Thou stranger which for Rome in Rome here seekest, And nought of Rome in Rome perceiv’st at all, These same old walls, old arches, which thou seest, Old palaces, is that which Rome men call. Behold what wreck, what ruin, and what waste, And how that she which with her mighty power Tamed all the world, hath tamed herself at last, The prey of Time, which all things doth devour. Rome now of Rome is the only funeral, And only Rome, of Rome hath victory; Ne ought save Tyber, hastening to his fall Remains of all: O World’s inconstancy! That which is firm, doth flit and fall away; And that is flitting, doth abide and stay. SPENSER’S _Ruins of Rome_. In the annals for 1167, we find that the German Barbarossa assaulted the Vatican for a week, and that the Pope saved himself in the Capitol. The Colonna were driven from the mausoleum of Augustus. After the Popes had begun to yield in the unequal contest with the senators and people, and had ceased to be constantly in the capital, the field was left open for the wars of the senators; that is, of the nobles themselves. The Colonna and Ursini then appear among the destroyers of the city. In 1291, a civil war occurred, which lasted six months; the issue of which was, according to a spectator, that Rome was reduced to the condition of a town “besieged, bombarded and burned.” At the period in which Henry VII. was crowned Emperor, battles were fought in every quarter of the city. The fall of houses, indeed, the fire, the slaughter, the ringing of the bells from the churches, the shouts of the combatants, and the clanging of arms, the Roman people rushing from all quarters towards the Capitol; this universal uproar attended the coronation of the new Cæsar, and the Cardinals apprehended the total destruction of the city. The absence of the Popes, also, from the year 1360 to 1376, has been esteemed peculiarly calamitous to the ancient fabrics. Petrarch was overwhelmed with regret. He complained that the ruins were in danger of perishing; that the nobles were the rivals of time and the ancient Barbarians; and that the columns and precious marbles of Rome were devoted to the decoration of the slothful metropolis of their Neapolitan rivals. Yet, it appears that these columns and marbles were taken from palaces comparatively modern, from the thresholds of churches, from the shrines of sepulchres, from structures to which they had been conveyed from their original state, and finally, from ruins actually fallen. The solid masses of antiquity are not said to have suffered from this spoliation; and the edifices, whose impending ruin affected Petrarch, were the sacred basilicas, then converted into fortresses.