Roma

“ Roma was, in his opinion, the most beautiful woman he had ever met, and his somewhat fervent nature was soon all ablaze with the ardour of a dangerous admiration, all the more dangerous because Roma seemed with every hour to grow more gentle, more pensive, more trustful. ”

“ Ancient Roma and the remains of her past greatness [148] will ever be impressed upon our memories. An empire once so mighty, the Mistress of the World; then for so long desolate and entombed, a city of ruins; and now, phœnix-like, rising rapidly from her ashes, and preparing as "Young Italy" to take her place as a power among the other nations of Europe, many of whom have already welcomed her as a sister.
On the morning of the 26th of January we left Rome for Naples, some 163 miles by railway. ”

“ Yes, here within thy sanctified walls there's a soul in each object, ROMA eternal. ”

“ Romulus, the son of Rhea Silvia and Mars, founded Rome on the Palatine Hill, above the Tiber, 753 B.C., on the site of the Arcadian city of Evander, near the Lupercal, where the wolf had given him suckle. The city was built after the Etruscan rites, and surrounded by a massive wall, in a quadrangular form, whence it was called Roma Quadrata. ”

“ It is no wonder that Horace was fond of strolling in Rome.
In contrast, the great and wonderful things of the Augustan city stand out in high relief, above the varied crowd that fills the streets, with all the dignity that centuries of power can lend. To the tawdry is opposed the splendid, the Roman general in his chiselled corselet and dyed mantle faces the Greek actor in his tinsel; the band of painted, half-clad, bedizened dancing-girls falls back cowering in awestruck silence as the noble Vestal passes by, high-browed, white-robed, untainted, the incarnation of purity in an age of vice. ”

“ Rome was a brown city in those days, when there was no marble and little stucco: a brown city teeming with men and women clothed mostly in grey and brown and black woollen cloaks, like those the hill shepherds wear today, caught up under one arm and thrown far over the shoulder in dark folds. ”

“ Sculptors, architects, [Pg 60] painters and even poets, such as there were, came captive to Rome in gangs, were sold at auction as slaves, and became the property of the rich, to work all their lives at their several arts for their master's pleasure; and the State rifled Greece and Asia, and even the Greek Italy of the south, and brought back the masterpieces of an age to adorn Rome's public places. The Roman was the engineer, the maker of roads, of aqueducts, of fortifications, the layer out of cities, and the planner of harbours. ”

“ Social life in Rome is no misnomer. From the most stately and beautiful ceremonials of balls at the court of the Quirinale, in ducal palaces, or at the embassies; of dinners whose every detail suggests stage pictures in their magnificence, to the simple afternoon tea, where conversation and music enchant the hours; the morning call en tête-à-tête, and the morning stroll, or the late afternoon drive,—a season in Rome prefigures itself, by the necromancy of retrospective vision, as a resplendent panorama of pictorial scenes. ”

“ This is the veritable beating, pulsing heart of Rome, and Rome is the world. Here is reality. Here are solidity, strength, planning made real, dreams hewn in enduring stone. Here are wealth, accomplishment, power, might. Not twenty paces across there is the Millenarium Aureum, the resplendent bronze column set up to mark the center of the Roman world, the point from which miles are counted along the highways and their joining sea lanes stretching to the ends of the known earth to bind Rome into one colossal, unconquerable, enduring Empire!... ”

“ It was a special kind of beauty, broad and ruddy, made up of nothing, sometimes simplified into a series of low, horizontal lines, but ever ennobled by the great memories it evoked: the Roman legions marching along the paved highways across the bare Campagna; the long slumber of the middle ages; and then the awakening of antique nature in the midst of Catholicism, whereby, for the second time, Rome became ruler of the world. ”

“ I scarcely know what view of Rome to prefer. That from the ruined Baths of Caracalla, or from the verge of the Coliseum, or the panorama of the Capitol, or from the porch of the Lateran, which commands a different landscape.—~You see nothing of the city, for your back is turned on it; you are on a height, the Campagna at your feet, spanned by a number of ruined aqueducts, whose grandeur and extent impress the mind, more than any other object, with a sense of Roman greatness. ”

