consumed and Dion only mentions that it fell down, without alluding, as the Abate has made him, to the force of the blow, or the firmness with which it had been fixed. The whole strength, therefore, of the Abate's argument hangs upon the past tense; which, however, may be somewhat diminished by remarking that the phrase only shows that the statue was not then standing in its former position. Winckelmann has observed that the present twins are modern; and it is equally clear that there are marks of gilding on the wolf, which might therefore be supposed to make part of the ancient group. It is known that the sacred images of the Capitol were not destroyed when injured by time or accident, but were put into certain underground depositories, called favissa. It may be thought possible that the wolf had been so deposited, and had been replaced in some conspicuous situation when the Capitol was rebuilt by Vespasian. Rycquius, without mentioning his authority, tells that it was transferred from the Comitium to the Lateran, and thence brought to the Capitol. If it was found near the arch of Severus, it may have been one of the images which Orosius says was thrown down in the Forum by lightning when Alaric took the city. That it is of very high antiquity the workmanship is a decisive proof; and that circumstance induced Winckelmann to believe it the wolf of Dionysius. The Capitoline wolf, however, may have been of the same early date as that at the temple of Romulus. Lactantius asserts that in his time the Romans worshipped a wolf; and it is known that the Lupercalia held out to a very late period after every other observance of the ancient 1. Luc. Fauni De Antiq. Urb. Rom., lib. ii. cap. vi., ap. Sallengre, tom. i. p. 216. 2. See note to stanza lxxx. in Historical Illustrations. 3. "Romuli nutrix Lupa honoribus est affecta divinis. Et ferrem, si animal ipsum fuisset, cujus figuram gerit." Lactant., De Falsá Religione, lib. i. cap. xx., Biponti, 1786, i. 66; that is to say, he would rather adore a wolf than a prostitute. His commentator has observed that the opinion of Livy concerning Laurentia being figured in this wolf was not universal. Strabo thought so. Rycquius is wrong in saying that Lactantius mentions the wolf was in the Capitol. 4. To A.D. 496. "Quis credere possit," says Baronius [Ann. Eccles., Lucæ, 1741, viii. 602, in an. 496], "viguisse adhuc Romæ ad Gelasii tempora, quæ fuere ante exordium Urbis allata in Italiam Lupercalia?" Gelasius wrote a letter, superstition had totally expired. This may account for the preservation of the ancient image longer than the other early symbols of Paganism. It may be permitted, however, to remark, that the wolf was a Roman symbol, but that the worship of that symbol is an inference drawn by the zeal of Lactantius. The early Christian writers are not to be trusted in the charges which they make against the Pagans. Eusebius accused the Romans to their faces of worshipping Simon Magus, and raising a statue to him in the island of the Tyber. The Romans had probably never heard of such a person before, who came, however, to play a considerable, though scandalous part in the church history, and has left several tokens of his aërial combat with St. Peter at Rome; notwithstanding that an inscription found in this very island of the Tyber showed the Simon Magus of Eusebius to be a certain indigenal god called Semo Sangus or Fidius.1 Even when the worship of the founder of Rome had been abandoned it was thought expedient to humour the habits of the good matrons of the city, by sending them with their sick infants to the church of Saint Theodore, as they had before carried them to the temple of Romulus. The practice is continued to this day; and the site of the above church seems to be thereby identified with that of the temple; so that if the wolf had been really found there, as Winckelmann says, there would be no doubt of the present statue being that seen by Dionysius. But Faunus, in saying that it was at the Ficus Ruminalis by the Comitium, is only talking of its ancient position as recorded by Pliny; and, even if he had been remarking where it was found, would not have which occupies four folio pages, to Andromachus the senator, and others, to show that the rites should be given up. 1. Eccles. Hist. (Lipsiæ, 1827, p. 130), lib. ii. cap. xiii. p. 40. Justin Martyr had told the story before; but Baronius himself was obliged to detect this fable. See Nardini, Roma Vet., lib. vii. cap. xii. 2. Accurata e succincta Descrizione, etc., di Roma moderna, dell' Ab. Ridolfino Venuti, Rome, 1766, ii. 397. 