YOUTH'S INSTRUCTER

AND

GUARDIAN.

MARCH, 1852.

THE TEMPLE OF BACCHUS,

OR CHURCH OF SAINT CONSTANCE.

(With an Engraving.)

THE shadows of many dark, dark ages still rest upon the monuments of Rome. Long before antiquarians first groped their uncertain way among the remains of this desolated Queen of cities, ruin had fallen upon ruin in inextricable confusion, and a thousand chances of demolition had sported among the fragments of republican and imperial grandeur. Oftentimes the geologist finds greater certainty, because he may be working by the light of a few established laws, than can be obtained by the "Old Mortalities" who glide amidst those fragments, lit only by the dim flashes of a poetical allusion, an incident of minute narrative, or the nearly obliterated remnant of some intractable inscription. The temples of the gods, like the gods themselves, were, even when in good repair, many of them of uncertain name, and in rank obscure. So the edifice before us is called, commonly, the "Temple of Bacchus," from the circumstance that there are vine-leaves discoverable among the carvings; whereas more exact criticism, conducted since the imposition of the name, attributes the erection of the building to the Emperor Constantine the Great, not to be used as a church or temple indeed, for in his day there were temples enow and to spare, but as a mausoleum for his family. They also suppose that a Christian lady of that family, named Constantia, who died in Asia, was buried, there; and she is now, as it would seem, VOL. XVI. Second Series. E

honoured as the guardian saint. The building had been kept in good condition, and become considerably modernised, when the drawing was made. The exhibition of a high altar shows, also, with remarkable distinctness, an example of the appropriation of a Pagan edifice, as this may almost be considered, to the purposes of a Paganised Christian worship. Such appropriation was at first general; the vestiges thereof are still frequent; and, for aught that we can see, there could never have been any impropriety in dedicating a deserted temple, mosque, or synagogue to the worship of Almighty God, through His Son our Lord Jesus Christ. The real evil consisted in imitating the old worship, as well as occupying the building; which last might have been innocently done. It is on account of the visible union of the two systems that we have given an engraving of this particular church.

Paganism still characterizes this pseudo-Christian worship, and that without the slightest diminution; and even the material remains of idol-temples are united, not always to the best effect, with modern works. We may notice two or three examples of the kind.

There is the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina his wife, yet retaining its portico of ten columns of Carrara marble, said to be the largest of the kind anywhere remaining; but they are almost half sunk in the ground. You may go down by steps to the ancient level, and see the base of a pillar. You may look up on the architrave, and read the original inscription: :

DIVO ANTONINO ET

DIVE FAUSTINE. EX. S. C.

But if you pass through the portico, you smell frankincense, and might imagine for a moment that the original priesthood were still alive and ministrant; but you find yourself under the invocation of S. Lorenzo in Miranda, a name less eminent than that of Antonine.

There is the residue of the Temple of Saturn, erected in the time of the old Roman republic. Within its precinct was the store of gold laid up against some extreme necessity, but to be untouched and sacred in ordinary times. To this

spot came Cæsar for a supply to carry on his campaign in Gaul; and hither came Pope Alexander VII., to remove the brazen gate that, even in his day, told of the ancient splendour of the edifice, and carried it away to St. John's of the Lateran, to adorn the mother-church of Popedom. But Saint Adrian is now substituted for the older object of worship, Saturn; a member of one mythology for a member of another. There are also buildings of doubtful origin. Either it is not yet agreed whether they should be attributed to Pagan or to Christian builders, or it is evident that they were thrown up with materials gathered out of the ruins of this truly monumental city. Such, for example, is a building called the Temple of Claudius, on the Celian Mount. It is a grand edifice. Two concentric circles of columns support a roof that sweeps round the base of a dome, which again springs aloft over the central area. The outer circle of columns is built up with a wall that cannot have belonged to the original structure, or, if it did, was added to the building after it had been planned, in imitation of an elder open temple, but enclosed and covered for the sake of the Christian congregation for whose use it was erected. The variety of ornament, and even the different sizes of the pillars, demonstrate that they were not prepared for the same piece of architecture, but brought together from demolished edifices. But in spite of these inequalities, an ancient idea has been admirably imitated. The building is larger than the Pantheon, and its construction is referred to the year of our Lord 467, or from that to 480, under the direction of St. Simplicius, as they call him, Bishop of Rome. St. Stephen's name is taken to charm the place; and the structure is now distinguished as the Temple of S. Stefano Rotondo,-St. Stephen's the Round.

If we were disposed to traverse this interesting field of classic and ecclesiastical antiquities, we should prescribe to ourselves the composition of a volume; and, in order to its effective execution, should have to take up our abode in the last desirable of all earthly dwelling-places, Rome itself. But for the present page we merely note one other notable instance of combination of the modern with the ancient, and do so in translation of a paragraph by Venuti in his "Topo

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After

graphical Description of the Antiquities of Rome. passing the Arch of Septimius, the first building you come to is the Mamertine Prison, of which a considerable part is also seen under the Church of St. Joseph of the Carpenters, called St. Peter in Prison. This building entirely consists of travertino," (a white stone resembling marble, but rather porous,) "with the façade built up, without any entrance towards the Forum, where the following inscription appears on a block of the travertine :

C. VIBIUS. C. F. M. COCCEIUS. NERVA. S. C.

-the names, probably, of the Curule Ædiles, who restored the building. Antiquarians complain bitterly that the fine pieces of travertine, united, in the ancient manner, without mortar, are disfigured by whitewash. Some of them are twelve palms in length, and three palms five inches in thickness; others are shorter. The portion of this façade remaining is fifty-nine palms in length, and more than twelve in height, exclusive of a part that is buried. You enter, by modern steps, into the horrid prison, built without any door; but in transforming the building into a sacred place, two entrances were made by breaking through walls of solid stone seven palms thick. The ascent into the upper prison is by two stairs on the outside. This prison is of an oval or oblong form, from the pavement to the top of the vault nineteen palms, twenty-six palms in breadth, and thirty-six in length. In the middle of the upper vault is a hole, wide enough to receive one person, through which the prisoners were let down into the first and second prisons. On one side of this upper prison, by the ancient wall, there are a few narrow steps, cut out by the Christians, leading down into another horrid prison, thirteen palms wide, and twenty-seven in length, but only nine palms high, with a flattened vault, formed out of large blocks of peperino," (a volcanic stone,) “with a few iron bolts let in to hold them together, as appeared where one of the blocks had been displaced. The front of this building, which looks into the Roman Forum, rises to twice the height of the other two prisons; whence it is probable that there were other prisons there for persons detained for lesser offences. These prisons