03.18. Rome
Chapter 18 Rome.
Rome -- The Colosseum -- The Forum -- Palaces of the Caesars -- The Appian Way -- The Tomb -- Ecclesiastical Rome -- A Night-Visit to the Colosseum.
It was nearly 11 o’clock at night when our train began to enter upon the Campagna that engirdles the city of Rome. A stoppage of a moment enabled me to raise the window and look out on the night. A lofty hill rose up in the dim distance the sky studded with quiet stars seemed to touch its summit. The barking of a dog from the distant hillside just reached my ears. Somehow the sight and sound struck in on the mind harmoniously with the occasion. In another moment the train was rushing through the darkness and barrenness of the Campagna. I remembered that this malarial and comparatively forsaken plain was once densely populated. Where once buildings and waving harvests were seen in every direction, today ruins, the remains of a vast aqueduct system and tombs, meet the eye. How can one account for its forsakenness, and this disease that now so broods upon it that the shepherds at the approach of summer hastily gather their herds and retire to the mountains? How much is owing to the neglect of man, how much to the scourge of God? As I leaned my head near the window listening to the rush of the wind, I peopled the plain with the armies of Hannibal and Caesar and Charlemagne, and Attila with his horde of Northern savages. It was their legions in rapid advance or tumultuous retreat that I heard in the air. It was their trampling, the beating of millions of feet that hardened the plain; it was their pitilessness which had brought the judgment of a rocky and blistered land to a country once fertile and beautiful. So I mused on as the train sped like a thing of life through the darkness. In a little while we saw in the distance the light of Rome reflected in the sky, and shortly afterward paused in the heart of the seven-hilled city.
It is something of an experience to pass the first night in a city where the Caesars ruled; where Paul lived two years; from which has proceeded the most monstrous system of religious error; and about which the Lord Jesus said so much in the book of Revelation. Very naturally I read for my night and morning lessons the Epistle to the Philippians, and the second one to Timothy, both written from Rome.
Some one divides the city into three parts, viz., ecclesiastical, modern and ancient Rome. The Vatican and first, in the form of St. Peter’s, the Vatican and its dependencies, lies on the west bank of the Tiber. Ancient Rome, by which we mean the Pantheon, Roman Forum, Palaces of the Caesars, the Colosseum, and other ruins, is on the eastern shore. Modern Rome is between the two, and has beside gone eastward of the ancient city, so that the ruins today stand encompassed by the modern buildings of the capital of Italy. Coming upon these ruins suddenly at the turn of a street, or built partially into a modern dwelling, they strike the eye and memory with the force of a blow. Neither do they look in keeping with the nineteenth century surroundings. A feeling of sadness comes over one whenever they are seen. An octogenarian in the midst of a merry band of children; an Indian warrior standing on the streets of Washington; a visitant from another world speaking an unknown language, and looking into our homes; all these are but steps by which you mount up to a faint realization of the impression produced upon the mind by these gray, moldering arches, walls, and pillars built two thousand years ago, as they are encountered in the neighborhood of streets and squares that are imitating the brightness and flashy splendor of the boulevards of Paris. It is like having a skeleton lay his hand upon your arm, or look with cavernous eyes upon you. It is a most forcible reminder of the change and decay and ruin that time is certain to bring. If Rome in its massiveness went down, what is to become of the cockleshell cities of today. My first visit was to the Colosseum. So deeply was I interested that I paid three visits to this world-famous structure. It is the acknowledged largest ruin in the world, and yet it was not that fact that flung such a spell over me. It is difficult by any array of figures to convey to the reader the proper conception of the magnitude and sublimity of this building. After saying that it is elliptical in shape, over six hundred feet in length, five hundred in width, and one hundred and fifty-six in height, one still cannot by a mental process do the great amphitheater justice. But when you stand in the center of the arena and look up, counting five galleries as the eye ascends, one rising above the other with scores of rows of seats, all ascending in an unbroken line to the edge of the topmost wall, and accommodating ninety-three thousand people -- then the size colossal breaks upon you! It is well called the Colosseum. The arena in which the gladiators fought, and in which thousands of Christians were killed by sword and wild beast, is nearly one hundred yards long and sixty wide. The wall that surrounded it, from the top of which the seats of the spectators began, is about twenty-five feet in height. As I stood