Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries

DR. LANCIANI is perhaps of all men the best fitted for the peculiar task which he has here undertaken.¹ By nature gifted not only with the perseverance of the investigator, but with the romantic enthusiasm of the true lover of the antique, actually learning his alphabet from the monuments which were to be his life-study, trained in the science of archæology under the eye of the illustrious De Rossi, and companion of the lamented Jordan in his walks about Rome, he justly speaks as one having authority. Through his whole work runs the keynote vidi, vidi ipse, libelle, yet so modestly as not to be aggressive.

The author does not come before us as a stranger. Many of our readers heard from his own lips, two years since, a part of the story here told in full, while others will have used on the spot itself his excellent little Guide du Palatin, compiled some fifteen years ago. In this connection it is instructive merely to note the differences in the two plans of the Palatine hill as given in each book, to say nothing of the advance shown in the descriptive text of the new one. In the more recent plan, and not in the earlier, we have observed laid down the sites of such buildings as the Balnea Helagabali, Domus Neroniana, Propylaia Augusti, Area and Templum Apollinis, and the two Bibliothecae. We are thus enabled to gain a fair idea of the most magnificent group of buildings which the world has ever seen, the group upon which contemporary writers bestowed the highest title in their vocabulary, — ‘ golden.’

Scholars who are familiar with Lanciani’s more professional articles in the Bulletino must not expect to find in the present volume the same attention to detail or the elaborated arguments which necessarily belong to his official publications. We have here, in short, a general view of the most important archæological discoveries made during the last thirty years. No man more than Lanciani regrets the loss of much that was picturesque and poetic in the Rome of the Popes, — a loss which has made possible important conquests in the field of archæology. But it is a mistake to regard the former as always a direct result of efforts towards the latter. In fact, generally speaking, the cause has been the auri sacra fames of the Roman nobility, who have been eager to sacrifice their ancestral villas to the temptations of modern speculators. Some of the most valuable discoveries have been made in the course of the transformation of mediæval beauty into modern ugliness. The charges of wholesale vandalism which have been aimed against men constantly on the watch to defend the sacred ground ought to recoil to the shame of the originators. The chronicle of the labors of those men is now before us, and it is the author’s hope that the reading of its pages by the young men of America will still further stimulate the movement so auspiciously begun by our Archæological Institute.

We have, after a valuable preface, an introductory chapter on the renaissance of archæological studies. Like a true Roman, Lanciani claims for Cola di Rienzi over Dante and Petrarch the honor of being the real founder of the modern school. There is no doubt that Rienzi deserves it, but we think that to the two passages quoted as the only ones in which Dante alludes to ancient monuments might have been added the lines

As for Petrarch, the less said about his archæological lore, the better ; still, as Lanciani remarks, no one should be blamed for ignorance of a science which did not then exist. But in the following century the prospect brightened, and to the Humanists and the Academy of Pomponius, with Paul II., who figures in these pages as a lover, and not a destroyer, of the antique, succeeded such men as Brunelleschi, Donatelli, and Ghiberti, the founding of the great museums, and the group of cinquecento masters, who have left us invaluable descriptions and drawings of monuments long since gone. The respect with which Lanciani speaks of his predecessors is equaled only by his enthusiasm for his art. We have been amused, en passant, to find confirmation for an old story which we have hitherto regarded as apocryphal. It is said that Socrates once remained lost in meditation for twentyfour hours, without food or drink, until the rising sun recalled him to himself, and, with a prayer to the god, he went his way. The vigil of the Commendatore di Rossi lasted thirty-six hours, and he fainted at his post, having beaten the ancient record by a good half-day.

We admit that we are old-fashioned enough to take greater pleasure in the reëstablishment of Romulus than in almost anything else in the book. He is not precisely the same Romulus, the old friend of our youth, son of Mars and Rhea Silvia, and nursling of the wolf, but it is at least refreshing to find that the absolute power of the hypercritical school is a thing of the past. Not long ago it was the fashion to deny everything, apparently only because somebody else had once held different views. And even as late as 1885, when certain discoveries were made in excavations on the Esquiline and Viminal hills, the opportunity was seized to bury the Rome of Romulus deeper than ever, or rather to ignore it, on the plea that there had never been any such Rome to bury. It now appears that the conclusion was too hasty. The site of Rome was never occupied by an Etruscan city, as Professor Middleton, on the basis of those excavations, declared. Roma, the city of the Rumon, or stream, under the leadership of Romulus, “ the man from the town of the river,” was founded by Alban shepherds, whose mode of life drove them to escape from the volcanic country about Alba to safer and better pasture-grounds. To go into the arguments which have led Dr. Lanciani and his fellows of the modern school to these conclusions would be beyond the purpose of this notice ; they are given in full in the second chapter. What has especially interested us is the identification of the time of the settlement of Rome with the Age of Bronze. This leads us to believe more strongly than ever in the theory of Büchholz and others, that the Homeric period was a step further remote, the Age of Copper, and that the weapons and other implements used by the Hetoes were of that metal without artificial alloy. This would point to a stage of metallurgy nearly parallel with that attained by the early American Indians. We are well aware of the objection so often raised, that the deeds of war chronicled by Homer could scarcely have been wrought with copper spears and swords. But when it is borne in mind that the warriors are regularly wounded in some exposed part of the body, or through a joint in the armor, and that with the simple copper axe of the Indians it is possible to cut down a tree, the objection becomes nothing but a lingering romantic regret.

