Rome

Reading notes

• Goose Talk §24 Rome

  Alludes to the legend of the sacred geese of the Capitol, whose honking supposedly woke the Roman garrison and saved the city from a surprise Gaulish night attack (390 BC).

• To the Chekhovs, April 1891. Finalmarina. §5 Yesterday I was again in Rome and again went round St. Peter's. From the entrance door to the altar I counted 250 paces.

  This aside confirms that Chekhov's party made a return loop back through Rome around 10-11 April 1891 before continuing north and west to Genoa and the coast -- resolving the apparent dateline inconsistency between (which already has him leaving Rome for Naples on 3/15 April) and (dated 11/23 April, Rome). See the crossref to in this letter's crossrefs file, and that letter's own headnote, which anticipates this confirmation.

• A Failure of Compensation §37 Rome

  One of the cities the letter-writer restlessly circles between, climbing the Monte Pincio there to look out over the city and seeing only Vera's face in it.

• Office Notations §8 the Roman Empire

  Invoked here as a stock schoolroom moral ("luxury destroyed Rome") by an official padding a bureaucratic refusal with borrowed erudition -- the joke is the total irrelevance of the allusion to the actual request.