Pagan and Christian Rome Part 6

"On the tribunal by the trophies of Germanicus, which are near the shrine of the _Fides_" (May 15, 86).

Comparing these indications of localities with the dates of the diplomas,--there are sixty-three in all,--it appears that they were not hung at random, but in regular order from monument to monument, until every available s.p.a.ce was covered. In the year 93 there was not an inch left, and the Capitol is mentioned no more as a place for exhibiting or advertising the acts of Government. From that year they were hung "_in muro post templum divi ad Minervam_," that is, behind the modern church of S. Maria Liberatrice.

THE TEMPLE OF ISIS AND SERAPIS. In the spring of 1883, in surveying the tract of ground between the Collegio Romano and the Baths of Agrippa, formerly occupied by the Temple of Isis and Serapis, and in collecting archaeological information concerning it, I was struck by the fact that, every time excavations were made on either side of the Via di S. Ign.a.z.io for building or restoring the houses which line it, remarkable specimens of Egyptian art had been brought to light. The annals of discoveries begin with 1374, when the obelisk now in the Piazza della Rotonda was found, under the apse of the church of S.

Maria sopra Minerva, together with the one now in the Villa Mattei von Hoffman. In 1435, Eugenius IV. discovered the two lions of Nektaneb I.

which are now in the Vatican, and the two of black basalt now in the Capitoline Museum. In 1440 the reclining figure of a river-G.o.d was found and buried again. The Tiber of the Louvre and the Nile of the Braccio Nuovo seem to have come to light during the pontificate of Leo X.; at all events it was he who caused them to be removed to the Vatican. In 1556 Giovanni Battista de Fabi found, and sold to cardinal Farnese, the reclining statue of Ocea.n.u.s now in Naples. In 1719 the Isiac altar now in the Capitol was found under the Biblioteca Casanatense. In 1858 Pietro Tranquilli, in restoring his house,--the nearest to the apse of la Minerva,--came across the following-named objects: a sphinx of green granite, the head of which is a portrait of Queen Haths'epu, the oldest sister of Thothmes III., who was famous for her expedition to the Red Sea, recently described by Dummichen;[52] a sphinx of red granite, believed to be a Roman replica; a group of the cow Hathor, the living symbol of Isis, nursing the young Pharaoh h.o.r.emheb; the portrait statue of the grand dignitary Uahabra, a good specimen of Satic art; a column of the temple, covered with high reliefs, which represented a procession of bald-headed priests holding canopi in their hands; a capital, carved with papyrus leaves and lotus flowers; and a fragment of an Egyptian basrelief in red granite, with traces of polychromy.

In 1859 Augusto Silvestrelli, the owner of the next house, on the same side of the Via di S. Ign.a.z.io, found five capitals of the same style and size, which, I believe, are now in the Museo Etrusco Gregoriano.

Inasmuch as no excavation had ever been made under the pavement of the street itself, which is public property, and as there was no reason why that strip of public property should not contain as many works of art as the houses about it, I asked the munic.i.p.al authorities to try the experiment, and my proposal was accepted at once.

The work began on Monday, June 11, 1883. It was difficult, because we had to dig to a depth of twenty feet between houses of very doubtful solidity. First to appear, at the end of the third day, was a magnificent sphinx of black basalt, the portrait of King Amasis. It is a masterpiece of the Satic school, perfected even in the smallest details, and still more impressive for its historical connection with the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Sphinx of Amasis.]

The cartouches bearing the king's name appear to have been purposely erased, though not so completely as to render the name illegible. The nose, likewise, and the _uraeus_, the symbol of royalty, were hammered away at the same time. The explanation of these facts is given by Herodotos. When Cambyses conquered Sas, Amasis had just been buried.

