"Rome that killed Rome"

“FOR it was literally Rome that killed Rome. The great cosmopolitan city of gold and marble, the successor of Alexandria and Antioch, had nothing in common with the old capital of the rural Latin state. It served no social function, it was an end in itself, and its population drawn from every nation under heaven existed mainly to draw their Government doles, and to attend the free spectacles with which the Government provided them. It was a vast useless burden on the back of the empire which broke at last under the increasing strain.”

~Christopher Dawson: Progress and Decay. (1924)

Capriccio with the Colosseum, by Bernardo Bellotto.
Oil on canvas, 1743-44; Galleria Nazionale, Parma.