[70] THE SEVEN HILLS. Contempt for all who lived in the provinces was peculiar to all Romans, even the lowest classes of the populace. Thus Cicero says: “_Cum infimo cive romano quisquam amplissimus Galliae comparandus est?_” (Can even the most distinguished Gaul be compared with the humblest Roman citizen?) This prejudice extended to later centuries, though under the first emperors numerous inhabitants of the provinces attained the rank of senator and reached the highest offices. It is very comical, when Juvenal, a freedman’s son, treats the “knights from Asia Minor,” (_Equites Asiani_) condescendingly, as if they were intruders, unworthy to unfasten the straps of his sandals. Inhabitants of the other provinces were held in higher esteem than the Greeks and Orientals. But even Tacitus (_Ann._ IV, 3.) regards it as an aggravation of the crime committed by the wife of Drusus, that Sejanus, for whom she broke her marriage-vow, was not a full-blooded Roman, but merely a knight from Volsinii. [71] THE FORMAL GARDENS OF ROME. The taste of the Romans in regard to the art of gardening resembled that shown at Versailles. The eloquence with which individual authors urge a return to nature (Hor. _Epist._ I, 10, Prop. I, 2, Juv. _Sat._ III, etc.,) only proves that the opposite course was universal. Clipping bushes and trees into artificial forms was considered specially fashionable. Thus Pliny the younger, in his description of the Tuscan villa (_Ep._ V, 6,) writes: “Before the colonnade is an open terrace, surrounded with box, the trees clipped into various shapes; below it a steep slope of lawn, at whose foot, on both sides of the path, stand bushes of box, shaped into the forms of various animals. On the level ground the acanthus grows delicately, I might almost say transparently. Around it is a hedge of thick closely-clipped bushes, and around this hedge runs an avenue of circular form, adorned with box clipped into various shapes, and small trees artistically trimmed. The whole is surrounded by a wall, concealed by box.” Then towards the end of the letter: “The box is clipped into a thousand shapes, sometimes into letters, that form the name of the owner or gardener.” [72] JUPITER CAPITOLINUS. The priests of certain divinities were called _Flamines_ and the chief of these was the _Flamen Dialis_ or priest of Jupiter--called Capitolinus from the hill on which the temple stood. Tacitus (_Ann._ III, 71,) tells us of the prohibition here spoken of. [73] THE PRAETORSHIP AND CONSULSHIP were still, under the emperors, an object of ardent desire, in spite of the fact that these offices had been stripped of all power.