15. Formula addressed to the Praefect of the City on the Appointment of an Architect.

Architectus Publicorum.

'It is desirable that the necessary repairs to this forest of walls and population of statues which make up Rome should be in the hands of a learned man who will make the new work harmonise with the old. Therefore for this Indiction we desire your Greatness to appoint A B Architect of the City of Rome. Let him read the books of the ancients; but he will find more in this City than in his books. Statues of men, showing the muscles swelling with effort, the nerves in tension, the whole man looking as if he had grown rather than been cast in metal. Statues of horses, full of fire, with the curved nostril, with rounded tightly-knit limbs, with ears laid back—you would think the creature longed for the race, though you know that the metal moves not. This art of statuary the Etruscans are said to have practised first in Italy; posterity has embraced it, and given to the City an artificial population almost equal to its natural one. The ancients speak of the wonders of the world [here enumerated and described], but this one of the City of Rome surpasses them all. It had need to be a learned man who is charged with the care of upholding all these works; else, in his despair, he will deem himself the man of stone, and the statues about him the truly living men.'