Sophia. We might likewise
celebrate the baths, which still retained the name of
Zeuxippus, after they had been enriched by the magnificence
of Constantine with lofty columns, various marbles, and
above three score statues of bronze. But we should deviate
from the design of this history if we attempted minutely to
describe the different buildings or quarters of the city....
A particular description, composed about a century after its
foundation, enumerates a capitol or school of learning, a
circus, two theatres, eight public and one hundred and
fifty-three private baths, fifty-two porticoes, five
granaries, eight aqueducts or reservoirs of water, four
spacious halls for the meeting of the senate or courts of
justice, fourteen churches, fourteen palaces, and four
thousand three hundred and eighty-eight houses, which for
their size or beauty deserved to be distinguished from the
multitude of plebeian habitations."
Gibbon's conception of history was that of a spacious panorama, in
which a series of tableaux pass in succession before the reader's eye.
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