there I conjured up the scenes of agony that had transpired there for centuries. I thought of the crushing sense of loneliness and helplessness that swept down upon the heart of the doomed Christian when led into this arena to die. He heard the dull roar of lion or tiger behind yonder iron-barred cell; in another moment he saw the animal leaping toward him; he glanced up and saw one hundred thousand faces looking down upon him, and their countenances were harder and more pitiless than the face of the animal rushing upon him. One moment to look upward, one cry to the Christ who was also murdered, and then the tearing of flesh, the cracking of bone, the swimming of the vast audience before the dying eyes, and t hen a mutilated, unconscious body upon the sand, with white face upturned to the sky. This is only the beginning. New victims are brought in singly, in groups, and as families. The spectacle must last for hours and when the odor of shed blood becomes offensive to the royal and patrician smell, then fountains of perfumery cast their jets high in the air. There beneath us is left the remains of the ingenious piece of mechanism. What kind of people were these Romans! On the right hand close to the arena is the place where the Emperor sat; just opposite to him were ranged the vestal virgins; in the topmost gallery sat the people. And yet when the gladiator looked to see if he should spare the man at his feet, the emperor and the people and the vestal virgins would unitedly give the signal to kill! High and low, church and world, agreeing on murder.
Again and again, as I have journeyed over this land of Italy, I have asked myself the question, What is the cause of these naked fields, these half-cultivated lands, these mountains scraped bare, this pauperism and ignorance and error that abounds? Why is it that Italy, in many respects, does not measure up to her sister kingdoms? Standing in the Colosseum, part of the answer came to me. He who has not yet finished paying the Jew for what he did to his Son, is still settling an awful account against this land for the precious Christian blood that was shed on this spot before me for three hundred years! Verily Rome, whether pagan or Catholic, is, as God says about it, "drunk with the blood of the martyrs." My next visit was to the Roman Forum. This famous spot is being brought more and more to light. The place where Caesar walked, and Cicero delivered his masterly orations; where the voice of Cato was heard, saying Carthage must be destroyed; and where Mark Antony made the great, and for all I know the only speech of his life, was covered up all through the Middle Ages with the rubbish that had accumulated for centuries. The ancient pavement lay forty feet beneath the present city level. A few columns protruding through the ground located the place. In this century the work of excavation began, and the result is now before the traveler, in a deep trench an hundred yards wide and two or three hundred long, which has brought to light arches of temples, bases of columns, foundations of palaces and basilicas, and a quantity of statuary. It certainly stirs the blood of the professional speaker to see the remains of the rostrum where Cicero stood and swept his audience before him, and where the mighty question s of the world at that day were debated and settled. Who also would not look most earnestly at a point just opposite, where Antony (or Shakespeare) made that celebrated speech over the dead body of Caesar? On the spot where the body was burned, afterward a temple to Julius Caesar was erected. The foundations now seen in a half-dozen hillocks, is all that is left of the edifice. Very near to the latter-named building are the ruins of the Temple of Vesta. In the floor is the spot where the perpetual fire was kept burning. It was all out when I saw it, and the virgins and their successors gone. They that turn the thumb downward, crying out "Habet" to the gladiatorial executioner, must pass away, and their fires be put out in darkness. The palaces of the Caesars profoundly interested me. They both encircle and crown the Palatine Hill. This hill, one hundred and sixty feet above the level of the Tiber, is loftier and broader than I had imagined. The palaces, or rather ruins of the palaces, of Caligula, Tiberius, and Augustus, are built closely against the northern side of the hill, and may have projected above the summit. The Palatine was thus inlaid or fronted with marble palaces. On the top, which is several hundred yards in diameter, I find gardens, ruins, and broken statuary. On the eastern edge of the summit is the palace of Julius Caesar, which evidently was one of the costliest and handsomest of all. I walked through his dining hall, music-hall, and Nympheum, and moralized to the extent of a volume. He certainly felt the Capuan touch of wealth. The poor and hardy young warrior fought valiantly in the midst of a thousand fierce-eyed Gauls, but after luxuriating in Egypt and on the Palatine, a flabbiness came to the muscle, a weakness to the nerve, and he went down almost without a struggle deserving of the name before the wild, excited blows of a few Roman civilians.
