304 THE DECLINE AND FALL millions six hundred and twenty-eight thousand pounds.^^ III. In the manners of antiquity the use of oil was indispensable for the lamp as well as for the bath ; and the annual tax, which was imposed on Africa for the benefit of Rome, amounted to the weight of three millions of pounds, to the measure, perhaps, of three hundred thousand English gallons. I . The anxiety of Augustus to provide the metropolis with sufficient plenty of com was not extended beyond that necessary article of human subsistence ; and, when the popular clamour accused the dear- ness and scarcity of wine, a proclamation was issued by the grave reformer to remind his subjects that no man could reason- ably complain of thirst since the aqueducts of Agrippa had introduced into the city so many copious streams of pure and salubrious water.^" This rigid sobriety was insensibly relaxed ; and, although the generous design of Aurelian ^^ does not appear to have been executed in its full extent, the use of wine was allowed on very easy and liberal terms. The administration of the public cellars was delegated to a magistrate of honourable rank ; and a considerable part of the vintage of Campania was reserved for the fortunate inhabitants of Rome. Use of uie The stupeudous aqueducts, so justly celebrated by the praises of Augustus himself, replenished the Thennce, or baths, which had been constructed in every part of the city, with Imperial magnificence. The baths of Antoninus Caracalla, which were open, at stated hours, for the indiscriminate service of the senators and the people, contained about sixteen hundred seats of marble ; and more than three thousand were reckoned in the baths of Diocletian. °-' The walls of the lofty apartments were covered with curious mosaics, that imitated the art of the pencil in the elegance of design and the variety of colours. The Egyptian granite was beautifully incrusted with the precious green marble of Numidia ; the perpetual stream of hot water was poured into the capacious basons, through so many wide mouths of bright and massy silver ; and the meanest Roman could pui'chase, with a small copper coin, the daily enjoyment of ^ See Novell, ad calcem Cod. Theod. D. Valent. 1. i. tit. xv. This law was published at Rome, 29th June, A. ix 452. S7 Sueton. in August, c. 42. The utmost debauch of the emperor himself, in his favourite wine of Rhaetia, never e.xceeded a sextarius (an English pint). Id. c. 77. Torrentius ad loc. and Arbuthnot's Tables, p. 86. ^5 His design was to plant vineyards along the sea-coast of Etruria (Vopiscus, in Hist. August, p. 225 [xxvi. 48, 2]), the dreary, unwholesome, uncultivated Maremine of modern Tuscany.
- • Olympiodor. apud Phot. p. 197 [fr. 43].
public batha
