or can, be more attached to Harrow than I have always been, and with reason;-a part of the time passed there was the happiest of my life; and my preceptor, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Drury, was the best and worthiest friend I ever possessed, whose warnings I have remembered but too well, though too late, when I have erred, and whose counsels I have but followed when I have done well or wisely. If ever this imperfect record of my feelings towards him should reach his eyes, let it remind him of one who never thinks of him but with gratitude and veneration-of one who would gladly boast of having been his pupil, if, by more closely following his injunctions, he could reflect any honour upon his instructor. STANZA LXXIX. The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; For a comment on this and the two following stanzas, the reader may consult "Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold," p. 46. STANZA LXXXII. The trebly hundred triumphs! Orosius gives 320 for the number of triumphs. He is followed by Panvinius; and Panvinius by Mr. Gibbon and the modern writers. STANZA LXXXIII. Oh thou, whose chariot roll'd on Fortune's wheel, &c. Certainly, were it not for these two traits in the life of Sylla, alluded to in the stanza, we should regard him as a monster unredeemed by any admirable quality. The atonement of his voluntary resignation of empire may perhaps be accepted by us, as it seems to have satisfied the Romans, who if they had not respected must have destroyed him. There could be no mean, no division of opinion; they must have all thought, like Eucrates, that what had appeared ambition was a love of glory, and that what had been mistaken for pride was a real grandeur of soul.* STANZA LXXXVI. And laid him with the earth's preceding clay. On the 3d of September Cromwell gained the victory of Dunbar; a year afterwards he obtained "his crowning mercy" of Worcester: and a few years after, on the same day, which he had ever esteemed the most fortunate for him, died. "Seigneur, vous changez toutes mes idées de la façon dont je vous vois agir. Je croyois que vous aviez de l'ambition, mais aucune amour pour la gloire: je voyois bien que votre âme étc it haute : mais je ne soupçonnois pas qu'elle fût grande."-Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate. STANZA LXXXVII. And thou, dread statue! yet existent in The austerest form of naked majesty, The projected division of the Spada Pompey has already been recorded by the historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Mr. Gibbon found it in the memorials of Flaminius Vacca ;* and it may be added to his mention of it, that Pope Julius III. gave the contending owners five hundred crowns for the statue; and presented it to Cardinal Capo di Ferro, who had prevented the judgment of Solomon from being executed upon the image. In a more civilised age this statue was exposed to an actual operation for the French, who acted the Brutus of Voltaire in the Coliseum, resolved that their Cæsar should fall at the base of that Pompey, which was supposed to have been sprinkled with the blood of the original dictator. The nine-foot hero was therefore removed to the arena of the amphitheatre, and, to facilitate its transport, suffered the temporary amputation of its right arm. The republican tragedians had to plead that the arm was a restoration: but their accusers do not believe that the integrity of the statue would have protected it. The love of finding every coincidence has discovered the true Cæsarian ichor in a stain near the right knee; but colder criticism has rejected not only the blood, but the portrait, and assigned the globe of power rather to the first of the emperors than to the last of the republican masters of Rome. Winkelmannf is loth to allow an heroic statue of a Roman citizen, but the Grimani Agrippa, a contemporary almost, is heroic; and naked Roman figures were only very rare, not absolutely forbidden. The face accords much better with the "hominem integrum et castum et gravem," than with any of the busts of Augustus, and is too stern for him who was beautiful, says Suetonius, at all periods of his life. The pretended likeness to Alexander the Great cannot be discerned, but the traits resemble the medal of Pompey. The objectionable globe may not have been an ill applied flattery to him who found Asia Minor the boundary, and left it the centre of the Roman empire. It seems that Winkelmann has made a mistake in thinking that no proof of the identity of this statue with that which received the bloody sacrifice can be derived from the spot where it was discovered. Flaminius Vacca says sotto una cantina, and this cantina is known to have been in the Vicolo de' Leutari, near the Cancellaria; a position corresponding exactly to that of the Janus before the basilica of Pompey's theatre, to which Augustus transferred the statue after the curia was either burnt or taken down. Part of the Pompeian shade,** the por * Memorie, num. Ivii. pag. 9, ap. Montfaucon, Diarium Italicum. † Storia delle Arti, &c. lib. ix. cap. li pag. 321, 322, tom. ii. Cicer. Epist. ad Atticum, xi. 6. Published by Causeus in his Museum Romanum. Storia delle Arti, &c. lib. ix. cap. i. pag. 321, 322, tom. ii. ¶ Sueton. in vit. Augusti cap. 31, and in vit, C. J. Cæsar, cap. 83. Appian says it was burnt down. See a note of Pitiscus to Suetonius, pag. 224. **"Tu modo Pompeia lenta spatiare sub umbra," Ovid. De Arte Amandi. tico, existed in the beginning of the XVth century, and the atrium was still called Satrum. So says Blondus.