The _impluvium_ (pool for rain-water) in the peristyle (23B) of the private quarters contained a fountain, and is curiously treated with cut-out segments of circles, with cuttings in its top face for setting statues. This combination of plays of water and works of art is in the taste of the Sperlonga villa of Tiberius: ancient sources find a parallel between that monarch’s suspicious, tyrannical nature and Domitian’s. The small temple in the upper peristyle (24E), connected with the “mainland” by a curious seven-arched bridge, was built, to judge by its materials and technique, two centuries later than Domitian. But his is the “stadium” (26). Its portico makes it unlikely that it was ever a track for running races in the Greek style; he was to build such a stadium full-scale in the Campus Martius in A.D. 93. The Palatine stadium, in spite of its apsidal Imperial spectator’s box (the model for Bramante’s Vatican Belvedere), was probably a garden for shady strolling. Perhaps Hadrian had this plan in mind when he built the so-called “Painted Porch” or “Poecile” of his villa, to which we shall return. It is hard to realize that all this splendor lies only 100 yards from the site of “Romulus’” straw hut. The difference measures the distance Roman culture had travelled in 800 years. Nowadays, one can sit under the umbrella pines of a summer evening and hear symphony concerts played in Domitian’s stadium-garden. On such occasions it may seem less of a pity that the Palatine is incompletely excavated. Here, on this hill of dreams, as Miss Scherer calls it, one can imagine Domitian’s palace rich with many-colored marbles, bright with paintings and gold. One can wander in the dappled light among oleander and orange-trees, golden broom and scarlet poppies, and admire how the mellow brick glows rose-colored in the afternoon sunlight. One can appreciate the mood of the Romantics for whom, a century and a half ago, all Rome had this dream-like quality. One can argue that their attitude may not have been scientific, but it produced the classical revival in architecture. Here is the old dilemma, but its horns are properly labelled not art and science, but sentiment and intelligence. If we want truly to understand ancient Rome, the choice is clear. Sentiment is not a Roman quality; intelligence is. The atmosphere of Domitian’s reign was not dream but nightmare. The natural beauty of the Palatine is attractive but adventitious; the essence of the place is of another kind, starker, grander, more disciplined, than a nineteenth-century water color, and behind it looms always the shadow of violence. * * * * *