cellus and Pompey were occupied in a great measure by
public and private buildings; and in the Circus, Agonalis and Maximus,
little more than the situation and the form could be investigated. 6.
The columns of Trajan and Antonine were still erect; but the Egyptian
obelisks were broken or buried. A people of gods and heroes, the
workmanship of art, was reduced to one equestrian figure of gilt brass
and to five marble statues, of which the most conspicuous were the two
horses of Phidias and Praxiteles. 7. The two mausoleums or sepulchres of
Augustus and Hadrian could not totally be lost; but the former was only
visible as a mound of earth, and the latter, the castle of St. Angelo,
had acquired the name and appearance of a modern fortress. With the
addition of some separate and nameless columns, such were the remains of
the ancient city; for the marks of a more recent structure might be
detected in the walls, which formed a circumference of ten miles,
included three hundred and seventy-nine turrets, and opened into the
country by thirteen gates.

This melancholy picture was drawn above nine hundred years after the
fall of the Western Empire, and even of the Gothic kingdom of Italy. A
long period of distress and anarchy, in which empire, and arts, and
riches had migrated from the banks of the Tiber, was incapable of
restoring or adorning the city; and as all that is human must retrograde
if it do not advance, every successive age must have hastened the ruin
of the works of antiquity. To measure the progress of decay, and to
ascertain, at each era, the state of each edifice, would be an endless
and a useless labor; and I shall content myself with two observations
which will introduce a short inquiry into the general causes and
effects. 1. Two hundred years before the eloquent complaint of Poggius,
an anonymous writer composed a description of Rome. His ignorance may
repeat the same objects under strange and fabulous names. Yet this
barbarous topographer had eyes and ears; he could observe the visible
remains; he could listen to the tradition of the people; and he
distinctly enumerates seven theatres, eleven baths, twelve arches, and
eighteen palaces, of which many had disappeared before the time of
Poggius. It is apparent that many stately monuments of antiquity
survived till a late period, and that the principles of destruction
acted with vigorous and increasing energy in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. 2. The same