Old Rome

Robert Burn wrote Old Rome, subtitled A Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the Campagna. The preface says the book is intended to serve as a handbook to the actually-existing ruins and monuments of ancient Rome and the Campagna. The text says the huge vaulted arches of brick-work and concrete which remain in the Baths of Caracalla, and the Basilica of Constantine, and the massive arches of the Claudian Aqueduct, are the glory of Roman architecture.

The text says the Gnomon Obelisk, of which Pliny gives an interesting account in his Natural History, was erected on the Campus Martins under the directions of the mathematician Facundus Novus to serve as a sun-dial. The text says Pliny remarks that when he wrote, the gnomon had ceased for thirty years to mark the time rightly. A passage on a temple says the capitals exhibit a fantastic variety of the Corinthian order, having the second row of acanthus leaves nearly hidden behind the first.