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Page 11
"I suppose that there isn't much that you can do about them," I
remarked.
"But we ought to do what we can," said Bagster. "When I do have an
emotion, something immediately turns up to contradict it. It's like
wandering through a big hotel, looking for your room, when you are on
the wrong floor. Here you are as likely as not to find yourself in the
wrong century. In Rome everything turns out, on inquiry, to be something
else. There's something impressive about a relic if it's the relic of
one thing. But if it's the relic of a dozen different kinds of things
it's hard to pick out the appropriate emotion. I find it hard to adjust
my mind to these composite associations."
"Now just look at this," he said, opening his well-thumbed Baedeker:
"'Santa Maria Sopra Minerva (Pl. D. 4), erected on the ruins of
Domitian's temple of Minerva, the only medi�val Gothic church in Rome.
Begun A.D., 1280; was restored and repainted in 1848-55. It contains
several admirable works of art, in particular Michelangelo's Christ.'"
"It's that sort of thing that gets on my nerves. The Virgin and Minerva
and Domitian and Michelangelo are all mixed together, and then
everything is restored and repainted in 1848. And just round the corner
from Santa Maria Sopra Minerva is the Pantheon. The inscription on the
porch says that it was built by Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus. I
try to take that in. But when I have partially done that, I learn that
the building was struck by lightning and entirely rebuilt by the Emperor
Hadrian.
"That information comes like the call of the conductor to change cars,
just as one has comfortably settled down on the train. We must forget
all about Agrippa and Augustus, and remember that this building was
built by Hadrian. But it turns out that in 609 Boniface turned it into a
Christian church. Which Boniface? The Pantheon was adorned with bronze
columns. If you wish to see them you must go to St. Peter's, where they
are a part of the high altar. So Baedeker says, but I'm told that isn't
correct either. When you go inside you see that you must let by-gones be
by-gones. You are confronted with the tomb of Victor Emmanuel and set to
thinking on the recent glories of the House of Savoy. Really to
appreciate the Pantheon you must be well-posted in nineteenth-century
history. You keep up this train of thought till you happen to stumble on
the tomb of Raphael. That, of course, is what you ought to have come to
see in the first place.
"When you look at the column of Trajan you naturally think of Trajan,
you follow the spiral which celebrates his victories, till you come to
the top of the column; and there stands St. Peter as if it were _his_
monument. You meditate on the column of Marcus Aurelius, and look up and
see St. Paul in the place of honor.
"I must confess that I have had difficulty about the ruins. Brick,
particularly in this climate, doesn't show its age. I find it hard to
distinguish between a ruin and a building in the course of construction.
When I got out of the station I saw a huge brick building across the
street, which had been left unfinished as if the workmen had gone on
strike. I learned that it was the remains of the Baths of Diocletian.
Opening a door I found myself in a huge church, which had a long history
I ought to have known something about, but didn't.
"Now read this, and try to take it in: 'Returning to the Cancelleria, we
proceed to the Piazza Campo de' Fiori, where the vegetable market is
held in the morning, and where criminals were formerly executed. The
bronze statue of the philosopher Giordano Bruno, who was burned here as
a heretic in 1600, was erected in 1889. To the east once lay the Theatre
of Pompey. Behind it lay the Porticus of Pompey where C�sar was
murdered, B.C. 44.'
"It economizes space to have the vegetable market and the martyrdom of
Giordano Bruno and the assassination of Julius C�sar all close together.
But they are too close. The imagination hasn't room to turn round.
Especially as the market-women are very much alive and cannot conceive
that any one would come into the Piazza unless he intended to buy
vegetables. Somehow the great events you have read about don't seem to
have impressed themselves on the neighborhood. At any rate, you are
conscious that you are the only person in the Piazza Campo de' Fiori who
is thinking about Giordano Bruno or Julius C�sar; while the price of
vegetables is as intensely interesting as it was in the year 1600 A.D.
or in 44 B.C.
"How am I to get things in their right perspective? When I left home I
had a pretty clear and connected idea of history. There was a logical
sequence. One period followed another. But in these walks in Rome the
sequence is destroyed. History seems more like geology than like logic,
and the strata have all been broken up by innumerable convulsions of
nature. The Middle Ages were not eight or ten centuries ago; they are
round the next block. A walk from the Quirinal to the Vatican takes you
from the twentieth century to the twelfth. And one seems as much alive
as the other. You may go from schools where you have the last word in
modern education, to the Holy Stairs at the Lateran, where you will see
the pilgrims mounting on their knees as if Luther and his protest had
never happened. Or you can, in five minutes, walk from the Renaissance
period to 400 B.C.
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