tra had feasted, became the witness of the banquets of Roman
proconsuls. Babylon, Thebes, and Athens were only what Delhi and
Calcutta are to the English of our day,--cities to be ruled by the
delegates of the imperial Senate. Rome was the only "home" of the proud
governors who reigned on the banks of the Thames, of the Seine, of the
Rhine, of the Nile, of the Tigris. After they had enriched themselves
with the spoils of the ancient monarchies they returned to their estates
in Italy, or to their palaces on the Aventine. What a concentration of
works of art on the hills, and around the Forum, and in the Campus
Martius, and other celebrated quarters! There were temples rivalling
those of Athens and Ephesus; baths covering more ground than the
Pyramids, surrounded with Corinthian columns, and filled with the
choicest treasures ransacked from the cities of Greece and Asia; palaces
in comparison with which the Tuileries and Versailles are small;
theatres which seated a larger audience than any present public
buildings in Europe; amphitheatres more extensive and costly than
Cologne, Milan, and York Minster cathedrals combined, and seating eight
times as many spectators as could be crowded into St. Peter's Church;
circuses where, it is said, three hundred and eighty-five thousand
persons could witness the games and chariot-races at a time; bridges,
still standing, which have furnished models for the most beautiful at
Paris and London; aqueducts carried over arches one hundred feet in
height, through which flowed the surplus water of distant lakes; drains
of solid masonry in which large boats could float; pillars more than one
hundred feet in height, coated with precious marbles or plates of brass,
and covered with bas-reliefs; obelisks brought from Egypt; fora and
basilicas connected together, and extending more than three thousand
feet in length, every part of which was filled with "animated busts" of
conquerors, kings, statesmen, poets, publicists, and philosophers;
mausoleums greater and more splendid than that Artemisia erected to the
memory of her husband; triumphal arches under which marched in stately
procession the victorious armies of the Eternal City, preceded by the
spoils and trophies of conquered empires.

Such was the proud capital,--a city of palaces, a residence of nobles
who were virtually kings, enriched with the accumulated treasures of
ancient civilization. Great were the capitals of Greece and Asia, but
ho