Roma: Ancient, Subterranean, And Modern Rome, In Word And Picture

Roma: Ancient, Subterranean, And Modern Rome, In Word And Picture

Author: Kuhn, Albert, 1839-1929

Year: 1916

Preface Among all the cities raised by the cunning of man Rome stands foremost. Its charm is infinite, and forever it attracts mankind as the mighty seat of ancient empire, the mother and nurse of all modern nations, and the center of Catholicism. Nowhere has man left more durable and impressive monuments, nowhere does he stand forth so clearly the lord of creation as on the banks of the yellow Tiber, where for nearly three thousand years the proofs of his genius have multiplied, until there is nothing to surpass them in statesmanship, arms, legis- lation, letters, and those noble arts by which man rises above the animal world and touches on his heavenly home. Its happy position and its climate, no less than the rude and simple virtues of its first inhabitants, made it one day the mistress of the world's most historic peninsula. The story of her political growth fascinates us forever, as it did Polybius and St. Augustine. The very wreckage of her splendor, palaces, baths, porticos, theaters, obelisks, arches, still encumbers the sites of departed greatness, and our eyes may richly feast on the sites where Cicero spoke to the masters of this earth, and where Augustus ruled with firm