27 



LucuUus, Agrippa, Domilian, Caius, &c. now thrown perhaps 

 into one, and united with the Imperial Palaces by bridges 

 over the Tibur. 



At the time Alaric invaded Rome, A. D. 408. Rome 

 contained 1780 residences of wealthy and honourable citizens,* 

 the precincts of each palace contained not only Aviaries, Por- 

 ticoes and Baths, but Groves, Fountains, Hippodromes Tem- 

 ples, and even markets. f A moderate palace would have co- 

 vered the whole four-Acre farm of Cincinnatus + So little 

 space was left for the houses of the Plebians that they built 

 them many stories high, each inhabited by more than an equal 

 number of families. Wealth and consequently landed properly 

 gradually accumulated in the hands of the comparatively 

 few noble families. The Estates of the same owner stretched 

 over a large space in Italy, as well as distant provinces. 

 Faustinus a Roman, as Gale conjectures, possessed an Estate 

 near the modern Bury in Suffolk, and a second in the vicinity 

 of Naples. II 



We have thus followed the progress of Gardening among 

 the Romans from their first existence as a colony, through 

 their rise as a people to the pinnacle of power, and thence 

 through their decay in effeminacy and debauchery. Nor is there 

 anything singular in their rise and fall, any more than in their 

 accompanying progress in our Art. As their Arms were at 

 first restrained to their own establishment as a people ; and 

 the Arts of cultivation to the obtaining subsistence : so as their 

 conquests and wealth extended, to a want of the necessaries of 

 life, they added the desire of its comforts, and when their vic- 

 tories carried them to those very Eastern countries from 

 which they themselves proceeded, and who lost in luxury and 

 effeminacy, soon fell beneath the swords of their less degenerate 



* Nardini. Roma Autica. p. 89. 4. 8. 500- + Claudiaii. Rutil. Muma- 

 tian. Itiaerar. v. iii, JVal. Max, iv. 1. |1 Antoniiiut. Itinerary iu IJritain, 

 p. 92. 



