looking west, taken at the time when the arena was so excavated. It has since been filled up. We have also given an external view of this remarkable building, as it existed in the time of Piranesi *. It would be unnecessary to attempt a description of the splendours of the Colosseum, and the scenes which it exhibited from the time of Titus to that of Honorius, while two celebrated pictures of these marvels exist, from authors of very different characters of excellence. Gibbon, in his twelfth chapter, häs embodied, with his usual power of expression, those passages of Calpurnius, and of other ancient writers, which represent this extraordinary building and the pomp which its walls disclosed; but he acknowledges his obligations to Montaigne, who, says the historian, "gives a very just and lively view of Roman magnificence in these spectacles." Our readers will, we doubt not, be gratified by the quaint but most appropriate sketch of the old philosopher of France: "It was doubtless a fine thing to bring and plant within the theatre a great number of vast trees, with all their branches in their full verdure, representing a great shady forest, disposed in excellent order, and the first day to throw into it a thousand ostriches, a thousand stags, a thousand boars, and a thousand fallow deer, to be killed and disposed of by the people the next day, to cause an hundred great lions, an hundred leopards, and three hundred bears to be killed in his presence: and for the third day, to make three hundred pair of fencers to fight it out to the last, as the Emperor Probus did. It was also very fine to see those vast amphitheatres, all faced with marble without, curiously wrought with figures and statues, and the inside sparkling with rare decorations and enrichments, 'Baltheus en gemmis, en illita porticus auro † ;' *See p. 306. 'Behold a belt with jewels glorious made, And a brave portico with gold o'erlaid ;' all the sides of this vast space filled and environed from the bottom to the top, with three or fourscore ranks of seats, all of marble also, and covered with cushions, 'exeat, inquit, Si pudor est, et de pulvino surgat equestri, Cujus res legi non sufficit*,'— 'Get y' out, whose means fall short of law, one cries: where an hundred thousand men might sit placed at their ease; and, the place below, where the plays were played, to make it by art first open and cleft into chinks, representing caves that vomited out the beasts designed for the spectacle; and then secondly, to be overflowed with a profound sea, full of seamonsters, and loaded with ships of war, to represent a naval battle: and thirdly, to make it dry and even again for the combats of the gladiators; and for the fourth scene, to have it strew'd with vermillion and storax, instead of sand, there to make a solemn feast for all that infinite number of people-the last act of one only day. - Quoties nos descendentis arenæ 'How often, when spectators, have we seen *Juven. Sat. 3. † Sir Robert Stapleton. Calpurnius, Ec.7. And from a dreadful chasm in the earth Which, by their shape, we might sea-horses name.' "Sometimes they have made a high mountain advance itself, full of fruit-trees and other flourishing sorts of woods, sending down rivulets of water from the top, as from the mouth of a fountain: other whiles, a great ship was seen to come rolling in, which opened and divided of itself; and after having disgorged from the hold four or five hundred beasts for fight, closed again, and vanished without help. At other times, from the floor of this place, they made spouts of perfumed waters dart their streams upward, and so high as to besprinkle all that infinite multitude. To defend themselves from the injuries of the weather, they had that vast place one while covered over with purple curtains of needle-work, and by and by with silk of another colour, which they could draw off or on in a moment, as they had a mind. Quamvis non modico caleant spectacula sole, 'The curtains, tho' the sun does scorch the skin, The net-work also that was set before the people to defend them from the violence of these turned out beasts, was also woven of gold. *Calpurnius, Ec. 7. Montaigne's Essays, translated by Cotton, book iii. chap. 6. "If there be anything excusable in such excesses as these," continues Montaigne, "it is where the novelty and invention create more wonder than expense." Fortunately for the real enjoyments of mankind, even under the sway of a Roman despot, 'the novelty and invention' had very narrow limits when applied to matters so utterly unworthy and unintellectual as the cruel sports of the amphitheatre. Probus, indeed, transplanted trees to the arena, so that it had the appearance of a verdant grove; and Severus introduced four hundred ferocious animals in one ship sailing in the little lake which the arena formed. This was a rare exercise of invention: and it was commemorated accordingly in a medal, whose inscription bore that the pageant of Severus was the "joy of the times." But on ordinary occasions, profusion,-tasteless, haughty, and uninventive profusion,-the gorgeousness of brute power, the pomp of satiated luxurythese constituted the only claim to the popular admiration. If Titus exhibited five thousand wild beasts at the dedication of the amphitheatre, Trajan bestowed ten thousand on the people at the conclusion of the Dacian war. If the younger Gordian collected together bears, elks, zebras, ostriches, boars, and wild horses, he was an imitator only of the spectacles of Carinus, in which VOL. II. 2 E |