Regarding the face of Pompey's statue in the Spada Palace, I was more
struck than ever with a resemblance to American politicians which I
had noted in all the Roman statues. It is a type of face not now to be
found in Rome, but frequent enough here, and rather in the South
than in the North. Pompey was like the pictures of so many Southern
Congressmen that I wondered whether race had not less to do with
producing types than had similarity of circumstances; whether a
republicanism based upon slavery could not so far assimilate character
as to produce a common aspect in people widely separated by time and
creeds, but having the same unquestioned habits of command, and the
same boundless and unscrupulous ambition.