from the “games” and to study and write in quiet.  He might fancy that his health called for baths in the hot springs on the Bay of Naples, or for sea-bathing somewhere on the Latian or Campanian coasts.  To put it briefly, he was very much like our worried, bilious, or exhausted selves.  His life of ceremony was a hard one, and often he ate and drank too much.  But whereas nowadays we can make free choice of any agreeable spot, since every such spot possesses its “Grand Hotel” or “Hotel Superbe,” where we can always find the crowd and discomfort which we pretend to be escaping, the Roman idea was different.  It corresponded more to that of our English nobles, who, in Elizabethan or Queen Anne days or later, built themselves country seats, one, two, or more, indulging in architectural fancies and surrounding all with spacious gardens, ponds, and rockeries.  The Roman man of wealth created no hotels.  He dotted his country seats about in places where the air was warm for winter and spring, or cool for summer and autumn, by the seashore, on the lower hills, or high on the mountain side.  You would find them on the Italian lakes or elsewhere toward the north.  In greater numbers would you find them on the hills near Rome, at the modern Tivoli or Palestrina, on the Alban heights near what are now Frascati, Albano, or Genzano, along the shore at Antium, Terracina, Baiae, Naples, Herculaneum, Pompeii, Castellamare, and Sorrento.

Perhaps it is not too much to say that more than a hundred and twenty miles of this coast were practically a chain of country houses.  The shore of the Bay of Naples has been compared to a collar of pearls strung round the blue.  Wherever there was a wide and varied landscape or seascape, there arose a Roman country house.  We are too prone to assume that the ancients felt but little love or even appreciation of scenery, and to fancy that the feeling came as a revelation to a Rousseau, a Wordsworth, or a nineteenth-century painter.  That Roman literature does not gush about the matter has been absurdly taken for proof that the Roman writer did not copiously enjoy the glories presented to his eyes.  But, though Roman literature does not gush, it often exhibits the same feelings towards scenery which at least a Thomson or a Cowper exhibits.  Perhaps it was so accustomed to scenic beauties that it took for granted much that an English or German writer cannot.  At any rate we are sure that the Roman chose for his country seat a site commanding the widest and most beautiful outlook, and that he even built towers upon his house to command the view the better.  In this respect he was like the mediaeval monks, when they chose the sites of monasteries at San Martino or Amalfi, and his love of a belvedere was probably quite as great as theirs.