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Chapter 07 Performance and Motor Control Characteristics of Functional
Skills Answer Key

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Fitts' Law specifies that performance will show a speed-accuracy trade-off in a rapid manual
aiming task according to the relationship between which two characteristics of the task?

A. Distance to move and target size

B. Distance to move and movement speed
C. Target size and movement speed
D. Target size and type of target

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Speed-Accuracy Skills

2. The Index of Difficulty (ID) that can be derived from Fitts' law demonstrates that the same task
can have various levels of difficulty and the same amount of:

A. Movement speed
B. Response choices
C. Complexity
D. Performance variability

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Speed-Accuracy Skills

3. One of the current views of how we control prehension is that the transport and grasp phases
function:

A. As one unit
B. Synergistically
C. As two motor programs
D. Independently.

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Prehension

7-1
Copyright © 2018 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
4. When you reach to grasp an object, which of the following describes when the fingers begin to
close?

A. At a consistent percentage of the total movement time

B. At a point that depends on the total movement time
C. At a point just before contact with the object
D. At contact with the object

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Prehension

5. Consider the following two prehension situations: a person reaches to pick up a cup to: (a)
drink from it; (b) move it to a different location on the table. The kinematic characteristics of the
transport phase for these two situations would:

A. Be similar
B. Be different
C. Depend on the color of the cup
D. Not be predictable

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Prehension

6. Because we can write our signature relatively legibly with a pen held by either hand, either
foot, or even by our teeth, researchers often describe handwriting as a good example of
Bernstein's concept of motor:

A. Programs
B. Equivalence
C. Independence
D. Complexity

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Handwriting

7. In a two-hand aiming task in which the right hand must move to a target that has an ID of 4,
and the left hand must simultaneously move to a target that has an ID of 2, when will each
hand arrive at the target?

A. The right hand will arrive much earlier than the left hand
B. The left hand will arrive much earlier than the right hand
C. The two hands will arrive at approximately the same time
D. The preferred hand will arrive first regardless of the ID

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

7-2
Copyright © 2018 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
 Topic: Discussion; Bimanual Coordination Skills

8. Which of the following statements reflects the appropriate view of the spatial and temporal
control underlying the performance of an asymmetric bimanual action?

A. The two arms prefer to move independently of each other

B. The two arms prefer to move together as one unit
C. The preferred arm always dominates the other arm
D. The two arms cannot perform an asymmetric bimanual action

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Bimanual Coordination Skills

9. The playing of a guitar is a good example of performing:

A. An asymmetric bimanual skill

B. A symmetric bimanual skill
C. A prehension skill
D. A manual aiming skill

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Bimanual Coordination Skills

10. From the dynamical systems perspective, the tendency for the two arms to prefer to move in
tight spatial and temporal synchrony is the result of:

A. A single generalized motor program

B. Two separate motor programs
C. An attractor
D. Motor equivalence

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Bimanual Coordination Skills

11. When participants cannot see their hands during catching they typically make:

A. No errors in catching
B. Hand positioning errors
C. Grasping errors
D. An equal number of hand positioning and grasping errors

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Catching a Moving Object

7-3
Copyright © 2018 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
12. What do baseball batters tend to adjust relative to the oncoming speed of the pitch?

A. When they initiate their step forward

B. When they initiate their swing
C. The speed of their swing
D. The length of their swing

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Striking a Moving Object

13. Research with highly skilled long jumpers reveals that the jumpers:

A. Have remarkably consistent strides during their run up

B. Show large inconsistencies in their strides at the beginning of the run up
C. Show large inconsistencies in their last few strides before take off
D. Show large inconsistencies throughout the entire run up

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Locomotion

14. The rhythmic structure of the movements involved in gait can be observed

A. Only in leg movements

B. Only in arm movements
C. In arm and leg movements
D. None of these

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Locomotion

Short Answer Questions

15. The three phases of prehension are called the transport phase, the grasp phase, and the
________ phase.

object manipulation

Topic: Discussion; Prehension

7-4
Copyright © 2018 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
16. That a person can adapt their handwriting to different surfaces, sizes, forces, etc., is an
example of what Bernstein referred to as motor ________.

equivalence

Topic: Discussion; Handwriting

17. The term used to describe a bimanual coordination task that requires the two hands to
simultaneously perform movements that have the same spatial and temporal characteristics is
________.

symmetric

Topic: Discussion; Bimanual Coordination Skills

18. A predominant view of gait control is that at the nervous system level, gait is controlled by
central pattern ________.

generators

Topic: Discussion; Locomotion

19. When a person walks or runs, an essential goal of the motor control system is the
maintenance of head _______.

stability

Topic: Discussion; Locomotion

True / False Questions

7-5
Copyright © 2018 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
20. Fitts' Law predicts movement speed based on specific accuracy requirements in a task.

TRUE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Speed-Accuracy Skills

21. According to Fitts' Law, a person's movement time will be faster for a task with an ID of 6 than
for an ID of 3.

FALSE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Speed-Accuracy Skills

22. Fitts' Law only applies to reciprocal tapping tasks.

FALSE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Speed-Accuracy Skills

23. Researchers have not agreed on a motor control explanation for Fitt's Law.

TRUE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Speed-Accuracy Skills

24. The kinematic characteristics of a prehension action are the same as those for the actions of
reaching or pointing.

FALSE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Prehension

25. Although Fitts' law is based on manual aiming tasks, research has shown that it applies to
prehension actions as well.

TRUE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Prehension

26. The serve in tennis is a good example of an asymmetric bimanual skill.

TRUE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Bimanual Coordination Skills

7-6
Copyright © 2018 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
27. During the preparation phase of putting a key in a keyhole, you use vision to assess the
regulatory conditions.

TRUE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Prehension

28. It is not necessary that functional activities are used during prehension practice or therapy.

FALSE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Prehension

29. The reason we have difficulty tapping our head and rubbing our belly at the same time with our
two hands is that our motor control system is organized in such a way that our two hands
prefer to move in the same ways at the same time.

TRUE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Bimanual Coordination Skills

30. Continuous visual contact with a ball is essential for successful catching.

FALSE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Catching a Moving Object

31. Skilled baseball batters typically watch the ball continuously onto the bat.

FALSE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Striking a Moving Object

32. General vision training programs have consistently been shown to improve sports
performance.

FALSE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Locomotion

33. Central pattern generators, which are involved in the control of gait, are thought to be located
primarily in the brain.

FALSE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Locomotion

7-7
Copyright © 2018 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
34. The ratios of number of arm swings to leg swings for walking and running are both 1:1 (i.e.,
one arm swing for one leg swing).

FALSE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Locomotion

35. The "atypical" posture and gait characteristics we often observe in children and adults with
cerebral palsy can be related to strategies the individuals have developed in order to maintain
a stable head position during locomotion.

