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Page 12
"When I was in the theological seminary I had a very clear idea of the
difference between Pagan Rome and Christian Rome. When Constantine came,
Christianity was established. It was a wonderful change and made
everything different. But when you stroll across from the Arch of Titus
to the Arch of Constantine you wonder what the difference was. The two
things look so much alike. And in the Vatican that huge painting of the
triumph of Constantine over Maxentius doesn't throw much light on the
subject. Suppose the pagan Maxentius had triumphed over Constantine,
what difference would it have made in the picture?
"They say that seeing is believing, but here you see so many things that
are different from what you have always believed. The Past doesn't seem
to be in the past, but in the present. There is an air of
contemporaneousness about everything. Do you remember that story of
Jules Verne about a voyage to the moon? When the voyagers got a certain
distance from the earth they couldn't any longer drop things out of the
balloon. The articles they threw out didn't fall down. There wasn't any
down; everything was round about. Everything they had cast out followed
them. That's the way Rome makes you feel about history. That which
happened a thousand years ago is going on still. You can't get rid of
it. The Roman Republic is a live issue, and so is the Roman Empire, and
so is the Papacy.
"The other day they found a ruined Arch of Marcus Aurelius in Tripoli,
and began to restore it. New Italy is delighted at this confirmation of
its claims to sovereignty in North Africa. The newspapers treat Marcus
Aurelius as only a forerunner of Giolitti. By the way, I never heard of
Giolitti till I came over here. But it seems that he is a very great
man. But when ancient and modern history are mixed up it's hard to do
any clear thinking. And when you do get a clear thought you find out
that it isn't true. You know Dr. Johnson said something to the effect
that that man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain
force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose feelings would not grow
warmer among the ruins of Rome. Marathon is a simple proposition. But
when one is asked to warm his enthusiasm by means of the Roman
monuments, he naturally asks, 'Enthusiasm over what?' Of course, I don't
mean to give up. I'm faint though pursuing. But I'm afraid that Rome is
not a good place to rest in."
"I'm afraid not," I said, "if you insist on keeping on thinking. It is
not a good place in which to rest your mind."
II
I think Bagster is not the first person who has found intellectual
difficulty here. Rome exists for the confusion of the sentimental
traveler. Other cities deal tenderly with our preconceived ideas of
them. There is one simple impression made upon the mind. Once out of the
railway station and in a gondola, and we can dream our dream of Venice
undisturbed. There is no doge at present, but if there were one we
should know where to place him. The city still furnishes the proper
setting for his magnificence. And London with all its vastness has, at
first sight, a familiar seeming. The broad and simple outlines of
English history make it easy to reconceive the past.
But Rome is disconcerting. The actual refuses to make terms with the
ideal. It is a vast storehouse of historical material, but the
imagination is baffled in the attempt to put the material together.
When Scott was in Rome his friend "advised him to wait to see the
procession of Corpus Domini, and hear the Pope
Saying the high, high mass
All on St. Peter's day.
He smiled and said that these things were more poetical in the
description than in reality, and that it was all the better for him
not to have seen it before he wrote about it."
Sir Walter's instinct was a true one. Rome is not favorable to
historical romance. Its atmosphere is eminently realistic. The
historical romancer is flying through time as the air-men fly through
space. But the air-men complain that they sometimes come upon what
they call "air holes." The atmosphere seems suddenly to give way under
them. In Rome the element of Time on which the imagination has been
flying seems to lose its usual density. We drop through a Time-hole,
and find ourselves in an inglorious anachronism.
I am not sure that Bagster has had a more difficult time than his
predecessors, who have attempted to assort their historical material.
For in the days before historical criticism was invented, the history
of Rome was very luxuriant. "Seeing Rome" was a strenuous undertaking,
if one tried to be intelligent.
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