II

CONJECTURAL ROME


"I received Rome in brick; I shall leave it in marble," said
Augustus, who was fond of fine phrases, a trick he had caught from
Vergil. And when he looked from his home on the Palatine over the
glitter of the Forum and the glare of the Capitol to the new and
wonderful precinct which extended to the Field of Mars, there was
a stretch of splendor which sanctioned the boast. The city then
was very vast. The tourist might walk in it, as in the London of
to-day, mile after mile, and at whatever point he placed himself,
Rome still lay beyond; a Rome quite like London--one that was
choked with mystery, with gold and curious crime.

But it was not all marble. There were green terraces and porphyry
porticoes that leaned to a river on which red galleys passed;
there were theatres in which a multitude could jeer at an emperor,
and arenas in which an emperor could watch a multitude die; there
were bronze doors and garden roofs, glancing villas and temples
that defied the sun; there were spacious streets, a Forum
curtained with silk, the glint and evocations of triumphal war,
the splendor of a host of gods, but it was not all marble; there
were rents in the magnificence and tatters in the laticlave of
state.