TRUE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Locomotion

36. Gait transitions, from walking to running and running to walking, occur at the same speed for
all people.

FALSE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Locomotion

37. It is likely that multiple factors explain why spontaneous gait transitions occur.

TRUE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Locomotion

38. Vision provides body-scaled information to facilitate our interactions with objects and
surfaces.

TRUE

Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

Topic: Discussion; Locomotion

7-8
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McGraw-Hill Education.
Other documents randomly have
different content
opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous
sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and sixty-three years
after the foundation of Rome, the imperial city, which had subdued
and civilised so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered to the
licentious fury of the tribes of Scythia and Germany. A cruel
slaughter was made of the Romans; the streets of the city were
filled with dead bodies, which, during the consternation, remained
unburied. The despair of the inhabitants was sometimes converted
into fury; and whenever the barbarians were provoked by
opposition, they extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble,
the innocent, and the helpless. The private revenge of 40,000 slaves
was exercised without pity or remorse; and the ignominious lashes,
which they had formerly received, were washed away in the blood of
the guilty, or obnoxious families. The matrons and virgins of Rome
were exposed to injuries more dreadful, in the apprehension of
chastity, than death itself.
When the portable riches had been seized, the palaces were rudely
stripped of their splendid and costly furniture; the side-boards of
massy plate, and the variegated wardrobes of silk and purple, were
irregularly piled in the wagons, that always followed the march of a
Gothic army. The most exquisite works of art were roughly handled,
or wantonly destroyed; many a statue was melted for the sake of
the precious materials; and many a vase, in the division of the spoil,
was shivered into fragments by the stroke of the battle-axe. The
sack lasted six days.
The edifices, too, of Rome received no small injury from the violence
of the Goths; but those injuries appear to have been somewhat
exaggerated. At their entrance they fired a multitude of houses; and
the ruins of the palace of Sallust remained, in the age of Justinian, a
stately monument of the Gothic conflagration. Procopius confines
the fire to one peculiar quarter; but adds, that the Goths ravaged
the whole city. Cassiodorus says, that many of the “wonders of
Rome,” were burned; and Olympiodorus speaks of the infinite
quantity of wealth, which Alaric carried away. We collect, also, how
great the disaster was, when he tells us, that, on the retreat of the
Goths, 14,000 returned in one day.
The injury done by Genseric (a. d. 455), is said to have been not so
great as that, perpetrated by the Goths; yet most writers record that
the Vandals and Moors emptied Rome of most of her wealth. They
revenged the injuries of Carthage. The pillage lasted fourteen days
and nights; and all that yet remained of public or private wealth, of
sacred or profane treasure, were transported to the vessels of
Genseric. Among the spoils, the splendid relics of two temples, or
rather of two religions, exhibited the remarkable example of the
vicissitude of human things. Since the abolition of Paganism, the
capital had been violated and abandoned; yet the statues of the
gods and heroes were still respected, and the curious roof of gilt
bronze was reserved for the rapacious hands of Genseric. The holy
instruments of the Jewish worship had been ostentatiously displayed
to the Roman people, in the triumph of Titus. They were afterwards
deposited in the temple of Peace; and, at the end of four hundred
years, the spoils of Jerusalem were transferred to Carthage, by a
barbarian who derived his origin from the shores of the Baltic. It was
difficult either to escape or to satisfy the avarice of a conqueror, who
possessed leisure to collect, and ships to transport, the wealth of the
capital. The imperial ornaments of the palace, the magnificent
furniture and wardrobe, the sideboards of massy plate, were
accumulated with disorderly rapine; the gold and silver amounted to
several thousand talents; yet even the brass and copper were
laboriously removed. The empress was rudely stripped of her jewels,
and, with her two daughters, the only surviving remains of the great
Theodosius, was compelled, as a captive, to follow the haughty
Vandal; who immediately hoisted sail, and returned, with a
prosperous navigation, to the port of Carthage. Many thousand
Romans of both sexes, chosen for some useful or agreeable
qualifications, reluctantly embarked on board the fleet of Genseric;
and their distress was aggravated by the unfeeling barbarian, who,
in the division of the booty, separated the wives from their
husbands, and the children from their parents.
The consequences of this Vandal invasion, to the public and private
buildings, are thus regarded by the same authority (Gibbon):—“The
spectator, who casts a mournful view over the ruins of ancient
Rome, is tempted to accuse the memory of the Goths and Vandals,
for the mischief which they had neither the leisure, nor power, nor
perhaps the inclination, to perpetrate. The tempests of war might
strike some lofty turrets to the ground; but the destruction which
undermined the foundations of those massy fabrics, was prosecuted,
slowly and silently, during a period of ten centuries. The decay of the
city had gradually impaired the value of the public works. The circus
and theatres might still excite, but they seldom gratified, the desires
of the people; the temples, which had escaped the zeal of the
Christians, were no longer inhabited, either by gods or men; the
diminished crowds of the Romans were lost in the immense space of
their baths and porticoes; and the stately libraries and halls of
justice became useless to an indolent generation, whose repose was
seldom disturbed, either by study or business. The monuments of
consular or imperial greatness were no longer revered as the
immortal glory of the capital; they were only esteemed as an
inexhaustible mine of materials, cheaper and more convenient than
the distant quarry. Specious petitions were addressed to the easy
magistrates of Rome, which stated the want of bricks or stones for
some necessary service; the fairest forms of architecture were rudely
defaced for the sake of some paltry or pretended repairs; and the
degenerate Romans, who converted the spoil to their own
emolument, demolished, with sacrilegious hands, the labours of their
ancestors.”
In 472 the city was sacked by Ricimer, who enjoyed power under
cover of the name of the Emperor Libius Severus. His victorious
troops, breaking down every barrier, rushed with irresistible violence
into the heart of the city, and Rome was subverted. The unfortunate
emperor (Anthemius) was dragged from his concealment, and
inhumanly massacred by the command of Ricimer his son-in-law;
who thus added a third, or perhaps a fourth, emperor to the number
of his victims. The soldiers, who united the rage of factious citizens
with the savage manners of barbarians, were indulged, without
control, in the licence of rapine and murder; the crowd of slaves and
plebeians, who were unconcerned in the event, could only gain by
the indiscriminate pillage; and the face of the city exhibited the
strange contrast of stern cruelty and dissolute intemperance. The
sack of Rome by Ricimer is generally overlooked by the apologists of
the early invaders; but it must not be forgotten, that they were
indulged in the plunder of all but two regions of the city.
To Vitiges (about a. d. 540) must be ascribed the destruction of the
aqueducts, which rendered the thermæ useless; and as these
appear never to have been frequented afterwards, their dilapidation
must be partially, but only partially, ascribed to the Goths.
Vitiges burned every thing without the walls, and commenced the
desolation of the Campagna.
The last emperor of Rome was Augustulus. Odoacer, king of the
Heruli, entered Italy with a vast multitude of barbarians, and having
ravaged it, at length approached Rome itself. The city made no
resistance; he therefore deposed Augustulus, and took the dignity of
empire on himself. From this period the Romans lost all command in
Italy.
a. d. 479. Five centuries elapsed from the age of Trajan and the
Antonines, to the total extinction of the Roman empire in the west.
At that unhappy period, the Saxons fiercely struggled with the
natives for the possession of Britain. Gaul and Spain were divided
between the powerful monarchies of the Franks and Visigoths; and
the dependent kingdoms of the Suevi and Burgundians in Africa
were exposed to the cruel persecution of the Vandals, and the
savage insults of the Moors. Rome and Italy, as far as the banks of
the Danube, were afflicted by an army of barbarian mercenaries,