3. Nardini, lib. v. cap. 3, ap. J. G. Græv., iv. 1143, convicts Pomponius Lætus Crassi erroris, in putting the Ruminal fig-tree at the church of Saint Theodore; but, as Livy says the wolf was at the Ficus Ruminalis, and Dionysius at the temple of Romulus, he is obliged to own that the two were close together, as well as the Luperal cave, shaded, as it were, by the fig-tree. VOL. II. 2 L alluded to the church of Saint Theodore, but to a very different place, near which it was then thought the Ficus Ruminalis had been, and also the Comitium; that is, the three columns by the church of Santa Maria Liberatrice, at the corner of the Palatine looking on the Forum. It is, in fact, a mere conjecture where the image was actually dug up; and perhaps, on the whole, the marks of the gilding, and of the lightning, are a better argument in favour of its being the Ciceronian wolf than any that can be adduced for the contrary opinion. At any rate, it is reasonably selected in the text of the poem as one of the most interesting relics of the ancient city, and is certainly the figure, if not the very animal to which Virgil alludes in his beautiful verses : "Geminos huic ubera circum Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem 26. For the Roman's mind Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould. Stanza xc. lines 3 and 4. It is possible to be a very great man and to be still very inferior to Julius Cæsar, the most complete character, so Lord Bacon thought, of all antiquity. Nature seems incapable of such extraordinary combinations as composed his versatile capacity, which was the wonder even of the Romans themselves. The first general-the only triumphant politician-inferior to none in eloquence-comparable to any in the attainments of wisdom, in an age made up of the greatest commanders, statesmen, orators, and philosophers that ever appeared in the world-an author who composed a perfect specimen of military annals in his travelling carriage at one time in a controversy with Cato, at another 1. Donatus, lib. xi. cap. xviii., gives a medal representing on one side the wolf in the same position as that in the Capitol; and on the reverse the wolf with the head not reverted. It is of the time of Antoninus Pius. 2. Æn., viii. 631-634. (See Dr. Middleton, in his letter from Rome, who inclines to the Ciceronian wolf, but without examining the subject.) 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 countrymen : HE WAS JUSTLY SLAIN.1 27. Egeria sweet creation of some heart Which found no mortal resting-place so fair 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.2 He assures us that he saw an inscription in the pavement, 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 [Fast., iii. 275, 276] from a stone in the Villa Giustiniani, which he seems to think had been brought from the same grotto. 1. "Jure cæsus existimetur," says Suetonius, i. 76, after a fair estimation of his character, and making use of a phrase which was a formula in Livy's time. "Mælium jure cæsum pronuntiavit, etiam si regni crimine insons fuerit :" [lib. iv. cap. xv.] and which was continued in the legal judgments pronounced in justifiable homicides, such as killing housebreakers. 2. Rom. Ant., F. Nardini, 1771, iv. Memorie, note 3, p. xii. He does not give the inscription. 3. "In villa Justiniana exstat ingens lapis quadrus solidus, in quo sculpta hæc duo Ovidii carmina sunt : 666 Ægeria est quæ præbet aquas dea grata Camœnis, Illa Numæ conjunx consiliumque fuit.' Qui lapis videtur eodem Egeriæ fonte, aut ejus vicinia, istuc comportatus."-Diarium Italic., Paris, 1702, p. 153. 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 2 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 had 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 1. De Magnit. Vet. Rom., ap. Græv., Ant. Rom., iv. 1507 [I. Vossius, De Ant. Urb. Rom. Mag., cap. iv.] 2. Eschinard, Descrizione di Roma e dell' Agro Romano, Roma, 1750. They believe in the grotto and nymph. "Simulacro di questo Fonte, essendovi scolpite le acque a pie di esso" (p. 297). 3. Classical Tour, vol ii. chap. vi. p. 217. 4. Lib. I. Sat. iii. lines 11-20. |