The Forum lies like an open sepulchre in the heart of old Rome.  All is death there; the death of nature and the death of a race whose long history has done more to shape the destiny of the world than any other.  The soil beneath our feet is formed by the ashes of an extinct fire, and by the dust of a vanished empire.  Everywhere the ruins of time and of man are mingled with the relics of an older creation; and the sculptured marbles of the temples and law courts, where Caesar worshipped and Cicero pled, lie scattered amid the tufa-blocks, the cinders of the long quiescent volcanoes of the Campagna.  Nature and man have both accomplished their work in this spot; and the relics they have left behind are only the exuviae of the chrysalis out of which the butterfly has emerged, or the empty wave-worn shells left high and dry upon an ancient coast-line.  It is a remarkable circumstance that the way in which the Forum originated was the very way in which it was destroyed.  The cradle of Roman greatness became its tomb.  The Forum originated in the volcanic fires of earth; it passed away in the incendiary fires of man.  In the month of May 1084 the Norman leader, Robert Guiscard, came with his troops to rescue Gregory VII. from the German army which besieged Rome.  Then broke out—­whether by accident or design is not known—­the terrible conflagration which extended from the Capitol to the Coelian Hill, but raged with the greatest intensity in the Forum.  In that catastrophe classical Rome passed away, and from the ashes of the fire arose the Phoenix of modern Rome.  The greatest of physical empires was wrecked on this spot, and out of the wreck was constructed the greatest spiritual empire the world has ever known.  For the Roman Pontificate, to use the famous saying of Hobbes, was but the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.

CHAPTER VI

THE EGYPTIAN OBELISKS

Among the first objects that arrest the attention and powerfully excite the curiosity of the visitor in Rome are the Egyptian obelisks.  They remind him impressively that the oldest things in this city of ages are but as of yesterday in comparison with these imperishable relics of the earliest civilisation.  At one time it is said that there were no less than forty-eight obelisks erected in Rome,—­six of the largest size and forty-two of the smaller,—­all conveyed at enormous cost and with almost incredible labour from the banks of the Nile to the banks of the Tiber.  Upwards of thirty of them have perished without leaving any trace behind.  They are doubtless buried deep under the ruins of ancient Rome, but the chance of their disinterment is very problematical.  One obelisk, indeed, was exposed a hundred and forty years ago in the square of the principal church of the Jesuits, near the Pantheon; but being found to be broken, and also to underlie a corner of the church and the greater part of an adjoining palace, so that it could not be extracted without seriously injuring these buildings, it was covered up again, and was thus lost to the world.  As it is, we find in Rome the largest collection of obelisks that exists at the present day in the world, and the best field for studying them.