quent description by characterizing that focus of Italy as a spot singularly adapted for the growth of a great city. But the glowing praise of Livy might be the mere declamation of a Roman, and a professed rhetorician; certain it is, that neither the scattered testimonies to be gleaned from his own beautiful history, nor the observation of modern travellers will confirm, in its full extent, the commendation thus lavished upon Rome. In ancient times, the city and its vicinity were as unhealthy in the summer months as the most pestilential regions of our Southern States, and the deadly breath of the sirocco was as pernicious then as it is now. True it is, that the desolation of the surrounding Campagna, the filth and rottenness of the modern Rome, may have developed, despite the efforts of Sixtus V., the seeds of disease, to a greater extent than formerly, but they were always existent there, and the atmosphere of Rome was never a healthy one. The shallow waters of the Tiber, with its obstructed harbour, were such as scarcely to permit that commerce, which the laws failed to encourage, and the people regarded as degrading. And the space intervening between themselves and the sea, was not sufficient to protect the citizens from the dread of an unexpected descent upon their coasts, and even upon their city, by the Etruscans, the Carthaginians, or the fleets of Sextus Pompeius. Modern history may show how insecure the Romans were on the side of the sea. A traveller, and a German, whose name is among the most distinguished ornaments of the nineteenth century, and who has formed an era in the literary history of his own country, (Goëthe,) speaks, with the deepest feeling of personal experience, of the dull fogs of the Tiber, the solemn gloom of the Roman hills, and conceives that no people were ever more unfortunate in the location of their metropolis than the conquerors of the world. And yet, notwithstanding the eternal sadness that breathes over the mighty Queen of Nations, she must have presented a spectacle of most imposing splendour in the days of her greatness and glory. The mind of the greatest of all historians, was kindled into fire, as he sat upon the shattered columns of the capitol: and to the heart, which is sensitive to such influences, there is still much of moral grandeur and impressive awe in the midst of the Roman ruins,-marred, as is their effect, by the juxtaposition of tawdry palaces, wretched hovels, and modern Vandalism. We may yet conceive, from the wreck that remains, the feeling which led the old inhabitants to speak with admiration of the powerful, the mighty, the blessed, the royal, the queenly Rome, princess of all cities.* Standing near the spot now occupied by the equestrian statue of Aurelius, you are in the Asylum of Romulus,-the cradle of the city, the centre of Rome. On one hand are the relics of the past, on the other the structures of the present. It is the point which separates the city of the living from the city of the dead. In the former you may behold the lofty dome of St. Peter's, and the Vatican, and may still recognize the columns of Trajan and of Antonine, and the rotunda of the Pantheon. In the latter, and beneath your feet, lies a vast wilderness of ruin,-pile upon pile, mass heaped on mass, the wreck of a mighty empire. Here are the Forum, the Triumphal Way, the Arches of Septimus Severus and of Titus, the columns of the Temples of the Thundering Jove and of Concord. Beyond are the shivered fragments of the imperial palace, and still further on is the stupendous mole of the Coliseum,-the melancholy but majestic type of Rome. "Looking thus from the capitol, you may readily discover the progress and the unity of Roman history. The Forum represents the Republic; the Pantheon of Augustus and Agrippa, the amalgamation of all the peoples and all the gods of the old world in one empire and one temple. The monument of the central epoch of Roman history, occupies nearly the central spot of Rome,——whilst, at the two extremities, you see in the Coliseum the early struggles of Christianity, its sovereignty and triumph in the Church of St. Peter.† The contemplation of this fallen grandeur, hurries back instinctively through the long vista of twenty-six centuries, to the early development of that germ whence so much greatness was evolved. The seed, loosely scattered upon the hill-top, took deep root in a congenial soil: it budded, it put forth its leaves, it stretched out its branches, and the whole world was darkened beneath its shadow,-it bore fruit, and good fruit, in abundance; and at this day, the nations, which tasted of it, regard it as their tree of life and of 'Magna Roma.' Hor. Sat. i. v. 1. iii. xxix. 12. 'Regia,' Ep. i. vii. 44. principis urbium. Od. iv. iii. 13. 'Potens,' Ep. ii., i. 60. 'Beata,' Od. 'Domina,' Öd. iv. xiv. 44. 'Romæ + Michelet. Hist. Rép. Rom. Introd. c. 1. knowledge, and refer thereunto their literature, their law, and their civilization. Thus, the study of the present carries us back with an ever-living interest to the consideration of the early fortunes of the mighty, the wonderful Rome: She who was named eternal, and array'd Her rushing wings,-Oh! she who was almighty hail'd. But who were they that first cast this prolific seed into the ground? It were now a hopeless task to attempt to determine, with critical certainty, the several tribes which met together on the gloomy hills of Rome, the regions whence they came, the nations from which they were descended,the dates of their respective settlements,--the mode in which they became agglomerated into one people,-or the period when this fusion of races began. The story of the original foundation of the city by Romulus and a Latino-Trojan colony from Alba Longa, is evidently a preposterous fable. In all our text-books, and even in the majority of those of much higher pretensions, the years 750-2-3-4 have been variously assigned, without the utterance of a doubt, to the foundation of Rome and the reference to this supposed era is so