I shall not soon forget my visit to this romantic spot, and the delightful day I spent there with a congenial friend. We left Rome in an open one-horse carriage early one morning about the end of April. Passing out at the Porta del Popolo, we quickly traversed the squalid suburb and crossed the Ponte Molle—the famous old Milvian Bridge. We proceeded as far as the Via Cassia on the old Flaminian Way. At the junction of these roads the villa and gardens of Ovid were situated; but their site is now occupied by a humble osteria or wayside tavern. The road passes over an undulating country entirely uncultivated, diversified here and there with copses and thickets of wild figs intermixed with hawthorn, rose-bushes, and broom. A few ilexes and stone-pines arched their evergreen foliage over the road; and the succulent milky stems of the wild fig-trees were covered with the small green fruit, while the downy leaves were just beginning to peep from their sheaths. It was one of those quiet gray days that give a mystic tone to a landscape. The cloudy sky was in harmony with the dim Campagna, that looked under the sunless smoky light unutterably sad and forlorn. Wreaths of mist lingered in the hollows like the shadowy forms of the past; the lark was silent in the sky; and on the desolate bluffs and headlands, where once stood populous cities, were a few hoary tombs whose very names had perished ages ago. But inexpressibly sad as the landscape looked it was relieved by the grand background of the Sabine range capped with snow. The village of La Storta, that flourished in the old posting days, had fallen into decay when the railway diverted the traffic from it; and its inn, with a rude model of St. Peter's carved in wood projecting above its door, was silent and deserted. Passing down a narrow glen, fringed with wood for three miles from this point, we came in sight of the village of Isola. Its situation is romantic, perched on the summit of a steep cliff, with deep richly-wooded ravines around it, and long swelling downs rising beyond. It is surrounded by two streams which unite and fall along with the Formello into the river called La Valca, which has been identified with the fatal Cremera that was dyed red with the blood of the three hundred Fabii.

The rock of Isola is most interesting to the geologist, consisting of large fragments of black pumice cemented together by volcanic ashes deposited under water. It is literally a huge heap of cinders thrown out by the rapidly intermittent action of some neighbouring volcano, probably the crater of Baccano, or that which is now filled with the blue waters of Lake Bracciano. The whole mass is very friable, and in every direction the soft rock is hollowed out into sepulchral caves. By many this isolated rock is considered the arx or citadel of Veii; but the existence of so many sepulchral caves in it is, as Mr. Dennis says, conclusive of the fact that it was the Necropolis of the ancient city, which must therefore, according to Etruscan and Roman usage regarding the interment of the dead, have been outside the walls. The tombs have all been rifled and destroyed, and many of the sepulchral caves have been turned to the basest uses for stalling goats and cattle. An air of profound melancholy breathes around the whole spot. It seems to be more connected with the dead than with the living world. And the hamlet which now occupies the commanding site is of the most wretched description. All its houses, which date from the fifteenth century, are ruinous, and are among the worst in Italy; and the baronial castle which crowns the highest point,—built nearly a thousand years ago, the scene of many a conflict between the Colonnas and the Orsinis, and captured on one occasion after a twelve days' siege by Caesar Borgia,—has been converted into a barn. The inhabitants of the village do not exceed a hundred in number, and present a haggard and sallow appearance—the effect of the dreadful malaria which haunts the spot. It is strange to contrast this blighted and fever-stricken aspect of the place with the description of Dionysius, who praised its air as in his time exceedingly pure and healthy, and its territory as smiling and fruitful. In the little square of the village are several fragments of marble and other relics of Roman domination; and the church, about four or five hundred years old, dedicated to St. Pancrazio, is in a state of great decay. The walls are damp and mouldy, and all the pictures and ornaments are of the rudest description, with the exception of a faded fresco of the coronation of the Virgin, which is a fair specimen of the art of the fifteenth century. The service of the church is supplied by some distant priest or friar in orders.

We left our conveyance in the piazza, and took our lunch in one of the houses. We brought our provisions with us from Rome, but we got a coarse but palatable wine from the people, and a rude but clean room in which to enjoy our repast. This inn—if it may be called, so—had at one time a very evil reputation. But nothing could be more simple-hearted than the landlord and his wife, with their group of timid children who clung to their mother's skirts in dread of the strangers. They told us that the poverty of the place was deplorable. Nearly all the people were laid down during the heats of summer with fever; and they were so poor that they could not afford to keep a doctor. Many deaths occurred, and the survivors, emaciated by the disease, were left to drag on a weary existence embittered by numerous privations. At a distance the village on its lofty rock, surrounded by its richly-wooded ravines, looked like a picture of Arcadia; but near at hand the sad reality dispelled the idyllic dream.

Taking with us from Isola a guide, originally a big burly man, but now a sad victim to malaria, we set out to visit the site of the ancient city and the few relics which survive. It takes about four hours to complete the circuit of the walls; but there are four objects of special interest, the Arx, the Columbarium, the Ponte Sodo, and the Painted Tomb, which may be visited in less than three. The extent of the city is surprising to those who have been in the habit of thinking that all the ancient towns in the neighbourhood of Rome were mere villages. Dionysius says that it was equal in size to Athens. Veii was indeed fully larger, and was about the dimensions of the city of Rome, included within the walls of Servius Tullius. It occupied the whole extent of the platform on which it was situated; and as the area was bounded on every side by deep ravines, its size was thus absolutely circumscribed. Built for security and not for the comfort and progress of its inhabitants, its confined and inaccessible situation would have unfitted it to become the capital of a great nation, as was at one time proposed. Passing down a richly-wooded glen by a path overhanging a stream, we came to a molino or polenta mill, most romantically situated. Here a fine cascade, about eighty feet high, plunges over the volcanic rock into a deep gulley overshadowed by bushy ilexes. The scenery is very picturesque, and differs widely from that of the rest of the Campagna. In its profusion of broom and hawthorn bushes, whose golden and snowy blossoms contrasted beautifully with the dark hues of the evergreen oaks, and in the snowy gleam of its falling waters, and the hoary gray of its lichen-clad cliffs, it presented features of resemblance to Scottish scenery. It had indeed a peculiar home look about it which produced a very pleasing impression upon our minds. Crossing the stream above the cascade by stepping-stones, between which the water rushed with a strong current, we entered the wide down upon which Veii stood. No one would have supposed that this was the site of one of the most important ancient cities, which held at bay for ten long years the Roman army, and yielded at last to stratagem and not to force. Not a vestige of a ruin could be seen. In the heart of the city the grass was growing in all the soft green transparency of spring, and a few fields of corn were marked out and showed the tender braird above the soil. The relics of the walls that crowned the cliffs have almost entirely disappeared. No Etruscan site has so few remains; and yet its interest is intensified by the extreme desolation. It is more suggestive to the imagination because of the paucity of its objects to appeal to the eye. Legend and history haunt the spot with nothing to distract the mind or dispel its musing melancholy. All trace of human passion has disappeared, and only the eternal calm of nature broods over the spot; the calm that was before man came upon the scene, and that shall be after all his labour is over.

On a part of these downs overgrown with briars was situated the Roman Municipium, a colony founded after the subjugation of Veii. It did not cover more than a third of the area of the ancient city. Several excavations were made here, which resulted in the discovery, among other interesting relics of the imperial period, of the colossal heads of Augustus and Tiberius and the mutilated statue of Germanicus now in the Vatican Gallery. On this spot were also found the twelve Ionic columns of white marble which now form the portico of the post-office in the Piazza Colonna at Rome, and also a few of the pillars which adorn the magnificent Basilica of St. Paul's on the Ostian Road. No one looking at these grand columns, so stainless in hue and so perfect in form, would have supposed that they had formed part of the Roman Forum of Veii more than two thousand years ago. Those in front of the post-office look newer than the rest of the building, which is not more than sixty years old. They owed their perfect preservation doubtless to the fact that they were buried deep under the dry volcanic soil for most of the intervening period. It seems strange to think of these ancient columns, that looked down upon the legal transactions of Roman Veii, now standing in one of the busiest squares of modern Rome, associated with one of the most characteristic and important of our modern institutions, of which ancient Rome had not even the germ.

