Volume 1 — CHAPTER IX. THE VIA APPIA. (continued 2)

"No doubt they also had their perplexities, and wondered why the wicked triumph, and sighed to God, 'How long, O Lord, how long?'"—Schonberg Cotta Family.

"And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled."—Rev. vi. 9—11.

In the valley beneath S. Sebastiano are the ruins of the Circus of Maxentius, near those of a villa of that emperor. The circus was 1482 feet long, 244 feet broad, and was capable of containing 15,000 spectators, yet it is a miniature compared with the Circus Maximus, though very interesting as retaining in tolerable preservation all the different parts which composed a circus. The circular ruin near it was a Temple dedicated by Maxentius to his son Romulus.

"Le jeune Romulus, étant mort, fut placé au rang des dieux, dans cet olympe qui s'écroulait. Son père lui éleva un temple dont la partie inférieure se voit encore, et le cirque lui-même fut peut-être une dépendance de ce temple funèbre, car les courses de chars étaient un des honneurs que l'antiquité rendait aux morts, et sont souvent pour cela représentées sur les tombeaux."—Ampère, Emp. ii. 360.

These ruins are very picturesque, backed by the peaks of the Sabine range, which in winter are generally covered with snow.

The opposite hill is crowned by the Tomb of Cecilia Metella, daughter of Quintus Metellus Creticus, and wife of Crassus. It is a round tower, seventy feet in diameter. The bulls' heads on the frieze gave it the popular name of Capo di Bove. The marble coating of the basement was carried off by Urban VIII. to make the fountain of Trevi. The battlements were added when the tomb was turned into a fortress by the Caëtani in the thirteenth century.

"About two miles, or more, from the city gates, and right upon the roadside, is an immense round pile, sepulchral in its original purpose, like those already mentioned. It is built of great blocks of hewn stone, on a vast, square foundation of rough, agglomerated material, such as composes the mass of all the other ruinous tombs. But, whatever might be the cause, it is in a far better state of preservation than they. On its broad summit rise the battlements of a mediæval fortress, out of the midst of which (so long since had time begun to crumble the supplemental structure, and cover it with soil, by means of wayside dust) grow trees, bushes, and thick festoons of ivy. This tomb of a woman has become the dungeon-keep of a castle; and all the care that Cecilia Metella's husband could bestow, to secure endless peace for her beloved relics, only sufficed to make that handful of precious ashes the nucleus of battles, long ages after her death."—Hawthorne, Transformation.

Close to the tomb are the ruins of a Gothic church of the Caëtani.

"Le tombeau de Cecilia-Metella était devenu un château fort alors aux mains des Caëtani, et autour du château s'était formé un village avec son église, dont on a récemment retrouvé les restes."—Ampère, Voyage Dantesque.

It is at Cecilia Metella's tomb that the beauties of the Via Appia really begin. A very short distance further, we emerge from the walls which have hitherto shut in the road on either side, and enjoy uninterrupted views over the Latin plain, strewn with its ruined castles and villages—and the long lines of aqueducts, to the Sabine and Alban mountains.

"The Via Appia is a magnificent promenade, amongst ruinous tombs, the massive remains of which extend for many miles over the Roman Campagna. The powerful families of ancient Rome loved to build monuments to their dead by the side of the public road, probably to exhibit at once their affection for their relations and their own power and affluence. Most of these monuments are now nothing but heaps of ruins, upon which are placed the statues and sculptures which have been found in the earth or amongst the rubbish. Those inscriptions which have been found on the Via Appia bear witness to the grief of the living for the dead, but never to the hope of reunion. On a great number of sarcophagi or the friezes of tombs may be seen the dead sitting or lying as if they were alive, some seem to be praying. Many heads have great individuality of character. Sometimes a white marble figure, beautifully draped, projects from these heaps of ruins, but without head or hands; sometimes a hand is stretched out, or a portion of a figure rises from the tomb. It is a street through monuments of the dead, across an immense churchyard; for the desolate Roman Campagna may be regarded as such. To the left it is scattered with the ruins of colossal aqueducts, which, during the time of the emperors, conveyed lakes and rivers to Rome, and which still, ruinous and destroyed, delight the eye by the beautiful proportions of their arcades. To the right is an immense prairie, without any other limit than that of the ocean, which, however, is not seen from it. The country is desolate, and only here and there are there any huts or trees to be seen."—Frederika Bremer.

