omans, is become the happy seat of liberty, plenty, and
letters; flourishing in all the arts and refinements of civil life; yet
running, perhaps, the same course which Rome itself had run before it,
from virtuous industry to wealth; from wealth to luxury; from luxury to
an impatience of discipline and corruption of morals: till, by a total
degeneracy and loss of virtue, being grown ripe for destruction, it fall
a prey at last to some hardy oppressor, and, with the loss of liberty,
losing everything that is valuable, sinks gradually again into its
original barbarism." (See _Life of M. Tullius Cicero_, by Conyers
Middleton, D.D., 1823, sect. vi. vol. i. pp. 399, 400.)

[og] {409} _Oh, ho, ho, ho--thou creature of a Man_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[oh]
_And show of Glory's gewgaws in the van_
_And the Sun's rays with flames more dazzling filled_.--[MS. M.]

[486] [The "golden roofs" were those of Nero's _Domus Aurea_, which
extended from the north-west corner of the Palatine to the Gardens of
Maecenas, on the Esquiline, spreading over the sites of the Temple of
Vesta and Rome on the platform of the Velia, the Colosseum, and the
Thermae of Titus, as far as the Sette Sale. "In the fore court was the
colossal statue of Nero. The pillars of the colonnade, which measured a
thousand feet in length, stood three deep. All that was not lake, or
wood, or vineyard, or pasture, was overlaid with plates of gold, picked
out with gems and mother-of-pearl" (Suetonius, vi. 31; Tacitus, _Ann._,
xv. 42). Substructions of the _Domus Aurea_ have been discovered on the
site of the Baths of Titus and elsewhere, but not on the Palatine
itself. Martial, _Epig._ 695 (_Lib. Spect._, ii.), celebrates
Vespasian's restitution of the _Domus Aurea_ and its "policies" to the
people of Rome.

"Hic ubi sidereus propius videt astra colossus
Et crescunt media pegmata celsa via,
Invidiosa feri radiabant atria regis
Unaque jam tola stabat in urbe domus."

"Here where the Sun-god greets the Morning Star,
And tow'ring scaffolds block the public way,
Fell Nero's loathed pavilion flashed afar,
Erect and splendid 'mid the town's decay."]

[487] {410} [By the "nameless" column Byron means the column of Phocas,
in the Forum. But, as he may have known, it had ceased to be nameless
when he visited Rome in 1817. During some excavations which were carried
out under the auspices of the Duchess of Devonshire, in 1813, the soi