Passing through a beautiful copse wood, where cyclamens grew in lavish profusion, forming little rosy clusters about the oak-stools and diffusing a faint spicy smell through the warm air, we came out at one of the gates of the city into open ground. This gate is simply a gap in a shapeless mound, with traces of an ancient roadway passing through it and fragments of walls on either side. Where the stones can be seen projecting through the turf embankment they are smaller than usual in Etruscan cities. Sir William Gell found hereabouts a portion of the wall composed of enormous blocks of tufa—three or four yards long and more than five feet in height—based upon three courses of thin bricks three feet in length, that rested upon the naked rock. Such a mode of wall construction has no resemblance to anything remaining in Rome or in any Etruscan city. It indicates a still higher antiquity; while the brick foundations remind us of the fame which the Etruscans and particularly the people of Veii had acquired on account of their skill in works of terra cotta. The famous Quadriga or brick chariot which adorned the pediment of the great temple of Jupiter on the Capitol at Rome was made at Veii, and was a remarkable proof of the superiority of its people in this species of art. Indeed the name of Veii is supposed to have been derived from its skill in the manufacture of terra cotta chariots. The old gateway through which we passed out of the wood was probably the principal entrance into the city, and the one over which Tolumnius King of Veii appeared, standing on the wall, during the famous siege when he was challenged to mortal combat by Cornelius Cossus, as graphically described by Livy.

Beneath this gate there is a remarkable tunnel called the Ponte Sodo, bored in the volcanic rock for the passage of the river. It is not, however, visible from this point. You require to descend the steep banks of the river to see it; and a very extraordinary excavation it is, two hundred and forty feet long, sixteen feet wide, and twenty feet high. It was doubtless made to prevent the evil effects of winter floods by the inhabitants of Veii, who had considerable skill in such engineering works. The river sometimes fills the tunnel to the very roof, leaving behind trunks and branches of trees firmly wedged in the clefts of the rock in the inside. It was extremely interesting to stand on this spot and see before me this wonderful Etruscan work, and to lave my hands in the waters of the Formello, which, under the classical name of the Cremera, was prominently associated with early Roman history. It would be difficult to find a lovelier dimple in the fair face of mother earth than the valley through which the Formello flows. Precipitous cliffs rose from the bed of the river opposite to me, enriched with all the hues that volcanic rock assumes under the influences of the weather and the garniture of moss and lichen. A perfect tangle of vegetation crowned their tops and fringed their sides; the dark unchanging verdure of the evergreen oak and ivy contrasting beautifully with the tender autumn-like tints in which the varied spring foliage of the brushwood appeared. Bright flowers and gay blossoms grew in every crevice and nook. The shallow river flowed at my feet through ruts of dark volcanic sand, and amid masses of rock fallen from the cliffs, and stones whose artificial appearance showed that they had formed part of the ramparts that once ran round the whole circuit of the heights. The sunshine sparkled on the gray-green waters, and followed them in bright coruscations for a short distance into the mouth of the tunnel, the other end of which, diminished by the distance, opened into the daylight like the eye-piece of an inverted telescope. I found in the bed of the river fragments of marble and porphyry, cut and polished, that had doubtless come from the pavement of some palace or temple, and attested the truth of the report that has come down to us, that the buildings of Veii were stately and magnificent. To me there is something peculiarly impressive in the presence of a stream in a scene of vanished human greatness. Its eternal sameness contrasts with the momentous changes that have taken place; its motion with the death around; its sunny sparkle with the gloom; while its murmur seems the very requiem of the past. In this giant sepulchre, into which, like the Gulf of Curtius in the Forum, all the greatness of Etruscan and Roman Veii had gone down, the abundance of life was most remarkable. The vegetation sprang up with a rank luxuriance unknown in northern latitudes; lizards darted through the long grass; one snake of considerable length and girth uncoiled itself before me and crawled leisurely away; and the air, as bright and warm as it is in July with us, was murmurous with the hum of insects that danced in the April sunshine.

Beyond the Ponte Sodo the precipices disappear and the ground slopes down gently to the edge of the river. Here the valley of the Formello opens up—a quiet green pastoral spot rising on the right hand into bare swelling downs, without a tree, or a bush, or a rock to diversify their surface. On the sloping banks of the river the rock has been cut into a number of basins filled with water, where Sir William Gell supposes that the nymphs of Veii, like those of Troy, "washed their white garments in the days of peace;" but they were in all likelihood only holes caused by the quarrying of the blocks of stone used in the construction of the walls and buildings of the city. The slopes of this valley seem to have formed the principal Necropolis of Veii. Numerous tombs were discovered in it; but after having been rifled of their contents they were filled up again, and all traces of them have disappeared. Only one sepulchre now remains open in the Necropolis, half way up the slope of a mound called the Poggio Reale. It is commonly known as "The Painted Tomb," or La Grotta Campana—after its discoverer, the Marchese Campana of Rome—who got permission forty-five years ago from the Queen of Sardinia, to whom the property then belonged, to dig in this locality for jewels and other relics of antiquity. Instead of closing the tomb, as was done in the other cases, this accomplished antiquarian, with the good taste for which he was distinguished, left it in the exact condition in which he had found it, so that it might be an object of interest to future visitors. Ascending the slope, we entered a long narrow passage about six feet wide and about fourteen feet deep cut through the tufa rock. This was the original entrance to the tomb; and the discoverer had cleared it out by removing the earth that had accumulated in the course of ages. A solitary crouching lion, carved in a species of volcanic stone, guarded the entrance of the passage. Its companion had been removed some distance, and lay neglected on the slope of the hill. The sculpture is exceedingly uncouth and primitive. At the inner end of the passage a couple of similar lions crouch, one on each side of the door of the tomb. They were placed there in all likelihood as symbols of avenging wrath to inspire fear, and thus prevent the desecration of the dead. Originally the tomb was closed by a great slab of volcanic stone: but this having been broken to pieces and carried away to build the first sheepfold or the nearest peasant's hut, it has been replaced by an iron gate. The walls around were damp and covered with moss and weeds, and the bars of the gate were rusty. Our guide applied the key he had brought with him, and the gate opened with a creaking sound. Lighting a candle, he preceded us into the tomb. I cannot describe the strange mixture of feelings which took possession of me,—wonder, curiosity, and awe. This was my first visit to an Etruscan tomb. In Rome I had been familiar with the monuments of a remote past; I had gazed with interest upon objects over which twenty centuries had passed. But here I was to behold one of the mysterious relics of the world's childhood. I had previously read with deep interest the graphic account of this tomb, which Mr. Dennis gives in his Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, and was therefore prepared in large measure for what I was about to see.

I found myself when I entered in a gloomy chamber hewn out of a brown arenaceous clay. The floor was a loose mud, somewhat slippery; and on it I noticed a number of vases, large and small, and of various forms. They were not like the exquisite painted vases which we are accustomed to associate with the name of Etruscan, but of the simplest and most archaic shapes, formed out of the coarsest clay. Some of them had a curious squat appearance, with rude figures painted on them; while others of them were about three feet high, of dark-brown earthenware, and were ornamented with some simple device in neutral tints or in very low relief. They were empty now; but when found they contained ashes and fragments of calcined bones. Just within the door there were two stone benches, on each of which, when the tomb was opened, was stretched a skeleton, which rapidly crumbled under the pressure of the air into a cloud of dust. That on the left was supposed to have been a female; and her companion on the right had doubtless been a warrior, judging from the bronze helmet and breastplate, both much corroded, that were left lying on the bench. He had evidently come by a violent death, for at the back of the helmet was an ugly hole, whose ragged side was outwards, showing that the fierce thrust of the spear had crashed through the face, and protruded beyond the casque. The combination of cinerary urns containing ashes, and of stone couches on which dead bodies were extended in the same tomb, is curious, showing that both modes of sepulture were practised at this period. The skeletons found entire were evidently those of the master and mistress of the household, persons of consideration; and the ashes in the jars were probably the remains of the servants and dependants. On the benches beside the skeletons were a bronze laver and mirror, a simple candlestick, and a brazier used for burning perfumes. The vases were exceedingly interesting, as the first rude attempts of the Etruscans in an art in which afterwards they attained to such marvellous perfection, and the only relics now remaining of the fictile statuary for which Veil was so celebrated.

