But when Sixtus the Fifth, who also surprised the cardinals greatly, was in a fit of haste to finish the dome, the masons, wanting a receptacle for water, laid hands on Urban’s stone coffin, pitched his bones into a corner, and used the sarcophagus as they pleased, leaving it to serve as a water-tank for many years afterwards.
In extending the foundations of the church, Paul the Third came upon the bodies of Maria and Hermania, the two wives of Honorius, the Emperor who ‘disestablished’ paganism in favour of Christianity. They were sisters, daughters of Stilicho, and had been buried in their imperial robes, with many rich objects and feminine trinkets; and they were found intact, as they had been buried, in the month of February, 1543. Forty pounds of fine gold were taken from their robes alone, says Baracconi, without counting all the jewels and trinkets, among which was a very beautiful lamp, besides a great number of precious stones. The Pope melted down the gold for the expenses of the building, and set the gems in a tiara, where, if they could be identified, they certainly exist today — the very stones worn by empresses of ancient Rome.
Then, as if in retribution, the Pope’s own tomb was moved from its place. Despoiled of two of the four statues which adorned it, the monument is now in the tribune, and is still one of the best in the church. A strange and tragic tale is told of it. A Spanish student, it is said, fell madly in love with the splendid statue of Paul’s sister-in-law, Julia Farnese. He succeeded in hiding himself in the basilica when it was closed at night, threw himself in a frenzy upon the marble and was found stone dead beside it in the morning. The ugly draperies of painted metal which now hide much of the statue owe their origin to this circumstance. Classical scholars will remember that a somewhat similar tale is told by Pliny of the Venus of Praxiteles in Cnidus.
In spite of many assertions to the effect that the bronze statue of Saint Peter which is venerated in the church was originally an image of Jupiter Capitolinus, the weight of modern authority and artistic judgment is to the contrary. The work cannot really be earlier than the fifth century, and is therefore of a time after Honorius and the disestablishment. Anyone who will take the trouble to examine the lives of the early popes in Muratori may read the detailed accounts of what each one did for the churches. It is not by any means impossible that this may be one of the statues made under Saint Innocent the First, a contemporary of Honorius, in whose time a Roman lady called Vestina made gift to the church of vast possessions, the proceeds of which were used in building and richly adorning numerous places of worship. In any case, since it is practically certain that the statue was originally intended for a portrait of Saint Peter, and has been regarded as such for nearly fifteen hundred years, it commands our respect, if not our veneration.
The Roman custom of kissing the foot, then bending and placing one’s head under it, signifies submission to the commands of the Church, and is not, as many suppose, an act of devotion to the statue.
The practice of dressing it in magnificent robes on the feast of Saint Peter is connected with the ancient Roman custom, which required censors, when entering upon office, to paint the earthen statue of Jupiter Capitolinus a bright red. But the connection lies in the Italian mind and character, which cling desperately to external practices for their hold upon inward principles. It is certainly not an inheritance of uninterrupted tradition, as Roman church music, on the contrary, most certainly is; for there is every reason to believe that the recitations now noted in the Roman missal were very like those used by the ancient Romans on solemn occasions.
The church is not only a real landmark. Astronomers say that if there were a building of the same dimensions on the moon we could easily see it with our modern telescopes. It is also, in a manner, one of Time’s great mile-stones, of which some trace will probably remain till the very end of the world’s life. Its mere mass will insure to it the permanence of the great pyramid of Cheops. Its mere name associates it for ever with the existence of Christianity from the earliest time. It has stamped itself upon the minds of millions of men as the most vast monument of the ages. Its very defects are destined to be as lasting as its beauties, and its mighty faults are more imposing than the small perfections of the Greeks. Between it and the Parthenon, as between the Roman empire and the Athenian commonwealth, one may choose, but one dares not make comparison. The genius of the Greeks absorbed the world’s beauty into itself, distilled its perfection, and gave humanity its most subtle quintessence; but the Latin arm ruled the world itself, and the imperial Latin intelligence could never find any expression fitted to its enormous measure. That is the secret of the monstrous element in all the Romans built. And that supernormal giantism showed itself almost for the last time in the building of Saint Peter’s, when the Latin race had reached its last great development, and the power of the Latin popes overshadowed the whole world, and was itself about to be humbled. Before Michelangelo was dead Charles the Fifth had been Emperor forty years, Doctor Martin Luther had denied the doctrine of salvation by works, the nations had broken loose from the Popes, and the world was at war.
Let us part here, at the threshold of Saint Peter’s, not saying farewell to Rome, nor taking leave without hope of meeting on this consecrated ground again; but since the city lies behind us, region beyond region, memory over memory, legend within legend, and because we have passed through it by steps and by stations, very quickly, yet not thoughtlessly nor irreverently, let us now go each our way for a time, remembering some of those things which we have seen and of which we have talked, that we may know them better if we see them again.
