triumph were therefore so near to each other, that it is difficult to distinguish them; and a peculiarity which they possessed in common makes me inclined to consider them as the same. Both these gates were consecrated by public opinion and the ceremonies of religion. According to the institutions of the Tuscans,* walls were sacred, but gates were profane; and when they traced the sacred site of the Pomorium, it was customary at times to interrupt the action of the plough, that spaces might be left free for these necessary outlets, which, for the convenience of the city, must often be defiled by impurities. But the triumphal gate, which was destined solely for admitting into the city a most venerable religious procession, needed not to be included under this law; and that it certainly was not, appeared from what happened respecting the honours which it was proposed to bestow on the memory of Augustus.† Tiberius rejected these, however, as offensive to religion; to which the proposition of making a dead body pass through the triumphal gate was reckoned as contrary as that of collecting the bones of Augustus by the hands of priests, and of determining the age or century by the length of his life. It belonged to the gods alone to mark by prodigies the duration of each period. 4. The supposed identity of the two gates, whose resemblance is very striking, perfectly explains the institution of Numa, and the reason why Janus was open in war and shut in peace. The contrary symbols might appear more natural. A free and open access to a city bespeaks the security of peace. Amidst the fear and distrust occasioned by war against neighbouring enemies, the shutting of the gates is employed as the most natural means of defence. But, by the institution of Numa, the gates of war were opened, because they were gates of glory; and they continued open, to admit the small number of great men, who were entitled to pass through them. They were, on the other hand, shut when the return of peace shut up the triumphal road. Among the Romans, indeed, this road was rarely interrupted. For the ceremony of shutting Janus required not merely an actual peace, which the Romans often enjoyed, but an inclination also in the senate to render that peace lasting; an inclination which that body testified only during the tranquil reigns of Numa and Augustus, and during that period of national weakness which was occasioned by the first Punic war.

ON THE TRIUMPHAL CEREMONIES.

It is here necessary to pause. This chapter might become a volume. We may commit to antiquaries the care of describing the triumphal show; the victims, sacrifices, vases of gold and silver, and crowns. I shall dwell on one circumstance alone, more deserving the attention of a philosopher, because by it this institution is honourably distinguished from those vain and fatiguing solemnities which create nothing but weariness or contempt. The triumph converted the spectators into actors, by showing to them objects great, real, and which could not fail to move their affections.

* Plutarch in Romul. † Sueton. in Aug. cap. 100; Tacit. Annal. i. 8.

The most brilliant shows in courts, the carousals of Lewis XIV. or the festivities of the Duke of Wurtemberg, attested the wealth, and sometimes the taste, of princes. We may throw a glance on them, to remark the state of arts and manners in a certain age or country; but our eyes are soon tired or disgusted by perceiving that these immense expenses are consumed in relieving the languor or gratifying the vanity of one man. I perceive crowds of courtiers indifferent, or yawning, or wretchedly occupied in concealing, under the mask of pleasure, their inward uneasiness. I hear the loud complaints of a whole people; who have felt, in an expensive hunting-match, the desolation of a province; and can trace, in a gilded dome, the marks of an hundred cottages, overwhelmed by the weight of taxes. From such objects I remove my attention with horror. The ceremonies of religion, when presented to mankind in a venerable garb, ought powerfully to interest their affections; but their influence cannot be completely felt, unless the spectators have a firm faith in the theological system on which they are founded; and unless they also feel in themselves that particular disposition of mind which lays it open to religious terrors. Such ceremonies, when they are not viewed with respect, are beheld with the contempt excited by the most ridiculous pantomime.

