nmong the Antients. 351 



placed upon two grand pedestals ; that the feet of the horse 

 rested upon the figure of the Rhine, represented as a captive 

 lying on the ground, and upon the figure of one of the 

 Dacii in a similar dress and attitude : in short, this colossus 

 exceeded in height the temples of the public square it oc- 

 cupied. The scaffolding and the machinery for transporting 

 and raising this enormous mass were a spectacle, according 

 to the same poet, as novel as it was curious, and all the 

 young men in Rome were employed in raising it. Upon 

 the death of the tyrant, indignation and hatred gave way to 

 every other consideration, and this wonderful colossus was 

 destroyed by order of the senate. 



Under the emperors, all employments which did not lead 

 to a speedy fortune were disregarded. *' Labour, study the 

 laws, exercise yourself in pleading causes," says a father to 

 his son, in Juvenal*, " nothing else leads to preferment; or 

 if you would rather choose to scale and demolish the castles 

 of the Arabs, ask the emperor for a centurion's truncheon, 

 you will perhaps obtain the command of a legion as the re- 

 ward of your services, but this will be when you are sixty years 

 old. If you prefer trade, become a skin-dealer, and let not the 

 bad smell of the hides deter you ; the gold you earn will place 

 the perfumes of Arabia within your reach. Every where 

 around you people will ask if you have got money, but none 

 will inquire how you came by it." Such was the manner in 

 which riches were spoken of. The poor, who had not the means 

 of aspiring to fortune, nor the courage to attain it by dint of 

 labour, attached themselves to an opulent man. They went 

 every morning and paid their reverence to their patron, in 

 order to obtain food from him for the rest of the day. The 

 lower orders lived, for the most part, upon the distributions 

 of corn made by the emperors, and by the liberalities of ihe 

 ambitious, who, by this means, bought the suffrages of the 

 common people. Let us add to this the number and the 

 duration of their public festival?, the time which was wasted 

 in the elections of their magistrates, and we may easily con- 

 ceive that threc-fourlhs of the people lived in absolute idle- 



ness 



