The Mentor, No. 46, Among the Ruins of Rome

AMONG THE RUINS OF ROME

By GEORGE WILLIS BOTSFORD

Professor of History, Columbia University. Author of “The Story of Rome,” “A History of Rome.”

ONE OF THE CAMPAGNA AQUEDUCTS

THE MENTOR

SERIAL No. 46 Department of Travel

MENTOR GRAVURES

THE CAMPAGNA · THE FORUM TOWARD THE CAPITOL · THE FORUM FROM THE CAPITOL · THE COLOSSEUM · THE ARCH OF TITUS · THE TOMB OF HADRIAN

Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the postoffice at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1913, by The Mentor Association, Inc., New York.

Shortly after sunset the express train, speeding north from Naples, emerges from the mountains and begins winding its way down grade. The expectant visitor to the Eternal City sees below him through the car window a broad expanse of plain, sloping imperceptibly on the left to the sea, in front to the Tiber River. It is an ocean of green, here quietly level, there billowed in ridges or headed up in round hillocks.

EMPEROR CLAUDIUS

This is the Campagna, the broad flat belt which borders the Tiber on the left. At first sight it reveals to us its solitude. In early Roman times it had swarmed with peasants who owned the lands they tilled. As the city grew wealthy the district fell into the hands of lords, who covered it with their luxurious villas, peopled by multitudes of slaves. Still later, when Rome was declining, these villas fell to ruins, the slaves disappeared, and Malaria stalked lonely and terrible over the beautiful country she had made her own. Even now she rules it, scarcely weakened by modern progress. The dwellings of her few wretched tenants are miles apart. Herds of sheep and of fierce long-horned cattle pasture on the abundant grass, and along the well-made roads that span the plain an occasional ox-team wearily drags an awkward cart.

THE TEMPLE OF CASTOR AND POLLUX

The ruins of this famous temple stand in the Forum.

But the Campagna has its attractions. It fascinates imaginative tourists and draws them to its heart. Three or four together, their knapsacks filled with food and drink, often take long trips through this wild region, whose eternal quiet speaks peace to the weary mind, whose delicate, ever-changing tints of sky and field appeal to the taste for natural beauty, whose ruined villas and towns awaken historical memories of the rise of Rome from a little settlement on the Tiber to a worldwide power and a fame that cannot die.

THE APPIAN WAY

The most impressive features of the Campagna as we view it from the car window or in a stroll along either the old Appian Way or the modern Appian Way, are the ruins of aqueducts. The one here illustrated is the Claudia, named after Emperor Claudius, who completed it. Its sources were more than forty miles distant; while crossing the Campagna the water flowed in a channel supported by a series of gigantic arches. It provided Rome not only with her best