d.

It is hard to reduce the great building in imagination to the little
basilica built by Constantine the sentimentalist, on the site of Nero's
circus; built by some other man perhaps, for no one knows surely; but a
little church, at best, compared with many of those which Saint Peter's
dwarfs to insignificance now. To remind men of him the effigy of that
same Constantine sits on a marble charger there, on the left, beneath
the portico, behind the great iron gate, with head thrown back, and
lifted hand, and marble eyes gazing ever on the Cross. Some say that he
really embraced Christianity only when dying. The names of the churches
founded by him in Constantinople are all sentimentally ambiguous, from
Sophia, 'wisdom,' to Anastasia, 'resurrection,' or revival, and hence
'spring.' It is strange that the places of worship built by him in Rome,
if they were really his work, should bear such exceedingly definite
designations and direct dedications as Saint Peter's, Saint John's,
Saint Paul's and the Church of the Holy Cross. At all events, whether he
believed much or little, Christianity owes him much, and romance is
indebted to him for almost as much more. But for Constantine there might
have been no Charlemagne, no Holy Roman Empire.

In old times criminals of low degree used to be executed on the
Esquiline, and were buried there, unburned, unless their bodies were
left to wither upon the cross in wind and sun, as generally happened.
The place was the hideous feeding ground of wild dogs and carrion birds,
and witches went there by night to perform their horrid rites. It was
there that Canidia and her companion buried a living boy up to the neck
that they might make philters of his vitals. Everyone must remember the
end of Horace's imprecation:--

"... insepulta membra different lupi,
Et Esquilinae alites."

Then came Maecenas and redeemed all that land; turned it into a garden,
and beautified it; uprooted the mouldering crosses, whereon still hung
the bones of dead slaves, and set out trees in their stead; piled thirty
feet of clean earth upon the shallow graves of executed murderers and of
generations of thieves, and planted shrubbery and flowers, and made
walks and paths and shady places.

Therefore it happened that the southern spur of the Janiculum became
after that time a place of execution and cruel death. The city had never
grown much on that side of the Tiber,--that is to say, on the right
ba