Coming to the northern edge of the Palatine and looking northeast a quarter of a mile we see the tower of the Golden House of Nero, where he surveyed his burning capital to the sound of his violin. The tower is left, but the fiddle and the fiddler are gone. Directly north of where we stand, and only four hundred yards away, is the Capitoline Hill, famous for the Senate House of ancient Rome. Just at our feet, and lying between the Palatine and Capitoline Hills, is the Roman Forum. In the afternoon I drove out on the Appian Way, through the gate and beyond the old walls of Rome. The remains of that famous road are plainly to be seen. The interest born in my heart for this ancient national thoroughfare arose from a single verse in the scripture, in which we are informed that Paul came along this road as a prisoner to Rome. One or two miles from the city, where the driver turned into a little inn hard by to water and rest his horse, I strolled down the road, and seating myself on one of the old Appian blocks of stone, read the latter part of the twenty-eighth chapter of Acts. I could see the gate and wall distinctly, and the Appian Way leading in a direct course toward them and disappearing in the city; and then imagination caused Paul and his companions and guard to pass by me That he had been discouraged I know from the fact that when a few Roman brethren met him farther away down the road, it is said, "he thanked God and took courage." That he was resolute appears in one of hi s letters: "I must see Rome also." From this very point I doubt not his eyes saw the gate and distant city. What must have been his thoughts, and what a spectacle to heaven and earth and hell he presented. I see him nearing the city, and now he is at the gate, it opens, he passes in and is lost to view. One man gone to confront a million men!
What cannot and will not a man do who loves Christ as Paul did, and which is full of the Holy Ghost? Many great men had gone through that gate -- Caesar, Pompey, Marius, Sylla, Antony, and Octavius -- and yet never before or since has a greater man passed through that archway than a man named Paul, who, in the year (33, entered footsore and weary, unknown and a prisoner into the city that was then the recognized ruler of the world. There was no revolution. Take courage, my brother. He did not win Caesar, but he gained Caesar’s household. He did all, and accomplished what God desired him to do. "My bonds are manifest in the palace and in all other places." Who can tell how much is behind these words? Anyhow, he wrote to Timothy that he had "finished his course."
Modern Rome failed to impress me agreeably. It is a feeble imitation of Paris. The sight really jarred upon me as does the spectacle of a jocular preacher, or an aged person indulging in the pranks of a child. The minister should always be the recognized man of God; let a sweet dignity clothe the old; and let Rome be marked by solidity and grandeur of structure rather than by flashiness of shop. The long centuries and the grand events back of her seem to demand this. As a specimen of the mixing up of the ages, the conglomeration of architecture and the triumph of the new over the old, I saw one day a modern house perched on the top of a tomb built long before the dark ages. The mausoleum in this instance was a massive wall, circular in shape, and twenty or thirty feet in height. The nineteenth century contribution to its top by no means added to the appearance of the sepulchre, but suffered itself by a damaging contrast. The foundation was grander than the superstructure. So great and strong are these sepulchres that more than once they have been used for military purposes. The Castle of Angelo is well known to be the tomb of one of the kings, transformed into a fortress. Of course I visited St. Peter’s. Fortunately I was not overwhelmed with awe, nor struck dumb with astonishment. The view from the dome of the ancient city at my feet, the yellow Tiber flowing past, and the blue Mediterranean in the distance were scenes far more congenial to my feelings. The Vatican, the palace of the Pope, has something over eleven thousand rooms; and yet the prelate is not happy. He seems to want more space. He claims to be the Vicar of Christ on earth.
What a startling difference between the two is suggested by the sight of the Vatican. The one said long ago: "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." The man who claims to be His representative in the world has a palace that is a vast fortune in itself, whose long halls are filled with statuary, whose walls are lined with paintings, whose rooms cannot be counted, and whose doors are carefully guarded day and night by gorgeously uniformed companies of soldiers.
