Читать книгу Rambles in Rome - S. Russell Forbes - Страница 37

erected, according to Livy (i. 33) by Ancus Martius. "In order to suppress the terror, the boldness which the vicious assumed from hence (A.U.C. 121),[1] and which gained ground continually, a prison was built in the middle of the city, adjoining the Forum." Servius Tullius added a lower cell, called the Tullianum, 6½ feet high and 19 feet by 9. Prisoners who were condemned to be strangled or to die of hunger were thrust down the aperture; hence the phrase, "to cast into prison." Sallust ("Catiline," lv.) thus describes it:—

"There is a place in the prison which is called the Tullianum Dungeon. It is about 12 feet deep in the ground when you have ascended a little to the left.[2] It is secured round the sides by walls, and over it is a vaulted roof, connected with stone arches; but its appearance is disgusting and horrible, by reason of the filth, the obscurity, and the stench. When Lentulus had been let down into this place, certain men, to whom orders had been given, strangled him with a cord."

The upper part of the Mamertine Prison was partly rebuilt in the time of Tiberius, as we know from an inscription remaining in the cornice over the flight of steps under the church.

C. VIBIUS . C. F. RUFINUS . M. COCCEIUS . NERVA . COS . EX . S. C. Consuls A.D. 23.

It seems to have been used exclusively for state prisoners. We have records of the following, amongst others, who were confined here:—

Manlius, who had defended the Capitol against the Gauls.—B.C. 382.

Quintus Pleminius, a prisoner for sedition.—B.C. 194.

Jugurtha, King of Numidia, who was starved to death B.C. 104. He exclaimed, when cast in, "By Hercules! how cold is this bath of yours!" (Plutarch, in "Caius Marius"), evidently speaking of the spring as existing in those days.

Catiline conspirators, strangled by order of the Consul Cicero.—B.C. 55.

Vercingetorix, King of the Gauls, by order of Julius Cæsar.

Sejanus, the minister of Tiberius.—A.D. 31.

Simon, the son of Giora, the defender of Jerusalem against Vespasian.—A.D. 69.

In the centre of the upper chamber is the round aperture, covered by a grate, down which the prisoners were cast.

Juvenal says: "Happy ages of the just, happy centuries, it may be said, those which saw, formerly under the kings, as under the tribunes, Rome content with one prison."

One prison may have been enough in those times when it was against the law to confine a Roman citizen before he was tried. We have records of other prisons. Appius Claudius constructed a prison for common offenders near the Forum Olitorium, the scene of "Roman Charity." (See page 190.) Pliny mentions "Stationes Municipiorum"—barracks of the municipal soldiers—near the Forum of Julius Cæsar. These may likewise have been prisons. In addition to these, there was the Lautumiæ.

Below the church, the Chapel of the Crucifixion occupies part of the buildings of the prison, and from the sacristy a flight of modern steps leads down into a lower cell, the Chapel of SS. Peter and Paul. The entrance and steps from the street are also modern. In this chamber, to the right of the altar, is a closed-up passage; it evidently communicated with other chambers. On the tufa, carefully guarded by iron bars, an indentation is shown which, they say, was caused by the jailers beating Peter's face against the rock. (He must have had rather a hard head!)

Another flight of modern stairs leads down into the Tullianum: the opening down which the prisoners were cast can still be seen. The iron door is the opening of a sewer leading into the Cloaca Maxima, by which means the dead bodies, &c., were taken away. This drain is of the same construction as the Cloaca Maxima, and comes from beyond the other chambers, mentioned below, with which it also communicates.

The Roman Catholic tradition is, that SS. Peter and Paul were confined here, and they show the pillar to which they are said to have been chained, though there are no marks of a staple having been fixed in the stone, as represented in the bronze bas-relief; and a fountain which miraculously sprang up when they had converted their keepers, and they wished to be baptized: this was evidently alluded to by Jugurtha.

The name Mamertine Prison is medieval. By the ancients it was called the Prison, or the Tullian Prison.[3] The two chambers are only a small part of the ancient prison, which extended up the left side of the Clivus Argentarius, the modern Via Marforio, and evidences of its extent can be seen in the cellars of the houses. It evidently extended up as far as No. 68, for under that wine shop we found two chambers corresponding with the two under the church. The prison was approached from the Forum by a flight of stairs called