That such officers were in use too among the Persians during the time
their monarchy lasted, is plain from the apocryphal story of Bel and the
Dragon in our Bibles, where, to the joy of every child that reads it,
Daniel detects the fraud of the priests by scattering ashes or saw-dust
in the temple.
But I fear the critics will reprove me for saying that Julius Caesar
only increased the number to seven, while many are of opinion he added
three more, and made them a decemvirate: mean time Livy tells us the
institution began in the year of Rome 553, during the consulate of
Fulvius Purpurio and Marcellus, upon a motion of Romuleius if I
remember. They had the privilege granted afterwards of edging the gown
with purple like the pontiffs, when increased to seven in number; and
they were always known by the name _Septemviratus,_ or _Septemviri
Epulonum_, to the latest hours of Paganism.
The tomb of Caius Cestius is supposed to have cost twelve thousand
pounds sterling of our money in those days; and little did he dream that
it should be made in the course of time a repository for the bones of
_divisos orbe Britannos_: for such it is now appointed to be by
government. All of us who die at Rome, sleep with this purveyor of the
gods; and from his monument shall at the last day rise the re-animated
body of our learned and incomparable Sir James Macdonald: whose numerous
and splendid acquirements, though by the time he had reached twenty-four
years old astonished all who knew him, never overwhelmed one little
domestic virtue.
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