THE DECLINE AND FALL

400

CHAP.

LXXI.

of plunder or purchase were rare in the darkerages; and the Romans, alone and ucenvied,might have applied to their private or publicuse the remaining structures of antiquity, if, intheir present form and situation, they had notbeen useless in a great measure to the city andits inhabitants. The walls still described theold circumference, but the city had descendedfrom the seven hills into the campus Martius;and some of the noblest monuments, which hadbraved the injuries of time, were left in a desert,far remote from the habitations of mankind.The palaces of the senators were no longer adap-ted to the manners or fortunes of their indigentsuccessors; the use of baths 1 and porticoes wasforgotten; in the sixth century, the games of thetheatre, amphitheatre, and circus, had been in-terrupted : some temples were devoted to the pre-vailing worship; but the Christian churches pre-ferred the holy figure of the cross ; and fashion,or reason, had distributed, after a peculiar mo-del, the cells and offices of the cloister. Under

in pontes et moenia atque immeritos lapides desaevirent. Deniquepostvi vel senio coll.ipsa palatia, quae quondam ingentes tenueriint viri,post diruptos arcus triumphales (unde majores horum forsitan cor-ruerunt) de ipsius vetustatis ac proprioe impietatis fragminibus vileinquestum turpi mercimonio captare non puduit. Itaquc nunc, lieudolor! lieu scelus indignum! de vestris marmoreis columuis, de liminibus templorum (ad quae nuper ex orbe toto concursus devotissimusfiebat), de imaginibus sepulchrorum sub quibus patrum vestrorum ve-nerabilis civis (cinis 1) erat, ut reliquas sileam, desidiosa NeapoHs ador-natur. Sic paulatim rumae ipsae deficiunt. Yet king Robert was tliefriend of Petrarch.

' Y et Charlemagne washed and swam at Aix la Cliapelle with anhundred of his courtiers (Eginhart, c. 22, p. 108, 109), and Muratoridescribes, as late as the year 814, the public baths which were builtat Spoleto in Italy (Annali, tom. vi, p 416).