Martial further informs us, that the Romans used to screen their orchards of choice fruit-trees with specularia. Lib. viii. epig. 14.
[58] I suppose he means that of Fortuna Seia. Lib. xxxvi. c. 22.
[59] Salmasius, speaking of the custom of adorning chambers with glass, says—Quod proximè ætatem suam incepisse fieri narrat Plinius. Quum M. Scaurus——Ex. Plin. tom. II. p. 854.
I do not find this expresly asserted by Pliny: but it might have been so in fact. This fashion indeed was not begun till after Agrippa had built his thermæ: but if we suppose that to have been even as late as his third consulship, viz. ante Christ. 27. (Helvicus), when he erected the Pantheon (or at least its portico), near adjoining to those thermæ, there would have been sufficient room, from that period to the birth of Pliny (viz. anno Christi 24), for the introduction of this usage.
[60] Plin. Ep. V. I. 111.
[61] Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. xxxvi. c. 26. §. 66.
[62] Vid. supra.
[63] Anno Christi 80.
[64] In order to justify my placing the testimony of this Father so high, I would observe, that St. Jerome (De Scriptor. Eccles.) says, that Lactantius—Extremâ senectute magister Cæsaris Crispi filii Constantini in Gallia fuit. He must probably have exercised this charge between anno Christi 309, when Constantine began to reign, and 320. If he was then of a great age, he might have composed the treatise, out of which this authority is produced, and which was one of the earliest of his works, that are extant (Vid. Sparkii præf. ad Lactant.), 40 years before, viz. about anno Christi 280; which brings us up to 200 years after the overthrow of Herculaneum, as above.
[65] Lib. i. c. 20. See this subject largely discussed in Bodæus à Stapel Comment. in Theoph. p. 156. et seq.