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Show Miscellany Germany's Ancestors Did to Rome What Huns Want to Do to Us Now. This story is true because it is history. It is a comparison worth while and is a subject for deep thought. Rome In the days of AupustuR was a city of more than l.onn.OOO persons, ant1, it did not have a single hospital. The city was built mainly of brick, with narrow, tortuous streets. But it had some broad a nrl well -paved thoroughfares, thor-oughfares, the fashionable avenue being the famous Appian way. which was the metropolitan terminus, so to speak, of one of the preat military" roads thnt ra- ; dinted, from Rome as a center to all parts ; of the empire. The houses of the rich, and even thos1 of the fairly well-to-do, wrre supplied with running watpr. Xo modern system of aqueducts surpassed th:it of ancient Rome, and the water wns distributed to dwellings by underground pipes that furnished fur-nished the fluid throuch lead pipe connections con-nections to tanks elevated on pillars at: retrular intervals alon? the strpet. From these tanks lend pipes carried the water 1 to the houses on eithpr Ftdp. which were provided with faucets and basins like our houses of today. This in itself is a very interesting fa-T. because. evn two centuries ago thr-rr1 wn s no such a denim t p system of water supply for cities anywhere in the civilized wnrld. When Julius Caesnr first visitpd Alexandria Alex-andria in Knypt, the occasion on which b was capturpfl by the Greek charms of Cleopatra, he found there so complete an underground watT supply ?yptm that the city seemed "hollow undernea th. " The aqueducts of Romp, substantial remains re-mains of which still exist, supplied numerous nu-merous strept fountains, at whirh the pi? drark. and, much niore important, the enormous bqth buil-3ir.es, erected and maintained at fabulous expense by various vari-ous emperors. There were no street lamps. Soldiers employed as policf-men carried torrlips throuch the streets. It wns a method correspond in e: nearly to that In use in European cities a couple of centuries a co. Stoves were unknown and dwpninirs ere heated with braziers of charcoal. , Olive oil lamps and candies of tallow and wax furnished domestic illumination. House furniture sofas, chairs, bedsteads and what not much resembled in pattern pat-tern what we have today, and for the rich was r.o less luxurious. Grain was ground by watormills and windmills. Boats in the Tiber carried mill wheels that were driven by the currents cur-rents of the river. Chickens were hatched by incubators on preat scale for market. Ice obtained from mountain heights was stored in summer time for winter use. A big book might be written about the "modern conveniences" enjoyed by the ancient Romans. They were wiped out, together with nearly everything that was worth while in the way of civilization, by barbarous tribes, whose notion of warfare war-fare was "frightfulness" carried to the ultimate extent. These tribes were largely the ancestors of the pr-.sent-day Germans. What they are today they were then. Great Divide. |