LIGHTING OF STREETS.

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this pharos is considered to be the best constructed of allmodern known edifices for like purposes. There are innumerous places on our coast, a variety of light-houses, aswell as Marietta towers.

LIGHTING of STREETS.

The Jews kept the streets lighted on the eve of theirgreat festival, called feslum encceniorum, the least of thededication, which, according to general belief, occurred inDecember, and continued for eight days, having a numberof lamps lighted before their houses. 1 A passage in JEs-chylus informs us that similar illuminations were used alsoin Greece. At Rome , the forum was lighted when gameswere celebrated in the night-time. Caligula , also, upon asimilar occasion, caused the whole city to be lighted ; as weare told by Suetonius, in Vita Caligula. Plutarch , also,in Vita Cicero, informs us, that upon that advocate returninghome late at night, after he had defeated the conspiracy ofCatiline , lamps and torches were lighted in all the streets,in honour of that great orator. The Emperor Constantine,caused the whole city of Constantinople to be illuminated withlamps and wax candles on Easter eve. 2 The early lathers ofthe church, in the first century, were often in the habit of up-braiding the Christians for lighting and illuminating theirhouses, on idolatrous festivals, in a more elegant manner thanthe idolaters did themselves ; 3 this they considered as a speciesof idolatry. It was usual on birth-days, among the ancients,to suspend lamps from chains. 4 The streets, not only ofAntioch, but of Edessa, in Syria , were lighted in the fourthand fifth centuries ; to prove which, a passage occurs inthe history of Jesue Stylites, where it is explicitly said,that Eulogins, governor of Edessa, about the year 505,ordered lamps to be kept burning in the streets during thenight; and that he employed upon that occasion, the oilwhich was before given.to churches and monasteries.

In the beginning of the fourth century, Libanius , writinga panegyric in praise of his native city, Antioch, says,

1 Et accedere raos est in eis lumina tempore vespertine, ad ostium domorum.Gemara Babylonica, ad tit. Sabbath, c. ii. p. 21.

* Euseb. Pamphili . lib. iv.de Vita Constantini, cap. 22. Cant 1720. fol. p. 637.Compare the passages there found with Greg. Nazianzeni Oral. 19, and Orat. 2.p. 676, where the author alludes to the festival of Easter .

3 Tertullian . de Idololatria, cap. xv. p. 523

♦ J. Lipsii Electa, lib. ii. cap. 3.