The conqueror caused the body to be dragged out of the royal tomb, then flogged and otherwise insulted, and finally burnt, the maximum of profanation, from an Egyptian point of view. His name was erased from the monuments which bore it, as a natural consequence of the _memoriae d.a.m.natio_. This sphinx is the surviving testimonial of the eventful catastrophe. When, six or seven centuries later, a Roman governor of Egypt, or a Roman merchant from the same province, singled out this work of art, to be s.h.i.+pped to Rome as a votive offering for the Temple of Isis, ignorant of the historical value of its mutilations, he had the nose and the _uraeus_ carefully restored. Now both are gone again, and there is no danger of a second restoration. I may remark, as a curious coincidence, that, as the name of Amasis is erased from the sphinx, so that of Hophries, his predecessor, is erased from the obelisk discovered in the same temple, and now in the Piazza della Minerva. In these two monuments of the Roman Iseum we possess a synopsis of Egyptian history between 595 and 526 B. C.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Obelisk of Rameses the Great.]

The second work, discovered June 17, was an obelisk which was wonderfully well preserved to the very top of the pinnacle, and covered with hieroglyphics. It was quarried at a.s.suan, from a richly colored vein of red granite, and was brought to Rome, probably under Domitian, together with the obelisk now in the Piazza del Pantheon.

The two monoliths are almost identical in size and workmans.h.i.+p, and are inscribed with the same cartouches of Rameses the Great. The one which I discovered was set up, in 1887, to the memory of our brave soldiers who fell at the battle of Dogali. The site selected for the monument, the square between the railway station and the Baths of Diocletian, is too large for such a comparatively small shaft.

Two days later, on the 19th, we discovered two _kynokephaloi_ or _kerkopithekoi_, five feet high, carved in black porphyry. The monsters are sitting on their hind legs, with the paws of the forearms resting on the knees. Their bases contain finely-cut hieroglyphics, with the cartouche of King Necthor-heb, of the thirtieth Sebennitic dynasty. One of these _kynokephaloi_, and also the obelisk, were certainly seen in 1719 by the masons who built the foundations of the Biblioteca Casanatense. For some reason unknown to us, they kept their discovery a secret. Many other works of art were discovered before the close of the excavations, in the last days of June. Among them were a crocodile in red granite, the pedestal of a candelabrum, triangular in shape, with sphinxes at the corners; a column of the temple, with reliefs representing an Isiac procession; and a portion of a capital.

From an architectural point of view, the most curious discovery was that the temple itself, with its colonnades and double cella, had been brought over, piece by piece, from the banks of the Nile to those of the Tiber. It is not an imitation; it is a purely original Egyptian structure, shaded first by the palm-trees of Sas, and later by the pines of the Campus Martius.

The earliest trustworthy account we have of its existence is given by Flavius Josephus. He relates how Tiberius, after the a.s.sault of Mundus against Paulina,[53] condemned the priests to crucifixion, burned the shrine, and threw the statue of the G.o.ddess into the Tiber. Nero restored the sanctuary; it was, however, destroyed again in the great conflagration, A. D. 80. Domitian was the second restorer; Hadrian, Commodus, Caracalla, and Alexander Severus improved and beautified the group, from time to time. At the beginning of the fourth century of our era it contained the _propylaia_, or pyramidal towers with a gateway, at each end of the _dromos_; one near the present church of S. Stefano del Cacco, one near the church of S. Macuto. They were flanked by one or more pairs of obelisks, of which six have been recovered up to the present time, namely, one now in the Piazza della Rotonda, a second in the Piazza della Minerva, a third in the Villa Mattei, a fourth in the Piazza della Stazione, a fifth in the Sphaeristerion at Urbino, and fragments of a sixth in the Albani collection.

