Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI | Page 6

the civil war brought on
it the vengeance of the second Cæsar. But the destroyer became the
restorer, and Pietas Julia, in the height of its greatness, far surpassed the
extent either of the elder or the younger Pola. Like all cities of this
region, Pola kept up its importance down to the days of the

Carlovingian Empire, the specially flourishing time of the whole
district being that of Gothic and Byzantine dominion at Ravenna. A
barbarian king, the Roxolan Rasparasanus, is said to have withdrawn to
Pola after the submission of his nation to Hadrian; and the panegyrists
of the Flavian house rank Pola along with Trier and Autun among the
cities which the princes of that house had adorned or strengthened. But
in the history of their dynasty the name of the city chiefly stands out as
the chosen place for the execution of princes whom it was convenient
to put out of the way.
Here Crispus died at the bidding of Constantine, and Gallus at the
bidding of Constantius. Under Theodoric, Pola doubtless shared that
general prosperity of the Istrian land on which Cassiodorus grows
eloquent when writing to its inhabitants. In the next generation Pola
appears in somewhat of the same character which has come back to it
in our own times; it was there that Belisarius gathered the Imperial fleet
for his second and less prosperous expedition against the Gothic lords
of Italy. But, after the break up of the Frankish Empire, the history of
medieval Pola is but a history of decline. It was, in the geography of
Dante, the furthest city of Italy; but, like most of the other cities of its
own neighborhood, its day of greatness had passed away when Dante
sang.
Tossed to and fro between the temporal and spiritual lords who claimed
to be marquesses of Istria, torn by the dissensions of aristocratic and
popular parties among its own citizens, Pola found rest, the rest of
bondage, in submission to the dominion of Saint Mark in 1331.[9]
Since then, till its new birth in our own times, Pola has been a failing
city. Like the other Istrian and Dalmatian towns, modern revolutions
have handed it over from Venice to Austria, from Austria to France,
from France to Austria again. It is under its newest masters that Pola
has at last begun to live a fresh life, and the haven whence
Belisarius[10] sailed forth has again become a haven in more than
name, the cradle of the rising navy of the united Austrian and
Hungarian realm.
That haven is indeed a noble one. Few sights are more striking than to
see the huge mass of the amphitheater at Pola seeming to rise at once
out of the land-locked sea. As Pola is seen now, the amphitheater is the
one monument of its older days, which strikes the eye in the general

view, and which divides attention with signs that show how heartily the
once forsaken city has entered on its new career. But in the old time
Pola could show all the buildings which befitted its rank as a colony of
Rome. The amphitheater, of course, stood without the walls; the city
itself stood at the foot and on the slope of the hill which was crowned
by the capitol of the colony, where the modern fortress rises above the
Franciscan church. Parts of the Roman wall still stand; one of its gates
is left; another has left a neighbor and a memory....
Travelers are sometimes apt to complain, and that not wholly without
reason, that all amphitheaters are very like one another. At Pola this
remark is less true than elsewhere, as the amphitheater there has several
marked peculiarities of its own. We do not pretend to expound all its
details scientifically; but this we may say, that those who dispute--if the
dispute still goes on--about various points as regards the Coliseum at
Rome will do well to go and look for some further light in the
amphitheater of Pola. The outer range, which is wonderfully perfect,
while the inner arrangements are fearfully ruined, consists, on the side
toward the town, of two rows of arches, with a third story with
square-headed openings above them.
But the main peculiarity in the outside is to be found in four tower-like
projections, not, as at Arles and Nîmes, signs of Saracenic occupation,
but clearly parts of the original design. Many conjectures have been
made about them; they look as if they were means of approach to the
upper part of the building; but it is wisest not to be positive. But the
main peculiarity of this amphitheater is that it lies on the slope of a hill,
which thus supplied a natural basement for the seats on one side only.
But this same