“Sic pugnas Cilicis laudabat, et ictus;
Et pegma et pueros inde ad velaria raptos.”
(Juvenal, Satyr iv. 121, 122.)
[96] Photos., No. 3283.
[97] Photos., No. 3286, and Plate [VII.]
[98] Photos., No. 3263.
[99] Those English people who remember Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London about 1820, must know that there was always a sheet of water or reservoir under the stage, and trap-doors in the floor by which sea-monsters could be introduced. The amusements of the old Roman people seem to have been frequently of this kind. Naval fights in boats might have been performed in the Colosseum, and a great deal of machinery must have been required to remove the floor and replace it.
A wooden Roman bridge still remains under water near Compiègne in France, of which M. Peigné Delacourt has published an account, with engravings of it, so that wood under water is preserved in the same manner as when it is buried in a wet soil. This is well known in the case of piles for bridges, and in those under the city of Amsterdam.