whose lawless tyranny was succeeded by the reign of Theodoric, the
Ostrogoth. All the subjects of the empire, who, by the use of the
Latin language, more particularly deserved the name and privileges
of Romans, were oppressed by the disgrace and calamities of foreign
conquest; and the victorious nations of Germany established a new
system of manners and government in the western countries of
Europe.
That Rome, however, did not always suffer from the Goths, is
evident from a passage in one of the letters written by Cassiodorus,
at one time minister to Theodoric:—“The care of the Roman city is a
subject to which our thoughts are ever awake. For what is there
which it behoves us to provide for, more worthy than the keeping up
the repair of a city which, it is evident, contains the ornaments of
our republic? therefore, let your illustrious highness know, that we
have appointed a notable person, on account of its splendid Cloacæ,
which are productive of so much astonishment to beholders, that
they may well be said to surpass the wonders of other cities. There
thou mayest see flowing rivers, inclosed, as it were, in hollow
mountains. There thou mayest see the rapid waters navigated by
vessels, not without some anxiety lest they should suffer shipwreck
in the precipitate torrent. Hence, O matchless Rome! it may be
inferred what greatness is in thee. For what city may dare to
contend with thy lofty superstructures, when even thy lowest
recesses can find no parallel?”
In 546, Rome was besieged by Totila the Goth. Having reduced, by
force or treaty, the towns of inferior note in the midland provinces of
Italy, Totila proceeded to besiege Rome. He took it December 17th
of the same year. On the loss of the city, several persons,—some say
five hundred,—took, refuge in the church of St. Peter. As soon as the
daylight had displayed the victory of the Goths, their monarch visited
the tomb of the prince of the apostles; but while he prayed at the
altar, twenty-five soldiers and sixty citizens were put to the sword in
the vestibule of the temple. The arch-deacon Pelagius stood before
him with the gospels in his hand.—“O Lord, be merciful to your
servant.” “Pelagius,” said Totila, with an insulting smile, “your pride
now condescends to become a suppliant.” “I am a suppliant,” replied
the prudent arch-deacon; “God has now made us your subjects,
and, as your subjects, we are entitled to your clemency.” At his
humble prayer, the lives of the Romans were spared; and the
chastity of the maids and matrons was preserved inviolate from the
passions of the hungry soldiers. But they were rewarded by the
freedom of pillage. The houses of the senators were plentifully
stored with gold and silver. The sons and daughters of Roman
consuls tasted the misery which they had spurned or relieved,
wandered in tattered garments through the streets of the city, and
begged their bread before the gates of their hereditary mansions.
Against the city he appeared inexorable. One third of the walls was
demolished by his command; fire and engines prepared to consume
or subvert the most stately works of antiquity; and the world was
astonished by the fatal decree, that Rome should be changed into “a
pasture for cattle!” Belisarius, hearing of this, wrote him a letter, in
which he observed, “That if Totila conquered, he ought, for his own
sake, to preserve a city, which would then be his own by right of
conquest, and would, at the same time, be the most beautiful city in
his dominions. That it would be his own loss, if he destroyed it, and
redound to his utter dishonour. For Rome, having been raised to so
great a grandeur and majesty by the virtue and industry of former
ages, posterity would consider him as a common enemy of mankind,
in depriving them of an example and living representation of their
ancestors.”
In consequence of this letter, Totila permitting his resolution to be
diverted, signified to the ambassadors of Belisarius, that he should
spare the city; and he stationed his army at the distance of one
hundred and twenty furlongs, to observe the motions of the Roman
general. With the remainder of his forces, he occupied, on the
summit of Gargarus, one of the camps of Hannibal. The senators
were dragged in his train, and afterwards confined in the fortresses
of Campagna. The citizens, with their wives and children, were
dispersed in exile; and, during forty days, Rome was abandoned to
desolate and dreary solitude.
Totila is known to have destroyed a third part of the walls; and
although he desisted from his meditated destruction of every
monument, the extent of the injury inflicted by that conqueror may
have been greater than is usually supposed. Procopius affirms, that
he did burn “not a small portion of the city,” especially beyond the
Tiber. One of the authors of the Chronicles records a fire, and the
total abandonment of the city for more than forty days; and it must
be mentioned, that there is no certain trace of the palace of the
Cæsars having survived the irruption of Totila.
With Totila, the dilapidation of Rome by the barbarians is generally
allowed to terminate.
The incursion of the Lombards in 578 and 593 completed the
desolation of the Campagna; but did not affect the city itself.
Their king Luitprand (in 741) has been absolved from a supposed
violence; but Astolphus (in 754) did assault the city violently; and
whatever structures were near the walls must be supposed to have
suffered from the attack.
From that period, Rome was not forcibly entered, that is not after a
siege, until the fall of the Carlovingian race, when it was defended in
the name of the emperor Lambert; and assaulted and taken by
barbarians, commanded by Arnulphus, son of Carloman of Bavaria
(a. d. 896).
It would exceed our limits were we to enter into a detail of the
various causes, which were so long at work in effecting the ruin of
the ancient monuments of Rome. If we except the Pantheon, the
ancient remains have been so mutilated and destroyed, that even
the name is, in many cases, doubtful. If a person, says Dr. Burton,
expects to find at Rome such magnificent remains, as he has read of
in Athens, he will be grievously disappointed. It is highly necessary
to know, that whatever exists at Rome as a monument of ancient
times has suffered from various calamities.
Gibbon states four causes of decay:—The injuries of time and
nature; the hostile attacks of the barbarians and christians; the use
and abuse of the materials; and the domestic quarrels of the
Romans. There is great truth in Pope’s remark—
Some felt the silent strokes of mouldering age;
Some hostile fury; some religious rage;
 Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire,
And Papal piety, and Gothic fire.
The injuries done by the Christian clergy to the architectural beauty
of Rome, may be divided into two kinds: those, which were
commanded, or connived at, by the Romans, for useful repairs or
constructions; and those, which were encouraged or permitted from
motives of fanaticism.
In the year 426, during the reign of Theodosius the Younger, there
was a great destruction of the temples and fanes. “The destruction
of the idolatrous fanes,” says an ecclesiastical writer, “was from the
foundation; and so complete, that we cannot perceive a vestige of
the former superstition. Their temples are so destroyed, that the
appearance of their form no longer remains; nor can those of our
times recognise the shape of their altars. As for their materials, they
are dedicated to the fanes of the martyrs. Temples are not found
among the wonders admired by Theodoric, except the half-stripped
Capitoline fane is to be enumerated; and Procopius confines his
notices to the Temple of Peace, and to the Temple of Janus. In the
reign of Justinian, the temples were partly in private hands, and,
therefore, not universally protected as public edifices. Pagan
structures would naturally suffer more at the first triumph of
Christianity than afterwards, when the rage and the merit of
destruction must have diminished. It is not then rash to believe, that
many temples were destroyed or despoiled, and the materials
employed to the honour of the new religion. Du Barga asserts that
there were marks on the obelisks of their having been all
overthrown, with the exception of one, which was not dedicated to
any of the false gods of antiquity.”
The destruction of the baths are attributed to the same piety, and
those of Diocletian and Caracalla showed, in the eighth century,
evident marks of human violence. Pope Gregory III. employed nine
columns of some ancient building for the church of St. Peter. The
rebuilding of the city walls by four popes, in the same century, was a
useful but a destructive operation. Pope Hadrian I. threw down an
immense structure of Tiburtine stone to enlarge the church of St.
Maria in Cosmedin. Donus I. had before (a. d. 676) stripped the
marble from a large pyramid, generally known by the name of
Scipio’s Tomb. Paul II. employed the stones of the Coliseum to build
a palace. Sixtus IV. took down the Temple of Hercules, and
destroyed the remains of an ancient bridge to make four hundred
cannon-balls for the castle of St. Angelo. Paul III. and his nephews
