orators, and philosophers that ever appeared in the world—an author who composed a perfect specimen of military annals in his travelling carriage-at one time in a controversy with Cato, at another writing a treatise on punning, and collecting a set of good sayings-fighting and making love at the same moment, and willing to abandon both his empire and his mistress for a sight of the Fountains of the Nile. Such did Julius Cæsar appear to his contemporaries and to those of the subsequent ages who were the most inclined to deplore and execrate his fatal genius. But we must not be so much dazzled with his surpassing glory, or with his magnanimous, his amiable qualities, as to forget the decision of his impartial country men: HE WAS JUSTLY SLAIN.† XXVII. EGERIA. "Egeria! sweet creation of some heart Which found no mortal resting-place so fair As thine ideal breast." Stanza cxv. lines 1, 2, and 3. The respectable authority of Flaminius Vacca would incline us to believe in the claims of the Egerian grotto. He assures us that he saw an inscription in the pave ment, stating that the fountain was that of Egeria, dedicated to the nymphs. The inscription is not there at this day; but Montfaucon quotes two lines of Ovid from * In his tenth book, Lucan shows him sprinkled with the blood of Pharsalia in the arms of Cleopatra, "Sanguine Thessalice cladis perfusus adulter After feasting with his mistress, he sits up all night to converse with the Ægyptian sages, and tells Achoreus, "Spes sit mihi certa videndi Niliacos fontes, bellum civile relinquam." "Sic velut in tuta securi pace trahebant Immediately afterwards, he is fighting again, and defending every position. "Sed adest defensor ubique Cæsar et hos aditus gladiis, hos ignibus arcet Insiluit Cæsar semper feliciter usus Præcipiti cursu bellorum et tempore rapto." "Jure cæsus existimetur," says Suetonius, after a fair estimation of his charac ter, and making use of a phrase which was a formula in Livy's time. "Melium jure cæsum pronuntiavit, etiam si regni crimine insons fuerit:" [lib. iv. cap. 48.] and which was continued in the legal judgments pronounced in justifiable homicides, such as killing housebreakers. See Sueton. in Vit. C. J. Cæsar, with the commentary of Pitiscus, p. 184. "Poco lontano dal detto luogo si scende ad un casaletto, del qualen e sono Padroni li Caffarelli, che con questo nome è chiamato il luogo; vi è una fontana sotto una gran volta antica, che al presente si gode, e li Romani vi vanno l'estate a ricrearsi; nel pavimento di essa fonte si legge in un epitaffio essere quella la fonte di Egeria, dedicata alle ninfe, e questa, dice l'epitaffio, essere la medesima fonte in cui fu convertita." Memorie, &c. ap. Nardini, pag. 13. He does not give the inscription. "In villa Justiniana extat ingens lapis quadratus solidus, in quo sculpta hæc duo Ovidii carmina sunt : a stone in the Villa Giustiniani, which he seems to think had been brought from the same grotto. This grotto and valley were formerly frequented in summer, and particularly the first Sunday in May, by the modern Romans, who attached a salubrious quality to the fountain which trickles from an orifice at the bottom of the vault, and, overflowing the little pools, creeps down the matted grass into the brook below. The brook is the Ovidian Almo, whose name and qualities are lost in the modern Aquataccio. The valley itself is called Valle di Caffarelli, from the dukes of that name who made over their fountain to the Pallavicini, with sixty rubbia of adjoining land. There can be little doubt that this long dell is the Egerian valley of Juvenal and the pausing place of Umbritius, notwithstanding the generality of his commentators have supposed the descent of the satirist and his friend to have been into the Arician grove, where the nymph met Hippolitus, and where she was more peculiarly worshipped. The step from the Porta Capena to the Alban hill, fifteen miles distant, would be too considerable, unless we were to believe in the wild conjecture of Vossius, who makes that gate travel from its present station, where he pretends it was during the reign of the Kings, as far as the Arician grove, and then makes it recede to its old site with the shrinking city.