mans were dirty creatures, are these
two particulars. Vespasian laid a tax upon urine and ordure, on
pretence of being at a great expence in clearing the streets from such
nuisances; an imposition which amounted to about fourteen pence a year
for every individual; and when Heliogabalus ordered all the cobwebs of
the city and suburbs to be collected, they were found to weigh ten
thousand pounds. This was intended as a demonstration of the great
number of inhabitants; but it was a proof of their dirt, rather than of
their populosity. 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 poin