“ Ever since Rome began there must have been just such silvery nights; just such a voice rang through the same air ages ago; just as now the velvet shadows fell pall-like and unrolled themselves along the grey pavement under the lofty columns of Mars the Avenger and beneath the wall of the Forum of Augustus. [Pg 119]
PIAZZA COLONNA
Perhaps it is true that the impressions which Rome makes upon a thoughtful man vary more according to the wind and the time of day than those he feels in other cities. ”

“ In Mucius Scaevola, in Regulus, in Marcus Curtius, and many others the fine qualities of the old Roman temper, pride, courage, will, devotion, a love of their country that went beyond all other feelings, even unto death, stand out. One can see the main lines of the character that made the Romans what they afterwards became—the conquerors and law-givers first of a single city, Rome, then of the whole plain of Latium in which that city stood: then, after driving back barbarian invaders from the north and Greek invaders from the south, of all Italy: later of the known world. ”

“ This day will I mingle, daring all things, with thy returning citizens and penetrate, amid Romans, the gates of Rome! Through the day will I lurk, cunning and watchful, in thy solitary haunts, to steal forth on thee at nights, a secret minister of death! I will watch for thy young and thy weak once in unguarded places; I will prey, alone in the thick darkness, upon thy unprotected lives; I will destroy thy children, as their fathers destroyed at Aquileia the children of the Goths! Thy rabble will discover me and arise against me ”

“ Nowhere in Rome is more colour, more charm, more sport for the eye. The mild incline, during the winter months, is always covered with lounging sun-seekers, and especially with those more constantly obvious members of the Roman population--beggars, soldiers, monks and tourists. ”

“ THE first object of every traveller will naturally be to reach the Capitol, and look down thence upon ancient Rome; but as he will go down to the Corso to do this, and must daily pass most of its surrounding buildings, we will first speak of those objects which will, ere long, become the most familiar.
A stranger's first lesson in Roman geography should be learnt standing in the Piazza del Popolo, whence three streets branch off—the Corso, in the centre, leading towards the Capitol, beyond which lies ancient Rome ”

“ But Rome cannot be taken as a criterion of the Roman States. It is a cosmopolite city, resorted to by strangers from all parts of the world, animated and enriched by their presence. Take away the artists' studios, the shops of the dealers in mosaic and cameos, statuettes and sarcophagi,—and those who purchase them,—and grass would be growing in the streets of Rome, as it did six months ago in the half-depopulated cities of the Legations. ”

“ The air of Rome inspires lassitude, and renders the inhabitants inert. The Romans who live in the healthy parts of the city are all inclined to grow fat; their language, unidiomatic, and, so to speak, long-winded in its expressions, is pronounced with a grace of accent, a slow and melodious emphasis, that renders it more agreeable than any other Italian to the ears of strangers, and is strangely in harmony with the dreamy contentment of their minds. ”

“ The most ancient and the most remote from the sea of the cities of Latium, Rome soon became the most influential, and began to combine in itself the traits of the peoples near it; but owing to the singular strength and rare impressiveness of the national character, these were assimilated, and the inhabitant of the capital remained distinctively a Roman in spite of his intimate association with men of different origin and training. ”

“ A new prospect now opens before us. The rough paths through which we have hitherto threaded our way grow smoother as we approach their close. Rome, so long dark and gloomy to our view, brightens at length like a landscape when the rain is past and the first rays of returning sunlight stream through the parting clouds. Some days have elapsed, and in those days the temples have yielded all their wealth; the conquered Romans have bribed the triumphant barbarians to mercy; the ransom of the fallen city has been paid. ”

“ Le lieu est fait pour une aquarelle, et quand un beau soleil éclaire les débris antiques, les vieux murs sombres de la rue étroite où la poisson se vend sur des tables de marbre blanc, et à travers laquelle des nattes sont tendues, on a, à côté du monument romain, le spectacle d'un marché du moyen âge, et un peu le souvenir d'un bazar d'Orient."—Ampère, Emp. i. 179.
"Who that has ever been to Rome does not remember Roman streets of an evening, when the day's work is done? They are all alive in a serene and homelike fashion. ”

