the laureate to conclude his wanderings in the bosom of his native country, where he might finish his immortal Africa, and enjoy, with his recovered possessions, the esteem of all classes of his fellow-citizens. They gave him the option of the book and the science he might condescend to expound: they called him the glory of his country, who was dear, and would be dearer to them; and they added, that if there was any thing unpleasing in their letter, he ought to return amongst them, were it only to correct their style. (1) Petrarch seemed at first to listen to the flattery and to the entreaties of his friend, but he did not return to Florence, and preferred a pilgrimage to the tomb of Laura and the shades of Vaucluse. XXI. BOCCACCIO. "Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeath'd His dust." Stanza Iviii, lines I and 2. Boccaccio was buried in the church of St. Michael and St. James, at Certaldo, a small town in the Valdelsa, which was by some supposed the place of his birth. There he passed the latter part of his life in a course of laborious study, which shortened his existence; and there might his ashes have been secure, if not of honour, at least of repose. But the "hyæna bigots" of Certaldo tore up the tombstone of Boccaccio, and ejected it from the holy precincts of St. Michael and St. James. The occasion, and, it may be hoped, the excuse, of this ejectment was the making of a new floor for the church; but the fact is, that the tombstone was taken up and thrown aside at the bottom of the building. Ignorance may share the sin with bigotry. It would be painful to relate such an exception to the devotion of the Italians for their great names, could it not be accompanied by a trait more honourably conformable to the general character of the nation. The principal person of the district, the last branch of the house of Medicis, afforded that protection to the memory of the insulted dead which her best ancestors had dispensed upon all contemporary merit. The Marchioness Lenzoni rescued the tombstone of Boccaccio from the neglect in which it had some time lain, and found for it an honourable elevation in her own mansion. She has done more: the house in which the poet lived has been as little respected as his tomb, and is falling to ruin over the head of one indifferent to the name of its former tenant. It consists of two or three little chambers, and a low tower, on which Cosmo II. affixed an inscription. This house she has taken measures to purchase, and proposes to devote to it that care and consideration which are attached to the cradle and to the roof of genius. This is not the place to undertake the defence of Boccaccio; but the man who exhausted his little pa (I) "Accingiti innoltre, se ci è lecito ancor l'esortarti, a compire l'immortal tua Africa... Se ti avviene d'incontrare nel nostro stile cosa che ti dispiaccia, ciò debb' essere un altro motivo ad esaudire i desiderj della tua patria." Storia della Lett. Ital. tom. v. par. i. lib. i. pag. 76. (2) Classical Tour, chap. ix. vol. ii. p. 355. edit. 3d. "Of Boccaccio, the modern Petronius, we say nothing; the abuse of genius is more odious and more contemptible than its absence; and it imports little where the impure remains of a licentious author are consigned to their kindred dust. For the same reason the traveller may pass unnoticed the trimony in the acquirement of learning, who was amongst the first, if not the first, to allure the science and the poetry of Greece to the bosom of Italy;-who not only invented a new style, but founded, or certainly fixed, a new language; who, besides the esteem of every polite court of Europe, was thought worthy of employment by the predominant republic of his own country, and, what is more, of the friendship of Petrarch, who lived the life of a philosopher and a freeman, and who died in the pursuit of knowledge,such a man might have found more consideration than he has met with from the priest of Certaldo, and from a late English traveller, who strikes off his portrait as an odious, contemptible, licentious writer, whose impure remains should be suffered to rot without a record. (2) That English traveller, unfortunately for those who have to deplore the loss of a very amiable person, is beyond all