worn away with kissing,* just as St Peter's toe is now.+ At present Rome has sixteen gates, including the four of the Citta Leonina, but several of them have been walled up. By far the finest of them is the Porta Maggiore. This noble monument of Roman architecture, though now converted into a gate of the modern city, was originally an arch of the Aqueduct of Claudius, restored by Vespasian and Titus, and constructed with extraordinary elevation and embellishment, as was usual when Aqueducts crossed the public way. This fact is proved by a triple inscription which it still bears, commemorating its erection by the first, and its restoration by the two last, named of these emperors. This noble arch is built of immense squares of Tiburtine stone, joined together without cement, and supported by Ionic pillars of proportionate solidity. Like almost every building of antiquity at Rome, it seems to have been used as a fortress in the disastrous ages of feudal warfare. The ancient Porta Flaminia on the north is now supplied by the Porta del Popolo; the Porta Capena on the south by the Porta San Sebastiano; the Porta Salara on the east alone retains one of its ancient names, for it had several. It was the Porta Salaria, alias Collina, alias Quirinalis, alias * Vide Lucr. 1. i. v. 318. The toe of the brazen statue of the saint in his church, is the grand object of devotion among the modern Romans. Agonensis, alias Scelerata, or rascally gate, which appellation it derived from the Campus Sceleratus, a piece of ground situated a little beyond it, in which the vestal virgins, who had violated their vows, were buried alive. Livy, I think, invariably calls this gate the Porta Collina. It was to this gate that Hannibal rode, attended by two thousand guards, to reconnoitre the wall and defences of the city he destined for destruction, and it was through this gate that Alaric, by the treachery of its guards, entered the city at midnight on the 24th of August A. D. 410, when Rome was for the third time sacked by an army of Goths. On the west of Rome, the Porta San Paola, which is the substitute for the Porta Ostiensis, still, as formerly, leads to Ostia, and through it Genseric, at the head of his Vandals, after landing at that port from Africa, entered Rome the 15th June, A. D. 455, and was encountered,—not by a Roman army, but by Pope Leo the Great, at the head of a procession of priests.* The ancient mistress of the world, the invincible conqueror of other nations, had now to trust for her own security to prayers, not to arms, and humbly to beseech the pity of the barbarian. In vain: the unceasing plunder of fourteen days and nights, the spoil of temples and of palaces, the flames of houses, the shrieks of their murdered inmates, and the * Vide Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. vi. groans of a people led away into slavery, attested his remorseless vengeance. In consequence of the extension of the walls, all the gates of Rome are now removed, more or less, beyond their ancient situation. The Porta Capena, which led to the Via Appia, is supposed to have stood near the little church of St Nereo ed Achilleo; and the Flaminian gate, within the modern Corso, and so of all the rest. The Porta Pia was once the Porta Nomentana, through which the Roman people twice retreated to the Sacred Mount, when oppressed by their rulers; and through which Nero fled from the vengeance of the people he had oppressed. The Porta San Lorenzo, which was probably the ancient Porta Tiburtina, still leads to Tivoli, the ancient Tibur. The Porta San Giovanni, now the great entrance from Naples, nearly corresponds to the ancient Porta Celimontana; between it and the Porta San Sebastiano was the Porta Latina, now blocked up. Close to the Porta San Giovanni, and on the right of it as you leave Rome, you see the now blocked up Porta Asinaria, which was betrayed to Totila by the perfidy of the Isaurian centinels who guarded it, and through it he made his dreaded The first Roman mile-stone on the Appian way, was found in a vineyard about a hundred yards beyond the present Porta San Sebastiano. A mile measured back from the spot where it was discovered, terminates at the church of St Nereo ed Achilleo. entrance into Rome, when the wretched inhabitants, after having experienced the last extremities of famine, felt the mercy of the barbarian. Gibbon relates, that at break of day he knelt before the tomb of St Peter; and while in the act of praying before the altar of the God of Mercy, eighty-five Romans were butchered by his command in the portico of the church. Rome was pillaged. "The sons and daughters of Roman consuls wandered in tattered garments through the streets, and begged their bread, perhaps without success, before the gates of their hereditary mansions."* Still was his rage unsatiated against "the city that had so long delayed the course of his victories." Already was the fatal command issued, "that Rome should be turned into a pasture for cattle," that the plough should pass over her proud fabrics: already was the torch lighted, and the combustibles prepared, that were to consume the splendours of antiquity; when the warning voice of Belisarius called on his victorious enemy, "Not to sully his fame by the destruction of those monuments which were the glory of the dead, and the delight of the living."+ Totila listened to the admonition of a rival, and Rome was preserved. * Gibbon, Decline and Fall. + Ibid. LETTER XIV. "But I will sing above all monuments, Seven Roman hills-the world's seven wonderments."* ROME was always the City of the Seven Hills. They were held sacred, and a festival was annually celebrated in December, called the Dies Septimontium. Indeed, I must say that the ancient Romans seem to have been quite as fond of idleness, or diversion, under the name of religion, as the modern Italians, and that they had as many festas in these days as they have now. But this has nothing to do with the hills "these Seven Hills-which be now Tombs of her greatness which did threat the sky.”‡ I would, however, advise you not to raise your expectations of them too high. My ideas were far too towering. I had unconsciously formed a kind of notion that their magnitude must be proportioned to their fame-which, to be sure, was about as reasonable as if one should expect that a man of great * Spenser's Ruins of Rome. + Vide Varso.-De Ling. Lat. lib. 5. Dies Septimontium ab his septem montibus in quies sita urbs est. Spenser's Ruins of Rome. |