Ruins of Ancient Cities Part 10

"These walls," says Mr. Wood, "like most of the ancient cities of Asia, appear to be the confused patch-work of different ages. The pieces of capitals, broken entablatures, and, in some places, reversed Greek inscriptions, which we observed in walking round them, convinced us that their last repairs were made after the decline of taste, with materials, negligently collected as they lay nearest to hand, and hastily put together for immediate defence."

The stone of which the temple is built was brought from the neighbouring quarry, at the bottom of which there is a single stone lying seventy feet in length, fourteen in breadth, and fourteen feet six inches in thickness. Its weight, according to these dimensions, must be above 1130 tons! It would require, we are told, the united strength of sixty thousand men of our time to raise this single stone!

The stones used at Balbec are the largest that have ever been moved by human power. The largest in the pyramids of Egypt do not exceed eighteen feet. But here, of those that compose the sloping wall, which surrounds the temple on the west and north, three occupy a s.p.a.ce of one hundred and seventy-five feet and a half; viz., the 1st, fifty-eight feet seven inches; the 2nd, fifty-eight feet eleven inches; and the 3rd, exactly fifty-eight feet long; and each of these is twelve feet thick.

"When it is considered," says La Martine, "that some of these blocks of hewn granite are raised one above another to the height of twenty or thirty feet from the ground;--that they have been brought from distant quarries, and raised to so vast a height to form the pavement of the temple;--the mind is overwhelmed by such an example of human power. The science of modern times cannot help us to explain it, and we cannot be surprised, therefore, that it is referred to the supernatural."

"The shades of evening," continues this accomplished traveller, "which slowly descended the mountains of Balbec, and obscured, one by one, the columns and the ruins, imparted an additional air of mystery to the picturesque and magical effect of these wonderful works of man and time.

We felt the full insignificance of human nature; and while contemplating the ma.s.s and eternity of these monuments, we compared man to the swallows, which build their nests for a season in the interstices of these stones, without knowing for whom, or by whom, or for what purpose, they were collected together. The power which moved these ma.s.ses, and acc.u.mulated these blocks, is unknown to us. The dust of the marble, which we trod under our feet, knows more than we do, but can tell us nothing; and in a few centuries to come, the generations who may, in their turn, visit the wrecks of our monuments now existing, will ask, without being able to answer, why we laboured without being able to build and carve. The works of man are more durable than his thoughts; movement is the law of the human mind; the definite is the dream of man's vanity and ignorance; G.o.d is an object which incessantly recedes from us, as we endeavour to approach him. We are continually advancing, but we never arrive. The Deity, whose divine figure man seems to embody in his imagination, and to enshrine in his temples, continually enlarges, and exceeds the narrow boundaries of our minds, and our edifices; leaves the temples and the altars to crumble into dust; and summons man to seek him where he is most plainly manifested, viz., in intelligence, in virtue, in nature, and in eternity."

We now give place to observations, made by travellers on the relative merits of the architecture, employed in these magnificent edifices.

"When we compare the ruins of Balbec," says Mr. Wood, "with those of many ancient cities, which we visited in Italy, Greece, and Egypt, and in other parts of Asia, we cannot help thinking them the remains of the boldest plan we ever saw attempted in architecture."

"The enormity of the scale," says Mr. Buckingham, "and the magnificence of design, seen throughout the whole of the architecture, with the boldness of the drawing, and the exquisite finish of the sculpture, impressed me with an idea of a labour more than human. I should conceive that in no country was to be found so superb a monument of the inimitable perfection of ancient architecture. The temples and the tombs of Egypt were here equalled in the enormity of the ma.s.ses, that composed them; and the chamber of the Pyramids rivalled in the closeness of the masonry; while the monuments of Athens itself, in the age of Pericles and Praxiteles, were at least equalled in the richness and beauty of the sculptured ornaments, that adorned them. It appeared to me, that the temples of Edfou, Tentyris, and Thebes, fell far short of this, as a whole; for here the ponderous strength of the Egyptian, and the chastened elegance of the Grecian school, are both most happily combined."

