, still earlier, Livy laments that Praeneste seduces senators from their duties in the Capital: 'Aestivae Prenesti deliciæ.' 'seu mihi frigidum Praeneste, seu Tibur supinum, Seu liquidae placuere Baiae.' Sometimes the poet himself resided here: "Trojani belli scriptorem, maxime Lolli, -'Epist.' i. 2. 'Quis timet aut timuit gelida Praeneste ruinam ?' Aslotfus, king of the Lombards, took up his residence there In 970, the town, already called Palestrina, was given by Pope John XIII. to his sister Stephania, mother of Benedict, Count of Tusculum, and through the marriage of her granddaughter Emilia ('Imilia nobilissima comitissa'), came into the Colonna family, whose history is henceforth that of the place. When, in 1297, the Cardinals Giacomo and Pietro Colonna had opposed the election of a member of the rival family of the Caëtani of Anagni to the papacy, they fled hither with their kinsfolk. The newly-elected pope, Boniface VIII., immediately issued bulls confiscating all the estates of the Colonnesi, and promised plenary indulgences to all who would take up arms against them. 'Stronghold after stronghold was stormed; castle after castle fell. Palestrina alone held out with intrepid obstinacy. Almost the whole Colonna house sought their last refuge in the walls of this redoubted fortress, which defied the siege, and wearied out the assailing forces. Guido di Montefeltro, a famous Ghibelline chieftain, had led a life of bloody and remorseless warfare, in which he was even more distinguished by craft than by valour. He had treated with contemptuous defiance all the papal censures which rebuked and would avenge his discomfiture of many papal generals, and the depression of the Guelfs. In an excess of devotion, now grown old, he had taken the habit and the vows of S. Francis, divorced his wife, given up his wealth, obtained remission of his sins, first from Celestine, afterwards from Boniface, and was living in quiet in a convent at Ancona. He was summoned from his cell on his allegiance to the Pope, and, with plenary absolution for his broken vows, commanded to inspect the walls and give his counsel for the best means of reducing the stubborn citadel. The old soldier surveyed the impregnable defences, and then, requiring still further absolution for any crime of which he might be guilty, uttered his memorable oracle, "Promise largely, keep little your promises."1-Milman, Latin Chris tianity. He Thus the Colonna were at last induced to open their gates, and proceeded in mourning robes to meet the Pope at Rieti. received them with outward forgiveness, and gave them absolution; but while they were detained as his guests, Ranieri, Bishop of Pisa, was sent to destroy Palestrina utterly, and was ordered to spare nothing except 'the cathedral of S. Agapetus.' Everything else was 'totali exterminio et ruinae exposita,' a plough was driven over the ruins, and the ground was sown with salt; even the famous marble staircase of a hundred steps, up which people could ride on horseback into the palace, perished. The Colonna family fled in all directions, but Sciarra Colonna returned just at the time when Boniface was quarrelling with Philippe le Bel, and, joining the French, captured and insulted the Pope on his throne at Anagni. Under Benedict XI., the ban against the Colonnesi was removed, and under Clement V. and John XXII. Stefano Colonna was allowed to rebuild Palestrina. In 1350 and 1354 the town was successfully defended against Rienzi, but in 1436, when the Colonnesi had rebelled against Eugenius IV., it was again besieged and taken by his legate Cardinal Vitelleschi, who during forty days completely razed it to the ground, not even the cathedral being spared this time. In 1447, Nicholas V. gave the family permission to rebuild Palestrina, but it never again became a place of any importance, and the only noteworthy event which has since occurred there has been the birth, in 1524, of the musician Pierluigi da Palestrina. The last Colonna of Palestrina was Francesco, who died in 1626, and in 1630 the town was sold to Carlo Barberini, brother of Urban VIII., and it still belongs to that family. Remains of ancient Praeneste meet us on every side, and it is typical of the place and its overflow of antiquities, that the curbstone at the cross-roads as we approach it is a headless ancient statue. In the walls of almost every house fragments of pillars and capitals may be discovered. And what is chiefly remarkable is that almost all the remains belong to one building, the gigantic Temple of Fortune, built by Sulla, which rose tier above tier, occupying the whole space now filled by the town, and was perhaps the largest building in Italy. The chief of these terraces are to be 1 Among the evil counsellors in Malebolge, swathed and tormented in the flame of his own consciousness, Dante saw the shade of Guido di Montefeltro, who had found that the Devil was a logician, and unable to reconcile the wish to repent with the wish to sin. So the cordelier's frock had to give place to the robe of flame, in which the unhappy warrior must rue eternally the crafty counsel, "Lunga promessa con l'attender corto." Inf. xxvii. observed below the Barberini garden, and above it, in the Via del Corso, Via del Borgo, Strada Nuova, and Via della Cortina. Behind Palestrina the mountain, bare and arid, rises rapidly. The town itself stands high. Virgil alludes to the cool climate of Praeneste: 'Quique altum Praeneste viri, quique arva Gabinae -'Aen.' vii. 682. The polygonal walls are made of Calcare dell' Apennino, from the hill itself. Those near the Porta del Sole are the best preserved. From this point they may be followed mounting by the Church of S. Cesareo. At the top the two sides of the girdle meet forming the arx, which in time became the centre of the Colonna power. Here is seen the