On the 21st of January, a beautiful service is celebrated here, in which two lambs, typical of the purity of the virgin saint, are blessed upon the altar. They are sent by the chapter of St. John Lateran, and their wool is afterwards used to make the pallium of the pope, which is consecrated before it is worn, by being deposited in a golden urn upon the tomb of St. Peter. The pallium is the sign of episcopal jurisdiction.

"Ainsi, le simple ornement de laine que ces prelats doivent porter sur leurs epaules comme symbole de la brebis du bon Pasteur, et que le pontife Romain prend sur l'autel meme de Saint Pierre pour le leur adresser, va porter jusqu'aux extremites de l'Eglise, dans une union sublime, le double sentiment de la force du Prince des Apotres et de la douceur virginale d'Agnes."--_Dom Gueranger._

Close to St' Agnese is the round _Church of Sta. Costanza_. erected by Constantine as a mausoleum for his daughters Constantia and Helena, and converted into a church by Alexander IV. (1254--61) in honour of the Princess Constantia, ob. 354, whose life is represented by Marcellinus as anything but saintlike, and who is supposed to have been confused in her canonization with a sainted nun of the same name. The rotunda, seventy-three feet in diameter, is surrounded by a vaulted corridor; twenty-four double columns of granite support the dome. The vaulting is covered with mosaic arabesques of the fourth century, of flowers and birds, with scenes referring to a vintage. The same subjects are repeated on the splendid porphyry sarcophagus of Sta. Costanza, of which the interest is so greatly marred by its removal to the Vatican from its proper site, whence it was first stolen by Pope Paul II., who intended to use it as his own tomb.

"Les enfants qui foulent le raisin, tels qu'on les voit dans les mosaques de l'eglise de Sainte Constance, les bas-reliefs de son tombeau et ceux de beaucoup d'autres tombeaux chretiens sont bien d'origine paenne, car on les voit aussi figurer dans les bas-reliefs ou parait Priape."--_Ampere, Hist. Rom._ iii. 257.

Behind the two churches is an oblong space, ending in a fine mass of ruin, which is best seen from the valley below. This was long supposed to be the Hippodrome of Constantine, but is now discovered to have belonged to an early Christian cemetery.

_The Catacomb of St Agnese_ is entered from a vineyard about a quarter of a mile beyond the church. It is lighted and opened to the public on St. Agnes' Day. After those of St. Calixtus, this, perhaps, is the catacomb which is most worthy of a visit.

We enter by a staircase attributed to the time of Constantine. The passages are lined with the usual _loculi_ for the dead, sometimes adapted for a single body, sometimes for two laid together. Beside many of the graves the palm of victory may be seen scratched on the mortar, and remains of the glass bottles or _ampullae_, which are supposed to indicate the graves of martyrs, and to have contained a portion of their blood, of which they are often said to retain the trace. One of the graves in the first gallery bears the names of consuls of A.D. 336, which fixes the date of this part of the cemetery.

The most interesting features here are a square chamber hewn in the rock, with an arm-chair (_sedia_) cut out of the rock on either side of the entrance, supposed to have been a school for catechists,--and near this is a second chamber for female catechists, with plain seats in the same position. Opening out of the gallery close by is a chamber which was apparently used as a chapel; its _arcosolium_ has marks of an altar remaining at the top of the grave, and near it is a credence-table; the roof is richly painted,--in the central compartment is our Lord seated between the rolls of the Old and New Testament. Above the arcosolium, in the place of honour, is our Saviour as the Good Shepherd, bearing a sheep upon his shoulders, and standing between other sheep and trees;--in the other compartments are Daniel in the lions' den, the Three Children in the furnace, Moses taking off his shoes, Moses striking the rock, and--nearest the entrance--the Paralytic carrying his bed. A neighbouring chapel has also remains of an altar and credence-table, and well-preserved paintings,--the Good Shepherd, Adam and Eve, with the tree between them, Jonah under the gourd, and in the fourth compartment a figure described by Protestants merely as an Orante, and by Roman Catholics as the Blessed Virgin.[244] Near this chapel we can look down through an opening into the second floor of the catacomb, which is lined with graves like the first.

