صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

of the ancient image longer than the other early symbols of Paganism.

It may be permitted, however, to remark that the wolf was a Roman symbol, but that the worship of that symbol is an inference drawn by the zeal of Lactantius. The early Christian writers are not to be trusted in the charges which they make against the Pagans. Eusebius accused the Romans to their faces of worshipping Simon Magus, and raising a statue to him in the island of the Tyber. The Romans had probably never heard of such a person before, who came, however, to play a considerable, though scandalous part in the church history, and has left several tokens of his aerial combat with St. Peter at Rome; notwithstanding that an inscription found in this very island of the Tyber showed the Simon Magus of Eusebius to be a certain indigenal god, called Semo Sangus or Fidius. 1

Even when the worship of the founder of Rome had been abandoned, it was thought expedient to humour the habits of the good matrons of the city by sending them with their sick infants to the church of Saint Theodore, as they had before carried them to the temple of Romulus. The practice is continued to this day; and the site of the above church seems to be thereby identified with that of the temple: so that if the wolf had been really found there, as Winkelmann says, there would be no doubt of the present statue being that seen by Diony

Ecclesi. Hist.

1 Eusebius has these words; καὶ ἀνδριάντι παρ' ὑμῖν ὡς θεός, τετίμηται, ἐν τῷ Τίβερι ποταμῷ μεταξὺ τῶν δύο γεφυρῶν, ἔχων ἐπιγραφὴν ρωμαϊκὴν τάυτην Είμωνι δέω (άγκτω. Lib. ii. cap. xiii. p. 40. Justin Martyr had told the story before; but Baronius himself was obliged to detect this fable. See Nardini Roma Vet. lib. vii. cap. xii.

"In essa gli antichi pontefici per toglier la memoria de' giuochi Lupercali istituiti in onore di Romolo, introdussero l'uso di portarvi Bambini oppressi da infermità occulte, acciò si liberino per l'intercessione di questo Santo, come di continuo si sperimenta." Rione xii. Ripa accurata e succincta descrizione, &c. di Roma Moderna dell' Ab. Ridolf. Venuti, 1766.

sius.1 But Faunus, in saying that it was at the Ficus Ruminalis by the Comitium, is only talking of its ancient position as recorded by Pliny; and even if he had been remarking where it was found, would not have alluded to the church of Saint Theodore, but to a very different place, near which it was then thought the Ficus Ruminalis had been, and also the Comitium; that is, the three columns by the church of Santa Maria Liberatrice, at the corner of the Palatine looking on the Forum.

2

It is, in fact, a mere conjecture where the image was actually dug up, and perhaps, on the whole, the marks of the gilding, and of the lightning, are a better argument in favour of its being the Ciceronian wolf than any that can be adduced for the contrary opinion. At any rate, it is reasonably selected in the text of the poem as one of the most interesting relics of the ancient city, and is certainly the figure, if not the very animal to which Virgil alludes in his beautiful verses:

"Geminos huic ubera circum

Ludere pendentes pueros et lambere matrem
Impavidos: illam teriti cervice reflexam

Mulcere alternos, et fingere corpora lingua.”✦

1 Nardini, lib. v. cap. 11. convicts Pomponius Lætus crassi erroris, in putting the Ruminal fig-tree at the church of Saint Theodore: but as Livy says the wolf was at the Ficus Ruminalis, and Dionysius at the temple of Romulus, he is obliged (cap. iv.) to own that the two were close together, as well as the Lupercal cave, shaded, as it were, by the fig-tree.

2 "Ad comitium ficus olim Ruminalis germinabat, sub qua lupæ rumam, hoc est, mammam, docente Varrone, suxerant olim Romulus et Remus; non procul a templo hodie D. Mariæ Liberatricis appellato ubi forsan inventa nobilis illa ænea statua lupa geminos puerulos lactantis, quam hodie in capitolis videmus." Olai Borrichii antiqua Urbis Romana facies, cap. x. See also cap. xii. Borrichius wrote after Nardini in 1687. Ap. Græv. Antiq. Rom. tom. iv. p. 1522.

3 Donatus, lib. xi. cap. 18. gives a medal representing on one side the wolf in the same position as that in the Capitol; and in the reverse the wolf with the head not reverted. It is of the time of Antoninus Pius.

4 Æn. viii. 631. See-Dr. Middleton, in his Letter from Rome, who inclines to the Ciceronian wolf, but without examining the subject.

47.

For the Roman's mind

Was modell'd in a less terrestrial mould.

Stanza xc. lines 3 and 4.

