1-14.] THE SEVEN HILLS. 7 steep ascent, preceded by the spoils and captives of his triumph, and where he returned thanks for victory by a festal sacrifice. This temple was divided into three cells, or chapels, occupied by the images of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. The ancient images of Terminus and Juventas, the legend ran, had refused to quit their stations on the foundation of the Capitol, so they, too, had places within the walls. Hard by were two other temples to Jupiter, under the titles of the Thunderer and Spoil-bearer, and the horrible Mammertine dungeons, the living tombs of many. The Palatine Hill was the next centre of attraction, as the abode of the Senators. Here rose the modest mansions of the Gracchi, of Hortensius, Crassus, Clodius, Cataline, and Cicero. But all of them had now been swept away, to make room for the magnificent palace of Augustus; and the Senators spread their villas on the crest of the eminence on the farther side of the Tiber, across the oldest of the Roman bridges, the Sublician (or Bridge of Piles): a district which, rising in terraces from the river, enjoyed a noble view of the seven hills on the opposite bank, and was also celebrated for its salubrity. This Transtiberine region included the island in the Tiber, which was fashioned at either side into a rude resemblance of a ship, and was densely crowded with habitations. The Esquiline Hill was at this time inhabited by the meanest of the citizens; the Pincian Hill was chiefly occupied with villas buried in extensive gardens; the Cælian Hill, afterwards called after a senator named Lateranus, who had a splendid palace on it, the Aventine, and the Quirinal, were then crowned with temples and stately palaces. Beyond the Viminal Hill, without the walls, afterwards stood the celebrated Prætorian Camp, which forms such a distinguished object in the history of Rome under the Emperors. North of the city, within the walls, lay a broad plain, called the Campus Martius, or Field of Mars, as from the earliest period the grassy meadows which here skirted the Tiber had been consecrated to the god of war, as a resort for military exercises, and the kindred recreations of leaping, running, and bathing. Thither also the citizens poured in vast crowds, after the business of the day, to indulge in gymnastic games and sports. Here stood the famous Flaminian Gate, through which the conqueror, returning from distant frontiers, conducted his triumphal procession to the Capitol. Temples were still the chief public buildings which met the eye on every side. They were mostly of Grecian model, oblong, and with long, low roofs, generally crowned with statues, but scarcely overtopping, except from their position, the meaner buildings around them. The invention of bells, the greatest of all boons to architecture, had not yet afforded a motive or excuse for raising the many-storied tower, or suggesting the arrowy flight of the spire or steeple. But there was a solemn significance of the Roman character in the crests of the seven hills encompassing the Forum, being all crowned with a range, almost unbroken, of columned temples, surmounted with images of the gods, who thus seemed to keep watch and ward over the cherished city. Ancient Romanism, as Neander terms the Pagan worship of Rome, originated with the Etruscans, and it became the ruling idea of all its institutions, manners, arts, and literature, as powerfully as it swayed Etruria itself, from the belief that each and all was of divine authority. The Etruscan Lucumo, or military chieftain, was also the priest and soothsayer of his nation; and, under the legend of the marvellous dwarf Tages, who sprung from the soil to teach mankind the wor,ship of the gods, he claimed infallibility, and pretended to make holy places of worship, or of ordinary abode, and the walls of cities, domestic customs and public ceremonies, 1-14.] ANCIENT ROMANISM. 9 family relations and official personages, births, marriages, and funerals, games, spectacles, and sacrifices. The Etruscan priests claimed peculiar sanctity, and professed-perhaps they believed its truth-the art of foretelling the future by divination. According to them, the secrets of the gods were not imparted directly by inspired oracles, but were to be learnt by priests through a holy discipline of observation and experience. They had secret rules for discovering the future by inspecting the entrails of a sacrificed animal, or by the flight of birds, by omens, or dreams. They studied also the hidden properties of nature, particularly electric phenomena, and had the art of turning their discoveries to their own credit and profit. Legislators and philosophers were to form the morals of the people; the Roman priests, following the Etruscan model only, undertook the remission of their sins. Hence Tartarus and its lurid flames, for the punishment of the unforgiven and wicked sinner, and the gloomy shades, where souls guilty of lesser offences were purified by suffering, these were their favourite topics. Listen to the Roman Milton, Virgil, describing the Purgatory of Ancient Romanism, in words thus rendered by Dryden : 'Therefore the souls hard penance undergo Then are admitted to Elysium's realm.' The Roman priests boasted, that by their wailings, prayers, and sacrifices-sometimes human-they could propitiate the infernal gods, and even draw 'Tears down Pluto's iron cheek :' and that they could hasten the purgatorial process by their sacrificial offerings; they could freeze the stoutest heart, as they wildly tossed the long snake-like fillets of various coloured ribbons twisted round their heads, brandished burning torches in their hands, and with horrible incantations and curses consigned their enemies to the grasp of the furies. So intense was the superstition of the Romans, that scarcely a ring, or picture, or goblet, was without its likeness of some god; and seldom was any act, public or private, performed without invoking its appropriate deity, or consulting a soothsaying priest. The Senate opened its most solemn deliberations in a temple furnished with the altar and image of Victory, a majestic goddess standing on a globe, with flowing garments, expanded wings, and a crown of laurel in her hand. They were sworn on that altar to observe the laws; a solemn offering of wine and incense was then made, and every old Roman speech began, like that of Appius, 'I first pray to Jupiter, the best and the greatest, and to the other gods under whose protection are this city and Roman people, the Quirites, that they will allow my words to be of advantage to the State.' The attachment of the Roman soldiers to their standards was secured by consecrating the golden eagles which glittered in the front of the legions, placing them, after the march or the conflict, in a chapel in the heart of the camp, and sacrificing and burning incense to them as 'gods of war'; so it was more sinful than shameful to desert these sacred ensigns in the stress of battle. Indeed, the first element of the Roman constitution was the union, or confraternity, of several families descended from one common ancestor, and bound together as a gens, or clan, by the joint performance of peculiar religious rites. The Senate obtained the yearly census by the stated sum paid to the priests by every citizen at the festival called Compitalia. Every child was purified with holy water and spittle by a priest, who 1-14.] ANCIENT ROMANISM. 11 carried his fee to the temple of Juno Lucina. Every death brought a tribute to the temple of Venus; and every son arrived at the age of military service brought his offering to the temple of Youth. Almost every hill and dale, streamlet and tree, around Rome, had its god-protector.' locality it might be said 'Between the Naid, Nereid, Dryad throngs, A strife is waged, to which the spot belongs.' Of each All the virtues and vices had their patron-deities at Rome. To their Queen of Heaven they added their beatified heroes, legislators, and generals. They infinitely multiplied their gods by contemplating each under a two-fold personality, as male and female, and by their belief, that when an image was consecrated, the deity to whom it was dedicated dwelt in it as in a body. Hence the belief that these images were full of feeling and sympathy; that they often indicated by signs their will to favoured worshippers; and wept in times of public calamity, as Virgil tells us they did at the death of Julius Cæsar. Daemons, a sort of intermediate beings between gods and men, chiefly deified heroes, were supposed to be means of intercourse between both, and defended the dignity of the gods by embodying in themselves all the baser popular legends. Relics of their deified ancestor Romulus, were objects of passionate worship at Rome, especially the black stone which was supposed to be that marking his grave; the sacred fig-tree, under the shade of which it was fabled that the wolf had given him suck; and his pretended staff, which was believed to possess prophetic virtue, as having been his instrument for marking out the astrological aspect of the heavens. So intense was the superstition of the Romans, that their whole history and literature bear its impress. Even their drama originated thus; for it was to propitiate the gods |