frequent, and so firmly established, that the question of its accuracy does not present itself to any but professed scholars, and not often to them. Yet, unhesitatingly as this date is accredited, there is no point in the early chronology of nations, which is less satisfactorily settled or built upon a more slender and unsubstantial basis, than this imaginary but universally received commencement of the Roman city. The hallucinations of judicial astrology, it will be seen, have been sufficient to impose upon the credulity and satisfy the curiosity of successive generations. We will here exhibit the data upon which the usual determination of the Era Urbis Condita rests, and the mode of its discovery: as these may be points of curious interest to many, and of novel information to some. In the words of the old writer, from whom we principally take our account, "Rome herself had not attained to know her own beginning till Cato's time, who, considering the absurdity, searched the censor's tables, and bringing down the account to the first consuls, got within a little of urbs condita."* But the period embracing the reigns of the kings, remained still to be accounted for. Tradition, or some equally fallible authority, reported the names of seven persons who had successively exercised the regal power, and were each identified in the current fables with the development of a distinct element in the national system,† and had achieved deeds of such magnitude, as might reasonably demand the concentrated energies of whole generations. But one circumstance, more certain, or at least better fixed to all appearance than the rest, was discovered as a plausible germ for the desired hypothesis, and afforded a glimmering hope of the satisfactory determination of the difficult inquiry. The Festival of the Palilia was still celebrated at Rome on the 21st of April, as it continued to be till changed by an ordinance of the Emperor Caius,-and it was believed, from surviving faith in an old legend, that this feast was observed, in a great measure, as the anniversary of the Foundation of Rome. This day was accordingly assumed as the dies natalitius of the city; and, to determine the year, recourse was had by Varro, who was dissatisfied with the conclusion to which Cato's further reasoning had brought him, to the mystical language of the stars, and the received sophisms of judicial astrology. Tarutius Firmianus, a man skilled in these matters,―(in primis Chaldaicis rationibus eruditus, says Cicero,)-undertook, at the personal instance of Varro, to discover the exact year. With this intent he consulted his astrolabe, determined the benignant and malignant influences of the planetary aspects, studied the horoscope of Romulus, which he had fancifully drawn out from loose and curious rumours, cast his nativity, and thence deduced that of Rome. One of the numerous legendary tales of the day, related that Romulus had been conceived during an eclipse of the sun; * John Gregorie. De Er. & Epoch. Lond. 1683. Re-edited by E. H. Barker. 1837. + Gibbon. Decl & Fall, etc. c. xliv. Niebuhr. Rom. Hist. H. S. Legaré on the Civil Law. Vico. Scienza Nuova. § Cic. De Div. Lib. ii., c. xlvii. §§ 98, 99. What was thought of this mode of computation by the better informed at Rome, may be estimated from the language of Cicero. "O vim maximam erroris ! Etiamne Urbis natalis dies ad vim stellarum et lunæ pertinebat? Fac in puero referre, ex qua affectione cœli primum spiritum duxerit: num hoc in latere aut in cæmento, ex quibus Urbs affecta est, potuit valere? Sed quid plura ? Quotidie refelluntur," etc. another, that he had founded the city during an eclipse; and another, that he had disappeared-murdered on earth or translated to heaven-during a third eclipse. These three eclipses were all employed by Tarutius in his calculation, to whom the singular recurrence and appropriation of so many solar defections, appear never to have imparted a doubt of the veracity of the traditions themselves. With like credulity-but in an age of large belief-Calvisius, Muller (Regiomontanus) and Bunting, Scaliger and Petavius, disputed, with no very satisfactory result, on these obscurations of the sun, and the date which they were supposed to establish and the consequence has been, that the era of the Foundation fluctuates between A. C. 750 and A. C. 754; though the preference has been usually accorded to the year A. C. 753 by modern scholars. : More than a century antecedent to Varro's calculation, was that of Cato himself, to which we first alluded, who had been at once the first to attempt the determination of the date, and to write a Latin prose history of his country, in his celebrated Origines. Varro allowed 244 years for the duration of the regal government,-Cuto had given 243, though Petavius maintains that this was not his opinion, and Calvisius conceives, somewhat singularly, that they both coincided. The mode of reasoning which Cato adopted, we may naturally suppose to have been, in many respects, analogous to that of his rival chronologist,-perhaps, even more feeble, or the preference would scarcely have been extended to the wild deduction of Varro. Cato undoubtedly derived most of his fundamental facts from the Fasti and the pontifical books, as well as from the Censor's tables, but to these he applied such criticism as the habits of his mind and the genius of his time would permit, in this respect differing from Fabius, who probably made the loosest of all calculations from the statements which he found recorded in what were then considered as authentic documents. Fabius allowed 240 years for the government of the kings, a period which he might have found indicated in the authorities which he referred to. The preciseness of the number, the mode in which it was divided among the kings, the symbolical numbers of which it is a multiple,--would all point to the mystical calculations of Etruscan hierologists. But when we consider that, in all countries. where systems of chronology are fabricated on astronomical |
