:04 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Rome's greatest historic and traditional 

 interest centers in the Forum Romanum, 

 once a deep and marshy little valley be- 

 tween the Capitoline and Palatine Hills. 

 In the beginning it probably looked some- 

 thing like one of the present-day open-air 

 markets. But it did not look like a mar- 

 ket long, for temples and imposing public 

 buildings were added more and more to 

 the shops and stalls until the whole 

 Forum was a blaze of gilded bronze and 

 marble, a magnificent show place worthy 

 of the center of civilization (page 307). 



And today ? Ghosts and ruin ! Here 

 in a somber file are the stumps of the 

 columns of the Colonnade of the Twelve 

 Gods. That heavy basement of brick and 

 mortar, with bits of cracked marble still 

 bravely shining on it, was the Orators' 

 Platform, where Antony came "to bury 

 Csesar, not to praise him." Across the 

 Holy Way all there is left of murdered 

 Caesar's Basilica Julia is its brick founda- 

 tion ; beyond, the crumbling fragments of 

 the palace of the Vestal Virgins, where a 

 few melancholy, shattered statues of the 

 high priestesses of this pure and lovely 

 cult stand tranquilly amid the desolation. 



STIRRING THE POETS' IRE 



Every foot of ground in the Forum has 

 interest, much of it tragic — like the bar- 

 ren spot where, tradition says, Virginius 

 snatched a knife from a butcher's block 

 and slew his beautiful daughter Virginia, 

 while Appius Claudius raged in impotent 

 fury; or the Vicus Tuscus (Tuscan 

 street), where the shopkeepers stirred 

 the poets to ire by using their precious 

 manuscripts as wrapping-paper ! 



And hither and yon, from Palatine to 

 Capitoline, from Tabularium to Colos- 

 seum, only ruin— brick, mortar, marble, 

 columns, arches, statuary — all desolate 

 and forlorn and broken. And the lament- 

 able part of it all is that it was not the 

 northern barbarian who accomplished the 

 greatest ruin, though he did his share. 

 For a thousand years any Roman who 

 wished to build church or palace simply 

 came here, tore down and carried away 

 whatsoever he would. Worse yet, con- 

 tractors actually demolished whole struc- 

 tures — to burn their marble for lime — 

 and eventually peasants turned the buried 

 waste into a vegetable garden and a cow- 



pasture. It was not until 1870 that the 

 Italian Government began systematic ex- 

 cavation and unearthed the present pan- 

 orama of destruction. 



ARCHITECTURE THE KEYNOTE OE ROMAN 

 CHARACTER 



The Romans were late in developing 

 artistic genius, for first of all they were 

 men of action : fighters, strategists, poli- 

 ticians — imperialists. Their work reflects 

 them — their vast strength, their love of 

 lavish adornment, their lack of true re- 

 finement, and their carelessness of subor- 

 dinate detail. Simpson points out in his 

 History of Architectural Development 

 that had they possessed the artistic sense 

 of their Greek neighbors their architect- 

 ure would have been the grandest the 

 world has ever seen. The greatest sig- 

 nificance of the Roman gift to art lies in 

 its universal distribution, for while the 

 Romans laid their heavy yoke upon all 

 nations, at the same time they dissemi- 

 nated their laws and art — perhaps I had 

 better say the art of Greece, adapted and 

 generalized, made fit for cosmopolitan 

 acceptance. 



For all the destruction and moderniz- 

 ing that has transformed the Eternal 

 City, its ancient magnificence crops out in 

 unexpected places : in the blank Avail of 

 the Stock Exchange, eleven columns of 

 Neptune's temple; in a narrow street, 

 twelve arches of the Theater of Marcel- 

 lus, filled with workshops ; again, a few 

 forlorn survivors of the once splendid 

 Porticus of Octavia, and so on. At the 

 end of one of the massive stitches that 

 span the Tiber the gleaming solid marble 

 of the exquisite little round temple of 

 Mater Matuta — or whatever it may have 

 been called — gems the bank like a great 

 pearl. 



A few paces farther along, thrusting 

 indomitably up from the level of older 

 days, all the beauty of pure Ionic ideals 

 is crystallized in the so-called Temple of 

 the Fortune of Men, soft-hued tufa and 

 weathered travertine. The two stand al- 

 most intact, because of the early Chris- 

 tians whose eye for beauty — or was it 

 their practical sense? — seized upon and 

 preserved them as churches when the old 

 eods ceased to call. 



