Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/213

 On the Martyrdom and Commemorations of St Hippolytus. 203 and the new channel of Claudius and Trajan, there was long shewn a well in which the great martyr of the place was said to have perished and in the sixteenth century there were still pointed out beside it the remains of the memoria or chapel which had once adorned it 36. The Isola Sacra, as it is called, has been for ages a fallen place; a place of wild buffaloes and rich pasture, of asphodel and orchis and rosemary. To the temples and symbols of all those gods with which its ten miles circuit was crowded, the gods of Greece, the old native gods, Silvanus and the Lares, the sailor's gods Portumnus and Calm Fortune, the gods of the rich Egyptian merchants, Holy Isis, and Zeus the Sun the Great Sarapis 37, and all their Companion Gods, succeeded, within three centuries of Hippolytus' death, a crowd of Christian churches, and Portus was still "the eye of Tiber." The active office of the Count of Portus 38 was held rather a life of luxury than of labour, so glorious was the host of ships, and the magnificence of the imperial stores, and the tide of wealth that poured hourly in, and rode gaily up to Rome. The old Ostia was desolate, and her pathways overgrown with brushwood, while a fine straight street ran with a continuous pavement from the city down to Portus, along which the whole commerce of the city moved. The Bishop of Portus, as in the days of Hippolytus himself, was second to none 39 in the councils of the see of Rome ; his blood had hallowed the great mart, and in the high ceremony of the Inauguration of the Pope, the second prayer was always offered by his successor 40. 36 Baronius, Annates, A. D. 229, that we know the truth. He assents to num. 6. the notion that Hippolytus once had 37 Silvanus, Lares, Isis. Nibby. held a see in Arabia, which he quitted Anal. H. p. 614. Portumnus and For- for Rome under CaMstus, who made him tuna Tranquilla, p. 649. Zeus Helios Bishop of Portus, " eo nimirum consilio Sarapis and cvvvaoi deol. Inscription of ne tantum episcopum, sede alia obliga- Heron in Spohn quoted by Bunsen. turn, in Arabiam redeundi cura prioris 38 The Comitiva. Cassiodor. Variar. commissi sibi gregis impelleret : quern Lib. vii. ep. 9. ap. Nibby. ut adhcerentem lateri semper haberet, et 39 Philosoph. pp. 289, 290. in ambiguis consuUorem, creavit episco- 40 I cannot forbear to add the fol- pum Portuensem, sedem illi tribuens mo- lowing most curious passage from Baro- dicce quidem curce sed amplissimce digni- nius which, while it illustrates the esti- tatis, cujus episcopi assistere solent Pon- mation of the See of Portus in his time, tifici Romano." is amusing as a literary conjecture, now