found in the Appendix following page 362.




CHAPTER I


TOPOGRAPHICAL

The modern traveller of to-day arriving at Rome by rail drives to his
hotel through the uninteresting streets of a modern town, and thence
finds his way to the Forum and the Palatine, where his attention
is speedily absorbed by excavations which he finds it difficult to
understand. It is as likely as not that he may leave Rome without once
finding an opportunity of surveying the whole site of the ancient
city, or of asking, and possibly answering the question, how it
ever came to be where it is. While occupied with museums and
picture-galleries, he may well fail "totam aestimare Romam."[1]
Assuming that the reader has never been in Rome, I wish to transport
him thither in imagination, and with the help of the map, by an
entirely different route. But first let him take up the eighth book of
the _Aeneid_, and read afresh the oldest and most picturesque of all
stories of arrival at Rome;[2] let him dismiss all handbooks from his
mind, and concentrate it on Aeneas and his ships on their way from the
sea to the site of the Eternal City.

Virgil showed himself a true artist in bringing his hero up the Tiber,
which in his day was freely used for navigation up to and even above
the city. He saw that by the river alone he could land him exactly