“And was it so?” said the lady, not looking at the Stoic.—“But I did not call for you to hear useless apologies. What new sight is it that attracts you to the Palatine?—or is it only that you are desirous of exhibiting to Valerius the old-established wonders of the place? In either case, I have half a mind to accompany you. In spite of all they tell us about the Golden House, I can scarcely think the Palatine shewed more splendidly than it does now, even in the days of Nero.”
“Indeed,” said I, as we began to mount together the broad slabbed steps which rise up, tier above tier, from the portico on the street, to that which hangs on the brow—“Indeed, it is not easy for me to doubt that Rubellia is in the right.”—For now, on one side, were [pg 167]all the pillars and arches of the Forum stretched out below us, and, on the other, lay the great Circus, topped with its obelisk; while before rose the gray cliffs of the Capitoline, with their domes and proud pinnacles in the glow of noontide—the space between, radiant with arms and banners. Even Xerophrastes did not refrain from some ejaculations.—“Illustrious Rome! how great is thy sublimity!” And then, after a pause, he repeated, in a voice of much majesty, those verses from the Fury of Ajax:
“Oh! might I be where o’er the living deep
Lies the broad shadow of the Sounian cliff,
Waving with all its glorious garniture,
Of rock-sprung foliage: from old Ocean’s side,
That I might look on Athens once again!”
Some of the hints which had reached me concerning his nativity recurring to my recollection, I could not help echoing his quotation with another from the Æneid, about the wide tracts ploughed by the Thracians; of which impertinence the sage took no notice.
Nor was admiration diminished when, having gained the top of that massive staircase, or rather, as I should say, hill of marble, we passed beneath the sounding portal, the sole remnant of the original pile of Augustus, and found ourselves within the first of those great imperial quadrangles, by which the whole summit of that once so variously and multitudinously peopled region is now occupied. The light and airy porticoes—the domes—the princely towers—the universal profusion of marble, brass, ivory, flaming gold, lavished on arch, metope, and architrave—all conspired to dazzle the sight, and I stood still to gaze.
“Observe,” said Sextus, “those two equestrian statues of bronze on the left hand. I have heard my father say that they mark the sites of two houses, which, before Augustus began to enclose the whole Palatine in his walls, were inhabited, the one by Cicero, the other by Clodius; these are the only traces of their mansions.”