criticism; but the mortality which did not protect Boccaccio from Mr. Eustace, must not defend Mr. Eustace from the impartial judgment of his successors. Death may canonise his virtues, not his errors; and it may be modestly pronounced that he transgressed, not only as an author, but as a man, when he evoked the shade of Boccaccio in company with that of Aretine, amidst the sepulchres of Santa Croce, merely to dismiss it with indignity. As far as respects "Il flagello de' Principi, Il divin Pietro Aretino," it is of little import what censure is passed upon a coxcomb who owes his present existence to the above burlesque character given to him by the poet, whose amber has preserved many other grubs and worms: but to classify Boccaccio with such a person, and to excommunicate his very ashes, must of itself make us doubt of the qualification of the classical tourist for writing upon Italian, or, indeed, upon any other literature; for ignorance on one point may incapacitate an author merely for that particular topic, but subjection to a professional prejudice must render him an unsafe director on all occasions. Any per- | version and injustice may be made what is vulgarly called "a case of conscience," and this poor excuse is all that can be offered for the priest of Certaldo, or the author of the Classical Tour. It would have answered the purpose to confine the censure to the novels of Boccaccio; and gratitude to that source which supplied the muse of Dryden with her last and most harmonious numbers might, perhaps, have restricted that censure to the objectionable qualities of the hundred tales. At any rate the repentance of Boccaccio might have arrested his exhumation; and it should have been recollected and told, that in his old age he wrote a letter entreating his friend to discourage the reading of the Decameron, for the sake of modesty, and for the sake of the author, who would not have an apologist always at hand to state in his excuse that tomb of the malignant Aretino." This dubious phrase is hardly enough to save the tourist from the suspicion of another blunder respecting the burial-place of Aretine, whose tomb was in the church of St. Luke at Venice, and gave rise to the famous controversy of which some notice is taken in Bayle. Now the words of Mr. Eustace would lead us to think the tomb was at Florence, or at least was to be somewhere recognised. Whether the inscription so much disputed was ever written on the tomb cannot now be decided, for all memorial of this author has disappeared from the church of St. Luke. he wrote it when young, and at the command of his superiors. (1) It is neither the licentiousness of the writer, nor the evil propensities of the reader, which have given to the Decameron alone, of all the works of Boccaccio, a perpetual popularity. The establishment of a new and delightful dialect conferred an immortality on the works in which it was first fixed. The Sonnets of Petrarch were, for the same reason, fated to survive his self-admired Africa, the "favourite of kings." The invariable traits of nature and feeling with which the novels, as well as the verses, abound, have doubtless been the chief source of the foreign celebrity of both authors; but Boccaccio, as a man, is no more to be estimated by that work, than Petrarch is to be regarded in no other light than as the lover of Laura. Even, however, had the father of the Tuscan prose been known only as the author of the Decameron, a considerate writer would have been cautious to pronounce a sentence irreconcilable with the unerring voice of many ages and nations. An irrevocable value has never been stamped upon any work solely recommended by impurity. The true source of the outcry against Boccaccio, which began at a very early period, was the choice of his scandalous personages in the cloisters as well as the courts; but the princes only laughed at the gallant adventures so unjustly charged upon queen Theodelinda, whilst the priesthood cried shame upon the debauches drawn from the convent and the hermitage; and most probably for the opposite reason, namely, that the picture was faithful to the life. Two of the novels are allowed to be facts usefully turned into tales, to deride the canonisation of rogues and lay men. Ser