But my interest in these objects was speedily transferred to a far more wonderful sight, which the candle of the guide disclosed to me. On the inner wall, which divided the tomb into two chambers, and on the right and left of the door leading from the one to the other, was a most extraordinary fresco. Seen in the dim light of the candle passing over the different parts, it had a singularly weird and grotesque appearance. The colours were as fresh as if they had been laid on yesterday; and the thought at first flashed across my mind that I was gazing not upon a painting which had been sealed up for nearly thirty centuries, but upon the rude attempts at art of some modern shepherd or rustic belonging to the village of Isola, who sought thus to amuse his leisure moments. But such a thought was dismissed at once as absurd. No one after a few moments' inspection could doubt the genuineness of the painting. It is difficult to describe it, for it is altogether unlike anything to be seen elsewhere in Egyptian or Assyrian, in Greek or Roman tombs. On the right side of the door the upper half of the wall was panelled off by a band of colour, and represented one scene or picture. In the centre was a large horse, that reminded me of a child's wooden toy-horse, such as one sees at a country fair. Its legs were unnaturally long and thin; and the slenderness of its barrel was utterly disproportioned to the breadth of its chest. It was coloured in the most curious fashion: the head, hind-quarters, and near-leg being black; the tail and mane and off-legs yellow; and the rest of the body red, with round yellow spots. It was led by a tall groom; a diminutive youth was mounted upon its back; and a proud, dignified-looking personage, having a double-headed axe or hammer on his shoulder, strode in front. These human figures were all naked, and painted of a deep-red colour. In the same picture I noticed two strange-looking nondescript animals, very rudely drawn, and party-coloured like the horse. One probably represented a cat without a tail, like the Manx breed, half-lying upon the back of the horse, and laying its paw on the shoulder of the youth mounted before it; and the other looked like a dog, with open mouth, apparently barking with all his might, running among the feet of the horse. Interspersed with these figures were most uncouth drawings of flowers, growing up from the ground, and forming fantastic wreaths round the picture, all party-coloured in the same way as the animals.

This extraordinary fresco seemed like the scene which presented itself to the apostle, when one of the seals of the Apocalyptic book was opened. I wished that I had beside me some authoritative interpreter who could read for me "this mystic handwriting on the wall." It has been suggested that the silent scene before me represented the passage of a soul to the world of the dead. The lean and starved-looking horse symbolised death; and its red and yellow spots indicated corruption. It may have been the ghost of the horse that was burned with the body of his dead master; for we know that the tribes, from which the Etruscans were supposed to be descended, if not the Etruscans themselves, not only burned their dead, but offered along with them the wives, slaves, horses, and other property of the dead upon their funeral pyre. The horse in this remarkable fresco may therefore have been the death-horse, which is well-known in Eastern and European folklore. The diminutive figure which it carried on its back was the soul of the dead person buried in this tomb; and its small size and the fact of its being on horseback might have been suggested by the thought of the long way it had to go, and its last appearance to the mortal eyes that had anxiously watched it from the extreme verge of this world as it vanished in the dim distance of the world beyond. The groom that led the horse and his rider was the Thanatis or Fate that had inflicted the death-blow; and the figure with the hammer was probably intended for the Mantus—the Etruscan Dispater—who led the way to another state of existence. The deep-red colour of the human figures indicated not only that they belonged to the male sex, but also that they were in a state of glorification. This is further confirmed by the flowers, which looked like those of the lotus, universally regarded amongst the ancients as symbols of immortality. It is difficult to say what part the domestic animals were meant to play in this scene of apotheosis. Painted with the same hues as those of the steed, they were doubtless sacrificed at the death of their master, in order that they might share his fortunes and accompany him into the unseen world; their affection for him, and the reluctance with which they parted from him, being indicated by the cat putting its paw upon his shoulder as if to pull him back, and the dog barking furiously at the heels of the horse. But all this is merely conjectural. And yet I caught such a glimpse of the general significance of the picture, of the spirit that prompted it, as deeply impressed me. It seemed as if my own searching dimly with a candle in the inside of a dark sepulchral cave into the meaning of this fresco of death was emblematical of the groping of the ancient Etruscans, by such feeble light of nature as they possessed, in the midst of the profound, terrible darkness of death, for the great truths of immortality. They had not heard of One who alone with returning footsteps had broken the eternal silence of the tomb, and brought the hope of immortal life to the sleeping dead around. These Etruscan sleepers had been laid to rest in their narrow cell ages before the Son of Man had rolled away the stone from the door of the sepulchre, and carried captivity captive; but He whom they ignorantly worshipped had partially lifted the veil and given them faint glimpses of the things unseen and eternal. And these were doubtless sufficient to redeem their life from its vanity and their death from its fear.

Below the fresco which I have thus minutely described is another about the same size, representing a sphinx, with a nondescript animal, which may be either an ass or a young deer standing below it, and a panther or leopard sitting behind in a rampant attitude, with one paw on the haunch of the sphinx, and the other on the tail, and its face turned towards the spectator. The face of the sphinx is painted red. The figure bears some resemblance to the Egyptian type of that chimera in its straight black hair depending behind, and its oblique eyes; but in other respects it diverges widely. On Egyptian monuments the sphinx never appears standing as in this fresco, but crouching in the attitude of reposeful observation. Its form also was always fuller and more rounded than the long-legged, attenuated spectre before us, and it was invariably wingless; whereas the Etruscan sphinx had short wings with curling points, spotted and barred with stripes of black, red, and yellow. This strange mixture of the human and the brutal might be regarded as a symbol of the religious state of the people. We see in it higher conceptions of religion struggling out of lower. In the recumbent wingless sphinx of Egypt we see anthropomorphic ideas of religion emerging out of the gross animal-worship of more primitive times. In the standing and winged Etruscan Sphinx we see these ideas assuming a more predominant form; while in the Greek mythology the emancipation of the human from the brutal was complete, and the gods appeared wholly in the likeness of men.

On the wall on the opposite side of the door were two other frescoes, somewhat similar in general appearance to those already described. On the upper panel was a horse with a boy on his back, and a panther sitting on the ground behind him; while on the lower panel there was a huge standing panther or leopard, with his long tongue hanging out of his mouth, and a couple of dogs beneath him, one lifting up its paw, and the other trying to catch the protruded tongue of the panther. All the figures in the four frescoes were painted in the same bizarre style of red, yellow, and black characteristic of the first fresco described; and they had all the same Oriental border of lotus flowers. They had evidently all the same symbolic import; for the sphinx guarded the gate of the unseen world, and leopards or panthers were frequently introduced into the paintings of Etruscan tombs as guardians of the dead.

Passing through the doorway I entered an inner and smaller chamber, whose only decoration was six small round discs on the opposite wall, each about fifteen inches in diameter, painted in little segments of various colours,—black, blue, red, yellow, and gray. What they were meant to represent no one has satisfactorily explained. Above them I observed a number of rusty nails fixed in the wall, and traces of others that had fallen out around the doorway. On these nails were originally suspended various articles of household economy or of personal ornament; for the Etruscan sepulchres were always furnished with such things as the tenants took delight in when living. For a proof of this nothing could be more satisfactory than a thorough study of Inghirami's voluminous work. Indeed, all ancient nations buried their dead not only with their weapons and armour, but also with their most precious possessions; and in proportion to the rank and wealth of the deceased were the number and value of the offerings deposited with him in his tomb. We are amazed at the variety and preciousness of the golden ornaments found by Dr. Schliemann in the tombs at Mycenae; and every Etruscan cemetery that has been opened has yielded an immense number of most precious articles, which the devotion of the survivors sacrificed to the manes of their departed friends. It is to this propensity that we owe all our knowledge of this mysterious race. But the fact, as Mr. Dennis says, that the nails in the interior of this tomb were empty, and that no fragments of the objects suspended were found at the foot of the wall, indicated either that the articles had decayed, being of a perishable nature, or that they had been carried off on account of their superior value. This last is the more probable supposition. The Marchese Campana, who opened the tomb, was late in the field, and had in all likelihood been anticipated by some previous explorer. The work of plundering Etruscan tombs was begun, we have reason to believe, in the time of the early Romans, who were attracted, not merely by the precious metals which they contained, but also by the reputation of their vases, which in the days of the Empire were held in as high esteem as now. Many tombs have doubtless been repeatedly searched. The very architects employed in their construction, as Signor Avolta conjectures, may have preserved the secret of the concealed entrance, and used it for the purpose of spoliation afterwards. Indeed, an unviolated tomb is a very rare exception. No modern excavations were made till about sixty years ago; and yet during that short interval many tombs that were opened and filled up again have been forgotten; and now they are being dug afresh by persons ignorant of this, who spend their labour only to be disappointed. There is little reason, therefore, to believe that the Painted Tomb of Veii was so fortunate as to escape all notice until the Marchese Campana had discovered it. Former visitors had robbed it in all likelihood of any objects of intrinsic value it may have contained, and left only the bronze utensils and armour and the rude archaic vases.

