The excavations of Pompeii attest great luxury and elegance of life.  Cortona, Clusium, Veii, Ancona, Ostia, Praeneste, Antium, Misenum, Baiae, Puteoli, Neapolis, Brundusium, Sybaris, were all celebrated.

And still more remarkable were the old capitals of Greece, Asia Minor, and Africa.  Syracuse was older than Rome, and had a fortress of a mile and a half in length.  Carthage, under the emperors, nearly equalled its ancient magnificence.  Athens was never more splendid than in the time of the Roman Antonines.  In spite of successive conquests, there still towered upon the Acropolis the most wonderful temple of antiquity, built of Pentelic marble, and adorned with the sculptures of Phidias.  Corinth was richer and more luxurious than Athens, and possessed the most valuable pictures of Greece, as well as the finest statues; a single street for three miles was adorned with costly edifices.  And even the islands which were colonized by Greeks were seats of sculpture and painting, as well as of schools of learning.  Still grander were the cities of Asia Minor.  Antioch had a street four miles in length, with double colonnades; and its baths, theatres, museums, and temples excited universal admiration.  At Ephesus was the grand temple of Diana, four times as large as the Parthenon at Athens, covering as much ground as Cologne Cathedral, with one hundred and twenty-eight columns sixty feet high.  The Ephesian theatre was capable of seating sixty thousand spectators.  Tarsus, the birthplace of Paul, was no mean city; and Damascus, the old capital of Syria, was both beautiful and rich.

Laodicea was famous for tapestries, Hierapolis for its iron wares, Cybara for its dyes, Sardis for its wines, Smyrna for its beautiful monuments, Delos for its slave-trade, Cyrene for its horses, Paphos for its temple of Venus, in which were a hundred altars.  Seleucia, on the Tigris, had a population of four hundred thousand.  Caesarea in Palestine, founded by Herod the Great, and the principal seat of government to the Roman prefects, had a harbor equal in size to the renowned Piraeus, and was secured against the southwest winds by a mole of such massive construction that the blocks of stone, sunk under the water, were fifty feet in length, eighteen in width, and nine in thickness.  The city itself was constructed of polished stone, with an agora, a theatre, a circus, a praetorium, and a temple to Caesar.  Tyre, which had resisted for seven months the armies of Alexander, remained to the fall of the empire a great emporium of trade; it monopolized the manufacture of imperial purple.  Sidon was equally celebrated for its glass and embroidered robes.  The Sidonians cast glass mirrors, and imitated precious stones.  But the glory of both Tyre and Sidon was in ships, which visited all the coasts of the Mediterranean, and even penetrated to Britain and India.