HKB
37 (return) [ It is recorded by an inscription found at Pesaro. See Gruter cclxxvi. 3.]
Fear has been the original parent of superstition, and every new calamity urges trembling mortals to deprecate the wrath of their invisible enemies. Though the best hope of the republic was in the valor and conduct of Aurelian, yet such was the public consternation, when the barbarians were hourly expected at the gates of Rome, that, by a decree of the senate the Sibylline books were consulted. Even the emperor himself, from a motive either of religion or of policy, recommended this salutary measure, chided the tardiness of the senate, 38 and offered to supply whatever expense, whatever animals, whatever captives of any nation, the gods should require. Notwithstanding this liberal offer, it does not appear, that any human victims expiated with their blood the sins of the Roman people. The Sibylline books enjoined ceremonies of a more harmless nature, processions of priests in white robes, attended by a chorus of youths and virgins; lustrations of the city and adjacent country; and sacrifices, whose powerful influence disabled the barbarians from passing the mystic ground on which they had been celebrated. However puerile in themselves, these superstitious arts were subservient to the success of the war; and if, in the decisive battle of Fano, the Alemanni fancied they saw an army of spectres combating on the side of Aurelian, he received a real and effectual aid from this imaginary reënforcement. 39
38 (return) [ One should imagine, he said, that you were assembled in a Christian church, not in the temple of all the gods.]
39 (return) [ Vopiscus, in Hist. August. p. 215, 216, gives a long account of these ceremonies from the Registers of the senate.]
But whatever confidence might be placed in ideal ramparts, the experience of the past, and the dread of the future, induced the Romans to construct fortifications of a grosser and more substantial kind. The seven hills of Rome had been surrounded by the successors of Romulus with an ancient wall of more than thirteen miles. 40 The vast enclosure may seem disproportioned to the strength and numbers of the infant-state. But it was necessary to secure an ample extent of pasture and arable land against the frequent and sudden incursions of the tribes of Latium, the perpetual enemies of the republic. With the progress of Roman greatness, the city and its inhabitants gradually increased, filled up the vacant space, pierced through the useless walls, covered the field of Mars, and, on every side, followed the public highways in long and beautiful suburbs. 41 The extent of the new walls, erected by Aurelian, and finished in the reign of Probus, was magnified by popular estimation to near fifty, 42 but is reduced by accurate measurement to about twenty-one miles. 43 It was a great but a melancholy labor, since the defence of the capital betrayed the decline of monarchy. The Romans of a more prosperous age, who trusted to the arms of the legions the safety of the frontier camps, 44 were very far from entertaining a suspicion that it would ever become necessary to fortify the seat of empire against the inroads of the barbarians. 45
40 (return) [ Plin. Hist. Natur. iii. 5. To confirm our idea, we may observe, that for a long time Mount Cælius was a grove of oaks, and Mount Viminal was overrun with osiers; that, in the fourth century, the Aventine was a vacant and solitary retirement; that, till the time of Augustus, the Esquiline was an unwholesome burying-ground; and that the numerous inequalities, remarked by the ancients in the Quirinal, sufficiently prove that it was not covered with buildings. Of the seven hills, the Capitoline and Palatine only, with the adjacent valleys, were the primitive habitations of the Roman people. But this subject would require a dissertation.]