Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1894-03-15
LrTrEnS From lTALY.
The Burial Of Old Iomc. Tivoli aud Iihdri-
an, vita -tlosr of the pupc's Jubilee.
Epvr Feb 10. 1891

To the Free Press.
Much rs had read and heard about the
excavations in this city. did not begin to
realize. till | came and saw aud ponderod
thcrcup5u. the fact that for many centuries,
aud up TO Il timo within the memory of mnn
now living. old Rome lay under covering
of soil from ~ 10 60 feet thick At The
commencement Of the present century what
appeared to the eye of ancient Rome, was
the old walls, the Pantheon few great
piles of ruined and half buried masonry,
such as the colosseum and the arches of the
hasilica Of Constantine. and the top halves
of three triumphal arches and of few mar
BILE columns sticking out of the earth The
Roman forum rs late as 1916 was pas
ture where the COWS grIlcd, 40 feet above
the pavement, now visible on which the
mutitudes stood to listen to the eloquence |
of Cicero. Most of what we now see of the |
old city has been uncovered by removing the |
superintendent earth; most of the old sculp- |
lures in the galleries have been dug out of
the ground, and ! suppose that much more
in the way of remains of the city of the
Cipsars is still covered than has been
brought to view Dig deep enough any
where within the walls. in any cellar or
street or garden and you will probably find
old foundation walls and perhaps sculp
tured marbles or possibly brunzcs; and dig
ging still deeper you may find, below the
old foundations, remains of masonry of still
earlier periods. As a single instance of
what has been disclosed 10y such excavations,
take the church of San Clcmente We visit
ed this, the other day, on one of the three
days in the year when special services are
H1...., 81
when the subtcrranean structures beneath it
are illuminated, l. e. lighted by Il few
candles for the benefit Of visitors. The
church has stood there for 500 years. 1t
belongs TO the Irish dominicans and about
40 years ago, one of them, Father Mullooly,
took it into his head to dig out the earth
from its cellar He found beneath it a
Christian church, of the fourth century
which is now the crypt of the upper church.
1t is entirely below the surrounding surface
Descending to it., some Is feet down, You
find n church, with nave and aiseS, divided
bv marble columns, and its walls decorated
with frcscoes some of which are in good
preservation One Of these represents Dan
lei in the lions den, Daniel being in Roman
costume and standing between two lions,
who are standing on their heads with their
tails in the air In an interesting lecture
delivered here last week 10y Archdeacon
Farrar of England, which we We're privileged
to hear. he explained that in the carly
Christian symbolism. Daniel represent, the
human soul. and the two lions the hostile
forces of sin and death Other of the fres-
Goes are only less interesting.
What had taken place here is plain The
ground around the earlier church became
raised by successive deposits till the most
of the edifce was beneath the surface 1t
probably became much out of repair and
was filled I'D to the tops of its columns and
Il new church built over it. But this was
not the only process of this kind that had
taken place on that spot. BY further ex-
cavations made to depth of 90 feet be-
meath the pavement of the subterranean
church in 1861. it was discovered that its
foundations rested on massive walls of vol
canic stone. OF a much earlier period, and
an altar and other relics disclosed the fact
that this earliest structure was temple of