A wonderful, epic, and poetic review at the same time... A harvest of cultured quotes, lofty digressions, literary delicacies: a ban on the detractors of the arena, you made me dream, I see hundreds of gladiators parade before me with their beautiful weapons, sparkling with sweat on their skin and armor, while little orchestras of ancient times present the morituri with solemn musical accents. Ah, what sadness to see a boiled fish filling the arenas today with monochord and deflated songs. Poe sang in Il Colosseo: Tipo dellāantica Roma! Rich reliquary of sublime contemplation, abandoned to time by buried centuries of pomp and might! At the end, after so many days of painful pilgrimage and burning thirst (thirst for the springs of knowledge that lie in you), I kneel, so changed and humble, among your shadows, and thus I intoxicate my soul with your greatness, your sadness, and your glory!
Immensity and Age! And the memory of the Past! Silence and Desolation! And deep night! I feel you now, I feel you now in your power! O enchantments more certain than those ever felt by any Jewish king in the gardens of Gethsemane! O enchantments more powerful than those the ecstatic Chaldean ever drew from the high, tranquil stars!
Here where a hero fell, a column falls! Here, where the Eagle shimmered in gold, the watchful midnight holds the black bat! Here, where the matrons of Rome waved their golden hair to the wind, now the reed and thistle sway! Here, where on a golden throne the monarch lay, the swift and silent lizard of stones passes by!
But halt! These walls, these arches clothed in ivy, these plinths that crumble to dust, these sorrowful and black columns, these vague cornices, this crumbling frieze, these shattered frames, this shipwreck, this ruin, these stonesāalas, these gray stonesāare all, all that the famous and colossal has left to time and to me.
"Not all," the Echoes reply: "not all. Prophetic sounds and strong rise always from us and from every ruin, toward the wise, like the melody of Memnon to the sun. We dominate the hearts of the most powerful men; we dominate with despotic empire every gigantic spirit.
"We are not powerless, we pale stones: not every power is extinguished, not every glory of ours, not all the magic of high renown, not all the wonder that surrounds us, not all the mysteries that lie within us; not all the memories that hang and cling around us like clothing, dressing us in a fabric that surpasses even glory itself."
