tempted to accuse the memory of the Goths and Vandals, for
the mischief which they had neither leisure, nor power, nor perhaps
inclination, to perpetrate. The tempest of war might strike some
lofty turrets to the ground; but the destruction which undermined the
foundations of those massy fabrics was prosecuted, slowly and silently,
during a period of ten centuries; and the motives of interest, that
afterwards operated without shame or control, were severely checked by
the taste and spirit of the emperor Majorian. The decay of the city
had gradually impaired the value of the public works. The circus and
theatres might still excite, but they seldom gratified, the desires of
the people: the temples, which had escaped the zeal of the Christians,
were no longer inhabited, either by gods or men; the diminished
crowds of the Romans were lost in the immense space of their baths and
porticos; and the stately libraries and halls of justice became useless
to an indolent generation, whose repose was seldom disturbed, either
by study or business. The monuments of consular, or Imperial, greatness
were no longer revered, as the immortal glory of the capital: they were
only esteemed as an inexhaustible mine of materials, cheaper, and more
convenient than the distant quarry. Specious petitions were continually
addressed to the easy magistrates of Rome, which stated the want of
stones or bricks, for some necessary service: the fairest forms of
architecture were rudely defaced, for the sake of some paltry, or
pretended, repairs; and the degenerate Romans, who converted the spoil
to their own emolument, demolished, with sacrilegious hands, the labors
of their ancestors. Majorian, who had often sighed over the desolation
of the city, applied a severe remedy to the growing evil. He reserved
to the prince and senate the sole cognizance of the extreme cases which
might justify the destruction of an ancient edifice; imposed a fine of
fifty pounds of gold (two thousand pounds sterling) on every magistrate
who should presume to grant such illegal and scandalous license, and
threatened to chastise the criminal obedience of their subordinate
officers, by a severe whipping, and the amputation of both their hands.
In the last instance, the legislator might seem to forget the proportion
of guilt and punishment; but his zeal arose from a generous principle,
and Majorian was anxious to protect the monuments of those ages, in
which he would have desired an