vereign uniting exactly the opposite characteris- of the attributes ascribed to it at present visible tics, than one possessed of all the happy quali- The nine Muses could hardly have stood in ties ascribed to this emperor. "When he mount-niches; and Juvenal certainly does not allude ed the throne," says the historian Dion, "he was to any individual cave. *) Nothing can be calstrong in body, he was vigorous in mind; age lected from the satirist but that somewhere e had impaired none of his faculties; he was al- the Porta Capena was a spot in which it was together free from envy and from detraction; he supposed Numa held nightly consultations viti honoured all the good and he advanced them; his nymph, and where there was a grove and i and on this account they could not be the ob- sacred fountain, and fanes once consecrated ta Ject of his fear, or of his hate; he never listened the Muses; and that from this spot there was a to informers; he gave not way to his anger; he descent into the valley of Egeria, where were abstained equally from unfair exactions and un- several artificial caves. It is clear that the sixJust punishments; he had rather be loved as a tues of the Muses made no part of the decita man than honoured as a sovereign; he was af- tion which the satirist thought misplaced in fable with his people, respectful to the senate, these caves; for he expressly assigns other fan and universally beloved by both; he inspired (delubra) to these divinities above the valley, none with dread but the enemies of his country." and moreover tells us, that they had been ejected to make room for the Jews. In fact, the little temple, now called that of Bacchus, was formerly thought to belong to the Muses, and Nardini places them in a poplar-grove, which was in his time above the valley. Rienzi, last of Romans! [p. 49. St. 114. The name and exploits of Rienzi must be familiar to the reader of Gibbon. Egeria! sweet creation of some heart Which found no mortal resting-place so fair As thine ideal breast. (p. 49. St. 115. The respectable authority of Flaminius Vacca would incline us to believe in the claims of the Egerian grotto. He assures us that he saw an Inscription in the pavement, stating that the fountain was that of Egeria dedicated to the nymphs. The inscription is not there at this day; but Montfaucon quotes two lines *) of Ovid from a stone in the Villa Giustiniani, which he seems to think had been brought from the same grotto. This grotto and valley were formerly frequented in summer, and particularly the first Sunday in May, by the modern Romans, who attached a salubrious quality to the fountain which trickles from an orifice at the bottom of the vault, and, overflowing the little pools, creeps down the matted grass into the brook below. The brook is the Ovidian Almo, whose name and qualities are lost in the modern Aquataccio. The valley itself is called Valle di Caffarelli, from the dukes of that name who made over their fountain to the Pallavicini, with sixty rubbia of adjoining land. There can be little doubt that this long dell is the Egerian valley of Juvenal, and the pausingplace of Umbricius, notwithstanding the generality of his commentators have supposed the descent of the satirist and his friend to have been Into the Arician grove, where the nymph met Hippolitus, and where she was more peculiarly worshipped. The step from the Porta Capena to the Alban hill, fifteen miles distant, would be too considerable, unless we were to believe in the wild conjecture of Vossius, who makes that gate travel from its present station, where he pretends it was during the reign of the Kings, as far as the Arician grove, and then makes it recede to Its old site with the shrinking city. The tufo, or pumice, which the poet prefers to marble, is the substance composing the bank in which the grotto is sunk. The modern topographers find in the grotto the statue of the nymph and nine niches for the Muses, and a late traveller has discovered that the cave is restored to that simplicity which the poet regretted had been exchanged for injudicious ornament. But the headless statue is palpably rather a male than a nymph, and has none *) In villa Justiniana exstat ingens lapis quadratus solidus in quo sculpta hæc duo Ovidii carmina sunt: Egeria est quæ præbet aquas dea grata Camœnis. Qui lapis videtur ex eodem Egeriæ fonte, aut It is probable, from the inscription and posttion, that the cave now shown may be one of the "artificial caverns," of which, indeed, there is another a little way higher up the valley, under a tuft of alder bushes: but a single grotta of Egeria is a mere modern invention, grafted upon the application of the epithet Egerian to these nymphea in general, and which might send us to look for the haunts of Numa upon the banks of the Thames. Our English Juvenal was not seduced into mistranslation by his acquaintance with Pope: he carefully