CHAPTER VI.

PANTHEON, COLUMN OF MARCUS AURELIUS, MAUSOLEUM OF AUGUSTUS, MAUSOLEUM OF HADRIAN, AND NEIGHBOURHOOD.

[Sidenote: The Septa.]

Near the Piazza Venezia and S. Marco, to the east of the site of the ancient Circus Flaminius, stood the Septa, an ancient building erected for the purpose of holding the Roman comitia or elections. Some ruins of a very peculiar kind are situated under the Palazzo Doria and the church of S. Maria in Via Lata. They consist of ancient piers of travertine stone, about thirty-nine inches square, standing in rows at distances of five or six yards, and evidently belonging to the remains of a portico. There are three rows of these, each containing eight piers under the Palazzo Doria, and five rows under the church of S. Maria in Via Lata, containing each five piers. It is plain that these were originally faced with marble, as the exterior surface of the travertine is rough hewn. The situation of these pillars agrees well with the locality in which the Septa are placed by classical writers, and a further proof that they certainly formed a part of that building is given by the Capitoline map, upon which we find a large tract occupied by a building resting upon piers arranged in regular rows exactly corresponding to the piers under the church of S. Maria and the Palazzo Doria. Upon these fragments the letters SÆPT and LIA are legible, which appear to belong to the words SÆPTA JULIA.

The shape of the building is very peculiar. It must have reached along the side of the Via Lata from the Piazza di S. Marco to the church of S. Maria in Via Lata, and consisted of a long cloister supported by parallel rows of eight marble piers. This cannot have been the arrangement of the place in the Republican or early Imperial times, for a design less adapted for the orderly meeting of a large body of people can hardly be conceived. It is much more probable that in the present ruins we have the remains of Hadrian’s Septa, built when the original purpose of the building, the reception and division of the centuries when they voted, had become an affair of the past.

The design of these spacious covered cloisters seems to have been to afford a sheltered place for various classes of the Roman populace. Even in Domitian’s time the Septa had become the common resort of slave vendors, dealers in fancy goods, flâneurs and loungers, and the new arcades were intended possibly for the express accommodation of such persons. The wide court in which the great assemblies of the centuries had previously been held was partly filled up by these new buildings, and partly occupied by private houses, as the Capitoline plan shows. When that plan was prepared, in the time of Septimius Severus, the old Septa had entirely lost their form and original use, and the name only remained attached to the spacious colonnades of Hadrian.

In the early times of the Republic the Septa were simply an enclosed place on the Campus Martins partitioned off into a number of different plots by means of ropes or slight railings, in each of which one division of voters or century assembled, and whence the presidents passed one by one over the pontes to deliver the vote of their respective century. Hence arose the nickname of ovilia, which was given to the septa on account of their similarity to a sheepfold. Julius Cæsar first entertained the idea of setting up marble enclosures for the comitia centuriata, and surrounding them with a magnificent portico. The whole formed a spacious cloistered court, decorated with works of art, and closely connected with the Villa Publica. Cæsar’s design was completed after his death by Agrippa in B.C. 27, and he gave the building the name Septa Julia. A rostrum was erected in it, and such was the extent of the space enclosed that gladiatorial shows, and sometimes naumachiæ were held there. This was afterwards altered by Hadrian as above described.

[Sidenote: Temples of Isis and Serapis.]

Westwards from the septa and nearly upon the site now occupied by the church of S. Stefano del Cacco, the little Via di pie di Marmo and a part of the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, stood the temples of Isis, Serapis, and Minerva Chalcidica.[91] The names of the three temples are given in the catalogue of the Curiosum in the ninth region, and the sites of the two first, the Iseum and Serapeum, have been sufficiently traced by the numerous Egyptian antiquities which have been found near the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva. Of these the most remarkable are the two obelisks, one of which now stands in the Piazza della Rotunda in front of the Pantheon, and the others on the Piazza della Minerva. The latter of these was found between the church of S. Ignazio and that of S. Maria in the time of Alexander VII. in 1665, and the former had stood, previously to its erection on the present pedestal, in a little piazza near this place, whence it was removed by Clement XI. The antiquarian Fea, in his Miscellanea, gives an account of various other Egyptian relics found on the south-east side of the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, which undoubtedly belonged to the Iseum and Serapeum.[92]

Among these was a statue of Isis now in the hall of the dying gladiator in the Capitol, the two Egyptian lions now at the foot of the steps of the Capitol; the famous group of the Nile now in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican, and two fragments of an altar with Egyptian reliefs, and the inscription ISIDI SACRUM. Further traces of the same Egyptian worship were found by Canina in the year 1852, of which he has given an account in the Annali dell’ Instituto of that year. The emperors Commodus and Caracalla were particularly given to the worship of Egyptian deities, and the emperor Alexander Severus is said to have bestowed additional decorations upon those temples. The third temple, that of Minerva Chalcidica, which was restored by Domitian, together with the Iseum and Serapeum after the fire in A.D. 80, stood nearer to the Pantheon, and probably occupied the site of the present church called S. Maria sopra Minerva. The statue of Minerva, formerly in the Giustiniani Palace and now placed in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican, was found here. Some few remains of pilasters which are built into the foundations of the houses between the Via della Minerva and the Via di pie di Marmo may have belonged to this temple.

[Sidenote: Pantheon.]

