S. Marco, and the Cancellaria, were built with materials plundered from its walls. It is said that the first of these destroyers, Cardinal Farnese, only extorted permission from his reluctant uncle, Paul III., to quarry as much stone as he could remove in twelve hours, and that he availed himself of this permission to let loose four thousand workmen upon the building. Sixtus V. endeavoured to utilize it by turning the arcades into shops, and establishing a woollen manufactory, and Clement XI. (1700—1721) by a manufactory of saltpetre, but both happily failed. In the last century the tide of restoration began to set in. A Carmelite monk, Angelo Paoli, represented the iniquity of allowing a spot consecrated by such holy memories to be desecrated, and Clement XI. consecrated the arena to the memory of the martyrs who had suffered there, and erected in one of the archways the still existing chapel of Sta. Maria della Pietà. The hermit appointed to take care of this chapel was stabbed in 1742, which caused Benedict XIV. to shut in the Coliseum with bars and gates. After this time destruction became sacrilege, and the five last popes all contributed to strengthen and preserve the walls which remain. Even so late as thirty years ago, however, the interior was (like that of an English abbey) an uneven grassy space littered with masses of ruin, amid which large trees grew and flourished, and the clearing out of the arena, though exhibiting more perfectly the ancient form of the building, is much to be regretted by lovers of the picturesque.[72]
Among the ecclesiastical legends connected with the Coliseum, it is said that Gregory the Great presented some foreign ambassadors with a handful of earth from the arena as a relic for their sovereigns, and upon their receiving the gift with disrespect, he pressed it, when blood flowed from the soil. Pius V, urged those who wished for relics to gather up the dust of the Coliseum, wet with the blood of the martyrs.
In 1744 "the blessed Leonardo di Porto Maurizio," who is buried in S. Buonaventura, drew immense crowds to the Coliseum by his preaching, and obtained permission from Benedict XIV. to found the confraternity of "Amanti di Gesù e Maria," for whom the Via Crucis was established here. Recently the ruins have been associated with the holy beggar, Benoit Joseph Labré (beatified by Pius IX. in 1860), who died at Rome in 1783, after a life spent in devotion. He was accustomed to beg in the Coliseum, to sleep at night under its arcades, and to pray for hours at its various shrines.
The name Coliseum is first found in the writings of the Venerable Bede, who quotes a prophecy of Anglo-Saxon pilgrims.
"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
And when Rome falls, the world."[73]
The name was probably derived from its size; the amphitheatre of Capua was also called Colossus.
"When one looks at the Coliseum everything else becomes small; it is so great that one cannot keep its true image in one's soul; one only remembers it on a smaller scale, and returning thither again finds it again grown larger."—Goethe, Romische Briefe.
Once or twice in the course of every Roman winter the Coliseum is illuminated with Bengal lights.
"Les étrangers se donnent parfois l'amusement d'éclairer le Colisée avec des feux de Bengale. Cela ressemble un peu trop à un finale de mélodrame, et on peut préférer comme illumination un radieux soleil on les douces lueurs de la lune. Cependant j'avoue que la première fois que le Colisée m'apparut ainsi, embrasé de feux rougeâtres, son histoire me revint vivement à la pensée. Je trouvais qu'il avait en ce moment sa vraie couleur, la couleur du sang."—Ampère, Emp. ii. 156.
CHAPTER V.
THE VELABRUM AND THE GHETTO.
S. Teodoro—Sta. Anastasia—Circus Maximus—S. Giorgio in Velabro—Arch of Septimius Severus—Arch of Janus—Cloaca-Maxima—Sta. Maria in Cosmedin—Temple of Vesta—Temple of Fortuna Virilis—House of Rienzi—Ponte-Rotto—Ponte Sublicio—S. Nicolo in Carcere—Theatre of Marcellus—Portico of Octavia—Pescheria—Jewish Synagogue—Palazzo Cenci—Fontana Tartarughe—Palazzo Mattei—Palazzo Caetani—Sta. Caterina dei Funari—Sta. Maria Campitelli—Palazzo Margana—Convent of the Tor de' Specchi.
THE second turn on the right of the Roman Forum is the Via dei Fienili, formerly the Vicus Tuscus, so called from the Etruscan colony established there after the drying up of the marsh which occupied that site in the earliest periods of Roman history. During the empire, this street, leading from the Forum to the Circus Maximus, was one of the most important. Martial speaks of its silk-mercers; from an inscription on a tomb we know that the fashionable tailors were to be found there; and the perfumers' shops were of such abundance as to give to part of the street the name of Vicus Thurarius. At its entrance was the statue of the Etruscan god, Vertumnus, the patron of the quarter.[74] This was the street by which the processions of the Circensian games passed from the Forum to the Circus Maximus. In one of the Verrine Orations, an accusation brought by Cicero against the patrician Verres, was that from avaricious motives he had paved even this street—used for processions of the Circus—in such a manner that he would not venture to use it himself.[75]
All this valley was once a stagnant marsh, left by inundations of the Tiber, for in early times the river often overflowed the whole valley between the Palatine and the Capitoline hills, and even reached as far as the foot of the Quirinal, where the Goat's Pool, at which Romulus disappeared, is supposed to have formed part of the same swamp. Ovid, in describing the processions of the games, speaks of the willows and rushes which once covered this ground, and the marshy places which one could not pass over except with bare feet:
"Qua Velabra solent in Circum ducere pompas,
Nil præter salices crassaque canna fuit,
Sæpe suburbanas rediens conviva per undas
Cantat, et ad nautas ebria verba jacit.
Nondum conveniens diversis iste figuris
Nomen ab averso ceperat amne deus.
Hic quoque lucus erat juncis et arundine densus,
Et pede velato non adeunda palus.
Stagna recesserunt, et aquas sua ripa coërcet:
Siccaque nunc tellus. Mos tamen ille manet."
Fast. vi. 405.
We even know the price which was paid for being ferried across the Velabrum: "it was a quadrans, three times as much as one pays now for the boat at the Ripetta."[76] The creation of the Cloaca Maxima had probably done much towards draining, but some fragments of the marsh remained to a late period.
According to Varro the name of the Velabrum was derived from vehere, because of the boats which were employed to convey passengers from one hill to the other.[77] Others derive the name from vela, also in reference to the mode of transit, or, according to another idea, in reference to the awnings which were stretched across the street to shelter the processions—though the name was in existence long before any processions were thought of.
It was the waters of the Velabrum which bore the cradle of Romulus and Remus from the Tiber, and deposited it under the famous fig-tree of the Palatine.
On the left of the Via dei Fienili (shut in by a railing, generally closed, but which will be opened on appealing to the sacristan next door) is the round Church of S. Teodoro. The origin of this building is unknown. It used to be called the temple of Romulus, on the very slight foundation that the famous bronze wolf, mentioned by Dionysius as existing in the temple of Romulus, was found near this spot. Dyer supposes that it may have been the Temple of Cybele; this, however, was upon, and not under, the Palatine. Be they what they may, the remains were dedicated as a Christian church by Adrian I., in the eighth century, and some well preserved mosaics in the tribune are of that time.
"It is curious to note in Rome how many a modern superstition has its root in an ancient one, and how tenaciously customs still cling to the old localities. On the Capitoline hill the bronze she-wolf was