Chapter 23

ANCIENT ROME--THE SEVEN HILLS.

Site of Ancient Rome--Calm after the Storm--The Seven Hills--Their General Topography--The Aventine--The Palatine--The Ruins of the Palace of Caesar--View of Ruins of Rome from the Palatine--The Caelian--The Viminale--The Quirinal--Other two Hills, the Janiculum and the Vatican--The Forum--The Arch of Titus--The Coliseum--The Mamertine Prison--External Evidence of Christianity--Rome furnishes overwhelming Proofs of the Historic Truth of the New Testament--These stated--The Three Witnesses in the Forum--The Antichrist come--_Coup d'OEil_ of Rome.

But where is the Rome of the Caesars, that great, imperial, and invincible city, that during thirteen centuries ruled the world? If you would see her, you must seek for her in the grave. You are standing, I have supposed, on the tower of the Capitol, with your face towards the north, gazing down on the flat expanse of red roofs, bristling with towers, columns, and domes, that covers the plain at your feet. Turn now to the south. There is the seat of her that once was mistress of the world. There are the Seven Hills. They are furrowed, tossed, cleft; and no wonder. The wars, revolutions, and turmoils of two thousand years have rolled their angry surges over them; but now the strife is at an end; and the calm that has succeeded is deep as that of the grave. These hills, all unconscious of the past, form a scene of silent and mournful beauty, with fragments of temples protruding through their soil, and humble plants and lowly weeds covering their surface.

The topography of these famous hills it is not difficult to understand. If you make the Capitoline in which you stand the centre one, the remaining six are ranged round it in a semi-circle. They are low broad swellings or mounts, of from one to two miles in circumference. We shall take them as they come, beginning at the west, and coming round to the north.

First comes the AVENTINE. It rises steep and rocky, with the Tiber washing its north-western base. It is covered with the vines and herbs of neglected gardens, amid which rises a solitary convent and a few shapeless ruins. At its southern base are the baths of Caracalla, which, next to the Coliseum, are the greatest ruin in Rome.

Descend its eastern slope,--cross the valley of the Circus Maximus,--and you begin to climb the PALATINE hill, the most famous of the seven. The Palatine stands forward from the circular line, and is divided from where you stand only by the little plain of the Forum. It was the seat of the first Roman colony; and when Rome grew into an empire, the palace of the Caesars rose upon it, and the Palatine was henceforward the abode of the world's master. The site is nearly in the middle of ancient Rome, and commands a fine view of the other hills, the Capitol only overtopping it. The imperial palace which rose on its summit must have been a conspicuous as well as imposing object from every part of the city. Three thousand columns are said to have adorned an edifice, the saloons, libraries, baths, and porticos of which, the wealth and art of ancient Rome had done their utmost to make worthy of their imperial occupant. A dark night has overwhelmed the glory that once irradiated this mount. It is now a huge mountain of crumbling brickwork, bearing on its broad level top a luxuriant display of cabbages and vines, amid which rise the humble walls of a convent, and a small but tasteful villa, which is owned, strange to say, by an Englishman. The proprietor of the villa and the little colony of monks are now the only inhabitants of the Palatine. In walking over it, you stumble upon blocks of marble, remains of terraces, vaults still retaining their frescoes, arches, porticos, and vast substructions of brickwork, all crushed and blended into one common ruin. In these halls power dwelt and crime revelled: now the owl nestles in their twilight vaults, and the ivy mantles their crumbling ruins. The western side of this mound rises steep and lofty, crested with a row of noble cypress trees. They are tall and upright, and wear in the mind's eye a shadowy shroud of gloom, looking like mourners standing awed and grief-stricken beside the grave of the Caesars. When the twilight falls and the stars come out, their dark moveless figures, relieved against the sky, present a sight peculiarly impressive and solemn.

The general aspect and condition of the Palatine have been sketched by Byron with his usual power:--

"Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower, grown, Matted and massed together, hillocks heaped On what were chambers, arch crushed, column strown In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescoes steeped In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped, Deeming it midnight;--temples, baths, or halls, Pronounce who can; for all that learning reaped From her research hath been, that these are walls. Behold the imperial mount! 'tis thus the mighty falls."

But Cowper rises to a yet higher pitch, and reads the true moral which is taught by this fallen mount. For to Rome may we apply his lines on the fall of the once proud monarchy of Spain.

"Art thou, too, fallen, Iberia? Do we see The robber and the murderer weak as we? Thou that hast wasted earth, and dared despise Alike the wrath and mercy of the skies, Thy pomp is in the grave, thy glory laid Low in the pits thine avarice has made. We come with joy from our eternal rest, To see the oppressor in his turn oppressed. Art thou the god, the thunder of whose hand Rolled over all our desolated land, Shook principalities and kingdoms down, And made the mountains tremble at his frown? The sword shall light upon thy boasted powers, And waste them, as thy sword has wasted ours. 'Tie thus Omnipotence his law fulfils, And Vengeance executes what Justice wills."

