Old Rome Part 9

CHAPTER V.

THE VELABRUM AND THE CIRCUS FLAMINIUS.

[Sidenote: Ja.n.u.s Quadrifrons.]

The church of S. Giorgio in Velabro, which stands between the Palatine Hill and the river near the Piazza Bocca della Verita, retains the ancient name of this district, formerly a swamp called the Velabrum. This is perhaps the best point from which to begin our survey of the ruins of the Velabrum. The most conspicuous ruin near the church is the archway called Ja.n.u.s Quadrifrons, from its quadrilateral shape. It is a ma.s.sive square building of white marble, with four piers supporting as many arches which are united in the centre, by a vaulted roof. Each pier has on the exterior twelve niches in two rows, with semicircular sh.e.l.l-shaped crowns. These two rows of niches were formerly separated by a projecting cornice which is now nearly destroyed except in the interior. The niches nearest to the corners on the north and south sides are not hollowed out, but only traced on the exterior surface, in order not to endanger the solidity of the angles. The present height of the building is thirty-eight feet, but it probably had an attica originally upon the top to which the staircase still extant led, and in which were some small rooms for the transaction of business. Upon the key-stones of the arches two figures can be still recognized, one of Rome and the other of the patroness of trade, Minerva.

The exterior surface was doubtless decorated with rows of Corinthian columns between the niches, a large quant.i.ty of remains of such columns having been found in clearing the base, and in the niches themselves statues of various deities probably stood.

The purpose of this arch was probably solely ornamental, and it stood by itself in some part of the Forum Boarium. The rooms in the attica may have been used for the accommodation of some of the officials of the cattle market. The builder and date are alike unknown. From the style of its architecture and sculptures, it has been p.r.o.nounced decidedly later than the age of Domitian, to whom from his fondness for building Jani, it might be attributed. Platner and Becker suggest that it is identical with an archway called the Arcus Constantini--in the catalogue of the eleventh region--but a comparison of the style of the remnants of sculptures upon it with those on the existing arch of Constantine, does not confirm this conjecture.

[Sidenote: Arcus Argentinorum.]

Close to the Ja.n.u.s Quadrifrons stands a stone ornamental doorway now partly built into the wall of the church of S. Giorgio in Velabro. It is constructed of brickwork with marble facings, and consists of two square piers decorated with pilasters of the Composite or Roman order at the corners and surmounted by a horizontal entablature of rich carved work.

There is no trace of an attica above. The inscription, still well preserved, shows that it was erected by the money-changers or bankers, and other merchants of the Forum Boarium, in honour of Septimius Severus, his wife Julia, and his son Antoninus (Caracalla). As in the case of the Arch of Septimius in the Forum, so here the words III. PP. PROCOS. FORTISSIMO FELICISSIMOQUE PRINCIPI and PARTHICI MAXIMI BRITANNICI MAXIMI were inserted by Caracalla in place of the name and t.i.tles of his murdered brother Geta.

Not only in the inscriptions of the time of Septimius Severus, but even in the reliefs we everywhere find Geta's figure erased.

On the shafts of the pilasters are representations of military ensigns, which bear upon their circular tablets and above the eagles likenesses in relief of two Caesars, Severus and Caracalla. The third likeness, that of Geta, has been erased in every instance. In each of the s.p.a.ces between the pilasters are four panels with sculptures in relief. The lowest of these represents the merchants of the Forum Boarium bringing cattle as victims to the altar. The compartment above these exhibits various instruments used in sacrifice, similar to those found upon the Temple of Vespasian.

Upon the larger central panel are the figures of the imperial family engaged in sacrificing, and it can easily be seen that from some of these the figure of Geta has been carefully chiselled away.

In one of these large panels is the figure of a barbarian captive with the Phrygian cap so common upon the sculptures of the triumphal arches. The upper compartments contain festooned ornamental work and a few figures of men. The front of the architrave and frieze is almost entirely occupied by the inscriptions, and is not highly ornamented, but the cornice, which is divided into seven ledges, is overladen with various decorative patterns without purity of design or excellence of execution. The date of the erection of this monument is stated in the inscription to be the twelfth year of the tribunitia potestas of Severus and the seventh of Caracalla, which corresponds to the year A.D. 204. Reber thinks it possible that the merchants of the Forum Boarium intended it as a testimonial of grat.i.tude to Severus for having built the neighbouring Ja.n.u.s Quadrifrons to ornament their quarter of the city.