At the same time with his Thermæ, which occupied this district, Agrippa built the famous dome, called by Pliny and Dion, and in the inscription of Severus on the architrave of the building itself, the Pantheon, and still retaining that name, though now consecrated as a Christian Church under the name of S. Maria ad Martyres or della Rotunda. This consecration, together with the colossal thickness of the walls, have secured the building against the waste of time, and the still more destructive attacks of the barons of the Middle Ages, who destroyed most of the other great edifices of imperial Rome by either making them their strongholds or pulling them down for building materials. The pronaos rests upon sixteen granite columns, with marble Corinthian bases and capitals. It was formerly approached by six steps, but two only are now above the level of the surrounding ground. The architrave and frieze are plain, and on the latter stands the inscription, which formerly, as may be seen by the holes for nails, was formed by metallic letters:

M . AGRIPPA . L . F . COS . TERTIUM . FECIT.

Agrippa was consul for the third time in B.C. 27, so that the building is now 1906 years old. Another inscription in smaller characters stands under this upon the two upper ledges of the architrave, commemorating the restoration of the building by Severus and Caracalla. The pediment, as may be seen by the holes of the metal fastenings, formerly contained a bronze relief representing Jupiter hurling thunderbolts upon the giants. The roof of the pronaos was originally arched, but the vaulting has been replaced by strong beams, and on the outside the gilded bronze has been replaced by lead. In the interior of the pronaos, on each side of the entrance are two huge niches which formerly contained the statues of Augustus and Agrippa, but are now empty.

The pronaos is connected with the rotunda by two massive projections of masonry ornamented at the sides with marble pilasters and exquisitely worked reliefs in pentelic marble representing candelabra and sacrificial implements entwined with wreaths. These connecting walls originally rose to an equal height with the walls of the rotunda, but are now hidden by the bell towers, erected by Bernini in the time of Urban VIII. about A.D. 1625.

The doorway is of magnificently carved marble slabs, and the folding doors, moving on massive hinges fixed in two projecting pilasters, are of exquisitely worked bronze.

The rotunda rests on a rectangular base, similar to those which support the cylindrical part of the mausoleum of Hadrian and the tomb of Cecilia Metella. In the parts where the thickness of the wall is not lessened by niches in the interior, it has the amazing breadth of nineteen feet of solid brickwork. In addition to this it is strengthened with numerous arches built into the wall. Three cornices run round the exterior of the rotunda and divide it into three rings, the lowest of which was faced with marble, and the two upper with stucco. The dome springs from the second cornice, and consists first of a ring of masonry seven feet high, and then of six concentric rings, presenting on the exterior the appearance of six steps. The top is flat, and is pierced in the centre with a large round opening twenty-seven feet in diameter. Round the opening is a ring of ornamental gilded bronze, which is the only part of the old bronze gilt roof now remaining. The masonry of the dome is of wedge-shaped pumice stones, chosen for this purpose on account of their lightness. The same kind of stone is used in several other buildings in Rome where lightness combined with moderate strength is required. The exterior of the dome is flat and heavy, and impressive only from its stern and massive solidity. The proportions of the interior are altogether different, and have been universally admired for their elegance, and the exquisitely simple taste with which they are decorated. The lower part contains eight deep niches, alternately semicircular and square, in one of which the entrance doors are placed, while the others were filled with statues of deities, now replaced by Romish altars. They are decorated with pilasters, and two Corinthian columns stand in front of each, supporting the entablature which runs round the whole interior. Between the eight principal niches are eight smaller ones, now used as altars, faced with ædiculæ consisting of two small columns with entablature and pediment. The two ring cornices in the interior answer in position to the lower exterior cornices. Above the upper cornice which runs quite round the building there were originally twelve niches surrounded with elegant marbles and stucco work. These were altered in 1747, and their effect injured by the introduction of heavy pediments, and by the removal of the marbles and stucco work. The interior of the roof is relieved by well-designed rectangular coffer work, decreasing in size towards the apex of the dome so as to give the impression of height and space. The floor is laid with slabs of Phrygian and Numidian marble, porphyry, and grey granite, in alternate squares and circles, set in reticulated work. In the centre it has a depression pierced with small holes to carry off the rain water from the aperture above. This drain probably communicated with the great cloaca built by Agrippa to drain the Campus Martius. The proportions of the interior of the dome are admirably adjusted, so that no part of the building has an undue prominence, contrasting favourably in this respect with S. Peter’s, where the immense size of the piers on which the dome is supported dwarf the upper part too much. The Pantheon will always be reckoned among the masterpieces of architecture for solid durability combined with beauty of interior effect.

The Romans prided themselves greatly upon it as one of the wonders of their great capital, and no other dome of antiquity could rival its colossal dimensions.[93] The height from the pavement to the crown of the dome is 143 feet, half of which is occupied by the cylindrical wall and half by the dome; this height is insignificant when compared with S. Peter’s, the dome of which is 405 feet from the pavement to the base of the lantern, and the exterior appearance of S. Peter’s is far finer, but the diameter of the Pantheon is the greater, and the proportions of the interior more harmonious.

The inscription assigns its completion to the year B.C. 27, the third consulship of Agrippa. For a long time the mistaken notion prevailed that the building was dedicated to Juppiter Ultor, a misapprehension arising from a corrupt reading in a passage of Pliny, where the words Jovis Ultoris had been inserted instead of diribitori. The original name, Pantheon, taken in connection with the numerous niches for statues of the gods in the interior, seems to contradict the idea that it was dedicated to any peculiar deity or class of deities. The seven principal niches may have been intended for the seven superior deities, and the eight ædiculæ for the next in dignity, while the twelve niches in the upper ring were occupied by the inferior inhabitants of Olympus. Dion hints at this explanation when he suggests that the name was taken from the resemblance of the dome to the vault of heaven.[94]

Originally, to all appearance, the Pantheon was not intended for a temple, but for a part of Agrippa’s Thermæ. Its shape corresponds very closely with the description given by Vitruvius of the Laconicum or Sudatio attached to all Roman Thermæ. He recommends a dome-shaped building, with a round opening like that of the Pantheon at the crown, which can be opened or closed at pleasure, so as to lower or raise the temperature, by the removal or application of a lid (clypeum) moved by chains.

