Aurelian | Page 3

Of this you may have heard, in the letters which have reached you; but that will not prevent me from describing to you, with more exactness than any other can have done it, the home of your old and fast friend, Lucius Manlius Piso; for I think it adds greatly to the pleasure with which we think of an absent friend, to be able to see, as in a picture, the form and material and position of the house he inhabits, and even the very aspect and furniture of the room in which he is accustomed to pass the most of his time. This to me is a satisfaction greater than you can well conceive, when, in my ruminating hours, which are many, I return to Palmyra, and place myself in the circle with Gracchus, Calpurnius, and yourself. Your palace having now been restored to its former condition, I know where to find you at the morning, noon, and evening hour; the only change you have made in the former arrangements being this: that whereas when I was your guest, your private apartments occupied the eastern wing of the palace, they are now in the western, once mine, which I used then to maintain were the most agreeable and noble of all. The prospects which its windows afford of the temple, and the distant palace of the queen, and of the evening glories of the setting sun, are more than enough to establish its claims to an undoubted superiority; and if to these be added the circumstance, that for so long a time the Roman Piso was their occupant, the case is made out beyond all peradventure.
But I am describing your palace rather than my own. You must remember my paternal seat on the southern declivity of the hill, overlooking the course of the Tiber as it winds away to the sea. Mine is not far from it, but on the northern side of the hill, and thereby possessing a situation more favorable to comfort, during the heats of summer--I loving the city, as you well know, better if anything during the summer than the winter months. Standing upon almost the highest point of the hill, it commands a wide and beautiful prospect, especially toward the north and east, the eye shooting over the whole expanse of city and suburbs, and then resting upon the purple outline of the distant mountains. Directly before me are the magnificent structures which crown the Esquiline, conspicuous among which, and indeed eminent over all, are the Baths of Titus. Then, as you will conjecture, the eye takes in the Palatine and Capitol hills, catching, just beyond the last, the swelling dome of the Pantheon, which seems rather to rise out of, and crown, the Flavian Amphitheatre, than its own massy walls. Then, far in the horizon, we just discern the distant summits of the Appenines, broken by Soracte and the nearer hills.
The principal apartments are on the northern side of the palace, opening upon a portico of Corinthian columns, running its entire length and which would not disgrace Palmyra itself. At the eastern extremity, are the rooms common to the family; in the centre, a spacious hall, in the adorning of which, by every form of art, I have exhausted my knowledge and taste in such things; and at the western extremity, my library, where at this moment I sit, and where I have gathered around me all in letters and art that I most esteem. This room I have decorated for myself and Julia--not for others. Whatever has most endeared itself to our imaginations, our minds, or our hearts, has here its home. The books that have most instructed or amused; the statuary that most raises and delights us; the pictures on which we most love to dwell; the antiquities that possess most curiosity or value, are here arranged, and in an order that would satisfy, I believe, even your fastidious taste.
I will not weary you with any more minute account of my new dwelling, leaving that duty to the readier pen of Julia. Yet I cannot relieve you till I have spoken of two of the statues which occupy the most conspicuous niche in the library. You will expect me to name Socrates and Plato, or Numa and Seneca--these are all there, but it is not of either of them that I would speak. They are the venerable founders of the Jewish and Christian religions, MOSES and CHRIST. These statues, of the purest marble, stand side by side, at one extremity of the apartment; and immediately before them, and within the wondrous sphere of their influences stands the table at which I write, and where I pursue my inquiries in philosophy and religion. You smile at my enthusiasm, Fausta, and wonder when