5.) Yet pomp is well exchange for convenience; and a plain modern coach, that is hung upon springs, is much preferable to the silver or gold carts of antiquity, which rolled on the axle-tree, and were exposed, for the most part, to the inclemency of the weather.] [Footnote 38: In a homily of Asterius, bishop of Amasia, M.de Valois has discovered (ad Ammian.xiv.

6) that this was a new fashion; that bears, wolves lions, and tigers, woods, hunting-matches, &c., were represented in embroidery: and that the more pious coxcombs substituted the figure or legend of some favorite saint.] [Footnote 39: See Pliny's Epistles, i.6.Three large wild boars were allured and taken in the toils without interrupting the studies of the philosophic sportsman.] [Footnote 40: The change from the inauspicious word Avernus, which stands in the text, is immaterial.

The two lakes, Avernus and Lucrinus, communicated with each other, and were fashioned by the stupendous moles of Agrippa into the Julian port, which opened, through a narrow entrance, into the Gulf of Puteoli.

Virgil, who resided on the spot, has described (Georgic ii.

161) this work at the moment of its execution: and his commentators, especially Catrou, have derived much light from Strabo, Suetonius, and Dion.