among the pleasures

text from alternate manuscript at eldritch dark.

''treasury of art, emporium of wealth, so expensive to live in that the saying ran "not everyone can go to corinth", its citadel poised so grandly on the craggy mountain above, the two blue gulfs spread below, it walls fortified with such extravagant strength--this superb city came crashing down in flames, and mummiu's soldiery hacked their way about streets, temples, rich villas, sepulchres, great warehouses stored with merchandise, galleries set with marble and bronze statues and bright paintings, smashing, looting, destroying and massacring, in philistine triumph and greed. they left behind them chaos, piled corpses, an almost razed city ...

''the dramatic contrast between the city of blackened ruins and broken stones and the magnificence that had been, stirred for a century the pity and the imagination of all who passed that way ... wrecked corinth thus lay derelict, lived in by a few, but uncleared and unbuilt, from 146 to 44 bc. then julius caesar who knew the importance of its position, set to work to rebuild it, clearing away the hundred years of ruins and building up a fine roman town. ...

''roman merchants and gentlemen came and grew rich in the once-more flourishing sea trade; they built their villas where those of rich corinthians had stood; digging about, they came on beautiful objects buried in debris; in their theatres they had gladitorial shows; they soon became licentious enough to qualify for the diatribes of st. paul; perhaps they absorbed it from the ancient site of libertinism; and such influences may be numbered among the pleasures of ruins.''

rose macaulay, pleasure of ruins.