Ciappelletto and Marcellinus are cited with applause even by the decent Muratori. (2) The great Arnauld, as he is quoted in Bayle, states, that a new edition of the novels was proposed, of which the expurgation consisted in omitting the words "monk" and "nun," and tacking the immoralities to other names. The literary history of Italy particularises no such edition; but it was not long before the whole of Europe had but one opinion of the Decame ron; and the absolution of the author seems to have been a point settled at least a hundred years ago: On se feroit siffler si l'on prétendoit convaincre Bocace de n'avoir pas été honnête homme, parce qu'il a fait le Décaméron." So said one of the best men, and perhaps the best critic, that ever lived-the very martyr to impartiality. (3) But as this information, that in the beginning of the last century one would have been hooted at for pretending that Boccaccio was not a good man, may seem to come from one of those enemies who are to be suspected, even when they make us a present of truth, a more acceptable contrast with the proscription of the body, soul, and muse of Boccaccio may be found in a few words from the virtuous, the patriotic contemporary, who thought one of the tales of this impure writer worthy a Latin version from his own pen. "I have remarked (1) "Non enim ubique est, qui in excusationem meam consurgens dicat, juvenis scripsit, et majoris coactus imperio." The letter was addressed to Maghinard of Cavalcanti, marshal of the kingdom of Sicily. See Tiraboschi, Storia, etc. tom. v. par. ii. lib. iii, pag. 525, ed. Ven. 1795. (2) Dissertazioni sopra le Antichità Italiane, diss. lviii. p. 253. tom. iii. edit. Milan, 1751. (3) Eclaircissement, etc. etc. p. 638. edit. Basle, 1741, in the Supplement to Bayle's Dictionary. elsewhere," says Petrarch, writing to Boccaccio, "that the book itself has been worried by certain dogs, but stoutly defended by your staff and voice. Nor was I astonished, for I have had proof of the vigour of your mind, and I know you have fallen that unaccommodating incapable race of mortals, who, whatever they either like not, or know not, or cannot do, are sure to reprehend in others; and on those occasions only put on a show of learning and eloquence, but otherwise are entirely dumb.” (4) on It is satisfactory to find that all the priesthood do not resemble those of Certaldo, and that one of them who did not possess the bones of Boccaccio would not lose the opportunity of raising a cenotaph to his memory. Bevius, canon of Padua, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, erected at Arquà, opposite to the tomb of the Laureate, a tablet, in which he associated Boccaccio to the equal honours of Dante and of Petrarch. XXII. THE MEDICI. "What is her pyramid of precious stones?" Stanza Ix. line 1. Our veneration for the Medici begins with Cosmo, and expires with his grandson; that stream is pure only at the source; and it is in search of some memorial of the virtuous republicans of the family that we visit the church of San Lorenzo at Florence. The tawdry, glaring, unfinished chapel in that church, designed for the mausoleum of the Dukes of Tuscany, set round with crowns and coffins, gives birth to no emotions but those of contempt for the lavish vanity of a race of despots, whilst the pavement slab, simply inscribed to the Father of his country, reconciles us to the name of Medici. (5) It was very natural for Corinna (6) to suppose that the statue raised to the Duke of Urbino in the cappella de' depositi was intended for his great namesake; but the magnificent Lorenzo is only the sharer of a coffin half hidden in a niche of the sacristy. The decay of Tuscany dates from the sovereignty of the Medici. Of the sepulchral peace which succeeded to the establishment of the reigning families in Italy, our own Sidney has given us a glowing, but a faithful picture:-"Notwithstanding all the seditions of Florence, and other cities of Tuscany, the horrid factions of Guelphs and Ghibelins, Neri and Bianchi, nobles and commons, they continued populous, strong, and exceeding rich; but in the space of less than a hundred and fifty years, the peaceable reign of the Medices is thought to have destroyed nine parts in ten of the people of that