buttress, which is modestly marked with the name and number of Pius VII., and is said to have cost seventy thousand crowns, will help to secure the yawning rents on the side towards the Lateran. Sentinels have been found a more effectual protection than the hermit, or the cross, or the walls.

With the leave of Maffei, there is still something more than a piece of the bark left to wonder at. The antiquary may profit by the recent exposure of the substructures of the arena; but the clearing away of the soil, and the opening the arches, increases the satisfaction of the unlearned, though devout admirers, who are capable of being affected by the general result, however little they understand the individual details, and who wander amidst these stupendous ruins for no other instruction than that which must be suggested by so awful a memorial of fallen empire.

1" Che genera ancor maraviglia con quel pezzo della corteccia che ne sussiste." Veron. Illust. p. iv. p. 24

Stanza CXLVI.

Sanctuary and home

Of art and piety-Pantheon !—pride of Rome. Whether the Pantheon be the calidarium of a bath or a temple, or a single or a double building, it is evidently that structure of which the ancients themselves. spoke with rapture, as one of the wonders of Rome: whose vault was like the heavens', and whose compass was that of a whole region2.

Notwithstanding the repairs of Domitian, Hadrian, and Severus and Caracalla, it is probable that the later artists copied the old model, and that the Portico may still be said to belong to the age of Augustus. Knowing that we see what was one of the most superb edifices of the ancient city, in the best period of its architecture, we are surprised, when looking down on the Pantheon from one of the summits of Rome, with the mean appearance of its flat. leaden dome, compared with the many towering structures of the modern town; but the sight of the Portico from the opposite extremity of the market-place in front of the Rotonda, vindicates the majesty of the ancient capital.

- 1 σε ὡς δὲ ἐγὼ νομίζω ὅτι θολοειδὲς ὂν τῷ οὐρανῷ προσέοικεν.” Dion. Hist. Rom. lib. liii. tom. i. p. 722.

2

"Pantheum velut regionem terretem speciosa celsitudine fornicatam." Amm. Marcell. lib. xvi. cap. x. p. 145.

The Abate Lazeri1 has done his utmost to prove this structure a bath, or, at least, not a temple; or if it were a temple, he would show that a temple does not always mean a religious edifice, but sometimes a tomb, and sometimes the mast of a ship; and that Pantheon was a band of soldiers. However, as our Pantheon is neither one nor the other of these three, we need not embarrass ourselves with the name, which was a difficulty even in ancient times. Dion ascribed it to the expanding vault, but tells that others referred it to the resemblance to several deities observed in certain statues of Venus and Mars 2. There is no evidence that it was dedicated to all the gods, although such a persuasion prevailed with the early Christian writers3: nor is there any authority for the assertion of the pilgrim of the thirteenth century, that Cybele and Neptune were the original possessors of this temple.

1 Discorso di Pietro Lazeri della consecrazione del Panteone fatta da Bonifazio IV. Roma, 1749.

2. Hist. Rom. in loc. citat.

• Paul the deacon-the martyrology. "Idém (Focas) Papa Bonifacio petente, jussit in veteri fano, quod Panteon vocabant, ablatis idolatriæ sordibus, Ecclesiam Beatæ semper Virginis Mariæ, et omnium Martyrum fieri, ut ubi omnium non Deorum, sed Dæmonum cultus erat, ibi deinceps fieret omnium memoria sanctorum." De gest. Lang. lib. iv. cap. xxxvii. p. 464, Script. Rer. Ital. tom. i.

The words of Pliny should be reckoned decisive, that the Pantheon was dedicated to Jove the Avenger'; and Lazeri has only one way of getting rid of this witness, which is by remarking, that all places dedicated to gods were not necessarily temples. In his reply to objections he rather gives way, and retreats to the ground that the Christians did not think it a temple, or they would have destroyed it, as they did all other edifices devoted to the pagan religion!! This is the strength of his argument; and, up to a certain point, he makes out his case better against, or, as he thought, for, the Christians, than against the pretensions of Jupiter to his claims over the Pantheon. In both one and the other position the Abate has fallen into errors for which he has been sharply reproved by the editor of Winklemann2.

The positive merit of" saving and converting the majestic structure of the Pantheon" would have been greater, if the consecration had taken place earlier than two hundred years after the triumph of Christianity. From the shutting of the temples in the reign of Honorius to the

** Pantheon Jovi Ultori ab Agrippa factum, cum theatrum ante texerit Romæ." Nat. Hist. lib. xxxvi, cap. xv.

• Dissertazione sulle Rovine, &c. p. 284, note (c).

• Decline and Fall, cap. Ixxi. tom. xii. p. 408.

U

year 609, it must have been abandoned to the ravages of neglect. Vain attempts have been made to prove that it was dedicated before the above date', but all the writers are of accord in this point: there is only some doubt whether all the Saints should not be esteemed the first possessors of the Christian church, instead of all the Martyrs. It seems, that as early as the. fourth century, the Saints were worshipped with the Martyrs'; and, indeed, as martyrdom grew more rare every day, and was not to be had, except now and then from an Arian tyrant, it is probable that simple saintship was regarded as a just title to an apotheosis. Gregory IV. changed the martyrs, however, into saints, at the re-consecration in 830, though the ancient name. was still preserved-Beata Maria ad Martyres.

The positive merit of saving the Pantheon would have been more complete, if the pontiffs had not afterwards converted it to a fortress, which, in the time of Gregory VII. was called S. Maria in turribus, and was defended by the anti-pope, Clement III. when the Countess Ma

1

2

By father Martene. Discorso, &c. p. 4.

Mabillon, Cardinal Bona, and Fontanini, are of this opinion. Discorso, p. 4.

3 Anastas. in vit. Greg. IV. p. 226. Script. Rer. Ital. tom. iii.