laboured incessantly at the quarry of the Coliseum. He devastated,
also, many other buildings. Sixtus V. threw down several statues still
remaining in the capital. Urban VIII. took off the bronze from the
portico of the Pantheon, and some of the base of the sepulchre of
Cecilia Metella; and Paul V. removed the entablature and pediment
of a structure in the Forum of Nerva, and also the remaining column
of the Temple of Peace. Lastly, Alexander VII. took down the arch
called “di Portogallo,” in order to widen the Corso. The inferior
clergy, too, were great depredators; insomuch that a volume of no
inconsiderable size has been composed by one of their own order to
enumerate the Pagan materials applied to the use of the church.
It is difficult to say where this system of depredation would have
stopped, had not Benedict XIV. erected a cross in the centre of the
arena, and declared the place sacred, out of respect to the blood of
the many martyrs who had been butchered there during the
persecution. This declaration, if issued two or three centuries before,
would have preserved the Coliseum entire; it can now only protect
its remains, and transmit them in their present state to posterity.
Conflagrations, also, contributed to the destruction of the city. In
312 the temple of Fortuna was burned down. The palaces of
Symmachus and Lampadius, with the baths of Constantine, suffered
by the same cause.
Nor must the destruction be confined to one element. The Tiber
rose, not unfrequently, to the walls, and many inundations are
recorded. Indeed, even so early as the second siege of the city by
Totila, there was so much uncultivated land within the walls, that
Diogenes, the governor, thought the corn, he had sown, would be
sufficient to supply the garrison and citizens in a protracted defence.
It is impossible to assign a precise date to the total destruction of
the greater portion of the ancient site; but the calamities of the
seventh and eighth centuries must have contributed to, if they did
not complete, the change. A scarcity in the year 604, a violent
earthquake a few years afterwards, a pestilence in or about the year
678, five great inundations of the Tiber from 680 to 797, a second
famine in the pontificate of Pope Constantine, which lasted thirty-six
months, a pestilence in the last year of the seventh century, and the
assault of the Lombards for three months in 755;—these are the
events which compose the Roman history of this unhappy period.
Added to all this, the importance of the new city accelerated the ruin
of the old; and great was the destruction during the periods in which
separate parties fought their battles in the public streets, after the
restoration of the empire of the West; in which we must record the
ruin, caused by Robert Guiscard, which proved more injurious to the
remains of Rome, from 1082 to 1084, than all the preceding
barbarians of every age: for the Normans and Saracens of his army,
with the papal faction, burned the town from the Flaminian gate to
the Antonine column, and laid waste the sides of the Esquiline to the
Lateran; thence he set fire to the region from that church to the
Coliseum and the Capitol. He attacked the Coliseum for several days,
and finished the ruin of the Capitol.
A cotemporary writer says, that all the regions of the city were
ruined; and another spectator, who was in Rome twelve years
afterwards, laments that although what remained could not be
equalled—what was ruined, could never be repaired.
Thou stranger which for Rome in Rome here seekest,
And nought of Rome in Rome perceiv’st at all,
These same old walls, old arches, which thou seest,
Old palaces, is that which Rome men call.
Behold what wreck, what ruin, and what waste,
And how that she which with her mighty power
Tamed all the world, hath tamed herself at last,
The prey of Time, which all things doth devour.
Rome now of Rome is the only funeral,
And only Rome, of Rome hath victory;
 Ne ought save Tyber, hastening to his fall
Remains of all: O World’s inconstancy!
That which is firm, doth flit and fall away;
And that is flitting, doth abide and stay.
Spenser’s Ruins of Rome.
In the annals for 1167, we find that the German Barbarossa
assaulted the Vatican for a week, and that the Pope saved himself in
the Capitol. The Colonna were driven from the mausoleum of
Augustus. After the Popes had begun to yield in the unequal contest
with the senators and people, and had ceased to be constantly in
the capital, the field was left open for the wars of the senators; that
is, of the nobles themselves. The Colonna and Ursini then appear
among the destroyers of the city. In 1291, a civil war occurred,
which lasted six months; the issue of which was, according to a
spectator, that Rome was reduced to the condition of a town
“besieged, bombarded and burned.”
At the period in which Henry VII. was crowned Emperor, battles
were fought in every quarter of the city. The fall of houses, indeed,
the fire, the slaughter, the ringing of the bells from the churches, the
shouts of the combatants, and the clanging of arms, the Roman
people rushing from all quarters towards the Capitol; this universal
uproar attended the coronation of the new Cæsar, and the Cardinals
apprehended the total destruction of the city.
The absence of the Popes, also, from the year 1360 to 1376, has
been esteemed peculiarly calamitous to the ancient fabrics. Petrarch
was overwhelmed with regret. He complained that the ruins were in
danger of perishing; that the nobles were the rivals of time and the
ancient Barbarians; and that the columns and precious marbles of
Rome were devoted to the decoration of the slothful metropolis of
their Neapolitan rivals. Yet, it appears that these columns and
marbles were taken from palaces comparatively modern, from the
thresholds of churches, from the shrines of sepulchres, from
structures to which they had been conveyed from their original
state, and finally, from ruins actually fallen. The solid masses of
antiquity are not said to have suffered from this spoliation; and the
edifices, whose impending ruin affected Petrarch, were the sacred
basilicas, then converted into fortresses.
The great earthquake of 1349 operated, also, in a very destructive
manner; several ancient ornaments being thrown down; and an
inundation of the Tiber is recorded among the afflictions of the
times. The summits of the hills alone were above the water; and the
lower grounds were for eight days converted into a lake.
The return of the Popes was the signal of renewed violence. The
Colonna and Ursini, the people and the church, fought for the
Capitol and towers; and the forces of the Popes repeatedly
bombarded the town.
During the great schism of the West, the hostile entries of Ladislaus
of Naples, and the tumultuous government of the famous Perugian,
Braccio Montone, despoiled the tomb of Hadrian, and doubtless
other monuments. Yet that violence is supposed to have been less
pernicious than the peaceful spoliation which succeeded the
extinction of the schism of Martin V, in 1417; and the suppression of
the last revolt of the Romans by his successor Eugenius IV, in 1434:
for from that epoch is dated the consumption of such marble or
travertine, as might either be stripped with facility from the stone
monuments, or be found in isolated fragments.
We now give place to a description of what remained in the time of
Poggio Bracciolini. Besides a bridge, an arch, a sepulchre, and the
pyramid of Cestius, he could discern, of the age of the republic, 1, a
double row of vaults, in the salt-office of the Capitol, which were
inscribed with the name and munificence of Catullus. 2, Eleven
temples were visible, in some degree, from the perfect form of the
Pantheon to the three arches and a marble column of the temple of
Peace, which Vespasian erected after the civil wars and the Jewish
triumph. 3, Of the public baths, none were sufficiently entire to
represent the use and distribution of the several parts; but those of
Diocletian and Caracalla still retained the titles of the founders, and
astonished the curious spectator; who, in observing their solidity and
extent, the variety of marbles, the size and multitude of the
columns, compared the labour and expense with the use and the
importance. Of the baths of Constantine, of Alexander, of Domitian,
or rather of Titus, some vestige might yet be found. 4, The triumphal
arches of Titus, Severus, and Constantine were entire, both the
structures and the inscriptions; a falling fragment was honoured with
the name of Trajan; and two arches were still extant in the Flaminian
way. 5, After the wonder, of the Coliseum, Poggio might have
overlooked a small amphitheatre of brick, most probably for the use
of the Prætorian camp: the theatres of Marcellus and Pompey were
occupied, in a great measure, by public and private buildings; and in
the Circus Agonalis and Maximus, little more than the situation and
the form could be investigated. 6, The columns of Trajan and
Antonine were still erect; but the Egyptian obelisks were broken or
buried. A people of gods and heroes, the workmanship of art, was
reduced to one equestrian figure of gilt brass, and to five marble
statues, of which the most conspicuous were the two horses of
