694 
ANTIQUITIES IN ITALY. 
was of the family of Barbarini, presented as much of this metal to his 
nephew as was sufficient for the decoration of his new palaces, on 
which occasion this pasquinade was stuck up i 
Quod non fecerunt Barbari fecere Barbarini. 
Alexander VII. did what Urban had neglected to do. He ordered ■ 
search to be made for pillars to match those of the portico of the 
Pantheon, and some were found of the very same model. He also 
caused all the old houses before the portico to be pulled down, and 
the rubbish to be cleared away which covered the steps and the 
bases of the pillars. Clement IX. enclosed the portico with iron rails. 
Several later popes have added to its decorations, which were all in the 
taste of the times they were done in, and the body of the edifice and 
its architecture gained nothing from them. 
Antiquities of Benevento, in Italy. 
The arch of Trajan, now called the Porta Aurea, forms one of the 
entrances to the city. This arch, though it appears to great disad- 
vantage, from the walls and houses that hem it in on all sides, is in 
tolerable preservation, and is one of the most magnificent remains of 
Roman grandeur to be met with out of Rome. The architecture and 
sculpture are both singularly beautiful. This elegant monument was 
erected A. D. 114, about the commencement of the Parthian w'ar, 
and after the submission of Decebalus had entitled Trajan to the 
surname of Dacicus. The order is Composite ; the materials, w'hite 
marble; the height, sixty palms ; length, thirty-seven and a half ; and 
depth, twenty-four. It consists of a single arch, the span of which 
is twenty palms, the height thirty-live. On each side of it, two fluted 
columns, upon a joint pedestal, support an entablement and an attic. 
The intercolumniations and frieze are covered with basso-relievos, 
representing the battles and triumphs of the Dacian war. In the 
attic is the inscription. As the sixth yearof Trajan’s consulate, marked 
on this, is also to be seen on all the different columns he erected along 
his new road to Brundusium, it is probable that the arch was built to 
commemorate so beneficial an undertaking. Except the old metro- 
polis of the world, no city in Italy can boast of so many remains of 
ancient sculpture as Benevento. Scarce a wall is built of any thing 
but altars, tombs, columns, and remains of entablatures. 
The cathedral is a clumsy edifice, in a style of Gothic, or rather 
Lombard architecture. The church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, 
w'as built in the sixth century, enlarged in the eleventh, and altered 
considerably in the thirteenth, when archbishop Panger adorned it 
with a new front. To obtain a sufficient quantity of marble for this 
purpose, he spared neither sarcophagus, altar, nor inscription, but 
fixed them promiscuously and irregularly in the walls of his barbarous 
structure. Three doors, a type of the Trinity, according to the rules 
established by the mystical virtuosi of those ages, open into this facade. 
That in the centre is of bronze, embossed with the life of Christ, and 
the effigies of the Beneventine metropolitan, with all his suffragan 
bishops. The inside offers nothing to the curious observer but 
