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brated villa of Lucullus, situated near Naples, which had more the air of a magnificent town than a rural seat. Here this luxurious and accomplished Roman general not only caused hills on the coast to be cut through, for the purpose of conducting the ocean into a lake, which he had been at the expense of forming on his estate, but directed whole bays of the sea to be dammed up, for the sake of covering them with marble structures, that he might indulge in his love of artificial variety. exorbitant luxury in building, which Horace notices in various familiar passages of his

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ceius, Anxur, and the more airy situations in the mountains, were their favourite retirements during the heats of summer. Juvenal also notices the rage for erecting villas which prevailed in his time :

Centronius lov'd to build; and now the shore,
Of curv'd Cajeta priz'd-now charm'd him more
The cliffs of Tibur ;-next some lofty site
Amid Preneste's mountains would invite.
The villas rose!—thither were marbles brought,
From Grecian and more distant quarries sought.
Badham's Translation, Satire 14.

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

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

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