From the propylaia, a _dromos_, or sacred avenue, led to the double temple. To the dromos belong the two lions in the Museo Etrusco Gregoriano, the two lions in the Capitoline Museum, the sphinx of Queen Hathsepu in the Barracco collection, the sphinx of Amasis and the Tranquilli sphinx in the Capitol, the cow Hathor and the statue of Uahabra in the Museo Archeologico in Florence, the _kynokephaloi_ of Necthor-heb, the _kynokephalos_ which gave the popular name of _Cacco_ (ape) to the church of S. Stefano, the statue formerly in the Ludovisi Gallery, the Nile of the Braccio Nuovo, the Tiber of the Louvre, the Ocea.n.u.s at Naples, the River-G.o.d buried in 1440, the Isiac altars of the Capitol and of the Louvre, the tripod, the crocodile and sundry other fragments which were found in 1883. Of the temple itself we possess two columns covered with mystic bas-reliefs, seven capitals,--one in the Capitol, the others in the Vatican,--and two blocks of granite from the walls of the cella, one in the Barberini gardens, one in the Palazzo Galitzin.

The last historical mention we possess of this admirable Egyptian museum of ancient Rome was found by Delille in the "Cod. Parisin."

8064, in which the attempt by Nicomachus Flavia.n.u.s to revive the pagan religion in 394 A. D. is minutely described.[54] The reaction caused by this final outburst of fanaticism must have been fatal to the temple. The masterpieces of the dromos were upset, and otherwise damaged, the faces of the _kynokephaloi_ and the noses and paws of the sphinxes were knocked off, and statues of Pharaohs, G.o.ds, priests, dignitaries, and Pastophoroi were hurled from their pedestals, and broken to pieces. When this wholesale destruction took place, the pavement of the temple was still clear of the rubbish and loose soil.

The sphinx of Amasis, found June 14, was lying on its left side on the bare pavement; the two apes had fallen on their backs. No attempt, however, was made to overthrow the obelisks, at least the one which I discovered. When the monolith fell, in the eighth or ninth century, the floor of the Iseum was already covered with a bed of rubbish five feet thick. To this fact we owe the wonderful preservation of the obelisk, the soft, muddy condition of the soil having eased the weight of the fall.

Students have wondered at the existence, in our time, of such a mine of antiquities in this quarter of the Campus Martius, where it appears as if, in spite of the feverish search for ancient marbles, this spot had escaped the attention of the excavators of the past four or five centuries. It did not escape their attention. The whole area of the Iseum, save a few recesses, has been explored since the Middle Ages, but the search was made to secure marble, which could be burnt into lime, or turned into new shapes. Of what use would porphyry, or granite, or basalt be for such purposes? These materials are useless for the lime-kiln, and too hard to be worked anew, and accordingly they were left alone. In the excavations of 1883 I found the best evidence that such was the case. The obelisk is of granite; its pedestal of white marble. The obelisk escaped destruction, but the pedestal was split, and made ready for the lime-kiln.

THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE. The discoveries made in 1878 in the Piazza di Pietra, on the site of the Temple of Neptune, rank next in importance to those just described. In repairing a drain which runs through the Via de' Bergamaschi to the Piazza di Pietra, the foundations of an early mediaeval church, dedicated to S. Stephen (Santo Stefano del Trullo) were unearthed, together with historical inscriptions, pieces of columns of _giallo antico_, and other architectural fragments. On a closer examination of the discoveries, I was able to ascertain that the whole church had been built with spoils from the triumphal arch of Claudius in the Piazza di Sciarra, and from the Temple of Neptune in the Piazza di Pietra. To enable the reader to appreciate the value of the discovery, I must begin with a short description of the temple itself.

