Note 41 — ITALY. (continued 3)

“It is a great mistake to believe that a period must be better known the nearer it is to us. This is not the case in antiquity. There can be no doubt that, e.g., we know the internal condition of Rome in the time of Cicero much better than during the second century after Christ, when we know nothing but what can be gathered from Pliny’s letters. A merely mechanical mind imagines that a period about which nothing is written, had nothing worth knowing; but whoever has an eye for the remains of antiquity, sees distinctly what has existed. Thus, for example, the monte testaccio, mons testaceus or testarius at Rome is not mentioned anywhere until we come to the documents of the seventh and eighth centuries, and the most ridiculous pains have been taken to discover it at an earlier period. It is not mentioned in the Regionaria, hence, it is said, it must have arisen afterwards, about the period of the eighth century, when Rome was a desert. The matter can be explained very simply. Every one who has practised eyes, knows what is to be recognised in those thousands of shells; but there are antiquaries who can see nothing at all except what they read in books. The ancients made very little use of wooden vessels, they nearly always used pottery ware. This produced an enormous quantity of shells. It was thought inexpedient to throw them into the river, and there must have been some police regulation, that all shells should be thrown on one heap. I was on the spot when a wall was dug out, and it was found that the heaps of shells extended up to the very walls of the city. I caused the digging to be continued farther, and found shells everywhere. It must have been a marsh which was filled with shells to a depth of five feet. Under Honorius a wall was built to defend Rome against the barbarians; it has a double inscription, in one of which we read egestis immensis ruderibus. Under Augustus a regular police was instituted, and all shells were regularly thrown there. Now, imagine Rome with nearly a million of inhabitants; assuredly many carts were employed every day in carrying away the broken vessels, which were all thrown on one spot, and may have already filled the whole place. When Aurelian built his wall, a portion was perhaps thrown back, and this may have been the beginning of the hill. According to Andr. Fulvius, the wall of the city under pope Clement VII., at the commencement of the sixteenth century, was so much covered on both sides, that it was impossible to walk there: a road was then made, and part of the rubbish was carried to the Forum, which was filled with it. Such you must imagine the rudera immensa egesta to have been. About the time of Honorius the wall had been cleared, not to have a hill outside, on which the Goths might have planted their engines to harass the city. He removed the rubbish on both sides, and thus raised an immense mound of shells. This explanation is as certain as if it were described in ancient authors, though not a single author speaks of it. Such also is the case with other phenomena which present themselves at Rome, and about which not one passage can be referred to.”