It is possible to be a very great man and to be still very in. ferior to Julius Cæsar, the most complete character, so Lord Bacon thought, of all antiquity. Nature seems incapable of such extraordinary combinations as composed his versatile capacity, which was the wonder even of the Romans themselves. The first general-the only triumphant politician-inferior to none in eloquence-comparable to any in the attainments of wisdom, in an age made up of the greatest commanders, statesmen, orators and philosophers that ever appeared in the world— an author who composed a perfect specimen of military annals in his travelling carriage-at one time in a controversy with Cato, at another writing a treatise on punning, and collecting a set of good sayings-fighting' and making love at the same moment, and willing to abandon both his empire and his mistress for a sight of the Fountains of the Nile. Such did Julius Cæsar appear to his cotemporaries and to those of the subsequent ages,

1 In his tenth book, Lucan shows him sprinkled with the blood of Pharsalia in the arms of Cleopatra,

Sanguine Thessalicæ cladis perfusus adulter

Admisit Venerem curis, et miscuit armis.

After feasting with his mistress, he sits up all night to converse with the Egyptian sages, and tells Achoreus,

Spes sit mihi certa videndi

Niliacos fontes, bellum civile relinquam.

"Sic velut in tuta securi pace trahebant
Noctis iter medium."

Immediately afterwards, he is fighting again and defending every position.

"Sed adest defensor ubique

Cæsar et hos aditus gladiis, hos ignibus arcet

cæca nocte carinis

Insiluit Cæsar semper feliciter usus

Præcipiti cursu bellorum et tempore rapto."

who were the most inclined to deplore and execrate his fatal genius.

But we must not be so much dazzled with his surpassing glory or with his magnanimous, his amiable qualities, as to forget the decision of his impartial countrymen :

1 HE WAS JUSTLY SLAIN.

48.

What from this barren being do we reap?
Our senses narrow, and our reason frail.
Stanza xciii. lines 1 and 2.

The

".... omnes pene veteres ; qui nihil cognosci, nihil percepi, nihil sciri posse dixerunt; angustos sensus; imbecillos animos, brevia curricula vitæ; in profundo veritatem demersam; opinionibus et institutis omnia teneri ; nihil veritati relinqui: deinceps omnia tenebris circumfusa esse dixerunt." a eighteen hundred years which have elapsed since Cicero wrote this, have not removed any of the imperfections of humanity : and the complaints of the ancient philosophers may, without injustice or affectation, be transcribed in a poem written yester→ day.

49.

There is a stern round tower of other days.

Stanza xcix. line 1. Alluding to the tomb of Cecilia Metella, called Capo di Bove, in the Appian Way. See-Historical Illustrations of the IVth Canto of Childe Harold.

"Jure cæsus existemetur," says Suetonius after a fair estimation of his character, and making use of a phrase which was a formula in Livy's time. "Melium jure cœsum pronuntiavit, etiam si regni crimine insons fuerit:" [lib. iv. cap. 48.] and which was continued in the legal judgments pronounced in justifiable homicides, such as killing housebreakers. See Sueton. in vit. C. J. Cæsar, with the commentary of Pitiscus, p. 184.

2 Academ. I. 13,

50.

Prophetic of the doom

Heaven gives its favourites—early death.

Stanza cii. lines 5 and 6.

Ον οι θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν ἀποθνήσκει νέος

Τὸ γὰρ θανεῖν οὐκ ἀισχρὸν ἀλλ ̓ ἀισχρῶς θανεῖν.
Rich. Franc. Phil. Brunck. Poetæ Gnomici,

p. 231, edit. 1784.

. 51.

Behold the Imperial Mount ! 'tis thus the mighty falls.
Stanza cvii. line 9.

The Palatine is one mass of ruins, particularly on the side towards the Circus Maximus. The very soil is formed of crumbled brick-work. Nothing has been told, nothing can be told, to satisfy the belief of any but a Roman antiquary.— See-Historical Illustrations, page 206.

52.

There is the moral of all human tales;
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
First Freedom, and then Glory, &c.

Stanza cviii. lines 1, 2, and 3. The author of the Life of Cicero, speaking of the opinion entertained of Britain by that orator and his cotemporary Romans, has the following eloquent passage: "From their railleries of this kind, on the barbarity and misery of our island, one cannot help reflecting on the surprising fate and revolutions of kingdoms, how Rome, once the mistress of the world, the seat of arts, empire, and glory, now lies sunk in sloth, ignorance, and poverty, enslaved to the most cruel as well as to the most contemptible of tyrants, superstition and religious imposture: while this remote country, anciently the jest and contempt of the polite Romans, is become the happy seat of liberty, plenty,

« السابقةمتابعة »