"For the space of a mile or two beyond the gate of S. Sebastiano, this ancient and famous road is as desolate and disagreeable as most of the other Roman avenues. It extends over small, uncomfortable paving-stones, between brick and plastered walls, which are very solidly constructed, and so high as almost to exclude a view of the surrounding country. The houses are of the most uninviting aspect, neither picturesque, nor homelike and social; they have seldom or never a door opening on the wayside, but are accessible only from the rear, and frown inhospitably upon the traveller through iron-grated windows. Here and there appears a dreary inn, or a wine-shop, designated by the withered bush beside the entrance, within which you discover a stone-built and sepulchral interior, where guests refresh themselves with sour bread and goat's-milk cheese, washed down with wine of dolorous acerbity.

"At frequent intervals along the roadside, up rises the ruin of an ancient tomb. As they stand now, these structures are immensely high, and broken mounds of conglomerated brick, stone, pebbles, and earth, all molten by time into a mass as solid and indestructible as if each tomb were composed of a single boulder of granite. When first erected, they were cased externally, no doubt, with slabs of polished marble, artfully wrought, bas-reliefs, and all such suitable adornments, and were rendered majestically beautiful by grand architectural designs. This antique splendour has long since been stolen from the dead, to decorate the palaces and churches of the living. Nothing remains to the dishonoured sepulchres, except their massiveness.

"Even the pyramids form hardly a stranger spectacle, or a more alien from human sympathies, than the tombs of the Appian Way, with their gigantic height, breadth, and solidity, defying time and the elements, and far too mighty to be demolished by an ordinary earthquake. Here you may see a modern dwelling, and a garden with its vines and olive-trees, perched on the lofty dilapidation of a tomb, which forms a precipice of fifty feet in depth on each of the four sides. There is a house on that funeral mound, where generations of children have been born, and successive lives have been spent, undisturbed by the ghost of the stern Roman whose ashes were so preposterously burdened. Other sepulchres wear a crown of grass, shrubbery, and forest-trees, which throw out a broad sweep of branches, having had time, twice over, to be a thousand years of age. On one of them stands a tower, which, though immemorially more modern than the tomb, was itself built by immemorial hands, and is now rifted quite from top to bottom by a vast fissure of decay; the tomb-hillock, its foundation, being still as firm as ever, and likely to endure until the last trump shall rend it wide asunder, and summon forth its unknown dead.

"Yes, its unknown dead! For, except in one or two doubtful instances, these mountainous sepulchral edifices have not availed to keep so much as the bare name of an individual or a family from oblivion. Ambitious of everlasting remembrance as they were, the slumberers might just as well have gone quietly to rest, each in his pigeon-hole of a columbarium, or under his little green hillock, in a grave-yard, without a headstone to mark the spot. It is rather satisfactory than otherwise, to think that all these idle pains have turned out so utterly abortive."—Hawthorne.

Near the fourth milestone, is the tomb of Marcus Servilius Quartus (with an inscription), restored by Canova in 1808. A bas-relief of the death of Atys, killed by Adrastus, a short distance beyond this, has been suggested as part of the tomb of Seneca, who was put to death "near the fourth milestone" by order of Nero. An inscribed tomb beyond this is that of Sextus Pompeius Justus.

Near this, in the Campagna on the left, are some small remains, supposed to be those of a Temple of Juno.

