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1465 introduced for the first time in the capital of the Pontifical States the celebration of the Carnival. A Venetian of noble family, fond of luxury and magnificence, Paul II thought that the more amusement the people were allowed to enjoy, the readier they would be to forget their aspirations to municipal liberties. At the same time he, a patrician by birth and by feelings, could certainly not approve of the bloody and brutal sports so dear to mediæval Romans, such as bull-fights, tournaments, and chariot-races, which never ended without loss of life. When we think that the most popular amusement was the so-called "Giuoco di Testaccio," in which bull-carts laden with live pigs were hurled down the slopes of Monte Testaccio, with evident risk of life to the daring youths who tried to seize the pigs in their wild descent; and that stands were erected on these occasions for the patrician matrons and maidens to witness the revolting spectacle, we do not wonder at the attempt made by the Venetian pope to bring about a less brutal spirit of amusement. He selected the Corso, the whole extent of which he could command from the corner balcony of his palace, for the racing competitions, which he organized on a grand scale. The events for the Carnival of 1465 included races of horses, donkeys, oxen, and buffaloes, which, however, brought about the same results, and were the cause of many accidents among the crowd which lined the Corso, on account of the narrowness of the street. Then followed competitions of speed between children, youths, and old men, the prize, a pallio, being a piece of Venetian red cloth of the value of thirty-six scudi.

The principal attraction-le clou de la fête was undoubtedly the racing of the Jews. It was the first time that they were obliged to take a share in the Carnival, more personally than they desired. Disguised in fantastic cos

tumes, they were compelled to run for the pallio, driven on by the yells and insults of the heartless crowd; and whenever they slackened speed from sheer fatigue, or in protest against the persecution, they were hurried on by mounted soldiers galloping behind them. In the following years the original institution of Paul II degenerated into license and cruelty.

The track was lengthened from one thousand to thirteen hundred yards, and the unfortunate champions of the Ghetto were forced to take a copious repast before racing, and, incredible as it may appear to the reader, it was decided to shorten the blouse which the runners wore for the Christians, as much as was strictly consistent with decency; for the Jews, without any reference to it. We hear also of competitions between hunchbacks and lame men. Montaigne witnessed in 1580 a race of absolutely nude competitors, "On fait courir à l'envi tantôt quatre ou cinq enfants, tantôt des Juifs, tantôt des vieillards tout nus."

The Carnival festivities were generally attended by the cudgelling of minor offenders in the Piazze Colonna, di Sciarra, or di Venezia, and by the execution of criminals in the Piazza del Popolo, the hangman and his assistants donning the costume of harlequins and punchinellos. The minor offenders were mostly vulgar women, who had infringed police regulations, but the victims of the hangman were selected with greater care among the nobility and the clergy. It is enough to quote the names of Count Soderini, executed on Shrove Tuesday, 1650, of the Abbé Volpini, hanged in the Carnival of 1720, and of Count Trivelli, who perished in that of 1737.

These cruel amusements were not those, surely, which Paul II, the gentle Venetian, had thought to offer to the Romans. However, when institutions like the Carnival are transferred from one country to another, they can survive

only by shaping and adapting themselves to the nature and requirements of the new soil. The Grecian athletes, once transplanted to Rome, became gladiators.

The Via del Corso, in which the Carnival has been celebrated from the time of Paul II to our own days, then followed only approximately the straight line of the Via Flaminia, and its level was most irregular. It did not start

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The Piazza Colonna in the time of Paul III, from a rare engraving by Etienne Duperac, 1575

from the Piazza di Venezia, which was opened in 1536, but from the tomb of C. Poplicius Bibulus at the foot of the Tarpeian Rock,' seven hundred feet more to the south. The pilgrim, advancing northwards, in the direction of the Porta del Popolo, must have been struck by the number and magnitude of the ruins of classic edifices which lined the road, leaving but little space for habitations. The lofty

1 The name Tarpeian Rock, contrary to the received notion and to popular belief in Rome, belongs to the cliff of the Capitoline hill, facing the north, under the walls of the Arx or citadel. Epigraphic records of it have been found in situ in the foundations of the monument to Victor Emmanuel at the side of the Via della Pedacchia.

arcades of the Septa Julia extended as far as the Piazza di Sciarra on the site of the present palaces d' Aste (Bonaparte), Doria, and Simonetti, and of the present churches of Santa Maria in Via and San Francesco Saverio (Caravita). On the opposite side of the road, and facing the column of Marcus Aurelius, rose the remains of the Porticus Vipsania on the site of the Palazzi Bonaccorsi and Piombino (now demolished), and, farther on, those of the Horti Largiani, in such good preservation that Palladio was able to draw their plan in its most minute details. These gardens and the colonnade by which they were surrounded had their frontage on the Corso extending from the Via di San Claudio to the Via Frattina. At this point, viz., at the height of the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, all traces of city life ceased, and the road entered a belt of orchards and gardens with hardly a trace of human habitation save in the neighborhood of the Ortaccio (the present Piazza di Monte d' Oro), where women of ill fame dwelt in wretched hovels. The most conspicuous features in this marshy waste were the mausoleum of Augustus, called "lo monte dell' Austa," and a great pyramid on the site of the present church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli. The pyramid, the grave of an illustrious Roman whose name is not known, was stripped of its coating of marble by Pope Sixtus IV, and the blocks were used in the construction of the towers flanking the Porta del Popolo. The shell, which still constituted a landmark of some importance under the name of Meta Populi, was levelled to the ground in the time of Paul III.

The road itself was spanned by three triumphal arches, the first of which, near the church of Santa Maria in Via, was destroyed by Pope Innocent VIII in the month of August, 1491. The oldest guide-books call it the "arcus novus," just as they call the one raised by Maxentius on the Sacred

Way "basilica nova." We may argue, therefore, from the name that the arch was probably dedicated to one of the emperors of the Constantinian era.

The second arch spanned the road just in front of the Sciarra palace, and answered a double purpose, that of carrying the Aqua Virgo across the road to its terminal fountain and reservoir by the present church of Sant' Ignazio, and that of celebrating and recording the capture of King Caractacus and the "annexation of barbarous trans-oceanic lands" by the Emperor Claudius. I have related the curious history of this structure in chapter vii of "New Tales of Old Rome."

The third arch, named Arco di Portogallo from its contiguity to the residence of the cardinal-ambassador of that country, as shown in the following illustration, was destroyed by Pope Alexander VII in 1662. The inscription recording the fact is still affixed to the corner house between the Corso and the Via della Vite. We have no knowledge of the origin and classic name of the arch; but we know that it was only a patchwork of older materials made in the fourth century after Christ. The story of the dispersion of its parts is remarkable. Two panels from the north front of the arch, representing, one the apotheosis of Faustina the younger, the other an allocution of M. Aurelius, were removed to the Conservatori palace; two columns of verde antico were made use of in the construction of the high altar of the church of Santa Agnese in Agone; a second pair are now to be found in the Corsini chapel at the Lateran. The key of the arch is preserved in the lower vestibule of the University della Sapienza.

The aspect of the second thoroughfare, which left the Piazza di Venezia in the direction of the Ponte Sant' Angelo and the Vatican, was quite different from that of the Corso,

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