pretension to scholarship, and it was more particularly his artistic
temperament which awoke within him and gathered warmth from the flame of
memory. The present had disappeared, and the ocean of the past was still
rising, buoying him up, carrying him away.

And then his mind involuntarily pictured a resurrection instinct with
life. The grey, dismal Palatine, razed like some accursed city, suddenly
became animated, peopled, crowned with palaces and temples. There had
been the cradle of the Eternal City, founded by Romulus on that summit
overlooking the Tiber. There assuredly the seven kings of its two and a
half centuries of monarchical rule had dwelt, enclosed within high,
strong walls, which had but three gateways. Then the five centuries of
republican sway spread out, the greatest, the most glorious of all the
centuries, those which brought the Italic peninsula and finally the known
world under Roman dominion. During those victorious years of social and
war-like struggle, Rome grew and peopled the seven hills, and the
Palatine became but a venerable cradle with legendary temples, and was
even gradually invaded by private residences. But at last Caesar, the
incarnation of the power of his race, after Gaul and after Pharsalia
triumphed in the name of the whole Roman people, having completed the
colossal task by which the five following centuries of imperialism were
to profit, with a pompous splendour and a rush of every appetite. And
then Augustus could ascend to power; glory had reached its climax;
millions of gold were waiting to be filched from the depths of the
provinces; and the imperial gala was to begin in the world's capital,
before the eyes of the dazzled and subjected nations. Augustus had been
born on the Palatine, and after Actium had given him the empire, he set
his pride in reigning from the summit of that sacred mount, venerated by
the people. He bought up private houses and there built his palace with
luxurious splendour: an atrium upheld by four pilasters and eight
columns; a peristylium encompassed by fifty-six Ionic columns; private
apartments all around, and all in marble; a profusion of marble, brought
at great cost from foreign lands, and of the brightest hues, resplendent
like gems. And he lodged himself with the gods, building near his own
abode a large temple of Apollo and a shrine of Vesta in order to ensure
himself divine and eternal sovereignty. And then the seed of the imperial
palaces was s