Beyond this a number of tombs can be identified, but none of any importance. Such are the tombs of Plinius Eutychius, erected by Plinius Zosimus, a freedman of Pliny the younger; of Caius Licinius; the Doric tomb of the tax-gatherer Claudius Philippanus, inscribed "Tito. Claudio. Secundo. Philippiano. Coactori. Flavia. Irene. Vxori Indulgentissimo;" of Rabinius, with three busts in relief; of Hermodorus; of Elsia Prima, priestess of Isis; of Marcus C. Cerdonus, with the bas-relief of an elephant bearing a burning altar.

Beyond the fifth milestone, two circular mounds with basements of peperino, were considered by Canina to be the tombs of the Horatii and Curiatii.

On the opposite side of the road is the exceedingly picturesque mediæval fortress, known as Torre Mezza Strada, into which are incorporated the remains of the Church of Sta. Maria Nuova, or della Gloria. Behind this extend a vast assemblage of ruins, which form a splendid foreground to the distant mountain view, and whose size has led to their receiving the popular epithet of Roma Vecchia. Here was the favourite villa of the Emperor Commodus, where he was residing, when the people, excited by a sudden impulse during the games of the Circus, rose and poured out of Rome against him—as the inhabitants of Paris to Versailles—and refused to depart, till, terrified into action by the entreaties of his concubine Marcia, he tossed the head of the unpopular Cleander to them out of the window, and had the brains of that minister's child dashed out against the stones. This villa is proved by the discovery of a number of pipes bearing their names to have been that of the brothers Condianus and Maximus, of the great family of the Quintilii, which was confiscated by Commodus.

"L'histoire des deux frères est intéressante et romanesque. Condianus et Maximus Quintilius étaient distingués par la science, les talents militaires, la richesse, et surtout par une tendresse mutuelle qui ne s'était jamais démentie. Servant toujours ensemble, l'un se faisait le lieutenant de l'autre. Bien qu'étrangers à toute conspiration, leur vertu les fit soupçonner d'être peu favorables à Commode; ils furent proscrits et moururent ensemble comme ils avaient vécu. L'un d'eux avait un fils nommé Sextus. Au moment de la mort de son père et de son oncle, ce fils se trouvait en Syrie. Pensant bien que le même sort l'attendait, il feignit de mourir pour sauver sa vie. Sextus, après avoir bu sang du lièvre, monta à cheval, se laissa tomber, vomit le sang qu'il avait pris et qui parut être son propre sang. On mit dans sa bière le corps d'un bélier qui passa pour son cadavre, et il disparut. Depuis ce temps, il erra sons divers déguisements; mais on sut qu'il avait échappé, et on se mit à sa recherche. Beaucoup furent tués parce-qu'ils lui ressemblaient ou parce-qu'ils étaient soupçonnés de lui avoir donné asile. Il n'est pas bien sûr qu'il ait été atteint, que sa tête se trouvât parmi celles qu'on apporta à Rome et qu'on dit être la sienne. Ce qui est certain, c'est qu'après la mort de Commode, un aventurier, tenté par la belle villa et par les grandes richesses des Quintilii, se donna pour Sextus et réclama son héritage. Il paraît ne pas avoir manqué d'adresse et avoir connu celui pour lequel il voulut qu'on le prît, car par ses réponses il se tira très-bien de toutes les enquêtes. Peut-être s'était-il lié avec Sextus et l'avait-il assassiné ensuite. Cependant l'empereur Pertinax, successeur de Commode, l'ayant fait venir, eut l'idée de lui parler grec. Le vrai Sextus connaissait parfaitement cette langue. Le faux Sextus, qui ne savait pas le grec, répondit tout de travers, et sa fraude fut ainsi découverte."—Ampère, Emp. ii. 253.

On the left of the Via Appia, appears a huge monument, on a narrow base, called the Tomb of the Metelli. Beyond this, after the fifth milestone, are the tombs of Sergius Demetrius, a wine merchant; of Lucius Arrius; of Septimia Gallia; and of one of the Cæcilii, in whose sepulchre, according to Eutropius, was buried Pomponius Atticus, the friend of Cicero, whose daughter Vipsania was the first wife of Agrippa, and whose granddaughter Vipsania Agrippina was the first wife of Tiberius.