province. Amongst other things, it is remarkable, that when Philip the Second of Spain gave Sienna to the Duke of Florence, his ambassador then at Rome sent him word, that he had given away more than 650,000 subjects; and it is not believed there are now 20,000 souls inhabiting that city and territory. Pisa, Pistoia, (4) "Animadverti alicubi librum ipsum canum dentibus lacessitum, tuo tamen baculo egregie tuâque voce defensum. Nec miratus sum: nam et vires ingenii tui novi, et scio expertus esses hominum genus insolens et ignavum, qui quicquid ipsi vel nolunt vel nesciunt, vel non possunt, in aliis reprehendunt; ad hoc unum docti et arguti, sed elingues ad reli qua." Epist. Joan. Boccatio, Opp. tom. i. p. 540. edit. Basil. (5) "Cosmus Medices, Decreto Publico, Pater Patriæ." (6) Corinne, liv. xviii. chap. iii. vol. iii. page 248. Arezzo, Cortona, and other towns, that were then good and populous, are in the like proportion diminished, and Florence more than any. When that city had been long troubled with seditions, tumults, and wars, for the most part unprosperous, they still retained such strength, that when Charles VIII. of France, being admitted as a friend with his whole army, which soon after conquered the kingdom of Naples, thought to master them, the people, taking arms, struck such a terror into him, that he was glad to depart upon such conditions as they thought fit to impose. Machiavel reports, that in that time Florence alone, with the Val d'Arno, a small territory belonging to that city, could, in a few hours, by the sound of a bell, bring together 135,000 well-armed men; whereas now that city, with all the others in that province, are brought to such despicable weakness, emptiness, poverty, and baseness, that they can neither resist the oppressions of their own prince, nor defend him or themselves if they were assaulted by a foreign enemy. The people are dispersed or destroyed, and the best families sent to seek habitations in Venice, Genoa, Rome, Naples, and Lucca. This is not the effect of war or pestilence: they enjoy a perfect peace, and suffer no other plague than the government they are under." (1) From the usurper Cosmo down to the imbecile Gaston, we look in vain for any of those unmixed qualities which should raise a patriot to the command of his fellow-citizens. The Grand Dukes, and particularly the third Cosmo, had operated so entire a change in the Tuscan character, that the candid Florentines, in excuse for some imperfections in the philanthropic system of Leopold, are obliged to confess that the sovereign was the only liberal man in his dominions. Yet that excellent prince himself had no other notion of a national assembly, than of a body to represent the wants and wishes, not the will, of the people. XXIII. BATTLE OF THRASIMENE. "An earthquake reel'd unheededly away." Stanza Ixiii. line 5. “And such was their mutual animosity, so intent were they upon the battle, that the earthquake, which overthrew in great part many of the cities of Italy, which turned the course of rapid streams, poured back the sea upon the rivers, and tore down the very mountains, was not felt by one of the combatants." (2) Such is the description of Livy. It may be doubted whether modern tactics would admit of such an abstraction. The site of the battle of Thrasimene is not to be mistaken. The traveller from the village under Cortona to Casa di Piano, the next stage on the way to Rome, has for the first two or three miles, around (1) On Government, chap. ii. sect. xxvi. page 208, edit. 1751. Sidney is, together with Locke and Hoadley, one of Mr. Hume's "despicable writers." (2) "Tantusque fuit ardor animorum, adeo intentus pugne animus, ut eum terræ motum qui multarum urbium Italiæ magnas partes prostravit, avertitque cursu rapido amnes, mare fluminibus invexit, montes lapsu ingenti proruit, nemo pugnantium senserit." Tit. Liv. lib. xxii. cap. xii. (3) Equites ad ipsas fauces saltus, tumulis apte tegentibus, locat." T. Livii, lib. xxii. cap. iv. him, but more particularly to the right, that flat land which Hannibal laid waste in order to induce the Consul Flaminius to move from Arezzo. On his left, and in front of him, is a ridge of hills bending down towards the lake of Thrasimene, called by Livy “mon- ¦ tes