For a man can no more say a last farewell to Rome than he can take leave of eternity. The years move on, but she waits; the cities fall, but she stands; the old races of men lie dead in the track wherein mankind wanders always between two darknesses; yet Rome lives, and her changes are not from life to death, as ours are, but from one life to another. A man may live with Rome, laugh with her, dream with her, weep with her, die at her feet; but for him who knows her there is no good-bye, for she has taken the high seat of his heart, and whither he goes, she is with him, in joy or sorrow, with wonder, longing or regret, as the chords of his heart were tuned by his angel in heaven.
But she is as a well-loved woman, whose dear face is drawn upon a man’s heart by the sharp memory of a cruel parting, line for line, shadow for shadow, look for look, as she was when he saw her last; and line for line he remembers her and longs for her smile and her tender word. Yet be the lines ever so deep-graven, and the image ever so sweet and true, when the time of parting is over, when he comes back and she stands where she stood, with eyes that lighten to his eyes, then she is better loved than he knew and dearer than he had guessed. Then the heart that has steadily beaten time to months of parting, leaps like a child at the instant of meeting again; then eyes that have so long fed on memory’s vision widen and deepen with joy of the living truth; then the soul that has hungered and starved through an endless waiting, is suddenly filled with life and satisfied of its faith.
So he who loves Rome, and leaves her, remembers her long and well, telling himself that he knows how every stone of her walls and her streets would look again; but he comes back at last, and sees her as she is, and he stands amazed at the grandeur of all that has been, and is touched to the heart by the sad loveliness of much that is. Together, the thoughts of love and reverence rise in words, and with them comes the deep wonder at something very great and high. For he himself is grown grey and war-worn in the strife of a few poor years, while through five and twenty centuries Rome has faced war and the world; and he, a gladiator of life, bows his head before her, wondering how his own fight shall end at last, while his lips pronounce the submission of his own mortality to her abiding endurance —
AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS, MORITURUS TE SALUTAT
Rulers of the South
CONTENTS
VOLUME I.
The Earliest Time
The Greeks
The Romans
VOLUME II.
The Goths and the Byzantines
The Saracens
The Normans
In Later Times
Conclusion: The Mafia
VOLUME I.
The Earliest Time
IN VERY EARLY times, when demigods made history and myth together, heroic beings moved upon the southern land and sea, in seasons of beauty and of strength, sometimes of terror, that pursued each other, changing and interchanging forms, appearing and disappearing, rising from the waters as a mirage and sinking into the bosom of the earth, then springing into life again elsewhere in the more vivid day of a nearer reality, half human still but already mortal, to die at the last, to be buried in tombs that endure, and to leave names behind them which history can neither quite accept nor wholly overlook.
First, ancient Kronos is the kindly god of the golden age in all Italy, but changes in Sicily to Baal-Moloch, grasping tyrant, devourer of human flesh, fortified against mankind in the high places of the earth; and he slays Ouranos, his father, whose blood falls as a fertilizing rain from heaven upon the burning Sicilian earth. Armed with the scythe, he rules in wrath, then fades from existence, and leaves his crooked weapon twice buried in the earth in Drepanon, the sickle of Western Trapani, and in Zancle, the wide reaping-hook of land that guards Messina from the southern storms.
Poseidon next, his son, god of the Mediterranean Sea, smites his trident deep into the uncertain land. He is the father of many heroes, of Trinakros and Sikelos, whose names stuck fast, of giant Polyphemus, of the man-eating Laestrygones, of Eryx, Aphrodite’s son; he is the father, too, of great Demeter, who fights forever with fiery Hephaestos for possession of her rich inheritance, of Demeter, who first taught men to sow corn;º while the nymph Aetna, high on her mountain throne, watches the eternal strife, forever umpire of a never-ending war. Still the fight for bread against fire is raging, and in the wild burnt lands between Randazzo and Brontë, the ‘thunder-town,’ the myth of Hephaestos and Demeter is truth still.
From her springs the lovely fable-allegory of the seed hidden in the earth, dead half the year and half the year alive again. For of Demeter, by Zeus, was born Kore, the ‘Maiden,’ the girl Persephone, who played in Sicilian fields with maiden Athene and maiden Artemis, and each chose a playground of her own. Athene took Himera, on the west, for hers, and on the east Artemis chose Ortygia in the sea; but Kore loved best the fruitful land of Enna in the island’s heart, where violets grew so close and sweet that the Huntress’s own hounds could follow no scent there, and the chase ended among the flowers. There Kore wandered, gathering the violets to make a dark blue mantle for her father Zeus, the sky-king; but though the meadows were so fair, the gate of Hades was close at hand, among the trees at the foot of Enna’s hill, and thence dark Pluton, master of hell, watched her with glowing eyes, and sprang forward at last and took her in his arms to bear her away. But when he was hard by Syracuse, the nymph Kyane, Kore’s playmate, leapt lightly from the woods and stood in the way as he rushed along, and she prayed with all her heart for her friend’s freedom, but could not move the raging god to mercy; so she sank to earth and was lost in her own tears, which made a deep translucent well, the most beautiful of all springs in the world to this day. After that Demeter went out to seek for her lost daughter, and lighted Aetna’s fires for a torch, but could not find her, for Kore had eaten the seed of the pomegranate in Pluton’s house, and was wedded, and could only come back for half the year. Therefore Zeus gave her Sicily for a wedding gift. By this is fabled the hiding of the seed in the earth, and its return to the upper world in leaf and flower.