Mr. Addison appears to have entertained a different opinion:--"Those ruins," says he, "though so striking and magnificent, are yet, however, quite second rate, when compared with the Athenian ruins; and display, in their decorations, none of the bold conceptions and the genius which characterise the Athenian architecture. There is a peculiar sameness in the decorations of the figures, entablatures, and cornices. The ornaments are all alike, and the festoons of grapes, and vine-leaves hung on goats' and horses' heads, the pendent bunches of grapes and Cupids, however rich in appearance, and beautifully chiselled, can never excite such feelings, as one small portion of the Panathenian frieze of the Parthenon, or one of the Metopes, representing a battle between a Centaur and a Lapithae. There is a genius in these latter, a combination of talent, a soul, fire, and spirit, which are looked for in vain in the Balbec remains. The great Panathenian frieze of the Parthenon, which extended all around that temple, with its hundreds of horses and warriors, its spirited grouping, and faithful delineation of forms and att.i.tudes; and above it the wars of the Centaurs and Lapithae, possessed a most exciting interest. The vine-branches and wheat ears of the temple of Balbec, although unquestionably very beautiful, yet appear tame in comparison; and cannot certainly be put in compet.i.tion with these master-pieces of architectural decoration."

"Several artists have observed," says Mr. Wood, "a similitude between some European buildings, and some parts of the ruins of Palmyra and Balbec; from which they have, perhaps, too hastily concluded, that the former were copied from the latter. The portico of the Louvre at Paris has been compared in this light to the ruins of Palmyra; as also with the portico at Balbec; but we cannot discover any foundation for inferences so injurious to the memory of the architect, who built that n.o.ble structure, which is as justly admired as it is unaccountably neglected."

We now return to the page of M. de La Martine:--"Round this platform is ranged a series of chapels, decorated with niches, admirably sculptured, friezes, cornices, and vaulted arches; all displaying the most finished workmans.h.i.+p, but evidently belonging to a degenerate period of art. But this impression can only be felt by those whose eyes have been previously exercised by the contemplation of the pure monuments of Athens and Rome. Every other eye would be fascinated by the splendour of the forms and the finish of the ornaments. The only fault is too much richness; the stone groans beneath the weight of its own luxuriance, and the walls are overspread with a lace-work of marble."

The town is, at present, so ruined, that there are not counted more than fifty habitable dwellings in it; though the whole number within the walls may be estimated at five hundred.

The state of the city is deplorable. The emirs of the house of Harfoushe had already greatly impaired it, when an earthquake, in 1759, completed its destruction; insomuch, that though in 1751 there were five thousand inhabitants, not twelve hundred are remaining; and all these poor, without industry or commerce, we are told, and cultivating nothing but a little cotton, some maize, and a few watermelons.

Even the ruins are altering every day. Dawkins and Wood found nine large columns standing; but Volney, in 1784, found only six. They reckoned twenty-nine at the lesser temple; but now there are only twenty. There were, originally, thirty-four,--eight in front, and thirteen along each of the sides. The others were overthrown by an earthquake. Nature alone, however, has not effected this devastation. The Turks have had their share in the destruction of the columns; the motive for which was merely that of procuring the iron cramps, which served to join the several blocks of which each column is composed. Famine, the pestilence, and the sword, gradually thinned the inhabitants. The population of five thousand, which the town contained in 1751, has now dwindled down to barely two hundred persons: nor does each house continue to possess, as it did in the time of Maundrell, "ten or fifteen cows, besides goats and sheep, the goats being of an uncommon species, worth from 30_l._ to 35_l._ a piece!" The description left by Maundrell was faithful at the time he visited those ruins; but since that period several important parts have been destroyed, and even the place of the temple at the end of the great court, which was probably the princ.i.p.al edifice of the whole, cannot at this day be made out[146].

The hands of the natives have, no doubt, committed many ravages.

Faccardine, prince of the Druses, destroyed or injured several parts of these ruins; but when he afterwards visited Italy, and contracted a taste for its architecture, he is said to have bitterly lamented the sacrilege he had committed at Balbec[147]. "It is in fact man, not nature," says an elegant writer, "that has wrought this change. No blight has seared the soil, or poisoned the air, but a degrading despotism has as effectually dried up the sources of social prosperity, as if some elementary convulsion had suddenly turned the clime of beauty cold and dark, and struck the teeming earth with hopeless barrenness.

