ILLUSTRATION

OF

TWO ROMAN SEPULCHRES OF THE AUGUSTAN AGE,

DISCOVERED BY THE ILLUStrator, chevALIER G. PIETRO CAMPANA.

[Sepolcri Romani, etc.] Rome, Monaldi.

A green waste, almost tree-less and house-less, surrounds the Eternal City, reaching between her few, half-inhabited, forlorn outposts, up to her very walls, and stretching away to the feet of the mountains far off. How often, as we wandered over this desolate expanse of verdure, while absorbed in our meditations upon its numberless mounds and other ruinous memorials, how often did we imagine it a vast Grave-yardanother Eternal City, a City of the Dead, whose mansions just heaved their roofs above ground, and whose denizens slept for ever beneath! So strong is the illusion, that even we, who are noways given to fanciful theories, felt at times persuaded that the hillocks after hillocks which rose before us, were the tumuli or barrows of a gigantic race,-Pre-Adamites, perhaps, or Ante-Diluvians, coeval and coequal with Behemoth and Leviathan, and those enormous nondescript creatures once existent though now extinct. But is not the Campagna, in truth, the cemetery of a bygone giant people? of their colossal works, too, as well as themselves? Are not these huge turf-clad undulations, in truth, heaped over a Titan brood, the cruel offspring of earth impregnated with blood? To what other name do their sanguinary temper, their prodigious energies, and their audacious deeds entitle them? If we did not

hear them groan from their burning tombs under our feet, like Enceladus and his brethren under Etna and the Phlegrean Fields, if we did not, with classical implicit faith, feel the earth tremble while they endeavoured to throw its weight off their shoulders, or tossed their restless limbs beneath it,-certain localities, we must aver, did send forth effluvia which made them much resemble vent-holes for the respiration of spirits in pain and for sulphurous sighs, while a yellow-green, brackish fluid was also discharged, that might be taken for the gall of bitterness, and the sweat of torture, and remorseful tears mingled together. However this may be, tillers of the Campagna could scarcely drive their ploughs through that soil without striking against a relic or rust-eaten implement of war or peace, a sarcophagus or a sepulchre, an architectural foundation or fragment of sculpture, and perhaps on the slightest further search turning up a coin, a trinket, a useful or an elegant production of art. But modern Romans seldom do so they refrain from disturbing the earth with plough or mattock as religiously as if it were, indeed, the sacred dust of their ancestors. Either that, or a filial aversion to disfigure the bosom of Alma Tellus, beautiful Mother Nature, makes almost all these her considerate children prefer the lazy shepherd-life to the agricultural, and keeps almost the whole suburban plain of Rome a wild, open, smooth-tufted cattle-walk. This is their idea of the Golden Age, which with them consists in idleness, not innocence! At great intervals, perhaps, they scarify the ground for a small garden, or trench or punch it about as deep as a fox-and-goose table for a field of we beg Ceres' pardon-a bed of a grain. Nay, half Rome itself is pastureland, and more of it would be so but that it is altogether barren. Cacus might still feed Herculean oxen on Mount Aventine: Monte Testaceo (Potsherd Hill) would graze all the sheep which come to the Roman shambles, were it only covered with the immondizio» that manures the Roman streets; in fact, such lean, dry, dark red carrion as calls itself mutton, does relish of the potsherds, and may be depastured among them like beetles for aught we know. Mounts Cœlius and Esquilinus are less deserted landscapes, yet large portions

of them are as silent and vacant as savannahs, their soil delved into by vermin alone, or buried beneath more rubbish than the cellars of fallen Babylon. Both the builder and the excavator fear trespassing on ground, which would seem either so very profane or so very sanctified; and should they be obliged to work there, proceed as leisurely as if they were about to raise their own gallows or dig their own grave.

Our remarks, being general, admit of some few exceptions. Certain scoopings, dignified with the name scawi, have been made at different points of Rome and her environs; perforations not altogether deep enough to let in day-light on Pluto, but enough for partial discoveries. One and another native of that land from which all Virtuosi, Cognoscenti, Dilettanti, derive these flattering titles, has endeavoured to merit them himself; while, for the most part, Hotspur's popinjay Lord could not stop his nose with more contempt at a dead corse, than a Roman Signor at the aroma of a freshly-opened antique sepulchre. Cavaliere Campana is a celebrated and successful explorer of subterranean regions, in especial of that immense terra incognita lying just under the feet of its proprietorsOld classic Rome-which might as well lie as far under them as their antipodes, the whole world's axis beneath them as well as a barleycorn's depth! What care the modern Quirites about their progenitors-predecessors, we mean?