Next came mysterious Daedalus, art and skill in person, flying before angry Minos, king of Crete, touching Sicily first and wandering from island to island, beautifying each and leaving in each some stable work to tell that he had passed there; while the Sicanians burned his enemies’ ships, and drowned King Minos in the bath, burying him deep, and building above his grave their temple to Aphrodite. Daedalus built great reservoirs and impregnable cities, treasuries for kings and temples for gods, whose images he carved in rare wood, and set them moving with cunning devices hidden within. So, when bread had first been won, and when husbandry had grown strong in peace, thought and art came likewise, that Sicily might be a perfect home for men. The great legend of Troy embraced the island then. When old Laomedon had sacrificed his daughter Hesione to atone for his broken word, many Trojans fled, or sent away their children secretly, lest like should befall them. Hippotes sent his child Egesta to Sicily, and she loved Crimisos and bore him Acestes, who went back when he was fully grown, and fought for Troy, but returned again and brought with him Elymos, son of Anchises; and this Elymos left his name to the children of Acestes, who were called Elymians. But some say that these were the Elamites of the Bible.
Soon after that came great Ulysses, wandering by sea, when he had dragged his unwilling companions from the shores of the Lotus land; and first he came to the eastern shore of Sicily, where Polyphemus dwelt among cliffs and caves, pasturing huge sheep, and he was taken with his companions by the giant; but he blinded him and escaped with those who still lived; and the Cyclops tore up great boulders, that were like hills, and sent them whirling after the Greeks, but could not hit them, being quite blind; so the rocks fell into the sea and became three islets, fast and firm to this day. One of them, moreover, is like a vast monster’s head rising above the water, and where the eye should be there is a round aperture, through which the light shines brightly from side to side; for which reason it may well be that the Cyclops was made a one-eyed creature in the imagination of early men, as any one who may understand who will go to Aci Castello or to Trezza and look at the rocks for himself.
Thence Ulysses sailed by the southern coast, round Sicily, touching here and there, and landing on islands where many advantages befell him, and along the Italian shore, so that his name and fame linked Sicily and Southern Italy with Greece.
Next, still from Troy, came Trojans with Aeneas and his fleet, wandering hither and thither, and founding the great temple of Idalian Venus, of Venus Erycina, on Mount Eryx, named after Aphrodite’s son; and then Orestes came, crossing to Sicily when he had purged himself of his crime in Rhegium, and he built the temple of Artemis in Mylae, which is Milazzo, to hold the sacred image he had brought from far away.
So gods and heroes came and went, and left their names upon the south, and some of them found their last resting-places there; and tradition grew out of myth, and history was moulded upon tradition, till the legends would have filled volumes, and gradually concentrated themselves toward the point of transition at which fable becomes fact. Out of it all results clearly the main truth, that from very early times the rich south was a possession for which several races fought one with another, Orientals, Greeks, and peoples who had come down from Italy, and who were afterwards driven back by degrees into the inner country, the Sicanians and the Sicelians.
The most learned modern historian of Sicily, Adolf Holm, has proved almost conclusively that these two peoples were of common and Italian origin, and came in succession from their Latian home, somewhere near Anxur, which is now Terracina. The Sicanians came first, in small bands of wanderers, leaving many at home, whence afterwards arose the confusion of names, by which the stronger Sicelians were sometimes called Sicanians, but when the latter sailed down in force and took possession, the confusion ceased. The first comers had intrenched themselves in strong passes and had built fortresses on inaccessible heights, as men do who know that they may be easily destroyed. But the Sicelians came in hordes, driven from their homes by the vast immigration of the Pelasgian race when it moved westward and descended into Italy. They were Latins, speaking a Latin language, closely allied with that of the Romans, for they called a hare ‘leporis’; and a basin ‘katinon,’ and they named a certain river ‘Gela’ because the hoar frost settled along the banks more thickly than elsewhere. And so, as Holm says, the Sicelians are proved by their language to have been closely connected wi
th the Latins and the Oscans, and descended from the common Pelasgian stock; and it is clear that they had wandered from the Haemus to the Apennines, before they reached the island to which they gave their name, and that in their immigration they had overrun and filled the southern mainland of Italy. Once there, they built all those early cities of which remains exist that are not manifestly Greek; they built ships and sailed out on marauding expeditions, and some of them even attempted to plunder the Egyptians, joining themselves with Tyrrhenians and Sardinians, Achaeans and Lycians, as is proved by a hieroglyphic inscription found in Thebes, which tells how two hundred and fifty Sicelians were slain, under King Merenptah, and their hands were struck off and brought to him, twelve hundred years before our era began. It is sure, also, that even for centuries after the Greeks had settled in Sicily, the Sicelians dwelt there still, a flourishing and active race. They were therefore the first permanent element of a Sicilian population, and most probably of the south Italian people also; for Thucydides says that Italus, from whom Italy was supposed to have been named, was king of the Sicelians, and Aristotle states that he taught his pastoral people the more civilized arts of agriculture.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1403