Dio Ca.s.sius (liii. 27) states that, in 26 B. C., Marcus Agrippa built the Portico of the Argonauts, with a temple in the middle of it, called the Poseidonion (??S???O????), in token of his grat.i.tude to the G.o.d of the seas for the naval victories he had gained over the foes of the commonwealth; but the beautiful ruins still existing in the Piazza di Pietra do not belong to Agrippa's work, nor to the golden age of Roman art. They belong to the restoration of the temple which was made by Hadrian after the great fire of A. D. 80, by which the Neptunium, or Poseidonion, was nearly destroyed. The characteristic feature of the temple was a set of thirty-six bas-reliefs representing the thirty-six provinces of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the Christian era. These reliefs were set into the bas.e.m.e.nt of the temple, so as to form the pedestals of the thirty-six columns of the peristyle, while the intercolumniations, or s.p.a.ces between the pedestals, were occupied by another set of bas-reliefs representing the military uniforms, flags and weapons which were peculiar to each of the provinces. The fifteen provinces and fourteen trophies belonging to the colonnade of the Piazza di Pietra, that is, to the north side of the temple, have all been accounted for. Four provinces were found during the pontificate of Paul III. (1534-50), two during that of Innocent X. (1644-55), two during that of Alexander VII. (1655-1667), three in our excavations of 1878, and four either are still in the ground or have perished in a lime-kiln. Here again we have an instance of the shameful dispersion of the spoils of ancient Rome. We have this wing of the temple still standing in all its glory, in the Piazza di Pietra; we have eleven pedestals out of fifteen, and as many panels for the intercolumniations; the others are _probably_ within our reach, and we have beautiful pieces of the entablature with its rich carvings. The temple, entablature, and nearly all the trophies and provinces are public property; nothing would be easier than to restore each piece to its proper place, and make this wing of the Neptunium one of the most perfect relics of ancient Rome. Alas!

three provinces and two trophies have emigrated to Naples with the rest of the Farnese marbles, one has been left behind in the portico of the Farnese palace in Rome, five provinces and four trophies are in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, two are in the Palazzo Odescalchi, one is in the Palazzo Altieri, two pieces of the entablature are used as a rustic seat in the Giardino delle Tre Pile on the Capitol, and another has been used in the restoration of the Arch of Constantine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: One of the Provinces from the Temple of Neptune.]

THE TEMPLE OF AUGUSTUS. It is a remarkable fact that, at the beginning of archaeological research in the Renaissance, there was great enthusiasm over a few strange monuments of little or no interest, the existence of which would have been altogether unknown but for an occasional mention in cla.s.sical texts. As a rule, the cinquecento topographers give a prominent place in their books to the _columna Maenia_, the _columna Lactaria_, the _senaculum mulierum_, the _pila Tiburtina_, the _pila Horatia_ and other equally unimportant works which, for reasons unknown to us, had forcibly struck their fancy. The fas.h.i.+on died out in course of time, but never entirely. Some of these more or less fanciful structures still live in our books, and in the imagination of the people. The place of honor, in this line, belongs to Caligula's bridge, which is supposed to have crossed the valley of the Forum at a prodigious height, so as to enable the young monarch to walk on a level from his Palatine house to the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. This bridge is not only mentioned in guide-books, and pointed out to strangers on their first visit to the Forum, but is also drawn and described in works of a higher standard,[55] in which the bridge is represented from "remains concealed under a house, which have been carefully examined and measured, as well as drawn by architectural draughtsmen of much experience."

The bridge never existed. Caligula made use of the roofs of edifices which were already there, spanning only the gaps of the streets with temporary wooden pa.s.sages. This is clearly stated by Suetonius in chapters xxii. and x.x.xvii. and by Flavius Josephus, "Antiq. Jud." xix.

1, 11. From the palace at the northeast corner of the Palatine, he crossed the roof of the _templum divi Augusti_, then the _fastigium basilicae Juliae_, and lastly the Temple of Saturn close to the Capitolium. The Street of Victory which divided the emperor's palace from the Temple of Augustus, the Street of the Tuscans which divided the temple from the basilica, and the Vicus Iugarius between the basilica and the Temple of Saturn, were but a few feet wide and could easily be crossed by means of a _pa.s.serelle_. We are told by Suetonius and Josephus how Caligula used sometimes to interrupt his aerial promenade midway, and throw handfuls of gold from the roof of the basilica to the crowd a.s.sembled below. I have mentioned this bridge because the words of Suetonius, _supra templum divi Augusti ponte transmisso_, gave me the first clew towards the identification of the splendid ruins which tower just behind the church of S. Maria Liberatrice, between it and the rotunda of S. Teodoro.

