'That detestable father [italics]St Jerome[end italics], thus reacts to the Fall of Rome:-- '[...] When the refugees [...] began to reach Palestine: "I was long silent, knowing that it was the time for tears. Since to relieve them all was impossible, we joined our lamentations with theirs [...]" [...] Virgil's "Urbas antiqua ruit, multos dominata per annos" quoted, which I myself was to read 1500 [sic] later, after seeing the Docks on fire from my roof in Chiswick. '[Extracted from Hodgkin. Jerome has to leave Rome for the desert because he found the ladies too charming there.'