fields with the ritual of the Litania Major in Rogation Week he is doing very much what the Fratres Arvales did in the infancy of Rome and with the same object. In other countries, England among them, the same custom was taken up by the Church, which rightly appreciated its utility, both spiritual and material; the bounds of the parish were fixed in the memory of the young, and the wrath of God was averted, by an act of duty, from man, cattle, and crops.'-Cf. Georg., i. 338; Cato R.R., 141. In Imperial days the cult and confraternity contracted a fresh character by undertaking special ceremonies and sacrifices for the health and preservation of the Imperial family. Henceforward, the Emperor was always a member of the Arvales. The 'Cæsareum,' a ruined rotunda, once covered with marble, and having statues in its niches of illustrious members of the Brotherhood, which we see here refers to this elaboration of the ritual. Here sacrifices were offered to the deified Augustus, after which a banquet was held, at which were eaten among other ritual foods, 'panes laureatos,' or holy loaves-i.e. the laurel was the essential purifier. This edifice is reduced to base uses as a 'cantina.' Nearer the line stand remains of the pro-style Temple of Dea Dia; once highly enriched with sculpture, and upon whose walls were fastened the tables on which were inscribed the Acta Arvalia, of which numerous invaluable fragments were found by Prof. Henzen (between 1866-69) during his systematic excavation of the site; and a still greater number have been brought to light here and elsewhere since those days. The sacred wood, or Lucus,' in which the Cæsareum stands, practically represents the formal grove of ancient days. Within it also are seen vestiges of the Circus; with its 'Carceres,' and main entrance, which belong to the Vigna Molinari. It is considered by Prof. Lanciani a remarkable fact that the ancient grove should continue to be called Bosco Sacro'; but the writer has found the Diospyros Lotus-the sacred Lotus of the Vestalsstill denominated by country-folk Legno Santo,' and crosses of it used as a charm. This sacred wood was given to Pope Damasus (366-384) by the Emperors. He erected on the abandoned site an oratorio without delay over catacombs already in existence some eighty years, and containing the tombs of S. Simplicius and Faustinus. These were denominated Cemiterium Generosæ ad Sextum Philippi-i.e. at the sixth mile of the road. The tetrastylon, or chapter-house of the Arvales, is found on the slope by the Casino Ceccarelli. The Domus Arvalium' is not yet determined; but their baths occur between this and the Tiber-bank. The Tiber now winds sluggishly through a flat desert overgrown with thistle and asphodel, porazzi the Italians call them on account of their unpleasant smell. On the left, near Dragoncello, where Nibby imagines the original mouth of the Tiber to have been, begins the chain of low hills called Monte di Decima (from the neighbouring tributary), extending in a slanting direction to the sea near Porto d' Anzio, and which he believed to have been once the coast-line of Latium. On the right is an open wilderness, where great herds of cattle graze undisturbed beside the Rio Valera. It is the country where the peasant-sufferings of the summer are described in the Improvisatore. 'The stranger from beyond the mountains, who, full of love for art and antiquity, approaches the city of the Tiber for the first time, sees a vast page of the world in this parched-up desert; the isolated mounds are all holy ciphers, entire chapters of the world's history. Painters sketch the solitary arch of a ruined aqueduct, and the shepherd who sits beneath it with his flock figures on the paper; they give the golden thistle in the foreground, and people say that it is a beautiful picture. With what an entirely different feeling my companion and I regarded the immense plain ! The burnt-up grass; the unhealthy summer air, which always brings to the dwellers of the Campagna fevers and malignant sickness, were doubtless the shadow side of his passing observations. To me there is something novel in all; I rejoiced to see the beautiful mountains, which in every shade of violet-colour inclosed one side of the plain; the wild buffalo, and the yellow Tiber, on whose shore oxen with their long horns went bending under the yoke, and drawing the boat against the stream. Around us we saw only short yellow grass, and tall, half-withered thistles. We passed a crucifix, which had been raised as a sign that some one had been murdered there, and near to it hung a portion of the murderer's body, an arm and a foot; it was frightful to me, and all the more so as it stood not far from my new home. This was neither more nor less than one of the old decayed tombs, of which so many remain here from the most ancient times. Most of the shepherds of the Campagna dwell in these, because they find in them all that they require for shelter, nay, even for comfort. They excavate one of the vaults, open a few holes, lay on a roof of reeds, and the dwelling is ready. Ours stood upon a height, and consisted of two stories. Two Corinthian pillars at the narrow doorway bore witness to the