drew out his heavy-armed Africans and Spaniards in a conspicuous position. * From this spot he dispatched his Balearic and light-armed troops round through the Gualandra heights to the right, so as to arrive unseen, and form an ambush amongst the broken acclivities which the road now passes, and to be ready to act upon the left flank and above the enemy, whilst the horse shut up the pass behind. Flaminius came to the lake near Borghetto at sunset; and, without sending any spies before him, marched through the pass the next morning before the day had quite broken, so that he perceived nothing of the horse and light troops above and about him, and saw only the heavy-armed Carthaginians in front on the hill of Torre.t The Consul began to draw out his army in the flat, and in the mean time the horse in ambush occupied the pass behind him at Borghetto. Thus the Romans were completely enclosed, having the lake on the right, the main army on the hill of Torre in front, the Gualandra hills filled with the light-armed on their left flank, and being prevented from receding by the cavalry, who, the farther they advanced, stopped up all the outlets in the rear. A fog rising from the lake now spread itself over the army of the Consul, but the high lands were in the sunshine, and all the different corps in ambush looked towards the hill of Torre for the order of attack. Hannibal gave the signal, and moved down from his post on the height. At the same moment all his troops on the eminences behind and in the flank of Flaminius, rushed forward as it were with one accord into the plain. The Romans, who were forming their array in the mist, suddenly heard the shouts of the enemy amongst them, on every side; and, before they could fall into their ranks, or draw their swords, or see by whom they were attacked, felt at once that they were surrounded and lost. There are two little rivulets which run from the Gualandra into the lake. The traveller crosses the first of these at about a mile after he comes into the plain, and this divides the Tuscan from the Papal territories. The second, about a quarter of a mile further on, is called "the bloody rivulet ;" and the peasants point out an open spot to the left between the "Sanguinetto" and the hills, which, they say, was the principal scene of slaughter. The other part of the plain is covered with thickset olive trees in corn-grounds, and is no where quite level except near the edge of the lake. It is, indeed, most probable that the battle was fought near this end of the valley, for the six thousand Romans who, at the beginning of the action, broke through the enemy, escaped to the summit of an eminence which must have been in this quarter, otherwise they would have had to traverse the whole plain, and to pierce through the main army of Hannibal. The Romans fought desperately for three hours, but the death of Flaminius was the signal for a general dispersion. The Carthaginian horse then burst in upon the fugitives, and the lake, the marsh about Borghetto, but chiefly the plain of the Sanguinetto, and the passes of the Gualandra, were strewed with dead. Near some old walls on a bleak ridge to the left above the rivulet many human bones have been repeatedly found, and this has confirmed the pretensions and the name of the 66 stream of blood." Every district of Italy has its hero. In the north some painter is the usual genius of the place, and the foreign Julio Romano more than divides Mantua with her native Virgil. To the south we hear of Roman names. Near Thrasimene tradition is still faithful to the fame of an enemy, and Hannibal the Carthaginian is the only ancient name remembered on the banks of the Perugian lake. Flaminius is unknown; but the postilions on that road have been taught to show the very spot where il Console Romano was slain. Of all who fought and fell in the battle of Thrasimene, the historian himself has, besides the generals and Maharbal, preserved indeed only a single name. You overtake the Carthaginian again on the same road to Rome. The antiquary, that is, the hostler of the post-house at Spoleto, * Τὸν μὲν κατὰ πρόσωπον τῆς πορείας λόφον αὐτὸς κατελάβετο, καὶ τοὺς Λίβυας καὶ τοὺς Ιβηρας ἔχων ἐπ' аUTOυ KаTEσтρаTomidevos. Hist. lib. iii. cap. 83. The account in Polybius is not so easily reconcileable with present appearances as that in Livy; he talks of hills to the right and left of the