Cortonenses," and now named the Gualandra. These hills he approaches at Ossaja, a village which the Itineraries pretend to have been so denominated from the bones found there: but there have been no bones found there, and the battle was fought on the other side of the hill. From Ossaja the road begins to rise a little, but does not pass into the roots of the mountains until the sixty-seventh milestone from Florence. The ascent thence is not steep but perpetual, and continues for twenty minutes. The lake is soon seen below on the right, with Borghetto, a round tower, close upon the water; and the undulating hills partially covered with wood, amongst which the road winds, sink by degrees into the marshes near to this tower. Lower than the road, down to the right amidst these woody hillocks, Hannibal placed his horse, (3) in the jaws of, or rather above, the pass, which was between the lake and the present road, and most probably close to Borghetto, just under the lowest of the " tumuli.”(4) On a summit to the left, above the road, is an old circular ruin, which the peasants call "the Tower of Hannibal the Carthaginian." Arrived at the highest point of the road, the traveller has a partial view of the fatal plain, which opens fully upon him as he descends the Gualandra. He soon finds himself in a vale enclosed to the left, and in front, and behind him by the Gualandra hills, bending round in a segment larger than a semicircle, and running down at each end to the lake, which obliques to the right and forms the chord of this mountain arc. The position cannot be guessed at from the plains of Cortona, nor appears to be so completely enclosed unless to one who is fairly within the hills. It then, indeed, appears " a place made as it were on purpose for a snare," locus insidiis natus. "Borghetto is then found to stand in a narrow marshy pass close to the hill, and to the lake, whilst there is no other outlet at the opposite turn of the mountains than through the little town of Passignano, which is pushed into the water by the foot of a high rocky acclivity." (5) There is a woody eminence branching down from the mountains into the upper end of the plain nearer to the side of Passignano, and on this stands a white village called Torre. Polybius seems to allude to this eminence as the one on which Hannibal encamped, and drew out his heavy-armed Africans and Spaniards in a conspicuous position. (6) From this spot he despatched his Balearic and light-armed | troops round through the Gualandra heights to the right, so as to arrive unseen and form an ambush amongst the broken acclivities which the road now passes, and to be ready to act upon the left flank and above the enemy, whilst the horse shut up the (4) "Ubi maxime montes Cortonenses Thrasimenus subit." T. Livii, lib. xxii. cap. iv. (5) "Inde colles assurgunt." Ibid. (6) Τὸν μὲν κατὰ πρόσωπον τῆς πορείας λόγον αὐτὸς κατελάβετο, καὶ τοὺς Λίβυας καὶ τοὺς Ιβηρας ἔχων ἐπ' αὐτοῦ κατεστρατοπέδευσε. Hist. lib. iii. cap. 83. The account in Polybius is not so easily reconcilable with present appearances as that in Livy: 1 he talks of hills to the right and left of the pass and valley; but when Flaminius entered, he had the lake at the right of both. pass behind. Flaminius came to the lake near Borghetto at sunset; and, without sending any spies before him, marched through the pass the next morning before the day had quite broken, so that he perceived nothing of the horse and light troops above and about him, and saw only the heavy-armed Carthaginians in front on the hill of Torre. (1) The consul began to draw out his army in the flat, and in the mean time the horse in ambush occupied the pass behind him at Borghetto. Thus the Romans were completely inclosed, having the lake on the right, the main army on the hill of Torre in front, the Gualandra hills filled with the light-armed troops on their left flank, and being prevented from receding by the cavalry, who, the farther they advanced, stopped up all the outlets in the rear. A fog rising from the lake now spread itself over the army of the consul, but the high lands were in the sunshine, and all the different corps in ambush looked towards the hill of Torre for the order of attack. Hannibal gave the signal, and moved down