The Old Roman City
Moor and Spaniard have, between them, effaced almost all traces of the ancient Hispalis or Romula, the little Rome; but the sister-city of Italica, early deserted by man, has been dealt not too harshly with by time. Its remains—a Spanish league to the north-west of Seville—still attract the artist and the archæologist. There, where the wretched hamlet of Santi Ponce now stands, was in the dim past the Iberian village of Sancios. Scipio the Elder, after his long and victorious campaign, passed this way, and selected the spot as a place of rest and refreshment for his war-worn veterans. “Relicto utpote pacata regione valido præsidio, Scipio milites omnes vulneribus debiles in unam urbem compulit, quam ab Italia Italicam nominavit,” says Appian. Señor de Madrazo remarks that this must have been the first Latin-speaking town founded outside Italy. It was not at first a municipium, but a place for meeting and council of the Roman citizens. The municipal status it owed to Augustus. Subsequently, its citizens petitioned to be classed as a colony of Rome.
The colony proved not unworthy of the great capital. Hence sprang the illustrious line of the Ælii, and most of the eminent Roman Spaniards who conferred such lustre on the early Empire are believed to have been natives of the place. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that the citizens should have preferred a nominal dependence on the Mother City to the quasi-independence of a provincial municipality. But Italica never seems to have been a city in the modern sense of the word. Excavations have revealed extremely few remains of private habitations or bazaars. The only vestiges are those of great public monuments—temples, palaces, amphitheatres, baths. The Emperors seem to have delighted to embellish this small town with ornaments quite out of proportion to its size and population, and it is clear that it never was a serious rival to its older neighbour, Hispalis.
Its downfall, like its history, is mysterious. Leovigild occupied it while besieging Seville, which was held by his son, Hermenigild. Later on, the Arabs are said to have demolished it almost completely, and to have carried off numerous statues, columns, and blocks of masonry to serve in the construction and adornment of the neighbouring city. Then Italica disappeared from history. Earthquakes finished the work of ruin, and the scattered stones went to the making of the miserable village of Santi Ponce—a name which some derive from that of San Geroncio, a Bishop of Italica in early times.
The amphitheatre is now all that remains to attest the erstwhile splendour of the darling colony of the Ælii. It is a melancholy and yet a pretty spot, approached through olive plantations. Some of the walls are still standing, and enable us to determine the dimensions, which are stated at 291 feet length and 204 feet breadth. You may still see the Podium or stone platform, whereon the civic dignitaries sate, and the upper tiers appropriated to the populace. You may pass down the vomitoria, through which the spectators streamed, glutted with the sight of blood, and penetrate to the dens and chambers, wherein gladiators and wild beasts were confined before the combat. Italica is more a place to muse in than to explore. The place has long since been rifled of all its treasures. Extensive ruins of what was believed to have been the palace of Trajan existed down till the great earthquake of 1755, and all that was spared were three statues preserved in the Museo Provincial or Picture Gallery.
Close to the ruins is the convent of San Isidoro del Campo, founded in 1301 by Don Alonso Perez de Guzman, as a place of sepulture for him and his family. The establishment was peopled first by the Cistercians, later by the Hermits of St Jerome. The edifice presents the appearance of a fortified abbey of the Middle Ages, though not without traces of Mudejar influence. The church is Gothic, and divided into two naves, united by a transept, and constituting each a distinct church. One of these structures was built by the hero of Tarifa, Guzman the Good, and contains his tomb and that of his wife, together with a fine retablo by Montañes; the other, founded by the hero’s son, Don Juan Alonso Perez de Guzman, contains his tomb, marked by a fine recumbent figure, and that of Doña Urraca Osorio, burnt by order of Pedro the Cruel. In the cloisters of the convent are some mural paintings of the fifteenth century, which though much damaged repay inspection.
With the excursion to Italica the traveller should combine a visit to the Cartuja, more properly called Santa Maria de las Cuevas. It lies close to the suburb of Triana. The monastery was founded in the first decade of the fifteenth century, at the instance of the great Archbishop Gonzalo de Mena, and became the burying-place of the Ribera family, whose magnificent tombs are now to be seen in the University Church. Of the original structure only a little antique chapel remains. The refectory, chapter-hall, and cloisters all date from a restoration effected by the first Marqués de Tarifa in the sixteenth century. The building became, in 1839, the seat of the pottery manufacture of the (then) English firm of Pickman & Co. The establishment has produced some fine porcelain, and is worth inspection by all those interested in the ceramic art. Pottery has been associated from time immemorial with this locality and the adjoining suburb of Triana, and it will be remembered that the patron saints of Seville, Justa and Rufina, were, according to tradition, potters by trade.
St Christopher carrying the Child Jesus, by Mateo Perez Alesio, in the Cathedral.].
Sultana’s Quarters, Alcazar.
Footnotes
Notes
A There is one picture only by Roelas in the Prado. His work is hardly known outside Seville. In England we have at least one of his pictures, a fine example, in a private collection.
B There is a picture by El Greco, the wonderful portrait of himself, in the Museum. It came quite recently from the Palace of San Telmo, where also was once the really grand picture, “The Death of Laocoön and his Sons at the Siege of Troy.” The remarkable and interesting “Trinity” in the Cathedral, attributed to El Greco, is the work of his pupil Luis Tristan, a painter neglected too long. Seville has no picture by Navarrete; the one work of Morales, the triptych in the Sacristiá de los Calices of the Cathedral, is not typical of his strange power.
C The most important is the “Adoration of the Shepherds,” until recently in the Palace of San Telmo; but this work has been removed with other pictures in the collection of the Infanta Maria Luisa Fernanda de Bourbon. The really fine picture on the same subject in our National Gallery is now attributed to Zurbarán; probably to him, too, belongs the “Dead Warrior,” now assigned to Velazquez.