g a thousand years, describes it as beginning a new life from the
time when Narses, in the year 552, came to reside there as imperial prefect
and representative of the absent eastern lord Justinian. Narses so ruled
for fifteen years, but when he was recalled there ensued a long time of
terrible distress and anxiety--a time of temporal servitude, but one also
of spiritual expansion. The complete ruin of Rome as a secular city, the
overthrow of all that ancient world of which Rome was the centre and
capital, had been effected in the struggle ended by the extinction of the
Gothic kingdom. By degrees the laws, the monuments, the very recollections
of what had been, passed away. The heathen temples ceased to be preserved
as public monuments. The Capitol, on its desolate hill, lifted into the
still air its fairy world of pillars in a grave-like silence, startled
only by the owl's night cry. The huge palace of the Caesars still occupied
the Palatine in unbroken greatness, a labyrinth of empty halls yet
resplendent with the finest marbles, here and there still covered with
gold-embroidered tapestry. But it was falling to pieces like a fortress
deserted by its occupants. In some small corner of its vast spaces there
might still be seen a Byzantine prefect, an eunuch from the court of the
eastern despot, or a semi-Asiatic general, with secretaries, servants, and
guards. The splendid forums built by Caesar after Caesar, each a homage
paid by the ruler of the day to the Roman people, whom he fed and feared,
became pale with age. Their history clung round them like a fable. The
massive blocks of Pompey's theatre showed need of repairs, which were
not given. The circus maximus, where the last and dearest of Roman
pleasures--the chariot races--were no longer celebrated, stretched its long
lines beneath the imperial palace covered with dust and overgrown with
grass. The colossal amphitheatre of Titus still reared its circle perfect,
but stripped of its decorations. The gigantic baths, fed by no aqueduct
since the ruin wrought by Vitiges the Goth, rose like fallen cities in a
wilderness. Ivy began to creep over them. The costly marble mantle of their
walls dropped away in pieces or was plundered for use. The Mosaic pavements
split. There were still in those beautiful chambers seats of bright or dark
marble, baths of porphyry or Oriental alabaster. But these found their way
by degrees to churches. They served for episcopal chairs, or to rece