Phidias and Praxiteles. 7, The two mausoleums or sepulchres of
Augustus and Hadrian could not totally be lost; but the former was
visible only as a mound of earth; and the latter, the castle of St.
Angelo, had acquired the name and appearance of a modern
fortress. With the addition of some separate and nameless columns,
such were the remains of the ancient city.
In the intervals between the two visits of Poggio to Rome, the cell,
and part of the Temple of Concord, and the base of the tomb of
Metella, were ground to lime; also a portico near the Minerva.
Poggio’s description of the ruins, it may be observed, is not
sufficiently minute or correct to supply the deficiency of his
contemporary Blondus; but we may distinctly mark, that the site of
ancient Rome had arrived at the desolation in which it is seen at the
present day. The Rome of the lower and middle ages was a mass of
irregular lanes, built upon or amongst ruins, and surmounted by
brick towers, many of them on ancient basements. The streets were
so narrow, that two horsemen could ride abreast. Two hundred
houses, three towers, and three churches, choked up the forum of
Trajan. The reformation of Sixtus IV., and the embellishments of his
successors, have obliterated this town, and that which is now seen is
a capital, which can only date from the end of the fifteenth century.
Not long before the imperialists carried Rome, the Colonnas, in
1526, sacked it, as it were; and that was followed by that of the
Abate di Farfa, and the peasantry of the Orsini family151.
Rome was assaulted by the Bourbon, May 5, 1527; and the
imperialists left it February 17, 1528.
No sooner was the Bourbon in sight of Rome, than he harangued his
troops, and pointed to the end of all their sufferings. Being destitute
of artillery, with which he might batter the walls, he instantly made
his dispositions for an assault; and having discovered a breach, he
planted, with his own hands, a ladder against the rampart, and
prepared to mount it, followed by his German bands. But, at that
instant, a shot, discharged from the first arquebuse which was fired,
terminated at once his life and his misfortunes. Much fruitless inquiry
has been made to ascertain the author of his death, which is
commonly attributed to a priest; but Benvenuto Cellini, so well
known by his extraordinary adventures and writings, lays claim to
the merit of killing this hero. By whatever hand he fell he preserved,
even in the act of expiring, all his presence as well as greatness of
mind. He no sooner felt himself wounded, than he ordered a Gascon
captain, named Jonas, to cover him with a cloak, in order to conceal
his death, lest it should damp the courage of his soldiers. Jonas
executed his commands with punctuality. The Constable still
continued to breathe when the city was taken. He was, therefore,
carried thither, and there expired, May 5, 1527, at thirty-eight years
of age.
Philipart, prince of Orange, contrived to keep the troops in ignorance
of their commander’s death, till they were masters of Rome; and
then, to render them inaccessible to pity, he revealed to them the
fate of Bourbon. No language can express the fury with which they
were animated at this sad intelligence. They rent the air with the
cries of “Carné, carné! Sangre, sangre! Bourbon, Bourbon!”
The imagination is appalled at the bare recital of the wanton
outrages on human nature, which were committed by Bourbon’s
army, during the time that they remained masters of Rome. The
pillage lasted, without any interruption, for two months.
Never had that proud city suffered from her barbarian conquerors, in
the decline of the Roman empire,—from Alaric, from Genseric, or
from Odoacer,—the same merciless treatment as she underwent
from the rage of the imperial troops;—the subjects, or the soldiers of
a Catholic king! Rapacity, lust, and impiety, were exhausted by these
men. Roman ladies of the noblest extraction were submitted to the
basest and vilest prostitution. The sacred ornaments of the
sacerdotal, and even of the pontifical dignity, were converted to
purposes of ridicule and buffoonery. Priests, nay even bishops and
cardinals, were degraded to the brutal passions of the soldiery; and
after having suffered every ignominy of blows, mutilation, and
personal contumely, were massacred in pastime. Exorbitant ransoms
were exacted repeatedly from the same persons; and when they had
no longer wherewithal to purchase life, they were butchered without
mercy. Nuns, virgins, matrons, were publicly devoted to the
infamous appetites of the soldiers; who first violated, and then
stabbed, the victims of their pleasures. The streets were strewed
with the dead; and it is said that eight thousand young women, of
all ranks and conditions, were found to be pregnant within five
months from the sack of the unfortunate city.
Three years after the sack by Bourbon, that is in 1530, an
inundation of the Tiber ruined a multitude of edifices both public and
private, and was almost equally calamitous with the sack of Rome.
Simond, writing from Rome in January 1818, says: “The Tiber has
been very high, and the lower parts of the town under water; yet
this is nothing compared with the inundations recorded on two
pillars at the port of Ripetta, a sort of landing-place. The mark on
one of them is full eighteen feet above the level of the adjoining
streets; and, considering the rapidity of the stream, a great part of
the city must then have been in imminent danger of being swept
away.” In 1819 the Pantheon was flooded; but this is not an
uncommon event, as it stands near the river, and the drain, which
should carry off the rain-water that falls through the aperture in the
top, communicates with the stream. The inundations of the Tiber,
indeed, are one of the causes, which combined to destroy so many
of the monuments of Rome during the middle ages. There is one
recorded in 1345, among the afflictions of the times, when only the
summits of the hills were above the water, and the lower grounds
were converted into a lake for the space of eight days. Several
floods are mentioned by the ancient writers; and Tacitus speaks of a
project which was debated in the senate, a. d. 15, for diverting some
of the streams running into the Tiber, but which was not carried into
execution in consequence of the petitions of various towns, who sent
deputies to oppose it; partly on the ground of their local interests
being affected, and partly from a feeling of superstition, which
emboldened them to urge that “Nature had assigned to rivers their
proper courses,” and other reasons of a similar nature.
Aurelian endeavoured to put an effectual stop to the calamities
which sprang from the lawless river, by raising its banks and clearing
its channel. However, the deposits resulting from these frequent
inundations have contributed greatly to that vast accumulation of
soil, which has raised the surface of modern Rome so many feet
above the ancient level; and thus the evil itself has occasioned a
remedy to a partial extent.
We must now close this portion of our imperfect account, and
proceed to give our readers some idea in respect to the present
condition of Rome’s ancient remains; gleaned, for the most part,
from the pages of writers who have recently been sojourners in “the
Eternal City:” but in doing this we by no means wish our readers to
expect the full and minute particulars, which they may find in works
entirely dedicated to the subject; for Rome, even in its antiquities,
would require a volume for itself.
When Poggio Bracciolini visited Rome in the fifteenth century, he
complained that nothing of old Rome subsisted entire, and that few
monuments of the free city remained; and many writers of more
recent times have made the same complaint. “The artist,” says Sir
John Hobhouse, “may be comparatively indifferent to the date and
history, and regard chiefly the architectural merit of a structure; but
the Rome which the Florentine republican regretted, and which an
Englishman would wish to find, is not that of Augustus and his
successors, but of those greater and better men, of whose heroic
actions his earliest impressions are composed.” To which, however,
may be added what Dr. Burton questions, viz., Whether, in his
expectations, the traveller may not betray his ignorance of real
history. “The works of the Romans, in the early ages of their nation,
were remarkable for their solidity and strength; but there seems no
reason to suppose that much taste or elegance was displayed in
them. But then, again, if we wish to confine ourselves to the
republic, there is surely no need of monuments of brick and stone to
awaken our recollections of such a period. If we must have visible
objects on which to fix our attention, we have the ground itself on
which the Romans trod; we have the Seven Hills; we have the
Campus Martius, the Forum,—all places familiar to us from history,
and in which we can assign the precise spot where some memorable
action was performed. Those who feel a gratification, by placing
their footsteps where Cicero or Cæsar did before them, in the
consciousness of standing upon the same hill which Manlius
defended, and in all those associations which bring the actors