On the roughly-hewn roof of this inner chamber of the tomb were carved in high relief two beams in imitation of the rafters of a house; and round the walls at the foot ran a low ledge formed out of the rock, like a family couch, on which stood three very curious boxes of earthenware, about a foot and a half long and a foot high, covered with a projecting lid on which was moulded a human head. These were sepulchral urns of a most primitive form, intermediate between the so-called hut-urns found under the lava in the Necropolis of Alba Longa, and supposed to represent the tents in which the Etruscans lived at the time of their arrival in Italy, and the round vases of a later period. On the same ledge were several vases painted in bands of red and yellow, with a row of uncouth animals executed in relief upon the rim. The form and contents of this chamber afforded striking proof of the fact that the Etruscan tombs were imitations of the homes of the living. These tombs were constructed upon two types: one rising in the form of a tumulus or conical mound above the ground when the situation was a level table-land, and the other consisting of one or two chambers excavated out of the rock when the tomb was situated on the precipitous face of a hill. Dr. Isaac Taylor, in his admirable Etruscan Researches, says that the former type recalled the tent, and the latter the cave, which were the original habitations of men. The ancestors of the Etruscans are supposed by him to have been a nomadic race, wandering over the steppes of Asia, and to have dwelt either in caves or tents. At the present day the yourts or permanent houses in Siberia and Tartary are modelled on the plan of both kinds of habitation—the upper part being above the ground, representing the tent; and the lower part being subterranean, representing the cave. And so the descendants of this Asiatic horde, having migrated at a remote period to Italy, preserved the burial traditions of their remote ancestors, and formed their tombs after the model of the tent or cave, according as they were constructed on the level plateau or in the rocky brow of a hill. In further illustration of this theory he says that in olden times when a member of the Tartar tribe died, the tent in which he breathed his last, with all its contents intact, was converted into a tomb by simply covering it with a conical mound of earth or stones, in order to preserve it from the ravages of wolves and other beasts of prey. Even the row of stones that surrounded the outside of the tent and kept down the skins that covered it from being blown away by the storms of the steppe, was introduced into the structure of the tomb, and continued to surround the base of the funeral mound. He finds traces of this circle of stones in the podium or low wall of masonry which encircled every Etruscan tumulus or outside tomb, and a remarkable example in the mounds of the Horatii and Curiatii on the Appian Way at Rome.

This theory, however, it is only fair to state, is disputed by other writers, who assert that there was no intentional imitation of tents in Etruscan tombs; for if this had been the design there would have been a correspondence between the conical outside and the conical interior, and no Etruscan tomb has been found with a bell-shaped chamber. The tent-like tumulus, say they, was but the mere rude mound of earth heaped over the dead in an uncultured age; and the mound would be made higher and larger according to the dignity of the deceased; and the podium or row of stones around its foot was simply the retaining wall necessary to give it stability and shape. The tomb at Veii had a narrow entrance-passage; and we find this a marked feature in all Etruscan tombs, which are approached by a vaulted passage of masonry, varying from twelve to a hundred feet in length. This also, according to Dr. Taylor, was but a survival of the low entrance-passage through which the ancient Siberians crept into their subterranean habitations, and which the modern Laplanders and Esquimaux still construct before their snow-huts and underground dwellings, to serve the purpose of a door in keeping out the wind and maintaining the temperature of the interior.

The other, or cave type of Etruscan tomb, is that which we see at Veii, and of which there are hundreds of examples all over Central Italy, wherever there are deep valleys bounded by low cliffs. This, too, was modelled after the pattern of the house. There were usually two chambers, an outer and an inner one. The outer was the place of meeting between the living and the dead; the surviving friends feasted there during their annual visit to the tomb, while the dead were laid in the inner chamber in the midst of familiar objects. Here everything was designed to keep up the delusion that the dead were still living in their own homes. The roof of the chamber was carved in imitation of the roof-tree, the rafters, and even the tiles of the house; the rock around was hewn into couches, with cushions and footstools like those on which they reposed when living; on the floor were the wine-jars, the vases, and utensils, consecrated by long use; on the various projections were suspended the mirrors, arms, and golden ornaments that were most prized; while the walls were painted with gay frescoes, representing scenes of festivity in which eating and drinking, music and dancing, played a prominent part. And as the ordinary habitation contained the family, the grandparents, the parents, and the children, all living under the same roof, so the Etruscan tombs were all family abodes—the dead of a whole generation being deposited in the same inner chamber.

To the outer chamber, as I have said, came the surviving members of the family at least once a year to hold a funeral feast, and pay their devotions to their departed friends. The tombs of this people were thus at the same time also their temples—the sacred places where they came to perform the rites of their religion, which consisted in worshipping the lares and penates of their beloved dead, and making offerings to them. And by this striking link of the cultus of the dead the ancient Etruscans were connected with the present inhabitants of Northern Asia, the Finns, Laplanders, Tartars, Mongols, and Chinese, who have no temples or places of special honour for their idols, but assemble once a year or oftener at the graves of their ancestors to worship the dead. But after all there is no great difference in this respect between the races, ancient and modern; for the churchyard and the church, the burial vaults and monuments within the cathedral and chapel, show how universal is the instinct that associates the dead with the shrine of religion, and makes the tomb the most appropriate place for giving expression to those blessed hopes of immortality upon which all religion is founded. The sanctuary of the Holy Land derived its sacredness, as well as the charter of its inheritance, from the cave of Machpelah. Around that patriarchal tomb clustered all the grand religious hopes of the covenant people. The early Christians adopted and purified the Etruscan custom which they found in Rome, and erected over the tombs of the martyrs and other illustrious persons Cellae Memoriae, or memorial chapels, in which on anniversary occasions the friends and brethren assembled to partake of a funeral feast in honour of the dead. The primitive Agapae, or love-feasts, were often nothing more than such banquets in the memorial cells at the tombs of the faithful. And in our own country, many of our most important churches, towns, and villages took their origin and name from the grave of some saint, who in far-off times hallowed the spot and made it a shrine of worship.

There are numerous indications that this Painted Tomb at Veii is of very great antiquity, and may be considered as probably the oldest tomb in Europe. No inscription of any kind has been found on its walls or any of its contents; and this circumstance, which is almost singular so far as all Etruscan tombs yet discovered are concerned, of itself indicates a very remote date, when the art of letters if known at all was only known to a privileged few, and confined to public and sacred monuments. No clue remains to inform us who the Veientine warrior was who met his death in so tragic a manner, and who lay down with his wife and dependants in this tomb, and took the last long sleep without a thought of posterity or the conclusions they might form regarding him. And the argument of hoary antiquity derived from this speechless silence of the tomb is still further strengthened by architectural evidence. The outer wall as seen from the inside is built of rough uncemented blocks of the earliest polygonal construction, such as we see in a few of the oldest Cyclopean cities of Central Italy; and the doorway is formed by the gradual convergence of stones laid in horizontal courses, instead of being arched by regular wedges of stone held together. Now, as the perfect arch was known and constructed in Etruria at a very early period, this pseudo-vault, which indicates complete ignorance of the principle, must belong to a very remote age indeed—to the period of the Cyclopean gateways of Italy and Greece, whose origin is lost in the mist of a far-off antiquity. There are two limits within which the date of the tomb may probably be placed. While its style and decorations are genuinely national and characteristic of the primitive Etruscan tomb, there can be no doubt that several Egyptian features in it, such as the sphinx and the lotus, and in some respects the colouring and physiognomy of the human figures, indicate some acquaintance with the land of the Nile. Now an inscription has been found at Karnac which records that Egypt was invaded by a confederation of Libyans, Etruscans, and other races, and was only saved after a desperate struggle by the valour of Menephtah I. of the Nineteenth Dynasty. The allied forces occupied the country for a time, and took away with them when they departed large spoils, consisting among other things of bronze knives and armour. This happened in the fourteenth or fifteenth century before Christ. There can be no doubt, therefore, that the civilisation of Egypt must at this period have been spread by commerce or war among the Western nations, and produced a powerful influence upon the Etruscans. The imitation of Egyptian models is not so decided in this tomb as it is in the painted tombs of Tarquinii and other Etruscan cities of later date; and this circumstance would indicate that it was constructed at the very commencement of the intercourse of Etruria with Egypt. If we take this historic fact as the limit in one direction, the tomb cannot be older than three thousand three hundred years. On the other hand, we know that Veii was destroyed about four hundred years before Christ, and remained uninhabited and desolate till the commencement of the Empire; we have, therefore, the surest ground for fixing the date of the tomb prior to that event. Somewhere between the invasion of Egypt by the Etruscan confederacy and the fall of Veii—that is, somewhere between the fourteenth and the fourth century before Christ—this sepulchre was hewn in the rock and its tenants interred in it.

