“I understand, and I suspect it’s a sound observation, that the rich do get richer and the poor get poorer, I mean. But it’s not true of Rome alone; it’s that way everywhere, isn’t it, throughout the world?”
“I couldn’t say as to that, sir. Rome’s pretty much my world.”
Rome was his world, too, Longinus told himself a moment later as the two were propelled suddenly from the shaded cavern of the cobblestoned narrow street into the widened stir and commotion of a veritable forest of marbled columns and statuary.
The centurion’s heart lifted as he strode once more into the Forum Romanum, that busy, marble-crowded flat between the Tiber’s westward bend and the mansion-crowned hills. He took a deep breath, and his chest swelled.
... This is the veritable beating, pulsing heart of Rome, and Rome is the world. Here is reality. Here are solidity, strength, planning made real, dreams hewn in enduring stone. Here are wealth, accomplishment, power, might. Not twenty paces across there is the Millenarium Aureum, the resplendent bronze column set up to mark the center of the Roman world, the point from which miles are counted along the highways and their joining sea lanes stretching to the ends of the known earth to bind Rome into one colossal, unconquerable, enduring Empire!...
They paused to catch their breath. Longinus set down the glass, but he continued to clutch the toga-wrapped packet under his arm. In another moment they would push once more into the jostling, shoving multitude milling through the Forum’s crossways. Suddenly the centurion remembered Cornelius and their discussion that afternoon as the two men had sat in the wrecked rowboat near the glassworks. He smiled grimly.
... But this is Rome. This is reality. This is accomplishment, creation. I can reach out and run my hand over the stone and feel these marbled creations of men; a thousand years from now, were I to live so long, I could rub my hands across their imperishable cold faces. These are tangible things, and Rome is tangible, her power, her strength, her wealth, her dominance over the world. Cornelius may prate of his old tutor’s preachments about the imperishability of the intangibles and the reality of things unseen. But these statues, these temples, this Millenarium Aureum, are tangible. Rome is carved statuary and fluted marble magnificence; Rome is spacious mansions and marching great armies flaunting their ensigns. Rome is poverty, too, and injustice and ugliness at times and in places, but Rome is no pale intangibles, no vaporous conjurations of an eastern philosopher. Rome is not even her gods. This is Rome, this marbled splendor of the Forum; Rome is here and now and touchable and real, and Rome, by all the gods or no gods, will endure.
... Rome is something else. Rome is strength and power and substance, but Rome is also grace and beauty. Examine these graceful columns, these elegant pediments. Rome is feminine, a beautiful woman. Rome, by the great Jove, is Claudia. Indeed! What is more Rome than Claudia; what is more Claudia than Rome? Rome is beauty and pleasure, tangible, real, to be experienced, enjoyed.
... And Rome will endure. That carpenter of Galilee, wandering up and down the seacoast with his little band of poor working people, talking of intangibles to illiterate fisherfolk and the dwellers in Jerusalem’s festering Ophel, that fellow to overcome Rome! Even under the silvery softness of a full moon beside the sea in Galilee, it was a preposterous notion. But here in the middle of the Forum, with confirmation of Rome’s might everywhere around....
“By all the gods, Cornelius. Can’t you see?”