themselves upon the scene, may have all their enthusiasm satisfied,
and need not complain that there are no monuments of the time of
the republic.”
The remains of ancient Rome may be classed in three different
periods. Of the first, the works of the kings, embracing a period of
two hundred and forty-four years, from the foundation of the city by
Romulus to the expulsion of Tarquin, very little have escaped the
ravages of time; the Tullian walls and prison, with the Cloaca
Maxima, being the only identified remains. Of the works of the
republic, which lasted four hundred and sixty-one years, although
the city, during that period, was more than once besieged, burned,
and sacked, many works are yet extant:—the military ways and
aqueducts, and some small temples and tombs. But it was during
the third period, that of the emperors, that Rome attained the
meridian of her glory. For three centuries all the known world was
either subject to her, or bound by commercial treaties; and the taste
and magnificence of the Romans were displayed in the erection of
temples to the gods, triumphal arches and pillars to conquerors,
amphitheatres, palaces, and other works of ostentation and luxury,
for which architecture was made to exhaust her treasures, and no
expense was spared to decorate.
Architecture was unknown to the Romans until Tarquin came down
from Etruria. Hence the few works of the kings, which still remain,
were built in the Etruscan style, with large uncemented, but regular
blocks. In the gardens of the convent Giovanni a S. Paolo is a ruin of
the Curia Hostilia, called the Rostrum of Cicero; and some few
fragments, also, remain of a bridge, erected by Ancus Martius. On
this bridge (Pons Sublicius) Horatius Cocles opposed singly the army
of Porsenna; and from it, in subsequent times, the bodies of
Commodus and Heliogabalus were thrown into the Tiber. In the
pontificate of Nicholas V. it was destroyed by an inundation. There
are also the remains of a large brick edifice, supposed to have been
the Curia, erected by Tullus Hostilius, which was destroyed by fire
when the populace burned in it the corpse of Clodius. Julius Cæsar
commenced its restoration; and Augustus finished it, and gave it the
name of Curia Julia, in honour of his father by adoption.
In regard to the form and size of the city, we must follow the
direction of the seven hills upon which it was built. 1. Of these Mons
Palatinus has always had the preference. It was in this place that
Romulus laid the foundation of the city, in a quadrangular form; and
here the same king and Tullus Hostilius kept their courts, as did
Augustus afterwards, and all the succeeding emperors. This hill was
in compass 1200 paces. 2. Mons Tarpeius, took its name from
Tarpeia, a Roman virgin, who in this place betrayed the city to the
Sabines. It had afterwards the denomination of Capitolinus, from the
head of a man, casually found here in digging for the foundation of
the temple of Jupiter. This hill was added to the city by Titus Tatius,
king of the Sabines; when, having been first overcome in the field by
Romulus, he and his subjects were permitted to incorporate with the
Romans. 3. Mons Esquilinus was taken in by Servius Tullius, who had
here his royal seat. 4. Mons Viminalis derived its name from the osiers
that grew very plentifully upon it. This hill was taken in by Servius
Tullus. 5. Mons Cœlius owes its name to Cœlius, or Cœles, a Tuscan
general greatly celebrated in his time, who pitched his tents here
when he came to the assistance of Romulus against the Sabines. Its
having been taken into the city is attributed to Tullus Hostilius, by
Livy and Dionysius; but by Strabo, to Ancus Martius. 6. Collis
Quirinalis was so called from the temple of Quirinus, another name
of Romulus; or from the Curetes, a people that removed hither from
a Sabine city, called Cures. It afterwards changed its name to
Caballus, Mons Caballi, and Caballinus, from the two marble horses,
with each a man holding him, which are set up here. They are still
standing, and, if the inscription on the pilasters be true, were the
work of Phidias and Praxiteles; made by those masters to represent
Alexander and his horse Bucephalus, and sent to Nero as a present
by Tiridates king of Armenia. 7. Mons Aventinus derived its name from
Aventinus, an Alban king, from the river Avens, or from (ab Avibus)
the birds, that used to flock there from the Tiber. Gellius affirms, that
this hill was not enclosed within the bounds of the city, till the time
of Claudius; but Eutropius expressly states that it was taken into it
even so early as that of Ancus Martius.
As to the extent of the whole city, the greatest, recorded in history,
was in the reign of Valerian, who enlarged the walls to such a
degree, as to surround a space of fifty miles. The number of
inhabitants, in its flourishing state, is computed by Lipsius at four
millions. The present extent of the walls is about thirteen miles. Sir
John Hobhouse walked round them in three hours, thirty-three
minutes and three quarters; and Dr. Burton did the same in three
hours and ten minutes.
This circuit will bring into view specimens of every construction, from
the days of Servius Tullius down to the present. Aurelian took into
his walls whatever he found standing in their line, and they now
include some remains of the Tullian walls, the walls of the Prætorian
barracks, the facing of a tank, aqueducts, sepulchral monuments, a
menagerie, an amphitheatre, a pyramid, &c. Thus do they exhibit
the uncemented blocks of the Etruscan style, the reticular work of
the republic, the travertine preferred by the first emperors, the
alternate tufa and bricks employed by their successors, and that
poverty of materials which marks the declining empire. Since the
first breach, made by Totila, the walls have been often and variously
repaired; sometimes by a case of brick-work, filled up with shattered
marbles, rubble, shard, and mortar. In some parts, the cementitious
work is unfaced; here you find stones and tufa mixed; there tufa
alone, laid in the Saracenic manner: the latter repairs have the brick
revêtement of modern fortification.
The gates of Rome, at the present day, are sixteen in number, of
which only twelve are open. The wall of Romulus had but three or
four; and there has been much discussion among antiquaries, as to
their position. That of Servius had seven; but in the time of Pliny, (in
the middle of the first century) there were no less than thirty-seven
gates to the city. The twelve gates at present in use correspond to
some of the principal gates of former times.
Modern Rome, however, can scarcely be said to rest upon the
ancient base. Scarcely two-thirds of the space within the walls are
now inhabited, and the most thickly peopled district is comprised
within what was anciently the open plain of the Campus Martius. On
the other hand the most populous part of the ancient Rome is now
but a landscape; it would almost seem, indeed, as if the city had
slipped off its seven hills into the plain beneath. A remarkable
change, too, has taken place in the surface of the site itself. In the
valleys the ground has been raised not less than fourteen or fifteen
feet. This is strikingly observable in the Forum, where there has
been a great rise above the ancient level, owing partly to the
accumulation of soil and rubbish brought down by the rains; but
chiefly, as there is reason to believe, to that occasioned by the
demolition of ancient buildings, and the practice which prevailed of
erecting new structures upon the prostrate ruins.
The Tiber, too, still remains; but its present appearance has been
variously estimated. “The Tiber,” says Dr. Burton, “is a stream of
which classical recollections are apt to raise too favourable
anticipations. When we think of the fleets of the capital of the world
sailing up it, and pouring in their treasures of tributary kingdoms, we
are likely to attach to it ideas of grandeur and magnificence. But if
we come to the Tiber with such expectations, our disappointment
will be great.”
Sir John Hobhouse speaks differently: “Arrived at the bank of the
Tiber,” he says, speaking of the traveller’s approach to Rome from
the north, across the Ponte Molle, “he does not find the muddy
insignificant stream, which the disappointments of overheated
imaginations have described it; but one of the finest rivers of
Europe, now rolling through a vale of gardens, and now sweeping
the base of swelling acclivities, clothed with wood, and crowned with
villas, and their evergreen shrubberies.” Notwithstanding this, the
Tiber can be by no means called a large river, and it is scarcely
navigable even below Rome, owing to the frequent shoals which
impede its course. A steam-boat, which plies between the capital
and Fiumicino, a distance of about sixteen miles, is generally five or
six hours in making the passage. Ordinary vessels are three days in
making their way up the Tiber to Rome; being towed up always by
buffaloes. The velocity of its current may be estimated from the fact,
that it deposits its coarser gravel thirty miles from the city, and its
finer at twelve; it hence pursues its course to the sea, charged only
