laced there at the head of the gulf,
on the borders of two great portions of the Empire, it leads to the land
which produced that line of famous Illyrian Emperors who for a while
checked the advance of our own race in the world's history, and it leads
specially to the chosen home of the greatest among them.[7] The chief
glory of Trieste, after all, is that it is the way to Spalato....

At Pola the monuments of Pietas Julia claim the first place; the
basilica, tho' not without a certain special interest, comes long after
them. The character of the place is fixt by the first sight of it; we
see the present and we see the more distant past; the Austrian navy is
to be seen, and the amphitheater is to be seen. But intermediate times
have little to show; if the duomo strikes the eye at all, it strikes it
only by the extreme ugliness of its outside, nor is there anything very
taking, nothing like the picturesque castle of Pirano, in the works
which occupy the site of the colonial capitol. The duomo should not be
forgotten; even the church of Saint Francis is worth a glance; but it is
in the remains of the Roman colony, in the amphitheater, the arches,
the temples, the fragments preserved in that temple which serves, as
at Nimes,[8] for a museum, that the real antiquarian wealth of Pola
lies....

The known history of Pola begins with the Roman conquest of Istria
in 178 B.C. The town became a Roman colony and a flourishing seat of
commerce. Its action on the republican side in the civil war brought
on it the vengeance of the second Caesar. But the destroyer became
the restorer, and Pietas Julia, in the height of its greatness, far
surpassed the extent either of the elder or the younger Pola. Like all
cities of this region, Pola kept up its importance down to the days of
the Carlovingian Empire, the specially flourishing time of the whole
district being that of Gothic and Byzantine dominion at Ravenna. A
barbarian king, the Roxolan Rasparasanus, is said to have withdrawn to
Pola after the submission of his nation to Hadrian; and the panegyrists
of the Flavian house rank Pola along with Trier and Autun among the
cities which the princes of that house had adorned or strengthened. But
in the history of their dynasty the name of the city chiefly stands out
as the chosen place for the execution of princes whom it was convenient
to put out of the way.

Here Crispus died at the bidding of Constantine, and Gallus at the
bidding of Con