[Signature: John Bach McMartin] THE ALTERED ASPECTS OF ROME From 'Historical Essays of Edward A. Freeman,' Third Series. London, Macmillan & Co., 1879 The two great phenomena, then, of the general appearance of Rome, are the utter abandonment of so large a part of the ancient city and the general lack of buildings of the Middle Ages. Both of these facts are fully accounted for by the peculiar history of Rome. It may be that the sack and fire under Robert Wiscard--a sack and fire done in the cause of a pope in warfare against an emperor--was the immediate cause of the desolation of a large part of Rome; but if so, the destruction which was then wrought only gave a helping hand to causes which were at work both before and after. A city could not do otherwise than dwindle away, in which neither emperor nor pope nor commonwealth could keep up any lasting form of regular government; a city which had no resources of its own, and which lived, as a place of pilgrimage, on the shadow of its own greatness. Another idea which is sure to suggest itself at Rome is rather a delusion. The amazing extent of ancient ruins at Rome unavoidably fills us with the notion that an unusual amount of destruction has gone on there. When we cannot walk without seeing, besides the more perfect monuments, gigantic masses of ancient wall on every side,--when we stumble at every step on fragments of marble columns or on richly adorned tombs,--we are apt to think that they must have perished in some special havoc unknown in other places. The truth is really the other way. The abundance of ruins and fragments--again setting aside the more perfect monuments--proves that destruction has been much less thorough in Rome than in almost any other Roman city. Elsewhere the ancient buildings have been utterly swept away; at Rome they survive, though mainly in a state of ruin. But by surviving in a state of ruin they remind us of their former existence, which in other places we are inclined to forget. Certainly Rome is, even in proportion to its greatness above all other Roman cities, rich in ancient remains above all other Roman cities. Compare those cities of the West which at one time or another supplanted Rome as the dwelling-places of her own Caesars,--Milan, Ravenna, York, Trier itself. York may be looked upon as lucky in having kept a tower and some pieces of wall through the havoc of the English conquest. Trier is rich above all the rest, and she has, in her _Porta Nigra_, one monument of Roman power which Rome herself cannot outdo. But rich as Trier--the second Rome--is, she is certainly not richer in proportion than Rome herself. The Roman remains at Milan hardly extend beyond a single range of columns, and it may be thought that that alone is something, when we remember the overthrow of the city under Frederick Barbarossa. But compare Rome and Ravenna: no city is richer than