could not find some things that resembled it, and so make myself
understand it. The prospect seemed difficult, because modern men are
persuaded that they are models of all the virtues. Who could think to
find in them even traces of the famous Roman corruption? In the modern
world to-day are the abominable orgies carried on for which the Rome
of the Caesars was notorious? Are there to-day Neros and Elagabaluses?
He who studies the ancient sources, however, with but a little of the
critical spirit, is easily convinced that we have made for ourselves
out of the much-famed corruption and Roman luxury a notion highly
romantic and exaggerated. We need not delude ourselves: Rome, even in
the times of its greatest splendour, was poor in comparison with the
modern world; even in the second century after Christ, when it stood
as metropolis at the head of an immense empire, Rome was smaller,
less wealthy, less imposing, than a great metropolis of Europe or
of America. Some sumptuous public edifices, beautiful private
houses--that is all the splendour of the metropolis of the empire.
He who goes to the Palatine may to-day refigure for himself, from the
so-called House of Livia, the house of a rich Roman family of the
time of Augustus, and convince himself that a well-to-do middle-class
family would hardly occupy such a house to-day.

Moreover, the palaces of the Caesars on the Palatine are a grandiose
ruin that stirs the artist and makes the philosopher think; but if
one sets himself to measure them, to conjecture from the remains the
proportions of the entire edifices, he does not conjure up buildings
that rival large modern constructions. The palace of Tiberius, for
example, rose above a street only two metres wide--less than seven
feet,--an alley like those where to-day in Italian cities live only
the most miserable inhabitants. We have pictured to ourselves
the imperial banquets of ancient Rome as functions of unheard of
splendour; if Nero or Elagabalus could come to life and see the
dining-room of a great hotel in Paris or New York--resplendent with
light, with crystal, with silver,--he would admire it as far more
beautiful than the halls in which he gave his imperial feasts. Think
how poor were the ancients in artificial light! They had few wines;
they knew neither tea nor coffee nor cocoa; neither tobacco, nor the
innumerable _liqueurs_ of which we make use; in face of our habits,
they were always Spartan, even when they wa