2nd s. NO 70., Mat 2. '57.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



341 



LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 2. 1857. 

 NIBBUHB ON THE LEGEND OP TABPBIA. 



In the first volume of his Roman History, Nie- 

 buhr, after having related the well-known story of 

 Tarpeia, of her treachery to the Romans, and of 

 the price of her treachery being converted into 

 the instrument of her death, proceeds to illustrate 

 that story by the following remarks : 



"The remembrance of her guilt is still living in a po- 

 pular legend. The whole Capitoline Hill is pierced with 

 quarries or passages cut in very remote times through 

 the loose tufo. Many of these have been blocked up ; but 

 near the houses erected upon the rubbish which covers 

 the hundred steps, on the side of the Tarpeian rock facing 

 the Forum, beside some ruinous buildings known by the 

 name of the Palazzaccio, several of them are still acces- 

 sible. A report that there was a well here of extraor- 

 dinarj' depth, which must have been older than the 

 aqueducts, since no one would have been at the labour of 

 digging it afterward, and which no doubt supplied the 

 garrison with water during the siege by the Gauls, at- 

 tracted nie into this labj'rinth. Some girls from the 

 neighbouring houses were our guides, and told us as we 

 went along, that in the heart of the hill the fair Tarpeia 

 is sitting, covered with gold and jewels, and bound by a 

 spell ; none who tried to go to her could ever find out the 

 way ; once only had she been seen, by the mother of one 

 of the girls. The inhabitants of this quarter are smiths 

 and common victuallers, without the slightest touch of 

 that seemingly living knowledge of antiquitj', which 

 other classes of the Komans have drawn from the turbid 

 sources afforded by popular books ; so that genuine oral 

 tradition has kept the story of Tarpeia for five and twenty- 

 hundred years in the mouth of the common people, who 

 for many centuries have been strangers to the names of 

 Clodia and Cornelia." — History of Rome, vol. i. p. 230., 

 Eng. Transl. 



The experience of all countries contradicts the 

 supposition that a genuine oral tradition, respect- 

 ing any matter of fact, can be preserved for a 

 period of time at all approaching that indicated in 

 this passage ; namely, 2500 years, composed of 

 700 years before, and ] 800 years alter, the 

 Christian era. The narrative of Niebuhr is cir- 

 cumstantial ; but considering the liability to mis- 

 take or deceit In the case of a stranger imperfectly 

 acquainted with the habits of the common people, 

 it is to be regretted that he did not record the 

 names of his informants, and particularly of the 

 person who was supposed to have seen the en- 

 chanted Tarpeia. 



Through the kindness of a common friend, I 

 have lately been able to obtain some information 

 on the subject, from Dr, Pantaleoni, an accom- 

 plished Roman physician, who, at my request, 

 undertook the task of verifying Niebuhr's alleged 

 discovery. He has favoured me with a letter, 

 containing the results of his inquiries, dated 

 Rome, Nov. 9, 1856, from which I subjoin all 

 that is material to the question : 



" Of the existence of the well mentioned by Niebuhr 



there is no doubt, as I visited it myself; nor is there any 

 doubt that it was anterior to the aqueducts, as some pas- 

 sages belonging to them cross it in four different directions. 

 The well is on the Tarpeian rock, in the garden of the 

 new Protestant hospital. With respect to the popular 

 legend described by Niebuhr, I have made all possible 

 inquiries through people living in that quarter of the 

 town, and by their profession and character conversant 

 with the lower orders ; but I have not succeeded in dis- 

 covering any trace of it, and it is certain that I could not 

 have failed in verifying it if it at all deserved the name 

 oi popular. I may be perhaps allowed to add that, even 

 if this tradition were really in existence, I could by no 

 means agree with Niebuhr in supposing it to have been 

 preserved orally for 2500 years. Almost all the oral tra- 

 ditions of Roman antiquities, which are locally current at 

 Rome, had their origin during the middle ages, and were 

 the fanciful invention of ignorant antiquaries. Thus a 

 medieval tower — the tomb of Nero on the Flaminian 

 road — is shown as the place where Nero was singing 

 during the fire of Rome. In Italy the lower orders are 

 in habits of such familiar intercourse with the middle and 

 even the upper classes, that their ideas represent those 

 which were current some time previous among the better 

 informed portions of society, but they have no real original 

 importance." 



If the legend of Tarpeia, reported by Niebuhr, 

 had a genuine popular existence, the probability 

 is, as Dr. Pantaleoni conjectures, that it was de- 

 rived from a medieval origin, and was borrowed 

 from some northern story similar to those of en- 

 chanted persons sitting under ground, which are 

 collected In Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie, c. 25. 

 of the first, or c. 32. of the second edition. Thus 

 Frederic Barbarossa is supposed to be still sleep- 

 ing, in some part of Germany, in a cavern or 

 subterranean place ; he is seated at a round stone 

 table, holding his head in his hand ; he nods, and 

 his eyes wink ; his beard has grown twice round 

 the table ; when it has made the third round the 

 emperor will wake ; he will hang up his shield on 

 a leafless tree, the tree will become green, and 

 better times will ensue. Some persons have seen 

 him awake : on one occasion he asked a shepherd, 

 who had pleased him by piping a tune, whether 

 the ravens still flew round the hill ; on receiving 

 an affirmative answer, he said that he must sleep 

 a hundred years longer. The shepherd was taken 

 into the emperor's armoury, and was presented 

 with the stand of a vessel, which the goldsmiths 

 declared to be made of pure gold. A peasant, 

 carrying corn from the village of Reblingen to 

 Nordhausen in 1669, was led by a goblin into the 

 hill, where his sacks were emptied of corn, and 

 filled with gold in exchange. This peasant saw 

 the emperor sitting, but without any movement. 

 (Grimm's Deutsche Sageri, No. 23.) Other ver- 

 sions of this story are related of different places in 

 Germany ; the enchanted emperor is sometimes 

 Charlemagne, or even Charles V., as well as Fre- 

 deric I. Thus Charlemagne is spell-bound in a 

 deep well in the citadel of Nuremberg ; he sits 

 at a stone table, through which his beard has 

 grown {lb,, No. 22.) : he is likewise in the heart 



