Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/77

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OTHING more forcibly attests the imperial power and magnificence of Rome, at the height of her glory, than the fragments of precious marbles which almost every excavation among her ruins brings to light. Even if her history were lost to us, these varied bits of stone would tell in language stronger than words the story of her universal dominion, when her ships sought every clime, and every land paid tribute to her luxury. This piece reflects the glowing suns of Numidia, that the green of Tempe's Vale; this was quarried on Pentelicus, this in storied Chios, and these tell of Gallic and of Hispanic conquest. Many have a double history, having served to decorate some forum or temple of the East before its spoliation by a Mummius or a Sulla.

Toward the end of the second century B. C. the Romans, who had become conversant with Greek art through their conquests, began to appreciate sculptures and precious marbles, and from that time on-ward almost every captured city was rifled of its treasures. Not only were all the quarries of the world put under contribution, but statues, columns, and capitals, slabs, pavements, and sometimes entire edifices, were transported to Rome. Carthage, from the time of its destruction, furnished an almost inexhaustible supply. Edrisi, the Arab geographer of the twelfth century, says that marbles of so many different species were found among its ruins that it would be impossible to describe them. Blocks thirty feet high and sixty-three inches in diameter, and columns thirty feet in circumference, were taken out.

A large fleet of vessels was employed solely in transporting marbles, and slaves or freedmen were stationed in the various ports from which they were sent, who were charged with the duty of keeping account of the number, quality, and date of shipment of all stones. In 1868 excavations on the banks of the Tiber brought to light the ancient marmorata or marble-wharf, where these vessels landed their cargoes. Many blocks of precious colored marbles were exhumed here, some of colossal proportions. One of yellow African marble was twenty-seven feet long by five and a half feet wide, and weighed thirty-four tons. Another, sent from a then newly-opened quarry in the mountains north of the Adriatic, to the Emperor Nero, was marked with the name of his freedman Carynthus.

So immense was the store of marbles amassed in Rome that for centuries after her spoliation by the northern barbarians her ruined edifices were regarded as the richest of quarries, from which pope, nobles, and peasants, drew at will. Most of the mediæval churches and other public edifices now extant are decorated with the spoils of