In the triumph, every circumstance was great and interesting. To receive its full impression, it was enough to be a man and a Roman. With the eyes of citizens, the spectators saw the image, or rather the reality, of the public glory. The treasures which were carried in procession, the most precious monuments of art, the bloody spoils of the enemy, exhibited a faithful picture of the war, and illustrated the importance of the conquest. A silent but forcible language instructed the Romans in the exploits and valour of their countrymen: symbols chosen with taste, showed to them the cities, rivers, mountains, the scenes of their national enterprise, and even the gods of their prostrate enemies, subdued under the majesty of Capitoline Jupiter. Under the impression of recent and manifest favours, pride, curiosity, and devotion warmed into one strong and prevailing passion of enthusiasm. Sometimes sentiments more tender penetrated the citizen's heart, when he beheld a son, a brother, or a friend, escaped from the dangers of war, following the triumphal chariot, and crowned with the rewards of his valour. The general's glory was not confined within the narrow sphere of his own family and friends. It redounded to the honour of every citizen, who rejoiced at the new dignity thereby acquired to the Roman name; and who remembered, perhaps, that his own vote had helped to raise to the consulship the great man, whose merit he had the discernment to perceive, and whom he had the disinterestedness to prefer to all his rivals.

When the citizen cast his eye on the vanquished kings dragged in triumph, his own pride triumphed at once over them and insulted humanity. But if a sentiment of compassion overcame his stern prejudices, and he melted at the sight of a fallen monarch, and his innocent children still unconscious of their misfortune, his tenderness

must have been rewarded with that delightful pleasure with which nature repays such tears.

The lot of those unfortunate princes is but too well known. Victims of state policy and Roman pride, they ended a shameful captivity by an ignominious death, which had been delayed only by their disgrace of being led in triumph. In the conduct of the Romans toward them, there was however a singular capriciousness, which it is not easy to explain. Of this, the following is a memorable example. After the triumph of Paulus Emilius for the conquest of Macedon, the senate banished Perseus to Alba Facetia, in the territory of the Marsi, supplied him with every comfort that can be enjoyed without liberty, and honoured his remains with the pomp of a public funeral. This treatment was totally the reverse of that experienced by the unhappy Jugurtha, who expired in a dungeon, after enduring the torments of hunger and despair; torments the more horrible in his forlorn and solitary state, unrelieved by the hope of glory, the presence of spectators, or the show of a public execution, which, while it frightens, fortifies the mind. What was the reason for making this difference? Both princes were sworn enemies of the Roman name, and each was stained with the blood of a brother who had been a friend to the Romans. To these crimes Perseus had added the assassination of a king allied to the senate, and an attempt to poison the Roman ambassadors. But Perseus was a monument of the virtue of the republic. With him was associated the idea of a glorious war; but, with Jugurtha, the Romans must have wished to bury for ever the memory of their own disgrace; their legions made to pass under the yoke; consuls, ambassadors, the whole senate, corrupted by the bribes of that prince; the concealed baseness of the republic unveiled to the whole world. Such were the crimes of Jugurtha, crimes for which the Romans could never possibly forgive him.

Rome, 13th December, 1764.

NO. VIII.

Rome, 29th December, 1764.-I have been reading a MS. of the Abbé Gio. Vicenzo Gravina, which belongs to Mr. Lumsden, a Scotch gentleman, and a friend of Mr. Byers, through whose means I procured it. The title of it is, Del Governo Civile di Roma; in 4to. pp. 76: and its principal subject, the revolutions of the city after the fall of the empire; a subject which interests me much. This performance is an excellent abridgment, but merely an abridgment; the author not having sounded the depths of his subject, nor ransacked archives. His citations are few; and those only of well-known authors, such as Baronius, Blondus, or Sigonius. It may, however, be worth while to extract, without order or method, the particulars which I have learned from this work.

After the foundation of Constantinople, New Rome yielded in all matters of ceremony to her elder sister. The consul of the West preceded the consul of the East.-Procopius's Secret History.

Mr. Gravina believes in the donations of Pepin and Charlemagne. But, according to him, these princes gave the duchy of Rome and the exarchate of Ravenna to the popes, as chiefs of the senate and Roman republic during the vacancy of the empire.

In the insurrection of the Romans against King Hugh and Marozia, they established their ancient government by two annual consuls and tribunes. Young Alberic was one of the first consuls. Gravina cites Blondus; but Muratori, who places this event in the year 932 instead of 928, does not speak of consuls. I am inclined however to believe Gravina. The consuls were certainly re-established about that time.