Indeed, Turkish oppression has done what no unkindness of nature could have effected. The splendours of Palmyra rose, under the breath of a free commerce, in the midst of a sandy desert; but nothing has been able to preserve that and many other great cities from crumbling into heaps of ruins, at the death-touch of the gloomy tyranny, that now hangs like a pall over the land."

We must now give place to what Mons. de La Martine says, in regard to the Bishop of Balbec:--"We proceeded very little farther that day. The road diverged from these ruins, and led us to others. We pa.s.sed over some vaults, and arrived at a small house. This was the palace of the Bishop of Balbec, who, clothed in his violet-coloured pelisse, and attended by some Arab peasants, advanced to meet us, and conducted us to his humble door. The poorest peasant's cottage in Burgundy, or Auvergne, possesses greater luxury and elegance than the palace of the Bishop of Balbec. It was an ill-built hut, without either window or door, and through the decayed roof the rain worked its way, and dropped on the mud floor. This was the bishop's dwelling! But at the further end of the yard, which adjoined the house, a neat wall, newly built of blocks of stone, and a door and window in ogives of Moorish architecture, each ogive being constructed of finely-sculptured stones, attracted my attention. This was the church of Balbec, the cathedral of that town, in which other G.o.ds have had splendid temples; the chapel in which the few Arab Christians, who live here amidst the wrecks of so many different faiths, wors.h.i.+p, under a purer form, the universal Creator."

The bishop was a fine old man with hair and beard of silver, a grave and benevolent cast of features, and a sweet and well-modulated voice. He was the perfect image of a priest of poetry or romance, says the traveller; and his aspect, which denoted peace, resignation, and charity, was well suited to the scene of ruins and meditation in which he lived.

The traveller afterwards describes a delightful scene. He and his friends were sitting by moonlight near the bishop's hut. "We were silent. Suddenly a soft plaintive strain, a slow modulated murmur stole through the grotesque ogives of the ruined wall of the bishop's house.

This vague and confused sound swelled higher and higher, until we distinguished it to be a chant from the united voices of choristers; a monotonous, melancholy strain, which rose, fell, and died away, and was alternately revived and re-echoed. This was the evening prayer, which the Arab bishop was chanting with his little flock, in the skeleton of that which once had been his church; viz., a heap of ruins piled up by a heap of idolaters. We were totally unprepared for music of this sort, where every note was, in fact, a sentiment or a sign from the human breast. How little did we expect it in this solitude, in the bosom of the desert, issuing, as it were, from mute stones, strewed about by the combined influence of earthquakes, barbarous ignorance, and time! A hallowed emotion inspired us, and we joined with religious fervour in the sacred hymn, until the last sighs of the pious voices had died away, and silence again reigned over the venerable ruins."

We conclude with the words which Seller in his history of Palmyra adopts from Cicero: "Whenever we see such remains of venerable antiquity, such lasting records of the names and achievements of great persons, we are admonished to take care so to regulate our actions, that we may convince the world we have settled our prospect upon the rewards of future ages, and not on the flatteries of the present; and so remember, that monuments being erected to the memory of those who have lived well in this world before they left it, put us in mind, that there is nothing here permanent and immutable; and that it is the duty of considering man to aspire towards immortality[148]."

NO. XIX.--BYZANTIUM.

"On which side soever," says an elegant traveller, "you approach Constantinople, whether ascending by the Dardanelles and the sea of Marmora, or descending from the Black Sea by the Bosphorus; whether you arrive by crossing the plain of Thrace, or come in sight from the opposite hills of Asia, she presents herself, indeed, like 'the queen of cities.'"

The history of this city being that of an empire, we shall confine ourselves to a few particulars, and then pa.s.s on to give some account of its monumental antiquities. We do this the more readily, since those antiquities are far from being of the first order.

According to Ammia.n.u.s, Byzantium was founded by the Athenians; according to Justin, by the Lacedaemonians; according to Paterculus, by the Milesians; according to others, by a colony of Megara, under the conduct of Byzas, 658 B.C.

Byzantium received a great accession of inhabitants in consequence of a decree pa.s.sed, in grat.i.tude to the Athenians, for having compelled Philip of Macedon to raise the siege of their city[149].

