of gilding is also known to have been applied to the statues, which, as the metal was not beaten very thin, must have been an expensive mode of adornment, and the leaves consequently well worth the trouble of peeling off,-a practice that did not escape the notice of Juvenal amongst the vices of his age:

.....

Some pilfering khave will try

From Neptune's cheek or great Alcides' thigh To scrape the gilding,-or from Castor steal All of his plating that their hands can peel1. Lamps, each bearing several lights, called Polymyxos, were suspended within the temple, in which numerous statues of exquisite workmanship were assembled'. The Eleusinian goddess occupied the centre niche, having on

1 Satire 13. Badham's Translation.

2 See Antiq. Hercul. plate 49 to 52; and Martial, lib. xiv. Epig. 39.

3 In Spence's Anecdotes it is stated, on the authority of Ficoroni a famous Roman antiquary, that there were in his time 10,600 pieces of ancient sculpture of one sort or other, relievos, statues and busts, in Rome, and 6,300 ancient columns of marble. What multitudes of the last have been sawed out for tables and panelling chapels, or otherwise de

each side a Canephora, or female figure bearing a votive basket, executed in bronze'; and near the principal statue were those of Cupid and Hercules. In the centre of the Sacrarium stood an insulated pedestal bearing a gilt wooden figure of Good Fortune, to which deity, as the dispenser of riches and pleasure, particular attention was paid by the Romans. In drawers within a division of this sanctuary were kept the most valuable of the family papers, such as evidences and title-deeds; the archives in the chests of the Tablinum being considered as of the least real importance, documents of great interest could not be carefully preserved in so insecure a spot. The term archives, in its primary signification, expresses

stroyed! and what may there yet lie undiscovered under ground! When we think of this altogether, we may form some faint idea of the magnificence of Rome in its glory.p. 224.

1 A distinction has been drawn by Dr. Clarke between the ornaments and costume of the Canephora and Cistophori, and those of Ceres, with which they are sometimes confounded.

rather a collection of the proofs of ancestry, than title-deeds of estates.

The Penates, who presided over family affairs, were originally the manes of the illustrious dead, admitted by their votaries to partake of immortality. The philosopher Seneca' in a political view recommends the worship of those sons of men, whom eminent services to mankind had advanced to the rank of inferior gods; as it inculcated, in a manner the most sensible, the doctrine of the soul's immortality. Cicero also, to relieve his mind upon the death of his daughter Tullia, designed to build a temple in honour of her memory as a divinity. In his letters to Atticus he expresses his resolution and impatience to have it speedily erected: but after all his solicitude, it is supposed this temple was never actually built by Cicero, as no mention of it appears in any ancient writing.

Cicero, who was of an ancient and honour

1 De Leg. ii. 11.

2 Middleton's Life of Cicero, vol. ii. p. 189, &c.

able family, had no less than eighteen villas or country-seats, besides his house on the Palatine Hill, which cost him nearly £30,000, and is supposed to have been one of the noblest in Rome'. All his villas, excepting his paternal seat at Arpinum, were purchased or built by Cicero himself, and were generally situated near the sea, upon the lower coast between the cities of Rome and Pompeii. The principal were Tusculum, Arpinum, and his Formian, Cuman, Puteolan and Pompeian villas,—all with large plantations and gardens around them. Antium, thirty miles from Rome, he deposited his most valuable collection of books, including the works of the best Greek authors. His Puteolan house was built after the manner of the Academia at Athens, and was called by that name, having, in addition to the usual

At

It was bought of M. Crassus, and was adjoining to that in which he had always lived with his father, and which he is afterwards supposed to have given up to his brother Quintus. The purchase of so expensive a house occasioned some censure of Cicero, especially as it was made with borrowed money.

embellishments, a portico and grove for the convenience of philosophical conferences'. The furniture of Cicero's houses was perfectly suitable to the elegance of his taste and the magnificence of the buildings. His galleries were adorned with statues and pictures by the best Grecian masters. His vessels and moveables were of the most exquisite workmanship, and of the choicest materials. One article is particularly recorded:-a cedar table which existed in Pliny's time is known to have cost him eighty pounds2.

1 Sir J. C. Hobhouse, passing over the interesting remains of these villas, has pronounced a beautiful eulogium on Cicero, the wisest and best man of all antiquity. "Every site and relic that can remind us of him must be regarded with that veneration with which he himself contemplated the porticos and seats of the Athenian philosophers; and we treasure up the little dies of the pavement which lie scattered on the Formian shore, and may possibly have been trodden by the saviour of his country, with an affectionate regard scarcely inspired by the master-pieces of ancient art.". Illustrations of Childe Harold, p. 235.

2 Natural History, book xiii. chap. 15, in which Pliny relates many instances of the employment of citron-wood; and Middleton's Life of Cicero, vol. ii. p. 508, &c.