* The tufo, or pumice, which the poet prefers to marble, is the substance composing the bank in which the grotto is sunk. The modern topographers† find in the grotto the statue of the nymph, and nine niches for the Muses, and a late traveller has discovered that the cave is restored to that simplicity which the poet regretted has been exchanged for injudicious ornament. But the headless statue is palpably rather a male than a nymph, and has none of the attributes ascribed to it at present visible. The nine Muses could hardly have stood in six niches; and Juvenal certainly does not allude to any individual cave. Nothing can be collected from the satirist but that somewhere near the Porta Capena was a spot in which it was supposed Numa held nightly consultations with his nymph, and where there was a grove and a sacred fountain, and fanes once consecrated to the Muses; and that from this spot there was a descent into the valley of Egeria, where were several artificial caves. It is clear that the statues of the Muses made no part of the decoration which the satirest thought misplaced in these caves; for he expressly assigns other fanes (delubra) to these divinities above the valley, and moreover tells us that they had been ejected to make room for the Jews. In fact, the little temple, now called that of Bacchus, was formerly thought to belong to the Muses, and Nardini || places them in a poplar grove, which was in his time above the valley. It is probable, from the inscription and position, that the cave now shown may be one of the "artificial caverns," of which, indeed, there is another a little way higher up the valley, under a tuft of ́alder bushes: but a single grotto of Egeria is a mere "Egeria est quæ præbet aquas dea grata Camœnis Qui lapis videtur ex eodem Egeria fonte, aut ejus vicinia isthuc comportatus." Diarium Italic. p. 153. * De Magnit. Vet. Rom. ap. Græv. Ant. Rom. tom. iv. p. 1507. † Echinard, Descrizione di Roma e dell' Agro Romano, corretto dall' Abate Venuti, in Roma, 1750. They believe in the grotto and nymph. "Simulacro di questo fonte, essendovi sculpite le acque a pie di esso. Classical Tour, chap. vi. p. 217. vol. ii. § "Substitit ad veteres arcus, madidamque Capenam, Hic ubi nocturnæ Numa constituebat amicæ. modern invention, grafted upon the application of the epithet Egerian to these nymphea in general, and which might send us to look for the haunts of Numa upon the banks of the Thames. Our English Juvenal was not seduced into mistranslation by his acquaintance with Pope he carefully preserves the correct plural — "Thence slowly winding down the vale, we view The Egerian grots; oh, how unlike the true!" The valley abounds with springs,* and over these springs, which the Muses might haunt from their neighbouring groves, Egeria presided: hence she was said to supply them with water; and she was the nymph of the grottos through which the fountains were taught to flow. The whole of the monuments in the vicinity of the Egerian valley have received names at will, which have been changed at will. Venuti † owns he can see no traces of the temples of Jove, Saturn, Juno, Venus, and Diana, which Nardini found, or hoped to find. The mutatorium of Caracalla's circus, the temple of Honour and Virtue, the temple of Bacchus, and, above all, the temple of the god Rediculus, are the antiquaries' despair. The circus of Caracalla depends on a medal of that emperor cited by Fulvius Ursinus, of which the reverse shows a circus, supposed, however, by some to represent the Circus Maximus. It gives a very good idea of that place of exercise. The soil has been but little raised, if we may judge from the small cellular structure at the end of the Spina, which was probably the chapel of the god Consus. This cell is half beneath the soil, as it must have been in the circus itself; for Dionysius could not be persuaded to believe that this divinity was the Roman Neptune, because his altar was under ground. XXVIII. THE ROMAN NEMESIS. "Great Nemesis! Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long." Stanza cxxxii. lines 2 and 3. We read in Suetonius, that Augustus, from a warning received in a dream, counterfeited, once a year, the beggar, sitting before the gate of his palace with his hand hollowed and stretched out for charity. A statue formerly in the Villa Borghese, and which should be now at Paris, represents the Emperor in that posture of supplication. The object of this self-degradation was the appeasement of Nemesis, the perpetual attendant on good fortune, of whose power the Roman conquerors were also reminded by certain symbols attached to their cars of triumph. The symbols were the whip and the crotalo, which were discovered in the Nemesis of the Vatican. The attitude of beggary made the above statue pass for that of Belisarius: and until the criticism of Winkelmann || had rectified the mistake, one fiction was called in to "Undique e solo aquæ scaturiunt.' † Echinard, &c. Cic. cit. p. 297, 298. Antiq. Rom. lib. ii. cap. xxxi. Nardını, lib. iii. cap. iii. § Sueton. in Vit. Augusti, cap. 91. Casaubon, in the note, refers to Plutarch's Lives of Camillus and Emilius Paulus, and also to his apophthegms, for the character of this deity. The hollowed hand was reckoned the last degree of degradation; and when the dead body of the præfect Rufinus was borne about in triumph by the people, the indignity was increased by putting his hand in that position. Storia delle Arti, &c. lib. xii. cap. iii. tom. ii. p. 422. Visconti calls the statue, however, a Cybele. It is given in the Museo Pio-Clement. tom. i. par. 40. The Abate Fea (Spiegazione dei Rami. Storia, &c. tom. iii. p. 513.) calls it a Chrisippus. support another. It was the same fear of the sudden termination of prosperity that made Amasis king of Egypt warn his friend Polycrates of Samos, that the gods loved those whose lives were chequered with good and evil fortunes. Nemesis was supposed to lie in wait particularly for the prudent; that is, for those whose caution rendered them accessible only to mere accidents: and her first altar was raised on the banks of the Phrygian sepus by Adrastus, probably the prince of that name who killed the son of Croesus by mistake. Hence the goddess was called Adrastea.* The Roman Nemesis was sacred and august: there was a temple to her in the Palatine under the name of Rhamnusia:† so great indeed was the propensity of the ancients to trust to the revolution of events, and to believe in the divinity of Fortune, that in the same Palatine there was a temple to the Fortune of the day. This is the last superstition which retains its hold over the human heart; and, from concentrating in one object the credulity so natural to man, has always appeared strongest in those unembarrassed by other articles of belief. The antiquaries have supposed this goddess to be synonymous with Fortune and with Fate ;§ but it was in her vindictive quality that she was worshipped under the name of Nemesis. XXIX. GLADIATORS. "He, their sire, Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday." Stanza cxli. lines 6 and 7. Gladiators were of two kinds, compelled and voluntary; and were supplied from several conditions :- from slaves sold for that purpose; from culprits; from varbarian captives either taken in war, and, after being fed in triumph, set apart for the games, or those seized and condemned as rebels; also from free citizens, some fighting for hire (auctorati), others from a depraved ambition: at last even knights and senators were exhibited,- -a disgrace of which the first tyrant was naturally the first inventor. In the end, dwarfs, and even women, fought; an enormity prohibited by Severus. Of these the most to be pitied undoubtedly were the barbarian captives; and to this species a Christian writer ¶ justly applies the epithet "innocent," to distinguish them from the professional gladiators. Aurelian and Claudius supplied great numbers of these unfortunate victims; the one after his triumph, and the other on the * Dict. de Bayle, article Adrastea. † It is enumerated by the regionary Victor. 1 Fortunæ hujusce diei. Cicero mentions her, de Legib. DEAE NEMESI PISTORIVS RVGIANVS V. C. LEGAT. LEG. XIII. G. See Questiones Romanæ, &c. ap. Græv. Antiq. Roman. tom. v. p. 942. See also Muratori, Nov. Thesaur. Inscrip. Vet. tom. i. p. 88, 89, where there are three Latin and one Greek inscription to Nemesis, and others to Fate. Julius Cæsar, who rose by the fall of the aristocracy, brought Furius Leptinus and A. Calenus upon the arena. ¶ Tertullian," certe quidem et innocentes gladiatores in ludum veniunt, et voluptatis publicæ hostia fiant." Just. Lips Saturn. Sermon. lib. ii. cap. iii. pretext of a rebellion.