Carlo Avolta of Corneto on one occasion, opening an Etruscan tomb at Tarquinii, saw a most wonderful sight. From an aperture which he had made above the door of the sepulchre he looked in, and for fully five minutes "gazed upon an Etruscan monarch lying on his stone bier, crowned with gold, clothed in armour, with a shield, spear, and arrows by his side." But as he gazed the figure collapsed, and finally disappeared; and by the time an entrance was made all that remained was the golden crown, some fragments of armour, and a handful of gray dust. Like that Etruscan tomb has been the fate of the Etruscan confederacy. This mighty people left traces of their civilisation "inferior in grandeur perhaps to the monuments of Egypt, in beauty to those of Greece, but with these exceptions surpassing in both the relics of any other nation of remote antiquity." At the period of their highest power they lived in close neighbourhood and connection with a people who got its laws, its rulers, its arts, its religion from them—and might therefore if only in gratitude have preserved their history. But their fate was that of the similar civilisation of Mexico and Peru, which its selfish Spanish conquerors instead of preserving sought studiously to obliterate. The comprehensive history of Etruria written in twenty volumes by the emperor Claudius—who, though very feeble in other things, was yet a scholar, and could have given us much interesting information—perished. Their language, which survived their absorption by Rome, almost as late as the time of the Caesars, finally disappeared; and though thousands of inscriptions in tombs and on works of art remain—which we are able to read from the close resemblance of the alphabet to the Greek—the key to the interpretation of the language is gone beyond recall. In an age that has unravelled the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the cuneiform characters of Assyria, and the runic inscriptions of Northern Europe, the Etruscan language presents almost the only philological problem that refuses to be solved. Thus when the air and the light of modern investigation penetrated into the mystery which surrounded this strange people, all that was most important had vanished; and only the few ornaments of the tomb remained to tell us of a lost world of art, literature, and human life which had perished not by internal exhaustion, but had fallen before the arms of Rome in the full maturity of its civilisation.



CHAPTER VIII

HOLED STONES AND MARTYR WEIGHTS

In the porch of the interesting old church of Sta. Maria in Cosmedin near the Tiber is preserved a huge circular stone like a millstone. It is composed of white marble, upwards of five feet in diameter, and is finished after the model of the dramatic mask used in the ancient theatres. In the centre is a round hole perforating the mass right through, forming the mouth of the mask. It is called the Bocca della Verita, and has given its name to the irregular piazza in which the church is situated. It is so called from the use to which it has been put from time immemorial, as an ordeal for testing the guilt or innocence of an accused person. If the suspected individual on making an affirmation thrust his hand through the hole and was able to draw it back again, he was pronounced innocent; but if, on the contrary, the hand remained fixed in the marble jaws, the person was declared to have sworn falsely and was pronounced guilty. The marble mouth was supposed by the superstitious to contract or expand itself according to the moral character of the arraigned person. No reason has been given why this singular marble mask should have been placed in this church, nor is anything known of its previous history. Some have conjectured that it served as an impluvium or mouth of a drain in the centre of a court to let the water run off; and others regard it as having been an ornament for a fountain, like the colossal mask of marble out of the mouth of which a jet of water falls into a fountain in the Via de Mascherone, called after it, near the Farnese Palace, and the marble mask which belongs to a small fountain on the opposite side of the river near the Palazzo Salviati. But the question arises, Why should the Bocca della Verita, if such was its origin, have been used for the superstitious purpose connected with it? Our answer to this question must lead us back to the Temple of Ceres and Proserpine which originally stood on the site of the church of Sta. Maria in Cosmedin, and of the materials of which the Christian edifice was largely built.

In primitive times the worship of clefts in rocks, holes in the earth, or stones having a natural or artificial perforation, appears to have been almost universal. We find traces of it in almost every country, and amongst almost every people. These sacred chasms or holes were regarded as emblems of the celestial mother, and persons went into them and came out again, so as to be born anew, or squeezed themselves through the holes in order to obtain the remission of their sins. In ancient Palestine this form of idolatry was known as the worship of Baal-perazim, or Baal of the clefts or breaches. David obtained a signal victory over the Philistines at one of the shrines of this god, and burnt there the images peculiar to this mode of worship which the enemy had left behind in its flight. About two miles from Bombay there is a rock on the promontory of the Malabar Hill, which has a natural crevice, communicating with a cavity below, and opening upon the sea. This crevice is too narrow for corpulent persons to squeeze through, but it is constantly resorted to for purposes of moral purification. Through natural or artificial caverns in India pilgrims enter at the south side, and make their exit at the northern, as was anciently the custom in the Mithraic mysteries. Those who pass through such caves are considered to receive by this action a new birth of the soul. According to the same idea the rulers of Travancore, who are Nairs by caste, are made into Brahmins when they ascend the throne by passing through a hole in a large golden image of a cow or lotus flower, which then becomes the property of the Brahmin priests. It is possible that there may be an allusion to this primitive custom in the rule of the Jewish Temple, mentioned by Ezekiel,—"He that entereth in by the way of the north gate to worship shall go out by the way of the south gate; and he that entereth by the way of the south gate shall go forth by the way of the north gate: he shall not return by the way of the gate whereby he came in, but shall go forth over against it." This arrangement may have been made not as a mere matter of convenience, but as a survival of the old practice of "passing through" a sacred cave or crevice for the forgiveness of sins;—a survival purified and ennobled in the service of God.

The oldest of all religious monuments of which we have any existing trace are cromlechs, found mostly in waste, uncultivated places. These are of various forms, but they are mostly tripods, consisting of a copestone poised upon three other stones, two at the head and one at the foot. The supports are rough boulders, the largest masses of stone that could be found or moved; and the copestone is an enormous flat square block, often with cup-shaped hollows carved upon its surface. Under this copestone there was a vacant space, varying in size from a foot or two to the height of a man on horseback. Through this vacant space persons used to pass; and the narrower the space, the more difficult the feat of crawling through, the more meritorious was the act. In our own country there are numerous relics of this primitive custom. In Cornwall there are two holed stones, one called Tolven, situated near St. Buryan, and the other called Men-an-tol, near Madron, which have been used within living memory for curing infirm children by passing them through the aperture. In the parish of Minchin Hampton, Gloucestershire, is a stone called Long Stone, seven or eight feet in height, having near the bottom of it a large perforation, through which, not many years since, children brought from a considerable distance were passed for the cure of measles and whooping-cough. On the west side of the Island of Tyree in Scotland is a rock with a crevice in it through which children were put when suffering from various infantile diseases. In connection with the ancient ruined church of St. Molaisse on the Island of Devenish in Loch Erne in Ireland, there is an artificially perforated stone, through which persons still pass, when the opening will admit, in order to be regenerated. If the hole be too small, they put the hand or the foot through it, and the effect is thus limited. Examples of such holed stones are to be found in some of the old churches of Ireland, such as Castledermot, County Kildare; Kilmalkedar, County Kerry; Kilbarry, near Tarmon Barry, on the Shannon. In Madras, diseased children are passed under the lintels of doorways; and in rural parts of England they used to be passed through a cleft ash tree. At Maryhill, in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, about a year ago, when an epidemic of measles and whooping-cough was prevalent, two mothers took advantage, for the carrying out of this superstition, of the presence in the village of an ass which drew the cart of a travelling rag-gatherer. They stood one on each side of the animal. One woman then took one of the children and passed it face downward through below the ass's belly to the other woman, who in turn handed it back with its face this time turned towards the sky. The process having been repeated three times, the child was taken away to the house, and then the second child was similarly treated. The mothers were thoroughly satisfied that their children were the better of the magic process.

A mysterious virtue was supposed to be connected with passing under the ancient gate of Mycenae by the primitive race who constructed it. Jacob's words at Bethel, "This is the gate of heaven," may have an allusion to the prehistoric custom of the place; for we have reason to believe that a dolmen existed there, consecrated to solar worship, the original name of Bethel being Beth-on, the house of the sun. The hollow space beneath the dolmen was considered the altar-gate leading to paradise, so that whosoever passed through it was certain to obtain new life or immortality. It was an old superstition that the dead required to be brought out of the house not by the ordinary door of the living, but by a breach made specially in the wall, in order that they might thus pass through a species of purgatory. We find an exceedingly interesting example of this primitive superstition in the punishment that was imposed upon the survivor in the famous combat between the Horatii and Curiatii, when he murdered his sister, on account of her unpatriotic devotion to her slain lover. The father of Horatius, after making a piacular sacrifice, erected a beam across the street leading from the Vicus Cyprius to the Carinae, with an altar on each side—the one dedicated to Juno Sororia and the other to Janus Curiatius—and under this yoke he made his son pass with his head veiled. This beam long survived under the name of Tigillum Sororium or Sister's Beam, and was constantly repaired at the public expense.

