Researcher won’t render unto Caesar his claim of transforming Rome to marble

It turns out Caesar Augustus was an undeserving braggart. He claimed, “I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.” But new research by a university professor has found that only a small minority of the city of Rome’s buildings in Augustus’ time were marble.

“Many scholars have looked at Augustus’s claim from a political standpoint, as a metaphor for him transforming a republic into an empire. I wanted to see if Rome literally transformed under his rule,” said Diane Favro of the University of California-Los Angeles’ Department of Architecture and Urban design.