* At all events, so imposing is the stern majesty of the statue, and so memorable is the story, that the play of the imagination leaves no room for the exercise of the judgment, and the fiction, if a fiction it is, operates on the spectator with an effect not less powerful than truth. STANZA LXXXVIII. And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome! Ancient Rome, like modern Sienna, abounded most probably with images of the foster-mother of her founder; but there were two she-wolves of whom history makes particular mention. One of these, of brass in ancient work, was seen by Dionysiust at the temple of Romulus, under the Palatine, and is universally believed to be that mentioned by the Latin historian, as having been made from the money collected by a fine on usurers, and as standing under the Ruminal fig-tree. The other was that which Cicero has celebrated both in prose and verse, and which the historian Dion also records as having suffered the same accident as is alluded to by the orator.]] The question agitated by the antiquaries is, whether the wolf now in the Conservator's Palace is that of Livy and Dionysius, or that of Cicero, or whether it is neither one nor the other. The earlier writers differ as much *Roma Instaurata, lib, ii. fo. 31. * Χάλκεα ποιήματα παλαιᾶς ἐργασίας. Antiq. Rom. lib. 1. "Ad ficum Ruminalem simulacra infantium conditorum urbis sub uberibus lupa posuerunt." Liv. Hist. lib. x. cap. Ixix. This was in the year U. C. 455, or 457. §"Tum statua Nattæ, tum simulacra Deorum, Romulusque et Remus cum altrice bellua vi fulminus icti conciderunt." De Divinat, ii. 20. "Tactus est ille etiam qui hanc urbem condidit Romulus, quem inauratum in Capitolio parvum atque lactantem, uberibus lupinis inhiantem fuisse meministis." In Catilin. iii. 8. "Hic silvestris erat Romani nominis altrix Quæ tum cum pueris flammato fulminis ictu De Consulatu, lib, ii, (lib. i. de Divinat, cap, ii.) Η Εν γὰρ τῷ Καπητωλίῳ ἀνδριάντες τε πολλοὶ ὑπὸ κεραυνῶν συνεχωνεύ θησαν, καὶ ἀγάλματα ἄλλα τε, καὶ Διὸς ἐπὶ κίονος ἱδρύμενον, εἰκών τε τις λυκαίνης σύν τε τῳ Ρώμῳ καὶ σὺν τῷ Ρωμύλῳ ἱδρνμενη ἕπεση. Dion. Hist. lib. xxxvii. pag. 37, edit. Rob. Steph. 1548. He goes on to mention that the letters of the columns on which the laws were written were liquefied and became duvdpá. All that the Romans did was to erect a large statue to Jupiter, looking towards the east: no mention is afterwards made of the wolf. This happened in A. U, C, 689, The Abate Fea, in noticing this passage of Dion (Storia delle Arti, &c. tom. i. pag. 202, note x.), says, Non ostante, aggiunge Dione, che fosse ben fermata (the wolf); by which it is clear the Abate translated the Xylandro-Leunclavian version, which puts quamvis stabilita for the original idovμɛvn, a word that does not mean ben fermata, but only raised, as may be distinctly seen from another passage of the same Dion: Ἠβουλήθη μὲν οὖν ὁ Αγρίππας καὶ τὸν Αὔγουστον ἐνταῦθα ἱδρύσαι. Hist. lib. Ivi. Dion says that Agrippa "wished to raise a statue of Augustus in the Pantheon." as the moderns: Lucius Faunus* says, that it is the one alluded to by both, which is impossible, and also by Virgil, which may be. Fulvius Ursinust calls it the wolf of Dionysius, and Marlianus talks of it as the one mentioned by Cicero. To him Rycquius tremblingly assents. Nardini is inclined to suppose it may be one of the many wolves preserved in ancient Rome; but of the two rather bends to the Ciceronian statue.|| Montfaucon¶ mentions it as a point without doubt. Of the latter writers the decisive Winkelmann** proclaims it as having been found at the church of Saint Theodore, where, or near where, was the temple of Romulus, and consequently makes it the wolf of Dionysius. His authority is Lucius Faunus, who, however, only says that it was placed, not found, at the Ficus Ruminalis, by the Comitium, by which he does not seem to allude to the church of St. Theodore. Rycquius was the first to make the mistake, and Winkelmann followed Rycquius. Flaminius Vacca tells quite a different story, and says he had heard the wolf with the twins was found†† near the arch of Septimius Severus. The commentator on Winkelmann is of the same opinion with that learned person, and is incensed at Nardini for not having remarked that Cicero, in speaking of the wolf struck with lightning in the Capitol, makes use of the past tense. But, with the Abate's leave, Nardini does not positively assert the statue to be that mentioned by Cicero, and, if he had, the assumption would not perhaps have been so exceedingly indiscreet. The Abate himself is obliged to own that there are marks very like the scathing of lightning in the hinder legs of the present wolf; and, to get rid of this, adds, that the wolf seen by Dionysius might have been also struck by lightning, or otherwise injured. Let us examine the subject by