red pillars. Caesar built the Forum Julium, three hundred and forty
feet long, and two hundred wide, and commenced the still greater
structures known as the Basilica Julia and Curia Julia. The Forum Romanum
was seven hundred feet by four hundred and seventy, surrounded with
basilica, halls, porticoes, temples, and shops--the centre of architectural
splendor, as well as of life and business and pleasure. Augustus restored
the Capitoline Temple, finished the Forum and Basilica Julia, built the
Curia Julia, and founded the imperial palace on the Palatine, and erected
many temples, the most beautiful of which was that of Apollo, with columns
of African marble, and gates of ivory finely sculptured. He also erected
the Forum Augusti, the theatre of Marcellus, capable of holding twenty
thousand spectators, and that mausoleum which contained the ashes of the
imperial family to the time of Hadrian, at the entrance of which were two
Egyptian obelisks. It was the boast of this emperor, that he found the
city of brick and left her of marble. But great and beautiful as Rome was
in the Augustan era, enriched not only by his own munificence, but by the
palaces and baths which were erected by his ministers and courtiers,--the
Pantheon, the Baths of Agrippa, the Gardens of Maecenas,--it was not until
other emperors erected the Imperial Palace, the Flavian Amphitheatre, the
Forum Trajanum, the Basilica Ulpia, the Temple of Venus and Rome, the
Baths of Caracalla, the Arches of Septimius Severus and Trajan, and other
wonders, that the city became so astonishing a wonder, with its palaces,
theatres, amphitheatres, baths, fountains, bronze statues of emperors and
generals, so numerous and so grand, that we are warranted in believing its
glories, like its population, surpassed those of both Paris and London
combined.

(M1036) And this capital and this empire seemed to be the domain of one
man, so vast his power, so august his dignity, absolute master of the
lives and property of one hundred and twenty millions, for the people were
now deprived of the election of magistrates and the creation of laws. How
could the greatest nobles otherwise than cringe to the supreme captain of
the armies, the prince of the Senate, and the high-priest of the national
divinities--himself, the recipient of honors only paid to gods! But
Augustus kept up the forms of the old republic--all the old offices, the
old dignities, the old festivals, the old associations. Th