In the further part of the catacomb is a long narrow chapel which has received the name of the _cathedral_ or _basilica_. It is divided into three parts, of which the furthest, or presbytery, contains an ancient episcopal chair with lower seats on either side for priests--probably the throne where Pope St. Liberius (A.D. 359) officiated, with his face to the people, when he lived for more than a year hidden here from persecution. Hence a flight of steps leads down to what Northcote calls "the Lady Chapel," where, over the altar, is a fresco of an orante, without a nimbus, with outstretched arms,--with a child in front of her.

On either side of this picture, a very interesting one, is the monogram of Constantine, and the painting is referred to his time. Near this chapel is a chamber with a spring running through it, evidently used as a baptistery.

At the extremity of the catacomb, under the basilica of St. Agnes, is one of its most interesting features. Here the passages become wider and more irregular, the walls sloping and unformed, and graves cease to appear, indicating one of the ancient _arenaria_, which here formed the approach to the catacomb, and beyond which the Christians excavated their cemetery.

The graves throughout almost all the catacombs have been rifled, the bones which they contained being distributed as relics throughout Roman Catholic Christendom, and most of the sarcophagi and inscriptions removed to the Lateran and other museums.

"Vous pourriez voir ici la capitale des catacombes de toute la chretiente. Les martyrs, les confesseurs, et les vierges, y fourmillent de tous cotes. Quand on se fait besoin de quelques reliques en pays etrangers, le Pape n'a qu'a descendre ici et crier, _Qui de vous autres veut aller etre saint en Pologne?_ Alors, s'il se trouve quelque mort de bonne volonte, il se leve et s'en va."--_De Brosses_, 1739.

Half a mile beyond St' Agnese, the road reaches the willow-fringed river Anio, in which "Silvia changed her earthly life for that of a goddess,"

and which carried the cradle containing her two babes Romulus and Remus into the Tiber, to be brought to land at the foot of the Palatine fig-tree. Into this river we may also recollect that Sylla caused the ashes of his ancient rival Marius to be thrown. The river is crossed by the _Ponte Nomentana_, a mediaeval bridge, partially covered, with forked battlements.

"Ponte Nomentana is a solitary dilapidated bridge in the spacious green Campagna. Many ruins from the days of ancient Rome, and many watch-towers from the middle ages, are scattered over this long succession of meadows; chains of hills rise towards the horizon, now partially covered with snow, and fantastically varied in form and colour by the shadows of the clouds. And there is also the enchanting vapoury vision of the Alban hills, which change their hues like the chameleon, as you gaze at them--where you can see for miles little white chapels glittering on the dark foreground of the hills, as far as the Passionist Convent on the summit, and whence you can trace the road winding through thickets, and the hills sloping downwards to the lake of Albano, while a hermitage peeps through the trees."--_Mendelssohn's Letters._

The hill immediately beyond the bridge is the _Mons Sacer_ (not only the part usually pointed out on the right of the road, but the whole hillside), to which the famous secession of the Plebs took place in B.C.

549, amounting, according to Dionysius, to about 4000 persons. Here they encamped upon the green slopes for four months, to the terror of the patricians, who foresaw that Rome, abandoned by its defenders, would fall before its enemies, and that the crops would perish for want of cultivation. Here Menenius Agrippa delivered his apologue of the belly and its members, which is said to have induced them to return to Rome; that which really decided them to do so being the concession of tribunes, to be the organs and representatives of the plebs as the consuls were of the patricians. The epithet Sacer is ascribed by Dionysius to an altar which the plebeians erected at the time on the hill to ?e?? ?e??t???.

A second secession to the Mons Sacer took place in B.C. 449, when the plebs rose against Appius Claudius after the death of Virginia, and retired hither under the advice of M. Duilius, till the decemvirs resigned.