And on an examination of the pronaos it will be found that the stones in its upper part, which abut on the central building, are not bonded into it, but are only placed against it, showing that the pronaos was an after-thought, and was not erected till the rotunda had been finished. Agrippa must have changed the design of the building after the completion of the dome, and, perhaps because he found it too vast for the purposes of a sudatio, or because he thought it too splendid a building to be employed for such a purpose, have determined to dedicate it to the gods of heathendom. The bronze gilt statuary, the work of Diogenes of Athens, with which the temple was decorated, was much admired by the Roman connoisseurs, and in particular the group upon the pediment and the Caryatides. The statue of Venus was adorned with the two divided halves of the famous pearl of Cleopatra, fellow to the one which Cleopatra is said to have dissolved in vinegar in order to win her wager that she could spend ten million sesterces in one dinner.

In the fire of A.D. 80 the Pantheon suffered with the rest of the buildings in this part of the Campus Martius, but from the solidity of its construction the injury done was not great, and was repaired soon afterwards by Domitian. It was damaged by lightning in the reign of Trajan, but restored by Hadrian, who used it frequently as a court of justice.

A hundred years after this, the restoration by Septimius Severus, recorded in the extant inscription, took place A.D. 195. Honorius closed this temple, with the other temples of Rome, in A.D. 399, but it was not consecrated as a Christian church until two hundred years afterwards, when Boniface IV. dedicated it to All Saints in allusion to the pagan name of Pantheon, giving the name of S. Maria ad Martyres. Two acts of plunder perpetrated upon the building deserve mention. In the middle of the seventh century, A.D. 650, Constans II. took off the gilded bronze tiles of the roof, and was carrying them to Constantinople, with the plunder of the Forum of Trajan, when he was intercepted at Syracuse by the Saracens and killed. His act of plunder was imitated by Urban VIII., who in 1632 took away the bronze girders which supported the roof of the pronaos and had them melted down and used partly for the pillars of the baldachino in S. Peter’s, and partly for the cannon of the castle of S. Angelo.

[Sidenote: Aqua Virgo.]

Not far from the Pantheon the arches of the Aqua Virgo projected from the side of the Pincian Hill and crossed the Via Lata. Some remains of these arches are still to be seen in the Via del Nazareno (No. 12) at the back of the Fountain of Trevi. They bear an inscription which was copied in the ninth century by the anonymous chronicler of Einsiedlen, recording the restoration of the arches by Claudius after they had been partially destroyed by Caligula, who intended to build an amphitheatre in this neighbourhood. The arches are now entirely covered with rubbish, and the conduit of the aqueduct itself, which formerly was raised upon them, is consequently now upon the level of the ground. The inscription stands on the side of the conduit, and was formerly at the spot where some principal street passed under the aqueduct. Above it is a simple cornice, and below, an architrave, with the upper part of some Doric pilasters, appears above the surface of the water, which is here tapped to afford a washing trough to the laundresses of the neighbourhood. The masonry is of solid travertine blocks, carefully cut and fitted.

[Sidenote: Dogana in the Piazza di Pietra.]

Some topographers have identified the ruin in the Piazza di Pietra, now the Dogana, with the Posidonium, a portico built by Agrippa in memory of his naval exploits; but unless the ruin in the Piazza di Pietra be a later restoration after the fire of A.D. 80, which is possible enough, the style is not such as to allow us to assign it to the Augustan age. It has eleven fluted Corinthian marble columns supporting a tolerably well-preserved entablature, and plainly belonging to the longer side of a basilica or temple. The architrave, frieze, and cornice, have a heavy and unimpressive appearance, though some of the details of the work are rich and carefully executed. In the courtyard of the building a portion of the wall of the cella, and the spring of the arches of the vaulted roof, can be seen now incorporated into the modern building.

Various conjectures have been made as to the name and history of this building. Some of the older topographers thought that it was the Temple of M. Aurelius, which seems, however, to have been nearer to the column of that emperor than the ruin in question is;[95] nor does the position of this ruin allow us to suppose that it formed any part of a series of buildings placed symmetrically round the column. Palladio gives an elaborate ground-plan, with all the details, and calls it the Temple of Mars; but there does not appear to be any evidence in favour of this appellation; nor is it known how much of Palladio’s design is taken from what remained of the ruin in his time, and how much is merely conjectural restoration. The conjecture of Urlichs that the Temple of Marciana, Trajan’s sister, stood here, rests on no evidence but that of the Notitia, and is rendered very improbable by the great size of the building, and by the fact that the expression in the Notitia is Basilica Marciani, and not Templum Marcianæ. Another hypothesis, which Professor Reber mentions, has more to recommend it. Antoninus Pius is said to have erected a temple in honour of his adopted father, Hadrian. This temple could not have stood in the Forum of Trajan, where there was no room left for such a building, and would most probably be placed near the rest of the Antonine buildings, not far from the Column of M. Aurelius. In the Mirabilia, the Temple of Hadrian is placed near the Church of S. Maria in Aquiro, which corresponded to the modern Chiesa degli Orfanelli; and part of a temple precinct built of travertine has been discovered in the Palazzo Cini, and is, perhaps, a relic of this temple. A medal of the year A.D. 151 contains a representation of the Temple of Hadrian, and corresponds tolerably well with the extant ruins; and in the neighbourhood of the Piazza di Pietra, several statues and fragments of inscriptions bearing the name of Antoninus Pius have been found at different times. When it is added that the style of building and execution of the ornamental work belong to the Antonine era, it will be seen that, although there is nothing more than probable evidence in favour of the above supposition, yet it has more in its favour than any of the other conjectures mentioned.

