exaggeration, in the tale of a Roman noble, taking his seat in his sedan after the bath, and requiring the assurance of his slave that he was really seated.(45) It is little wonder that on such lives an utter weariness should settle, the disgust of oversated appetite, which even the most far-fetched luxuries of the orient, the most devilish ingenuity of morbid vice, could hardly arouse. Yet these jaded souls are tortured by an aimless restlessness, which frets and chafes at the slow passing of the hours,(46) or vainly hopes to find relief in change of scene.(47) The more energetic spirits, with no wholesome field for energy, developed into a class which obtained the name of “Ardeliones.” Seneca,(48) Martial,(49) and the younger Pliny(50) have left us pictures of these idle busybodies, hurrying round the forums, theatres, and great houses, in an idle quest of some trivial object of interest, waiting on patrons who ignore their existence, following some stranger to the grave, rushing pell-mell to the wedding of a much-married lady, or to a scene in the law courts, returning at nightfall, worn out with these silly labours, to tread the same weary round next day. Less innocent were they who daily gathered in the _circuli_,(51) to hear and spread the wildest rumours about the army on the frontier, to kill a woman’s reputation with a hint, to find a sinister meaning in some imperial order, or to gloat in whispers over the last highly-coloured tale of folly or dark guilt from the palace. It was a perilous enjoyment, for, with a smiling face, some seeming friend was probably noting every hint which might be tortured into an accusation before the secret tribunal on the Palatine, or angling for a sneer which might cost its author a fortune, or send him to the rocks of Gyarus.