Following the road beyond the bridge past the castle known as _Casale dei Pazzi_ (once used as a lunatic asylum) and the picturesque tomb called Torre Nomentana,--as far as the seventh milestone--we reach the remains of the unburied _Basilica of S. Alessandro_, built on the site of the place where that pope suffered martyrdom with his companions Eventius and Theodulus, A.D. 119, and was buried on the same spot by the Christian matron Severina.[245] The plan of the basilica, disinterred 1856-7, is still quite perfect. The tribune and high altar retain fragments of rich marbles and alabasters; the episcopal throne also remains in its place.

The "Acts of the martyrs Alexander, Eventius, and Theodulus," narrate that Severina buried the bodies of the first two martyrs in one tomb, and the third separately--"Theodulum vero alibi sepelivit." This is borne out by the discovery of a chapel opening from the nave, where the single word "martyri," is supposed to point out the grave of Theodulus.

A baptistery has been found with its font, and another chapel adjoining is pointed out as the place where neophytes assembled to receive confirmation from the bishop. Among epitaphs laid bare in the pavement is one to a youth named Apollo "votus Deo" (dedicated to the priesthood?) at the age of 14. Entered from the church is the catacomb called "ad nymphas," containing many ancient inscriptions and a few rude paintings.

Mass is solemnly performed here by the Cardinal Prefect of the Propaganda on the festival of St. Alexander, May 3, when the roofless basilica--backed by the blue Sabine mountains and surrounded by the utterly desolate Campagna--is filled with worshippers, and presents a striking scene. Beyond this a road to the left leads through beautiful woods to _Mentana_, occupying the site of the ancient Nomentum, and recently celebrated for the battle between the papal troops and the Garibaldians on Nov. 3, 1867. The conflict took place chiefly on the hillside which is passed on the right before reaching the town. Two miles further is _Monte Rotondo_, with a fine old castle of the Barberini family (once of the Orsini), from which there is a beautiful view. This place was also the scene of fighting in 1867. It is possible to vary the route in returning to Rome from hence by the lower road which leads by the (now broken) Ponte Salara.

If we re-enter Rome by the Porta Pia, immediately within the gates we find another Villa belonging to the Torlonia family. The straight road from the gate leads by the Termini to the Quattro Fontane and the Monte Cavallo. On the left, if we follow the _Via de Macao_, which takes its strange name from a gift of land which the princes of Savoy made to the Jesuits for a mission in China, we reach a small piazza with two pines, where a gate on the left leads to the remains of the _Pretorian Camp_, established by Sejanus, the minister of Tiberius. It was dismantled by Constantine, but from three sides having been enclosed by Aurelian in the line of his city-wall, its form is still preserved to us. The Pretorian Camp was an oblong of 1200 by 1500 feet; its area was occupied by a vineyard of the Jesuits till 1861, when a "Campo Militare" was again established here, for the pontifical troops.

"En suivant l'enceinte de Rome, quand on arrive a l'endroit ou elle se continue par le mur du Camp des pretoriens, on est frappe de la superiorite de construction que presente celui-ci. La partie des murs d'Honorius qui est voisine a ete refaite au huitieme siecle.

Le commencement et la fin de l'empire se touchent. On peut apprecier d'un coup d'il l'etat de la civilisation aux deux epoques: voila ce qu'on faisait dans le premier siecle, et voila ce qu'on faisait au huitieme, apres la conquete de l'empire Romain par les Barbares. Il faut songer toutefois que cette epoque ou l'on construisait si bien a amene celle ou l'on ne savait plus construire."--_Ampere, Emp._ i. 421.

Hence a road, three-quarters of a mile long, leads--passing under an arch of Sixtus V.--to the Porta S. Lorenzo (Ch. XIII.).

