Even in our own times botanical works have been composed on the plants which have made this noble wreck their home.

"The Flora of the Coliseum" contains four hundred and twenty species.
Among the ruins of classical buildings might be seen broken columns, cypresses, and mouldy frescoes, dropping from the walls.

Even the vegetable world participated in the melancholy change: the myrtle, which once flourished on the Aventine, had nearly become extinct; the laurel, which once gave its leaves to encircle the brows of emperors, had been replaced by ivy--the companion of death.
But perhaps it may be said the popes were not responsible for all this.
Let it be remembered that in less than one hundred and forty years the city had been successively taken by Alaric, Genseric, Rieimer, Vitiges, Totila; that many of its great edifices had been converted into defensive works.

The aqueducts were destroyed by Vitiges, who ruined the Campagna; the palace of the Caesars was ravaged by Totila; then there had been the Lombard sieges; then Robert Guiscard and his Normans had burnt the city from the Antonine Column to the Flaminian Gate, from the Lateran to the Capitol; then it was sacked and mutilated by the Constable Bourbon; again and again it was flooded by inundations of the Tiber and shattered by earthquakes.

We must, however, bear in mind the accusation of Machiavelli, who says, in his "History of Florence," that nearly all the barbarian invasions of Italy were by the invitations of the pontiffs, who called in those hordes! It was not the Goth, nor the Vandal, nor the Norman, nor the Saracen, but the popes and their nephews, who produced the dilapidation of Rome! Lime-kilns had been fed from the ruins, classical buildings had become stone-quarries for the palaces of Italian princes, and churches were decorated from the old temples.
Churches decorated from the temples! It is for this and such as this that the popes must be held responsible.