OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

This use of the amphitheatre was a rare, per-haps a singular festival; the demand for thematerials was a daily and continual want; whichthe citizens could gratify without restraint or re-morse. In the fourteenth century, a scandal-ous act of concord secured to both factions theprivilege of extracting stones from the free andcommon quarry of the Coliseum ;° and Poggiuslaments that the greater part of these stones hadbeen burnt to lime by the folly of the Romans. pTo check this abuse, and to prevent the noctur-nal crimes that might be perpetrated in the vastand gloomy recess, Eugeni us the fourth sur-rounded it with a wall; and by a charter longextant, granted both the ground and edifice tothe monks of an adjacent convent.* After hisdeath, the wall was overthrown in a tumult ofthe people; and had they themselves respectedthe noblest monument of their fathers, theymight have justified the resolve that it shouldnever be degraded to private property. The in-side was damaged; but in the middle of the six-teenth century, an era of taste and learning, theexterior circumference of one thousand six hun-

0 In a concise but instructive memoir, the abb£ Bartlielemy (Me-moires de l’Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxviii, p. 585) has men-tioned this agreement of the factions of the fourteenth century, deTiburtino faciendo in the Coliseum, from an original act in the ar-chives of Rome .

p Coliseum • ■ • • ob stultitiam Romanorum majori ex parte ad ealeemdeletum, says the indignant Poggius (p. 17); but his expression, toostrong for the present age, must be very tenderly applied to the fifteenth century.

* Of the Olivetan monks, Montfaucon (p. 142) affirms this fact fromthe memorials of Flaminius Vacca (No 72). They still hoped, onsome future occasion, to revive and vindicate their grant.

419

CHAP. 'LXXI.

Injuries