preserves the correct plural Thence slowly winding down the vale we view The Egerian grots; oh, how unlike the trael The valley abounds with springs, and over these springs, which the Muses might haunt from their neighbouring groves, Egeria presided: hence she was said to supply them with water; and she was the nymph of the grottos through which the fountains were taught to flow. The whole of the monuments in the vicinity of the Egerian valley have received names at will, which have been changed at will. Venuti owns he can see no traces of the temples of Jove, Saturn, Juno, Venus, and Diana, which Nardini found, or hoped to find. The mutaterium of Caracalla's circus, the temple of Honour and Virtue, the temple of Bacchus, and above all, the temple of the god Rediculus, are the antiquaries' despair. The circus of Caracalla depends on a medal of that emperor cited by Fulvius Ursinus, of which the reverse shows a circus, supposed, however, by some to represent the Circus Maximus. It gives a very good idea of that place of exercise. The soil has been but little raised, if we may judge from the small cellular structure at the end of the Spina, which was probably the chapel of the god Consus. This cell is half beneath the soil, as it must have been in the cir cus itself, for Dionysius could not be persuaded to believe that this divinity was the Roman Neptune, because his altar was underground. I see before me the Gladiator He. -He, their stre, Yet let us ponder boldly. (p. 50. St. 127. "At all events," says the author of the Aca(p. 52. St. 140. demical Questions, "I trust, whatever may be Whether the wonderful statue which suggested the fate of my own speculations, that philosophy this image be a laquearian gladiator, which in will regain that estimation which it ought to spite of Winkelmann's criticism has been stoutly possess. The free and philosophic spirit of our maintained, or whether it be a Greek herald, as nation has been the theme of admiration to the that great antiquary positively asserted *) or world. This was the proud distinction of Eng- whether it is to be thought a Spartan or barlishmen, and the luminous source of all their barian shield-bearer, according to the opinion of glory. Shall we then forget the manly and dig- his Italian editor, it must assuredly seem a nified sentiments of our ancestors, to prate in copy of that masterpiece of Ctesilaus which rethe language of the mother or the nurse about presented "a wounded man dying, who perfectly our good old prejudices? This is not the way expressed what there remained of life in him."**) to defend the cause of truth. It was not thus Mountfaucon and Maffei thought it the identical that our fathers maintained it in the brilliant statue; but that statue was of bronze. The glaperiods of our history. Prejudice may be trust-diator was once in the villa Ludovisi, and was ed to guard the outworks for a short space of bought by Clement XII. The arm is an entire time while reason slumbers in the citadel: but restoration of Michael Angelo. if the latter sink into a lethargy, the former will quickly erect a standard for herself. Philosophy, wisdom, and liberty, support each other; he who will not reason, is a bigot; he who can[p. 52. St. 141. not, is a fool; and he who dares not, is a slave." Gladiators were of two kinds, compelled and voluntary; and were supplied from several conGreat Nemesis! ditions; from slaves sold for that purpose; from Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long. culprits; from barbarian captives either taken (p. 51. St. 132. in war, and, after being led in triumph, set We read in Suetonius that Augustus, from a apart for the games, or those seized and conwarning received in a dream, counterfeited, once demned as rebels; also from free citizens, some a year, the beggar, sitting before the gate of fighting for hire (auctorati), others from a his palace with his hand hollowed and stretched depraved ambition: at last even knights and out for charity. *) A statue formerly in the Villa senators were exhibited, a disgrace of which the Borghese, and which should be now at Paris, first tyrant was naturally the first inventor. ***) represents the Emperor in that posture of sup-In the end, dwarfs, and even women, fought; an plication. The object of this self-degradation enormity prohibited by Severus. Of these the was the appeasement of Nemesis, the perpetual most to be pitied undoubtedly were the barbaattendant on good fortune, of whose power the rian captives; and to this species a Christian Roman conquerors were also reminded by cer- writer †) justly applies the epithet "innocent," tain symbols attached to their cars of triumph. to distinguish them from the professional glaThe symbols were the whip and the crotalo, diators. Aurelian and Claudius supplied great which were discovered in the Nemesis of the numbers of these unfortunate victims; the one Vatican. The