The road opposite the gateway leading to the Camp is bordered on the left by the buildings belonging to the _Railway Station_, beyond which is the entrance to the grounds of the _Villa Massimo Negroni_, which possessed a delightful terrace, fringed with orange-trees--a most agreeable sunny walk in winter--and many pleasant shady nooks and corners for summer, but which has been mutilated and stripped of all its beauties since the Sardinian rule. In a part of this villa beyond the railway but still visible from hence, is a colossal statue of Minerva (generally called "Rome"), which is a relic of the residence here of Cardinal Felix Perretti, who as a boy had watched the pigs of his father at Montalto, and who lived to mount the papal throne as Sixtus V. The pedestal of the statue bears his arms,--a lion holding three pears in its paw. Here, with her husband's uncle, lived the famous Vittoria Accoramboni, the wife of the handsome Francesco Perretti, who had been vainly sought in marriage by the powerful and ugly old Prince Paolo Orsini. It was from hence that her young husband was summoned to a secret interview with her brothers on the slopes of the Quirinal, where he was cruelly murdered by the hired bravos of her first lover. Hence also Vittoria went forth--on the very day of the installation of Sixtus V.--to her strange second marriage with the murderer of her husband, who died six months after, leaving her with one of the largest fortunes in Italy--an amount of wealth which led to her own barbarous murder through the jealousy of the Orsini a month afterwards.

Here, after the election of her brother to the papacy, lived Camilla, the sister of Sixtus V., whom he refused to recognise when she came to him in splendid attire as a princess, but tenderly embraced when she reappeared in her peasant's wimple and hood. From hence her two granddaughters were married,--one to Virginius Orsini, the other to Marc-Antonio Colonna, an alliance which healed the feud of centuries between the two families.

In later times the Villa Negroni was the residence of the poet Alfieri.

The principal terrace ends near a reservoir which belonged to the baths of Diocletian.

"As one looks from the Villa Negroni windows, one cannot fail to be impressed by the strange changes through which this wonderful city has passed. The very spot on which Nero, the insane emperor-artist, fiddled while Rome was burning, has now become a vast kitchen-garden, belonging to Prince Massimo (himself a descendant, as he claims, of Fabius Cunctator), where men no longer, but only lettuces, asparagus, and artichokes, are ruthlessly cut down. The inundations are not for mock sea-fights among slaves, but for the peaceful purposes of irrigation. In the bottom of the valley, a noble old villa, covered with frescoes, has been turned into a manufactory for bricks, and part of the Villa Negroni itself is now occupied by the railway station. Yet here the princely family of Negroni lived, and the very lady at whose house Lucrezia Borgia took her famous revenge may once have sauntered under the walls, which still glow with ripening oranges, to feed the gold fish in the fountain,--or walked with stately friends through the long alleys of clipped cypresses, or pic-nicked _alla Giornata_ on lawns which are now but kitchen-gardens, dedicated to San Cavolo."--_Story's Roba di Roma._

The lower part of the Villa Negroni, and the slopes towards the Esquiline, were once celebrated as the _Campus Esquilinus_, a large pauper burial-ground, where bodies were thrown into pits called _puticoli_,[246] as is still the custom at Naples. There were also tombs here of a somewhat pretentious character: "those probably of rich well-to-do burgesses, yet not great enough to command the posthumous honour of a roadside mausoleum."[247] Horace dwells on the horrors of this burial-ground, where he places the scene of Canidia's incantations:--

"Nec in sepulcris pauperum prudens anus Novemdiales dissipare pulveres."

_Epod._ xvii. 47.

'Has nullo perdere possum Nec prohibere modo, simul ac vaga luna decorum Protulit os, quin ossa legant, herbasque nocentes.

Vidi egomet nigra succinctam vadere palla Canidiam, pedibus nudis passoque capillo, Cum Sagana majore ululantem; pallor utrasque Fecerat horrendas aspectu,

Serpentes atque videres Infernas errare canes; lunamque rubentem, Ne foret his testis, post magna latere sepulcra."

_Hor. Sat._ i. 8'

The place was considered very unhealthy until its purification by Maecenas.

"Huc prius angustis ejecta cadavera cellis Conservus vili portanda locabat in arca.

