No other city I know can match the sheer vitality of Rome at the hour just before mid-morning. Rome wakes with a self-satisfied stretching of the limbs and a deep inhalation, stimulating the lungs, quickening the pulse. Rome wakes with a smile, roused from

pleasant dreams, for every night Rome goes to sleep dreaming a dream of empire. In the morning Rome opens her eyes, ready to go about the business of making that dream come true in broad daylight. Other cities cling to sleep — Alexandria and Athens to warm dreams of the past, Pergamum and Antioch to a coverlet of Oriental splendour, little Pompeii and Herculaneum to the luxury of napping till noon. Rome is happy to shake off sleep and begin her agenda for the day. Rome has work to do. Rome is an early riser.

Rome is multiple cities in one. On any given hour's journey across it, one will see at least several of its guises. To the eyes of those who look at a city and see faces, it is first and foremost a city of slaves, for the slaves far outnumber citizens and freedmen. Slaves are everywhere, as ubiquitous and as vital to the life of the city as the waters of the Tiber or the light of the sun. Slaves are the lifeblood of Rome.

They are of every race and condition. Some spring from a stock indistinguishable from their masters. They walk the streets better dressed and more finely groomed than many a free man; they may lack the toga of a citizen, but their tunics are made of material just as fine. Others are unimaginably wretched, like the pockmarked, half-idiot labourers one sees winding through the streets in ragged files, naked except for a cloth to cover then-sex, joined by chains at the ankles and bearing heavy weights, kept in line by bullies with long whips and further tormented by the clouds of flies that follow wherever they go. They hurry to the mines, or to galleys, or to dig the deep foundations of a rich man's house on their way to an early grave.

To those who look at a city and see not humanity but stone, Rome is overwhelmingly a city of worship.