[Footnote: By the Cloaca?]

The admirable system of subterranean drainage in Rome, by which the swampy hollows among the seven hills were converted into stately streets, and the stupendous cloaca maxima, the buried arches of which have sustained for more than two thousand years, without flinching, the weight of superincumbent Rome, were Etrurian performances, commenced six centuries before Christ.

" "Then you shall drown with Sextus' slave in the Cloaca Maxima, the great sewer of Rome," said Marcia.

The Cloaca Maxima, or Great Sewer, was built during the reign of the second Tarquin,the grandest monument of the reign of the kings.

Its application dates back to the Cloaca Maxima, and may have been of Etrurian invention.

dunghill, colluvies^, mixen^, midden, bog, laystall^, sink, privy, jakes; toilet, john, head; cess^, cesspool; sump, sough, cloaca, latrines, drain, sewer, common sewer; Cloacina; dust hole.

It would have been truly diverting to have listened to him; and satisfied I am, gentlemen, that he would have preferred the utile of creeping into a closet, or even into a cloaca, to the honestum of facing the bold artist.

No, not so much as degrees some of them will tolerate, or universities, all human learning, ('tis cloaca diaboli) hoods, habits, cap and surplice, such as are things indifferent in themselves, and wholly for ornament, decency, or distinction's sake, they abhor, hate, and snuff at, as a stone-horse when he meets a bear: they make matters of conscience of them, and will rather forsake their livings than subscribe to them.

[Footnote 52: The Cloaca Maxima, upon which Rome still relies for much of her drainage, is more generally attributed to Tarquinius Priscus.

I have visited the Pyramid of Cestius, the tomb of Metella, I have consulted, the nymph Egeria, smelled at the Cloaca Maxima; in fine, I have given in to all the singeries of pedantry and virtù with as much ardour as Martinus Scriblerus himself would have done.

Exploring this forenoon the vicinity of Monte Palatino, I discovered in an obscure corner, near the temple of Romulus, the time-hallowed spring of Juturna, rising with crystal clearness near the Cloaca maxima, into which it flows unvalued and forgotten.

There is Hawthorne's Marble Faun, (the one called of Praxiteles,) the Laocoön, the Apollo Belvedere, the Young Athlete with the Strigil, the Forum, the Cloaca Maxima, the Palace of the Caesars, the bronze Marcus Aurelius,those wonders all the world flocks to see,the God of Light has multiplied them all for you, and you have only to give a paltry fee to his servant to own in fee-simple the best sights that earth has to show.

We will not delay on the right bank of the Tiber, which had probably long been the home of tradesmen in their gilds, and where farther down the rich were buying land for gardens and suburban villas; but cross by the Pons Aemilius, with the Tiber island on our left, and the opening of the Cloaca maxima, which drained the water from the Forum, facing us, as it still does, a little to our right.

As the city extended itself, amalgamating with another community on the Quirinal, this hollow became a common meeting-place and market, and the stream was in due time drained by that Cloaca which we saw debouching into the Tiber near the bridge we crossed.

(Latin, cloaca, "a sewer.") ...

The Tin Soldier of the Danish army and the paper boat of the Danish navy, as in the story, were swept away down the great gutter, down that colossal cloaca that leads to the vast cesspool of Berlin.

The Etruscans appear to have taken very great pains with the drainage of their cities; on many sites the cloaca are the only remains of their former industry and greatness which remain.

The Cloaca Maxima was the great sewer of Rome.

The story of St. Sebastian relates how, after his martyred body had been thrown into the Cloaca Maxima, that his friends might not have the last satisfaction of giving it burial, he appeared in a vision to Lucina, a Roman lady, told her where his body might be found, and bade her lay it in a grave near that in which the apostles had rested.