[Sidenote: Cloaca Maxima.]

The oldest monument of Roman masonry is the remaining portion of a cloaca in this district, commonly identified with the Cloaca Maxima of Livy, which reaches from a spot near the church of S. Giorgio in Velabro and the Ja.n.u.s Quadrifrons to the Tiber bank near the Ponte Rotto. The ancient archway has been broken open here, and can be reached by descending into a hollow near the Ja.n.u.s Quadrifrons. Near the Ja.n.u.s Quadrifrons, at the above-mentioned spot, seven cloacae unite and pour their waters into the still extant portion of the Cloaca Maxima, so that a large stream is constantly flowing through it. These branch sewers are built with solid brick arches, but the main archway, though fronted with modern brickwork, consists of ma.s.sive blocks of tufa, and at short intervals of every few yards has an arch of travertine introduced, to add to its solidity and strength. The original size of the archway, one-third of which is now choked up with mud, was twelve feet four inches high, and ten feet eight inches wide. Strabo and Pliny say that a cart loaded with hay could pa.s.s through some of the Roman sewers, and certainly in the case of this cloaca, it would not be impossible to do so were it cleared of mud.

M. Agrippa, the Haussmann of Rome, is said, when aedile, to have traversed the main sewer in a boat. The whole length of this remaining portion is at least three hundred and forty yards, and it makes several bends, following probably the direction of the ancient streets. The mouth is still visible, when the Tiber is not high, at a spot called the Pulchrum Litus, near the round temple usually called the Temple of Vesta. The immense size is due to the fact that it was not only a sewer for refuse, but a drain for the lake of the Velabrum, and the many land springs of the Forum, and must be cla.s.sed with the emissarium of the Alban Lake and other gigantic undertakings of the kind, such as the cuniculus at Veii, executed about B.C. 539. For a distance of about forty feet from the mouth the cloaca is constructed of a triple arch of peperino, mixed with some blocks of tufa, but throughout the rest of its course it consists of a single arch of tufa with occasional bands of travertine. The masonry along the embankment of the sh.o.r.e on each side, is partly of peperino and partly of tufa and travertine blocks laid along and across alternately.

Livy gives the early history of this extraordinary work in his first Book.

In the thirty-eighth chapter he ascribes the commencement of the undertaking of draining the Velabrum and Forum to Tarquinius Priscus, and in the fifty-sixth he says that Tarquinius Superbus completed the Cloaca Maxima as a receptacle for the refuse of the whole city. Dionysius agrees in giving the same account of the origin of the system of cloacae, and Pliny enumerates the cloacae among the wonders of the great metropolis, and expressly mentions Tarquinius Priscus as ent.i.tled to the credit of having first originated this great work of public utility. His words are--"Seven streams, after traversing the city, are united and their water so compressed into one channel as to sweep everything along with it like a torrent, and when a great body of rain-water is added to this the very walls are shaken by the agitated waters; and sometimes the Tiber rises and beats back into them, and vast opposing ma.s.ses of water meet and struggle, yet the solidity of their masonry resists and stands firm. Huge weights are carried over them, whole buildings undermined by fire or by some accident fall upon them, earthquakes shake the very ground around them, yet they have lasted for seven hundred years from the time of Tarquinius Priscus almost uninjured, a monument of antiquity which ought to be the more carefully observed since it has been pa.s.sed over in silence by some of our most celebrated historians."

The Tarquins are said to have compelled the Roman people to work at these huge structures, just as the kings of Egypt and a.s.syria exacted task-work from their subjects; but in palliation of the cruelties alleged against them by the historians it must be noted that in the one case buildings of permanent public service were built, while in the other, only the vanity of a despot was flattered.

[Sidenote: Fortuna Virilis.]

Not far from the Ja.n.u.s Quadrifrons, and close to the Pons aemilius, or Ponte Rotto, stands a small temple, now converted into the church of S.

Maria Egiziaca, which presents an unsolved problem in Roman topography.

