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The value of any object that supplies the wants or
pleasures of mankind is compounded of its substance and its
form, of the materials and the manufacture. Its price must
depend on the number of persons by whom it may be acquired
and used; on the extent of the market; and consequently on
the ease or difficulty of remote exportation, according to
the nature of the commodity, its local situation, and the
temporary circumstances of the world. The Barbarian
conquerors of Rome usurped in a moment the toil and treasure
of successive ages; but, except the luxuries of immediate
consumption, they must view without desire all that could
not be removed from the city in the Gothic wagons or the
fleet of the Vandals.(27) Gold and silver were the first
objects of their avarice; as in every country, and in the
smallest compass, they represent the most ample command of
the industry and possessions of mankind. A vase or a statue
of those precious metals might tempt the vanity of some
Barbarian chief; but the grosser multitude, regardless of
the form, was tenacious only of the substance; and the
melted ingots might be readily divided and stamped into the
current coin of the empire. The less active or less
fortunate robbers were reduced to the baser plunder of
brass, lead, iron, and copper: whatever had escaped the
Goths and Vandals was pillaged by the Greek tyrants; and the
emperor Constans, in his rapacious visit, stripped the
bronze tiles from the roof of the Pantheon.(28) The edifices
of Rome might be considered as a vast and various mine; the
first labor of extracting the materials was already
performed; the metals were purified and cast; the marbles
were hewn and polished; and after foreign and domestic
rapine had been satiated, the remains of the city, could a
purchaser have been found, were still venal. The monuments
of antiquity had been left naked of their precious
ornaments; but the Romans would demolish with their own
hands the arches and walls, if the hope of profit could
surpass the cost of the labor and exportation. If
Charlemagne had fixed in Italy the seat of the Western
empire, his genius would have aspired to restore, rather
than to violate, the works of the Caesars; but policy
confined the French monarch to the forests of Germany; his
taste could be gratified only by destruction; and the new
palace of Aix la Chapelle was decorated with the marbles of
Ravenna (29) and Rome.(30) Five hundred years after
Charlemagne, a king of Sicily, Robert, the wisest and most
liberal sovereign of the age, was supplied with the same
materials by the easy navigation of the Tyber and the sea;
and Petrarch sighs an indignant complaint, that the ancient
capital of the world should adorn from her own bowels the
slothful luxury of Naples.(31) But these examples of plunder
or purchase were rare in the darker ages; and the Romans,
alone and unenvied, might have applied to their private or
public use the remaining structures of antiquity, if in
their present form and situation they had not been useless
in a great measure to the city and its inhabitants. The
walls still described the old circumference, but the city
had descended from the seven hills into the Campus Martius;
and some of the noblest monuments which had braved the
injuries of time were left in a desert, far remote from the
habitations of mankind. The palaces of the senators were no
longer adapted to the manners or fortunes of their indigent
successors: the use of baths (32) and porticos was forgotten:
in the sixth century, the games of the theatre,
amphitheatre, and circus, had been interrupted: some temples
were devoted to the prevailing worship; but the Christian
churches preferred the holy figure of the cross; and
fashion, or reason, had distributed after a peculiar model
the cells and offices of the cloister. Under the
ecclesiastical reign, the number of these pious foundations
was enormously multiplied; and the city was crowded with
forty monasteries of men, twenty of women, and sixty
chapters and colleges of canons and priests,(33) who
aggravated, instead of relieving, the depopulation of the
tenth century. But if the forms of ancient architecture
were disregarded by a people insensible of their use and
beauty, the plentiful materials were applied to every call
of necessity or superstition; till the fairest columns of
the Ionic and Corinthian orders, the richest marbles of
Paros and Numidia, were degraded, perhaps to the support of
a convent or a stable. The daily havoc which is perpetrated
by the Turks in the cities of Greece and Asia may afford a
melancholy example; and in the gradual destruction of the
monuments of Rome, Sixtus the Fifth may alone be excused for
employing the stones of the Septizonium in the glorious
edifice of St. Peter's.(34) A fragment, a ruin, howsoever
mangled or profaned, may be viewed with pleasure and regret;
but the greater part of the marble was deprived of
substance, as well as of place and proportion; it was burnt
to lime for the purpose of cement. Since the arrival of
Poggius, the temple of Concord, (35) and many capital
structures, had vanished from his eyes; and an epigram of
the same age expresses a just and pious fear, that the
continuance of this practice would finally annihilate all
the monuments of antiquity. (36) The smallness of their
numbers was the sole check on the demands and depredations
of the Romans. The imagination of Petrarch might create the
presence of a mighty people;(37) and I hesitate to believe,
that, even in the fourteenth century, they could be reduced
to a contemptible list of thirty-three thousand inhabitants.
From that period to the reign of Leo the Tenth, if they
multiplied to the amount of eighty-five thousand,(38) the
increase of citizens was in some degree pernicious to the
ancient city.
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