Close to the sixth milestone is the mass of masonry sometimes called "Casale Rotondo," or "Cotta's Tomb," from that name being found there inscribed on a stone, but generally attributed to Messala Corvinus, the poet, and friend of Horace, and believed to have been raised to him by his son Valerius Maximus Cotta, mentioned in Ovid.

This tomb was even larger than that of Cecilia Metella, and was turned into a fortress by the Orsini in the fifteenth century.

Beyond this are tombs identified as those of P. Quintius, tribune of the sixteenth legion; Marcus Julius, steward of Claudius; Publius Decumius Philomusus (with appropriate bas-reliefs of two mice nibbling a cake); and of Cedritius Flaccianius.

Passing on the left the Tor di Selce, erected upon a huge unknown tomb, are the tombs of Titia Eucharis, and of Atilius Evodus, jeweller (margaritarius) on the Via Sacra, with the inscription, "Hospes resiste—aspice ubi continentur ossa hominis boni misericordis amantis pauperis." Near the eighth milestone are ruins attributed to the temples of Silvanus and of Hercules,—of which the latter is mentioned in Martial's Epigrams, beyond which were the villas of Bassus and of Persius. The last tomb identified is that of Quintus Verranius. Near the ninth milestone is a tomb supposed to be that of Gallienus (Imp. 268), who lived close by in a villa, amid the ruins of which "the Discobolus" was discovered.

From the stream called Pontecello, near the tenth milestone, the road gradually ascends to Albano, passing several large but unnamed tombs. At the Osteria delle Frattocchie it joins the Via Appia Nuova. Close to the gate of Albano, it passes on the left the tall tomb attributed to Pompey the Great, in accordance with the statement of Plutarch, and in spite of the epigram of Varro Atacinus, which says:—

Among the many processions which have passed along this road, perhaps the most remarkable have been that bearing back to Rome the dead body of Sylla, who died at Pozzuoli, "in a gilt litter, with royal ornaments, trumpets before him, and horsemen behind;"[223] and the funeral of Augustus, who dying at Nola (A.D. 14), was brought to Bovillæ, and remained there a month in the sanctuary of the Julian family, after which the knights brought the body in solemn procession to his palace on the Palatine.

But throughout a walk along the Appian Way, the one great Christian interest of this world-famous road, will, to the Christian visitor, overpower all others.

"And so we went toward Rome.

"And from thence, when the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii-forum, and the Three Taverns: whom when Paul saw, he thanked God, and took courage.

"And when we came to Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guard; but Paul was suffered to dwell by himself, with a soldier that kept him."—Acts xxviii. 14—16.

"It is not without its manifold uses to remember that, amidst the dim and wavering traditions of later times, one figure at least stands out clear and distinct and undoubted, and this figure is the Apostle Paul. He, whatever we may think concerning any other apostle or apostolic man in connection with Rome, he, beyond a shadow of doubt, appears in the New Testament as her great teacher. No criticism or scepticism of modern times has ever questioned the perfect authenticity of that last chapter of the Acts, which gives the account of his journey, stage by stage, till he set foot within the walls of the city. However much we may be compelled to distrust any particular traditions concerning special localities of his life and death, we cannot doubt for a moment that his eye rested on the same general view of sky and plain and mountain; that his feet trod the pavement of the same Appian road; that his way lay through the same long avenue of ancient tombs on which we now look and wonder; that he entered (and there we have our last authentic glimpse of his progress) through the arch of Drusus, and then is lost to our view in the great Babylon of Rome."—A. P. Stanley's Sermons.