The substruction of this temple, which has been laid bare, consists of tufa cased with travertine. The form of the temple is that called tetrastylos by Vitruvius, having four Ionic columns in front and seven at the sides. The four front columns and two on each side, forming the p.r.o.naos, originally stood clear, but are now enclosed within the wall of the church. The remaining five on each side with those at the back were half columns set against the wall of the cella. The shafts of the half columns are of tufa, but the bases and capitals, with the entablature and the columns of the p.r.o.naos, are of travertine. On the frieze and cornice are the remains of ornamental work, which is now rendered almost invisible by the stucco with which the walls have been covered. The Ionic volutes on the corner capitals of this temple are in the later style, while the side capitals are in the usual style.

This building has usually been supposed to be the temple dedicated by Servius Tullius to Fortuna Virilis, and situated on the bank of the Tiber.

The pa.s.sage of Dionysius upon which this supposition rests is as follows: "Servius Tullius built two temples to Fortune, one in the Forum Boarium, and the other upon the bank of the Tiber."[81]

It is most probable, as Reber suggests, that we have here the Temple of Servius dedicated to Fortune without any special t.i.tle. Dionysius, as we have seen, places this in the Forum Boarium, and Livy describes it as intra portam Carmentalem, and mentions it in tracing the course of a conflagration between the Salinae near the Porta Trigemina and the Porta Carmentalis. But there was another temple, that of Mater Matuta which stood close to the Temple of Fortune, and there is no evidence showing to which of the two the ruin in question belonged. Both were founded by Servius, and reckoned among the most venerable relics of ancient Rome.

Becker urges the claims of the Temple of Pudicitia Patricia, which Livy places in the Forum Boarium near the round Temple of Hercules, to this site. But this was merely a small shrine, containing a statue and not a templum. So far as an opinion can be formed of the date of the temple from the materials and style of architecture, it seems to belong to the later republic.

[Sidenote: So-called Temple of Vesta.]

On the Piazza della Bocca della Verita, at a short distance from the temple we have just been considering, stand the remains of a small round temple commonly called the Temple of Vesta. Perhaps of all the ruins of Rome this is the most familiar to the eye of the tourist. A considerable part of the cella is still standing, ornamented with a simple and elegant cornice. Round this stand nineteen graceful Corinthian columns of white marble. The entablature is unfortunately destroyed, and the rude modern tiled roof with which the building has been capped completely spoils the picturesque effect of the ruin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Palatine Hill. aemilian Temple of Hercules, and mouth of Cloaca Maxima. Bell tower of S. Maria in Cosmedin.]

The name now given to it rests on no other evidence than its circular shape, and as we have no mention of a Temple of Vesta in the Forum Boarium it must be at once condemned as a misnomer. It has also been called the Temple of the Sibyl or the Temple of Cybele without better reason. The most probable conjecture as to its name is that first suggested by Piale, that it is the round Temple of Hercules in the Forum Boarium mentioned in the tenth Book of Livy, and alluded to by Festus as the aemilian Temple of Hercules. The appellation aemiliana certainly seems to point to the neighbourhood of the aemilian bridge. The style of its architecture may be attributed to a restoration in the latter half of the first century A.D.

Formerly, it was called the Church of Madonna del Sole, from a favourite image of the Virgin in it, and at an earlier period S. Stefano delle Carozze, from the discovery of a marble model of a chariot in its neighbourhood, but in 1810 it was cleared out and restored, and since then it has not been used as a church, but contains a small collection of marble fragments.

[Sidenote: Temple of Ceres.]

At the entrance of the valley of the Circus Maximus, and on the south side of the Piazza della Bocca della Verita stands the church of S. Maria in Cosmedin which is built upon the ruins of an ancient temple. Ten columns still remain in their original places, seven of which stand in a line parallel to the entrance, and three others in the left-hand side wall of the church. Some of the columns are built into the walls of the Sacristies on the right of the entrance, and reach through the roofs to the upper story. The material of which they are made is white marble, and the order to which they belong the Composite. Parts of the wall of the cella may still be seen in the sacristy, built of tufa which was originally faced with marble. The design of the capitals and chiselling of the ornamental work upon them is of the best period of art, and one of them may conveniently be examined in the room over the sacraria, and in the organ loft. Behind the apse of the church are some large chambers built of ma.s.sive blocks of travertine, which were probably attached to the Carceres of the Circus as stables or offices of some kind, and the position of these compels us to a.s.sume that the front of the temple faced towards the Velabrum, and that the seven columns parallel to the facade of the present church belonged to the side of the temple, while the three in the left-hand wall formed a part of the front. Otherwise the travertine chambers at the back must have formed some part of the temple, and it is difficult to see how this could have been the case, as they are evidently not the walls of the cella, and cannot be brought into any symmetrical position with the rows of columns.

