Rents in Rome appear to have been
on an average four times as high as in the country-towns;
a house there was once sold for 15,000,000 sesterces (150,000 pounds).
The house of Marcus Lepidus (consul in 676) which was at the time
of the death of Sulla the finest in Rome, did not rank a generation
afterwards even as the hundredth on the list of Roman palaces.
We have already mentioned the extravagance practised in the matter
of country-houses; we find that 4,000,000 sesterces (40,000 pounds)
were paid for such a house, which was valued chiefly for its fishpond;
and the thoroughly fashionable grandee now needed at least two villas--
one in the Sabine or Alban mountains near the capital, and a second
in the vicinity of the Campanian baths--and in addition if possible
a garden immediately outside of the gates of Rome. Still more irrational
than these villa-palaces were the palatial sepulchres, several of which
still existing at the present day attest what a lofty pile of masonry
the rich Roman needed in order that he might die as became his rank.
Fanciers of horses and dogs too were not wanting; 24,000 sesterces
(240 pounds) was no uncommon price for a showy horse. They indulged
in furniture of fine wood--a table of African cypress-wood
cost 1,000,000 sesterces (10,000 pounds); in dresses of purple stuffs
or transparent gauzes accompanied by an elegant adjustment of their folds
before the mirror--the orator Hortensius is said to have brought
an action of damages against a colleague because he ruffled his dress
in a crowd; in precious stones and pearls, which first at this period
took the place of the far more beautiful and more artistic
ornaments of gold--it was already utter barbarism, when at the triumph
of Pompeius over Mithradates the image of the victor appeared
wrought wholly of pearls, and when the sofas and the shelves
in the dining-hall were silver-mounted and even the kitchen-utensils
were made of silver. In a similar spirit the collectors of this period
took out the artistic medallions from the old silver cups,
to set them anew in vessels of gold. Nor was there any lack
of luxury also in travelling. "When the governor travelled,"
Cicero tells us as to one of the Sicilian governors, "which of course
he did not in winter, but only at the beginning of spring--
not the spring of the calendar but the beginning of the season of roses--
he had himself conveyed, as was the custom with the kings of Bithynia,
in a li