Deciphering a Roman Blueprint

摘要

In the 1930s, hoping to energize Italy with memories of its glorious past, Benito Mussolini ordered extensive and hasty archaeological excavations in Rome. Over the centuries, annual floods of the Tiber River had deposited soil all over the city. In particular, the mausoleum erected by Augustus around A.D. 30 to demonstrate his power had acquired a layer of earth many meters deep outside its walls. Digging through six or seven meters of it, the workers hit a pavement made of massive blocks of rock.