After this time there will perhaps be a few more remarkable structures erected, _e.g._ the Baths of Caracalla and of Diocletian and the Basilica (Court House) of Constantine, but for practical purposes imperial Rome has now been created. In 134 A.D. it is already architecturally what it will be in 410 A.D. (except then for a certain decadence) when Alaric’s Goths knocked at the gates. There is, therefore, hardly a better time than this year, 134 A.D., to visit the “Eternal City,” if we would discuss the best and the worst, the strength and the weakness of that Roman society which is to hold men fascinated across the ages. Let it be assumed, therefore, that on a warm spring morning we are being guided about the enormous capital of which bronze-skinned Arabs and blond-haired Frisians alike speak in awestruck whispers; the city apparently ordained by the gods to be the center and ruler of the conquered world. =3. Population and Crowded Condition of Rome.=--Before entering such a metropolis it is a fair question to present: “How large is Rome, at this time of our supposed visit?” Unfortunately the imperial government will fail to transmit to later ages its census statistics, and the conjectures of learned men will vary most seriously. By taking into account some data as to the number of citizens receiving grain doles, by adding to these the known size of the garrison, by establishing the extent of a great colony of resident foreigners and the still greater hordes of slaves, assertions can be made that the population exceeds 2,000,000, and again that it is barely 800,000. Both reckonings may be quite wrong. It seems reasonable to suppose that in Julius Cæsar’s day the city lacked considerably of 1,000,000 inhabitants, but these probably increased with the rising prosperity of the Empire. Hadrian’s “City Praefect” perhaps has to administer the peace for some 1,500,000 people. In later generations, however, the population will again slowly dwindle with the wave of the imperial system. However, this million and a half produces a sense of immensity greater perhaps than that in a later New York or London. Rome is, roughly speaking, some three miles long and nearly the same in breadth, no remarkable area as American cities will go;[1] but, as duly explained, population within these limits is extraordinarily congested. The streets overflow with pedestrians to the exclusion of most wheeled traffic. There are no “rapid transit” cars, no taxicabs, no telephones, and even no public postal service.