Hoc miserae plebi stabat commune sepulcrum, Pantolabo scurrae, Nomentanoque nepoti.

Mille pedes in fronte, trecentos cippus in agrum Hic dabat; heredes monumentum ne sequeretur.

Nunc licet Esquiliis habitare salubribus, atque Aggere in aprico spatiari; quo modo tristes Albis informem spectabant ossibus agrum."

_Hor. Sat._ i. 8.

"Post insepulta membra different lupi, Et Esquilinae alites."

_Hor. Ep._ v. 100.

"The Campus Esquilinus, between the roads which issued from the Esquiline and Viminal gates, was the spot assigned for casting out the carcases of slaves, whose foul and half-burnt remains were hardly hidden from the vultures. The _accursed field_ was enclosed, it would appear, neither by wall nor fence, to exclude the wandering steps of man or beast; and from the public walk on the summit of the ridge, it must have been viewed in all its horrors.

Here prowled in troops the houseless dogs of the city and the suburbs; here skulked the solitary wolf from the Alban hills, and here perhaps, to the doleful murmurs of the Marsic chaunt, the sorceress compounded her philtres of the ashes of dead men's bones.

Maecenas (B.C. 7) deserved the gratitude of the citizens, when he obtained a grant of this piece of land, and transformed it into a park or garden.... The Campus Esquilinus is now part of the gardens of the Villa Negroni."--_Merivale, Romans under the Empire._

Within what were the grounds of the Villa Negroni until they were encroached upon by the railway, but now only to be visited with a "lascia passare" from the station master, are some of the best remains of the _Agger of Servius Tullius_. In 1869--70, some curious painted chambers were discovered here, but were soon destroyed,--and the foolish jealousy of the authorities prevented any drawings or photographs being taken. The Agger can be traced from the Porta Esquilina (near the Arch of Gallienus), to the Porta Collina (near the Gardens of Sallust). In the time of the empire it had become a kind of promenade, as we learn from Horace.[248]

Opposite the station are the vast, but for the most part uninteresting, remains of the _Baths of Diocletian_, covering a space of 440,000 square yards. They were begun by Diocletian and Maximian, about A.D. 302, and finished by Constantius and Maximinus. It is stated by Cardinal Baronius, that 40,000 Christians were employed in the work; some bricks marked with crosses have been found in the ruins. At the angles of the principal front were two circular halls, both of which remain; one is near the modern Villa Strozzi, at the back of the Negroni garden, and is now used as a granary, the other is transformed into the Church of S.

Bernardo.

The Baths are supposed to have first fallen into decay after the Gothic invasion of A.D. 410. In the sixteenth century the site was sold to Cardinal Bella, ambassador of Francis I. at Rome, who built a fine palace among the ruins; after his death, in 1560, the property was re-sold to S. Carlo Borromeo. He sold it again to his uncle, Pope Pius IV., who founded the monastery of Carthusian monks. These, in 1593, sold part of the ruins to Caterina Sforza, who founded the Cistercian convent of S. Bernardo.

About 1520, a Sicilian priest called Antonio del Duca came to Rome, bringing with him from Palermo pictures of the seven archangels (Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Santhiel, Gendiel, and Borachiel), copied from some which existed in the Church of S. Angiolo. Carried away by the desire of instituting archangel-worship at Rome, he obtained leave to affix these pictures to seven of the columns still standing erect in the Baths of Diocletian, which, ten years after, Julius II.

allowed to be consecrated under the title of Sta. Maria degli Angeli; though Pius IV., declaring that angel-worship had never been sanctioned by the Church, except under the three names mentioned in Scripture, ordered the pictures of Del Duca to be taken away.[249] At the same time he engaged Michael Angelo to convert the great oblong hall of the Baths (Calidarium) into a church. The church then arranged was not such as we now see, the present entrance having been then the atrium of the side chapel, and the main entrance at first by what is now the right transept, while the high altar stood in what is now the left transept.