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Authors: Eleanor Herman
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piazza where the Roman vegetable market took place every Wednesday.
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M i s t r e s s o f t h e Vat i c a n
Donkeys drank from three low fountains, one of them in front of Olim-pia’s main entrance. Farmers loudly hawked their produce, and at the end of the day the piazza was littered with manure, wilted lettuce, rotten tomatoes, and the enormous horseflies that buzzed around them. Olimpia detested the market.
Just as bad as the noise and crowds from the market out front were the noise and crowds around the statue of Pasquino located just behind her house. In 1501 when the Orsini family was expanding their palace, workmen unearthed a noseless, armless, horribly mutilated fragment of a third-century b.c. Greek sculpture of Hercules. It had almost certainly once been part of the statuary adorning the Domitian stadium. The statue was placed on a pedestal and began to be called Pasquino after a nearby papal tailor who, it was said, couldn’t keep his mouth shut about Vatican gossip.
Almost immediately students began hanging virulently antigovernment poems and placards on the statue. These anonymous insults—on papal corruption, gluttony, sodomy, and incest—became known as pas-quinades. Given the absence of a free press, by Olimpia’s time writing a pasquinade was the only opportunity to express one’s negative opinion of the government and have fellow citizens read it. And read it they did. They gathered around the statue at all times of the day and night to laugh, drink, socialize, and copy down the cruel poems so they could be read in taverns.
Pasquino had a friend. In the sixteenth century, a mostly intact colossal statue of a reclining river god was unearthed and placed at the foot of Capitoline Hill. He was called Marforio because he had been found in the forum ( foro ) of the temple of Mars. Marforio would “talk” to Pasquino, asking him his opinion of the pope, a cardinal, or a foreign ambassador. People would then run across town to see Pasquino’s response. By the time they raced back to Marforio, his response to Pas-quino’s response would be posted. Other statues began talking to Pasquino.
Most popes usually let Pasquino and his friends have their say as a means of venting popular discontent against high taxes and injustice. But a few particularly annoying pasquinade writers had been incinerated at
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Eleanor Herman
the stake. Even an execution didn’t seem to dampen the ardor of would-be political columnists, and the crowds outside of Olimpia’s back windows never seemed to go away.
Next to Pasquino was Rome’s only post office. Here, before residents picked up their mail, or before their mail was sent abroad, inspectors opened letters and packages to search for heresy, libel, and treason. They compared book titles with the ever-growing list on the Vatican’s Index of Prohibited Books. Though usually, for the price of a scudo an inspector would forget to look in a particular satchel.
Olimpia’s Rome was a far cry from that shining marble metropolis of one million inhabitants under the Roman emperors. In the heady days of Emperor Trajan, who reigned from a.d. 98 to 117, eleven aqueducts pumped sparkling water to thirteen hundred fountains as well as countless public baths, swimming pools, and gardens. Eight sturdy stone bridges allowed pedestrians, horses, and carts laden with goods to cross the Tiber. But when Emperor Constantine left town, everybody who was anybody went with him, including almost all of the civil servants who had kept Rome running.
In the fifth and sixth centuries, Goths, Vandals, and Lombards surrounded the walls of Rome and cut the aqueducts, destroying most of the city’s water supply. Swamps spread out over leaking pipes and became home to malarial mosquitoes, which caused massive epidemics. With no water, the famous Seven Hills were abandoned. For a thousand years, almost all Romans huddled around the Tiber River for water.
The empty imperial edifices on
[ 44 ]
M i s t r e s s o f t h e Vat i c a n
Donkeys drank from three low fountains, one of them in front of Olim-pia’s main entrance. Farmers loudly hawked their produce, and at the end of the day the piazza was littered with manure, wilted lettuce, rotten tomatoes, and the enormous horseflies that buzzed around them. Olimpia detested the market.
Just as bad as the noise and crowds from the market out front were the noise and crowds around the statue of Pasquino located just behind her house. In 1501 when the Orsini family was expanding their palace, workmen unearthed a noseless, armless, horribly mutilated fragment of a third-century b.c. Greek sculpture of Hercules. It had almost certainly once been part of the statuary adorning the Domitian stadium. The statue was placed on a pedestal and began to be called Pasquino after a nearby papal tailor who, it was said, couldn’t keep his mouth shut about Vatican gossip.
Almost immediately students began hanging virulently antigovernment poems and placards on the statue. These anonymous insults—on papal corruption, gluttony, sodomy, and incest—became known as pas-quinades. Given the absence of a free press, by Olimpia’s time writing a pasquinade was the only opportunity to express one’s negative opinion of the government and have fellow citizens read it. And read it they did. They gathered around the statue at all times of the day and night to laugh, drink, socialize, and copy down the cruel poems so they could be read in taverns.
Pasquino had a friend. In the sixteenth century, a mostly intact colossal statue of a reclining river god was unearthed and placed at the foot of Capitoline Hill. He was called Marforio because he had been found in the forum ( foro ) of the temple of Mars. Marforio would “talk” to Pasquino, asking him his opinion of the pope, a cardinal, or a foreign ambassador. People would then run across town to see Pasquino’s response. By the time they raced back to Marforio, his response to Pas-quino’s response would be posted. Other statues began talking to Pasquino.
Most popes usually let Pasquino and his friends have their say as a means of venting popular discontent against high taxes and injustice. But a few particularly annoying pasquinade writers had been incinerated at
[ 45 ]
Eleanor Herman
the stake. Even an execution didn’t seem to dampen the ardor of would-be political columnists, and the crowds outside of Olimpia’s back windows never seemed to go away.
Next to Pasquino was Rome’s only post office. Here, before residents picked up their mail, or before their mail was sent abroad, inspectors opened letters and packages to search for heresy, libel, and treason. They compared book titles with the ever-growing list on the Vatican’s Index of Prohibited Books. Though usually, for the price of a scudo an inspector would forget to look in a particular satchel.
Olimpia’s Rome was a far cry from that shining marble metropolis of one million inhabitants under the Roman emperors. In the heady days of Emperor Trajan, who reigned from a.d. 98 to 117, eleven aqueducts pumped sparkling water to thirteen hundred fountains as well as countless public baths, swimming pools, and gardens. Eight sturdy stone bridges allowed pedestrians, horses, and carts laden with goods to cross the Tiber. But when Emperor Constantine left town, everybody who was anybody went with him, including almost all of the civil servants who had kept Rome running.
In the fifth and sixth centuries, Goths, Vandals, and Lombards surrounded the walls of Rome and cut the aqueducts, destroying most of the city’s water supply. Swamps spread out over leaking pipes and became home to malarial mosquitoes, which caused massive epidemics. With no water, the famous Seven Hills were abandoned. For a thousand years, almost all Romans huddled around the Tiber River for water.
The empty imperial edifices on
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