Their luxury and their manners have been the subject of minute and laborious disquisition; but as such inquiries would divert me too long from the design of the present work, I shall produce an authentic state of Rome and its inhabitants, which is more peculiarly applicable to the period of the Gothic invasion. Ammianus Marcellinus, who prudently chose the capital of the empire as the residence the best adapted to the historian of his own times, has mixed with the narrative of public events a lively representation of the scenes with which he was familiarly conversant. The judicious reader will not always approve of the asperity of censure, the choice of circumstances or the style of expression ; he will perhaps detect the latent prejudices and personal resentments which soured the temper of Ammianus himself; but he will surely observe, with philosophic curiosity, the interesting and original picture of the manners of Rome. * "The greatness of Rome (such is the language of the historian) was founded on the rare, and almost incredible alliance, of virtue and of fortune. The long period of her infancy was employed in a laborious struggle against the tribes of Italy, the neighbours and enemies of the rising city. In the strength and ardour of youth, she sustained the storms of war; carried her victorious arms beyond the seas and the mountains; and brought home triumphant laurels from every country of the globe. At length, verging towards old age, and sometimes conquering by the terror only of her name, she sought the blessings of ease and tranquillity. The VENERABLE CITY which had trampled on the necks of the fiercest nations, and established a system of laws, the perpetual guardians of justice and freedom, was content, like a wise and wealthy parent, to devolve on the Cæsars, her favourite sons, the care of governing her ample patrimony.† which serve, however, as collateral proofs.-ED.] *It is incumbent on me to explain the liberties which I have taken with the text of Ammianus. 1. I have melted down into one piece the sixth chapter of the fourteenth, and the fourth of the twenty-eighth book. 2. I have given order and connection to the confused mass of materials. 3. I have softened some extravagant hyperboles, and pared away some superfluities of the original. 4. I have developed some observations which were insinuated rather than expressed. With these allowances, my version will be found not literal indeed, but faithful and exact. + Claudian, who seems to have read the history of Ammianus, speaks of this great revolution in a much less courtly style : A.D. 498.] BY AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS. 407 A secure and profound peace, such as had been once enjoyed in the reign of Numa, succeeded to the tumults of a republic; while Rome was still adored as the queen of the earth; and the subject nations still reverenced the name of the people and the majesty of the senate. But this native splendour (continues Ammianus) is degraded and sullied by the conduct of some nobles; who, unmindful of their own dignity and that of their country, assume an unbounded license of vice and folly. They contend with each other in the empty vanity of titles and surnames; and curiously select or invent the most lofty and sonorous appellations, Reburrus, or Fabunius, Pagonius, or Tarrasius,* which may impress the ears of the vulgar with astonishment and respect. From a vain ambition of perpetuating their memory, they affect to multiply their likeness in statues of bronze and marble; nor are they satisfied, unless those statues are covered with plates of gold: an honourable distinction, first granted to Acilius the consul, after he had subdued by his arms and counsels the power of king Antiochus. The osten tation of displaying, of magnifying, perhaps, the rent-roll of the estates which they possess in all the provinces, from the rising to the setting sun, provokes the just resentment of every man, who recollects that their poor and invincible ancestors were not distinguished from the meanest of the soldiers by the delicacy of their food, or the splendour of their apparel. But the modern nobles measure their rank and consequence according to the loftiness of their chariots,† and the weighty magnificence of their dress. Their long Postquam jura ferox in se communia Cæsar Transtulit; et lapsi mores; desuetaque priscis Artibus, in gremium pacis servile recessi. De Bell. Gildonico, p. 49. *The minute diligence of antiquarians has not been able to verify these extraordinary names. I am of opinion that they were invented by the historian himself, who was afraid of any personal satire or application. It is certain, however, that the simple denominations of the Romans were gradually lengthened to the number of four, five, or even seven, pompous surnames; as for instance, Marcus Mæcius Mæmmius Furius Balburius Cæcilianus Placidus. See Noris, Cenotaph. Pisan. Dissert. 