DOI chapter:
Chap. V: Magnificence of Ancient Rome - its Cloacæ - Aqueducts - Viæ - Forums - Temples - Thermæ - Theatres - Instances of private Magnificence - Greatness, the Characteristic of Roman Taste at all times
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62268#0174
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Ch. N.
glory of the city was in its dawn, ventured to
give it the proud appellation of Rerum pulcherri-
ma, we may conjecture what it must have been in
the reign of Hadrian, when it had received all its
decorations, and blazed in its full meiidian splen-
dor. Even in its decline, when it had twice ex-
perienced barbaric rage and had seen some of its
fairest edifices sink in hostile flames, it was capa-
ble of exciting- ideas of something more than
mortal grandeur, and raising the thoughts of a
holy bishop from earth to heaven.* After the
Gothic war itself, which gave the last blow to the
greatness of Rome, when it had been repeatedly
besieged, taken and ransacked, yet then, though
stript of its population, and abandoned with its
tottering temples to time and desolation; even
then, deformed by barbarism, wasted by pesti-
lence, and bowed down to the ground under the
accumulated judgments of heaven, the “ Eternal
City” still retained its imperial features, nor
appeared less than the Mistress of the World, and
the excess of glory obscured.
Rome was in this state when Gregory the
* The period I allude to is the reign of the Goth Theo,
doric, and the prelate is the eloquent Fulgentius.
CLASSICAL TOUR
Ch. N.
glory of the city was in its dawn, ventured to
give it the proud appellation of Rerum pulcherri-
ma, we may conjecture what it must have been in
the reign of Hadrian, when it had received all its
decorations, and blazed in its full meiidian splen-
dor. Even in its decline, when it had twice ex-
perienced barbaric rage and had seen some of its
fairest edifices sink in hostile flames, it was capa-
ble of exciting- ideas of something more than
mortal grandeur, and raising the thoughts of a
holy bishop from earth to heaven.* After the
Gothic war itself, which gave the last blow to the
greatness of Rome, when it had been repeatedly
besieged, taken and ransacked, yet then, though
stript of its population, and abandoned with its
tottering temples to time and desolation; even
then, deformed by barbarism, wasted by pesti-
lence, and bowed down to the ground under the
accumulated judgments of heaven, the “ Eternal
City” still retained its imperial features, nor
appeared less than the Mistress of the World, and
the excess of glory obscured.
Rome was in this state when Gregory the
* The period I allude to is the reign of the Goth Theo,
doric, and the prelate is the eloquent Fulgentius.