o full of Roman remains as Rome herself. The truth is, that there is
nothing so destructive to the antiquities of a city as its continued
prosperity. A city which has always gone on flourishing according to
the standard of each age, which has been always building and
rebuilding and spreading itself beyond its ancient bounds, works a
gradual destruction of its ancient remains beyond anything that the
havoc of any barbarians on earth can work. In such a city a few
special monuments may be kept in a perfect or nearly perfect state;
but it is impossible that large tracts of ground can be left covered
with ruins as they are at Rome. Now, it is the ruins, rather than the
perfect buildings, which form the most characteristic feature of Roman
scenery and topography, and they have been preserved by the decay of
the city; while in other cities they have been swept away by their
prosperity. As Rome became Christian, several ancient buildings,
temples and others, were turned into churches, and a greater number
were destroyed to employ their materials, especially their marble
columns, in the building of churches. But though this cause led to the
loss of a great many ancient buildings, it had very little to do with
the creation of the vast mass of the Roman ruins. The desolation of
the Flavian amphitheatre and of the baths of Antoninus Caracalla comes
from another cause. As the buildings became disused,--and if we
rejoice at the disuse of the amphitheatre, we must both mourn and
wonder at the disuse of the baths,--they were sometimes turned into
fortresses, sometimes used as quarries for the building of fortresses.
Every turbulent noble turned some fragment of the buildings of the
ancient city into a stronghold from which he might make war upon his
brother nobles, from which he might defy every power which had the
slightest shadow of lawful authority, be it emperor, pope, or senator.
Fresh havoc followed on every local struggle: destruction came
whenever a lawful government was overthrown and whenever a lawful
government was restored; for one form of revolution implied the
building, the other implied the pulling down, of these nests of
robbers. The damage which a lying prejudice attributes to Goths and
Vandals was really done by the Romans themselves, and in the Middle
Ages mainly by the Roman nobles. As for Goths and Vandals, Genseric
undoubtedly did some mischief in the way of carrying off precious
objects, but even he is not charge