The present building was erected by Innocent XII. at the end of the seventeenth century in order to prevent the fall of the columns, which had become dangerously disjointed. The entablature has been restored in many parts, and a kind of attica erected over it, which gives the ruin the appearance of being in better preservation than it really is.

[Sidenote: Gnomon Obelisk.]

North of the Piazza Capranica, in the open space called the Piazza di Monte Citorio, is a large obelisk of red syenite. This is the Gnomon Obelisk, of which Pliny gives an interesting account in his ‘Natural History.’ It was brought by Augustus from Egypt, with that which is now in the Piazza del Popolo, and was erected on the Campus Martins under the directions of the mathematician Facundus Novus to serve as a sun-dial, by which not only the hour of the day, but also the day of the month, might be shown. For this purpose the pavement of the piazza in which it stood was marked out with a complicated system of lines in bronze; and, to prevent any disturbances caused by the settlement of the foundations, they were laid as deep below the ground as the height of the obelisk itself. Pliny remarks that when he wrote, the gnomon had ceased for thirty years to mark the time rightly, and he ascribes this inaccuracy to some displacement of the obelisk due to natural causes, such as earthquakes or inundations.[96] It is more probable that the inaccuracy of the Julian calendar gradually produced the change. Ammianus Marcellinus, the Notitia, and the anonymous writer of the Einsiedlen MS., all mention this obelisk as still standing on the place where Augustus placed it. It was then--after the ninth century--lost for a time, but discovered again in 1403 with a part of the figures of the dial. Marliani, in the first half of the sixteenth century, mentions a part of the obelisk as lying neglected in a cellar near S. Lorenzo in Lucina, and it was not erected upon the present site until 1792.

To the east and north of the Monte Citorio lay the great buildings of the Antonine era, of which we still have some remains in the base of the Pillar of Antoninus Pius, now in the Giardino della Pigna of the Vatican, the magnificent Pillar of M. Aurelius in the Piazza Colonna, and the remains of the arch of the latter emperor, now in the Palace of the Conservators of the Capitol.

[Sidenote: Pillar of Antoninus Pius.]

The first of these, the Pillar of Antoninus Pius, was a monolith of red syenite, resting upon a pedestal of the same stone ornamented with reliefs. These remained upon their original site in the garden of the Casa della Missione near the Monte Citorio, until the time of Benedict XIV., when the pedestal was removed and placed in the Piazza di Monte Citorio near the Gnomon Obelisk, but the monolith was found to be so damaged, as not to be worth the expense of re-erection. Pius VI. when he placed the Gnomon Obelisk in the Piazza di Monte Citorio, removed the pedestal and took it to the Vatican Gardens, and it was finally placed in the Giardino della Pigna by Gregory XVI., who caused it to be carefully restored.

[Sidenote: Column of M. Aurelius.]

The second of the great Antonine monuments, the Column of M. Aurelius, still stands upon its original site in the Piazza Colonna. Formerly it was the centre point of a group of massive temples and colossal halls, which have entirely perished. It is now surrounded by houses of modern construction, and surmounted by a statue of S. Paul, and looks like a grey veteran clothed in the dress of a later generation, in which he feels self-conscious and ill at ease. The only remains of the colonnades, which once enclosed the court in which it stood, are to be found on the east side of the piazza in the palace of the Prince of Piombino. They consist of a triple portico of brickwork, probably faced in ancient times with marble. The Temple of M. Aurelius, which stood, like that of Trajan, in front of the column, was probably upon the western side towards the Piazza di Monte Citorio, and it is from the ruins of this temple, and not of the Amphitheatre of Statilius, as commonly supposed, that the mound of ruins called Monte Citorio may have been formed. But no traces of the substructions or of the walls or columns have been found.[97]

The column itself, which is a close imitation of that of Trajan, stands upon a pedestal which was so altered by Fontana from its original shape as to present a totally different appearance. The ancient pedestal was much less massive and better proportioned to the upper part of the monument. Its base stood at a level thirteen feet lower than the present pavement of the square, and it consisted of a basement of solid stonework about sixteen feet in height resting on three steps, nearly the whole of which is now under the level of the surrounding ground. On the east side was the door by which the spiral staircase in the interior was reached. Upon the basement stood a large square flat stone, ornamented with genii and triumphal and military ensigns, and above this the pedestal upon which, before the restorations by Fontana, only the words CONSECRATIO and D. ANTONINI. AUG. PII. were legible. The original shape and inscription of this lower part are only known to us from old prints and antiquarian notes in Gamucci, Du Perac, and Piranesi’s works. It became necessary for the safety of the pillar, in 1589 to restore the base, and the whole was cased in marble and repaired by Fontana, under the orders of Sixtus V., who at the same time placed the statue of S. Paul upon the top. From a want of accurate historical information, however, the old inscription was supposed to refer to the elder of the Antonines, Antoninus Pius, and the new inscription accordingly speaks of the monument as dedicated to him. The error was discovered by a narrower inspection of the reliefs upon the shaft, which clearly relate to the exploits of M. Aurelius.

The plinth is quite simple, and the base of the shaft is formed, like the Column of Trajan, in the shape of a laurel crown. The whole of the shaft is occupied by a spiral series of reliefs, and only a small ring of fluted mouldings separates them from the capital, which is of the Romano-Doric order. The whole pillar measures 122 feet in height, being two feet lower than that of Trajan. The shafts of the two are exactly of the same height (100 Roman feet), and are formed in the same way of solid cylinders of marble, in the centre of which the spiral staircase which leads to the top is hewn.