One day I ascended the Palatine, picking my steps with care, owing to the abominations of all kinds that cover the path, to spend an hour on the mount, and survey from thence the mighty wrecks of empire strewn around it. The steps of the stair by which I ascended were formed of blocks of marble, the half-effaced carvings on which showed that they had formed parts of former edifices. Protruding from the soil, and strewn over its surface, were fragments of columns and capitols of pillars. I emerged on the summit at the spot where the vestibule of Nero's palace is supposed to have stood. I thought of the guards, the senators, the ambassadors, that had crowded this spot,--the spoils, trophies, and monuments, that had adorned it; and my heart sank at the sight of its naked desolation and dreary loneliness. The flat top of the hill ran off to the south, covered with a various and somewhat incongruous vegetation. Here was a thicket of laurels, and there a clump of young oaks; here a garden of vines, and there rows of cabbages. A monk, habited in brown, was looking out at the door of his convent; and one or two women were busy among the vegetables, making up a load for market. On the farther edge of the hill rose the tall, moveless, silent cypresses of which I have spoken. On the right rose the square tower of the Capitol, with the perperine substructions of its Tabularium, coeval with the age of the kings; and skirting its base were the cupolas of modern churches, and the nodding columns of fallen temples, beautiful even in their ruin, and more eloquent than Cicero, whose living voice had often been heard on the spot where they now moulder in silent decay. A little nearer was the naked, jagged front of the Tarpeian rock, crested a-top with gardens, and its base buried in rubbish, which is slowly gaining on its height. In front was a noble bend of the Tiber, rolling on in mournful majesty, amid the majestic silence of these mighty desolations. Beyond were the red roofs and mean streets of the Trastevere, with the empty upland slope of the Janiculum, crowned by the line of the gray wall. Behind, and immediately beneath me, was the Forum, where erst the Romans assembled to enact their laws and choose their magistrates. A ragged line of ghastly ruins,--porticos without temples, and temples without porticos, their noble vaultings yawning like caverns in the open day,--was seen bounding its farther edge. Its floor was a rectangular expanse of shapeless swellings and yawning pits. Here reposed a herd of buffaloes; there a little drove of swine; yonder stood a row of carts; and in the midst of these noways picturesque objects rose the gray arch of Titus. At its base sat a beggar; while an artist, at a little distance, was sketching it with the calotype. A peasant was traversing the Via Sacra, bearing to his home a supply of city-baked bread. A dozen or two of old men with spades and barrows were clearing away the earth from the ruins of the Temple of Venus and Rome. In the south-eastern angle of the plain rose the titanic bulk of the Coliseum, fearfully gashed and torn, yet sublime in its decay. Over the furrowed and ragged summits of the Caelian and Esquiline mounts were seen the early snows, glittering on the peaks of the Volscian and Sabine range. Such was the scene which presented itself to me from the top of the Palatine. How different, I need not say, from that which must have often met the eye of Caesar from the same point, prompting the proud boast,--"Is not this great" Rome, "that I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?" "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, that didst weaken the nations!... Is this the man that did make the earth to tremble,--that did shake kingdoms,--that made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof?"

A little eastward of the Palatine, and seen over its shoulder, as surveyed from the tower of the Capitol, is the CAELIAN Mount. Its summit is marked by the ruins of an ancient edifice,--the Curia Hostilia,--and the statued front of a modern temple,--the church of S. John Lateran, which is even more renowned in the pontifical annals than the other is in classic story. Moving your eye across the valley of the Forum, it falls upon the flat surface of the ESQUILINE. It is marked, like the former, by an ancient ruin and a modern edifice. Amid its vineyards and rural lanes rise the massive remains of the baths of Titus, and the gorgeous structure of Maria Maggiore. The VIMINALE comes next; but forming, as it did, a plain betwixt the Esquiline and the Quirinal, it is difficult to trace its limits. It is distinguishable mainly by the baths of Dioclesian, now a French barrack, and the church of San Lorenzo, which occupies its highest point. The QUIRINAL is the last of the Seven Hills. It is covered with streets, and crowned with the summer palace and gardens of the Pope.

