And All Those Other
Mediaeval Scourges, Epidemics And Floods And Famines.
That sirocco, the
worst of many Italian varieties:
Who shall calculate its debilitating
effect upon the stamina of the race? Up to quite a short time ago,
moreover, the population was malarious; older records reek of malaria;
that, assuredly, will leave its mark upon the inhabitants for years to
come. And the scorching Campagna beyond the walls, that forbidden land
in whose embrace the city lies gasping, flame-encircled, like the
scorpion in the tale....
A well-known scholar, surveying Rome with the mind's eye, is so
impressed with its "eternal" character that he cannot imagine this site
having ever been occupied otherwise than by a city. To him it seems
inevitable that these walls must always have stood where now they
stand - must have risen, he suggests, out of the earth, unaided by human
hands. Yet somebody laid the foundation-stones, once upon a time;
somebody who lived under conditions quite different from those that
supervened. For who - not five thousand, but, say, five hundred years
ago - who would have thought of building a town on a spot like this? None
but a crazy despot, some moonstruck Oriental such as the world has
known, striving to impress his dreams upon a recalcitrant nature. No
facilities for trade or commerce, no scenic beauty of landscape, no
harbour, no defence against enemies, no drinking water, no mineral
wealth, no food-supplying hinterland, no navigable river - a dangerous
river, indeed, a perpetual menace to the place - every drawback, or
nearly so, which a town may conceivably possess, and all of them huddled
into a fatally unhealthy environment, compressed in a girdle of fire and
poison.
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