The position of Caligula's palace at the northeast corner of the Palatine being well known, as also the site of the Basilica Julia, it is evident that the building which stands between the two must be the Temple of Augustus. This conclusion is so simple that I wonder that no one had mentioned it before my first announcement in 1881. The last nameless remains adjoining the Forum have thus regained their place and their ident.i.ty in the topography of this cla.s.sic quarter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plan of the Temple of Augustus.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Remains of the Temple of Augustus, from a sketch by Ligorio.]

The construction of a temple in honor of the deified founder of the empire was begun by his widow Livia, and Tiberius, his adopted son, and completed by Caligula. An inscription discovered in 1726, in the Columbaria of Livia on the Appian Way, mentions a C. Julius Bathyllus, sacristan or keeper of the temple. Pliny (xii. 19, 42) describes, among the curiosities of the place, a root of a cinnamon-tree, of extraordinary size, placed by Livia on a golden tray. The relic was destroyed by fire in the reign of t.i.tus. Domitian must have restored the building, because the rear wall of the temple, the _murus post templum divi Augusti ad Minervam_, is mentioned in contemporary doc.u.ments as the place on which state notices were posted. It has been excavated but once, in June, 1549, when the Forum, the Sacra Via and the Street of the Tuscans were ransacked to supply marbles and lime for the building of S. Peter's. Two doc.u.ments show the wonderful state of preservation in which the temple was found. One is a sketch, taken in 1549, by Pirro Ligorio, which, through the kindness of Professor T.

H. Middleton,[56] I reproduce from the original, in the Bodleian Library; the other is a description of the discovery by Panvinius.[57]

The place was in such good condition that even the statue and altar of Vortumnus, described by Livy, Asconius, Varro and others, were found lying at the foot of the steps of the temple.

THE SACELLUM SANCI, or Shrine of Sancus on the Quirinal.[58] The wors.h.i.+p of _Semo Sancus Sanctus Dius Fidius_ was imported into Rome at a very early period, by the Sabines who first colonized the Quirinal Hill. He was considered the Genius of heavenly light, the son of Jupiter _Diespiter_ or _Lucetius_, the avenger of dishonesty, the upholder of truth and good faith, whose mission upon earth was to secure the sanct.i.ty of agreements, of matrimony, and hospitality.

Hence his various names and his identification with the Roman Hercules, who was likewise invoked as a guardian of the sanct.i.ty of oaths (_me-Hercle_, _me-Dius Fidius_). There were two shrines of Semo Sancus in ancient Rome, one built by the Sabines on the Quirinal, near the modern church of S. Silvestro, from which the _Porta Sanqualis_ of the Servian walls was named, the other built by the Romans on the Island of the Tiber (S. Bartolomeo) near the Temple of Jupiter Jurarius. Justin, the apologist and martyr, laboring under the delusion that Semo Sancus and Simon the Magician were the same, describes the altar on the island of S. Bartolomeo as sacred to the latter.[59] He must have glanced hurriedly at the first three names of the Sabine G.o.d,--SEMONI SANCO DEO,--and translated them S??O?? ??O S?G??O.

The altar on which these names were written, the very one seen and described by S. Justin, was discovered on the same island, in July, 1574, during the pontificate of Gregory XIII. The altar is preserved in the Galleria Lapidaria of the Vatican Museum, in the first compartment (_Dii_).

The shrine on the Quirinal is minutely described by cla.s.sical writers.

It was hypaethral, that is, without a roof, so that the sky could be seen by the wors.h.i.+ppers of the "Genius of heavenly light." The oath _me-Dius Fidius_ could not be taken except in the open air. The chapel contained relics of the kingly period, the wool, distaff, spindle, and slippers of Tanaquil, and bra.s.s _clypea_ or medallions, made of money confiscated from Vitruvius Vaccus.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Statue of Semo Sancus.]

