DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.785#0166
64 FIDENjE. [chap. in.
surface—not a house—not a ruin—not one stone upon
another, to tell you that the site had been inhabited. Yet
here once stood Antemnae, the city of many towers,6 one
of the most ancient of Italy.7 Not a trace remains above
ground. Even the broken pottery, that infallible indicator
of bygone civilisation, which marks the site and determines
the limits of habitation on many a now desolate spot of
classic ground, is here so overgrown with herbage that the
eye of an antiquary would alone detect it. It is a site strong
by nature, and well adapted for a city, as cities then
were; for it is scarcely larger than the Palatine Hill,
which, though at first it embraced the whole of Rome, was
afterwards too small for a single palace. It has a peculiar
interest as the site of one of the three cities of Sabina,
whose daughters, ravished by the followers of Romulus,
became the mothers of the Roman race.8 Antemnae was
the nearest city to Rome—only three miles distant—and
therefore must have suffered most from the inhospitable
violence of the Romans.
It was a bright spring morning when I first visited the
spot. All Rome was issuing from its gates to witness the
meeting of the huntsmen at the tomb of Caecilia Metella.
Shades of Placcus and Juvenal! can ye rest amid the
clangour of these modern Circenses ? Doth not the earth
weigh heavy on your ashes, when " savage Britons," whom
ye were wont to see "led in chains down the Sacred
Way," flaunt haughtily and mockingly among your hearths
and altars 1—when, spurning the sober pleasures of the
august and solemn city, in the pride of their wealth and
power, they startle all Rome from its propriety by races
6 Turrigeras Antemnse,—Virg. ^En. II., p. 103.
TIL 631- s Lir. I. 9,10 ; Dionys. II., p. 101.
7 ------Antemnaque prisco Plut. Ronml. The other two were
Crustumio prior.— Csenina and Crustamium.
SU. Ital. VIII. 367. cf. Dion. Hal.
surface—not a house—not a ruin—not one stone upon
another, to tell you that the site had been inhabited. Yet
here once stood Antemnae, the city of many towers,6 one
of the most ancient of Italy.7 Not a trace remains above
ground. Even the broken pottery, that infallible indicator
of bygone civilisation, which marks the site and determines
the limits of habitation on many a now desolate spot of
classic ground, is here so overgrown with herbage that the
eye of an antiquary would alone detect it. It is a site strong
by nature, and well adapted for a city, as cities then
were; for it is scarcely larger than the Palatine Hill,
which, though at first it embraced the whole of Rome, was
afterwards too small for a single palace. It has a peculiar
interest as the site of one of the three cities of Sabina,
whose daughters, ravished by the followers of Romulus,
became the mothers of the Roman race.8 Antemnae was
the nearest city to Rome—only three miles distant—and
therefore must have suffered most from the inhospitable
violence of the Romans.
It was a bright spring morning when I first visited the
spot. All Rome was issuing from its gates to witness the
meeting of the huntsmen at the tomb of Caecilia Metella.
Shades of Placcus and Juvenal! can ye rest amid the
clangour of these modern Circenses ? Doth not the earth
weigh heavy on your ashes, when " savage Britons," whom
ye were wont to see "led in chains down the Sacred
Way," flaunt haughtily and mockingly among your hearths
and altars 1—when, spurning the sober pleasures of the
august and solemn city, in the pride of their wealth and
power, they startle all Rome from its propriety by races
6 Turrigeras Antemnse,—Virg. ^En. II., p. 103.
TIL 631- s Lir. I. 9,10 ; Dionys. II., p. 101.
7 ------Antemnaque prisco Plut. Ronml. The other two were
Crustumio prior.— Csenina and Crustamium.
SU. Ital. VIII. 367. cf. Dion. Hal.