se palaces which he had conjured up around
him, resuscitated, resplendent in the full sunlight. They were as if
linked together, parted merely by the narrowest of passages. In order
that not an inch of that precious summit might be lost, they had sprouted
thickly like the monstrous florescence of strength, power, and unbridled
pride which satisfied itself at the cost of millions, bleeding the whole
world for the enjoyment of one man. And in truth there was but one palace
altogether, a palace enlarged as soon as one emperor died and was placed
among the deities, and another, shunning the consecrated pile where
possibly the shadow of death frightened him, experienced an imperious
need to build a house of his own and perpetuate in everlasting stone the
memory of his reign. All the emperors were seized with this building
craze; it was like a disease which the very throne seemed to carry from
one occupant to another with growing intensity, a consuming desire to
excel all predecessors by thicker and higher walls, by a more and more
wonderful profusion of marbles, columns, and statues. And among all these
princes there was the idea of a glorious survival, of leaving a testimony
of their greatness to dazzled and stupefied generations, of perpetuating
themselves by marvels which would not perish but for ever weigh heavily
upon the earth, when their own light ashes should long since have been
swept away by the winds. And thus the Palatine became but the venerable
base of a monstrous edifice, a thick vegetation of adjoining buildings,
each new pile being like a fresh eruption of feverish pride; while the
whole, now showing the snowy brightness of white marble and now the
glowing hues of coloured marble, ended by crowning Rome and the
world with the most extraordinary and most insolent abode of
sovereignty--whether palace, temple, basilica, or cathedral--that
omnipotence and dominion have ever reared under the heavens.

But death lurked beneath this excess of strength and glory. Seven hundred
and thirty years of monarchy and republic had sufficed to make Rome
great; and in five centuries of imperial sway the people-king was to be
devoured down to its last muscles. There was the immensity of the
territory, the more distant provinces gradually pillaged and exhausted;
there was the fisc consuming everything, digging the pit of fatal
bankruptcy; and there was the degeneration of the people, poisoned by the
scenes of the circus and the a