Curius Dentatus, in the preceding year and the Aqua Marcia, a yet more magnificent work, was commenced in the year of Rome, 608, the same year in which the great rival of Rome, Carthage, surrrendered, and in which the Consul Mummius destroyed Corinth, carrying off a prodigious plunder. From means thus acquired, was this aqueduct probably provided for.

These were the two great works of republican Rome, but they were cemented by the blood of slavery, and defrayed by the spoils robbed from the conquered and the

oppressed. Imperial Rome constructed the Claudian, and the Anio Novus, each a river of itself. But both these were commenced by that monster, Caligula, who expressed the wish that the Roman people had but one head that he might strike it off at a blow, and who installed his horse, Consul and High Priest. His extortions, oppression, avarice and cruelty, were feebly compensated to the people of Rome, and cannot be pardoned by posterity, although he did undertake those two magnificent structures. It was reserved for the Emperor Claudius to finish them a successor scarcely less atrocious in character or conduct than

Caligula the dupe of favorites the slave of lust stupid, bloody and rapacious.

We have said these aqueducts were cemented with the blood of slavery, and such undoubtedly was the fact, although we have no direct testimony to offer in its support. But we know that slavery was coeval with the foundation of Rome for although Romu- ;

lus, as it is related by Livy, at the commencement, and in order to increase its popula-