The Ruins of Rome

by Brett Rutherford

adapted from Par tibi, Roma, nihil

     by Hildebert of Lavardin, c. 1103 CE.

 

To you, Rome, to you, now nearly all in ruins,
nothing can be equal. Nothing! Shattered, you still
show us the greatness of your vast entirety.
Long ages have destroyed your pride, and Tiber's flood
both Caesars' tombs and gods' temples have swallowed up.
Only the bull-frog trumpets atop triumphal arches.

All that labor, all for naught, even in Rome far-flung:
from road to aqueduct to standing Janus-stone,
to the distant river Aras whose trembled rage
shrugged off a great Augustan span, and now regrets
the loss of that which brought the caravans of salt
and spice, and for the flow's god, fragrant offerings.

Rome! which swords of kings and the considerate care
of the Senate, beneath the kind gaze of the gods,
established itself to be the world's capital:
how was it that one man, Caesar, came to rule it all?
He rose by bribe, by pledge, by dint of lineage,
by Caesar's daughter's marriage bed, by Pompey's head,
by loyal, well-paid army poised before the gate.

Yet somehow, guarded by indulgent gods, men built
this place with pious hands, ever aware of how
the Tiber's down-flow from stream and mountain pushed back
with even-tempered spirit the unwelcome tides.
And thus from near and far they brought the broad timbers,
marble, mortar, gypsum, clay, gold and porphyry.
The rocks of its own earth became the city's walls.
Rich Romans poured their treasures into its building,
craftsmen their genius in a life of proud making;
wealth of all lands in trade flowed into its coffers.

Fallen city! who can but stand here stupefied,
robbed of any fine words except to mumble, "Rome was!"
No wearing-away by wind or time, invaders'
fires or slashing swords, can fully obliterate
this city's ageless glory. For ruin itself
is more sublime than all its parts — greater than what
remains, greater than what was lost. Even if all
were restored, its weight of sorrow would sink the heart.
The broken statues, mended, would be the wiser
for their pain; the violated tombs would cry
no less for retribution with re-molded roofs.

But — idle thought! — Rome is so vast a ruin now,
no one could put it back the way it was, nor could
some mighty power come to level it utterly.
Oh, they may come with new wealth and the gods' favor;
they may with new hands carve human figures as once
the Roman artists and their Greek masters made them,
but who would expend, with crane and scaffold, the work
of rebuilding the shattered, tumbled Roman walls,
or even to restore one god's neglected shrine?

Statues and portrait busts, triumphal reliefs, all
the sarcophagi and funereal stones: what
visages! Even the gods are amazed to see
their own images (such as remain unburied),
wanting to be as fair again as these false masks,
for Nature never made the gods with faces such
as these, faces which human hands alone devised,
faces still numinous with human admiration,
boy-god and goddess, and all-Father Jupiter
frozen in one perfect moment, and for all time.

O happy ruin! And who is your master now?
You were always better kingless, or when enthroned
by rulers who could turn in shame from broken faith.

9/27/2020