THE GOOD OLD TIMES.

Kumara Times, Issue 1069, 4 March 1880, Page 4

THE GOOD OLD TIMES.

[akgonaut ] A writer in one of tbe Eastern periodicals has been bragging of the enormous fortunes of New Yorkers; of the wondrous wealth of Vanderdbilt and the sequence of millionaires ; of the famous Stewart memorial monument on Long Island, and the extravagance and sumptuousness of the world in general. Now, we can mouth just a bit here of money, and millionairles, and mansions reaching nearly to the skies; but the whole subject Binks into a small retail business when we recall how the ancients took the shine out of this nineteenth century. People had big fortunes, and built tine houses, and gave swell dinners, and drank old wines, and were liberal with their money before Vanderbilt, or Stewart, or Sharon, or the bonanza kings were thought of. Why, what is Stewart, or Belmont, or Flood, or Mackay, or the Marquis of Westminster, to Ptolemy Philadelphus, of Egypt, who amassed a little property of 350,000,000d01s ? And which of our extravagant youDg ladies in these boast ed times ever gave her lover, as Cleopatra did, a pearl dissolved in vinegar (or undissolved; worth 400,000d013 ? Then there was Paulina, one of the ton in Rome, who used to wear jewels, when she returned her visits, worth 800,000dols They boast of Stewarts's marble palace, on Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue. We do not suppose this house, which is about the best they have in New York, cost more than a million or so of dollars. Cicero, who was a poor man, gave 150,000d01s for his house, and Clodius paid 950,000d01s for his establishment on the Palatine, while Messaia gave 2,000,000d01s for the house of Antony. Seneca, who was just a plan philosopher, was worth 120,000,000d015. Tiberius left a property of nearly 120,000,000d015. Now we talk of a man's failing for a million as if it were a big thing. Csesar, before he entered any office—when he was a young gentleman in private life—owed 14,000,000d015, and he purchased the friendship of Qusesor for 2,500,000d01s Marc Antony owed 1,500,000d01s on the Ides of March, and he paid it before the Kalends of March. This was nothing—he squandered 720,000,000d01s of the public money, the latest defalcation being for the contemptible sum of 450,000d015. And these fellows lived well. Esophus, who was a play actor, paid 400,000d01s for a single dish. Caligula spent 400,000 dols on a supper. Their wines were often kept for two ages, and some of them were sold for 20dols. an ounce. Dishes were made of gold and silver set with precious stones. The beds of Heliogabalus were of solid silver, his table and plates were of pure gold, and his mattrasses, covered with carpets of cloth and gold, were stuffed with down from under the wing of the partridge. It took 80,000dols. a year to keep up the dignity of a Roman senator, and some of them spent 4,000,000d015. a year. Cicero and Pompey " dropped in" one day on Lucullns—nobody at home but the family—and that family dinner cost 4000dols. But we talk of population. We boast of London and New York. Rome had a population of between three and four millions. The wooden theatre of Scarurus contained 80,000 seats; the Coliseum, built of stone would seat 22,000 more. The Circuß Maximus would hold 385.000 spectators. There were in the city 9000 public baths, those of Diocletian accommodating 3200 bathers. Even in the sixth century, after Rome had been sacked and plundered by the Goths and Vandals, Zachariah, a traveller, asserts that there were 284 spacious streets, eighty golden Btatues of the gods, 47,097 palaces, 13,052 fountains, 3785 bronze statues of the emperors and generals, twenty-two great horses in bronze, two colossi, two spiral columns, thirty-one theatres, eleven amphitheatres, 6091 baths, 2300 shops of perfumes, 2025 prisons. As a set-off to Stewart's " monumental tombstones," we may merely mention the mausoleum of Augustus in the northern part of the Campus Martins, consisting of a large tumulus of earth raised in a lofty basement of white marble, and covered on the summit with evergreens, as in manner of a hanging garden, the whole surmounted by a bronze figure of Augustus. At the entrance were two Egyptian obelisks 50ft high, and all around was an extensive grove, divided into walks and terraces. We have not heart to speak of the Forum Romanura, the Forum Julium, the Theatre of Narcellus, the Pantheon, the Palace of Nero (entirely overlaid with jewels and motherof pearl), the Claudian Aqneduct, the Flavian Amphitheatre, the Coliseum, the Arch of Titus, the Villa of Hadrian, the Baths of Carcalla, nor the great Roman roads, straight as an arrow, paved like, the streets of a city, divided by mile stones, and having houses for travellers every five or six miles, affording uninterrupted communication from the Wall Antoniua through York, London, Sandwich, Boulogue, Rheims, Lyons, Milan, Rome, Brundusium, D.yrrachium, Byzantium, Aneyra. Tarsus, Antinch, Tyre, Jerusalem—a distance of 3470 miles. Nor have we space to refer to Thebes in Jsypt (which had a population of 2,500,000), and that noble palace with its grand columns, whose cornices were inlaid with mountings or sheathed with beaten gold; nor Alexandria, whose annual port dues were 6,000,000d015., and whose library, in an a<je when books were rare, contained 700,000 volumes ; nor to Capua, the second city of Italy • nor to Rhodes and its statues and 100 collosi—one of them the seventh wonder of the world, costing 3,000,000d01s ; nor to Antioch, with a street four miles long, perfectly level, with double colonnades through its whole length ; nor to Athens and the Parthenon, and the theatre of

Bacchus—the moat beautiful in the world, which seated 30,000 persons; nor to Syracuse, and its fortress one mile long by half a milejin breadth ; nor to Tyre, and Ourthage, and Babylon, and Byzantium, and a hundred others.