us Balburius Caecilianus Placidus. See Noris Cenotaph Piran Dissert.
iv. p. 438.]

[Footnote 37: The or coaches of the romans, were often of solid silver,
curiously carved and engraved; and the trappings of the mules, or
horses, were embossed with gold. This magnificence continued from the
reign of Nero to that of Honorius; and the Appian way was covered with
the splendid equipages of the nobles, who came out to meet St. Melania,
when she returned to Rome, six years before the Gothic siege, (Seneca,
epist. lxxxvii. Plin. Hist. Natur. xxxiii. 49. Paulin. Nolan. apud
Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 397, No. 5.) Yet pomp is well exchange for
convenience; and a plain modern coach, that is hung upon springs, is
much preferable to the silver or gold carts of antiquity, which rolled
on the axle-tree, and were exposed, for the most part, to the inclemency
of the weather.]

[Footnote 38: In a homily of Asterius, bishop of Amasia, M. de Valois
has discovered (ad Ammian. xiv. 6) that this was a new fashion; that
bears, wolves lions, and tigers, woods, hunting-matches, &c., were
represented in embroidery: and that the more pious coxcombs substituted
the figure or legend of some favorite saint.]

[Footnote 39: See Pliny's Epistles, i. 6. Three large wild boars were
allured and taken in the toils without interrupting the studies of the
philosophic sportsman.]

[Footnote 40: The change from the inauspicious word Avernus, which
stands in the text, is immaterial. The two lakes, Avernus and Lucrinus,
communicated with each other, and were fashioned by the stupendous
moles of Agrippa into the Julian port, which opened, through a narrow
entrance, into the Gulf of Puteoli. Virgil, who resided on the spot, has
described (Georgic ii. 161) this work at the moment of its execution:
and his commentators, especially Catrou, have derived much light from
Strabo, Suetonius, and Dion. Earthquakes and volcanoes have changed the
face of the country, and turned the Lucrine Lake, since the year 1538,
into the Monte Nuovo. See Camillo Pellegrino Discorsi della Campania
Felice, p. 239, 244, &c. Antonii Sanfelicii Campania, p. 13, 88--Note:
Compare Lyell's Geology, ii. 72.--M.]

[Footnote 41: The regna Cumana et Puteolana; loca caetiroqui valde
expe tenda, interpellantium autem multitudine paene fugienda. Cicero ad
Attic. xvi. 17.]

[Footnote 42: The proverbial expression of Cimmerian darkness was
originally borrowed from the description of Homer, (in the