with a fine yellowish sand, imparting to its waters that peculiar
colour, which poets call golden, and travellers muddy. Yet these
waters enjoyed, at one time, a high reputation for sweetness and
salubrious qualities. Pope Paul the Third invariably carried a supply
of the water of the Tiber with him on his longest journeys; and his
predecessor, Clement the Seventh, was similarly provided, by order
of his physician, when he repaired to Marseilles, to celebrate the
marriage of his niece, Catherine de Medici, with the brother of the
Dauphin, afterwards Henry the Second of France.
Both within and without the walls of Rome, fragments of aqueducts
may be seen. Of these “some,” says Mr. Woods, “are of stone, others
of brick-work, but the former cannot be traced for any continuance;
and while two or three are sometimes supported on a range of
arches, in other places almost every one seems to have a range to
itself. It is curious to trace these repairs, executed, perhaps, fifteen
centuries ago. The execution of the brick-work, in most instances, or
perhaps in all, shows them to be decidedly prior to the age of
Constantine; and the principal restorations, in all probability, took
place when the upper water-courses were added. They generally
consist of brick arches, built within the ancient stone ones;
sometimes resting on the old piers, but more often carried down to
the ground; and, in some cases, the whole arch has been filled up,
or only a mere door-way left at the bottom. Sometimes this internal
work has been wholly, or partially, destroyed; and sometimes the
original stone-work has disappeared, as the owner of the ground
happened to want bricks, or squared stones. In one place the
ancient piers have been entirely buried in the more recent brick-
work; but the brick-work has been broken, and the original stone-
work taken away: presenting a very singular, and, at first sight,
wholly unaccountable appearance. In other parts, the whole has
fallen, apparently without having had these brick additions; for a
range of parallel mounds mark the situation of the prostrated piers.”
“I do not know any thing more striking,” says Simond, “than these
endless arches of Roman aqueducts, pursuing, with great strides,
their irregular course over the desert. They suggest the idea of
immensity, of durability, of simplicity, of boundless power, reckless of
cost and labour, all for a useful purpose, and regardless of beauty. A
river in mid-air, which had been flowing on ceaselessly for fifteen or
eighteen hundred, or two thousand years, poured its cataracts in the
streets and public squares of Rome, when she was mistress, and
also when she was the slave of nations; and quenched the thirst of
Attila, and of Genseric, as it had before quenched that of Brutus and
Cæsar, and as it has since quenched that of beggars and of popes.
During those ages of desolation and darkness, when Rome had
almost ceased to be a city, this artificial river ran to waste among the
ruins; but now fills again the numerous and magnificent fountains of
the modern city. Only three out of eleven of these ancient aqueducts
remain entire, and in a state to conduct water; what, then, must
have been the profusion of water to ancient Rome?”
The Tarpeian rock still exists; but has little in its appearance to
gratify the associations of a classic traveller. Seneca describes it as it
existed in his time thus:—“A lofty and precipitous mass rises up,
rugged with many rocks, which either bruise the body to death, or
hurry one down still more violently. The points projecting from the
sides, and the gloomy prospect of its vast height, are truly horrid.
This place is chosen in particular, that the criminals may not require
to be thrown down more than once.”
Poggio Bracciolini gives a melancholy picture of what, in his time,
was the state of this celebrated rock. “This Tarpeian rock was a
savage and solitary thicket. In the time of the poet it was covered
with the golden roofs of a temple; the temple is overthrown, the
gold has been pillaged, the wheel of fortune has accomplished her
revolution, and the sacred ground is again disfigured with thorns and
brambles. The hill of the Capitol, on which we sit, was formerly the
head of the Roman empire, the citadel of the earth, the terror of
kings; illustrated by the footsteps of so many triumphs, enriched
with the spoils and attributes of so many nations. This spectacle of
the world, how is it fallen! how changed! how defaced! The path of
victory is obliterated by vines, and the benches of the senators are
concealed by a dunghill.”
“Like the modern Tiber, the modern Tarpeian,” says an elegant
traveller, “is little able to bear the weight of its ancient reputation.”
“The only precipice that remains,” says another traveller (Mathews)
“is one about thirty feet from the point of a wall, where you might
leap down on the dung, mixed in the fold below, without any fear of
breaking your bones.”
The Aqueducts were, beyond all question, some of the noblest
designs of the Romans. Frontinus, a Roman author, and a person of
consular dignity, who compiled a treatise on this subject, affirms
them to be the clearest token of the grandeur of the empire. The
first invention of them is attributed to Appius Claudius, a. u. c. 441,
who brought water into the city by a channel eleven miles in length.
But this was very inconsiderable compared to those that were
afterwards carried on by the emperors and other persons; several of
which were cut through the mountains, and all other impediments,
for above forty miles together; and of such height, that a man on
horseback, as Procopius informs us, might ride through them
without the least difficulty. This, however, is meant only of the
constant course of the channel; for the vaults and arches were, in
some places, 109 feet high.
Procopius makes the Aqueducts only fourteen; but Aurelius Victor
has enlarged the number to twenty. The Claudian Aqueduct
conveyed 800,000 tons of water each day into the city.
The Forums of Rome were of two kinds; one a place of popular
assembly, both for business, and pleasure; serving at once the
purposes of what we call an Exchange, certain courts of justice, and
of hustings for the election of public functionaries: the other
consisted of market-places. The chief forum was emphatically called
the Roman, or the Great Forum.
The second forum, built in Rome, was erected by Julius Cæsar. The
third was called sometimes the Augustan, from its having been
formed by Augustus; and sometimes the Forum of Mars from the
temple of that god, erected by him. Some remains are still in
existence. The fourth forum was begun by Domitian, but being
finished by Nerva, it was called after his name. A fifth forum was
built by the emperor Trajan; said to have been the most celebrated
work of the kind in the city. It was built with the spoils he had taken
in his wars. The roof was of brass.
Ammianus Marcellinus, in his description of Constantine’s triumphal
entrance into Rome, when he has brought him, with no ordinary
admiration, by the Baths, the Pantheon, the Capitol, and other noble
structures, as soon as ever he gives him a sight of the Forum of
Trajan, he puts him into an ecstacy, and cannot forbear making a
harangue upon the matter. We meet in the same place with a very
smart repartee, which Constantine received at the time from
Ormisdas, a Persian prince. The emperor, as he greatly admired
everything belonging to this noble pile, so he had a particular fancy
for the statue of Trajan’s horse, which stood on the top of it, and
expressed his desire of doing as much for his own beast. “Pray, sir,”
says the prince, “before you talk of getting such a horse, will you be
pleased to build such a stable to put him in?”
Besides these there was another. This was situated not in the city,
but in its neighbourhood. It was called the Forum Populi, which is
frequently mentioned in the history of the republic; and which
interests us as being the popular and commercial resort of a free
people. At stated periods, the Romans, and their friends and allies,
used to meet at that spot, and celebrate the Latinæ Feriæ; on which
many holidays and religious ceremonies were accompanied by
renewals of treaties of amity, by the interchange of commodities,
and by manly sports and pastimes. While the Roman citizens came
from the Tiber, the free confederates descended from their
mountains, or wended their way from the fertile plains beyond the
river. Sir William Gell thinks he can fix this interesting spot. The
habitations around the temple of Jupiter Latialis, on Mont Albano,
are supposed to have constituted the village called Forum Populi. It
is probable that the meeting of the Latin confederates upon the
mountain, and the fair held there, led to its erection. Here the
consuls had a house where they sometimes lodged, which Dio
Cassius (lib. iii.) says was struck with lightning.
We now return to the Great Forum.
 ... It was once,
And long the centre of their universe,
The Forum,—whence a mandate, eagle-winged,
Went to the ends of the earth. Let us descend
Slowly. At every step much may be lost.
The very dust we tread stirs as with life;
And not a breath but from the ground sends up
Something of human grandeur.