The Temples of Pudicitia Patricia, of Mater Matuta, and of Fortune have been severally identified with these ruins by the writers of Roman topography. But it has been shown already that the first of these was probably a mere chapel, and that the other two must be placed nearer to the Carmental gate, and therefore the conjecture of Canina that the church of S. Maria in Cosmedin was the Temple of Ceres, Liber, and Libera appears much more likely to be true. For that temple is included in the eleventh region by the Curiosum and Not.i.tia, and is placed by Vitruvius, Tacitus, and Pliny close to the Circus Maximus, while Dionysius expressly says that it stood just over the barriers of the Circus Maximus. The account of Vitruvius answers to the ruins which still remain. For he says that the temple was of the description called araeostyle, i.e. with wide intercolumnar intervals, and it will be found that the intervals between the columns now standing are nearly four times their diameter. Vitruvius also says that it was of the Tuscan order of architecture, and in this seems to contradict Pliny who, quoting Varro's authority, speaks of it as the first temple at Rome which had Greek ornamental work. Their statements may be reconciled by observing that Pliny is speaking of the decorations of the temple by Damophilus and Gorgasis, and not of the style of architecture. The araeostyle arrangement of the columns was probably preserved even after the complete restoration by Tiberius, at which time, as Pliny relates, the old Greek frescoes were cut out and framed, and the terra cotta statues removed from the roof. The temple was first vowed by A. Postumius, the dictator in the Latin war of B.C. 497, on account of the great scarcity of provisions which then prevailed. It was dedicated three years afterwards by the Consul Spurius Ca.s.sius, a statesman who showed a disposition to imitate the great architectural works of the regal period, contrary to the generally frugal spirit of the early republican fathers.

In the year B.C. 31, a destructive fire, which raged between the Circus and the Forum Olitorium, destroyed the Temple, and with it some of the most valuable treasures of Greek art which it contained. Among these, besides the frescoes of Damophilus and Gorgasis above mentioned, was the famous pictures of Dionysius by Aristides, for which Attalus bid sixteen talents, a price which excited the attention of Mummius, and induced him, although unable himself to appreciate the merits of such works of art, to suspect its value, and carry it to Rome in spite of the remonstrances of Attalus.

The restoration was undertaken by Augustus, and finished by Tiberius in A.D. 17. This temple was to the Plebeian aediles what the Temple of Saturn was to the quaestors, and it was enacted that the decrees of the Senate should be delivered over to the aediles there, an enactment which seems never to have been carried out.[82]

The medieval names of this church, in Cosmedin, and in Schola Graeca, seem to point to the possession of the church by Greek monks after the division of the empire, and the piazza in which it stands is called Bocca della Verita from the strange figure of a head under the modern portico of the church, in the mouth of which it is said that persons whose veracity lay under suspicion, were required to place their hands while making oath, in the belief that the mouth would close upon their hands if the oath taken was a false one.

[Sidenote: Carceres of the Cirrus Maximus.]

Immediately behind the church are the arched buildings of travertine blocks which have already been mentioned as belonging to the Carceres of the Circus. The largest of these is now used as a store-room for articles of church furniture, and stands on the right side of the tribune of the church. They are perhaps situated too far towards the river to be portions of the actual Carceres from which the chariots started, but they may have formed one side of a courtyard behind the Carceres, in which the harnessing and preparation for the races took place.

[Sidenote: Theatre of Marcellus.]

The ruins of the Theatre of Marcellus which are still standing in the Piazza Montanara afford us a fixed point from which to begin our survey of the region of the Circus Flaminius, which lies to the north-west of the Velabrum. For it appears certain that the ancient half columns, arches, and other ruins evidently belonging to a semicircular theatre, which are now covered by the Palazzo Orsini Savelli, belonged to the theatre of Marcellus. Suetonius distinctly places this theatre under the Tarpeian hill, and of the other two stone theatres at Rome we know that the Pompeian lay further to the north-west, and that the theatre of Balbus was near the Ponte Sisto. The masonry and architectural details of this building, though corresponding in many respects with the Coliseum are more carefully worked, and show an earlier and better period of art.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Theatre of Marcellus.]

