circumference, but Lipsius estimates the
original circumference at forty-five miles, and Vopiscus at nearly
fifty. The diameter of the city must have been eleven miles, since
Strabo tells us that the actual limit of Rome was at a place between the
fifth and sixth milestone from the column of Trajan in the Forum,--the
central and most conspicuous object in the city except the capitol.

Modern writers, taking London and Paris for their measure of material
civilization, seem unwilling to admit that Rome could have reached such
a pitch of glory and wealth and power. To him who stands within the
narrow limits of the Forum, as it now appears, it seems incredible that
it could have been the centre of a much larger city than Europe can now
boast of. Grave historians are loath to compromise their dignity and
character for truth by admitting statements which seem, to men of
limited views, to be fabulous, and which transcend modern experience.
But we should remember that most of the monuments of ancient Rome have
entirely disappeared. Nothing remains of the Palace of the Caesars,
which nearly covered the Palatine Hill; little of the fora which,
connected together, covered a space twice as large as that inclosed by
the palaces of the Louvre and Tuileries, with all their galleries and
courts; almost nothing of the glories of the Capitoline Hill; and little
comparatively of those Thermae which were a mile in circuit. But what
does remain attests an unparalleled grandeur,--the broken pillars of the
Forum; the lofty columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius; the Pantheon,
lifting its spacious dome two hundred feet into the air; the mere
vestibule of the Baths of Agrippa; the triumphal arches of Titus and
Trajan and Constantine; the bridges which span the Tiber; the aqueducts
which cross the Campagna; the Cloaca Maxima, which drained the marshes
and lakes of the infant city; and, above all, the Colosseum. What glory
and shame are associated with that single edifice! That alone, if
nothing else remained of Pagan antiquity, would indicate a grandeur and
a folly such as cannot now be seen on earth. It reveals a wonderful
skill in masonry and great architectural strength; it shows the wealth
and resources of rulers who must have had the treasures of the world at
their command; it shows the restless passions of the people for
excitement, and the necessity on the part of government of yielding to
this taste. What leisure and indolence marked a cit