Its foundations were discovered in March, 1881, under what was formerly the convent of S. Silvestro al Quirinale, now the headquarters of the Royal Engineers. The monument is a parallelogram in shape, thirty-five feet long by nineteen feet wide, with walls of travertine, and decorations of white marble; and it is surrounded by votive altars and pedestals of statues. I am not sure whether the remarkable work of art which I shall describe presently was found in this very place, but it is a strange coincidence that, during the progress of the excavations at S. Silvestro, a statue of Semo Sancus and a pedestal inscribed with his name should have appeared in the antiquarian market of the city.

The statue, reproduced here from a heliogravure, is life-sized, and represents a nude youth, of archaic type. His att.i.tude may be compared to that of some early representations of Apollo, but the expression of the face and the modelling of some parts of the body are realistic rather than conventional. Both hands are missing, so that it is impossible to state what were the attributes of the G.o.d. Visconti thinks they may have been the _avis Sanqualis_ or _ossifraga_, and the club of Hercules. The inscription on the pedestal is very much like that seen by S. Justin:--

SEMONI. SANCO. DEO. FIDIO. SACRUM. DECURIA. SACERDOT[UM] BIDENTALIUM.

According to Festus, _bidentalia_ were small shrines of second-rate divinities, to whom _bidentes_, lambs two years old, were sacrificed.

For this reason the priests of Semo were called _sacerdotes bidentales_. They were organized, like a lay corporation, in a _decuria_ under the presidency of a _magister quinquennalis_. Their residence, adjoining the chapel, was ample and commodious, with an abundant supply of water. The lead pipe by which this was distributed through the establishment was discovered at the same time and in the same place with the bronze statues of athletes described in chapter xi. of my "Ancient Rome."

The pipe has been removed to the Capitoline Museum, the statue and its pedestal have been purchased by Pope Leo XIII. and placed in the Galleria dei Candelabri, and the foundations of the shrine have been destroyed.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] On the almanacs (_Not.i.tia, Curiosum_), containing catalogues and statistics of Roman buildings in the fourth century, see Mommsen: _Chronograph von 354_, etc., in the _Abhandlungen der Sachsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften_, vols. ii. 549; iii. 269; viii.

694.--Preller: _Die Regionen der Stadt Rom_. Jena: Hochhausen, 1846.--Jordan: _Topographie der Stadt Rom_. Berlin: Weidmann, ii., pp.

1 & 178.--Richter: _Topographie der Stadt Rom_, 1889, p. 5; id.: _Hermes_, xx., p. 91.--De Rossi: _Piante iconografiche e prospettiche di Roma anteriori al sec. XVI_. Roma: Salviucci, 1879.--Guido: _Il testo siriaco della descrizione di Roma_, etc., in the _Bullettino Comunale_, 1884, p. 218; and 1891, p. 61.--Lanciani: _Ricerche sulle XIV regioni urbane_; in the _Bullettino comunale_, 1890, p. 115.

[35] _Inscript_. 139, i.

[36] The fac-simile here presented is from the _Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, vi. 820.

[37] The sale of skins of victims sacrificed at Athens in the year 334 B. C., in state sacrifices only, brought a revenue of 5,500 drachmas.

[38] See Henzen, _Bullettino dell' Inst.i.tuto_, 1863, p. 58.--Mommsen: _Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, vol. i. no. 1503.

[39] See Cicero: _De Divinatione_, ii. 59, 123.--Preller: _Die Regionen_, p. 133.--Nibby: _Roma Ant._, ii. p. 334.--Beckner: _Topogr._, p. 539.--Cavedoni: _Bull. dell' Inst._ 1856, p.

102.--Visconti: _Bullettino Comunale_, 1887, p. 154, 156.--Middleton: _The Remains of Ancient Rome_, ed. 1892, vol. ii. p. 233.

[40] Concerning this celebrated monument, see Tambroni and Poletti: _Giornale arcadico_, vol. xviii., 1823, p. 371-400.--Gell: _Rome and its Vicinity_, i. p. 219.--Klausen: _aeneas_, ii. p. 1083.--Canina: _Via Appia_, i. p. 209-232.--Mommsen: _Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, vol. i. p. 207, no. 807.