The great winding wreath of bas-reliefs which twines round the column contains scenes from the history of the German wars in the years from A.D. 167-179, in which a number of the tribes north of the Danube, the Marcomanni, Quadi, Suevi, Hermonduri, Jazyges, Vandali, Sarmati, Alani, and Roxolani, with many others, took part. The representations begin with an army on the march crossing a river (the Danube); then follow, as on the Pillar of Trajan, scenes in which the general harangues his troops, the enemy’s encampments are seen, and a great victory is won, accompanied with the usual thank-offerings.

But the most remarkable part of the whole relief is a scene which plainly corresponds to the account given by Dion Cassius of the sudden, and, as it seemed, supernatural relief afforded by a thunderstorm to the Roman army when hard pressed by the Quadi, who had surrounded them and succeeded in preventing all their efforts to escape. “The Roman army,” says Dion, “were in the greatest distress from fatigue, many of them were wounded, and they were hemmed in by the enemy, without water, under a burning sun. They could neither fight nor retreat, and would have been compelled to stand in their ranks and die under the scorching heat, had not some thick clouds suddenly gathered, and a heavy rain fallen, which refreshed them, and afforded them drink. This did not happen without the intervention of the gods (οὐκ ἀθεεί), for it was said that one Arnuphis, an Egyptian magician, was with Marcus Aurelius, and that he, by invoking the aid of Hermes, the god of the air, and some other deities by means of incantations, drew down the rain.” Xiphilinus, however, from whose abridgement of Dion we have the above account, declares that “Dion has purposely falsified the circumstances, for he must have known that the ‘legio fulminata’ obtained its name from this incident, the true history of which was as follows. There was a legion in the army of Marcus Aurelius, consisting entirely of Christians. The emperor being told that their prayers in such an emergency never remained unanswered, requested them to pray for help to their God. When they had prayed, God immediately smote the enemy with lightning, but refreshed the Roman army by a copious rain, upon which Marcus published a decree, in which he complimented the Christian legion and bestowed the name fulminate upon it.” History however, does not bear out this wonderful tale of Xiphilinus, for the name fulminate is known, from inscriptions, to have been given to the twelfth legion as early as the reign of Augustus.[98]

Upon the pillar the scene is represented by the figure of Jupiter Pluvius dripping with rain, which the soldiers are eagerly catching in their shields.

The drought is followed by an inundation, in which many of the Germans are drowned. A grand battle takes place, followed by the burning of the enemy’s huts and the seizure of numerous captives.

The figure of Marcus Aurelius on horseback, accompanying a long train of spoil taken from the German tribes, and a long series of battles, conflagrations of villages and towns, conferences with the enemy’s generals follow, and the first campaign ends at a point near the centre of the column, with a procession of trophies and spoils of war, in the midst of which a figure of Victory inscribes the triumph on a shield.

Over this figure of Victory begins the history of the second campaign, in which four battles are represented, and various military scenes, as the crossing of the Danube in boats, the thanksgiving sacrifices after victory, the emperor addressing his army, captures of women and children, and finally a long train of captives and spoils led off in triumph. This great marble history is after the model of that on Trajan’s Column. The style of execution is, however, somewhat different: the figures stand out much more from the surface, are more roughly cut, and have a heavier and stiffer look, resembling that of the reliefs upon the Arch of Severus, and the base of the Pillar of Antoninus Pius.

The column is called in all ancient writings Columna Antonini, which may apply to either of the Antonines. But it is perfectly evident from spiral reliefs, representing the frequent crossings of the Danube, and especially from that recording the incident of the sudden storm which extricated the Roman army from their difficulties, that the German wars of Marcus Aurelius are the subject commemorated.

Aurelius Victor and Julius Capitolinus state that temples, columns and priesthoods, were dedicated to this emperor after his death, and some inscriptions discovered in 1777 in the Piazza Colonna establish the conclusion that this pillar was erected in his honour beyond doubt. These inscriptions, now in the Gallery of Inscriptions in the Vatican, contain a petition from Adrastus, a freedman of Septimius Severus, and custodian of the Pillar of Marcus Aurelius, addressed to the Emperor Severus requesting leave to have the miserable hut (cannaba) in which he lived changed into a habitable house (solarium) for himself and his heirs, and also the decree of the emperor, giving the permission and assigning materials and a site. The petition was presented immediately on the accession of Severus, and the decree is dated in the consulship of Falco and Clarus, A.D. 193, two months after the emperor had taken possession of the palace. In this inscription the pillar is called the Columna Centenaria, and exact measurements of the shaft have shown that it is just one hundred Roman feet in height, including the base and capital.[99]

The bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius, which stood on the summit, was probably carried off by the Byzantine emperor, Constans II., to Syracuse, and was there taken by the Saracens from him, and conveyed to Alexandria with the rest of the plunder he had stripped from the buildings of Rome. To distinguish this column from the above-mentioned Pillar of Antoninus Pius, it is called in some of the legal documents of the tenth century “Columpna major Antonina.” As recorded in the inscription on the modern base, it was much injured by lightning in the fourteenth century, and restored by Sixtus V.

[Sidenote: Piazza Navona.]

The Piazza Navona was formerly a stadium, not a circus. The strongest evidence we have in favour of this rests on the shape of the piazza and of the ruins. One of the essential parts of a circus, the spina, is entirely wanting, and the end from which the runners started is at right angles to the longer sides, while in a circus, as in the case of the Circus of Maxentius, the carceres always stood in a slanting direction across the course, in order to equalise the distances round the spina.

