The Works of Lord Byron Volume II Part 76

[490] {412} [The archaeologists of Byron's day were unable to fix the exact site of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline.

"On which side," asks Hobhouse (_Hist. Ill.u.s.t._, p. 224), "stood the citadel, on what the great temple of the Capitol; and did the temple stand in the citadel?" Excavations which were carried on in 1876-7 by Professors Jordan and Lanciani enabled them to identify with "tolerable certainty" the site of the central temple and its adjacent wings, with the site of the Palazzo Caffarelli and its dependencies which occupy the south-east section of the Mons Capitolinus. There are still, however, rival Tarpeian Rocks--one (in the Vicolo della Rupe Tarpea) on the western edge of the hill facing the Tiber, and the other (near the Casa Tarpea) on the south-east towards the Palatine. But if Dionysius, who describes the "Traitor's Leap" as being in sight of the Forum, is to be credited, the "actual precipice" from which traitors (and other criminals, e.g. "bearers of false witness") were thrown must have been somewhere on the southern and now less precipitous escarpment of the mount.]

[oj] {413} _The State Leucadia_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[491] [M. Manlius, who saved the Capitol from the Gauls in B.C. 390, was afterwards (B.C. 384) arraigned on a charge of high treason by the patricians, condemned, and by order of the tribunes thrown down the Tarpeian Rock. Livy (vi. 20) credits him with a "foeda cupiditas regni"--a "depraved ambition for a.s.suming the kingly power."]

[ok]

_There first did Tully's burning accents glow?_ _Yes--eloquently still--the echoes tell me so_.--[D.]

[492] [Compare Gray's _Odes_, "The Progress of Poesy," iii. 3, line 4--"Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn."]

[493] {414} [Nicolas Gabrino di' Rienzo, or Rienzi, commonly called Cola di' Rienzi, was born in 1313. The son of a Roman innkeeper, he owed his name and fame to his own talents and natural gifts. His mission, or, perhaps, ambition, was to free Rome from the tyranny and oppression of the great n.o.bles, and to establish once more "the good estate," that is, a republic. This for a brief period Rienzi accomplished. On May 20, 1347, he was proclaimed tribune and liberator of the Holy Roman Republic "by the authority of the most merciful Lord Jesus Christ." Of great parts, and inspired by lofty aims, he was a poor creature at heart--a "b.a.s.t.a.r.d" Napoleon--and success seems to have turned his head. After eight months of royal splendour, purchased by more than royal exactions, the tide of popular feeling turned against him, and he was forced to take refuge in the Castle of St. Angelo (December 15, 1347). Years of wandering and captivity followed his first tribunate; but at length, in 1354, he was permitted to return to Rome, and, once again, after a rapid and successful reduction of the neighbouring states, he became the chief power in the state. But an act of violence, accompanied by treachery, and, above all, the necessity of imposing heavier taxes than the city could bear, roused popular discontent; and during a revolt (October 8, 1354), after a dastardly attempt to escape and conceal himself, he was recognized by the crowd and stabbed to death.

Petrarch first made his acquaintance in 1340, when he was summoned to Rome to be crowned as poet laureate. Afterwards, when Rienzi was imprisoned at Avignon, Petrarch interceded on his behalf with the pope, but, for a time, in vain. He believed in and shared his enthusiasms; and it is probable that the famous Canzone, "Spirto gentil, che quelle membra reggi," was addressed to the Last of the Tribunes.

Rienzi's story forms the subject of a tragedy by Gustave Drouineau, which was played at the Odeon, January 28, 1826; of Bulwer Lytton's novel _The Last of the Tribunes_, which was published in 1835; and of an opera (1842) by Richard Wagner.

(See _Encyc. Met._, art. "Rome," by Professor Villari; La Rousse, _G.

Dict. Univ._, art. "Rienzi;" and a curious pamphlet by G. W. Meadley, London, 1821, ent.i.tled _Two Pairs of Historical Portraits_, in which an attempt is made to trace a minute resemblance between the characters and careers of Rienzi and the First Napoleon.)]

[494] {415} [The word "nympholepsy" may be paraphrased as "ecstatic vision." The Greeks feigned that one who had seen a nymph was henceforth possessed by her image, and beside himself with longing for an impossible ideal. Compare stanza cxxii. line 7--"The unreached Paradise of our despair." Compare, too, _Kubla Khan_, lines 52, 53--

"For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise."]

[ol] _The lovely madness of some fond despair_.--[MS. M.]

[495] {416} [Byron is describing the so-called Grotto of Egeria, which is situated a little to the left of the Via Appia, about two miles to the south-east of the Porta di Sebastiano: "Here, beside the Almo rivulet [now the Maranna d. Caffarella], is a ruined nymphaeum ... which was called the 'Grotto of Egeria,' till ... the discovery of the true site of the Porta Capena fixed that of the grotto within the walls....

It is now known that this nymphaeum ... belonged to the suburban villa called Triopio of Herodes Atticus." The actual site of Egeria's fountain is in the grounds of the Villa Mattei, to the south-east of the Caelian, and near the Porta Metronia. "It was buried, in 1867, by the military engineers, while building their new hospital near S. Stefano Rotondo"

(Prof. Lanciani).

In lines 5-9 Byron is recalling Juvenal's description of the valley of Egeria, under the mistaken impression that here, and not by "dripping Capena," was the trysting-place of Numa and the G.o.ddess. Juvenal has accompanied the seer Umbritius, who was leaving Rome for Capua, as far as the Porta Capena; and while the one waggon, with its slender store of goods, is being loaded, the friends take a stroll--

"In vallem Egeriae; descendimus et speluncas Dissimiles veris. Quanto praestantius esset Numen aquae, viridi si margine clauderet undas Herba, nec ingenuum violarent marmora tophum?"

