The city of Rome must have been a wonderful spectacle under the emperors. One of our modern international exhibitions might faintly recall a little of its splendours, with gilt and stucco for gold and marble. Northward from the slope of the Aventine Hill there was a succession of majestic public buildings, temple beyond temple, forum beyond forum, as each of the great emperors had added to the work of his predecessor and endeavoured to eclipse it. At your feet would be the Circus Maximus, where the chariot-races were held, and behind it the Palatine Hill crowded with palaces. To the east of it ran the Triumphal Road passing through the Arch of [Illustration: The Roman Forum in the early Empire] Constantine to the Colossus of Nero and the mighty Flavian Amphitheatre known to us as the Colosseum. From there the Sacred Way led north-west through the Arch of Titus past the Temple of Venus and Rome and the Basilica of Constantine to a series of stately _fora_, opening one from the other and containing altars, columns, arches, statues, and temples surrounded with shady colonnades, whose cloisters served for business and pleasure. Above them on the west rose the ancient Capitoline Hill crowned with its great Temple of Jupiter and immemorial citadel. Picture these magnificent spaces filled with grave citizens in their flowing white togas, hurrying slaves in their bright tunics, visitors and barbarians from all corners of the earth, trousered Gauls, skin-clad Sarmatians, mitred Parthians. Every now and then the burly gladiators swagger through the crowd admired by every one, or a procession of the shaven begging priests of Isis passes by with strange cries and gestures. Perhaps the lictors come swinging down the hill bidding every one make way for the slaves who carry the litter of the emperor who is on his way to sacrifice. Or fancy the crowd in the Great Amphitheatre, which held more than eighty thousand spectators, with the purple and gold awnings spread to protect them from the blazing sunshine, the auditorium perfumed with scents and cooled by fountains, and the arena at their feet flooded with water to present a naval combat. It is a city wrapped in profound peace, still dreaming amid its splendours that it is the mistress of the world.