I Might
Likewise Add, The Delicate Custom Of Taking Vomits At Each
Other's Houses, When They Were Invited To Dinner, Or Supper, That
They Might Prepare Their Stomachs For Gormandizing; A Beastly
Proof Of Their Nastiness As Well As Gluttony.
Horace, in his
description of the banquet of Nasiedenus, says, when the canopy,
under which they sat, fell down, it brought along with it as much
dirt as is raised by a hard gale of wind in dry weather.
- Trahentia pulveris atri,
Quantum non aquilo Campanis excitat agris.
Such clouds of dust revolving in its train
As Boreas whirls along the level plain.
I might observe, that the streets were often encumbered with the
putrefying carcasses of criminals, who had been dragged through
them by the heels, and precipitated from the Scalae Gemoniae, or
Tarpeian rock, before they were thrown into the Tyber, which was
the general receptacle of the cloaca maxima and all the filth of
Rome: besides, the bodies of all those who made away with
themselves, without sufficient cause; of such as were condemned
for sacrilege, or killed by thunder, were left unburned and
unburied, to rot above ground.
I believe the moderns retain more of the customs of antient
Romans, than is generally imagined. When I first saw the infants
at the enfans trouves in Paris, so swathed with bandages, that
the very sight of them made my eyes water, I little dreamed, that
the prescription of the antients could be pleaded for this
custom, equally shocking and absurd: but in the Capitol at Rome,
I met with the antique statue of a child swaddled exactly in the
same manner; rolled up like an Aegyptian mummy from the feet. The
circulation of the blood, in such a case, must be obstructed on
the whole surface of the body; and nothing be at liberty but the
head, which is the only part of the child that ought to be
confined. Is it not surprising that common sense should not point
out, even to the most ignorant, that those accursed bandages must
heat the tender infant into a fever; must hinder the action of
the muscles, and the play of the joints, so necessary to health
and nutrition; and that while the refluent blood is obstructed in
the veins, which run on the surface of the body, the arteries,
which lie deep, without the reach of compression, are continually
pouring their contents into the head, where the blood meets with
no resistance? The vessels of the brain are naturally lax, and
the very sutures of the skull are yet unclosed. What are the
consequences of this cruel swaddling? the limbs are wasted; the
joints grow rickety; the brain is compressed, and a
hydrocephalus, with a great head and sore eyes, ensues. I take
this abominable practice to be one great cause of the bandy legs,
diminutive bodies, and large heads, so frequent in the south of
France, and in Italy.
I was no less surprised to find the modern fashion of curling the
hair, borrowed in a great measure from the coxcombs and coquettes
of antiquity. I saw a bust of Nero in the gallery at Florence,
the hair represented in rows of buckles, like that of a French
petit-maitre, conformable to the picture drawn of him by
Suetonius. Circa cultum adeo pudendum, ut coman semper in gradus
formatam peregrinatione achaica, etiam pene verticem sumpserit,
So very finical in his dress, that he wore his hair in the Greek
fashion, curled in rows almost to the crown of his head. I was
very sorry however to find that this foppery came from Greece. As
for Otho, he wore a galericulum, or tour, on account of thin
hair, propter raritatem capillorum. He had no right to imitate
the example of Julius Caesar, who concealed his bald head with a
wreath of laurel. But there is a bust in the Capitol of Julia
Pia, the second wife of Septimius Severus, with a moveable
peruke, dressed exactly in the fashionable mode, with this
difference, that there is no part of it frizzled; nor is there
any appearance of pomatum and powder. These improvements the
beau-monde have borrowed from the natives of the Cape of Good
Hope.
Modern Rome does not cover more than one-third of the space
within the walls; and those parts that were most frequented of
old are now intirely abandoned. From the Capitol to the Coliseo,
including the Forum Romanum and Boarium, there is nothing intire
but one or two churches, built with the fragments of ancient
edifices. You descend from the Capitol between the remaining
pillars of two temples, the pedestals and part of the shafts sunk
in the rubbish: then passing through the triumphal arch of
Septimius Severus, you proceed along the foot of Mons Palatinus,
which stands on your right hand, quite covered with the ruins of
the antient palace belonging to the Roman emperors, and at the
foot of it, there are some beautiful detached pillars still
standing. On the left you see the remains of the Templum Pacis,
which seems to have been the largest and most magnificent of all
the temples in Rome. It was built and dedicated by the emperor
Vespasian, who brought into it all the treasure and precious
vessels which he found in the temple of Jerusalem. The columns of
the portico he removed from Nero's golden house, which he
levelled with the ground. This temple was likewise famous for its
library, mentioned by Aulus Gellius, Further on, is the arch of
Constantine on the right, a most noble piece of architecture,
almost entire; with the remains of the Meta Sudans before it; and
fronting you, the noble ruins of that vast amphitheatre, called
the Colossaeum, now Coliseo, which has been dismantled and
dilapidated by the Gothic popes and princes of modern Rome, to
build and adorn their paultry palaces. Behind the amphitheatre
were the thermae of the same emperor Titus Vespasian. In the same
quarter was the Circus Maximus; and the whole space from hence on
both sides, to the walls of Rome, comprehending above twice as
much ground as the modern city, is almost covered with the
monuments of antiquity.
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