" Thus the prospect from the top of the Alban
Mount in the early days of Rome must have been very different in
some respects from what it is to-day. The purple Apennines, indeed,
in their eternal calm on the one hand, and the shining Mediterranean
in its eternal unrest on the other, no doubt looked then much as
they look now, whether bathed in sunshine, or chequered by the
fleeting shadows of clouds; but instead of the desolate brown
expanse of the fever-stricken Campagna, spanned by its long lines of
ruined aqueducts, like the broken arches of the bridge in the vision
of Mirza, the eye must have ranged over woodlands that stretched
away, mile after mile, on all sides, till their varied hues of green
or autumnal scarlet and gold melted insensibly into the blue of the
distant mountains and sea.
But Jupiter did not reign alone on the top of his holy mountain. He
had his consort with him, the goddess Juno, who was worshipped here
under the same title, Moneta, as on the Capitol at Rome. As the oak
crown was sacred to Jupiter and Juno on the Capitol, so we may
suppose it was on the Alban Mount, from which the Capitoline worship
was derived.
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