AUGUSTAN GLORY

The glamor of the "enternal' city" cannot be impaired by its association with dictators or the rabble of an illiterate populace. If possible, these rather enhance its fanciful and fashionable eclat by emphasizing the vicissitudes of its fortunes. Rome's most up-to-date advertising is still her age.

Presently to be rebuilt by Mussolini's hand and the spades of the Fascist faithful, Rome offers new attractions in the restoration of the old and imposition of the new. The Appian way is to be restored at the sacrifice of some ugly modernity now surrounding it. Excavation is expected to reveal the Circus Maximus and the Forum Olitorium. Construction is planned to raise among them a new Academy of Fine Arts. This represents a Fascist extravagance of ninety million lire.

People have always demanded romance from Rome and, if historians or connoisseurs of any pretentions, they have usually been satisfied. If not they have imagined satisfaction. However this may be, the proposed new Rome of the Dictator evokes in men a Byronic grandiosity which rather deserves its hour in a mechanistic age, even if diluted among democratic addicts with sighs of Byronic pity.