The period of imperial theocracy showed Rome in her pomp and splendour, covering inner hollowness and gradual decay with marble slabs. Palaces and temples, basilicæ and arcades, triumphal arches and amphitheatres, arenas and baths (of the latter Rome alone had about 768), naumachiæ and circuses, theatres and arenas, hippodromes and magnificent tombs abounded; but in all these architectural marvels, the monumental spirit of pride, self-glorification, vain ostentation, and theatrical display, is to be traced; the love of beauty, of artistic moderation, and simplicity being everywhere conspicuous by its absence. Roman art and decoration are to be carefully studied, that we may learn ‘how not to do it,’ if we earnestly intend to produce works of art, and not works of ornamentation, forming a very Paradise for ‘parvenus’ with bad taste. We have asserted that the Romans never produced anything original in art and science. Their religion, their literature, and their products of art, bear this assertion out to the very letter. The word ‘religion’ is of Roman origin. The Teutons have _faith_ or trust in God. The Roman word meant the tying down of everyone to certain formulas or dogmas. They borrowed their dogmas and superstitions, their gods and ceremonies, from all parts of the world; especially from the Greeks and Etruskans, and later from the Egyptians. Everything served their purpose so soon as it helped to overawe the masses. They had augurs, auspices, and sibylline oracles. From the entrails of beasts and human beings they predicted the future. Flashes of lightning, the rolling thunder, the flight of birds, meetings with hares, goats, dogs, or cats, announced the will of the gods. The conceptions of the Eastern gods were disfigured, and they were made more jealous, threatening, merciless, revengeful, and inexorable. Jupiter the thunderer (Jupiter tonans) did not govern by any moral law, but by mere force; he spoke in flashes of lightning and in thunder, in terrifying earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Amongst the 30,000 deities with which the Roman triple theocracy peopled the visible and invisible world, there was not ONE divinity of kindness, mercy, and comfort. They had a divinity of peace, to urge them on to war; they had divinities of plague, hunger, fever, mildew, and death. In their practical spirit they went even so far as to have a ‘Dea Cloacina.’ What subjects to paint or sculpture! A pale-yellow woman with dishevelled hair, protruding ghastly eyes, wasted lips, fleshless and emaciated limbs, may represent the goddess of hunger; another woman deliberately and slowly tearing the limbs of helpless creatures from their bodies with diabolical delight, may be a goddess of plague; another, placidly playing with human skulls in a field surrounded by dying men, women, and children, may be the goddess of death. In the illustration of a Dante or a Milton, a knowledge of the Roman mythology may prove full of suggestive power.