attitude of beggary made the above after his triumph, and the other on the pretext statue pass for that of Belisarius: and until the of a rebellion. No war, says Lipsius, was ever criticism of Winkelmann had rectified the misso destructive to the human race as these sports. take, one fiction was called in to support another. In spite of the laws of Constantine and Constans, It was the same fear of the sudden termination gladiatorial shows survived the old established of prosperity that made Amasis king of Egypt religion more than seventy years; but they warn his friend Polycrates of Samos, that the owed their final extinction to the courage of a gods loved those whose lives were chequered Christian. In the year 404, on the kalends of with good and evil fortunes. Nemesis was sup- January, they were exhibiting the shows in the posed to lie in wait particularly for the prudent: Flavian amphitheatre before the usual immense that is, for those whose caution rendered them concourse of people. Almachius or Telemachus, accessible only to mere accidents: and her first an eastern monk, who had travelled to Rome altar was raised on the banks of the Phrygian intent on his holy purpose, rushed into the midst Æsepus by Adrastus, probably the prince of that of the area, and endeavoured to separate the name who killed the son of Cræsus by mistake. combatants. The prætor Alypius, a person inHence the goddess was called Adrastea. credibly attached to these games, gave instant orders to the gladiators to slay him; and Telemachus gained the crown of martyrdom, and the title of saint, which surely has never either before or since been awarded for a more noble exploit. Honorius immediately abolished the shows, which were never afterwards revived. The Roman Nemesis was sacred and august; there was a temple to her in the Palatine under the name of Rhamnusia: so great indeed was the propensity of the ancients to trust to the revoJution of events, and to believe in the divinity of Fortune, that in the same Palatine there was a temple to the Fortune of the day. This is the last superstition which retains its hold over the human heart, and, from concentrating in one object the credulity so natural to man, has always appeared strongest in those unembarrassed by other articles of belief. The antiquaries have supposed this goddess to be synonimous with fortune and with fate: but it was in her vindictive quality that she was worshipped under the name of Nemesis. *) Suetonius in vit. Augusti, cap. 91. Casaubon, in the note, refers to Plutarch's Lives of Camillus and Emilius Paulas, and also to his apophthegms, for the character of this deity. The hollowed hand was reckoned the last degree of degradation: and when the dead body of the præfect Rufinus was borne about in triumph by the people, the indignity was increased by putting his hand in that position.' *) Either Polifontes, herald of Laius, killed by Edipus; or Cepreas, herald of Euritheus, killed by the Athenians when he endeavoured to drag the Heraclidæ from the altar of Mercy, and in whose honour they instituted annual games, continued to the time of Hadrian; or Anthemocritus, the Athenian herald, killed by the Megarenses, who never recovered the impiety. Vulneratum deficientem fecit in quo possit intelligi quantum restat animæ. PLIN. Nat. Hist. XXXIV. 8. ***) Julius Cæsar, who rose by the fall of the aristocracy, brought Furius Leptinus and A. Calenus upon the arena. +) Tertullian, "certe quidem et innocentes gladiatores in ludum veniunt, ut voluptatis publicæ hostia fiant." The story is told by Theodoret and Cassiodorus, | which enabled him to wear a wreath of laurel and seems worthy of credit notwithstanding its place in the Roman martyrology. Besides the torrents of blood which flowed at the funerals, in the amphitheatres, the circus, the forums, and other public places, gladiators were introduced at feasts, and tore each other to pieces amidst the supper-tables, to the great delight and applause of the guests. Yet Lipsius permits himself to suppose the loss of courage, and the evident degeneracy of mankind, to be nearly connected with the abolition of these bloody spectacles. *) Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise. An Englishman who can be much pleased with seeing two men beat themselves to pieces, cannot bear to look at a horse galloping round an arena with his bowels trailing on the ground, and turns from the spectacle and the spectators with horror and disgust. Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head. [p. 52. St. 144. Suetonius informs us that Julius Cæsar was particularly gratified by that decree of the senate, "Quod? non tu Lipsi momentum aliquod habuisse censes ad virtutem? Magnum. Tempora nostra, nosque ipsos videamus. Oppidum ecce unum alterumve captum, direptum est; tumultus circa nos, non in nobis; et tamen concidimus et turbamur. Ubi robur, ubi tot per annos meditata sapientiæ studia? ubi ille animus qui possit dicere, si fractus illabatur orbis ? The prototype of Mr. Windham's panegyric on bull-baiting. on all occasions. He was anxious, not, to show that he was the conqueror of the world, but to hide that he was bald. A stranger at Rome would hardly have guessed at the motive, aur should we without the help of the historian. While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand. [p. 52. St. 145. This is quoted in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Spared and blest by time. (p. 52. St. 146. Though plundered of all its brass, except the ring which was necessary to preserve the aperture above; though exposed to repeated fires, though sometimes flooded by the river, and always open to the rain, no monument of equal antiquity is so well preserved as this rotundo. It passed with little alteration from the pagan into the present worship; and so convenient were its niches for the Christian altar, that Michael Angelo, ever studious of ancient beauty, intreduced their design as a model in the Catholic church. them close. And they who feel for genius may repose There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light. This and the three next stanzas allude to the story of the Roman daughter, which is recalled to the traveller by the site, or pretended site, of that adventure now shown at the church of Saint Nicholas in carcere. Turn to the mole which Hadrian rear'd on high. [p. 53. St. 152. The castle of Saint Angelo. The strange fate Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns. [p. 55. St. 171. Mary died on the scaffold; Elizabeth of a broken heart; Charles V. a hermit; Louis XIV. a bankrupt in means and glory; Cromwell of anxiety; and, "the greatest is behind," Napoleon lives a prisoner. To these sovereigns a long but superfluous list might be added of names equally illustrious and unhappy. Lo, Nemi! navell'd in the woody hills. [p. 55. St. 173. The village of Nemi was near the Arician retreat of Egeria, and, from the shades which embosomed the temple of Diana, has preserved to this day its distinctive appellation of The Grove. Nemi is but an evening's ride from the comfortable inn of Albano. half of the Eneid, and the coast from beyond | dam, and thence trickles over into the Digentla. the mouth of the Tiber to the headland of Cir- But we must not hope cæum and the Cape of Terracina. The site of Cicero's villa may be supposed either at the Grotta Ferrata, or at the Tusculum of Lucian Buonaparte. The former was thought some years ago the actual site, as may be seen from Middleton's Life of Cicero. At present it has lost something of its credit, except for the Domenichinos. Nine monks, of the Greek order, live there, and the adjoining villa is a Cardinal's summerhouse. The other villa, called Rufinella, is on the summit of the hill above Frascati, and many rich remains of Tusculum have been found there, besides seventy-two statues of different merit and preservation, and seven busts. "To trace the Muses upwards to their spring," by exploring the windings of the romantic valley in search of the Bandusian fountain. It seems strange that any one should have thought Bandusia a fountain of the Digentia; Horace has not let drop a word of it; and this immortal spring has in fact been discovered in possession of the holders of many good things in Italy, the monks. It was attached to the church of St. Gervais and Protais near Venusia, where it was most likely to be found. We shall not be so lucky as a late traveller in finding the occasional pine still pendant on the poetic villa. There is not a pine in the whole valley, but there From the same eminence are seen the Sabine are two cypresses, which he evidently took, or hills, embosomed in which lies the long valley mistook, for the tree in the ode. The truth is, of Rustica. There are several circumstances that the pine is now, as it was in the days of which tend to establish the identity of this valley Virgil, a garden-tree, and it was not at all likely with the "Ustica" of Horace; and it seems pos- to be found in the craggy acclivities of the valsible that the mosaic pavement which the pea-ley of Rustica. Horace probably had one of sants uncover by throwing up the earth of a them in the orchard close above his farm, immevineyard, may belong to his villa. Rustica is diately overshadowing his villa, not on the rocky pronounced short, not according to our stress heights at some distance from his abode. The upon “Usticæ cubantis."