In modern times there are two most remarkable survivals of the same kind. One of them is in the corridor of the mosque of Aksa at Jerusalem. In this place are two pillars, standing close together, and like those in the mosque of Omar at Cairo, they are used as a test of character. It is said that whosoever can squeeze himself between them is certain of paradise, and must be a good Moslem. The pillars have been worn thin by the friction of countless devotees. An iron bar has now, however, been placed between the pillars by the present enlightened Pasha of Jerusalem to prevent the practice in future. The other instance is what is popularly known as "threading the needle" in the Cathedral of Ripon. Beneath the central tower of this minster there is a small crypt or vaulted cell entered from the nave by a narrow passage. At the north side of this crypt there is an opening thirteen inches by eighteen, called St. Wilfred's needle. This passage was formerly used as a test of character; for only an honest man, one new-born, could pass through it. "They pricked their credits who could not thread the needle," was the quaint remark of old Fuller in reference to the original use of the opening. It may be remarked that the well-known boys' game of "Through the needle's e'e, boys," had its origin in all likelihood in the old superstition. Thus we can trace the use made of the Bocca della Verita in Rome to the primitive idolatry associated perhaps with the Temple of Ceres that formerly stood on the spot.

Some other superstitious practices of a closely allied nature may be traced to the same source. In the Orkney Islands, not far from the famous Standing Stones of Stennis, there is a single monolith with a large hole through it, which has become celebrated, owing to the allusion to it of Sir Walter Scott in his novel of the Pirate. It is called Odin's Stone; and till a very recent period it was the local custom to take an oath by joining hands through the hole in it; and this oath was considered even by the regular courts of Orkney as peculiarly solemn and binding; the person who violated it being accounted infamous and excluded from society. In the old churchyard of the ruined monastery of Saints Island in the Shannon, there is an ancient black marble flagstone called the "Cremave" or "swearing stone." The saints are said to have made it a revealer of truth. Any one suspected of falsehood is brought here, and if the accused swears falsely the stone has the power to set a mark upon him and his family for several generations. But if no mark appears he is known to be innocent. Many other equally interesting instances might be quoted all akin to the superstition in Rome. It is not too fanciful to suppose that even the Jewish mode of making a covenant had something to do with this primitive custom. The animal offered in sacrifice was divided into two pieces, and so arranged that a space was left between them. Through this space, between the parts, the contracting persons passed in order to ratify the covenant. We have a striking account of this ceremony in the case of Abraham; and it is in allusion to it that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says that we have boldness to enter into the holiest "by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh."

The superstitious practices connected with clefts and holed stones were denounced by councils of the Christian Church, which subjected transgressors to various penalties. Consequently this mode of worship came into evil repute; and what was formerly considered a meritorious action, securing the cure of disease or future happiness, became a deed of evil, to be followed by some calamity. For this reason the primitive symbolism was reversed in many cases, such as "passing under a ladder," which is now considered unlucky; or in Eastern lands going between a wall and a pole, between two women or two dogs, which the Talmud forbids as an omen of evil.

Passing from the subject of holed stones I proceed to consider another class of interesting prehistoric objects that survive in the more primitive churches of Rome. In the same church of Sta. Maria in Cosmedin—where the Bocca della Verita which I have described occurs—there is a curious crypt called the chapel of St. Cyril, who undertook a mission about the year eight hundred and sixty to convert the Slavs in Bulgaria to Christianity, and suffered martyrdom in the attempt. Beside an ancient altar of primitive construction on one side is preserved a large slab of granite on which St. Cyril is said to have knelt when he was put to death; and half-sunk in the wall opposite are two large, smooth, dark-coloured stones, in shape not unlike curling stones—or an orange from which a portion has been sliced off horizontally. They cannot fail to be seen when attention is directed to them.

Such stones, often made level at the top and bottom, and with a ring inserted in the upper surface, are not uncommon in the older churches of Rome, although they are very seldom noticed, as their significance is only known to a few experts. One is placed in the centre of the middle nave of Santa Sabina, on the Aventine, on the top of a short spirally-fluted column of white marble, which marks the spot where St. Dominic, the founder of the order of the Dominicans, used to kneel down and pray. It has received the name of Pietra di Paragone, or the Touchstone. Another may be seen at the entrance of the church of Santa Pudenziana, on the Esquiline, supposed to have been built on the site of the house of the Roman senator Pudens, whose daughter, Pudentiana, St. Peter is said to have converted to Christianity. A third exists among the extensive collection of relics belonging to the ten thousand three hundred martyrs whose remains, according to tradition, were deposited in the church of S. Prassede, at the beginning of the ninth century, by Paschal I. Two stones may be observed upon the gable wall immediately above the basins of holy water in the interior of the church of S. Nicolo in Carcere, near the Ghetto. Two others are inserted in the wall of the Baptistery of St. John Lateran, between the vestibule and the octagonal area containing the so-called gigantic font in which Constantine was baptized. A very interesting stone hangs suspended from the gilded iron grating which protects the crypt or confessional of St. Laurence, immediately underneath the high altar of the great Basilica of San Lorenzo beyond the Gate. A stone still more remarkable, guarded by a strong iron grating, projects half its bulk from the wall on the right-hand side of the arch which divides the transept from the middle nave in the venerable church of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Two other stones may be seen in the quaint old church of SS. Cosma e Damiano at the south-eastern angle of the Roman Forum, composed of portions of three pagan temples. They are inserted in the plain whitewashed walls on both sides of the circular arch through which you pass from the round vestibule into the interior of the church. I have noticed similar stones in no less than twenty places besides those I have mentioned; and I am assured that they may be seen in many more churches.

It is very difficult to obtain any accurate or satisfactory information regarding these curious stones. They go by the name of Lapides Martyrum, or Martyr-stones. During the persecutions of the early Christians in Rome they are said to have been hung round the necks of those who were condemned to be drowned in the Tiber. In the reign of the emperor Diocletian many martyrs perished in this way, and the stones by which they were sunk beneath the fatal waters, according to the popular idea, were afterwards found, and carefully preserved as holy relics in the churches in which they are now to be seen. Beyond doubt they are genuine remains of antiquity, and some of them at least may have been used for the purpose alleged; although we cannot be sure, in any case, that the story connected with particular stones is authentic. St. Sabine desired that the stone which was to be tied to him when thrown in the river should be buried with his body, and this might have been done in the case of other martyrs. The stones in the church of SS. Cosma e Damiano are supposed to have been the very ones that were fastened to the necks of these devoted Christians when they were thrown into the Tiber in the reign of Maximian. But as the place and manner of their martyrdom are involved in hopeless obscurity, the various accounts given of both being contradictory, the ecclesiastical legend has no weight. Cosma and Damian were Arabian doctors who were converted to Christianity, and belonged to the class called "silverless martyrs"—that is, physicians who took no fee from those whom they cured, but only stipulated that they should believe in Christ the Great Physician. They occupied in Christian hagiology the same place as the ancient myth of Esculapius occupied in pagan mythology.

Around the stone in the church of Santa Sabina a curious legend has gathered. The sacristan, a Dominican friar of the neighbouring convent, is in the habit of telling the visitors that the devil one day, while St. Dominic was kneeling on the pavement as usual, hurled the huge stone in question, with his utmost force, against the head of the saint; but, strange to say, it either missed him altogether or failed to do him any injury, the saint going calmly on with his devotions as if nothing had happened. On the stone in the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere there is an inscription in Latin, informing us that it was fastened round the neck of St. Calixtus, the Bishop of Rome, who, after having been scourged during an outbreak of pagan hostility, was thrown out of a window in his house in the Trastevere, and flung into a well. The stone in the Basilica of S. Lorenzo is connected with the sufferings and death either of St. Justinian or of St. Stephen, the proto-martyr, who was stoned to death in Palestine, and whose remains, miraculously recovered, are supposed to rest in the crypt below, along with those of St. Laurence. All these relics are devoutly worshipped, and they are believed to cure diseases, and to protect against evil those who touch them.

