money for the use of their armies with the old insignia of the conquered cities. The workmanship is, indeed, inferior to the best specimens of Hellenic coins, but far superior to anything Roman before or after. Gold coins of similar model were not struck till near the close of the Hannibalic War (205 B.C.). The great mass of Roman coins which we possess belong to the last century of the Republic. They usually bear the family emblems of the person who presided over the mint, or of the Consuls for whose use they were struck, but the execution always remained rude and unattractive. Afterwards, Roman conquest gave the means of supplying works of Art by the easier mode of appropriation. In the conquest of Etruria, years before, the practice had been begun : from Volsinii alone we read that 2000 statues were brought to Rome. In following years Agrigentum, Syracuse, Corinth, and other famous cities, sent the finest works of Hellenic Art to decorate the public buildings and public places of the barbarous City of the Tiber, or in many cases to ornament the villas of the rapacious generals. § 20. In the more intellectual even of the Useful Arts the Romans made no great progress. The contrivances of Archimedes for the defence of Syracuse struck them with amazement. In Cicero's time they usually carried the sciences of Quantity and Magnitude no further than was necessary for practical arithmetic and mensuration. In 293 B.C. L. Papirius Cursor the younger set up a sun-dial at Rome, and thirty years later another was brought from Sicily by the Consul M. Valerius Messala; but no one knew how to place them, so as to make the shadow of the gnomon an index of time. A waterclock, resembling our sand-glass, was not introduced till 159 B.C. § 21. Nor were the common conveniences of life in an advanced state. Up to the year 264 the houses were commonly roofed with shingles of wood, like the Alpine cottages of our days; then first earthen tiles began to supersede this rude material. Agriculture must have been roughly carried on by men who were as much soldiers as countrymen. The wine of Latium was so bad that Cineas, when he tasted it, said,-and the witticism was remembered," he did not wonder that the VOL. I. 2 I mother of such wine was hung so high;" alluding to the Italian custom, still retained, of training the vine up elms and poplars, while in Greece it was trained (as in France and Germany) on short poles and exposed to all the heat of the sun. § 22. The form of Architecture in general use at Rome was called Tuscan, and bore an imperfect resemblance to that early Greek style usually called the Doric. But the existing remains of the Republican period are too scanty to allow of more precise statements. The true Arts of Rome were, then and always, the Arts of the Builder and Engineer. It would not be wrong to call the Romans the greatest Builders in the world. Some of the mighty works of their earlier times,works combining solidity of structure with beauty of form and utility of purpose,-still exist to claim our admiration, having survived the decay of ages and the more destructive hands of barbarian conquerors. In every country subject to their sway, roads and bridges and aqueducts remain in sufficient number and perfection to justify all praise. We class the roads among the buildings, according to their own phraseology, and their construction deserves the name as justly as the works upon our own railways. The first great military road and the first aqueduct are due to the old Censor Appius Cæcus, and they both remain to preserve the memory of the man, often selfwilled and presumptuous, but resolute, firm of purpose, noble in conception, and audacious in execution. Other aqueducts and other roads rapidly followed; the spade and trowel were as much the instruments of Roman dominion as the sword and spear. By the close of the Punic Wars solid roads, carried by the engineer's art over broad and rapid streams, through difficult mountain-passes, across quaking morasses, had already linked Rome with Capua in the South, with Placentia and Cremona in the North. Such were the proud monuments of the Appii, the Emilii, the Flaminii. § 23. It may be said that these magnificent works, as well as the vast Amphitheatres and Baths which afterwards decorated Rome and every petty city in her provinces, were due to the invention of the Arch. This simple piece of mechanism, a Munire vium, was their phrase. so wonderful in its results, first appears in the Great Cloaca. It was unknown to the Greeks, or at least not used by them." It may be that the Romans borrowed it from the Etruscans; the Cloaca is attributed to an Etruscan king, and similar works are discovered in ruined cities of Etruria. But if they borrowed the principle they used it nobly, as witness the noble bridges still remaining, the copious streams carried over the plain for miles at the height of sixty or seventy feet from the level of the soil. If they had little feeling for beauty and delicacy in the use of the pencil or the chisel, their buildings are stamped with a greatness which exalted the power of the State while it disregarded the pleasure of the individual. § 24. Their attention to practical utility in draining and watering their city is especially noted by Strabo in contrast with the indifference shown by the Greeks to these matters. To the facts already stated may be added their rule, established so early as the year 260 B.C., that no one should be buried within the city,-a rule scarcely yet adopted in London. From this time dates the beginning of those rows of sepulchral monuments which the traveller beheld on either side of the road as he entered the Eternal City. It was a gloomy custom, but better at least than leaving graveyards in the heart of crowded cities. § 25. A striking proof of engineering skill is shown in the tunnels cut through solid rock for the purpose of draining off volcanic lakes: this art we may also believe to have been originally borrowed from the Etruscans. The first tunnel of which we hear was that by which the Alban Lake was partially let off during the siege of Veii, a work which was suggested by an Etruscan soothsayer." Other works of like kind still remain, though the time of their execution is not always known. Here shall be added the notice of one work of kindred sort, which happens by a rare coincidence to combine great utility with rarest beauty. The famous M' Curius Dentatus, when The Arch is said to have been invented by Democritus, Posidon ap. Senec., Ep. 80. But it had long existed in Etruria. See Chapt. iii. § 11. The present Traveller may see their ruins, which have recently been uncovered by the Papal Government. See Canina's Via Appia. "See Chapt. xiii. § 6, with the note. Censor in 272, cut a passage through the rock, by which the waters of Lake Velinus were precipitated into the Nar. By this means he recovered for his newly-conquered Sabine Clients a large portion of fertile land, and left behind the most lovely, if not the most sublime, of all waterfalls. The Falls of Terni, such is the famous name they now bear, were wrought by the hand of man. "Thousands of travellers visit them," says Niebuhr; "how few know that they are not the work of Nature!" § 26. It will be something gained if from these imperfect chapters the English reader shall have learned to look upon the early Romans as they were,-men of strong wills and rigid morals, who cared little for the elegancies of life, but much for its freedom and order; who scorned the credit to be derived from originality compared with the practical uses of an invention; who were trained by education and discipline to rule themselves, and were thus carried on from conquest to conquest by an insatiable desire to rule others. The Roman of this time has his own virtues,-simplicity and good morals, joined indeed with roughness and want of feeling. In a later age he lost the virtues without losing the defects. The Roman, as we shall find him at the end of his career of conquest, without simplicity of manners and morality of life, corrupted by wealth and luxury, yet coarse and unfeeling as ever, is a being who does little honour to humanity. END OF VOLUME I. LONDON: PRINTED BY W. 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