the funeral pyre of their
idol. In the sky a comet appeared. It was his soul on its way to
Olympus.

II

CONJECTURAL ROME

"I received Rome in brick; I shall leave it in marble," said Augustus,
who was fond of fine phrases, a trick he had caught from Vergil. And
when he looked from his home on the Palatine over the glitter of the
Forum and the glare of the Capitol to the new and wonderful precinct
which extended to the Field of Mars, there was a stretch of splendor
which sanctioned the boast. The city then was very vast. The tourist
might walk in it, as in the London of to-day, mile after mile, and at
whatever point he placed himself, Rome still lay beyond; a Rome quite
like London--one that was choked with mystery, with gold and curious
crime.

But it was not all marble. There were green terraces and porphyry
porticoes that leaned to a river on which red galleys passed; there
were theatres in which a multitude could jeer at an emperor, and arenas
in which an emperor could watch a multitude die; there were bronze
doors and garden roofs, glancing villas and temples that defied the
sun; there were spacious streets, a Forum curtained with silk, the
glint and evocations of triumphal war, the splendor of a host of gods,
but it was not all marble; there were rents in the magnificence and
tatters in the laticlave of state.

In the Subura, where at night women sat in high chairs, ogling the
passer with painted eyes, there was still plenty of brick; tall
tenements, soiled linen, the odor of Whitechapel and St. Giles. The
streets were noisy with match-peddlers, with vendors of cake and tripe
and coke; there were touts there too, altars to unimportant divinities,
lying Jews who dealt in old clothes, in obscene pictures and
unmentionable wares; at the crossings there were thimbleriggers, clowns
and jugglers, who made glass balls appear and disappear surprisingly;
there were doorways decorated with curious invitations, gossipy barber
shops, where, through the liberality of politicians, the scum of a
great city was shaved, curled and painted free; and there were public
houses, where vagabond slaves and sexless priests drank the mulled wine
of Crete, supped on the flesh of beasts slaughtered in the arena, or
watched the Syrian women twist to the click of castanets.

Beyond were gray quadrangular buildings, the stomach of Rome, through
which, each noon, ediles passed, verifying the prices, the weights and
measures of