JOTTINGS FROM A TRAVELLER’S JOURNAL.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 1025, 18 August 1883, Page 4

JOTTINGS FROM A TRAVELLER’S JOURNAL.

WRITTEN SPECIALLY FOR THB ‘ ‘ASHBURTON • GtrABMAN.”J

,*S’V No. XX.—(continued.) 5 The Goilisbdm: of Rome, s ■ : Th'e’Ubliseuln—which Byron calls “a i noble wreck in ruinous perfection,” :next ! . engaged toy attention. I need not dwell on the appearance and proportions of this ruin ; paintings and engravings have made almost everyone familiar with its size and !> ‘ shape. But no pictorial representation can excite emotions similar to those which an actual survey of the colossal relic pro- ; • duces. It dateC from the year 72 j was " 'commenced by Vespasian, the two upper tiers being coippjeted by Titus,after his ■ nstv{rn ; from ihe’concjiiebl of Je^usAleto.. It is said .that twelve thousand* captive Jews wefre ethployed as laborers on’ the building. I ascended the various flights of steps leading to the tiers of seats,: and, looked down upon the now silent atena, twhef o''gladiatorial combats, fierce endoun-,; tars between wild beasts, mimic fiaval . battle®, end cruel slaughter of Christian martyrs, were wont to. be exhibited; to a hundred thousand spectators seated round ’ the vast enclosure. Only a portion of the :: walls now remain, but the fragment is sufficient to impress the mind with a tense of the magnitude of the original structure. As I stood and gazed, the scene of the ' ■ first martyrdom rose before my imagination. In mental visio 1 I saw Ignatius led into the arena by the officials. He cailraly surveyed the throng of eager faces turned 1 O towards him, but only here and there, on a countenance, half concealed from fear, could,he detect any expression of sympathy and pity; cruel exultant expectation i ; . ; was the prevailing feeling. Methought I "heard him say—“ Romans, who are here present, know that I have not been brought into this place for any crime, but, in order that by this means I may iperit the fruition of the glory .of God, for love of whom I have been made prisoner. I am r as the grain of the field, and 5 uniat be i - .|pfbuhd by the teeth of the lions tljat I may become bread fit for His table.”* I heard, in imagination, the impatient cries of the multitude, eager to witness! the bloody catastrophe. I heard the ;crqaking ! S !J of’ the machinery by which the doors of the,subterranean passages leading to the wild beasts’ dens wefe thrown open—lions with bristling manes and glaring eyes bound into the arena—there is a momentary pause, a death-like silence, whilst the \ beasts',c: ouch and creep towards 1 > their Victim, lashing their sides with their tails. Ho stands with hands elapsed and eyes directed* heavenwards : the next moment his body is seen writhing under T/ . -thdipaWs of the ..lions, who • have struck him down and are growling at one another as they devour him limb by limb. Humiliating thought ! men and wotoen, Roman nobles, and ladies of patrician ratik, as well as those of coarser mould, could look upon and delight in such spectacles I , , ■ / ; -■ Ignatius was the first, but not the llast ‘ by many hundreds, of Christian martyrs whose blood soaked into tho sand of. the arena of the Flavian Amphitheatre. Placidus and his wife Theophista, with their two children, were exposed to wild beisth); Cbu£< when • ith«J ahinials, either from satiety or other unknown cause, refused to toqch .them, the bloodthirsty crowd were gratified by seeing the victims ... .j enclosed in a brazen bull .-and roasted, to '’death. Numbers of Christians were shot down by arrows, and put to death by a variety of means devised to gratify the cruel spectators. But enough, I might fill many pages, if I longer dwelt upon the tragic scenes once enacted within the ancient walls on which I stood. No Words, perhaps, more graphically describe the place- and the emotions it excites in the mind,''than those .which Dickons penhedV—“lt is no fiction but plain, . sober, honest truth to say ; so suggestive v .:: iand distinct is it at this hour, that for a u —actually in passing in—they ;; who will, may have the whole great pile ,i_ before them, as it used to be, with thousands of eager faces staring down into : the arena, and such a whirl of strife and , blood and dust going’ on-there, as no lanu -gunge can describe. Its solitude, its > awful beauty and its utter desolation, strike upon the stranger the next moment like a softened sorrow ; and never in his life; perhaps, will he be so moved and overcome by any sight, not immediately connected with his own affections and afflictions. To see it crumbling there, an inch a year, its walls and arches overgrown with green, its corridors open to the day ; the long grass growing in its porches ; young trees of yesterday spring- , ing up on its rugged parapets and bearing fruit, chance produce of the seeds dropped there by the birds who build their nests Within its chinks and crannies ; to see its t' 1 pit of fight filled up with earth, and the peaceful cross planted in the centre* ; to climb ifato its upper halls and took down on ruin, ruin, ruin all about it, the triumphal arches of Constantine, Septinjaa, ; Severus and Titus, the Roman Foruip, the Palace of the Csesara, the ‘ temples, of the old religion fallen down and gone, is to see the ghost of old Rome wicked, wonderful old city, haunting the very ground on, which its people trod. It is the most impressive, the most stately, ‘ the most solemn, grand, majestic, mournful sight conceivable, Never, in its bloodiest prime, 1 could the sight of the* . gigantic Coliseum, full and running over . .with the lustiest life, have moved one heart as it must move all who look upon it now, a ruin—God be thanked, a > * ruin I’’; *

Up to the eighth century the Coliseum was tolerably well preserved. It could . scarcely be called a ruin. /But Guiscard partially dismantled ic to prevent its being fortified! And as time rolled on, the still farther injured the 'Structure, and after them the Annibaldi defaced it. ,During the fourteenth century it was - ' regarded only as a convenient quarry, and several of the Roman palaces were built with materials ab stracted from it; the venerable walls, are punctured all over with holes from whence the iron, so much coveted in the middle ages, was taken. ■ Pope Textus V. turned the arcades into shops, and Clement XI established a. manufactory of saltpetre in the place. where, gladiators fought andjmartjrs bled 1 Both these incongruous {undertakings failed, and the world is so far indebted to the later Popes that they did their best, to preserve the relic from further destruction. , Within the last thirty years serious ' injury has been done by clearing away all the trees and'shrubs and plants that had grown up about the walls; The intention, no doubt j was good, but in-uprooting the vegetable ornaments more stones were loosened and displaced than would have been done in the lapse of many centuries. -i—~ ; r ■ —- , 'The trees and shrubs have been removed, to the *".;j great injury of the ruin; and the tall cross that marked the spot where the martyrs suffered, was taken ■away in 1872. ' (To be continued.)