Due cose solamente bramano-Maccheroni ed il Corso '

Not many years ago Signor Campana disinterred these curious Sepulchres, now opened to us also by means of his splendid work, containing divers plans and illustrations, some coloured like the original objects, and all accompanied by ample and precise descriptions. Outside the Latin Gate is a spacious solitude, fringed near the walls with a few shrubs : another is inside the Appian Gate hard by, as if Desolation chose his town and country seats contiguous. Here, were the two Sepulchres respectively discovered. They are both of that multiple-tomb order denominated Columbaria, i. e. dovehouses, from the number of small, low niches in their sides for the reception of cinerary urns, miniature votive altars, &c.

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Perhaps, as these niches or nests face inwards, Gallinaria, i. e. hen-houses, were a more appropriate and expressive, though less poetic, title; but we employ this irreverent name only to preclude misconception on the part of our readers who have never seen a real Columbarium, nor picture of one, nor even that apology for one at the British Museum; and who might therefore conceive an assemblage of sacred reliques exposed like eggs in a pigeon-box to every impious hand or casual harm. Quite the reverse; shut up as they were between the close walls of their common depositary, sunshine and the soft dews and the breath of Heaven alone penetrated among them. These lodging-houses for the dead seem to have been let at immortal leases, in separate chambers, or suites of niches, to various persons or parties, mostly of the lower order, often of the same household where dependents abounded; but not always to tenants of either plebeian or servile condition, as sometimes the Patrons themselves took up their last abodes amongst those faithful domestics with whom they had shared their first. It is pleasing to see the family-circle yet hold together, even in the state of dissolution itself! Withinside each sepulchre, stairs led down to its floor, and a skylight through the coved roof which remains over one, tells how such receptacles were illumined and ventilated. Rows of apertures, as we have said, ran round the whole interior; some considerable enough to admit sarcophagi, urns, altartombs, and funereal utensils and superfluities at once; to be adorned like temple porticos with pillared jambs and pediments; to have their surfaces painted likewise, and covered with decorations architectural, sculptural, or pictorial. Signor Campana's coloured engravings pourtray these monuments of ancient vanity and art in their actual and, preserved as they have been, original state. Singular! that many persons here deposited should do more good, perhaps, to mankind after their deaths than during their lives!-yea, do this when they are themselves most impotent, rather than when they were most vigorous! that some who perhaps could not themselves read S.P.Q.R. on a standard, should instruct our deep-learned scholars in the abstrusest points of Roman History-the domes

tic rites, customs, tastes, manners, arts mechanical and mental, of the Romans!--Strange that they should now utter eloquent lessons, didactic, ethic, and poetic, who were tongue-tied when living, except to utter flagitiousness or frivolities, platitudes or semi-articulate nonsense! Yet so it is! their very ashes are now become precious as gold dust, though their entire bodies, at any period whatever, before they were charred, might have been worth scarce an as! The bones of Edward Longshanks, which after his death still led on his host, had greater virtue in them than breathed in the well-fleshed frame of his unwarlike successor, who was joint-General with them; but had they conquered all Scotland, what comparison would they bear in utility to the humble relics found here? Perpetual insurrection and bloodshed must have followed that event, disunion between the kingdoms, rendering future union impossible. On the other hand, these relics will produce, if no better effect, peace among antiquaries: to be serious, they decide the long litigated question, whether corpses were buried as well as burned in later Roman times. Two were entire bodies. (1) Many doubts, besides, are set at rest, many old positions confirmed, many new suggested or established.. Again we say, the veritable dead-weights upon the social machine are the useless living who encumber it. Let us hope that modern personages, however unprofitable to the present era, will prove of some benefit to posterity, by transmitting through the medium of their tombstones and sepulchres even the smallest modicums of knowledge instead of flatteries and falsehoods !

The elegant, sentimental Dodwell condemns Lord Elgin's antiquarian robberies at Athens as sacrilegious; he describes them in terms which might have been applied to the plunder of Delphos by impious and godless Etolians. And this he does just after his cool recipe for the developement of tombs,» as follows: It is performed by first breaking the trapeza,

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(') Historians also cry up John Zisca's skin, which he bequeathed his soldiers to make a drum of, that it might double their courage; but it did not a thousandth part of the service (though it slew a thousand men), that the shrivelled scalp of and Egyptian mummy performs by its various revelations.