ored the whole group of imperial buildings,
adding a new wing at the southwest corner, known under the name of
Septizonium. The latest additions, of no special importance, took place
under Julia Mamaea and Heliogabalus.

Every emperor, to a certain extent, enlarged, altered, destroyed, and
reconstructed the work of his predecessors; cutting new openings,
walling up old ones, subdividing large rooms into smaller apartments,
and changing their destination. One section alone of the imperial
Palatine buildings remained unaltered, and kept the former simplicity of
its plans down to the fall of the Empire--the section built by Augustus
across the center of the hill, which comprised the main entrance, the
portico surrounding the temple of Apollo, the temple itself, the Greek
and Latin libraries, the shrine of Vesta, and the imperial residence.

The architectural group raised by Augustus on the Palatine, formed, as
it were, the vestibule to his own imperial residence. We know with
absolute certainty that it contained at least one hundred and twenty
columns of the rarest kinds of marbles and breccias, fifty-two of which
were of Numidian marble, with capitals of gilt bronze; a group of
Lysias, comprising one chariot, four horses and two drivers, all cut in
a single block of marble; the Hercules of Lysippus; the Apollo of
Scopas; the Latona of Cephisodotos, the Diana of Timotheos; the
bas-reliefs of the pediment by Bupalos and Anthermos; the quadriga of
the sun in gilt bronze; exquisite ivory carvings; a bronze colossus
fifty feet high; hundreds of medallions in gold, silver, and bronze;
gold and silver plate; a collection of gems and cameos; and, lastly,
candelabras which had been the property of Alexander the Great, and the
admiration of the East.

Has the world ever seen a collection of greater artistic and material
value exhibited in a single building? And we must recollect that the
group built by Augustus comprises only a very modest section of the
Palatine; that to his palace we must join the palaces of Tiberius,
Caligula, Nero, Vespasian, Domitian, Septimius Serverus, Julia Mamaea,
and Heliogabalus; that each one of these imperial residences equalled
the residence of Augustus, if not in pure taste, certainly in wealth, in
luxury, in magnificence, in the number and value of works of art
collected and stolen from Greece and the East, from Egypt and Persia. By
multiplying eight or ten times the list I have given above, the r