than one possessed of all the happy qualities ascribed to this emperor. "When he mounted the throne," says the historian Dion, "he was strong in body, he was vigorous in mind; age had impaired none of his facul ties; he was altogether free from envy and from detraction; he honoured all the good, and he advanced them: and on this account they could not be the objects of his fear, or of his hate; he never listened to informers; he gave not way to his anger; he abstained equally from unfair exactions and unjust punishments; he had rather be loved as a man than honoured as a sovereign; he was affable with his people, respectful to the senate, and universally beloved by both; he inspired none with dread but the enemies of his country." (See Eutrop." Brev. Hist. Rom.," lib. viii., cap. v.; Dion. "Hist. Rom.," lib. lxiii., caps. vi., vii.) 66.-Stanza cxiv., line 5. Rienzi! last of Romans! While the tree The name and exploits of Rienzi must be familiar to the reader of Gibbon. Some details and inedited manuscripts, relative to this unhappy hero, will be seen in the "Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto," p. 248. 67.-Stanza cXV., line 1. Egeria! sweet creation of some heart The respectable authority of Flaminius Vacca would incline us to believe in the claims of the Egerian grotto. He assures us that he saw an inscription in the pavement, stating that the fountain was that of Egeria, dedicated to the nymphs. The inscription is not there at this day; but Montfaucon quotes two linest of Ovid from a stone in the Villa Giustiniani, which he seems to think had been brought from the same grotto. This grotto and valley were formerly frequented in summer, and particularly the first Sunday in May, by the modern Romans, who attached a salubrious quality to the fountain which trickles from an orifice at the bottom of the vault, and, overflowing the little pools, creeps down the matted grass into the brook below. The brook is the Ovidian Almo, whose name and qualities are lost in the modern Aquataccio. The valley itself is called Valle di Caffarelli, from the dukes of that name who made over their fountain to the Pallavicini, with sixty rubbia of adjoining land. There can be little doubt that this long dell is the Egerian valley of Juvenal, and the pausing place of Umbritius, notwithstanding the * Memorie, &c., ap. Nardini, p. 13. He does not give the inscription. In villa Justiniana extat ingens lapis quadratus solidus, in quo sculpta hæc duo Ovidii carmina sunt: 'Egeria est quæ præbet aquas dea grata Camoenis, Qui lapis videtur eodem Egeriæ fonte, aut ejus vicinia isthuc compor tatus." Diarium Italic., p. 153. generality of his commentators have supposed the descent of the satirist and his friend to have been into the Arician grove, where the nymph met Hippolitus, and where she was more peculiarly worshipped. The step from the Porta Capena to the Alban hill, fifteen miles distant, would be too considerable, unless we were to believe in the wild conjecture of Vossius, who makes that gate travel from its present station, where he pretends it was during the reign of the Kings, as far as the Arician grove, and then makes it recede to its old site with the shrinking city. The tufo, or pumice, which the poet prefers to marble, is the substance composing the bank in which the grotto is sunk. The modern topographers find in the grotto the statue of the nymph, and nine niches for the Muses; and a late traveller has discovered that the cave is restored to that simplicity which the poet regretted had been exchanged for injudicious ornament. But the headless statue is palpably rather a male than a nymph, and has none of the attributes ascribed to it at present visible. The nine Muses could hardly have stood in six niches; and Juvenal certainly does not allude to any individual cave.? Nothing can be collected from the satirist but that somewhere near the Porta Capena was a spot in which it was supposed Numa held nightly consultations with his nymph, and where there was a grove and a sacred fountain, and fanes once consecrated to the Muses; and that from this spot there was a descent into the valley of Egeria, where were several artificial caves. It is clear that the statues of the Muses made no part of the decoration which the satirist thought misplaced in these caves; for he expressly assigns other fanes (delubra) to these divinities above the valley, and moreover tells us that they had been ejected to make room for the Jews. In fact, the little temple, now called that of Bacchus, was formerly thought to belong to the Muses, and Nardini || places them in a poplar grove, which was in his time above the