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figure, others believe it hung off the helmet in alto relievo, as in the foregoing translation. Lubin supposes that the god Mars was engraven on the shield, and that he is said to be hanging because the shield which bore him hung on the left shoulder. One of the old interpreters is of opinion, that by hanging is only meant a posture of bending forward to strike the enemy. Another will have it, that whatever is placed on the head may be said to hang, as we call hanging gardens, such as are planted on the top of the house. Several learned men, who like none of these explications, believe there has been a fault in the transcriber, and that pendentis ought to be perdentis; but they quote no manuscript in favour of their conjecture. The true meaning of the words is certainly as follows. The Roman soldiers, who were not a little proud of their founder, and the military genius of their republic, used to bear on their helmets the first history of Romulus, who was begot by the god of war, and suckled by a wolf. The figure of the god was made as if descending upon the priestess Ilia, or, as others call her, Rhea Silvia. The occasion required his body should be naked:

Tum quoque inermis eras, cum te Romana sacerdos
Cepit, ut huic urbi semina digna dares.
Ov. de Fast. lib. 3.

Then too, our mighty sire, thou stood'st disarm'd,
When thy rapt soul the lovely priestess charm'd,
That Rome's high founder bore-

Though on other occasions he is drawn, as Horace has described him, tunica cinctum adamantina. The sculptor, however, to distinguish him from the rest of the gods, gave him what the medalists call his proper attributes, a spear in one hand, and a

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shield in the other. As he was represented descending, his figure appeared suspended in the air over the vestal virgin, in which sense the word pendentis is extremely proper and poetical. Besides the antique basso relievo, that made me first think of this interpretation, I have since met with the same figures on the reverses of a couple of ancient coins, which were stamped in the reign of Antoninus Pius, as a compliment to that emperor, whom, for his excellent government and conduct of the city of Rome, the senate regarded as a second kind of founder:

Ilia Vestalis (quid enim vetat inde moveri)
Sacra lavaturas manè petebat aquas:
Fessa resedit humi, ventosque accepit aperto
Pectore; turbatas restituitque comas.

Dum sedet; umbrosa salices volucresque canora
Fecerunt somnos, et leve murmur aquæ.
Blanda quies victis furtim subrepit ocellis,
Et cadit a mento languida facta manus.

Mars videt hanc, visamque cupit, potiturque cupitam :
Et sua divinâ furca fefellit ope.

Somnus abit: jacet illa gravis. Jam scilicet intra
Viscera, Romana conditor urbis, eras.

Ov. de Fast. lib. 3.

As the fair vestal to the fountain came,
(Let none be startled at a vestal's name),
Tir'd with the walk, she laid her down to rest,
And to the winds expos'd her glowing breast
To take the freshness of the morning air,
And gather'd in a knot her flowing hair:
While thus she rested on her arm reclin'd,

The hoary willows waving with the wind,

And feather'd choirs that warbled in the shade,

And purling streams that through the meadow stray'd,

In drowsy murmurs lull'd the gentle maid.

The god of war beheld the virgin lie,

The god beheld her with a lover's eye,

And by so tempting an occasion press'd,

The beauteous maid, whom he beheld, possess'd:

Conceiving as she slept, her fruitful womb
Swell'd with the founder of immortal Rome.

I cannot quit this head without taking notice of a line in Seneca the tragedian :

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Dextrá ferocem cornibus premens taurum

Zetus.

Primus emergit solo

SEN. Edip. act. 3.

First Zetus rises through the ground,

Bending the bull's tough neck with pain,
That tosses back his horns in vain.

I cannot doubt but the poet had here in view the posture of Zetus in the famous group of figures, which represents the two brothers binding Dirce to the horns of a mad bull.

I could not forbear taking particular notice of the several musical instruments that are to be seen in the hands of the Apollos, muses, fauns, satyrs, bacchanals, and shepherds, which might certainly give a great light to the dispute for preference between the ancient and modern music. It would, perhaps, be no impertinent design to take off all their models in wood, which might not only give us some notion of the ancient music, but help us to pleasanter instruments than are now in use. By the appearance they make in marble, there is not one string-instrument that seems comparable to our violins, for they are all played on either by the bare fingers or the plectrum, so that they were incapable of adding any length to their notes, or of varying them by those insensible swellings, and wearings away of sound upon the same string, which give so wonderful a sweetness to our modern music. Besides that, the string-instruments must have had very low and feeble voices, as may be guessed from the small pro

portion of wood about them, which could not contain air enough to render the strokes, in any considerable measure, full and sonorous. There is a great deal of difference in the make, not only of the several kinds of instruments, but even among those of the same name. The syringa, for example, has sometimes four, and sometimes more pipes, as high as the twelve. The same variety of strings may be observed on their harps, and of stops on their tibiæ, which shows the little foundation that such writers have gone upon, who, from a verse perhaps in Virgil's Eclogues, or a short passage in a classic author, have been so very nice in determining the precise shape of the ancient musical instruments, with the exact number of their pipes, strings, and stops. It is, indeed, the usual fault of the writers of antiquities, to straiten and confine themselves to particular models. They are for making a kind of stamp on everything of the same name; and if they find anything like an old description of the subject they treat on, they take care to regulate it on all occasions, according to the figure it makes in such a single passage: as the learned German author, quoted by monsieur Bardelot, who had probably never seen anything of a household god, more than a canopus, affirms roundly, that all the ancient lares were made in the fashion of a jug-bottle. In short, the antiquaries have been guilty of the same fault as the system writers, who are for cramping their subjects into as narrow a space as they can, and for reducing the whole extent of a science into a few general maxims. This a man has occasion of observing more than once, in the several fragments of antiquity that are still to be seen in Rome. How many dresses are there for each particular deity? What a variety of

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shapes in the ancient urns, lamps, lachrymary vessels, priapuses, household gods, which have some of them been represented under such a particular form, as any one of them has been described within an ancient author, and would probably be all so, were they not still to be seen in their own vindication? Madam Dacier, from some old cuts of Terence, fancies that the larva, or the persona of the Roman actors, was not only a vizard for the face, but had false hair to it, and came over the whole head like a helmet. Among all the statues at Rome, I remember to have seen but two that are the figures of actors, which are both in the Villa Matthei. sees on them the fashion of the old sock and larva, the latter of which answers the description that is given of it by this learned lady, though I question not but several others were in use; for I have seen the figure of Thalia, the comic muse, sometimes with an entire head-piece in her hand, sometimes with about half the head, and a little friz, like a tower, running round the edges of the face, and sometimes with a mask for the face only, like those of a modern make. Some of the Italian actors wear at present these masks for the whole head. I remember formerly I could have no notion of that fable in Phædrus, before I had seen the figures of these entire head-pieces:

Personam tragicam fortè vulpes viderat :
O quanta species, inquit, cerebrum non habet!

Lib. i. Fab. 7.

As wily renard walk'd the streets at night,
On a tragedian's mask he chanc'd to light,
Turning it o'er, he mutter'd with disdain,
How vast a head is here without a brain!

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