pass and valley; but when Flaminius entered, he had the lake at the right of both. "A tergo et super caput decepere insidiæ." Tit. Liv., &c. ↑ About the middle of the XIIth century, the coins of Mantua bore on one side the image and figure of Virgil. Zecca d'Italia, pl. xvii. i. 6... Voyage dans le Milanais, &c., par A. Z. Millin, tom. ii. p. 294. Paris, 1817. tells you that his town repulsed the victorious enemy, and shows you the gate still called Porto di Annibale. It is hardly worth while to remark that a French travelwriter, well known by the name of the President Dupaty, saw Thrasimene in the lake of Bolsena, which lay conveniently on his way from Sienna to Rome. Note 36. Stanza Ixvi. But thou, Ciitumnus ! No book of travels has omitted to expatiate on the temple of the Clitumnus, between Foligno and Spoleto : and no site, or scenery, even in Italy, is more worthy a description. For an account of the dilapidation of this temple, the reader is referred to Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold. Note 37. Stanza Ixxi. Charming the eye with dread,-a matchless cataract. I saw the "Cascata del marmore" of Terni twice, at different periods; once from the summit of the precipice, and again from the valley below. The lower view is far to be preferred, if the traveller has time for one only: but in any point of view, either from above or below, it is worth all the cascades and torrents of Switzerland put together; the Staubach, Reichenbach, Pisse Vache, fall of Arpenaz, etc., are rills in comparative appearance. Of the fall of Schaffhausen I cannot speak, not yet having seen it. Note 38. Stanza lxxii. An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge. Of the time, place, and qualities of this kind of Iris, the reader may have seen a short account in a note to Manfred. The fall looks so much like "the hell of waters," that Addison believed the descent to be the gulf by which Alecto plunged into the infernal regions. It is singular enough that two of the finest cascades in Europe should be artificial-this of the Velino, and the one at Tivoli The traveller is strongly recommended to trace the Velino, at least as high as the little lake called Pie' di Lup. The Reatine territory was the Italian Tempe,* and the ancient naturalist, amongst other beautiful varieties, remarked the daily rainbows of the lake Velinus. A scholar of great name has devoted a treatise to this district alone.‡ Note 39. Stanza Ixxiii. The thundering lauwine. In the greater part of Switzerland the avalanches are known by the name of lauwine. Note 40. Stanza lxxv. -I abhorr'd Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake, The drill'd dull lesson, forced down word by word. I These stanzas may probably remind the reader of Ensign Northerton's remarks -“D―n Homo," etc., but the reasons for our dislike are not exactly the same. wish to express, that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend the beauty; that we learn by rote before we can get by heart; that the freshness is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened and destroyed, by the didactic anticipation, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand the power of compositions which it requires an acquaintance with life, as well as Latin and Greek, to relish or to reason upon. For the same reason we never can be aware of the fulness of some of the finest passages of Shakspeare (" to be or not to be," for instance), from the habit of having them hammered into us at eight years old, as an exercise, not of mind but of memory: so that when we are old enough to enjoy them, the taste is gone, and the appetite palled.—In some parts of the continent, young persons are taught from more common authors, and do not read the best classics till their maturity. I certainly do not speak on this point from any pique or aversion towards the place of my education. I was not a slow, though an idle boy; and I believe no one could, or can be, more attached to Harrow than I have always "Reatini me ad sua Tempe duxerunt." Cicer. Epist. ad Attic. xv. lib. iv. been, and with reason ;-a part of the time passed there was the happiest of my life; and my preceptor (the Rev. Dr. Joseph Drury) was the best and worthiest friend I ever possessed, whose warnings I have remembered but too well, though too latewhen I have erred, and whose counsels I have but followed when I have done