... gouffre cloaque. The Cloaca Maxima was the great sewer of Rome. It is still in existence and in use. Hugo here first makes it the symbol of the destruction towards which the Roman Empire was tending, and then treats it half as a concrete reality, half as a figure for some underworld in which dethroned ... — La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... is inexhaustible; he has nothing under the sun to do. Have you, Rowland? If you had seen the big hole I have been making in it! Where will you go first? You have your choice—from the Scala Santa to the Cloaca Maxima." ... — Roderick Hudson • Henry James
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