—It is more rational to tourist may have easily supposed himself to have think that we are wrong than that the inhabitants seen this pine figured in the above cypresses, of this secluded valley have changed their tone in for the orange and lemon trees which throw this word. The addition of the consonant pre- such a bloom over his description of the royal fixed is nothing: yet it is necessary to be aware gardens at Naples, unless they have been since that Rustica may be a modern name which the displaced, were assuredly only acacias and other peasants may have caught from the antiquaries. common garden-shrubs. The extreme disappointThe villa, or the mosaic, is in a vineyard on ment experienced by choosing the Classical Toura knoll covered with chesnut trees. A stream ist as a guide in Italy must be allowed to find runs down the valley, and although it is not true, vent in a few observations, which, it is asserted as said in the guide-books, that this stream is without fear of contradiction, will be confirmed called Licenza, yet there is a village on a rock by every one who has selected the same conducat the head of the valley which is so denominat-tor through the same country. This author is ed, and which may have taken its name from in fact one of the most inaccurate, unsatisfactory the Digentia. Licenza contains 700 inhabitants. writers that have in our times attained a temOn a peak a little way beyond is Civitella, con-porary reputation, and is very seldom to be taining 300. On the banks of the Anio, a little trusted even when he speaks of objects which he before you turn up into Valle Rustica, to the must be presumed to have seen. His errors, left, about an hour from the villa, is a town from the simple exaggeration to the downright called Vico-varo, another favourable coincidence misstatement, are so frequent as to induce a suswith the Faria of the poet. At the end of the picion that he had either never visited the spots valley, towards the Anio, there is a bare hill, described, or had trusted to the fidelity of forcrowned with a little town called Bardela. At mer writers. Indeed the Classical Tour has every the foot of this hill the rivulet of Licenza flows, characteristic of a mere compilation of former and is almost absorbed in a wide sandy bed notices, strung together upon a very slender before it reaches the Anio. Nothing can be more thread of personal observation, and swelled out fortunate for the lines of the poet, whether in a by those decorations which are so easily supmetaphorical or direct sense: plied by a systematic adoption of all the commonplaces of praise, applied to every thing and therefore signifying nothing. Me quoties reficit gelidus Digentia rivus, Quem Mandela bibit rugosus frigore pagus. The stream is clear high up the valley, but before it reaches the hill of Bardela looks green and yellow like a sulphur rivulet. Rocca Giovane, a ruined village in the hills, half an hour's walk from the vineyard where the pavement is shown, does seem to be the site of the fane of Vacuna, and an inscription found there tells that this temple of the Sabine victory was repaired by Vespasian. With these helps, and a position corresponding exactly to every thing which the poet has told us of his retreat, we may feel tolerably secure of our site. The hill which should be Lucretilis is called Campanile, and by following up the rivulet to the pretended Bandusia, you come to the roots of the higher mountain Gennaro. Singularly enough, the only spot of ploughed land in the whole valley is on the knoll where this Bandusia rises, The style which one person thinks cloggy and cumbrous, and unsuitable, may be to the taste of others, and such may experience some salutary excitement in ploughing through the periods of the "Classical Tour." It must be said, however, that polish and weight are apt to beget an expectation of value. It is amongst the pains of the damned to toil up a climax with a huge round stone. The tourist had the choice of his words, but there was no such latitude allowed to that of his sentiments. The love of virtue and of liberty, which must have distinguished the character, certainly adorns the pages of Mr. Eustace, and the gentlemanly spirit, so recommendatory either in an author or his productions, is very conspicuous throughout the Classical Tour. But these generous qualities are the foliage of such a performance, and may be spread about it so prominently and profusely, as to embarrass those who wish to see and find the fruit at hand. The unction of the divine, and the exhortations of the moralist, may have made this work something more and better than a book of travels, but they have not made it a book of-travels; and this observation applies more especially to that enticing method of instruction conveyed by the ter's, must be much relieved to find that sacrilege out of the power of the French, or any other plunderers, the cupola being covered with lead.") perpetual introduction of the same Gallic Helot | ping of the copper from the cupola of St. Pe to reel and bluster before the rising generation, and terrify it into decency by the display of all the excesses of the revolution. An animosity against atheists and regicides in general, and Frenchmen specifically, may be honourable, and If the conspiring