In subsequent times Constantine the Great (from whom it was called Constantinople), seeing its proud situation, created it into a capital jointly with Rome; from which time the Roman empire was distinguished by the t.i.tles Eastern and Western. In this position it stood, till the city was sacked by the Turks under the guidance of Mahomet the Second.

The manner in which the Turks first gained a footing in Europe is thus described in Bucke's Harmonies of Nature:--"Orcan having made himself master of the sh.o.r.e skirting the sea that separated Asia from Europe, his son Solyman resolved, if possible, to gain the castle of Hanni (Sestos), then considered the key of Europe: but the Turks had neither pilot, s.h.i.+ps, nor boats. Solyman stood meditating on the beach, one fine moonlight night, for some time. He had come thither with about eighty followers on a hunting expedition. Beholding the towers of Hanni rising over the opposite sh.o.r.e, he resolved to secure them for his father and himself. He communicated his thoughts to his followers. Wondering at his resolution, they regarded him as frantic. He persisted;--and they made three rafts fastened on corks and bladders of oxen. When the party had finished their task, they committed themselves to the waters; and with poles instead of oars, succeeded in gaining the opposite sh.o.r.e: the moon s.h.i.+ning brilliantly as they stepped off the rafts, almost immediately under the walls of Hanni. As they marched along the beach, they met a peasant going to his work, it being now morning. This man hated his prince; and being bribed by a sum of money, he told Solyman of a subterranean pa.s.sage leading into the castle. The little band availed themselves of this information, and quietly entered the walls. There was no regular garrison, and the few inhabitants were still asleep. They fell an easy prey, therefore, to the adventurers. Having thus gained the first object of their enterprise, they a.s.sembled the pilots and vessel-owners of the town; and, offering them considerable sums of money, induced them to steer their vessels to the opposite sh.o.r.e. Some thousand men were then embarked, and in a few hours they were wafted under the castle walls. This was the first landing of the Turks in Europe: they ever after kept possession of this castle: ninety-six years after, they sacked the city of Constantinople."

Mahomet II.[150], surnamed "the Great," was born at Adrianople in the year 1430, and was, in the thirteenth year of his age, called to the throne by the voluntary abdication of his father, Amurath II. On his accession, Mahomet renewed the peace with the Greek emperor Constantine, to whom he, at the same time, agreed to pay a pension for the expenses and safe custody of his uncle Orcan, who had, at a previous period, withdrawn to the court of Constantinople for safety. The carelessness of the sultan in the observance of this clause of the treaty excited the complaints of the emperor, with the imprudent threat that, unless the pension was regularly paid, he would no longer detain Orcan. This threat afforded the sultan a pretext for rekindling the war. Mahomet determined to complete the conquest of the feeble empire by the capture of Constantinople; and to terminate, by one terrible catastrophe, the strife of many ages between the Moslems and the Greeks. Every preliminary measure having been completed, Mahomet at length appeared before Constantinople, on the 2d of April, 1453, at the head of three hundred thousand men; supported by a formidable artillery, and by a fleet of three hundred and twenty sail, mostly store-s.h.i.+ps and transports; but including eighteen galleys of war, while the besieged could not muster more than ten thousand effective soldiers for the defence. This vast disparity of force leaves little room for admiring the prowess and military skill of the victorious party. The besieged made, however, so obstinate a defence, under the brave emperor, Constantine Palaeologus, that for fifty-three days all the efforts of the a.s.sailants were unavailing. The defenders of the city had drawn strong iron chains across the entrance of the port; and Mahomet saw, that unless he could get some of his vessels into the Golden Horn, his success was doubtful, and that, at best, the defence might be greatly protracted. He, therefore, contrived to conduct a part of his fleet, for ten miles, over the land on a sort of railway, from the Bosphorus into the harbour, and caused a floating battery to be constructed and occupied with cannon. This sealed the fate of the imperial city.

On the day of the last a.s.sault, Mahomet said to his soldiers:--"I reserve to myself only the city; the gold and women are yours." The emperor (Constantine) accomplished all the duties of a general and a soldier. The n.o.bles, who fought around his person, sustained, till their last breath, the honourable names of Palaeologus and Cantacuzene. His mournful exclamation was heard--"Cannot there be found a Christian to cut off my head?" and his last fear was, lest he should fall alive into the hands of his enemies. He threw away his imperial dress, rushed into the thickest of the fight, fell by an unknown hand, and his body was buried under a mountain of the slain: nor was it afterwards recognised.