I saw a cardinal richly robed and in his carriage with liveried coachman and footman on his way to call on the Pope. Again by very contrast I saw the Man of Galilee on foot amid the hills of Judea and traversing the long, hot roads of Samaria.
I have no heart to write of the things seen and heard in Ecclesiastical Rome. This is the grand gathering place of relics and traditions. Bones and falsehoods abound. This is one place where the ear gets heartily weaned of hearing the word saint. The dead saints are here in force.
They line the galleries, look down on you from the top of buildings, stare at you out of canvass, and pose rigidly before you in marble. They settle like a cloud between the mind and heaven. They come as a vail between the soul and Christ. Intended by Catholic invention to be an assistance, they have burdened the religious soul unnecessarily, and robbed Christ of His glory as Mediator and Intercessor. Many of them died in profound ignorance that they were saints. Are not acquainted with the fact yet, and, what is more, will never find it out. The impression that the traveler gathers from statue, painting, book, and lip, and carries away with him from churchly Rome is that St. Peter is undoubtedly the greatest being in heaven and eternity. It is no extravagant speech to say that the Son of God Himself is overshadowed in Rome by him. From the statue whose foot is being worn away by repeated kissings, to the vast building that bears his name and from the many paintings where the figure of the apostle is central and commanding, to the glances and prayers that are being constantly directed to him the fact is painfully manifest that Peter is again thrust in between the Savior and His divine work and glory. No one can look at the paintings that contain the figures of our Lord and Peter without seeing to what great advantage the apostle is made to appear. The glorious manhood of the Lord Jesus never appears, but he is invariably drawn with drooping figure and lifeless or melancholy face while Peter stands out from every work of art an embodiment of manliness, courage, and noble triumph. Even in the famous picture of "The Judgment," by Angelo, and where you would expect the Savior to be the most prominent figure, behold! St. Peter is there again the main man and actually seems to be directing and controlling the tremendous events of the day.
What a holy sorrow would fill him in heaven, if he knew of these Romish follies committed in his name. The real Peter who in humility was crucified head downward, by his own request, would be the first to protest against this unmerited, anti-scriptural, and sinful exaltation of himself in the church. At 9 o’clock at night, while reading and meditating in my room, a great desire to visit the Colosseum by night came over me, Taking a cab, I drove to the ruin, and leaving the vehicle and driver on the road, I entered the dark and shadowy building alone and walked to the center of the arena. I had not the moonlight to illumine and glorify the place, but the somber night to deepen its solemnity. The sky was studded with stars. One beautiful planet hung tremblingly upon the broken edge of the southern wall. At one moment the place would be as silent as the grave; in the next it would be alive with echoes. The Colosseum sits alone in a valley between the Esqueline and Coelian Hills, and the sounds from distant streets of horses’ hoof and human voice came through the many openings of the walls and produced a hundred rattling echoes among the walls around and in the vaults below. It would have seemed to the superstitious that the multitudes who had gathered here in the past centuries were assembling once more. Again I conjured up the scenes of the dark past; again I saw the hundred thousand faces looking down into the arena; I saw the helpless Christian victim; I saw and heard the spring and roar of the wild beast; I saw the waving sword of the gladiator about to be sheathed in the heart of a dying saint; and then those sudden echoes that filled the building! was it the voices of an invisible audience in the seats above me in the dark, crying out "Habet!"
I left the building with a great awe upon me, and with a realization of those days of trial and horror to the church, that I never could have had from any amount of reading in my quiet study in New Orleans.
I returned to the hotel by way of the Forum. I looked across the empty place toward the palaces of the Caesars that skirt the edge of the Palatine Hill in that direction. A dozen street lamps have been stationed at regular distances around the side of this hill in front of the ruins. For what purpose I do not know, for that part of the city is completely deserted. But the shining of these lamps upon and through the doors and broken walls of the palatial ruins produced the strangest effect. It seemed as if the palaces were full of light; as if their old-time masters had returned and were holding high revel in their courts, after an absence of two thousand years. And so, like Nehemiah, "I went up in the night and viewed the wall, and turned back, and entered by the gate of the valley, and so returned; and the rulers knew not whither I went or what I did."
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