4. p. 438. + The carruca, or coaches of the Romans, were often of solid silver, curiously carved and engraved; and the trappings of the mules or horses were embossed with gold. This magnificence continued from the reign of Nero to that of Honorius; and the Appian way was covered with the splendid equipages of the nobles, who came robes of silk and purple float in the wind; and as they are agitated by art or accident, they occasionally discover the under garments, the rich tunics, embroidered with the figures of various animals.* Followed by a train of fifty servants, and tearing up the pavement, they move along the streets with the same impetuous speed as if they travelled with post-horses; and the example of the senators is boldly imitated by the matrons and ladies, whose covered carriages are continually driving round the immense space of the city and suburbs. Whenever these persons of high distinction condescend to visit the public baths, they assume, on their entrance, a tone of loud and insolent command, and appropriate to their own use the conveniences which were designed for the Roman people. If, in these places of mixed and general resort, they meet any of the infamous ministers of their pleasures, they express their affection by a tender embrace; while they proudly decline the salutations of their fellow-citizens, who are not permitted to aspire above the honour of kissing their hands or their knees. As soon as they have indulged themselves in the refreshment of the bath, they resume their rings and the other ensigns of their dignity; select from their private wardrobe of the finest linen, such as might suffice for a dozen persons, the garments the most agreeable to their fancy, and maintain till their departure the same haughty demeanour; which perhaps might have been excused in the great Marcellus, after the conquest of Syracuse. Sometimes, indeed, these heroes undertake more arduous achievements; they visit their estates in Italy, and procure themselves, by the toil of servile hands, the amusements of the chase.† If at any time, but more especially on a hot day, they have courage to sail, out to meet St. Melania, when she returned to Rome six years before the Gothic siege. (Seneca, epist. 87, Plin. Hist. Nat. 33, 49. Paulin. Nolan. apud Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 397, No. 5.) Yet pomp is well exchanged for convenience; and a plain modern coach that is hung upon springs, is much preferable to the silver or gold carts of antiquity, which rolled on the axle-tree, and were exposed, for the most part, to the inclemency of the weather. * In a homily of Asterius, bishop of Amasia, M. de Valois has discovered (ad Ammian. 14, 6), that this was a new fashion; that bears, wolves, lions, and tigers, woods, hunting matches, &c. were represented in embroidery; and that the more pious coxcombs substituted the figure or legend of some favourite saint. See Pliny's Epistles, 1, 6. Three large wild boars were allured and taken in the toils, without interrupting A.D. 408.] BY AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS. 4.09 in their painted galleys, from the Lucrine lake,* to their elegant villas on the seacoast of Puteoli and Cayeta,† they compare their own expeditions to the marches of Cæsar and Alexander. Yet should a fly presume to settle on the silken folds of their gilded umbrellas; should a sunbeam penetrate through some unguarded and imperceptible chink, they deplore their intolerable hardships, and lament in affected language, that they were not born in the land of the Cimmerians, the regions of eternal darkness. In these journeys the studies of the philosophic sportsman. * The change from the inauspicious word Avernus, which stands in the text, is immaterial. The two lakes, Avernus and Lucrinus, communicated with each other, and were fashioned by the stupendous moles of Agrippa into the Julian port, which opened through a narrow entrance into the gulf of Puteoli. Virgil, who resided on the spot, has described (Georgic 2, 161) this work at the moment of its execution; and his commentators, especially Catrou, have derived much light from Strabo, Suetonius, and Dion. Earthquakes and volcanoes have changed the face of the country, and turned the Lucrine lake, since the year 1538, into the Monte Nuovo. See Camillo Pellegrino, Discorsi della Campania Felice, p. 239, 244, &c. Antonii Sanfelicii Campania, p. 13, 88. The regna Cumana et Puteolana; loca cæteroqui valde expetenda, interpellantium autem multitudine pone fugienda. Cicero ad Attic. 