There had previously been a stone scena built near this spot by aemilius Lepidus, which was perhaps used by Julius Caesar who first began to build this theatre. It was not finished until the year B.C. 11 when Augustus opened it, and named it after his nephew Marcellus, son of Octavia. In the time of the Flavii the scena was restored, having perhaps suffered from the fire which burnt the Porticus Octaviae, and it seems to have again required repairs in the time of Alexander Severus, who is said to have wished to restore it.[83]

The Curiosum mentions it as if still in use, and gives the number of spectators it would contain as 20,000. In the Middle Ages it was, like all the other great buildings of Rome, turned into a castle by Pietro Leone, a n.o.bleman of great power in the time of Urban II. and Pascal II., and celebrated for his factious violence. The shape of the building was thus completely altered. The great family of the Savelli came into possession of it in the twelfth century, following Pietro Leone, and after them the Orsini. The lower stories are now occupied by workshops, small wine vaults, and rag and bone warehouses, frequented by the rustics of the Campagna, who are usually to be seen in considerable numbers in the Piazza Montanara in front of it.

From the piazza two rows of the exterior arcades are visible, each containing twelve arches and thirteen columns of travertine. The lower arcade is now buried to the depth of one third of its surface below the level of the present ground. Its half columns are of the Doric order, with a Doric entablature and triglyphs, and are surmounted by a low attica with projecting bases for the half columns of the upper arcade. The height of this upper arcade was originally somewhat less than that of the lower. It has half columns of the Ionic order, carrying a simple entablature with an architrave of three projecting ledges, a plain frieze, and a cornice with toothed mouldings. No actual remains of a third arcade above these two are now to be found, but it can hardly be doubted that one existed originally, and that it was of the Corinthian order. Some parts of the substructions of the seats are said to be still extant in the cellars of the Savelli residence, consisting of diverging walls similar to those still to be seen in the Coliseum. By means of these, the ground plan of the cavea of the theatre can be completely restored. There are no remains of the scena. Upon one of the fragments of the Capitoline plan, partly restored, the name Theatrum Marcelli is legible. There seems, however, to be some doubt as to the genuineness of this fragment.

[Sidenote: The Ponte Rotto.]

The bridge near the theatre of Marcellus is now called the Ponte Rotto from its broken condition. The two remaining arches are not ancient, but probably stand upon the site of an ancient bridge which was called the Pons aemilius. Livy mentions this bridge as the first stone bridge built over the Tiber, and states that it was begun in B.C. 179 by M. Fulvius n.o.bilior, and M. aemilius Lepidus the censor, whose name was given to the Basilica aemilia, and that it was finished in B.C. 142 by the Censors Publius Scipio Africa.n.u.s, and L. Mummius. The bridge was named after M.

aemilius Lepidus as Pontifex Maximus, and as a more popular statesman than Fulvius. The bridge afterwards bore the name pons lapideus, from being the first stone bridge built over the Tiber, and in contradistinction to the pons sublicius.

There is abundant evidence as to the position of this bridge, for the Fasti Capranici place it ad Theatrum Marcelli, and the Cosmographia of aethicus ad Forum Boarium, both of which indications point to the Ponte Rotto.

[Sidenote: Island of the Tiber.]

A short distance above the aemilian bridge is the island of the Tiber.

According to the legend, this island was formed by the corn belonging to the Tarquins grown on the Campus Martius, which after their expulsion was consecrated to Mars. After consecration the corn could not be used for food, and was therefore cut and thrown into the Tiber, and from this corn, when collected into heaps by the stream, the island was formed.

Until the fifth century of the city, the island remained consecrated and uninhabited, but in B.C. 292 a Temple of aesculapius was built upon it in consequence, as the story went, of the holy snake brought from Epidaurus having swum to sh.o.r.e there. The island was probably at this time also protected with stone embankments, and the two bridges were built, whence the name inter duos pontes was given to it. A fragment of this ancient stone embankment, which was in the shape of a ship, may still be seen in the garden of the Franciscan Monks of S. Bartolommeo, representing part of the prow of a ship, with a snake and the head of an ox carved in relief upon it.