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OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
315
Romans left under the effectual guard of St. Peter the apostle.[1] The battlements or bastions were shaped in sharp angles; a ditch, broad and deep, protected the foot of the rampart; and the archers on the rampart were assisted by military engines: the balista, a powerful cross-bow, which darted short but massy arrows; the onagri, or wild asses, which, on the principle of a sling, threw stones and bullets of an enormous size.[2] A chain was drawn across the Tiber; the arches of the aqueducts were made impervious, and the mole or sepulchre of Hadrian[3] was converted, for the first time, to the uses of a citadel. That venerable structure, which contained the ashes of the Antonines, was a circular turret, rising from a quadrangular basis: it was covered with the white marble of Paros, and decorated by the statues of gods and heroes; and the lover of the arts must read with a sigh that the works of Praxiteles or Lysippus were torn from their lofty pedestals, and hurled into the ditch on the heads of the besiegers.[4] To each of his lieutenants Belisarius assigned the defence of a gate with the wise and peremptory instruction that, whatever might be the alarm, they should steadily adhere to their respective posts and trust their general for the safety of Rome. The formidable host of the Goths was insufficient to embrace the ample measure of the city; of the fourteen gates, seven only were invested from the Prænestine to the Flaminian way;[5] and Vitiges divided his troops into six camps, each of
- ↑ The fissure and leaning in the upper part of the wall, which Procopius observed (Goth. l. i. c. 13), is visible to the present hour (Donat. Roma Vetus, l. i. c. 17, p. 53, 54). [This bit is known as the Muro Torto.]
- ↑ Lipsius (Opp. tom. iii. Poliorcet. l. iii.) was ignorant of this clear and conspicuous passage of Procopius (Goth. l. i. c. 21). The engine was named ὅναγρος, the wild ass, a calcitrando (Hen. Steph. Thesaur. Linguæ Græc. tom. ii. p. 1340, 1341, tom. iii. p. 877). I have seen an ingenious model, contrived and executed by General Melville, which imitates or surpasses the art of antiquity.
- ↑ The description of this mausoleum, or mole, in Procopius (l. i. c. 25) is the first and best. The height above the walls σχεδὸν ὲς λίθου βολήν [not the height, but the length of each of the sides]. On Nolli's great plan, the sides measure 260 English feet.
- ↑ Praxiteles excelled in Fauns, and that of Athens was his own masterpiece. Rome now contains above thirty of the same character. When the ditch of St. Angelo was cleansed under Urban VIII. the workmen found the sleeping Faun of the Barberini palace; but a leg, a thigh, and the right arm had been broken from that beautiful statue (Winckelmann. Hist. de l'Art, tom. ii. p. 52, 53; tom. iii. p. 265). [The Dancing Faun, now at Florence, was also found here.]
- ↑ [The six camps of the Goths invested according to Procopius "five gates," from P. Flaminia to P. Prænestina, the intervening being P. Salaria, P. Nomentana (close to modern P. Pia) and P. Tiburtina (P. San Lorenzo). He does not include the P. Pinciana, which was only a postern. But he might have included the P. Labicana, which was adjacent to the P. Prænestina (together they form the modern P. Maggiore); as the camp which invested the one invested the other, Mr. J. H. Parker in his Archæology of Rome has sought to determine the positions of the camps, which are also discussed by Mr. Hodgkin (4, p. 146 sqq.).]