Examining the martyr-stones more closely, we find abundant evidence to confirm the account which is usually given of their origin, viz. that they were first used as Roman measures of weight. Several of them have inscribed upon their upper surface the names of the quaestors or prefects who issued them, as well as the number of pounds and ounces which they represented; the pounds being distinguished by figures, and the ounces expressed by dots or small circles. Numbers of such ancient Roman weights of stone, similarly inscribed, may be seen in the Kircherian Museum in the Collegio Romano. One specimen bears an inscription which signifies that, by the authority of Augustus, the weight was preserved in the temple of the goddess Ops, the wife of Saturn, and one of the most ancient deities of Italy, where the public money was deposited. Montfaucon, in the third volume of his learned and elaborate work on Antiquity, has a plate illustrating a number of characteristic specimens of these weights from the cabinet of St. Germain's. This previous use would lead us to suspect that all the stones in the Roman churches did not figure in scenes of martyrdom. Some of them, indeed, were found in the loculi or graves of the Catacombs; but this circumstance of itself does not prove that the body interred therein had been that of a martyr, and that the stone had been employed in his execution. We know that the early Christians were in the habit of depositing in the graves of their friends the articles that were most valued by them during life. And hence, in the Catacombs, a singular variety of objects have been found. Stone weights, therefore, may have been put into the graves of Christians, not as instruments of suffering but as objects typical of the occupation of the departed in this life, in accordance with the habit of their pagan forefathers, which the Roman Christians had adopted. Some, however, of the stones, as I have said, may have been used according to the popular legend for the drowning of martyrs; and these weights were conveniently at hand in places of public resort, and lent themselves readily, by the rings inserted in many of them, to the persecutor's purpose.

The material of which they are composed is in nearly all cases the same. It is a stone of extreme hardness and of various shades of colour, from a light green to a dark olive, with a degree of transparency equal to that of wax and susceptible of a fine polish. By some writers it is called a black stone; but this colour may have been given to it by frequent handling when in use, and by the grime of age since. It was called by the Romans, from the use made of it in fabricating measures of weight, lapis aequipondus, and from its supposed efficacy in the cure of diseases of the kidneys lapis nephriticus. Fabreti says that it got the name of lapis Lydius from the locality from which it was believed to have come. It is a kind of nephrite or jade, a mineral which usually occurs in talcose or magnesian rocks. At one time it was supposed to exist only on the river Kara-Kash, in the Kuen Luen mountains north of Cashmere, and for thousands of years the mines of that locality were the only known worked ones of pure jade. It has since, however, been found in New Zealand and in India; while the discoverers of South America obtained specimens of it in its natural state from the natives of Peru, who used it for making axes and arrow-heads, and gave it the name of piedra de yjada, from which comes our common word jade, on account of its use as a supposed cure for the iliac passion. It may be mentioned that there is a mineral closely allied to jade called "Saussurite," discovered by the great geologist whose name it bears near Monte Rosa, and since found on the borders of the Lake of Geneva, near Genoa, and in Corsica. It is possible that the martyr-stones may be made of this mineral, for they have not been analysed. But if they are, as it is supposed, made of true jade, the fact opens up many important questions.

No stone has a more remarkable history. It is an object of interest alike to the geologist and the antiquarian; and in spite of the most patient inquiry its antecedents are surrounded with a mystery which cannot be satisfactorily solved. Its antiquity is beyond doubt. In the most ancient books of China it is noticed as one of the articles of tribute paid to the emperor. Dr. Schliemann found it among the ruins of Troy. But its history stretches into the misty past far anterior in time to all ordinary records, to Cyclopean constructions, or to pictured and sculptured stones. One of the most curious things brought to light in connection with the prehistoric annals of our race is the wide diffusion of this mineral in regions as far apart as China and Britain. Owing to its extreme hardness and susceptibility to polish, it was highly prized by the neolithic races for the manufacture of stone axes and hammers. In nearly every European country implements of jade belonging to the primitive inhabitants have been discovered. Some of the most beautiful belonged to one of the latest settlements of the stone age at Gerlafingen, in the Lake of Bienne, and were mixed with bronze celts of primitive type, indicating that the people of these lake-dwellings lived during the transition period between stone and bronze.

The presence of such celts made of jade obviously points to a connection at a very early period with the East, from whence the stone must have been brought, for it has never been found in a natural state west of the Caspian. An interesting controversy upon this subject was created about eight years ago by the finding in the bed of the Rhone of a jade strigil, an instrument curved and hollowed like a spoon used to scrape the skin while bathing. Various conjectures were formed as to how this isolated object could have found its way from its distant quarry in the East to this obscure spot among the Alps. Professor Max Mueller, and those who along with him advocate the Oriental origin of the first settlers in Europe, are of opinion that this strigil and the various jade implements found in the Swiss lake-dwellings, are relics of this Western migration from the primitive cradle of the Aryan race on the plateaus of Central Asia. The implements could only have come from the East, for the other sources of jade supply in New Zealand and America—since discovered—were altogether unknown in those primitive times. And this conclusion is supported by an imposing array of concurrent philological evidence, based upon the resemblances between the Aryan languages of Europe, so strangely akin to each other, and the ancient dialects of India and Persia. But plausible as this argument looks, the more probable explanation is that the inhabitants of Europe obtained the material which they laboriously fashioned into tools from the East, according to a system of barter similar to that which still exists amongst tribes more rude and savage than the Swiss lake-dwellers. Numerous facts of a like tendency are on record, such as the finding in the mounds of the Mississippi valley, side by side, obsidian from Mexico and mica from the Alleghanies, and in the mounds around the great northern lakes large tropical shells two thousand miles from their native habitat. The ancient inhabitants of China and India found at a very early period that they possessed in their jade rocks a very valuable material, in exchange for which they could get what they wanted from the Western races; while these Western races had at least one article which they could barter for the much-prized jade implements, viz. linen cloth, the weaving of which was practised in the oldest settlements, hanks of unspun flax and thread, nets and cloth of the same material having been found not unfrequently in the lake dwellings.

What an interesting glimpse into the far-off past does this link of connection between the East and the West give us! It indicates a degree of civilisation which we are not accustomed to associate with these primeval times. Archaeologists are of opinion that the race who inhabited Central Europe during the earlier part of the stone age were akin to the modern Laplanders. The people of the lake dwellings, however, and especially those who used jade implements, who replaced them, were a superior and more civilised race. The evidence of the articles which they used, with the exception of jade itself, points not to an Asiatic origin, but rather to a connection with the shores on both sides of the Mediterranean. When they migrated northwards they brought with them the flax and the cereals of Egypt, and introduced with them the southern weeds which grew among these cultivated plants. The seeds of the catch-fly of Crete, which does not grow in Switzerland or Germany, have been found among the relics of the earliest of the lake dwellings; while the familiar corn blue-bottle of our autumn fields was first brought from its native Sicily by this lacustrine people in whose cultivated fields it grew as a weed, and by them spread over all Western and Northern Europe. Such are the interesting associations and profound problems connected with the material of the martyr weights. And it is unique in this respect, that it meets us as far back as the first traces of neolithic man in Central Europe—nay, farther back still, in the palaeolithic flints found in the caves near Mentone; and that it is still used in the countries where it is found for a great variety of useful and ornamental purposes, idols being carved out of it, and altars adorned with its semi-transparent olive-green slabs. The inhabitants of the South Sea Islands until recently used it for their stone implements in the same way that the ancient lake dwellers did; and the Mogul emperors of Delhi set such a high value upon it on account of its superstitious virtues that they had it cut, jewelled, and enamelled into the most exquisite forms.

In Rome the martyr weights, as relics of the stone age, afford a curious example of a very primitive epoch projecting far into a highly-civilised one. Stone weights continued in use long after bronze and iron implements were constructed, on account of the sacred associations connected with them. Weights and measures were regarded by the Romans as invested with a peculiar religious significance; the stone of which the weights were composed was called from that circumstance, or because of the occult qualities attributed to it, lapis divinus; and therefore there was a deep-seated prejudice, which reached down to the days of the highest splendour of the Empire, against the introduction of a new substance. This was the case with all articles used in religious ceremonies. As late as the period of St. Paul's residence in Rome, and at the time of the first persecution of the Christians, ancient pagan rites were celebrated in the Forum, in which the use of metal was forbidden; and only stone hatchets could be employed in slaughtering animals, and only earthen vessels used in carrying the significant parts of the sacrifices into the temples. Treaties were also ratified by striking the victim offered on the occasion with a flint hatchet. The ancient Egyptians, although using iron and bronze for other objects, invariably used stone knives in preparing bodies for the process of embalming. The sacrifices which the Mexicans offered to their idols at the time of the Spanish conquest were cut up by means of knives of obsidian, which they obtained from the lavas of their volcanoes. In the Bible we have several traces of the same universal custom. The Jews seem to have performed the rite of circumcision with flint implements, for we read in Exodus that Zipporah, the wife of Moses, took a sharp stone for that purpose; and the phrase translated "sharp knives" in Joshua v. 2—"At that time the Lord said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time"—should be translated, as in the marginal reference, knives of flint. To the same ancient widespread habit may doubtless be referred the prohibition, mentioned in Exodus and Deuteronomy, against making an altar in any special place where God recorded His name, of hewn stone, or polluting it by lifting up any iron tool upon it. So strong is the conservative instinct in religion that to this very day the enlightened Brahmin of India will not use ordinary fire for sacred purposes, will not procure a fresh spark even from flint and steel, but reverts to, or rather continues the primitive way of obtaining it by friction with a wooden drill. Everywhere innovations in religious worship are resisted with more or less reason or prejudice. The instinct is universal, and has its good and its evil side.