_Sat._ I. iii. 17-20.

The grove and shrine of the sacred fountain, which had been let to the Jews (lines 13-16), are not to be confounded with the "artificial caverns" near Herod's Nymphaeum, which Juvenal thought were in bad taste, and Byron rejoiced to find reclaimed and reclothed by Nature.]

[496] {417} [Compare Sh.e.l.ley's _Prometheus Unbound_, act iv. (_Poetical Works_, 1893, ii. 97)--

"As a violet's gentle eye Gazes on the azure sky Until its hue grows like what it beholds."]

[497] {418} [Compare _Kubla Khan_, lines 12, 13--

"But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!"]

[498] [Compare _Hamlet_, act ii. sc. 1, line 292--"This most excellent canopy the Air."]

[om]

_Feel the quick throbbing of a human heart_ _And the sweet sorrows of its deathless dying_.--[MS. M. erased.]

or, _And the sweet sorrow which exults in dying_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[on] {419} _Oh Love! thou art no habitant of Earth_ _An unseen Seraph we believe in thee_ _And can point out thy time and place of birth_.--[D. erased.]

[499] [M. Darmesteter traces the sentiment to a maxim (No. 76) of La Rochefoucauld: "Il est du veritable amour comme de l'apparition des esprits: tout le monde en parle, mais pen de gens en out vu."]

[500] {420} [Compare Dryden on Shaftesbury (_Absalom and Achitophel_, pt. i. lines 156-158)--

"A fiery soul which, working out its way, Fretted the pigmy-body to decay, And o'er-informed the tenement of clay."]

[501] [The Romans had more than one proverb to this effect; e.g.

"Amantes Amentes sunt" (_Adagia Veterum_, 1643, p. 52); "Amare et sapere vix Deo conceditur" (Syri _Sententiae_. 1818, p. 5).]

[oo] {421} _For all are visions with a separate name_.--[D. erased.]

[502] [Circ.u.mstance is personified as halting Nemesis--"Pede poena claudo." Hor., _Odes_, III. ii. 32.

Perhaps, too, there is the underlying thought of his own lameness, of Mary Chaworth, and of all that might have been, if the "unspiritual G.o.d"

had willed otherwise.]

[503] {422} [Compare Milton's _Samson Agonistes_, lines 617-621--

"My griefs not only pain me As a lingering disease, But, finding no redress, ferment and rage; Nor less than wounds immedicable Rankle."]

[504] "At all events," says the author of the _Academical Questions_ [Sir William Drummond], "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 s.p.a.ce 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. pp. xiv., xv.

[For Sir William Drummond (1770-1828), see _Letters_, 1898, ii. 79, note 3. Byron advised Lady Blessington to read _Academical Questions_ (1805), and instanced the last sentence of this pa.s.sage "as one of the best in our language" (_Conversations_, pp. 238, 239).]

[505] {423} [Compare _Macbeth_, act iii. sc. 4, lines 24, 25--

"But now I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in To saucy doubts and fears."]

[506] [Compare _The Deformed Transformed_, act i. sc. 2, lines 49, 50--

"Those scarce mortal arches, Pile above pile of everlasting wall."

The first, second, and third stories of the Flavian amphitheatre or Colosseum were built upon arches. Between the arches, eighty to each story or tier, stood three-quarter columns. "Each tier is of a different order of architecture, the lowest being a plain Roman Doric, or perhaps, rather, Tuscan, the next Ionic, and the third Corinthian." The fourth story, which was built by the Emperor Gordia.n.u.s III., A.D. 244, to take the place of the original wooden gallery (_manianum summum in ligneis_), which was destroyed by lightning, A.D. 217, was a solid wall faced with Corinthian pilasters, and pierced by forty square windows or openings.

It has been conjectured that the alternate s.p.a.ces between the pilasters were decorated with ornamental metal shields. The openings of the outer arches of the second and third stories were probably decorated with statues. The reverse of an _aureus_ of the reign of t.i.tus represents the Colosseum with these statues and a quadriga in the centre. About one-third of the original structure remains _in situ_. The prime agent of destruction was probably the earthquake ("Petrarch's earthquake") of September, 1349, when the whole of the western side fell towards the Caelian, and gave rise to a hill or rather to a chain of hills of loose blocks of travertine and tufa, which supplied Rome with building materials for subsequent centuries. As an instance of wholesale spoliation or appropriation, Professor Lanciani refers to "a doc.u.ment published by Muntz, in the _Revue Arch._, September, 1876," which "certifies that one contractor alone, in the s.p.a.ce of only nine months, in 1452, could carry off 2522 cartloads" of travertine (Smith's _Dict.

of Gr. and Rom. Ant._, art. "Amphitheatrum;" _Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome_, by R. Lanciani, 1897, p. 375).]

[507] {424} [For a description of the Colosseum by moonlight, see Goethe's letter from Rome, February 2, 1787 (_Travels in Italy_, 1883, p. 159): "Of the beauty of a walk through Rome by moonlight, it is impossible to form a conception ... Peculiarly beautiful at such a time is the Coliseum." See, too, _Corinne, ou L'Italie_, xv. 4, 1819, iii.

32--

"Ce n'est pas connaitre l'impression du Colisee que de ne l'avoir vu que de jour ... la lune est l'astre des ruines. Quelque fois, a travers les ouvertures de l'amphitheatre, qui semble s'elever jusqu'aux nues, une partie de la voute du ciel parait comme un rideau d'un bleu sombre place derriere l'edifice."

For a fine description of the Colosseum by starlight, see _Manfred_, act iii. sc. 4, lines 8-13.]