"When St. Paul was approaching Rome, all the bases of the mountains were (as indeed they are partially now) clustered round with the villas and gardens of wealthy citizens. The Appian Way climbs and then descends along its southern slope. After passing Lanuvium it crossed a crater-like valley or immense substructions, which still remain. Here is Aricia, an easy stage from Rome. The town was above the road, and on the hillside swarms of beggars beset travellers as they passed. On the summit of the next rise, Paul of Tarsus would obtain his first view of Rome. There is no doubt that the prospect was, in many respects, very different from the view which is now obtained from the same spot. It is true that the natural features of the scene are unaltered. The long wall of blue Sabine mountains, with Soracte in the distance, closed in the Campagna, which stretched far across to the sea and round the base of the Alban hills. But ancient Rome was not, like modern Rome, impressive from its solitude, standing alone, with its one conspicuous cupola, in the midst of a desolate though beautiful waste. St. Paul would see a vast city, covering the Campagna, and almost continuously connected by its suburbs with the villas on the hill where he stood, and with the bright towns which clustered on the sides of the mountains opposite. Over all the intermediate space were the houses and gardens, through which aqueducts and roads might be traced in converging lines towards the confused mass of edifices which formed the city of Rome. Here no conspicuous building, elevated above the rest, attracted the eye or the imagination. Ancient Rome had neither cupola nor campanile, still less had it any of those spires which give life to all the capitals of northern Christendom. It was a widespread aggregate of buildings, which, though separated by narrow streets and open spaces, appeared, when seen from near Aricia, blended into one indiscriminate mass: for distance concealed the contrasts which divided the crowded habitations of the poor and the dark haunts of filth and misery—from the theatres and colonnades, the baths, the temples, and palaces with gilded roofs, flashing back the sun.

"The road descended into the plain at Bovillæ, six miles from Aricia: and thence it proceeded in a straight line, with the sepulchres of illustrious families on either hand. One of these was the burial-place of the Julian gens, with which the centurion who had charge of the prisoners was in some way connected. As they proceeded over the old pavement, among gardens and modern houses, and approached nearer the busy metropolis—the 'conflux issuing forth or entering in' in various costumes and on various errands,—vehicles, horsemen, and foot-passengers, soldiers and labourers, Romans and foreigners,—became more crowded and confusing. The houses grew closer. They were already in Rome. It was impossible to define the commencement of the city. Its populous portions extended far beyond the limits marked out by Servius. The ancient wall, with its once sacred pomœrium, was rather an object for antiquarian interest, like the walls of York or Chester, than any protection against the enemies, who were kept far aloof by the legions on the frontier.

"Yet the Porta Capena is a spot which we can hardly leave without lingering for a moment. Under this arch—which was perpetually dripping with the water of the aqueduct that went over it—had passed all those who, since a remote period of the republic, had travelled by the Appian Way,—victorious generals with their legions, returning from foreign service,—emperors and courtiers, vagrant representatives of every form of heathenism, Greeks and Asiatics, Jews and Christians. From this point entering within the city, Julius and his prisoners moved on, with the Aventine on their left, close round the base of the Cœlian, and through the hollow ground which lay between this hill and the Palatine: thence over the low ridge called Velia, where afterwards was built the arch of Titus, to commemorate the destruction of Jerusalem; and then descending, by the Via Sacra, into that space which was the centre of imperial power and imperial magnificence, and associated also with the most glorious recollections of the republic. The Forum was to Rome, what the Acropolis was to Athens, the heart of all the characteristic interest of the place. Here was the Milliarium Aureum, to which the roads of all the provinces converged. All around were the stately buildings, which were raised in the closing years of the republic, and by the earlier emperors. In front was the Capitoline Hill, illustrious long before the invasion of the Gauls. Close on the left, covering that hill, whose name is associated in every modern European language with the notion of imperial splendour, were the vast ranges of the palace—the 'house of Cæsar' (Philipp. iv. 22). Here were the household troops quartered in a prætorium attached to the palace. And here (unless, indeed, it was in the great Prætorian Camp outside the city wall) Julius gave up his prisoner to Burrus, the Prætorian Prefect, whose official duty it was to keep in custody all accused persons who were to be tried before the Emperor."—Conybeare and Howson.