Lyric Poems, kept constantly increasing, and perhaps was carried higher by no one than by his patron and friend Mæcenas himself.

Some idea of the extent and peculiar construction of the Golden House of Nero is to be obtained from Suetonius's description'. He states, that in nothing was the Emperor more prodigal than in building; and that in this house the vestibule was lofty enough to admit under it a colossal statue of the founder, no less than one hundred and twenty feet in height, and that the palace extended by three colonnades a mile in length. In the centre was an immense lake, surrounded with buildings, having the appearance of a town; and within the compass of the domain were cornfields, vineyards, pastures, and woods, stocked with a variety of animals both wild and tame. The interior of the palace was overlaid with gold, and enriched with jewels and mother-of-pearl. The rooms devoted to public

1 In his Life of Nero Claudius Cæsar.

entertainments are represented as arched with vaults of ivory, or with ceilings so contrived as to scatter fragrant flowers amongst the guests; besides which, they were furnished with pipes for conveying into different parts aromatic waters and sweet-smelling unctions. The chief banqueting-room in this palace is described as completely circular in plan, and fitted with a very ingenious piece of mechanism, made to revolve, producing the effect of day or night, in imitation of the celestial hemisphere'. The baths, equally magnificent in their plan, were supplied with salt water from the Mediterranean, and with warm water, conducted by rivulets from the hot springs of Baiæ. After an enormous expense had been thus lavished, and which nothing but the revenue of an empire could have afforded, Nero merely observed, he had at last completed a habitation fit for a man,

1 Those who are acquainted with the Diorama exhibitionroom in the Regent's Park, London, will have an excellent idea of the facility of producing an effect of this kind.

With the materials of this palace it is said the Temple of Peace, the Baths of Titus, and the Amphitheatre of Vespasian were afterwards partly constructed. Of the Temple of Peace, built by Vespasian, the only remains are three very large arches, the soffits of which are enriched with octagonal panels, and certainly do not convey any competent idea of that splendour which authors have related that this palace originally displayed. History, indeed, records that it was not only the most superb, but the largest palace in the universe, after the Golden House was destroyed,-which is rather extraordinary; the dimensions given to it, if they are correct, viz. three hundred feet in length and two hundred feet in width, being nothing uncommon for the magnitude of a palace. The exterior of the building is said to have been covered with large sheets of gilt bronze; it was adorned with the finest statues, pictures, marbles, and other rich ornaments; besides which the citizens here deposited their treasures as in a place of security, under the protection

J

of the Emperor and the Senate of Rome. This edifice was at length destroyed with all its contents by a conflagration. The site of the palace of the Cæsars at Rome, comprehending the remains of the residence of the Emperors and the Golden House of Nero, is now a desert, full of ruins and vast fragments of temples and baths. There are still to be found parts of a terrace, overlooking the Circus Maximus, whence the Emperors gave the signal for the commencement of the games. In another quarter of this interesting site are three rooms, in good preservation, which display a little of the ancient Roman taste in the construction and proportions of the apartments of a noble house. These seem to have received their light, like the Pantheon, from an opening in the ceiling; and instead of the formal square which so much prevails in modern rooms, each of the four sides is here broken into a semicircular recess. The same accumulation of soil has taken place on the Palatine Hill as elsewhere in Rome; for these chambers, which must have

1

been once on the surface, are now many feet below the ground'.

Few vestiges even remain of those innumerable villas with which Italy was once crowded; although in erecting and adorning them the Romans lavished the wealth and spoils of the world. Some accidental allusions in the ancient poets, and some occasional descriptions

Tappen's Professional Observations on the Architecture of Italy, &c.; and Matthews's Diary of an Invalid.

Bianchini, a learned Italian antiquary, wrote an account of his discoveries Del Palazzo de Cesari, which was published after his death, at Verona in 1738. He spent his fortune and lost his life in excavating the ground; but carried his theoretical arrangement of the edifice too far, according to Forsyth, a most intelligent traveller, and perhaps the best architectural critic who has visited the spot. Speaking of the Imperial Palace, he says, "In the present chaos of broken walls and arcades we can no longer retrace the general design of this palace as it existed in any one reign. Palladio, whose imagination has rebuilt so many ruins, forbore from these. Panvinio tried in vain to trace the original plan in his Topographia Roma, published in the sixteenth century."-See Forsyth's Remarks on Antiquities, Arts, &c. in Italy, p. 141.