... We are come:—

And now where once the mightiest spirits met
In terrible conflict; this, while Rome was free,
The noblest theatre on this side heaven!—Rogers.

The Forum152 was an entirely open space; it had public buildings in

it, as well as around it; we even read of streets passing through it.
The Curia, or Senate-house, stood near the foot of the Palatine hill,
in about the middle of the eastern side of the Forum. It was built
originally by Tullus Hostilius, the third king of Rome; and, after
having been repaired by Sylla, was destroyed by fire in the year 53
b. c., when the body of Clodius, who had been murdered by Milo,
was carried into it by a tumultuous multitude, and there burnt on a
funeral pile, formed of benches of the senators, the tables, the
archives, and such other materials as the place afforded. Sylla’s son
rebuilt it; but under the false pretence of erecting a temple to
“Felicity.” It was again restored by Julius Cæsar.
Vitruvius says, that the Greek Forum was square, with ambulatories
in the upper story; the Roman was oblong, with porticos, and shops
for bankers, and with galleries in the upper floor, adapted for the
management of the public revenues. The Roman forum also included
many other edifices of a different nature; as the basilicæ, prison,
curiæ, and were enriched with colonnades and sculpture. That of
Trajan was entered by four triumphal arches, and had his
magnificent column in the centre of it.
A few words will describe the present state of this celebrated spot:—
Now all is changed! and here, as in the wild,
 The day is silent, dreary as the night;
None stirring, save the herdsman and his herd,
Savage alike; or they that would explore,
Discuss and learnedly; or they that come
(And there are many who have crossed the earth)
That they may give the hours to meditation,
And wander, often saying to themselves,
“This was the Roman Forum.”
The list of edifices in the Forum would be tedious; nor could even
learned antiquaries now make it correct; but among them we may
mention the temple of the Penates, or household gods, the temple
of Concord, the temple of Jupiter Stator, the temple of Castor and
Pollux153, the temple of Vesta, the temple of Victory, the temple of
Julius Cæsar, and the arches of Fabian, Tiberius, and Severus. All
these, however, and in most cases even the traces of them, have
disappeared,—the few objects remaining being a puzzle to such
persons as take an interest in them, and examine the matters on the
spot.
“The glories of the Forum are now fled forever,” says Mr. Eustace. Its
temples are fallen; its sanctuaries are crumbled into dust; its
colonnades encumber pavements, now buried under their remains.
The walls of the rostra, stripped of their ornaments, and doomed to
eternal silence; a few shattered porticos, and here and there an
insulated column standing in the midst of broken shafts, vast
fragments of marble capitals and cornices heaped together in
masses, remind the traveller that the field which he now traverses
was once the Roman forum154. It is reduced, indeed, not to the
pasture-ground for cattle, which Virgil has described, but to the
market-place for pigs, sheep, and oxen; being now the Smithfield of
Rome. The hills, the rivers, the roads and bridges, in this mother of
cities, mostly go by their ancient Latin names, slightly altered in
Italian, but the Forum has not even retained its name; it is now
called Campo Vaccino, or the Field of Cows!
This scene155, though now so desolate and degraded, was once the
great centre of all the business, power, and splendour of Rome.
Here, as long as the Romans were a free people, all the affairs of the
state were debated in the most public manner; and from the rostra,
elevated in the midst of the square, and with their eyes fixed on the
capitol, which immediately faced them, and which was suited to fill
their minds with patriotism, whilst the Tarpeian rock reminded them
of the fate reserved for treason and corruption, the noblest of
orators “wielded at will” the fierce democracy, or filled the souls of
gathered thousands with one object, one wish, one passion—the
freedom and glory of the Roman race;—a freedom which would have
been more enduring had the glory been less.
“Yes; in yon field below,
A thousand years of silenced factions sleep—
The Forum, where the immortal accents glow,
And still the eloquent air breathes, burns, of Cicero!

“The field of freedom, faction, fame, and blood.

Here a proud people’s passions were exhaled,
From the first hour of empire in the bud,
To that when further worlds to conquer fail’d;
But long before had Freedom’s face been veil’d,
And Anarchy assumed her attributes;
Till every lawless soldier who assail’d
Trod on the trembling senate’s slavish mutes,
Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes.”

Here the orators of the people brought their accusations against

public men, or pronounced eulogies on such as had died for their
country; and here, also, were exhibited the bleeding heads or lifeless
bodies of traitors, or, as it but too often happened, of men unjustly
deemed so by an overbearing faction. The Forum was the court of
justice, and in homely days of the early republic, civil and criminal
causes were tried and decided by simple laws in the open air, or in
very plain sheds built in this square. The humble schools for the
republican children (for even these old Romans had places of public
instruction for the poor people) stood round the Forum, which seems
to have been intermixed with shops, shambles, stalls, lowly temples,
and altars.
No object within the walls of Rome, according to Dr. Burton, is so
melancholy as the Forum. “We may lament,” says he, “the ruin of a
temple or a palace, but our interest in the remaining fragments is
frequently diminished by our either not knowing with certainty to
what building they belonged, or because history has not stamped
them with any peculiar recollections. But standing upon the hill of
the Capitol, and looking down upon the Forum, we contemplate a
scene with which we fancy ourselves familiar, and we seem suddenly
to have quitted the habitations of living men. Not only is its former
grandeur utterly annihilated, but the ground has not been applied to
any other purpose. When we descend into it, we find that many of
the ancient buildings are buried under irregular heaps of soil. A
warm imagination might fancy that some spell hung over the spot,
forbidding it to be profaned by the ordinary occupations of inhabited
cities. What Virgil says of its appearance before the Trojan settlers
arrived, is singularly true at the present moment:
“There oxen strolled where palaces are raised,
And bellowing herds in the proud Forum grazed156.”

Where the Roman people saw temples erected to perpetuate their

exploits; and where the Roman nobles vied with each other in the
magnificence of their dwellings, we see now a few isolated pillars
standing amongst some broken arches. Or if the curiosity of
foreigners has investigated what the natives neither think nor care
about, we may, perhaps, see the remnant of a statue, or a column,
extracted from the rubbish. Where the Comitia were held, where
Cicero harangued, and where the triumphal processions passed, we
have now no animated beings, except strangers, attracted by
curiosity; the convicts who are employed in excavating, as a
punishment, and those more harmless animals, who find a scanty
pasture, and a shelter from the sun under a grove of trees. If we
look to the boundaries of this desolation, the prospect is equally
mournful. At one end we have the hill of the Capitol; on the summit
of which, instead of the temple of Jupiter, the wonder of the world,
we have the palace of the solitary senator. If we wish to ascend this
eminence, we have, on one side, the most ancient structure in
Rome, and that a prison; on the other, the ruins of a temple, which
seems to have been amongst the finest in the city, and the name of
which is not known. If we turn from the capital, we have, on our
right, the Palatine hill, which once contained the whole Roman
people, and which was afterwards insufficient for the house of one
emperor, and is now occupied by a few gardens, and a convent. On
the left, there is a range of churches, formed out of ancient temples;
and in front, we discover at a considerable distance, through the
branches of trees, and the ruins of buildings, the mouldering arches
of the Colosseum.
The Mausoleo Adriano was erected by Adrian, in the gardens of
Domitian. It is two stories high; the lower square, the upper round.
It was formerly covered with Parian marble, and encircled by a
concentric portico, and surmounted by a cupola. The Pons Ælius was
the approach to it; during the middle ages, it was used as a fortress;
and the upper works, of brick, were added to it by Alexander VI.;
when it became the citadel of Rome. This castle was of great service
to Pope Clement VII., when the city was surprised (a. d. 1527) by
the imperial army. The castle was formerly the burial-place of the
Roman emperors, which, after Augustus’s mausoleum on the side of
the Tiber was filled with arms, Adrian built for himself and his
successors; hence it acquired the name of Moles Hadriani. The large
round tower in the centre of the edifice was formerly adorned with a
considerable number of small pillars and statues; but most of them
were broken to pieces by the Romans themselves, who made use of
them to defend themselves against the Goths, when they assaulted
the city; as may be read at large in Procopius and Baronius. On the
top of it stood the Pigna, since in the Belvidere Gardens. It received
its name of St. Angelo, from the supposed appearance of an angel,
at the time of a pestilence, during the reign of Gregory the Great. It
was fortified by Pope Urban VII., with five regular bastions,
ramparts, moats, &c. The hall is adorned with gildings, fine
paintings, and Adrian’s statue, whose bust, with that of Augustus, is
to be seen on the castle wall.
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