The obelisk, which now stands in the centre of the piazza was brought by Innocent X. from the Circus of Maxentius on the Appian Road. The Circus of Maxentius was not, however, its original site, for the hieroglyphics are of Roman execution and contain the name of Domitian.

[Sidenote: Mausoleum of Augustus.]

The northern part of the Campus Martius, between the Via del Ripetta and the Pincian Hill, contained only one great building of which we have any knowledge. This was the Mausoleum of Augustus, the ruins of which are now buried under the Teatro Correa, and are approached by a narrow entry leading out of the Via dei Pontefici. All that can now be seen of the shapeless mass which this once stately building presents, is a small part of the cylindrical brickwork basement on the left of the entrance to the Teatro Correa, and another fragment of the same at the back of the Church of S. Rocco. The proofs that these are the remains of the Mausoleum of Augustus are quite indisputable. Suetonius places it between the Tiber and the Flaminian Road, and Strabo speaks of it as standing near the bank of the river, descriptions which, though they are not very definite, agree with the site of the Teatro Correa sufficiently. Complete certainty is, however, afforded by the inscriptions which have been found on the site of the Ustrina Cæsarum, where the bodies were burnt before burial. These were found near the Corso, between the Via degli Otto Cantoni and the Via dei Pontefici, a spot answering to Strabo’s notice of the site of the Ustrina as standing in the middle of the Campus, which is here narrowed by the approach of the Pincian Hill towards the river.

Augustus had built this magnificent tomb in his sixth consulship (B.C. 28). At that time the course of the Flaminian Road through the Campus was lined with the tombs of many eminent Roman statesmen and public characters, which have all, with the exception of the insignificant Tomb of Bibulus, totally disappeared. The modern city has entirely effaced all traces of these, but we may in all probability suppose that the Flaminian road presented no less striking a spectacle in the days of Augustus than the Appian, which we are accustomed to regard as the great burying-place of Rome.

The name mausoleum was apparently given to this tomb if not immediately, yet soon after its completion, not from any resemblance in the plan of the building of the famous monument of the Halicarnassian queen, which differed entirely in shape and design, but because the expression mausoleum had already become a name used to designate any tomb of colossal proportions. The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus was a rectangular building surrounded with a colonnade, while the Tomb of Augustus was cylindrical and ornamented with deep niches. Strabo gives the following description of the latter monument: “The most remarkable of all the tombs in the Campus is that called the Mausoleum, which consists of a huge mound of earth raised upon a lofty base of white marble near the river bank, and planted to the summit with evergreen trees. Upon the top is a bronze statue of Cæsar Augustus, and under the mound are the burial-places of Augustus and his family and friends, while behind it is a spacious wood containing admirably designed walks. In the middle of the Campus is the enclosure he made for burning the corpses, also of white marble, surrounded by an iron railing, and planted with poplar-trees.”[100]

The mound of earth here described by Strabo was probably of a conical shape, and the trees were planted on terraced ledges. The mass of the building was cylindrical, like the central portions of Hadrian’s Mausoleum, and of the tombs of Plautius and Cæcilia Metella, and was supported upon a square basement which is now entirely buried beneath the level of the ground. The exterior of the cylindrical part was relieved by large niches which doubtless contained statues, and broke the otherwise heavy uniformity of the surface. At the entrance were the bronze pillars which Augustus had ordered to be erected after his death, on which was engraved a catalogue of the acts of his reign. We now possess a fragment of a copy of this interesting document in the famous Monumentum Ancyranum, found at Ancyra in the vestibule of a Temple of Augustus. Besides these pillars two obelisks stood in front of the entrance door, one of which is now placed in the Piazza of S. Maria Maggiore, while the other stands between the statues of the Dioscuri on the Quirinal. These obelisks were not, however, placed there at the time when the tomb was first built, but at a later period of the empire. The entrance fronted towards the city, i.e., to the south, near the apse of the Church of S. Rocco, and appears to have had a portico with columns, the traces of which are still left.

The interior was formed by massive concentric walls, the spaces between which were vaulted and divided into cells for the deposit of the urns containing the ashes of the illustrious dead. A great alabaster vase found near the Mausoleum in 1777, and placed in the Vatican Museum, was probably one of these. We know from various passages of Roman authors that the first burial which took place here was that of the young Marcellus, the favourite nephew of Augustus, who died at Baiæ[101] in B.C. 23, and the last, that of the Emperor Nerva in A.D. 98. Trajan was buried under his column. The Mausoleum of Hadrian became the Imperial tomb in A.D. 138.[102] During the 160 years which intervened, the ashes of Agrippa, Octavia, the mother of Marcellus, Drusus, Caius and Lucius, Augustus himself and Livia, Germanicus, Drusus, son of Tiberius, the elder Agrippina, Tiberius, Antonia (wife of L. Domitius), Claudius and Britannicus were deposited here. Besides these there must have been a great number of other friends and relations of the Imperial family buried here. Only one of all the inscriptions recording these burials is now extant. It is engraved on a pedestal, which bore the urn where the ashes of the elder Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus and mother of Caligula, lay. In the inscription on this pedestal Caligula is called Augustus, showing that the burial took place after his accession, in accordance with the account of Agrippina’s banishment by Tiberius. The pedestal was hollowed out and used in the Middle Ages as a measure for corn, and is still inscribed with the words RUGITELLA DI GRANO. It may now be seen in the courtyard of the Conservator’s Palace on the Capitol. At the same time, and at a spot between the Mausoleum and the Corso were found six cippi of travertine, recording the burning of the bodies of four of the children of Germanicus, Tiberius Cæsar, Caius Cæsar, Livilla, and one whose name is erased. The remaining two cippi record the burning of the bodies of a son of Drusus, and of one of the Flavian family. It is evident that these belonged to the Ustrina Cæsarum, a place described by Strabo, as quoted above, where the corpses of the dead were burnt and the formal ceremony of collecting the bones took place. The cippi may still be seen in the Vatican Museum.

