Читать книгу The Best of the World's Classics (All 10 Volumes) - Henry Cabot Lodge - Страница 105
Оглавление(69 a.d.)
Martialis had scarcely reentered the Capitol when the furious soldiers appeared before it, without a general, and each man acting on his own suggestions. Having rapidly passed the forum, and the temples that overlook it, they marched up the opposite hill, as far as the first gates of the citadel. On the right side of the ascent, a range of porticoes had been built in ancient times. Going out upon the roof of those, the besieged threw a shower of stones and tiles. The assailants had no weapons but their swords, and to fetch engines and missiles seemed a tedious delay. They threw brands into the portico that jutted near them. They followed up the fire, and would have forced their way through the gate of the Capitol, which the fire had laid hold of, if Sabinus had not placed as a barrier in the very approach, in lieu of a wall, the statues, those honorable monuments of our ancestors, which were pulled down wherever they could be found. They then assaulted the Capitol in two different quarters near the grove of the asylum, and where the Tarpeian rock is ascended by a hundred steps. Both attacks were unforeseen.
That by the asylum was the nearer and most vigorous. Nor could they be stopt from climbing up the contiguous buildings, which being raised high under the idea of undisturbed peace, reach the basement of the Capitol. Here a doubt exists whether the fire was thrown upon the roofs by the storming party or the besieged, the latter being more generally supposed to have done it, to repulse those who were climbing up, and had advanced some way. The fire extended itself thence to the porticoes adjoining the temples; soon the eagles that supported the cupola caught fire, and as the timber was old they fed the flame. Thus the Capitol, with its gates shut, neither stormed, nor defended, was burned to the ground.
From the foundation of the city to that hour, the Roman republic had felt no calamity so deplorable, so shocking, as that, unassailed by a foreign enemy, and, were it not for the vices of the age, with the deities propitious, the temple of Jupiter supremely good and great, built by our ancestors with solemn auspices, the pledge of empire, which neither Porsena,[126] when Rome surrendered to his arms, nor the Gauls,[127] when they captured the city, were permitted to violate, should be now demolished by the madness of the rulers of the state. The Capitol was once before destroyed by fire during a civil war; but it was from the guilty machinations of private individuals. Now it was besieged publicly, publicly set fire to; and what were the motives for the war? what was the object to be gained, that so severe a calamity was incurred? Warred we in our country's cause?—Tarquinius Priscus, during the war with the Sabines, built it in fulfillment of a vow, and laid the foundations more in conformity with his anticipations of the future grandeur of the empire, than the limited extent of the Roman means at that time. Servius Tullius, assisted by the zeal of the allies of Rome, and after him Tarquin the Proud, with the spoils of Suessa Pometia, added to the building. But the glory of completing the design was reserved for the era of liberty. When tyrants were swept away, Horatius Pulvilus, in his second consulship, dedicated the temple, finished with such magnificence that the wealth of after ages graced it with new embellishments, but added nothing to its dimensions. Four hundred and fifteen years afterward, in the consulship of Lucius Scipio and Caius Norbanus, it was burned to the ground, and again rebuilt on the old foundation. Sulla having now triumphed over his opponents, undertook to build it, but nevertheless did not dedicate it; the only thing wanting to crown his felicity. That honor was reserved for Lutatius Catulus, whose name, amidst so many works of the Cæsars, remained legible till the days of Vitellius. Such was the sacred building which was at this time reduced to ashes.
