ABSTRACT
The Rome of literature is not an Augustan Rome. It is the Rome of the popes, the Rome of the Renaissance, the Rome of galleries and haunted palaces and enchanted villas that had no being till Constantinople was at an end. The sacks of 1204 and 1453 undoubtedly made away with the better part of the statuary and other precious things of which Constantinople was so unparalleled a museum, but some buried Greek marble may yet come to light. Constantinople is full of stories and legends of the same sort, in most of which figures a secret passage leading underground to St. Sophia. The richest remains of old Constantinople are its churches. Little as they are generally known, almost every one knows something about the greatest of them. The oldest of them is St. John the Baptist of the Studion, so called from the Roman senator Studius who about 463 founded a monastery near the Golden Gate.
