CHAP. 18.—AT WHAT PERIOD CEILINGS WERE FIRST GILDED.
The ceilings which, at the present day, in private houses even, we see covered with gold, were first gilded in the Capitol, after the destruction of Carthage, and during the censorship of Lucius Mummius.[842] 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[843] was far from being unanimously approved of for having gilded the brazen tiles of the Capitol!