well or wisely. If ever this imperfect record of my feelings towards him should reach his eyes, let it remind him of one who never thinks of him but with gratitude and veneration of one who would more gladly boast of having been his pupil, if, by more closely following his injunctions, he could reflect any honour upon his in structor. Note 41. Stanza Ixxix. The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now. For a comment on this and the two following stanzas, the reader may consult Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold. Note 42. Stanza lxxxii. The trebly hundred triumphs! Orosius gives three hundred and twenty for the number of triumphs. He is followed by Panvinius; and Panvinius by Mr. Gibbon and the modern writers. Note 43. Stanza Ixxxiii. Oh thou, whose chariot roll'd on fortune's wheel, &c. Certainly, were it not for these two traits in the life of Sylla, alluded to in this stanza, we should regard him as a monster unredeemed by any admirable quality. The atonement of his voluntary resignation of empire may perhaps be accepted by us, as it seems to have satisfied the Romans, who if they had not respected must have destroyed him. There could be no mean, no division of opinion; they must have all thought, like Eucrates, that what had appeared ambition was a love of glory, and that what had been mistaken for pride was a real grandeur of soul.* Note 44. Stanza lxxxvi. And laid him with the earth's preceding clay. On the 3d of September, Cromwell gained the victory of Dunbar; a year afterwards he obtained "his crowning mercy of Worcester;" and a few years after on the same day which he had ever esteemed the most fortunate for him, died. Note 45. Stanza lxxxvii. And thou, dread statue! still existent in The projected division of the Spada Pompey has already been recorded by the historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Mr. Gibbon found it in the Memorials of Flaminius Vacca,† and it may be added to his mention of it that Pope Julius III. gave the contending owners five hundred crowns for the statue: and presented it to Cardinal Capo di Ferro, who had prevented the judgment of Solomon from being executed upon the image. In a more civilized age this statue was exposed to an actual operation: for the French, who acted the Brutus of Voltaire in the Coliseum, resolved that their Cæsar should fall at the base of that Pompey, which was supposed to have been sprinkled with the blood of the original dictator. The nine-foot hero was therefore removed to the arena of the amphitheatre, and to facilitate its transport suffered the temporary amputation of its right arm. The republican tragedians had to plead that the arm was a restoration; but their accusers do not believe that the integrity of the statue would have protected it. The love of finding every coincidence has discovered the true Cæsarian ichor in a stain near the right knee; but colder criticism has rejected not only the blood but the portrait, and assigned the globe of power rather to the first the emperors than to the last of the republican masters of Rome. Winkelmann‡ is loth to allow an heroic statue of a *“Seigneur, vous changez toutes mes idées de la façon dont je vous vois agir. Je croyais que vous aviez de l'ambition, mais aucun amour pour la gloire: je voyais bien que votre ame était haute; mais je ne soupçonnais pas qu'elle fût grande."-Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate. + Memorie, num. lvii. pag. 9, ap. Montfaucon, Diarium Italicum. * Storia delle arti, &c., lib. ix. cap. i. pp. 321, 322, tom. ii. 14 Roman citizen, but the Grimani Agrippa, a contemporary almost, is heroic; and naked Roman figures were only very rare, not absolutely forbidden. The face accords much better with the "hominem integrum et castum et gravem,' "* than with any of the busts of Augustus, and is too stern for him who was beautiful, says Suetonius, at all periods of his life. The pretended likeness to Alexander the Great cannot be discerned, but the traits resemble the medal of Pompey.† The objectionable globe may not have been an ill-applied flattery to him who found Asia Minor the boundary, and left it the centre of the Roman empire. It seems that Winkelmann has made a mistake in thinking that no proof of the identity of this statue with that which received the bloody sacrifice can be derived from the spot where it was discovered. Flaminius Vacca says sotto una cantina, and this cantina is known to have been in the Vicolo de Leutari near the Cancellaria, a position corresponding exactly to that of the Janus before the basilica of Pompey's theatre, to which Augustus transferred the statue after the curia was either burnt or taken down.