antiquity of the building, as well as the three broad buttresses to its after repairs. Perhaps it had been used in the Middle Ages as a fort; a hole in the wall above the door served as a window; one half of the roof was composed of a sort of reed and of twigs; the other half consisted of living bushes, from among which the honeysuckle hung down in rich masses over the broken wall. The house was, as has been already said, in the very ancient times, a family burial-place, which consisted of a large room, with many small niches, side by side, in two rows, one above the other, all covered over with the most artistical mosaic. Now each was put to very different purposes; the one was a store-room, another held pots and pans, and a third was the fire-place, where the beans were cooked. 'When rain began, it sometimes continued for a whole week, and imprisoned us in the narrow room, in which was a half twilight, although the door stood open when the wind blew the rain the other way. I had to rock the baby which lay in the cradle. Domenica spun with her spindle, told me tales of the robbers of the Campagna, who, however, did no harm; sang pious songs to me, taught me new prayers, and related to me new legends of saints which I had not heard before. Onions and bread were our customary food, and I thought them good; but I grew weary of myself shut up in that narrow room; and then Domenica just outside the door dug a little canal, a little winding Tiber, where the yellow water flowed slowly away. Little sticks and reeds were my boats, which I made to sail past Rome to Ostia; but, when the rain beat in too violently, the door was obliged to be shut, and we sat almost in the dark. Domenica spun, and I thought about the beautiful pictures in the convent church; seemed to see Jesus tossing past me in the boat; the Madonna on the cloud borne upwards by angels, and the tombstones with the garlanded heads. 'When the rainy season was over, the heavens showed for whole months their unchangeable blue. I then obtained leave to go out, but not too far, nor too near the river, because the soft ground might so easily fall in with me, said Domenica; many buffaloes also grazed there, which were wild and dangerous, but, nevertheless, these had for me a peculiar and strange interest. The something demon-like in the look of the buffalo-the strange, red fire which gleamed in its eyeballs-awoke in me a feeling like that which drives the bird into the fangs of the snake. Their wild running, swifter than the speed of a horse, their mutual combats, where force meets with force, attracted my whole attention. We "The sun burnt hotter day by day its beams were like a sea of fire which streamed over the Campagna. The stagnant water infected the air. could only go out in the morning and evening. I thought about the delicious green water-melons which lay one on another, divided in halves, and showed the purple-red flesh with the black seeds: my lips were doubly parched with thinking of these. The sun burned perpendicularly; my shadow seemed as if it would vanish under my feet. The buffaloes lay like dead masses upon the burnt-up grass, or, excited to madness, flew, with the speed of arrows, round in great circles. Thus my soul conceived an idea of the traveller's suffering in the burning deserts of Africa. Not a During two months we lay there like a wreck in the world's sea. single living creature visited us. All business was done in the night, or else in the early hours of morning. The unhealthy atmosphere and the scorching heat excited fever-fire in my blood; not a single drop of anything cold could be had for refreshment; every marsh was dried up; warm, yellow water flowed sleepily in the bed of the Tiber; the juice of the melon was warm; even wine, although it lay hidden among stones and rubbish, tasted sour and half-boiled, and not a cloud, not a single cloud, was to be seen on the horizon -day and night always the everlasting, never-changing blue. Every evening and morning we prayed for rain, or else a fresh breeze; every evening and morning Domenica looked to the mountains to see if no cloud raised itself, but night alone brought shade-the sultry shade of night; the sirocco alone blew through the hot atmosphere for two long, long months. 'At the sun's rise and setting alone was there a breath of fresh air; but a dulness, a death-like lethargy, produced by the heat, and the frightful Flies and all weariness which it occasioned, oppressed my whole being. kinds of tormenting insects, which seemed destroyed by the heat, awoke at the first breath of air to redoubled life. They fell upon us in myriads with their poison-stings; the buffaloes often looked as if they were covered over with this buzzing swarm, which beset them as if they were carrion, until, tormented to madness, they betook themselves to the Tiber, and rolled themselves in the yellow water. The Roman, who in the hot summer days groans in the almost expiring streets, and crawls along by the house-sides, as if he would drink up the shadow which is cast down from the walls, has still no idea of the sufferings in the Campagna, where every breath which he draws is sulphurous poisonous fire; where insects and crawling things, like demons, torment him who is condemned to live in this sea of flame.'