] Hardly would he allow himself an
ivory hilt to his sabre. The same severe proscription he extended to every
sort of furniture, or decorations of art, which sheltered even in the
bosom of camps those habits of effeminate luxury--so apt in all great
empires to steal by imperceptible steps from the voluptuous palace to the
soldier's tent--following in the equipage of great leading officers, or of
subalterns highly connected. There was at that time a practice prevailing,
in the great standing camps on the several frontiers and at all the
military stations, of renewing as much as possible the image of distant
Rome by the erection of long colonnades and piazzas--single, double, or
triple; of crypts, or subterranean [Footnote: "_Crypts_"--these, which
Spartian, in his life of Hadrian, denominates simply _cryptae_, are the
same which, in the Roman jurisprudence, and in the architectural works of
the Romans, yet surviving, are termed _hypogaea deambulationes, i. e._
subterranean parades. Vitruvius treats of this luxurious class of
apartments in connection with the Apothecae, and other repositories or
store-rooms, which were also in many cases under ground, for the same
reason as our ice-houses, wine-cellars, &c.
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