Watchers from the walls pointed eastward, to where on its
height, encircled by the foaming Anio, stood the little town of
Tibur; this, a stronghold overlooking the Ager Romanus, Totila had
turned aside to besiege. The place must soon yield to him. How long
before his horsemen came riding along the Tiburtine Way?
Close by Tibur, on a gently rising slope, sheltered by mountains
alike from northern winds and from the unwholesome breathing of the
south, stood the vast pleasure-house built by the Emperor Hadrian,
with its presentment in little of the scenes and architecture which
had most impressed him in his travels throughout the Roman world.
The lapse of four hundred years had restored to nature his
artificial landscape: the Vale of Tempe had forgotten its name;
Peneus and Alpheus flowed unnoticed through tracts of wood or
wilderness; but upon the multitude of edifices, the dwellings,
theatres, hippodromes, galleries, lecture halls, no destroyer's hand
had yet fallen. They abounded in things beautiful, in carving and
mosaic, in wall-painting and tapestries, in statues which had been
the glory of Greece, and in marble portraiture which was the boast
of Rome.
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