they encompass the shafts from top to bottom. The engravings from them alone give a clear idea of them. The figure of Jupiter Pluvius is one of the most celebrated and most striking on the Column of Antoninus. The Catholic legend, which tells that this opportune torrent, which ensured victory to the emperor, was, even in his belief, drawn down by the prayers of his Christian soldiers does not seem to receive much support from the honour of it being thus given to the watery Jove.

The inscriptions we now see on the pedestal of this column are modern, and were inscribed upon it by Sixtus V., when he recased it with marble. In these it is stated, that this column was dedicated by Marcus Aurelius to Antoninus Pius; an assertion in which I suspect his Holiness had neither authority nor probability to support him. There was a column indeed, dedicated by M. Aurelius and Lucius Verus, to Antoninus Pius, but it was an immense column, or obelisc, of red granite, with a pedestal of white marble, which was dug up in the reign of Clement XI., and employed by Pius VI. in the repair of that obelisc which now stands on Monte Citorio; but this triumphal column, which records the martial glory of the philosophic emperor, was dedicated to himself alone.

There are no other remains of this Forum, excepting the eleven beautiful Corinthian columns of Grecian marble, which have been converted, with so much taste and judgment, into the Custom-house, and are so ingeniously built up in its vile modern wall, that scarcely one half of them are visible.

There can be no excuse, either for the French or the Pope, in not having removed this vile Dogana to some one of the multifarious vacant tenements with which Rome abounds,-knocked down this hideous fabric, and restored the imprisoned columns to light and beauty.

Like most other ruins, this colonnade has passed through a variety of appellations, but as it stands in what was the ancient Forum of Antoninus Pius, it is supposed either to have belonged to the Basilica, or to have formed one side of the Peripteral Temple he erected to himself. A singular excess of piety certainly! I wonder if it was this egotistical worship that procured him the agnomen ? But Antoninus Pius is not the only emperor who made himself a god while yet upon the earth. That diabolical madman, Caligula, built a temple to himself upon the Palatine, and had serious intentions of making his horse, as well as himself, the object of worship. Not to mention that he made a common practice of knocking off the heads of the statues of the gods, and affixing his own ruffian countenance in their stead. Amongst the number of these decapitated statues was the celebrated Jupiter Olympias, which was brought from Greece to Rome for this express purpose, together with many of the finest masterpieces of Grecian sculpture.+ We know from Tacitus that there was a temple to the deified Claudius, even in Britain, which stood

*

* Suetonius, C. Cal.

+ Suet. Cai, Caligula, 22.

near the Thames, on the scene of that memorable defeat the Roman army sustained from our ancestors. We are indeed assured, that Tiberius, in one instance at least, declined the offered honour; so also did Augustus;* but notwithstanding their modesty, temples and altars were erected to them, and to all the Casars, and their statues were carried in the sacred processions with those of the gods, even during their life-time. Some of them, indeed, were perhaps right in taking care they should be adored while they were alive, since they were sure of being execrated after they were dead. But, even in Republican times, Proconsols and Prætors, while in their several provinces, had the right to receive divine honours and to have temples erected to them.+ Divine worship was paid to Sejanus, the infamous favourite of Tiberius, who himself officiated at the rites in his own temples at once God and Priest.‡

The sight of the stupendous Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, which alone stand triumphant over time, while the proud trophies of a long list of tyrants are laid low in the dust, make us involuntarily admire the poetical justice displayed in the perfect preservation of those sublime monuments of the best and greatest emperors Rome ever produced; the sole, who deserved the victor's laurel, and the civic crown ;-who united the praise of preeminent virtue to that of military glory;—and who,

Suet. Aug. 52.

+ Vide Hist. de l'Art. Liv. vi. c. 5. § 2. Tacitus, Ann. lib. iv. c. 37, 38.

on a throne too often sullied with every vice and every crime that can disgrace human nature, were at once the conquerors of distant nations, and the fathers of their people.

LETTER XXI.

FORUM BOARIUM-JANUS QUADRIFRONTIS-LITTLE ARCH TO SEPT. SEVERUS-THE CLOACA MAXIMA AND FOUNTAIN OF JUTURNA.

In a deserted and lonely situation, and on a damp and grass-grown spot which was once the Forum Boarium, or cattle market of Rome, stands the magnificent ruin of Janus Quadrifrontis. It received its name from having four similar fronts, in each of which there is an arch of entrance; it is, therefore, somewhat inaccurately styled an arch, for it consists of four arches, and, in technical language, perhaps it would be more properly termed a Compitum.*

It is the only one now remaining of the many Jani of Ancient Rome, which were common in every Forum, or market-place, to shelter the people from the sun and rain; and were, in short, exactly what exchanges, or market-houses, are in the busy parts of our towns.

* So say Forsyth and many other authorities. Yet a Compitum was generally erected where four roads met, and that does not seem to have been the case here.