The ceilings which, at the present day, in private houses even, we see covered with gold, were first gilded in the Capi- tol, after the destruction of Carthage, and during the censorship of Lucius Mummius.[1] From the ceilings this luxuriousness has been since transferred to the arched roofs of buildings, and the party-walls even, which at the present day are gilded like so many articles of plate: very different from the times when Catulus[2] was far from being unanimously approved of for having gilded the brazen tiles of the Capitol!