little church Madonna della Costa itself standing on the polygonal work of old. There is not much to be seen in the lower town. In the piazza are some pillars of the Temple of Fortune built into a wall, and the small ugly Duomo, which has a low but graceful Gothic campanile. In the highest part of the town is the ill-kept upper Palazzo Barberini, of which the wing is used as a barrack, but which is for the most part as deserted and forlorn a specimen of an old Italian palace, once exceedingly magnificent, as can be found. Its front was built in a vast semicircle, so as to follow the plan of the sacrarium of the Goddess, and is approached by curved staircases enclosing an old well. The halls on the ground floor are painted by the Zucchari, but Apollo with his dove-drawn chariot, and Juno with her peacocks, are fading with the damp which streams from the walls. We asked the old housekeeper if she did not suffer from it. 'Ah, yes,' she said, 'all my hair has come off, and all my teeth have fallen out; for even when out of doors it is a caldo feroce, here within it is fresco assai.' She said she was a forestiera, for she came from Frascati, and though she had been here forty years, she could not accustom herself to the wickedness of the people—' Il mondo è bello, ma se fosse buono sarebbe meglio.' On the upper fioor is the famous mosaic, found amid the ruins of the Temple, representing the people and the beasts of Egypt in the annual overflow of the Nile (?) It is like a dictionary of the manners and customs and people of the Egypt of its time. Priests and priestesses, warriors, fishermen, shepherds, and huntsmen are equally represented, with all the peculiar animals of the country, and its plants, besides its temples, sacred trees, and houses. It is probably a copy of an earlier one, and made in the time of Domitian. The lettering is in Greek: and it was probably likewise made for quite another purpose than to decorate this temple. The mosaic was discovered in 1638 and it is quite perfect: the arms and the bees of the Barberini have been added in the corners. There is a grand view from the balcony of this room over the Volscian and Alban ranges, while the Hernican and Sabine hills are seen in profile. 'What is most remarkable in the palace of Palestrina is its incomparable situatiou on the height, where an ever-fresh and health-giving breeze blows, and whence the indwellers enjoy a view whose beauty is indescribable. Here a great part of Latium lies spread out beneath the eyes on one side, and of Tuscany or the patrimony of S. Peter's on the other, a great and classic district, whence rise the Latin and Volscian mountains, between which a wide plain opens, reaching to the distant glancing sea. There is the world-town Rome steeped in the mist; there stands the island-like Soracte; hard by rise the mighty chains of the Apennines; on the left, at their feet, is the deep beautiful valley of the Sacco, over which shine the gleaming hill-towns of Monte Fortino and Segni ; further are the heights of the Serra, and the airy chiefs of all these hills, whose varied forms lose themselves in the sunny atmosphere beyond Anagni and Ferentino. One looks upon these plains and hills, bedecked with towns and villages, of which most are rich in associations, and the early history of Rome, the story of the Empire, or of the middle ages, comes back to one's recollection, and when one feels that Umbria, the Sabina, Latium, and Equian territory, the land of the Hernicans, Etruria, the Volscian territory, the Alban hills, and the sea are united in one panorama, one appreciates the grandeur of this view. When a Colonna of the middle ages looked down from the windows of the old palace or castle, he might venture, as he gazed upon his possessions, to feel that he was the richest and mightiest chieftain in Latium.'-Gregorovius. The plain beneath the windows resembles one vast garden of fruit-trees, amongst which, about a mile from the town, near S. Maria della Villa (the name commemorating it), are remains of an immense villa of Hadrian amplified by Antoninus Pius. They are little worth visiting, yet here the Braschi Antinous and other important statues have been found, and smaller antiquities are dug up daily. The hillside above Palestrina is so bare, and the sun beats so pitilessly upon its white rocks, that it is best to make the ascent as soon as possible. It may be made on foot, or on donkeys. We were obliged to dismiss ours; and when we reproached its owner for having brought it, he coolly said: 'Yes, he knew that it was bad, and would certainly fall down, but he brought it because if a saddle was once put on it must be as much paid for as if it had been used. So few strangers came, that they must be taken advantage of.' We did not wonder that so few came amongst this rough population. Every woman and child you meet, however well dressed they may be, rushes out with defiant shout, demanding, not petitioning, Signor, dammi un baiocc.' From every window hands are outstretched. Stern-looking Sibyls scowl their demands at you, distaff in hand, upon their doorsteps. Dozens of ragged children yell and tumble over one another, and follow you for hours, dancing like frantic little demons, wherever you go. Some friends of ours ascended the mountain, followed by hampers well equipped for a picnic. They reached the top and were at once surrounded by the inhabitants of S. Pietro. The hampers were unpacked and the luncheon spread out, and-before any resistance could be offered or even suggested, the thronging swarms had descended upon the feast like locusts, and, in a moment, men and women tore up the chickens and swallowed the limbs at a mouthful, crunching bones and all like wild beasts, so that not the slightest vestige remained, and the rightful owners were left, dumbfoundered and famished |