ART AT THE BOTTOM OF THE TIBER.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5087, 13 July 1877, Page 3

ART AT THE BOTTOM OF THE TIBER.

A correspondent writing from Rome, March 22, says:—On Monday, the 12th, the first blow of the pick was struck in the bed of the Tiber, in pursuance of the long talked-of scheme of draining and embanking the river. The number of men thus far employed upon the works, the cost of which is estimated at 60,000,000 francs, amounts to seventeen or so, a proportion which, if continued, will defer the completion of the project to A.D. 2150. This gives us leisure to take into full consideration the probabilities of discoveries being made in the bed of the river; in other words, whether the chance of such discoveries is real or imaginary. In the fever of research which, during the last four centuries, has turned up the soil of Rome, the bed of the Tiber has certainly not been spared, and yet the discoveries .have not come up to the public expectation. Such poor results, notwithstanding the magnificence of the buildings which stood on the quays, and parts of which must have fallen into the bed of the river, can be easily explained from the muddy quality of the water. The proportion of solid mattertoliquid, whichiuordinary circumstances is 4 per cent., often, during the floods, reaches' an average of 18 to 21 per cent. The bed is consequently made of quicksands of light mud, through which heavy objects sink fast to a great depth. The central pier of the tabular bridge at St. Paolo is sunk for more than 60 feet. In October, 1865, a'train of 12 trucks, loaded with stone, fell into the river from the same bridge, stopping navigation. When a month afterward, the Government engineers went to clear away the debris, not a fragment of the trucks, not a stone, was found; all had been swallowed , up by the mire. How is it possible under such circumstances to think of finding works of art at the bottom of old Father Tiber? , Still, there are some who hope for the recovery of the bodies, of Maxentius and his , staff, all clad in gold armor, and expect to disinter the sevenbranched candlestick. They seem to forget the following passage of Aurelious Victor : “ Maxentius,” he says, “ endeavoring to cross the bridge of boats, which had been constructed for the use of his army,, a little below Forte Monte,, was thrown by his frightened horse into the waters and eaten up by quickt" sands on account of the weight of his cuirass. Constantine had great difficulty in finding his corpse.” As regards the Jewish treasures, no doubt the golden table, the silver trumpets and the candlestick were deposited by Titus and Vespasian in the newly-built Temple of Peace. They escaped destruction in the fire of 192 ; and Procopius* in his “ War of the Goths,” says he had heard they had been carried away by King Alarm, who was, burned; with his treasures in the river Basentus, near Cosenza. In that river, therefore, and mot in the Tiber, we ougnt to look for them, if the statement of Procopius was not contradicted by himself in his “War. of the Vandals,”, where he says, on the best testimony, that the Jewish trophies were carried by Gonserio to Carthage in the year 455.