but there is no private citizen in Rome at the present day who could bear the expense of gilding the existing temple, which cost more than twelve thousand talents.  Its columns are of Pentelic marble, exquisitely proportioned, which I myself saw at Athens; but at Rome they were again cut and polished, by which process they did not gain so much in gloss as they lost in symmetry, for they now appear too slender.  However, if any one who wonders at the expense of the temple in the Capitol were to see the splendour of any one portico, hall, or chamber in the house of Domitian, he would certainly be led to parody that line of Epicharmus upon an extravagant fellow,

    “Not good-natured, but possessed with the disease of giving,”

and would say that Domitian was not pious or admirable, but possessed with the disease of building, and turned everything into bricks and mortar, just as it is said Midas turned things into gold.  So much for this.

XVI.  Tarquin, after the great battle in which his son was slain by Brutus, took refuge at Clusium and begged Lars Porsena, the most powerful king in Italy, to assist him.  He was thought to be an honourable and ambitious man, and promised his aid.  First he sent an embassy to Rome, ordering them to receive Tarquin; and when the Romans refused to obey, he declared war against them, and telling them at what place and time he would attack them, marched against them with a great army.  At Rome, Poplicola, though absent, was chosen consul for the second time, and with him, Titus Lucretius.  He returned to Rome, and by way of putting a slight upon Porsena, went and founded the city of Sigliuria, while his army was close at hand.  He built the walls of this place at a vast expense, and sent away seven hundred colonists to it, as if the war with which he was menaced was a very unimportant matter.  But, nevertheless, Porsena made a sharp assault upon the walls of Rome, drove away the garrison, and very nearly entered the town.  Poplicola forestalled him by sallying from one of the gates, and fought by the banks of the Tiber against overwhelming numbers until he was severely wounded and had to be carried out of the battle.  As the same fate befell his colleague Lucretius, the Romans lost heart and endeavoured to save themselves by flight into the town.  As the enemy also began to push across the wooden bridge, Rome was in danger of being taken.  But Horatius, surnamed Cocles, and with him two of the noblest citizens, named Herminius and Lartius, held the wooden bridge against them.  This Horatius was surnamed Cocles because he had lost an eye in the wars, or as some say because of the flatness of his nose, which made his eyes and eyebrows seem to meet, having nothing to separate them, and therefore the people meaning to call him Cyclops, by a mistake of pronunciation, named him Cocles.  This man stood at the end of the bridge and kept off the enemy until his friends behind had cut down the