ROME,REIMAGINED

摘要

Ever since livy dipped his quill and Gibbon marked his proofs, histories of Rome have been a dime a dozen. But there is only one Robert Hughes-only one writer, it's safe to say, who would describe the ancient city as "Calcutta on the Mediterranean" and then convince you of the rightness of that vision. The "city of the imagination," he writes, is "mostly white ... white cylinders of stone gleaming in the sun ... white ramps, white colonnades, flights of white steps ... White people inhabit this townscape of course and they are wearing white togas."