16, 17. [Cuma was one of the most ancient and most remarkable cities in Italy. Its origin was involved in such obscurity, that while some, from the mere resemblance of name, make it a colony from the Eolian Cymæ, others assert it to have been founded 1030 years B.C., from Chalcis in Euboea (Heeren's Manual, p. 136), and others say that it existed two hundred years before any Greeks arrived in that region. (Niebuhr's Lectures, vol. i, p. 150.) The name and situation of Cuma make it probable that it was an early abode of the Celts, at the meeting of waters, where the two lakes, Avernus and Lucrinus, united with the bay, and constituted what Dion Cassius (lib. 48, p. 386) called " a triple sea. This became in later times the celebrated harbour of Misenum, and near it the Roman nobles raised their magnificent villas of Baiæ. Like the Lucrine lake, their very sites are now hidden beneath earthquake and volcanic desolation. The sulphureous exhalations, which gave to Lake Avernus its fearful character, invested the neighbourhood with superstitious terrors, and there was the fabled entrance to Hades. Ignorant mariners of Phoenicia and Ionia exaggerated these horrors, and from similarity of name and circumstances confounded the scene of them with the Cimmerium of the Euxine. Homer thus made a part of the coast of Italy the land of the Cimmerioi, and this was imitated by Virgil.-ED.] The proverbial expression of Cimmerian darkness was originally borrowed from the description of Homer (in the eleventh book of the Odyssey), which he applies to a remote and fabulous country on the shores of the ocean. (See Erasmi Adagia, in his works, tom. ii, p. 593, the Leyden edition.) ["Cimme into the country,* the whole body of the household marches with their master. In the same manner as the cavalry and infantry, the heavy and the light-armed troops, the rian darkness" had neither so" fabulous a country" nor so uncertain a meaning. The obscurity in which the expression was involved, arose from the clouds of erudition which made the inventions of poets appear to be realities of geography, and magnified fables of primeval ignorance into historical facts. The passage in the Erasmi Adagia. to which we are referred for instruction, leaves us more in the dark than we were at first. These erroneous views have been adverted to before. (See vol. i, p. 473.) Our attention is here directed to their origin. How imperfectly the early Greeks were acquainted with the Euxine Sea is evinced in all that has been sung respecting the Argonauts, in whose time the mouths of the Danube were the farthest extremity of the ocean, ὕπατον κέρας Ωκεανδιο. When somne bold adventurers afterwards reached the strait that connects the Palus Mæotis with that sea, they found there a Celtic settlement named from the Kymmer, or meeting of waters. (Eschylus, Prom. Vinct. 754-759, Callim. ad Dian. 254.) Surrounding forests, thick mists, and wintry sleet, filled them with horrid ideas, and they carried back to their countrymen marvellous accounts of a Cimmerian people, on whom the sun never shone. With these Homer confounded, as seen in the last note, the Cumani of Italy; and succeeding poets and tragedians copied from him. Historians and geographers connected both with the Kimme rioi of Herodotus, and then with the Cimbri of the northern Chersonesus. Philosophers like Cicero (Acad. Quæst. 4, 19) adorned their pages by allusions to them. Josephus made them all descend from the Gomer of Genesis; fathers of the church followed him, and modern writers have found the name still preserved by the Cymri of Wales. Of this chain Strabo is the main link, and is the great authority on whom Erasmus relies. While Strabo rejects as fallacious the statements of others (lib. 7, p. 449), he supplies in their place (lib. 1, p. 9. 31; lib. 3, p. 200; lib. 5, p. 351 ; lib. 7, p. 450, &c.) a mass of unsubstantial deductions from poets, and vague conjectures of his own, so irreconcilable even with each other, that his commentator Casaubon, when comparing two of them, says, "qui locus huic tam contrarius est quam aqua igni." Plutarch confesses (in Vit. Marii. c. 11) that nothing that had been said on the subject could be depended upon; and Pliny, treating of the north of Germany, with which Strabo had been dealing so strangely, despaired of giving any clear account. (Hist. Nat. lib. 4, c. 12, 13.) The only solution of the difficulty is that proposed in the above cited note, of distinguishing the geographical from the histor rical Cimmerioi, and regarding the latter not as a permanent name of a people, but as the occasional designation of a league. The "Cimmeriæ tenebræ" will then appear to be only a proverbial exaggeration of the gloomy atmosphere found by the early Greeks in the region where the Palus Mæotis joins the Euxine.-ED.] *We may learn from Seneca (epist. 123) three curious circumstances relative to the journeys of the Romans. 1. They were pre |