valley. It is probable from the inscription and position, that the cave now shown may be one of the "artificial caverns," of which, indeed, there is another a little way higher up the valley, under a tuft of alder bushes; but a single grotto of Egeria is a mere modern invention, grafted upon the application of the epithet Egerian to these nymphea in general, and which might send us to look for the haunts of Numa upon the banks of the Thames. Our English Juvenal was not seduced into mistranslation by his acquaintance with Pope: he carefully preserves the correct plural "Thence slowly winding down the vale, we view The valley abounds with springs,¶ and over these springs, which the Muses might haunt from their neighbouring groves, Egeria presided: * De Magnit. Vet. Rom. ap. Græv. Ant. Rom., tom. iv., p. 1507. † Echinard, Descrizione di Roma e dell' Agro Romano, corretto dall' Abate Venuti, in Roma, 1750. They believe in the grotto and nymph. "Simulacro di questo fonte, essendovi sculpite la acque a pie di esso." Classical Tour, chap. vi., p. 217, vol. ii. Sat. III. Lib. iii., cap. iii. "Undique e solo aquæ scaturiunt." Nardini, lib. iii., cap. iii. hence she was said to supply them with water; and she was the nymph of the grottos through which the fountains were taught to flow. The whole of the monuments in the vicinity of the Egerian valley have received names at will, which have been changed at will. Venuti owns he can see no traces of the temples of Jove, Saturn, Juno, Venus, and Diana, which Nardini found, or hoped to find. The mutatorium of Caracalla's circus, the temple of Honour and Virtue, the temple of Bacchus, and, above all, the temple of the god Rediculus, are the antiquaries' despair. The circus of Caracalla depends on a medal of that emperor cited by Fulvius Ursinus, of which the reverse shows a circus, supposed, however, by some to represent the Circus Maximus. It gives a very good idea of that place of exercise. The soil has been but little raised, if we may judge from the small cellular structure at the end of the Spina, which was probably the chapel of the god Consus. This cell is half beneath the soil, as it must have been in the circus itself; for Dionysius ↑ could not be persuaded to believe that this divinity was the Roman Neptune, because his altar was underground. 68.-Stanza cxxvii., line 1. Yet let us ponder boldly-'tis a base "At all events," says the author of the "Academical Questions," "I trust, whatever may be the fate of my own speculations, that philosophy will regain that estimation which it ought to possess. The free and philosophic spirit of our nation has been the theme of admiration to the world. This was the proud distinction of Englishmen, and the luminous source of all their glory. Shall we then forget the manly and dignified sentiments of our ancestors, to prate in the language of the mother or the nurse about our good old prejudices? This is not the way to defend the cause of truth. It was not thus that our fathers maintained it in the brilliant periods of our history. Prejudice may be trusted to guard the outworks for a short space of time, while reason slumbers in the citadel; but if the latter sink into a lethargy, the former will quickly erect a standard for herself. Philosophy, wisdom, and liberty support each other: he who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool: and he who dares not, is a slave."-Vol. i., pref., pp. 14, 15. [Lord Byron considered this passage from Sir W. Drummond to be one of the best in the language.] 69.-Stanza cxxxii., line 2. Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis! We read in Suetonius, that Augustus, from a warning received in a dream, counterfeited, once a year, the beggar, sitting before the gate of Echinard, &c. Sic. cit., pp. 297, 298. ↑ Antiq. Rom. lib. ii., cap. xxxi. Sueton. in Vit. Augusti, cap. xci. Casaubon, in the note, refers to Plutarch's Lives of Camillus and Emilius Paulus, and also to his apophthegms, for the character of this deity. The hollowed hand was DD his palace with his hand hollowed and stretched out for charity. A statue formerly in the villa Borghese, and which should be now at Paris, represents the Emperor in that posture of supplication. The object of this self-degradation was the appeasement of Nemesis, the perpetual attendant on good fortune, of whose power the Roman conquerors were also reminded by certain symbols attached to their cars of triumph. The symbols were the whip and the crotalo, which were discovered in the Nemesis of the Vatican. The attitude of beggary made the above statue pass for that of Belisarius: and until the criticism of Winkelmann had rectified