from his post on the height. At the same moment all his troops on the eminences behind and on the flank of Flaminius rushed forwards as it were with one accord into the plain. The Romans, who were forming their array in the mist, suddenly heard the shouts of the enemy amongst them, on every side; and before they could fall into their ranks, or draw their swords, or see by whom they were attacked, felt at once that they were surrounded and lost. There are two little rivulets which run from the Gualandra into the lake. The traveller crosses the first of these at about a mile after he comes into the plain, and this divides the Tuscan from the Papal territories. The second, about a quarter of a mile further on, is called "the bloody rivulet;" and the peasants point out an open spot to the left, between the "Sanguinetto" and the hills, which, they say, was the principal scene of slaughter. The other part of the plain is covered with thick-set olive-trees in corn grounds, and is nowhere quite level, except near the edge of the lake. It is, indeed, most probable that the battle was fought near this end of the valley, for the six thousand Romans, who, at the beginning of the action, broke through the enemy, escaped to the summit of an eminence which must have been in this quarter, otherwise they would have had to traverse the whole plain, and to pierce through the main army of Hannibal. The Romans fought desperately for three hours; bat the death of Flaminius was the signal for a general dispersion. The Carthaginian horse then burst in upon the fugitives, and the lake, the marsh about Borghetto, but chiefly the plain of the Sanguinetto and the passes of the Gualandra, were strewed with dead. Near some old walls on a bleak ridge to the left, above the rivulet, many human bones have been repeatedly found, and this has confirmed the pretensions and the name of the "stream of blood." Every district of Italy has its hero. In the north some painter is the usual genius of the place, and the foreign Julio Romano more than divides Mantua with her native Virgil. (2) To the south, we hear of Ro (1) A tergo et super caput decepere insidia." T. Liv. etc. About the middle of the twelfth century, the coins of Mantua bore on one side the image and figure of Virgil. Zecca d'Italia, pl. xvii. i. 6. Voyages dans le Milanais, etc. par A. Z. Millin, tom. ii. pag. 294. Paris, 1817.' man names. Near Thrasimene tradition is still faithful to the fame of an enemy, and Hannibal the Carthaginian is the only ancient name remembered on the banks of the Perugian lake. Flaminius is unknown; but the postilions on that road have been taught to show the very spot where Il Console Romano was slain. Of all who fought and fell in the battle of Thrasimene, the historian himself has, besides the generals and Maharbal, preserved indeed only a single name. You overtake the Carthaginian again on the same road to Rome. The antiquary, that is, the hostler of the post-house at Spoleto, tells you that his town repulsed the victorious enemy, and shows you the gate still called Porta di Annibale. It is hardly worth while to remark that a French travel-writer, well known by the name of the President Dupaty, saw Thrasimene in the lake of Bolsena, which lay conveniently on his way from Sienna to Rome. XXIV. STATUE OF POMPEY. "And thou, dread statue! still existent in The austerest form of naked majesty." Stanza lxxxvii. lines I and 2. The projected division of the Spada Pompey has already been recorded by the historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Mr. Gibbon found it in the memorials of Flaminius Vacca; and it may be added to his mention of it, that Pope Julius III. gave the contending owners five hundred crowns for the statue, and presented it to Cardinal Capo di Ferro, who had prevented the judgment of Solomon from being executed upon the image. In a more civilised age, this statue was exposed to an actual operation: for the French, who acted the Brutus of Voltaire in the Coliseum, resolved that their Cæsar should fall at the base of that Pompey, which was supposed to have been sprinkled with the blood of the original dictator. The nine-foot hero was therefore removed to the arena of the amphitheatre, and, to facilitate its transport, suffered