Passing from the prehistoric period, there follows a chapter on the sanitary arrangements of ancient Rome, with a description of the system of sewers and aqueducts, in part still remaining marvels to men. Eighteen springs, at distances of from seven to forty-four miles from the city, sent their pure waters to Rome, and the aggregate length of the aqueducts was more than three hundred and fifty miles. No doubt many of our readers have wondered why the Romans spent so much labor on the construction of these massive works, sometimes real triumphal arches more than a hundred feet in height, when by applying the principle of the siphon they might have accomplished the same end with far greater ease by means of underground pipes. Lanciani answers the question. It was not that the Romans were ignorant of the siphon, or that they had the foresight to avoid the perennial nuisance of the digging up of the public roads, from which so many of our cities suffer, but simply that no pipe, except one of cast-iron, could have borne the enormous pressure of fifty-four million cubic feet of water every day, and that the Romans had no cast-iron. Nobody, however, who has seen the ruins of the mighty arches spanning the Campagna will regret the ignorance to which we owe so grand a sight.

Out-of-door life was a far more important feature in the business and social intercourse of the ancients than it is with us to-day. Of course, the mildness of the climate in Greece and Italy made this possible, but there was another cause which Dr. Lanciani, with others, seems to have overlooked. In antiquity, a man’s house was still a thing sacred to its owner and his Penates. Nobody ever came to disturb the privacy of a Roman or a Greek, unless he had some right or some pressing need. There were no pedlers nor bookagents; no sellers of tickets for temple fairs, prowling from door to door to levy contributions ; no reporters to ring one up at all hours of the day, — in fact, there were no door-bells to ring. Energetic business men though the Romans were, yet they bad the sense to transact their affairs elsewhere than at home. The very bankers had their tables out in the public squares. Even friends respected each other’s retirement, and calls of pleasure or of duty were made at the stated morning hour of the salutatio. This is the reason why the scene of the philosophical dialogue is generally laid, not at the house of one of the characters, but, as a rule, in some public place of resort. Rome was full of such places. The fora, thermae, gymnasia, and basilicae were all great club-houses, in which men met each other, by accident or appointment, and arranged their pleasure-parties or affairs. But perhaps the favorite lounging and meeting places during the Empire were the porticoes, each Emperor vying with his predecessor in constructing them of ever-increasing length and magnificence. The whole Campus Martins became covered with colonnades, and it was possible to take a walk of two or three miles beneath their shelter. Many of them were in themselves museums and picture-galleries; others magazines of Oriental magnificence. One, lined with shops like the Burlington Arcade, contained within its corridor the Truefitt of ancient Rome. As for the fora, used for business of a more restricted nature, the need for such space had so increased in Trajan’s time that he cut away the ridge joining the Capitol to the Quirinal, and thus secured level ground for a new forum, six hundred feet wide. In the centre of it still stands his column, testifying by its height “ how high rose the mountain leveled by the Emperor.”

Lanciani’s interesting chapter on the house and temple of the Vestals, which are among the most recent excavations, ought to be read in its entirety. We shall therefore not summarize. The worship of Vesta, one of the bright spots in the severe and gloomy religion of the Romans, here receives thorough and even loving treatment from its origin to its suppression. One almost regrets that in some form or other its generally softening and holy influence was not retained on the establishment of Christianity as the state religion. But it was swept away, and we have only to be thankful that after nearly fifteen hundred years, we are enabled at last to form a clear idea of its sanctuary and of the home of its priestesses. Among the other subjects treated in the book are the libraries, police and fire departments, the Tiber (that rich depository which may some day give up its wealth to the archæologist), and, in a final chapter. the loss and recovery of works of art.

The volume is richly supplied with illustrations in the form of heliotypes, full-page plates, and cuts in the text. Most of the subjects are freshly treated, and it is a relief to be spared the old views which are generally found in slavish repetition in works of this kind. The execution of a few plates leaves something to be desired, notably those of the Pigna, Caracalla’s Baths, and the Appian Way. But as a rule the illustrations are excellent, and add to the interest of a very valuable book.