The Colosseum

What sentiment does the sight of the Colosseum give birth to in you? That produced by the aspect of every ruin: sadness. Its vast and beautiful proportions recall a whole world of grandeur; but its decrepitude invariably carries the thought toward the fragility of human things. All passes; and the monuments, which seemed to defy time, crumble, as if to prove that only the works of God are durable. And when the debris, strewn everywhere, protest against the eternity of the works of man, you dare to call eternal a city littered with the ruins of the past! Where are you, Babylon? Where are you, Nineveh? Where are your immense and splendid palaces? Traveler, in vain does he seek them beneath the sands of the desert; do you not see that God has wiped them from the face of the Earth? Rome! Do you hope, then, to affront the laws of Nature? I am Christian, you say, and Babylon was pagan. Yes; but, like her, you are of stone, and a breath of God can disperse those heaped-up stones. Does the soil that trembles around you not warn you that your cradle, which lies beneath your feet, may become your tomb? I am Christian, you say, and God protects me! But do you dare to compare yourself to those first Christians, who died for the faith, and whose thoughts were already of this world no longer, you who live on pleasures, luxury, and indolence? Cast your eyes upon these arenas, before which you pass with such indifference; interrogate these stones, still standing, and they will speak to you, and the shade of the martyrs will appear to you to say: What have you done with the simplicity, of which our divine master made a law, with humility and with charity, the example of which he gave us? Did they have palaces? Did they clothe themselves in gold and silk, those first propagators of the Gospel? Did their tables squander the superfluous? Did they have cohorts of useless servants to flatter their pride? What is there in common between you and them? They sought nothing but the treasures of Heaven, and you seek the treasures of the Earth! O men who call yourselves Christians, seeing your attachment to the perishable goods of this world, one would say in truth that you do not count on those of eternity. Rome! you who call yourself immortal, may the future centuries not seek your place, as today is sought that of Babylon! Dante. n Observation.

– By singular coincidence, these two last communications reached us on the same day. [See: Rome, by Massillon.] Although treating of the same subject, one sees that the Spirits view it each from his own personal point of view. The first sees the religious Rome and, in his opinion, eternal, because it will always be the capital of the Christian world; the second sees the material Rome and says that nothing that men build is eternal. Moreover, it is known that the Spirits have their opinions and that they can diverge among themselves in their manner of seeing, when still imbued with terrestrial ideas; only the purest Spirits are exempt from prejudices.

But, setting aside the opinion, which may be controversial, one cannot refuse to these two communications a great elevation of style and of thought, and we believe that they would not be discredited by the authors who bear their names.

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[v. Dante Alighieri.]