"Many of my readers must have seen districts of the Roman Campagna, either when walking, riding, or gliding swiftly by in the railway carriage... Everywhere, in whatever direction one gazes, are ruins of tombs and aqueducts, - ruins which appear like a forest of indigenous plants, the growth of an earth composed of the dust of the dead."

   Rodolfo Lanciani,
              Ancient Rome in Light of Recent Discoveries (1888)