RUINS OF LUNA.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 12 September 1924, Page 8

RUINS OF LUNA.

ONCE FAMOUS CITY

SCATTERED RELICS OF LOST GLORIES.

(By L. Mimiigerode in the New York Tribune.} But hark! the cry is Astur; And lo! the ranks divide; And the great Lord of Luna Comes with his stately stride. Upon his ample shoulders C'iangs loud the fourfold shield, And in his hand he shakes the brand Which none but he can wield.

An inspiring picture this. The “Great Lord of Luna” marching against “Brave Horatius” and his two companions as they stood resolute and waiting on the old bridge at Rome while Lars : Porsena and “False” Sextus eagerly watched his advance and the City Fathers of Rome “mixed with commons” in hewing down the bridge. But there is another picture—not, of action, not of sword and shield and “spears advanced and ensigns spread,” but of the great, quiet, dignified city of Luna, which the mighty Astur ruled. What was.this city like? We can only guess. The ruins of Luna are complete. An archaeologist might reconstruct the city from the scattered ribs that lie buried, eveji as a naturalist reconstructs some prehistoric animal from a few fossils found, but imagination must play an important part in any such reconstruction.

I wandered idly for hours among the ruins of Luna—among the hafl-buried evidences of a proud Mediterranean city when Caesar was young, a city that counted her age in centuries when Christ -walked in Galilee. What sermons in those stones!

When a great city is wiped out suddenly, as was Pompeii hy Vesuvius or Carthage by the Roman legions, a certain glamour still surrounds the place. •No tawdriness has disturbed its burial ■place, arid mankind looks with a cerAain awe uppii the ruins. Luna died •sloyyly. Eaten away by degrees. , Sackrid .first by the Goths after the fall of jtfle .Roipan Empire, ravaged, not once;luit; repeatedly,' by the Saracens in the ’fjinfch and tenth centuries, it grew •weaker Arid weaker. The Normans dias'tbhed the end. and in the year 1016 tIC was burned and almost .completely 3 V?Pe,d out. by corsairs. Two hundred years latei ; Luna gave up the ghost and 'ceased to be anything but a ruin and a .memory.

Hiere are the ruins of the amphitheatre. The . great central stage, overgrow n .with weeds and coarse gi*asses, above which a flaming poppy, lifts its ytsacf like.. a . fleck of blood,''brings a •vision of the old gladiatorial combats that raged there. Wliat food for 'thought is there in the tumbling and tumbled tiers of stone seats! Did the mighty Astur s ti;ide.up and down the arena to the applause of thousands of f What ferocious Avild beasts ■ were turned lose to devour slaves and prishnefs before the eyes of the multi-’ tudel Was there among these victims 's.ucH a stout-hearted prisoner, such a -stalwart gladiator, that he could “drive Ithe sword through plaited mail and flifiks of fugged brass, to warm it in marrow of his foes; to gaze into Ah® eyeballs of the fierce -Numidian ■hon, even as a boy upon a laughing K”! ' ’ What helmeted warriors with shields and spears and swords and battle-axes passed into the arena bemeath those tumbling arches when some great pageant was being held? And bn whose honour was this colourful and proud show? Augustus, Nero, VespasL Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, or Ari'•tbnius Pius? For these guests were at one time and another all guests of the cCity of Luna.

• -What glistening marble palaces stood -round about where to-day scarcely a ; cornerstone remains? What great leasts were spread in white halls whose windows overlooked the blue Mediterranean, where triremes “heavy' with Aa-ir-haired slaves” moved hither and thither over the smooth surface 2 Was fthat “thrice accursed sail” of Lausulus ■a welcome visitor to Luna, during the •days that the giant Astur held swav an f ] did this “destroying hark” ride rat anchor in the harbour while the “fell •pirate” wined and dined There are ‘none to make answer. Luna has Ion" *mce passed far beyond the time when her stol-y might be authentically written. Her deeds, her pomp and pageantry her monuments and palaces, her mighty soldiers, her very site, has all :but been _ swallowed un by the march of centuries!

’ ~^ ext , tf > the amphitheatre, the on!v •distinguishable ruins are of a great church. Out of these have been taken i l . r °f. pieces of statuary and indications point to the fact that the mighty men of Luna were buried there but even this is uncertain. The ruins of this temple, which was perhaps first pagan and then Christian—are such complete ruins that a reconstruction P lt ~ eve » in imagination’s eye—must lie difficulty tor an architect. There does remain evidence of a meat entrance way, and here again we*mav dream of the thousands of people through more than a thousand years that in solemn procession entered there Jiut even your dreams among the nameless dead arc interrupted. There is little repose and quiet on the site of ancient Luna. The, peasant boy or s ' r l.' l V tle field breaks in upon your meditations with snatches of airs from La• Bajadera” or “Rose Marie” and the Genoa-Rome express thunders by. r ' ar fergotteu are these ruins of liiina and her ancient greatness that not a soul among the. hundreds of passengers on this train de luxe takes the trouble to so much as look upon them as they pass. They, many of them, have doubtless read Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome.” but think of J/una as an imaginary city only. Thev do hot know that, thev have passed over the very site where “Astur of the fourfold shield-, girt with the brand none; else may, wield,-”, walked anion--his gardens 1500 years ago.''