Читать книгу Rambles in Rome - S. Russell Forbes - Страница 30

It was erected originally at Heliopolis to Psammeticus I., of the twenty-fourth dynasty, more than six centuries B.C. It is 72 feet high. Its first site in Rome was in the Campus Martius, where is now the Piazza dell'Impresa, where it was found and taken to its present site. The Roman pedestal with inscription is in the Church of S. Lorenzo in Lucina. The obelisk was repaired, and its present pedestal formed of fragments of the Antonine Column, which stood near by. The obelisk was brought to Rome by Augustus at the same time as the one in the Piazza del Popolo, and was put up, according to Pliny (xxxvi. 15), as a sun-dial:—

"The one that has been erected in the Campus Martius has been applied to a singular purpose by the late Emperor Augustus—that of marking the shadows projected by the sun, and so measuring the length of the days and nights. With this object, a stone pavement was laid, the extreme length of which corresponded exactly with the length of the shadow thrown by the obelisk at the sixth hour on the day of the winter solstice. After this period the shadow would go on day by day gradually decreasing, and then again would as gradually increase, correspondingly with certain lines of brass that were inserted in the stone—a device well deserving to be known, and due to the ingenuity of Facundus Novus, the mathematician. Upon the apex of the obelisk he placed a gilded ball, in order that the shadow of the summit might be condensed and agglomerated, and so prevent the shadow of the apex itself from running to a fine point of enormous extent, the plan being first suggested to him, it is said, by the shadow that is projected by the human head. For nearly the last thirty years, however, the observations derived from this dial have been found not to agree—whether it is that the sun itself has changed its course, in consequence of some derangement of the heavenly system; or whether that the whole earth has been in some degree displaced from its centre—a thing that, I have heard say, has been remarked in other places as well; or whether that some earthquake, confined to this city only, has wrenched the dial from its original position; or whether it is that, in consequence of the inundations of the Tiber, the foundations of the mass have subsided, in spite of the general assertion that they are sunk as deep into the earth as the obelisk erected upon them is high."

Regaining the Corso, the first turning on the right, Via Pietra, leads into the Piazza di Pietra, in which are the ruins of