At their base, Rienzi, "last of the Roman tribunes,"
fell. And, if the tradition of the Church is to be trusted, it was on
the site of the present high altar that Augustus erected the "_Ara
primogenito Dei_" to commemorate the Delphic prophecy of the coming of
our Saviour. Standing on a spot so thronged with memories, the dullest
imagination takes fire. The forms and scenes of the past rise from their
graves and pass before us, and the actual and visionary are mingled
together in strange poetic confusion. Truly, as Walpole says, "memory
sees more than our eyes in this country."
And this is one great charm of Rome,--that it animates the dead figures
of its history. On the spot where they lived and acted, the Caesars
change from the manikins of books to living men; and Virgil, Horace, and
Cicero grow to be realities, as we walk down the Sacred Way and over
the very pavement they may once have trod. The conversations "De Claris
Oratoribus" and the "Tusculan Questions" seem like the talk of the last
generation, as we wander on the heights of Tusculum, or over the grounds
of that charming villa on the banks of the Liris, which the great Roman
orator so graphically describes in his treatise "De Legibus.
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