* No war, says Lipsius,† was ever so destructive to the human race as these sports. In spite of the laws of Constantine and Constans, gladiatorial shows survived the old established religion more than seventy years; but they owed their final extinction to the courage of a Christian. In the year 404, on the kalends of January, they were exhibiting the shows in the Flavian amphitheatre before the usual immense concourse of people. Almachius or Telemachus, an eastern monk, who had travelled to Rome intent on his holy purpose, rushed into the midst of the arena, and endeavoured to separate the combatants. The prætor Alypius, a person incredibly attached to these games, gave instant orders to the gladiators to slay him; and Telemachus gained the crown of martyrdom, and the title of saint, which surely has never either before or since been awarded for a more noble exploit. Honorius immediately abolished the shows, which were never afterwards revived. The story is told by Theodoret and Cassiodorus,|| and seems worthy of credit notwithstanding its place in the Roman martyrology. Besides the torrents of blood which flowed at the funerals, in the amphitheatres, the circus, the forums, and other public places, gladiators were introduced at feasts, and tore each other to pieces amidst the supper tables, to the great delight and applause of the guests. Yet Lipsius permits himself to suppose the loss of courage, and the evident degeneracy of mankind, to be nearly connected with the abolition of these bloody spectacles.** XXX. "Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise Stanza cxlii. lines 5 and 6. When one gladiator wounded another, he shouted, "he has it," " hoc habet," or "habet." The wounded combatant dropped his weapon, and advancing to the edge of the arena, supplicated the spectators. If he had fought well, the people saved him; if otherwise, or as they happened to be inclined, they turned down their thumbs, and he was slain. They were occasionally so savage that they were impatient if a combat lasted longer than ordinary without wounds or death. The emperor's presence generally saved the vanquished; and it is recorded as an instance of Caracalla's ferocity, that he sent those who supplicated him for life, in a spectacle, at Nicomedia, to ask the people; in other words, handed them over to be slain. A similar ceremony is observed at the Spanish bull-fights. The magistrate presides; and after the horsemen and piccadores have fought the bull, the matadore steps forward and bows to him for permission to kill the animal. If the bull has done his duty by killing two or three horses, or a man, which last is rare, the people interfere with shouts, the ladies wave their handkerchiefs, and the animal is saved. The wounds and death of the horses are accompanied with the loudest acclamations, and many gestures of delight, especially from the female portion of the audience, including * Vopiscus, in vit. Aurel, and in vit. Claud. ibid. ↑ "Credo imò scio nullum bellum tantam cladem vastitiemque generi humano mtulisse, quam hos ad voluptatem ludos." Just. Lips. ibid. lib, i. cap. xii. 1 Augustinus (lib. vi. confess. cap. viii.)" Alypium suum gladiatorii spectaculi nhiatu incredibiliter abreptum," scribit. ib. lib. i. cap. xii. § Hist. Eccles. cap. xxvi. lib. v. Cassiod, Tripartita, 1. x. c. xi. Saturn. ib. ib. See - Marangoni ¶ Baronius, ad. ann. et in notis ad Martyrol. Rom. I. Jan. delle memorie sacre e profane dell' Anfiteatro Flavio, p. 25. edit. 1746. **Quod? non tu Lipsi momentum aliquod habuisse censes ad virtutem? Magnum. Tempora nostra, nosque ipsos videamus. Oppidum ecce unum alterumve captum, direptum est; tumultus circa nos, non in nobis: et tamen concidimus et tur. bamur. Ubi robur, ubi tot per annos meditata sapientiæ studia? ubi ille animus qui possit dicere, si fractus illabutur orbis?" &c. ibid. lib. ii. cap. xxv. The prototype of Mr. Windham's panegyric on bull-baiting. |