voice of otherwise rival erimay be useful, as a record; but that antidote tics had not given considerable currency to the should either be administered in any work ra- Classical Tour, it would have been unnecessary ther than a tour, or, at least, should be served to warn the reader, that, however it may aderi up apart, and not so mixed with the whole mass his library, it will be of little or no service to of information and reflexion, as to give a bitter- him in his carriage; and if the judgment d ness to every page: for who would choose to those critics had hitherto been suspended, as have the antipathies of any man, however just, attempt would have been made to anticipate for his travelling companions? A tourist, unless their decision. As it is, those who stand in the he aspires to the credit of prophecy, is not an- relation of posterity to Mr. Eustace may be swerable for the changes which may take place permitted to appeal from cotemporary praises, in the country which he describes; but his rea-and are perhaps more likely to be just in pro der may very fairly esteem all his political por- portion as the causes of love and hatred are the traits and deductions as so much waste paper, farther removed. This appeal had, in some the moment they cease to assist, and more par- measure, been made before the above remarks ticularly if they obstruct, his actual survey. were written; for one of the most respectable Neither encomium nor accusation of any go- of the Florentine publishers, who had been pervernment, or governors, is meant to be here suaded by the repeated inquiries of those on offered, but it is stated as an incontrovertible their journey southwards, to reprint a cheap fact, that the change operated, either by the edition of the Classical Tour, was, by the conaddress of the late imperial system, or by the curring advice of returning travellers, induced disappointment of every expectation by those to abandon his design, although he had already who have succeeded to the Italian thrones, has arranged his types and paper, and had struck off been so considerable, and is so apparent, as not one or two of the first sheets. only to put Mr. Eustace's Antigallican philippics entirely out of date, but even to throw some suspicion upon the competency and candour of the author himself. A remarkable example may be found in the instance of Bologna, over whose papal attachments, and consequent desolation, the tourist pours forth such strains of condolence and revenge, made louder by the borrowed trumpet of Mr. Burke. Now Bologna is at this moment, and has been for some years, notorious amongst the states of Italy for its attachment to revolutionary principles, and was almost the only city which made any demonstrations in favour of the unfortunate Murat. This change may, however, have been made since Mr. Eustace visited this country; but the traveller whom he has thrilled with horror at the projected strip. The writer of these notes would wish to part (like Mr. Gibbon) on good terms with the Pope and the Cardinals, but he does not think it necessary to extend the same discreet silence to their humble partisans. .... *) "What then will be the astonishment, or rather the horror, of my reader, when I inform him the French Committee turned its attention to Saint Peter's, and employed a company of Jews to estimate and purchase the gold, silver, and bronze that adorn the inside of the edifice, as well as the copper that covers the vaults and dome on the outside." The story about the Jews is positively denied at Rome NOTES TO THE GIAOUR. That tomb which, gleaming o'er the cliff. [p. 57. | tempted in description, but those who have, will A tomb above the rocks on the promontory, by some supposed the sepulchre of Themistocles. Sultana of the Nightingale. [p. 57. The attachment of the nightingale to the rose is a wellknown Persian fable. If I mistake not, the "Bulbul of a thousand tales is one of his appellations. Till the gay mariner's guitar. [p. 57, The guitar is the constant amusement of the Greek sailor by night: with a steady fair wind, and during a calm, is accompanied always by the voice, and often by dancing. Where cold Obstruction's apathy. [p. 58. "Ay, but to die and go we know not where To lie in cold obstruction." Measure for Measure, Act. III. Sc. 1. The first, last look by death reveal'd. [p. 58. I trust that few of my readers have ever had an opportunity of witnessing what is here at probably retain a painful remembrance of that singular beauty which pervades, with few ex ceptions, the features of the dead, a few hours, after "the spirit is not there." It is to be remarked in cases of violent death by gun-shot wounds, the expression is always that of languor, whatever the natural energy of the sufferer's character; but in death from a stab the countenance preserves its traits of feeling or ferocity, and the mind its bias, to the last. |