CHAPTER IX

ST. ONOFRIO AND TASSO

One of the most romantic shrines of pilgrimage in Rome is the church of St. Onofrio. It is situated in the Trastevere, that portion of the city beyond the Tiber whose inhabitants boast of their pure descent from the ancient Romans. A steep ascent on the slope of the Janiculum, through a somewhat squalid but picturesque street, and terminating in a series of broad steps, leads up to it from the Porta di San Spirito, not far from the Vatican. The ground here is open and stretches away, free from buildings, to the walls of the city. The church has a simple old-fashioned appearance; its roof, walls, and small campanile are painted with the rusty gold of lichens that have sprung from the kisses of four centuries of rain and sun. It was erected in the reign of Pope Eugenius IV. by Nicolo da Forca Palena, an ancestor of that Conte di Palena who was a great friend of Torquato Tasso at Naples. It was dedicated to the Egyptian hermit Honuphrius, who for sixty years lived in a cave in the desert of Thebes, without seeing a human being or speaking a word, consorting with birds and beasts, and living upon roots and wild herbs. A subtle harmony is felt between the history of the hermit and the character of this building raised in his honour. A spot more drowsy and secluded, more steeped in the dreams of the older ages, is not to be found in the whole city. In front of the church there is a long, narrow portico, supported by eight antique columns of the simplest construction, in all likelihood borrowed from some old pagan temple. Under this portico is a beautiful fresco of the Madonna and Child by Domenichino. To the right are three lunettes, which contain paintings by the same great master, representing the Baptism, Temptation, and Flagellation of St. Jerome. On the left of the arcade are portraits of the most prominent saints of the Hieronomyte order. Exposed to the weather at first, these invaluable frescoes had faded into mere spectres of pictures; but they are now protected from further injury by glass.

Usually the church is closed, except in the early morning, and visitors are admitted by the custode on ringing a door bell under the portico. The interior is dark and solemn, with much less gilding and meretricious ornament than is usual in Roman churches. It contains, in the side chapels, many objects of interest; frescoes and altar-pieces by Annibale Caracci, Pinturicchio, and Peruzzi; and splendid sepulchral monuments. Of the last the most conspicuous are the marble tomb of Alessandro Guidi, the Italian lyric poet, who died in 1712; and the simple cenotaph in the last chapel on the left of one of the titular cardinals of the church, who died in 1849, the celebrated linguist Mezzofante. But the tomb upon which the visitor will gaze with deepest interest is that of Torquato Tasso, who died in the adjacent monastery in 1595. The chapel of St. Jerome, in which it is situated, the first on the left as you enter, was restored by public subscription in 1857, in a manner which does not reflect much credit upon the artistic taste of modern Rome. Previous to this the remains of the poet reposed for two hundred years in an obscure part of the church close to the door, indicated by a tablet. Above this spot there is a portrait of the time, which from an artistic point of view is very poor, but is said to be a good likeness. Removed on the anniversary of his death, about thirty years ago, to the chapel of St. Jerome, the poet's remains are now covered by a huge marble monument in the cinque-cento style, adorned by a bas-relief of his funeral and a statue of him by Fabris. Whatever may be said regarding the artistic merits of this monument, no one who has read the poet's immortal epic, and is conversant with the sad incidents of his life, can stand on the spot without being deeply moved.

Connected with the church is a monastery dedicated to St. Jerome. In one of the upper corridors is a beautiful arched fresco of the Madonna and Child, by Leonardo da Vinci, with the donor of the picture in profile kneeling before her. The picture is surrounded by a frame of fruit and flowers on an enamelled ground. The soft, tender features of the infant Jesus, and the quiet dignity and grace of the smiling Madonna, are so characteristic of the style of Leonardo da Vinci that the picture would be at once referred to him by one who did not know its origin. The chamber where Tasso spent the last days of his life is on the upper floor, and is the most conveniently situated in the whole building. It is left very much in the same state as when he lived in it. The walls and ceiling are bare and whitewashed, without any decoration. Here and there are several pale marks, indicating the places of objects that had been removed. In one part is painted on the plaster a false door partially open, behind which is seen the figure of Tasso about to enter; but every person of good taste must condemn the melodramatic exhibition, and wish that he could obliterate it with a daub of whitewash. The custode directed my attention to it with an air of great admiration, and could not understand the scowl with which I turned away my face. There are several most interesting relics of Tasso preserved in this chamber—his table, with an inkstand of wood; his great chair covered with Cordova leather, very aged and worn-looking; the belt which he wore; a small German cabinet; a large China bowl, evidently an heirloom; a metal crucifix of singular workmanship, given to him by Pope Clement VIII., which soothed his dying moments; several of his letters, and an autograph copy of verses. In one corner is the leaden coffin, much corroded, in which his remains were originally deposited. On the table is a mask in reddish wax moulded from the dead face of the poet, and placed upon a plaster bust—a most fantastic combination. From this mask, which is an undoubted original, numerous copies have been taken, which are scattered throughout Europe. It is in consequence somewhat effaced, but it still shows the characteristic features of the poet—the purity of the profile, the fineness of the mouth, and the spiritual beauty and fascinating expression of the whole face. But the incoherence of the adaptation makes it painful to think that this is the best representation of the poet we possess.

The extensive garden behind the convent combines a considerable variety of natural features. The monks grow large quantities of lettuce and fennochio; and interspersed among the beds of vegetables are orange and other fruit trees, and little trellises of cane, wreathed with vines. A large tank is supplied with water from a spring whose murmur gives a feeling of animation to the spot. The garden rises at the end into broken elevated ground showing the native rock through its grassy sides. A row of tall old cypresses crowns the ridge—their fluted trunks gray with lichen-stains, and their deep green spires of foliage forming harp-strings on which the evening winds discourse solemn music, as if the spirit of the poet haunted them still. On one side are the picturesque ruins of a shrine overarching a fountain, now dry and choked up with weeds, and fringed with ferns. Cyclamens—called by the Italians viola pazze, "mad violets"—grow on its margin in glowing masses; sweet-scented violets in profusion perfume all the air; and a few Judas-trees, loaded with crimson blossoms, without a single leaf to relieve the gorgeous colour, serve as an admirable background, almost blending with the clouds on the low horizon. On the other side the hill slopes down in a series of terraces to the crowded streets of the Trastevere, forming a spacious out-door amphitheatre, in which the Arcadian Academy of Rome used to hold its meetings during the summer months, and where St. Filippo Neri was wont to give those half-dramatic musical entertainments which, originating in the oratory of the religious community established by him, are now known throughout the world as oratorios. Between these two objects still stands the large torso of a tree which bears the name of "Tasso's oak," because the poet's favourite seat was under its shadow. It suffered much from the violence of a thunderstorm in 1842, but numerous branches have since sprouted from the old trunk, and it now affords a capacious shade from the noonday heat. It is a variety of the Valonia oak, with delicate, downy, pale-green leaves, much serrated, and contrasts beautifully with the dark green spires of the cypresses behind. The leaves at the time of my visit had but recently unfolded, and exhibited all the delicacy of tint and perfection of outline so characteristic of young foliage. The garden was in the first fresh flush of spring—that idyllic season which, in Italy more than in any other land, realises the glowing descriptions of the poets. Plucking a leafy twig from the branches and a gray lichen from the trunk as mementoes of the place, I sat down on the mossy hole, and tried to bring back in imagination the haunted past. Nature was renewing her old life; the same flowers still covered the earth with their divine frescoes; but where was he whose spirit informed all the beauty and translated its mystic language into human words? The permanency of nature and the vanity of human life seemed here to acquire new significance.