“ Establishing the city of Rome as a stable, defensible center of merchandising and commerce, transport, finance, population, wealth and power with a hinterland of associates and dependencies. As it turns out, the city of Rome has outlived both the Roman Empire and Roman Civilization. ”

“ More than two thousand years ago, at a time when the people in the British Isles and in most parts of Western Europe were living the lives of savages, occupied in fighting, hunting, and fishing, dwelling in rude huts, clad in skins, ignorant of everything that we call civilization, Rome was the centre of a world in many ways as civilized as ours is now, over which the Roman people ruled. ”

“ It is by the aimless flânerie which leaves you free to follow capriciously every hint of entertainment that you get to know Rome. The greater part of the life about you goes on in the streets; and for an observer fresh from a country in which town scenery is at the least monotonous incident and character and picture seem to abound. I become conscious with compunction, let me hasten to add, that I have launched myself thus on the subject of Roman churches and Roman walks without so much as a preliminary allusion to St. Peter’s. ”

“ A en croire le jeune Romain, cependant, la dorure, au lieu d'aller s'effaçant toujours davantage, était en voie de progrès. 'Voyez, disait-il, la statue de bronze commence à se dorer, et quand elle le sera entièrement, le monde finira.'—C'est toujours, sous une forme absurde, la vieille idée romaine, que les destinées et l'existence de Rome sont liées aux destinées et à l'existence du monde. C'est ce qui faisait dire au septième siècle; ainsi que les pèlerins saxons l'avaient entendu et le répétaient; 'Quand le Colisée tombera, Rome et le monde finiront.'"—Ampère, Emp. ”

“ These men, by their smooth speech, their effrontery and ready wit, their infinite capacity for assuming every mood and humouring every caprice of the patron, are creeping into the recesses of great houses, worming out their secrets, and mastering their virtue.560 Rome is becoming a Greek town,561 in which there will soon be no place for Romans. ”

“ Worthy of saving from the wreck of life—
I chop this weed. And for the soul of Rome,
The lazar soul, the slave, the fuller, cobbler,
The fool, the God-forsaken and the child ...
What if Rome fall? The City of God remains
Eternal in the Heavens. Yes, but Earth,
Where is thy city, if it be not Rome?
Destroy your Romans, Hadrians, what is left?—
Itinerant exorcists and prophets, idlers,
And sacred beggars, leper lips that curse{240}
Rome and her beauty? These the citizens
Of the City of God! What will that city be?
Themselves externalized, as Rome has flowered
From Roman minds ”

“ That a city-state with the old and narrow local social and political traditions which Rome had could adapt herself to the government of a world-empire composed of such diverse elements as made up the Roman Empire is one of the marvels of history, and a study of the methods which she followed can not fail to throw light on political questions which we have to meet today. The range of social and economic conditions through which Rome went is equally wide. The Romans come on the stage of history as a primitive pastoral people with strongholds on the hills. ”

“ Dismissing the notion of occult qualities of race, we look for a rational explanation in the circumstances of the plain which was the cradle of the Roman Empire. It is evident that in the period designated as that of the kings, when Rome commenced her career of conquest, she was, for that time and country, a great and wealthy city. This is proved by the works of the kings, the Capitoline Temple, the excavation for the Circus Maximus, the Servian Wall, and above all the Cloaca Maxima. Historians have indeed undertaken to give us a very disparaging picture of the ancient Rome. ”

“ The Spread of Latin. For some centuries after Rome was founded, the Romans were a feeble and insignificant people, their territory was limited to Latium, and their existence constantly threatened by warlike neighbors. But after the third century before Christ, Rome's power grew rapidly. She conquered all Italy, then reached out for the lands across the sea and beyond the Alps, and finally ruled over the whole ancient world. ”