§ Part of the Pompeian shade,** the portico, existed in the beginning of the XVth century, and the atrium was still called Satrum. So says Blondus. At all events, so imposing is the stern majesty of the statue, and so memorable is the story, that the play of the imagination leaves no room for the exercise of the judgment, and the fiction, if a fiction it is, operates on the spectator with an effect not less powerful than truth. Note 46. Stanza lxxxviii. And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome! Ancient Rome, like modern Sienna, abounded most probably with images of the foster-mother of her founder; but there were two she-wolves of whom history makes particular mention. One of these, of brass in ancient work, was seen by Dionysius‡‡ at the temple of Romulus under the Palatine, and is universally believed to be that mentioned by the Latin historian, as having been made from the money collected by a fine on usurers, and as standing under the Ruminal fig-tree. §§ The other was that which Cicero*** has celebrated both in prose and verse, and which the historian Dion also records as having suffered the same accident as is alluded to by the orator.+++ The question agitated by the antiquaries in whether the wolf now in the conservator's palace is that of Livy and Dionysius, or that of Cicero,i or whether it is neither one nor the other. The earlier writers differ as much as the *Cicer. epist. ad Atticum, xi. 6. + Published by Causeus in his Museum Romanum. Storia delle arti, &c., ibid. § Sueton. in vit. August. cap. 31, and in vit. C. J. Cæsar. cap. 88. Appian says it was burnt down. See a note of Pitiscus to Suetonius, pag. 224. **"Tu modo Pompeia lenta spatiare sub umbra." Ovid. Ar. Aman. ++ Roma Ristaurata, lib. ii. fol. 31. Η Χάλκεα ποιήματα παλαιᾶς ἐργασίας. Antiq. Rom. lib. 1. §§"Ad ficum Ruminalem simulacra infantium conditorum urbis sub uberibus lupa posuerunt." Liv. Hist. lib. x. cap. lxix. This was in the year U. C. 455, or 457. ***"Tum statua Nattæ, tum simulacra Deorum, Romulusque et Remus, cum altrice bellua vi fulminis icti conciderunt." De Divinat. ii 20. "Tactus est ille etiam qui hanc urbem condidit Romulus, quem inauratum in Capitolio parvum atque lactantem, uberibus lupinis inhiantem fuisse meministis." Catilin. iii. 8. "Hic sylvestris erat Romani nominis altrix Quæ tum cum pueris flammato fulminis ictu De Consulatu, lib. ii. (lib. i. de Divinat. cap. ii.) In † Εν γὰρ τῷ καπητωλίῳ ἀνδριάντες τε πολλοὶ ὑπὸ κεραυνῶν συνεχωνεύθησαν, καὶ ἀγάλματα ἄλλα τε, καὶ Διὸς ἐπὶ κίονος ὑδρυμένου, εἰκών τέ τις λυκαίνης σύν τε τῷ Ρώμῳ καὶ σὺν τῷ Ῥωμύλῳ ἱδρυμένη ἐπίση. Dion. Hist. lib. xxxvii. p. 37, edit. Rob. Steph. 1548. He goes on to mention that the letters of the columns on which the laws were written were liquified and become duvdpá. All that the Romans did was to erect a large statue to Jupiter, looking towards the east; no mention is afterwards made of the wolf. This happened in A. U. C. 689. The Abate Fea, in noticing this passage of Dion (Storia delle arti, etc., tom. i. p. 202, note x.), says, Non ostante, aggiunge Dione, che fosse ben-fermata (the wolf), by which it is clear the Abate translated the Xylandre-Leuclavian version, which puts quamvis stabilita for the original ¿ópuμén, a word that does not mean ben-fermata, but only raised, as may be distinctly seen from another passage of the same Dion : Ηβουλήθη μὲν οὖν ὁ ̓Αγρίππας καὶ τὸν Αὔγουστον ἐνταῦθα ιδρύσαι. Hist. lib. vi. Dion says that Agrippa "wished to raise a statue of Augustus in the Pantheon." * moderns: Lucius Faunus says that it is the one alluded to by both, which is impossible, and also by Virgil, which may be. Fulvius Ursinust calls it the wolf of Dionysius, and Marlianus ‡ talks of it as the one mentioned by Cicero. To him Rycquius tremblingly assents. § Nardini is inclined to suppose it may be one of the many wolves preserved in ancient Rome; but of the two rather bends to the Ciceronian statue.