348 plint's natukal histoet. [Book XXXVI. 



citizens adopting this method of escaping their troubles. For 

 this evil, however, the king devised a singular remedy, and 

 one that has never ®^' been resorted to either before that time or 

 since : for he ordered the bodies of all who had been thus 

 guilty of self-destruction, to be fastened to a cross, and left 

 there as a spectacle to their fellow- citizens and a prey 

 to birds and wild beasts. The result was, that that sense 

 of propriety which so peculiarly attaches itself to the lio- 

 man name, and which more than once has gained a victory 

 when the battle was all but lost, came to the rescue on this 

 occasion as well ; though for this once, the Eomans were in 

 reality its dupes, as they forgot that, though they felt shocked 

 at the thoughts of such ignominy while alive, they would be 

 quite insensible to any such disgrace when dead. It is said 

 that Tarquinius made these sewers of dimensions sufficiently 

 large to admit of a w^aggon laden with hay passing along them. 



All that we have just described, however, is but trifling 

 when placed in comparison with one marvellous fact, which I 

 must not omit to mention before I pass on to other subjects. 

 In the consulships^ of M. Lepidus and Q. Catulus, there was 

 not at Eome, as we learn from the most trustworthy au- 

 thors, a finer house than the one which belonged to Lepidus 

 himself : and yet, by Hercules ! within five-and-thirty years 

 from that period, the very same house did not hold the hun- 

 dredth rank even in the City ! Let a person, if he will, in 

 taking this fact into consideration, only calculate the vast 

 masses of marble, the productions of painters, the regal trea- 

 sures that must have been expended, in bringing these hundred 

 mansions to vie with one that had been in its day the most sump- 

 tuous and the most celebrated in all the City ; and then let 

 him reflect how that, since that period, and down to the pre- 

 sent time, these houses have all of them been surpassed by 

 others without number. There can be no doubt that confla- 

 grations are a punishment inflicted upon us for our luxury ; 

 but such are our habits, that in spite of such warnings as these, 

 we cannot be made to understand that there are things in exist- 

 ence more perishable even than man himself. 



But there are still two other mansions by which all these 

 edifices have been eclipsed. Twice have we seen the whole 



81* As Hardouin remarks, the story of the Milesian Virgins, as related 

 by Aulus Gellius aud Plutarch, is very similar. ^^ jk..u.c. 676. 