-Hans Christian Andersen. summer. This is no bad word-picture of peasant life during a Campagna It is a life of absolute solitude, so thin is the population, so widely scattered the huts of the peasantry. Yet the scenes amid which they live, and the picturesqueness of that part of religion which forms their sole idea of literature and art, make their life poetical in spite of all its misery, and the Italian peasant sometimes has a keen perception of the beauties of Nature, which would be This is seen in incomprehensible even to an English farmer. nothing so much as in the songs, which are for ever on the lips of the people as they work. Here is a specimen given in the Pilgrimage of the Tiber. La prima volta che m' innamorai Albero che l' avevo tanto a caro, Morte, vieni da me quando ti pare, When first the sweet pleasure of loving I knew, In the spring I returned to my vineyard, and found My beautiful peach, that to me was so dear, So anxiously tended and nourished with pain, Come, Death, when thou wilt; all my pleasures are o'er, As we approach the salt-marshes of Ostia, 'Dove l'acqua di Tevere s' insala.' -Dante, 'Purg.' ii. 101. the river bends considerably to the right, leaving, to the left, Ostia, which already in the days of Strabo was called 'a city without a port, on account of the alluvial deposits continually brought down by the Tiber.' Julius Caesar was the first to form a plan for a new artificial port, but it was Claudius who carried out the work, and who, finding it hopeless to attempt to cleanse the original port of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, constructed an entirely new harbour two miles north of the old one, opening upon the sea, and protected by two long banks, which had an insulated breakwater between them, carrying a lighthouse. 'Claudius formed the harbour at Ostia, by carrying out circular arms on the right and on the left, with a mole protecting, in deep water, the entrance of the port. To secure the foundation of this mole, he sank the vessel in which the great obelisk 2 had been brought from Egypt, and built upon piles a very lofty tower, in imitation of the Pharos at Alexandria, on which lights were burnt to direct mariners in the night.'-Suetonius, Claud.' xx. This harbour is described by Juvenal : Tandem intrat positas inclusa per aequora moles, Quos natura dedit-sed trunca puppe magister 1 Plutarch, Caes. 58. -Sat. xii. 75. 2 Now in front of S. Peter's. and by Valerius Flaccus : 'Non ita Tyrrhenus stupet Ioniusque magister It is now not easily identifiable. -Argon. vii. 83. In course of years the port of Claudius became also choked, and a new harbour, hexagonal in form, was begun in A.D. 103, by Trajan, united with the port of Claudius on the north-west, and with the Tiber by a canal, Fossa Trajana, which, with the ever-increasing filling up of the old bed of the river, has become the Tiber itself, and is now the only branch which is navigable. The port was surrounded by wharfs and warehouses. The new harbour became known as Portus Ostiensis, Portus Urbis, or, simply, Portus. It was chiefly used for the vast importation of corn for the supply of the capital, which, as its population increased, was almost entirely dependent upon foreign produce. Minucius Felix, who lived A.D. 207, describes Porto as a place where the spirit enjoyed repose and the body recovered health. Romans went there to give themselves up to the delight of treading the sand of the seashore, which yielded softly beneath their feet, and to breathe that light breeze which restored lost vigour to their fatigued limbs.' The importance of the harbour was realised when Rome became attacked by barbarian forces, and especially in A.D. 409, when the Gothic king Alaric, by making himself master of Portus, and so cutting off the supplies, obliged the Roman senate to accept whatever terms he chose to dictate. Rome was in similar distress under Belisarius, when Vitiges, in 537, seized Portus. In the 10th century, the port of Trajan had been so neglected and allowed to fill up, that it had become a mere pool, entirely separated from the sea, and only connected with the Tiber by a ditch. This drove trade for a time into the older branch of the river, and gave a passing importance to mediaeval Ostia, where a fortress had been built by Gregory IV. (827-44), in the preceding century. Tassoni describes in his time 'Il porto di Trajano Lacero e guasto in misera ruina.' But in 1612 the canal of Trajan was once more cleared out by Fontana under Paul V., and connected with a little port, called Fiumicino, and has ever since been the only way by which vessels can ascend the Tiber, the other branch having been almost entirely closed up by sand near its mouth. The imperial palace of Portus was long entirely lost, but was rediscovered by a man hunting a badger, who, upon following it into the hole down which it disappeared, found himself in a vast hall, which led to a labyrinth of other halls and corridors. He lost the badger. In the last century much of the building was standing, and was known as Il Palazzo delle Cento Colonne. The ruins have |