the temporary amputation of its right arm. The republican tragedians had to plead that the arm was a restoration: but their accusers do not believe that the integrity of the statue would have protected it. The love of finding every coincidence has discovered the true Cæsarean ichor in a stain near the right knee; but colder criticism has rejected not only the blood, but the portrait, and assigned the globe of power rather to the first of the emperors than to the last of the republican masters of Rome. Winkelmann (3) is loth to allow an heroic statue of a Roman citizen, but the Grimani Agrippa, a contemporary almost, is heroic; and naked Roman figures were only very rare, not absolutely forbidden. The face accords much better with the "hominem integrum et castum et gravem," (4) than with any of the busts of Augustus, and is too stern for him who was beautiful, says Suetonius, at all periods of his life. The pretended likeness to Alexander the Great cannot be discerned, but the traits resemble the medal of Pompey.(5) The objectionable globe may not have been an ill-applied flattery to him who found Asia Minor the boundary, and left it the (3) Storia delle Arti, etc. lib. ix. cap. I. pag. 321, 322. tom. ii. (4) Cicer. Epist. ad. Atticum, xi. 6. (5) Published by Causeus, in his Museum Romanum. centre of the Roman empire. It seems that Winkelmann has made a mistake in thinking that no proof of the identity of this statue with that which received the bloody sacrifice can be derived from the spot where it was discovered.(1) Flaminius Vacca says sotto una cantina, and this cantina is known to have been in the Vicolo de' Leutari, near the Cancellaria; a position corresponding exactly to that of the Janus before the basilica of Pompey's theatre, to which Augustus transferred the statue after the curia was either burnt or taken down.(2) Part of the Pompeian shade, (3) the portico, existed in the beginning of the 15th century, and the atrium was still called Satrum. So says Blondus.(4) At all events, so imposing is the stern majesty of the statue, and so memorable is the story, that the play of the imagination leaves no room for the exercise of the judgment, and the fiction, if a fiction it is, operates on the spectator with an effect not less powerful than truth. XXV. THE BRONZE WOLF. "And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome!" Stanza Ixxxviii. line 1. Ancient Rome, like modern Sienna, abounded most probably with images of the foster-mother of her founder; but there were two she-wolves of whom history makes particular mention. One of these, of brass in ancient work, was seen by Dionysius (5) at the temple of Romulus, under the Palatine, and is universally believed to be that mentioned by the Latin historian, as having been made from the money collected by a fine on usurers, and as standing under the Ruminal fig-tree.(6) The other was that which Cicero (7) has (1) Storia delle Arti, etc. lib. ix. cap. i. pag. 321, 322. tom. ii. (2) Sueton. in vit. August. cap. 31. and in vit. C. J. Cæsar. cap. 88. Appian says it was burnt down. See a note of Pitiscus to Suetonius, page 221. (3) "Tu modo Pompeia lenta spatiare sub umbra." Ovid. Art. Amand. (4) Roma Instaurata, lib. ii. fo. 31. (5) Χάλκια ποιήματα παλαιᾶς ἐργασίας. Antiq. Rom. lib. i. (6) "Ad ficum Ruminalem simulacra infantium conditorum urbis sub uberibus lupa posuerunt." Liv. Hist. lib. x. cap. xxiii. This was in the year U. C. 455 or 457. (7) "Tum statua Nattæ, tum simulacra Deorum, Romulusque et Remus cum altrice bellua, vi fulminis icti conciderunt." De Divinat. ii. 20. "Tactus est ille etiam qui hanc urbem condidit Romulus, quem inauratum in Capitolio parvum atque lactantem, uberibus lupinis inhiantem fuisse meministis." In Catilin. iii. 8. "Hic silvestris crat Romani nominis altrix De Consulatu, lib. ii. 42. (lib. i. de Divinat. cap. 12.) (8) Εν γὰρ τῷ Καπιτωλίῳ ἀνδριάντες τε πολλοὶ ὑπὸ κεραυνών συνεχωνεύθησαν, καὶ ἀγάλματα ἄλλα τε, καὶ Διὸς ἐπὶ κίονος ἱδρυμένον, εἰκών τέ τις λυκαίνης σύν τε τῷ ῥέμῳ καὶ σὺν τῷ Ρωμύλῳ ἱδρυμένη Έπεσε. Dion. Hist. lib. xxxvii. pag. 37. edit. Rob. Steph. 