Mr. Gravina thinks that Otho III. abolished the consulship in 995, after the death of Crescentius. The observation seems probable; yet he does not give his authority; and it is proved that the office of consul subsisted immediately afterwards, as well as in the following age.

Innocent III. received the homage of the præfect of Rome, and granted to him the investiture of his office.-Sigon. de Regn. Ital. At the request of the people, he created fifty senators to govern the city; but as they exceedingly abused their power, he reduced them to one only, appointed to distribute justice.-Cantilius de Romaná Historia à Carolo Magno.

Under the pontificate of Martin IV. the Orsini, to avenge the affront which they had received from the Annibaldesi (who had driven them from Viterbo, after the death of their uncle Nicholas III.) entered with an armed force into Rome, which they ravaged with fire and sword. At that time were burnt the ancient edifices whose ruins are still visible on the declivity of the Capitoline hill.

OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

THE NINTH CENTURY.

THE more civilised part of the globe was divided between the Christians and the Mahometans; the former under two emperors, the latter under two caliphs. 1. The newly-erected empire of the Franks extended over France, Germany, and Italy, and even the Christian princes of Britain and the mountains of Spain respected the power and dignity of Charlemagne. 2. The empire of the Greeks, or as they vainly styled it, of the Romans, had preserved only Macedonia, Thrace, and Asia Minor. 3. The caliphs of the house of Ommiyah reigned in Spain. 4. Africa, Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and Persia, were subject to the Abassides. Whatever lay beyond the limits of these four empires, was still pagan, and, excepting China, still barbarous.

The overgrown monarchy of the Abassides soon declined. The powerful viceroys of great and distant provinces gradually usurped

deserving of punishment than Hannibal himself." The only objection that could have been made to Cicero was the defeat of Catiline, whose conqueror had not obtained a triumph. But that conqueror was the feeble-minded Antonius, who had not spirit to act the part either of a conspirator or of a citizen, and who tamely submitted to behold the destruction of his ancient friends by the arms of his lieutenant Petreius. Cicero would have been pleased to add, that Catiline had been conquered by himself in the senate; and that this conspirator, who was formidable only in Rome, became from the moment of his flight from the capital, no better than the leader of a miserable band of robbers.

The subverters of liberty, who were unwilling that their exploits should be forgotten in fighting against their country, endeavoured, like the great Condé, to contrive means for immortalising their glory without perpetuating the memory of their crimes. 1. For the ostentation of a triumph, they substituted the more modest ceremony of an ovation, in which the victors were honoured, and the vanquished were not insulted. It was thus that Augustus returned to Rome after the defeat of Brutus and Cassius; and after the war in Sicily, and his victory over young Pompey. 2. As the civil wars involved the whole Roman world, and each factious leader had kings and nations for his allies, the triumph openly exposed only those foreign allies, and left to the imagination of the Romans the sup plying of the domestic victims which the conqueror had the address to appear willing to conccal. Augustus triumphed for the defeat of the Egyptian fleet at Actium, and the conquest of Egypt. He suppressed the name of Antony and his lieutenants; but who did not recollect them at hearing that of Cleopatra? This artifice was employed so late as the reign of Vespasian,* when the name of the Sarmatians was used to justify the triumphal honours decreed by the senate to Mucianus for his services in the civil war.

There remain many observations to be made on the right of triumphs; the title of Imperator; the triumphs on Mount Alba; and the triumphal ornaments. But we have already detained our generals too long at the gates of Rome. It is time to conduct them into the city, and to examine the road which they followed in ascending the Capitol.

CONCERNING THE TRIUMPHAL ROAD.

I at first thought that the triumphs did not follow any particular road; and that the gate through which they entered into the city, as well as the streets through which they passed to the foot of the Capitol, depended on the situation of the country which had been the theatre of the war. The triumphs, I considered, were nothing but a picture of the general's return. Amidst all the artificial decorations of pride and magnificence, there must have been an inclination to confine them within the bounds of nature and probability. When Paulus Emilius returned from the conquest of Macedon, he must have pursued the Appian way to the Porta Capena; and the con

*Tacit. Hist. iv. 4.