Saint Paul in Rome

IT N visiting for the first time the Eternal City, nothing, amid its thousand thronging recollections, was of such profound interest as the “Roman Memories of St Paul.”

Circumstances interfered with the cherished purpose of making a preliminary acquaintance with the sites of “Appii Forum’’ and “The Three Taverns;” but we were able, under favourable auspices, including among these the brightest of skies, to trace the course of the Apostle-prisoner along the beautiful bay of Baiae, as the shores of Italy first opened upon him. If the commonly -accepted dates be correct, it must have been, too, about the same period of the year, when vine and fig-tree were in earliest bud; and the weeping willow, still so pleasingly familiar at this season to the traveller, was hanging its full, graceful tresses by the wayside. I felt it a privilege to stand on the only remaining step, covered with bright seaweed, and furrowed with age, on which he set foot at Puteoli,* also to follow him in thought in his journey to the capital, through the Arco Felice and by the Lake Avernus, till the ancient road, which in all probability he pursued, and which joins the Appian Way at Sinuessa, disappeared from our sight amid the rubbish and brushwood near Cumae.

The other termination of the great “Via The Via Appia” (whose polygonal blocks of

Appia at

Rome. basalt are in many places still grooved with the wheels wThich, two thousand years ago, passed over them), formed one of our first resorts on reaching Rome itself. It is easily

* A church, is close by, but erected not to St Paul but to the Virgin. St Januarius, whose name is associated with the pretended miracle of liquefied blood, is evidently the patron saint of modern ‘Pozzuoli. ’ accessible from the supposed site of the old Porta Capena of the Servian wall, by the modern San Sebastiano and Arch of Drusus.* However doubtful may be the identity of other traditional spots, which superstition has associated with St Paul, one fully realised his presence here. It was the feeling akin to what had previously been experienced, in a visit to Palestine, with regard to a Greater; when, amid the difficulties of tracing the Redeemer’s footsteps in connection with other localities, we felt there could be no hesitation that we were on the most consecrated ground on earth, as we trod the green sward of Olivet, or the beach of Gennesaret.

We could, accordingly, vividly imagine the Apostle, accompanied with the band of Roman

* This original entrance to the Appian Way will more than likely be soon brought to light, if indeed the discovery is not already made. The well-known President of one of the Archaeological Societies in Rome is now engaged in clearing the mounds of earth half way between the Baths of Caracalla and the Arch of Constantine, in search of the “missing link.’5 “Brethren” (some who met him at Appii st PauVs Forum, and others, probably older and

appi-oach to..

/^ a/y. less able for the journey, who had joined them at “The Three Taverns”), now approaching the end of their long route of fifty-one miles. We may be pardoned for pausing, as we endeavour to picture and vivify the scene which then opened before the central figure of that group. Of all the entrances to ancient, as to modern Rome, this was incomparably the grandest. Well may the Appian have been boastfully named by Statius, Regina Viarum (the Queenly Way). It formed the great line of communication, not only with southern Italy, but with the most remote oriental possessions of the Caesars, starting from the Golden Milestone in the Roman Forum and terminating at Brundusium. It was on nearing Rome it must have assumed its most imposing form and dimensions. Where now, for miles along this regal approach, we have only the fragments of grim, weather-stained sepulchres, wreathed with acanthus and ivy, interspersed here and there with remains of mediaeval fortresses, lonely blocks of travertine, and other masses of unshapely ruin, — there must have stretched before the Apostle’s eye one long magnificent street, lined with monuments to illustrious dead; a vast colonnade of tombs, with no vault but the blue sky, forming, if we may venture on the comparison, the Westminster Abbey of the Imperial City,* wrhile the present waste, treeless Campagna, which girdles the modern Rome as with a zone of death, was studded with patrician villas and palatial residences. The range of Alban and Sabine hills would appear on his

* All the burying-grounds in ancient times were extra-mural; situated generally in some conspicuous place immediately beyond the gates. I was struck with this peculiarity at Pompeii. The “Street* of Tombs,” outside one of the principal entrances, forms not the least interesting and noteworthy feature in the exhumed city. I noticed similar rows of ruined sepulchres, recently excavated, at Bayli and Cumae. The same, as every reader knows, was the case in Palestine. We have the familiar instance of the funeral of the Widow’s Son, met as it was proceeding outside the gate of Nain. To this day, the Jerusalem Cemetery is the immemorial oie in the Valley of Jehoshaphat.

right Conspicuous above him would be Monte Cavi, whither the laurelled conquerors of Rome were wont to proceed in triumphal procession with their trophies from the Capitol, — the Temple of Jupiter Latialis, long supplanted by a modern Passionist Convent, crowning its summit. Not far off, he would see Frescati, on its gentle eminence, enshrined in olive groves; and still farther to the right, Tivoli, nestling in its purple shadows, with the mountains of the Abruzzi for a background. Farthest away of all would be snowy Soracte, the solitary guardian of the northern landscape. Other thoughts and themes may possibly have been burdening his spirit as he passed monuments which to this hour engross the interest of the Roman archaeologist; a few, even then, hoary with age, others fresh from the chisel of sculptor or architect. Among the latter, on his right, would be that to the memory of the Consul Quintus Veranius. More conspicuous, alike in dimensions and splendour, would be the still surviving circular sepulchre, with its blocks of travertine — the Casale Rotondo, then recently erected by Augustus to the head of one of his great senatorial families. These two ancient tombs to the left, with their broad basement of peperino, are erected over the spot where, in the infancy of the empire, the Horatii and Curiatii fell. While here and there, mingling with this city of the dead, glimpses would be caught, through occasional openings, of the temples of Romulus, Bacchus, and Mars; or, on a greater scale than all, of those enormous aqueducts, then in their completed vastness, whose weird colossal fragments, still spanning the naked “Prairie” of which we have spoken, form the most picturesque of all the relics of Rome’s ancient splendour.

We may imagine the spot reached where the round tower of Cecilia Metella, built since St Paul’s time, crowns a gentle descent. Here he would obtain his most impressive view of the city proper, as the Aventine and Palatine

Mounts more nearly revealed themselves, with their crowded piles of architecture, — whether Theatres or Basilicas, Baths or Arches, Temples or Palaces; and yet, discovering also streets of squalid misery, homes festering with poverty and crime, which, as much as in any city of the present day, were in strange juxtaposition with dwellings of luxurious and guilty extravagance. Nor can we fail, in passing, to note, that the The Bast- modern traveller can discern from this

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