The Mausoleum remained closed after Nerva’s burial until the capture of Rome by Alaric in A.D. 409, when the Goths broke it open in their search for treasure, and scattered the ashes of the Cæsars to the winds. It was then probably that the alabaster vase mentioned above was removed from the Mausoleum and carried to the Ustrina where it was found.

In the 12th century the Mausoleum suffered the fate of all the other great buildings of Rome. It became a castle of the Colonna family, and bore the name Augusta. The mound of earth was then probably removed, and a stone or brick tower built in its place. Previously to this, the statue of Augustus, with the bronze decorations of the Pantheon and Forum of Trajan, had probably been carried to Syracuse by Constans, and thence to Alexandria by the Saracens.

The building might, however, still, like the tomb of Hadrian, have long defied the attacks of time, had not the Romans themselves, in the commotions of 1167, demolished the Colonna Castle, and with it the greater part of the walls upon which it was built. Two hundred years later, the body of the last of the Tribunes, Cola di Rienzi, was burned by the Jews before the Mausoleum.[103] At that time the spot was called Campo d’Austa from the ancient site of the Ustrina. The interior chambers seem to have been entirely demolished in the 15th century, and only the exterior wall left. Poggio, the Florentine, describes the building as used in his time (1440) for a vineyard, and before that date its shape was completely changed by the falling in of the vaulting of the interior, so that it presented the appearance of an amphitheatre instead of a lofty conical building. In Donatis’ book (1638), it is represented as a funnel-shaped ruin with a garden on the sloping sides of the interior. Much information might doubtless be gained by well-directed excavations, which have apparently never been undertaken on account of the present occupation of the ruin as a circus in winter and a theatre (the Teatro Correa) in summer.

[Sidenote: Muro Torto.]

Beyond the Porta del Popolo on the edge of the Pincian hill, there is a very ancient piece of wall, faced in the style called opus reticulatum, which is made of small diamond-shaped blocks of tufa set in the surface of a mass of concrete. These blocks are driven into the concrete before the lime has dried and set. This ruin, which is called the Muro Torto, is often spoken of as having been a part of the house of Sylla but I do not know upon what authority. It may have formed a part of the substructions of some of the private buildings on the Pincian, previous to the time of Aurelian, who incorporated it in his wall. Near the angle of the wall where it turns sharply to the south is a point at which the brickwork leans in great masses considerably out of the perpendicular, whence the name of Muro Torto. Procopius speaks of this as having been in the same state long before his time, and calls it the broken wall.

[Sidenote: Pons Ælius.]

Passing along the bank of the Tiber by the Via Ripetta from the Porta del Popolo we come to the bridge of S. Angelo (Pons Ælius) which crosses the river close to the Castle of S. Angelo, anciently the Mausoleum of Hadrian. This bridge was built by the Emperor Hadrian at the same time with his Mausoleum. The anonymous writer of the Einsiedlen MS. gives an inscription which in his time remained upon the bridge assigning its erection to the nineteenth tribuneship and third consulship of Hadrian, which indicates the year A.D. 135, and in confirmation of this Nardini gives a medal of Hadrian which dates from his third consulship, and has on the obverse a representation of this bridge. The name Pons Ælius, given to it by Dion Cassius in his account of Hadrian’s funeral, was probably derived either from Hadrian’s prænomen Ælius, or from the name of his son Ælius Cæsar whose burial was the first which took place in the Mausoleum. The piers of the bridge are ancient, but the upper parts have been rebuilt.

[Sidenote: Mausoleum of Hadrian.]

The Mausoleum of Hadrian owes its preservation entirely to the peculiar fitness of the site and shape for the purpose of a fortress which it has served since the time of Belisarius. Had it not been thus made serviceable to the turbulent spirit of the mediæval Romans, the same hands which stripped the great pile of its marble facing, and, after hurling the statues with which it was adorned into the moat, allowed them to lie there in oblivion, would have torn asunder and carried away the whole mass to furnish materials for the palaces and stables of their ferocious and ignorant nobles. The original form of this colossal mausoleum is now greatly changed by the modern buildings which have been piled upon it, by the addition of the corbels round its upper part, and by the loss of the exterior facing of marble, so that the ancient appearance can be only conjecturally restored. The remaining ancient part consists of a square basement of concrete and travertine blocks, the sides of which measured ninety-five yards surmounted by an enormous cylindrical structure of travertine seventy yards in diameter and seventy-five feet high. Procopius tells us that this was cased in Parian marble, and that upon the summit stood a number of splendid marble statues of men and horses.[104] There are several other tombs in Italy constructed upon the same plan with a cylindrical tower placed upon a square base. Two of these are upon the Appian road about three miles from Rome, the celebrated Tomb of Cæcilia Metella, and that of the Servilii, and belong to the Republican Era. Two others are of the Augustan Age, the tomb of the Plautii at Ponte Lucano, near Tivoli, and the beautiful monument of Munatius Plancus, near Gaeta. Hadrian’s design was not therefore by any means a new one, as we might have expected in the case of an emperor who was himself an architect, and proud of his artistic designs.