1548. He goes on to mention, that the letters of the columns on which the laws were written were liquified and become dupa. All that the Romans did was to erect a large statue to Jupiter, looking towards the east: no mention is afterwards made of the wolf. This happened in A. U. C. 689. The Abate Fea, in noticing this passage of Dion (Storia delle Arti, etc. tom. i. pag. 202. note x.), says, Non ostante, aggiunge Dione, che fosse ben fermata (the wolf); by which it is clear the Abate translated the Xylandro-Leun. clavian version, which puts quamvis stabilita for the original ispopin, a word that does not mean ben fermata, but only celebrated, both in prose and verse, and which the historian Dion also records as having suffered the same accident as is alluded to by the orator.(8) The question agitated by the antiquaries is, whether the wolf now in the Conservators' Palace is that of Livy and Dionysius, or that of Cicero, or whether it is neither one nor the other. The earlier writers differ as much as the moderns: Lucius Faunus (9) says, that it is the one alluded to by both, which is impossible, and also by Virgil, which may be. Fulvius Ursinus (10) calls it the wolf of Dionysius, and Marlianus (11) talks of it as the one mentioned by Cicero. To him Rycquius tremblingly assents.(12) Nardini is inclined to suppose it may be one of the many wolves preserved. in ancient Rome; but of the two rather bends to the Ciceronian statue.(13) Montfaucon (14) mentions it as a point without doubt. Of the latter writers the decisive Winkelmann (15) proclaims it as having been found at the church of Saint Theodore, where, or near where, was the temple of Romulus, and consequently makes it the wolf of Dionysius. His authority is Lucius Faunus, who, however, only says that it was placed, not found, at the Ficus Ruminalis, by the Comitium, by which he does not seem to allude to the church of Saint Theodore. Rycquius was the first to make the mistake, and Winkelmann followed Rycquius. Flaminius Vacca tells quite a different story, and says he had heard the wolf with the twins was found(16) | near the arch of Septimius Severus. The commentator on Winkelmann is of the same opinion with that learned person, and is incensed at Nardini for not having remarked that Cicero, in speaking of the wolf' struck with lightning in the Capitol, makes use of the past tense. But, with the Abate's leave, Nardini does raised, as may be distinctly seen from another passage of the same Dion: ἠβουλήθη μὲν οὖν ὁ Αγρίππας καὶ τὸν Αύγουστο ἐνταῦθα ἱδρύσαι. Hist. lib. vi. Dion says that Agrippa "wished to raise a statue of Augustus in the Pantheon." (9) "In eadem porticu ænea lupa, cujus uberibus Romulus ac Remus lactantes inhiant, conspicitur: de hac Cicero et Virgilius semper intellexere. Livius hoc signum ab Ædilibus ex pecuniis quibus mulctati essent fœneratores, positum innuit. Antea in Comitiis ad Ficum Ruminalem, quo loco pueri fuerant expositi, locatum pro certo est." Luc. Fauni de Antiq. Urb. Rom. lib. ii. cap. vii. ap. Sallengre, tom. i. p. 217. In his xviith chapter he repeats that the statues were there, but not that they were found there. (10) Ap. Nardini, Roma Vetus, lib. v. cap. iv. (11) Marliani Urb. Rom. Topograph. lib. ii. cap. ix. He mentions another wolf and twins in the Vatican, lib. v. cap. xxi. (12) Non desunt qui hanc ipsam esse putent, quam adpinximus, quæ è comitio in Basilicam Lateranam, cum nonnullis aliis antiquitatum reliquiis, atque hinc in Capitolium postea relata sit, quamvis Marlianus antiquam Capitolinam esse maluit à Tullio descriptam, cui, ut in re nimis dubia, 1 trepidè adsentimur." Just. Rycquii. de Capit. Roman. Comm. cap. xxiv. pag. 250. edit. Lugd. Bat. 1696. (13) Nardini, Roma Fetus, lib. v. cap. iv. (14) "Lupa hodieque in Capitolinis prostat ædibus, cam vestigio fulminis quo ictam narrat Cicero." Diarium Italic. tom. i. pag. 174. (15) Storia delle Arti, etc. lib. iii, cap iii. § ii. note 10. Winkelmann has made a strange blunder in the note, by saying the Ciceronian wolf was not in the Capitol, and that Dion was wrong in saying so. (16) "Intesi dire, che l' Ercole di bronzo, che oggi si trova ¦ nella sala di Campidoglio, fu trovato nel foro Romano ap· | presso l'arco di Settimio: e vi fu trovata anche la lupa di i bronzo che allatta Romolo e Remo, e stà nella Loggia de' Conservatori." Flam. Vacca, Memorie, num. iii. pag. i. ap. Montfaucon, Diar. Ital. tom. i. * |