Thus have we made the tour of the Seven Hills, commencing at the Aventine on the extreme right, and proceeding in a semicircular line over the low swellings which lie in their peaceful covering of flower and weed, onward to the Quirinal, which rises, with its glittering casements, on the extreme left. They hold in their arms, as it were, modern Rome, with the Tiber, like a golden belt, tying in the city, and bounding the Campus Martius, on which it is seated. On the west of the Tiber are other two hills, which, though not of the seven, are worth mentioning. The first is the JANICULUM, with the _Trastevere_ at its base. The inhabitants of this district pride themselves on their pure Roman blood, and look down upon the rest of the inhabitants as a mixed race; and certainly, if ferocious looks and continual frays can make good their claim, they must be held as a colony of the olden time, which, nestling in this nook of Rome, have escaped the intermixtures and revolutions of eighteen centuries. It has been remarked that there is a striking resemblance between their faces and those of the ancient Romans, as graven on the arch of Titus. They are the nearest neighbours of the Pope, whose own hill, the VATICAN, rises a little to the north of them. On the Vatican mount stood anciently the circus of Nero; and here many of the early Christians, amid unutterable torments, yielded up their lives. On the spot where they died have arisen the church of St Peter and the palace of the Vatican,--now but another name for whatever is formidable to the liberties of the world.

But beyond question, the spot of all others the most interesting in Rome is the Forum. You look right down into it from where you stand. Whether it be the eloquence, or the laws, or the victories, or the magnificent monuments of ancient Rome, the light reflected from them all is concentrated on this plain. How often has Tully spoken here! How often has Caesar trodden it! Over that very pavement which the excavations have laid bare, the chariots of Scylla, and of Titus, and of a hundred other warriors, have rolled. But the triumphs which this plain witnessed, once deemed eternal, are ended now; and the clods which that Italian slave turns up, or which that priest treads on so proudly, are perchance part of the dust of that heroic race which conquered the world. The tombs of the Caesars are empty now, and their ashes have been scattered long since over the soil of Rome. Of the many beautiful edifices that stood around this plain, not one remains entire: a few mouldering columns, half buried in rubbish, or dug out of the soil, only remain to show where temples stood. But there is one little arch which has survived that dire tempest of ruin in which temple and tower went down,--the Arch of Titus, which has sculptured upon its marble the sad story of the fall of Jerusalem and the captivity of the Jews. That little arch, wonderful to tell, stands between two mighty ruins,--the fallen palace of the Caesars on the one hand, and the kingly but ruined mass of the Coliseum on the other.

As regards the Coliseum, architects, I believe, do not much admire it; but to myself, who did not look at it with a professional eye, it seemed as if I had never seen a ruin half so sublime. I never grew weary of gazing upon it. It rises amid the hoar ruins of Rome, scarred and rent, yet wearing an eternal youth; for with the most colossal size it combines in the very highest degree simplicity of design and beauty of form. To stand on its area, and survey the sweep of its broken benches, is to feel as if you were standing in the midst of an amphitheatre of hills, and were gazing on concentric mountain-ranges. How powerfully do its associations stir the soul! How many spirits now in glory have died on that arena! The Romans, we shall suppose, have been occupied all day in witnessing mimic fights, which display the skill, but do not necessarily imperil the life, of the combatants. But now the sun is westering; the shadow of the Palatine begins to creep across the Forum, and the villas on the Alban hills burn in the setting rays, and the Romans, before retiring to their homes, demand their last grand spectacle,--the death of some poor unhappy captive or gladiator. The victim steps upon the arena amid the deep stillness of the overwhelming multitude. It is no mimic combat his: he is "appointed to death." This lets us into the peculiar force of Paul's words, "I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were, appointed to death; for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men."

But the most touching recollection connected with this city is this,--even that part of the Word of God was written in it, and that a greater than Caesar has trodden its soil. A few paces below where we stand is the Mamertine prison, in whose dungeons, it is probable, Paul was confined; for this was the state-prison, and offences against religion were accounted state-offences. It is hewn in the rock of the Capitoline hill, dungeon below dungeon; and when surveying it, I could not but feel, that among all the exploits of Roman valour, there was not one half so heroic as that of the man who, with a cruel death staring him in the face, could sit down in this dungeon, where day never dawned, and write these heroic words,--"I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing."