a reference to the words of Cicero. The * "In eadem porticu ænea lupa, cujus uberibus Romulus ac Remus lactantes inhiant, conspicitur: de hac Cicero et Virgilius semper intellexere. Livius hoc signum ab Ædilibus ex pecuniis quibus mulctati essent fœneratores, positum innuit. Antea in Comitiis ad Ficum Ruminalem, quo loco pueri fuerant expositi locatum pro certo est." Luc. Fauni de Antiq. Urb. Rom lib. ii. cap. vii, ap. Sallengre, tom. i. p. 217. In his XVIIth chapter he repeats that the statues were there, but not that they were found there. ↑ Ap. Nardini. Roma Vetus, lib. v. cap. iv. Marliani Urb, Rom. Topograph, lib. ii. cap. ix. He mentions another wolf and twins in the Vatican, lib. V. cap. xxi. § "Non desunt qui hanc ipsam esse putent, quam adpinximus, quæ e comitio in Basilicam Lateranam, cum nonnullis aliis antiquitatum reliquiis, atque hinc in Capitolium postea relata sit, quamvis Marlianus antiquam Capitolinam esse maluit a Tullio descriptam, cui ut in re nimis dubia, trepide adsentimur," Just. Rycquii de Capit. Roman. Comm. cap. xxiv. pag. 250, edit. Lugd. Bat. 1696. || Nardini, Roma Vetus, lib. v. cap. iv. ¶ "Lupa hodieque in capitolinis prostat ædibus, cum vestigio fulminis quo ictam narrat Cicero." Diarium Italic. tom, i. p. 174. ** Storia delle Arti, &c. lib. iii. cap. iii. § ii. note 10. Winkelmann has made a strange blunder in the note, by saying the Ciceronian wolf was not in the Capitol, and that Dion was wrong in saying so. "Intesi dire, che l'Ercolo di bronzo, che oggi si trova nella sala di Campidoglio, fu trovato nel foro Romano appresso l'arco di Settimio; e vi fu trovata anche la lupa di bronzo che allata Romolo e Remo, e sta nella Loggia de Conservatori." Flam. Vacca, Memorie, num. iii, pag. 1, ap. Montfaucon, Diar. Ital. tom. i. orator in two places seems to particularise the Romulus and the Remus, especially the first, which his audience remembered to have been in the Capitol, as being struck with lightning. In his verses he records that the twins and wolf both fell, and that the latter left behind the marks of her feet. Cicero does not say that the wolf was consumed: and Dion only mentions that it fell down, without alluding, as the Abate has made him, to the force of the blow, or the firmness with which it had been fixed. The whole strength, therefore, of the Abate's argument hangs upon the past tense; which, however, may be somewhat diminished by remarking that the phrase only shows that the statue was not then standing in its former position. Winkelmann has observed, that the present twins are modern; and it is equally clear that there are marks of gilding on the wolf, which might therefore be supposed to make part of the ancient group. It is known that the sacred images of the Capitol were not destroyed when injured by time or accident, but were put into certain underground depositories, called favissa. It may be thought possible that the wolf had been so deposited, and had been replaced in some conspicuous situation when the Capitol was rebuilt by Vespasian. Rycquius, without mentioning his authority, tells that it was transferred from the Comitium to the Lateran, and thence brought to the Capitol. If it was found near the arch of Severus, it may have been one of the images which Orosiust says was thrown down in the Forum by lightning when Alaric took the city. That it is of very high antiquity the workmanship is a decisive proof; and that circumstance induced Winkelmann to believe it the wolf of Dionysius. The Capitoline wolf, however, may have been of the same early date as that at the temple of Romulus. Lactantius asserts that in his time the Romans worshipped a wolf; and it is known that the Lupercalia held out to a very late period after every other observance of the ancient superstition had totally expired. This may account for the preservation of the ancient image longer than the other early symbols of Paganism. It may be permitted, however, to remark that the wolf was a Roman symbol, but that the worship of that symbol is an inference drawn by the zeal of Lactantius. The early Christian writers are not to be trusted in the charges which they make against the Pagans. Eusebius accused the Romans to their faces of worshipping Simon Magus, and raising a statue to him in the island of the Tiber. The Romans had probably never heard of Luc, Faun. ibid. ↑ See no'e to Stanza LXXX, in Historical Illustrations, "Romuli nutrix Lupa honoribus est affecta divinis, et ferrem, si animal tpsum fuisset, cujus figuram gerit." Lactant. de Falsa Religione, Lib. i, cap. 20, pag. 101. edit. varior. 1660; that is to say, he would rather adore a wolf than a prostitute. His commentator has observed that the opinion of Livy concerning Laurentia being figured in this wolf was not universal. Strabo thought so. Rycquius is wrong in saying that Lactantius mentions the wolf was in the Capitol. To A. D. 496. Quis credere possit, says Baronius, [Ann. Eccles, tom. viii. p. 602, in an. 496.] "viguisse adhuc Romæ ad Gelasii tempora, quæ fuere ante exordia urbis allata in Italiam Lupercalia ?” Gelasius wrote a letter which occupies four folio pages to Andromachus, the senator, and others, to show that the rites should be given up. 1 |