The houses and convents were deserted; and the trembling inhabitants flocked together in the streets, like a herd of timid animals. From every part of the city they rushed into the church of St. Sophia. In the s.p.a.ce of an hour the sanctuary, the choir, the nave, the upper and lower galleries, were filled with the mult.i.tude of fathers and husbands, of women and children, of priests, monks, and religious virgins; the doors were barred on the inside, and they sought protection from the sacred dome, which they had so lately abhorred as a profaned and polluted edifice.

The doors were, soon after, broken with axes; and the Turks encountering no resistance, their bloodless hands were employed in selecting and securing the mult.i.tude of their prisoners. Youth, beauty, and the appearance of youth, attracted their choice. In the s.p.a.ce of an hour, the male captives were bound with cords, the females with their veils and girdles. The senators were linked with their slaves; the prelates with the porters of their church; and young men of a plebeian cla.s.s with n.o.ble maids, whose faces had been invisible to the sun and their nearest kindred.

In this common captivity the ranks of society were confounded; the ties of nature were cut asunder; and the inexorable soldier was careless of the father's groan, the tears of the mother, and the lamentations of the children. The loudest in their wailings were the nuns, who were torn from the altars with naked bosoms, outstretched hands, and dishevelled hair. At a similar hour, a similar rapine was exercised in all the churches and monasteries; in all the palaces and habitations of the capital. The male captives were bound with cords, and the females with their veils and girdles, and driven, to the number of sixty thousand, from the city to the camp or fleet, where those, who could not obtain the means of purchasing their ransom, were exchanged, or sold, according to the caprice or interest of their masters.

The disorder and rapine lasted till the sultan entered in triumph through the gate of St. Roma.n.u.s. He was attended by his vizirs, his bashaws, and guards. As he rode along, he gazed with satisfaction and wonder on the strange, though splendid, appearance of the domes and palaces, so dissimilar to the style of oriental architecture. He proceeded to the church of St. Sophia; where, observing a soldier in the act of breaking up the marble pavement, he admonished him with his scymetar, that if the spoil and captives were granted to the soldiers, the public and private buildings had been reserved for the prince.

From St. Sophia he proceeded to the august, but desolate, mansion of a hundred successors of the first Constantine; but which, in a few hours, had been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself upon his mind, and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry:--"The spider has wove his web in the imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of Afrasiel[151]."

"The finest point from which Constantinople can be viewed," says M. de La Martine, "is from a belvidere, built by M. Truqui, on the terrace roof of his house. This belvidere commands the entire group of the hills of Pere-Galata, and the little hillocks which surround the port on the front side of the water. It is the eagle's flight over Constantinople and the sea. Europe, Asia, the entrance of the Bosphorus, and the sea of Marmora, are all under the eye at once. The city lies at the feet of the spectator. If (continues Mons. de La Martine) we were allowed to take only one point of the earth, this would be the one to choose.

Whenever I ascend to the belvidere to enjoy this view (and I do so several times a day, and invariably every evening), I cannot conceive how, of the many travellers who have visited Constantinople, so few have felt the beauty which it presents to my eye and to my mind. Why has no one described it? Is it because words have neither s.p.a.ce, horizon, nor colours, and that painting is only the language of the eye? But painting itself has never portrayed all that is here. The pictures, I have seen, are merely detached scenes, consisting of a few lines and colours without life: none convey any idea of the innumerable gradations of tint, varying with every change of the atmosphere, and every pa.s.sing hour. The harmonious whole, and the colossal grandeur of these lines; the movements and the intertwinings of the different horizons; the moving sails, scattered over the three seas; the murmur of the busy population on the sh.o.r.es; the reports of the cannon on board the vessels, the flags waving from the mast-heads; the floating caiques; the vaporous reflection of domes, mosques, steeples, and minarets in the sea; all this has never been described;"--nor ever can be!

