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9 Imaginary Conversatimi. 9 tables for ages, and never know at last perhaps whence the Carthaginians brought the wood. SCIPIO. It is an awful thing to close as we have done the history of a people. If the intelligence brought this morning to Polybius be true^, in one year the two most flourishing and most beautiful cities in the world have perished, in comparison with which our Rome presents but the pent- houses of artisans or the sheds of shepherds. With what- ever celerity the messager fled from the neighbourhood of Corinth and arrived here, the particulars must have been known at Rome as early, and I shall receive them ere many days are past. PANETIUS. I hardly know whether we are not less affected at the occurrence of two or three momentous and terrible events, than at one ; and whether the gods do not visually place them together in the order of things, that we may be awe- stricken by the former and reconciled to their decrees by the latter, from an impression of their power. I know not what Babylon may have been ; but I presume that, as in the case of all other great Asiatic capitals, the habitations of the people (who are slaves) were wretched, and that the magnificence of the place consisted in the property of the king and priesthood, and in the walls erected for the defense of it. Many streets probably were hardly worth a little bronze cow of Myron, such as a stripling could steal and carry off: The case of Corinth and of Carthage was very different. Wealth overspread the greater part of them, com- petence and content the whole. Wherever there are despotical governments, poverty and industry dwell together; shame dogs them in the public walks; humiliation is among their household gods. to the Atlantic continent and islands must have been possest by a company, bound to secrecy by oath and interest. The prodigious price of this wood proves that it had ceased to be imported, or perhaps found, in the time of Cicero. 2 Corinth in fact was not burnt until some months after Carthage ; but as one success is always followed by the rumour of another, the relation is not improbable. Vol. II. No. 4. B