Читать книгу Rambles in Rome - S. Russell Forbes - Страница 15

From the time of Servius to Aurelian the city, though much enlarged, had no new wall, though the boundaries had been extended. To continue our last quotation from Dionysius, who died 7 B.C., this is evident.

"But if any one is desirous to measure the circumference of it by the wall—which, though hard to be discovered, by reason of the buildings that surround it in many places, yet preserves in several parts of it some traces of the ancient structure—and to compare it with the circumference of the city of Athens, the circuit of Rome will not appear much greater than that of the other" (Dionysius, iv. 13).

The Pomœrium, or city bounds, was enlarged, as we know, by several emperors, some of their cippi, or boundary-stones, being still in situ; but there was no wall. Where the roads crossed the line of the Pomœrium, gates were built, between which there were no walls. The Romans considered the rivers Tigris, Euphrates, and Danube, the desert and the ocean, as the walls of Rome.

"When he [Aurelian] saw that it might happen what had occurred under Gallienus, having obtained the concurrence of the senate, he extended the walls of the city of Rome" (Vopiscus, in "Aur.," 21).

"Thus also Rome was surrounded by walls which it had not before, and the wall begun by Aurelian was finished by Probus" (Zosimus, i. 49).

Other quotations might be given to show that Aurelian surrounded the Rome of the empire with walls which it had not before his time. He incorporated with his wall everything that stood in his way—tombs, aqueducts, palaces, camps, and amphitheatre. It was commenced and finished in nine years, and had twenty-two gates, nineteen of which still remain.

These present walls have been in part rebuilt, repaired, and strengthened at different intervals, as occasion might require, from the time of Honorius, who improved and added to the existing gates, to that of Totila, who "resolved to raze Rome to the ground. So, of the circuit of the walls he threw down as much in different places as would amount to about a third part of the whole" (Procopius, "Bello Gothico," iii. 22).

Belisarius "made hasty repairs," after which the Popes stepped in and took up the tale, and put up inscriptions, so that there should be no mistake about it. Leo IV. built the walls of the Leonine city, to protect it from the Saracens, besides repairing the Aurelian walls. The Leonine walls can still be traced, the ruins standing boldly out in the landscape at the back of the Vatican.

The present wall on the Trastevere side was built by Innocent X. and Urban VIII. The complete circuit of the present walls is between twelve and thirteen miles; they contain twenty gates, ancient and modern, nine of which are closed.

Whilst the Romans considered the defences of the city to be the Tigris, Euphrates, Danube, desert, and ocean, their power was at its zenith; but when for the defence of their capital it was necessary to surround it with a wall, "the decline and fall of the Roman empire" had already begun.