The whole circuit of Constantinople, however, calculated at somewhat more than twelve miles, present, even to diligent research[152], very few remains of antiquity. The truth is, the Turks have availed themselves of the marbles and fragments of the Greeks in the construction of their own public edifices; and the antiquities of Constantinople are re-produced to the eye under entirely different forms and constructions, in the mosques and minarets, the fountains and cemeteries of the Osmandys. Many a beautiful work, of the ancient Greek chisel, has thus been embedded in a wall, or cut down and defaced to make a Turkish tombstone; and many an edifice, constructed in accordance with the pure styles of architecture, has been levelled and used as a quarry. But still, it must be confessed that some of the Turkish buildings, and more particularly some of the imperial mosques which have risen in their places, are distinguished by grandeur and beauty. Of these imperial mosques there are fourteen, each lofty, and magnificent in its general dimensions, and built from base to dome with excellent and enduring materials; chiefly of white marble, tinged with grey.

Besides these, there are sixty ordinary mosques, varying in size and beauty, but all considerable edifices; and then two hundred and more inferior mosques and messdgids[153].

The walls of Byzantium[154] were built of large square stones, so joined as, apparently, to form one single block. They were much loftier on the land side than towards the water, being naturally defended by the waves, and in some places by the rocks they are built on, which project into the sea.

They were of Cyclopian structure[155]; and of the workmans.h.i.+p, from what Herodian has said of them, the masonry was greatly superior to any of the workmans.h.i.+p now visible in the fortifications. It was surrounded by a wall, made of such immense quadrangular ma.s.ses of stone, and so skilfully adjusted, that the marvellous masonry, instead of disclosing to view the separate parts of which it consisted, seemed like one entire ma.s.s. "The very ruins," says Herodian, "show the wonderful skill, not only of the persons who built it, but of those, also, by whom it was dismantled."

The wall of Theodosius begins at the castle of Seven Towers, whence it traverses the whole western side of the city. This is the only part of the general wall of the city worth seeing. It is flanked into a double row of mural towers, and defended by a fosse about eight yards wide. The same promiscuous mixture of the works of ancient art--columns, inscriptions, bas-reliefs, &c.--seen in the walls of all the Greek cities, is here remarkably conspicuous. But the ivy-mantled towers, and the great height of this wall, added to its crumbling ruinous state, give it a picturesque appearance, exhibited by no other city in the Levant: it resembles a series of old ruined castles extending for five miles from sea to sea[156].

Of the eighteen gates, which once existed on the west side of the city, only seven now remain. The site of the two temples erected by Justinian, as _safeguards_ of the city, may still be ascertained by their vestiges; but these have almost disappeared.

The walls, which are well built, are still standing, and consist of stone terraces from fifty to sixty feet high, and occasionally from fifteen to twenty feet thick, covered with freestone of a greyish-white colour; but sometimes of pure white, and seeming fresh from the chisel of the mason. At the feet of the walls are the ancient fosses filled with rubbish and luxuriant loam, in which trees and pellitories have taken root ages ago, and now form an impenetrable glacis. The summit of the wall is almost everywhere crowned with vegetation, which overhangs and forms a sort of coping, surmounted by capital and volute of climbing plants and ivy. These walls are so n.o.ble, that La Martine says that, next to the Parthenon and Balbec, they are the n.o.blest existing memorials of ruined empires.

"There is nothing either grand or beautiful in the remains of the brazen column, consisting of the bodies of three serpents twisted spirally together. It is about twelve feet in height, and being hollow, the Turks have filled it with broken tiles, stones, and other relics.

But in the circ.u.mstances of its history, no critique of ancient times can be more interesting. For it once supported the golden tripod at Delphi, which the Greeks, after the battle of Plataea, found in camp of Mardonius[157]."

Near the Valide is a COLUMN of PORPHYRY[158], generally supposed to have supported the statue of CONSTANTINE. It is composed of eight pieces, surrounded by as many wreaths or garlands of the same marble. Not long since it gained the name of Colonna Brugiata, or burned pillar, having been very much defaced by the many conflagrations to which this vast city has been subject.

Near Mesmer-Kiosch[159] is a view of the summit of the Corinthian pillar of white marble, fifty feet high, in the gardens of the seraglio, with the inscription--

FORTUNae REDUCI OB DEVICTOS GOTHOS.

This has been erroneously supposed the column of Theodora. Poc.o.c.ke mentions that it was taken from some other part of the town to the seraglio gardens. It is supported by a handsome capital of verd antique.