** Montfaucontt mentions it as a point without doubt. Of the later writers, the decisive Winkelmann # proclaims it as having been found at the church of St. Theodore, where, or near where, was the temple of Romulus, and consequently makes it the wolf of Dionysius. His authority is Lucius Faunus, who, however, only says that it was placed, not found, at the Ficus Ruminalis by the Comitium, by which he does not seem to allude to the church of Saint Theodore. Rycquius was the first to make the mistake, and Winkelmann followed Rycquius. Flaminius Vacca tells quite a different story, and says he had heard the wolf with the twins was found §§ near the arch of Septimius Severus. The commentator on Winkelmann is of the same opinion with that learned person, and is incensed at Nardini for not having remarked that Cicero, in speaking of the wolf struck with lightning in the Capitol, makes use of the past tense. But, with the Abate's leave, Nardini does not positively assert the statue to be that mentioned by Cicero, and, if he had, the assumption would not perhaps have been so exceedingly indiscreet. The Abate himself is obliged to own that there are marks very like the scathing of lightning on the hinder legs of the present wolf! and to get rid of this, adds, that the wolf seen by Dionysius might have been also struck by lightning, or otherwise injured. Let us examine the subject by a reference to the words of Cicero. The orator in two places seems to particularize the Romulus and the Remus, especially the first, which his audience remembered to have been in the Capitol, as being struck by lightning. In his verses he records that the twins and wolf both fell, and that the latter left behind the marks of her feet. Cicero does not say that the wolf was consumed: and Dion only mentions that it fell down, without alluding, as the Abate has made him, to the force of the blow, or the firmness with which it had been fixed. The whole strength, therefore, of the Abate's argument, hangs upon the past tense; which, however, may be somewhat diminished by remarking that the phrase only shows that the statue was not then standing in its former position. Winkelmann has observed, that the present twins are modern; and it is equally clear that there are marks of gilding on the wolf, which might therefore be supposed to make part of the ancient group. It is known that the sacred images of the Capitol were not destroyed nor even injured by time or accident, but were put into certain underground depositories called favissæ.*** It may be thought possible that the wolf had been so deposited, and had been replaced in some conspicuous situation when the Capitol was rebuilt by Vespasian. Rycquius, without mentioning his authority, tells, that it was trans *"In eadem porticu ænea lupa, cujus uberibus Romulus ac Remus lactantes inhiant, conspicitur : de hac Cicero et Virgilius semper intellexere. Livius hoc signum ab Ædilibus ex pecuniis quibus mulctati essent fœneratores, positum innuit. Antea in Comitiis ad Ficum Ruminalem, quo loco pueri fuerant expositi locatum pro certo est." Luc. Fauni, de Antiq. Urb. Rom. lib. ii. cap. vii. ap. Sallengre, tom. i. pag. 217. In his XVIIth chapter he repeats that the statues were there, but not that they were found there. + Ap. Nardini, Roma Vetus, lib. v. cap. iv. Marliani Urb. Rom. Topograph. lib. ii. cap. ix. He mentions another wolf and twins in the Vatican, lib. v. cap. xxi. § "Non desunt qui hanc ipsam esse putent, quam adpinximus, quæ e comitio in Basilicam Lateranam, cum nonnullis aliis antiquitatum reliquiis, atque hinc in Capitolium postea relata sit, quamvis Marlianus antiquam Capitolinam esse maluit a Tullio descriptam, cui ut in re nimis dubia, trepide assentimur." Just. Rycquii de Capit. Roman. Comm. cap. xxiv. pag. 250, edit. Lugd.-Bat. 1696. ** Nardini, Roma Vetus, lib. v. cap. iv. ++ "Lupa hodieque in capitolinis prostat ædibus, cum vestigio fulminis quo ictam narrat Cicero." Diarium Italic. tom. i. p. 174. # Storia delle arti, etc., lib. iii. cap. iii. sect. ii. note 10. Winkelmann has made a strange blunder in the note, by saying the Ciceronian wolf was not in the Capitol, and that Dion was wrong in saying so. $$ "Intesi dire, che l'Ercole di bronzo, che oggi si trova nella sala del Campidoglio, fu trovato nel foro Romano appresso l'arco di Settimio; e vi fu trovata anche la lupa di bronzo che allatta Romolo e Remo, e stà nella Loggia de' conservatori." Flam. Vacca, Memorie, num. iii. pag. i. ap. Montfaucon. Diar. Ital. tom. i. *** Luc. Faun. ibid. |