Here I may be allowed to allude to a branch of the external evidence of Christianity which has not received all the notice to which it is entitled. When surveying from the tower of the Capitol the ruins of ancient Rome, I felt strongly the absurdity--the almost idiotcy--of denying the historic truth of Christianity. On such a spot one might as well deny that ancient Rome existed, as deny that Christianity was preached here eighteen centuries ago, and rose upon the ruins of paganism. At the distance of Rome, and amid the darkness of Italian ignorance, we can conceive of a Roman holding that the life of Knox is a fable,--that no such man ever existed, or ever preached in Scotland, or ever effected the Reformation from Popery. But bring him to the Castle Hill of Edinburgh,--bid him look round upon city and country, studded with the churches and schools of the reformed faith, planted by Knox,--show him the mouldering remains of the old cathedrals from which the priesthood and faith of Rome were driven out,--and, unless his mind is constituted in some extraordinary way, he would no longer doubt that such a man as Knox existed, and that Scotland has been reformed from Romanism to Presbyterianism. So is it at Rome. Around you are the temples of the ancient paganism. Here are ruins still bearing the inscriptions and effigies of the pagan deities and the pagan rites. Can any sane man doubt that paganism once reigned here? You can trace the history of its reign still graven on the ruins of Rome; but you can trace it down till only seventeen centuries ago: then it suddenly stops; a new writing appears upon the stones; a new religion has acquired the ascendancy in Rome, and left its memorials graven upon pillar, and column, and temple. Can any man doubt that Paul visited this city,--that he preached here, as the "Acts of the Apostles" records,--and that, after two centuries of struggles and martyrdoms, the faith which he preached triumphed over the paganism of Rome? Look along the Via Sacra,--that narrow paved road which leads southward from the Capitol: the very stones over which the chariot of Scylla rolled are still there. The road runs straight between the Palatine Mount, where the ivy and the cypress strive to mantle the ruins of the palace of the Caesars, and the wonderful and ever beautiful structure of the Coliseum. In the valley between is a beautiful arch of marble,--the Arch of Titus. The palace of the world's master lies in ruins on the one side of it; the Coliseum, the largest single structure which human hands ever created, stands rent, and scarred, and bowed, on the other; and between these two mighty ruins this little arch rises entire. What a wonderful providence has spared it! On that arch is graven the record of the fall of Jerusalem and the captivity of the Jews; and the great fact of the existence of the Old Testament economy is also attested upon it; for there plainly appears on the stone, the furniture of the temple, the golden candlestick, the table of shew-bread, and the silver trumpets. But further, about two miles to the south of Rome are the Catacombs. In these catacombs, which, not unlike the coal-mines of our own country, traverse under ground the Campagna for a circuit of many miles, the early Christians, lived during the primitive persecutions. There they worshipped, there they died, and there they were buried; and their simple tombstones, recording that they died in peace, and in the hope of eternal life through Christ, are still to be seen to the number of many thousands. How came these tombstones there, if early Christianity and the early martyrs be a fable? If Christianity be a forgery, the arch of Titus, with its sacred symbols, is also a forgery; the catacombs, with all their tombstones, are also a forgery; and the hundred monuments in Rome, with the traces of early Christianity graven upon them, are also a forgery; and the person or persons who forged Christianity, in order to give currency to their forgery, must have been at the incredible pains of building the arch of Titus, and chiselling out its sculpture work; they must have dug out the catacombs, and filled them, with infinite labour, with forged tombstones; and they must have covered the monuments of Rome with forged inscriptions. Would any one have been at the pains to have done all this, or could he have done it without being detected? When the Romans rose in the morning, and saw these forged inscriptions, they must have known that they were not there the day before, and would have exposed the trick. But the idea is absurd, and no man can seriously entertain it whom an inveterate scepticism has not smitten with the extreme of senility or idiotcy. There is far more evidence at Rome for the historic truth of Christianity than for the existence of Julius Caesar or of Scipio, or of any of the great men whose existence no one ever takes it into his head to doubt.

Here, in the Forum, are THREE WITNESSES, which testify respectively to three leading facts of Christianity. These witnesses are,--the Arch of Titus, the fallen Palace on the Palatine, and the Column of Phocas. The Arch of Titus proclaims the end of the Old Testament economy; for there, graven on its marble, is the record of the fall of the temple, and the dispersion of the Jewish nation. The ruin on the Palatine tells that the "let" which hindered the revelation of the Man of Sin has now been "taken out of the way," as Paul foretold; for there lies the prostrate throne of the Caesars, which, while it stood, effectually forbade the rise of the popes. But this solitary pillar, which stands erect where so many temples have fallen, with what message is it freighted? It witnesses to the rise of Antichrist. That column rose with the popes; for Phocas set it up to commemorate the assumption of the title of Universal Bishop by the pastor of Rome; and here has it been standing all the while, to proclaim that "that wicked" is now revealed, "whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming." Such is the united testimony borne by these three Witnesses,--even that the Antichrist is come.

To complete this _coup d'oeil_ of Rome, it is necessary only that we transfer our gaze for an instant to the more distant objects. Though swept, as the site of Rome now is, with the besom of destruction, the outlines, which no ruin can obliterate, are yet grand as ever. Immediately beneath you are the red roofs and glittering domes of the city; around is a gay fringe of vineyards and gardens; and beyond is the dark bosom of the Campagna, stretching far and wide, meeting the horizon on the west and south, and confined on the east and north by a wall of glorious hills,--the sweet Volscians, the blue Sabines, the craggy Apennines, with their summits--at least when I saw them--hoary with the snows of winter. Spectacle terrible and sublime! Ruin colossal and unparalleled! The Campagna is a vast hall, amid the funereal shadows and unbroken stillness of which repose in mournful state the ASHES OF ROME.