the mistake, one fiction was called in to support another. It was the same fear of the sudden termination of prosperity, that made Amasis king of Egypt warn his friend Polycrates of Samos, that the gods loved those whose lives were chequered with good and evil fortunes. Nemesis was supposed to lie in wait particularly for the prudent; that is, for those whose caution rendered them accessible only to mere accidents; and her first altar was raised on the banks of the Phrygian Esepus by Adrastus, probably the prince of that name who killed the son of Croesus by mistake. Hence the goddess was called Adrastea.f The Roman Nemesis was sacred and august: there was a temple to her in the Palatine under the name of Rhamnusia: so great, indeed, was the propensity of the ancients to trust to the revolution of events, and to believe in the divinity of Fortune, that in the same Palatine there was a temple to the Fortune of the day. This is the last superstition which retains its hold over the human heart; and, from concentrating in one object the credulity so natural to man, has always appeared strongest in those unembarrassed by other articles of belief. The antiquaries have supposed this goddess to be synonymous with Fortune and with Fate: but it was in her vindictive quality that she was worshipped under the name of Nemesis. reckoned the last degree of degradation; and when the dead body of the prefect Rufinus was borne about in triumph by the people, the indignity was increased by putting his hand in that position. * Storia delle Arti, &c., lib. xii., cap. iii., tom. ii., p. 422. Visconti calls the statue, however, a Cybele. It is given in the Museo Pio-Clement, tom. i., par. xl. The Abate Fea (Spiegazione dei Rami. Storia, &c., tom. iii., p. 513) calls it a Chrisippus. ↑ Dict. de Bayle, article Adrastea. It is enumerated by the regionary Victor. Fortunæ hujusce diei. Cicero mentions her, de Legib., lib. ii. DEAE NEMESI SIVE FORTUNAE PISTORIVS RVGIANVS V. C. LEGAT. See Questiones Romane, &c., ap. Græv. Antiq. Roman., tom. v., p. 942. See also Muratori, Nov. Thesaur. Inscrip. Vet., tom. i., pp. 88, 89, where there are three Latin and one Greek inscription to Nemesis, and others to Fate. 70.-Stanza cxxxvi., line 9. Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy. [Between stanzas cxxxv. and CXXXVI. we find in the original MS. the following: "If to forgive be heaping coals of fire As God hath spoken-on the heads of foes, Or Athos soars, or blazing Etna glows: True, they who stung were creeping things; but what Than serpents' teeth inflicts with deadlier throes? The Lion may be goaded by the Gnat. Who sucks the slumberer's blood?-The Eagle ?-No: the Bat."] 71. Stanza cxli., line 2. Were with his heart, and that was far away; Whether the wonderful statue which suggested this image be a laquearian gladiator, which, in spite of Winkelmann's criticism, has been stoutly maintained; or whether it be a Greek herald, as that great antiquary positively asserted; or whether it is to be thought a Spartan or barbarian shield-bearer, according to the opinion of his Italian editor; it must assuredly seem a copy of that masterpiece of Ctesilaus which represented "a wounded man dying, who perfectly expressed what there remained of life in him." Montfaucon and Maffei thought it the identical statue; but that statue was of bronze. The Gladiator was once in the Villa Ludovizi, and was bought by Clement XII. The right arm is an entire restoration of Michael Angelo. 72.-Stanza cxli., line 7. Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday Gladiators were of two kinds, compelled and voluntary; and were supplied from several conditions;-from slaves sold for that purpose; from culprits; from barbarian captives either taken in war, and, after being led in triumph, set apart for the games, or those seized and condemned as rebels; also from free citizens, some fighting for hire (auctorati), others from a depraved ambition; at last even kuights and senators were exhibited,-a disgrace of which the first tyrant was naturally the first inventor. In the end, dwarfs, and even women, fought; Either Polifontes, herald of Lains, killed by Edipus; or Cepreas, herald of Euritheus, killed by the Athenians when he endeavoured to drag the Heraclidæ from the altar of mercy, and in whose honour they instituted annual games, continued to the time of Hadrian; or Anthemocritus, the Athenian herald, killed by the Megarenses, who never recovered the impiety. See Storia delle Arti, &c., tom. ii., pp. 203-207, lib. ix.. cap. ii. f Julius Cæsar, who rose by the fall of the aristocracy, brought Furius Leptinus and A. Calenus upon the arena. |
