Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 | Page 8

been cheaper to their first owners than they are to a modern purchaser, several of the pillars are certainly rated at a much lower price at present than they were of old. For not to mention what a huge column of granite, serpentine, or porphyry must have cost in the quarry, or in its carriage from Egypt to Rome, we may only consider the great difficulty of hewing it into any form, and of giving it the due turn, proportion, and polish. The most valuable pillars about Rome, for the marble of which they are made, are the four columns of oriental jasper in St. Paulina's chapel at St. Maria Maggiore; two of oriental granite in St. Pudenziana; one of transparent oriental jasper in the Vatican library; four of Nero-Bianco, in St. Cecilia Transtevere; two of Brocatello, and two of oriental agate in Don Livio's palace; two of Giallo Antico in St. John Lateran, and two of Verdi Antique in the Villa Pamphilia. These are all entire and solid pillars, and made of such kinds of marble as are nowhere to be found but among antiquities, whether it be that the veins of it are undiscovered, or that they were quite exhausted upon the ancient buildings. Among these old pillars, I can not forbear reckoning a great part of an alabaster column, which was found in the ruins of Livia's portico. It is of the color of fire, and may be seen over the high altar of St. Maria in Campitello; for they have cut it into two pieces, and fixt it in the shape of a cross in a hole of the wall that was made on purpose to receive it; so that the light passing through it from without, makes it look, to those who are in the church, like a huge transparent cross of amber.

THE PALACE OF THE C?SARS[6]
BY RODOLFO LANCIANI
The Palatine hill became the residence of the Roman emperors, and the center of the Roman Empire, not on account of its historical and traditional associations with the foundation and first growth of the city, nor because of its central and commanding position, but by a mere accident. At daybreak on September 21st, of the year 63 B.C., Augustus was born in this region, in a modest house, opening on the lane called "ad capita bubula," which led from the valley, where now the Coliseum stands, up the slopes of the hill toward the modern church and convent of St. Bonaventura.
This man, sent by God to change the condition of mankind and the state of the world, this founder of an empire which is still practically in existence,[7] never deserted the Palatine hill all through his eventful career. From the lane "ad capita bubula" he moved to the house of Calvus, the orator, at the northeast corner of the hill overlooking the forum; and in process of time, having become absolute master of the Roman Commonwealth, he settled finally on the top of the hill, having purchased for his residence the house of Hortensius, a simple and modest house, indeed, with columns of the commonest kind of stone, pavements of rubble-work, and simple whitewashed walls.
Whether this selection of a site was made because the Palatine had long before been the Faubourg St. Honor��, the Belgravia of ancient Rome, is difficult to determine. We know that the house of Hortensius, chosen by Augustus, was surrounded by those of Clodius, Scaurus, Crassus, Caecina, Sisenna, Flaccus, Catiline, and other members of the aristocracy. I am persuaded, however, that the secret of the selection is to be found in the simplicity, I will even say in the poverty, of the dwelling; in fact, such extreme modesty is worthy of the good sense and the spirit of moderation shown by Augustus throughout his career. He could very well sacrifice appearances to the reality of an unbounded power. It is just, at any rate, to recognize that even in his remotest resorts for temporary rest and retirement from the cares of government, he led the same kind of plain, modest life, spending all his leisure hours in arranging his collections of natural history, more especially the palaeo-ethnological or prehistoric, for which the ossiferous caverns of the Island of Capri supplied him with abundant materials.
It was only after the victory of Actium that, finding himself master of the world, he thought it expedient to give up, in a certain measure, his former habits, and live in better style. Having bought through his agents some of the aristocratic palaces adjoining the old house of Hortensius, among them the historical palace of Catiline, he built a new and very handsome residence, but declared at the same time that he considered it as public property, not as his own. The solemn dedication of the palace took place