It is plain from the history of Procopius that the statues of men and horses which he describes were upon the top of the building. For the defenders of the mausoleum against the army of Vitiges being hard pressed by the approach of the Goths under shelter of a testudo, in their despair seized these statues and hurled them upon the heads of their assailants, thus breaking down the testudines and repelling the attack. Of the exact order in which they were arranged we have no evidence. Tradition asserts that the twenty-four Corinthian columns destroyed by fire in the Basilica of St. Paul in 1823 formerly belonged to the Mausoleum of Hadrian, and that they were removed by Honorius.[105] A comparison of this tradition with a passage of Herodian, in which he says that the ashes of Septimius Severus were buried in the temple where rest the bones of the Antonini, has led to the conjecture that the columns formed the colonnade of a round temple on the top of the mausoleum in which temple Hadrian’s colossal statue stood, and that the bronze fir-cone found here, which is now in the Vatican garden, ornamented the summit. Round this temple, and upon the level top of the cylindrical tower, may have been arranged the various statues of which Procopius speaks.

The colossal head of Hadrian’s statue found here is still to be seen in the Museo Pio Clementino, the bronze gilt peacocks in the Giardino della Pigna. The famous Barberini Faun, now at Munich, and the dancing Faun at Florence, were amongst the ornaments of the upper part of the tomb. Another conjecture as to the shape of the upper part of the building is that it was surmounted by a smaller cylindrical tower, with a roof in the shape of a truncated cone, upon the top of which stood the colossal statue of Hadrian. There is not sufficient evidence to give any degree of certainty to either of these conjectural restorations.

The interior of the building, according to the latest discoveries, consists of a large central rectangular chamber (thirty-six by thirty feet wide and fifty-four feet high), approached by an ascending spiral corridor, leading from a lower chamber which communicated immediately with the principal entrance. The entrance was a high arch in the cylindrical tower immediately opposite the bridge; it is now walled up and the lower chamber into which it leads can only be approached from above.

In the central chamber there are four niches in which formerly stood the urns and tombstones of the illustrious persons buried here. A large sarcophagus of porphyry found here was used for the tomb of Pope Innocent II. in the Lateran, and the lid may still be seen in the Baptisterium of St. Peter’s, where it is used as a font. The chamber was lighted and ventilated by square passages cut through the stone in a slanting direction, and the rain water was carried off by other channels, which conveyed it into drains at the foot of the building. It does not appear to be certainly known whether other chambers may not exist in the interior which have not been yet discovered. Piranesi gives a number of additional chambers besides the two above mentioned, but his representation is probably conjectural.

After the burial of Nerva no more room was left in the Mausoleum of Augustus for the interment of the imperial ashes. Trajan’s remains were deposited under his column in the forum bearing his name, but Hadrian gladly seized the opportunity of adding another to the many colossal structures he had already reared. The mausoleum was begun at the same time with the Ælian bridge in the year A.D. 135. The bricks of which part of the building consists have stamps of various years of Hadrian’s reign, and show that the greater part of the building was erected by him, though Antoninus Pius probably completed it. Hadrian’s son Ælius, who died before his father, was the first Cæsar whose ashes were placed in this tomb. After him, Hadrian himself was buried here, and then the Emperor Antoninus Pius, and his wife the elder Faustina, three of their sons, Fulvius Antoninus, M. Galerius Aurelius Antoninus, and L. Aurelius Verus, the colleague of M. Aurelius in the empire, and a daughter Aurelia Fadilla.

No record has been preserved of the burial of M. Aurelius, but it seems probable that his ashes were deposited here, as the Mausoleum of Hadrian continued to be the tomb of the Antonines till the time of Severus, who built a third imperial monument, the Septizonium, on the Appian Road.[106] Four children of M. Aurelius were buried here, who died during their father’s life, named Aurelius Antoninus, T. Ælius Aurelius, and Domitia Faustina, and also his miserable son and successor the Emperor Commodus. The inscriptions recording all these burials, were copied by the anonymous writer of Einsiedlen in the ninth century, when they were apparently still legible upon the south wall of the square basement. The inscriptions recording the names Hadrian and M. Aurelius may have been placed upon the upper part of the tomb, like those on the Plautian Tomb and the Tomb of Cæcilia Metella, and may therefore either have escaped the notice of the above-mentioned anonymous traveller, or have been stripped off with the marble casing of the exterior.

After the burial of M. Aurelius the tomb was closed until the sack of Rome by Alaric in A.D. 410, when this barbarian’s soldiers probably broke it open in search of treasure, and scattered the ashes of the Antonines to the winds. From this time for a hundred years the tomb was turned into a fortress, the possession of which became the object of many struggles in the wars of the Goths under Vitiges A.D. 537 and Totilas who was killed A.D. 552. From the end of the sixth century, when Gregory the Great saw on its summit a vision of St. Michael sheathing his sword in token that the prayers of the Romans for preservation from the plague were heard, the Mausoleum of Hadrian was considered as a consecrated building under the name of S. Angelus inter nubes, usque ad cælos, or inter cælos, until it was seized in A.D. 923 by Alberic, Count of Tusculum and the infamous Marozia, and again became the scene of the fierce struggles of those miserable ages between popes, emperors, and reckless adventurers.[107] The last injuries appear to have been inflicted upon the building in the contest between the French Pope Clemens VII. and the Italian Pope Urban VIII. The exterior was then finally dismantled and stripped. Partial additions and restorations soon began to take place. Boniface IX., in the beginning of the fifteenth century, erected new battlements and fortifications on and around it, and since his time it has remained in the possession of the Papal Government. The strange medley of Papal reception rooms, dungeons, and military magazines which now encumbers the top was chiefly built by Paul III. The corridor connecting it with the Vatican dates from the time of Alexander Borgia (A.D. 1494), and the bronze statue of St. Michael on the summit, which replaced an older marble statue, from the reign of Benedict XIV.[108]