sarcophagi; but after that period cremation became the universal custom. The ashes and calcined bones were preserved in ollæ, or little jars like common garden flower-pots, made of the same kind of coarse red earthenware, with a lid attached. These jars were deposited in rows of little niches sunk in the brickwork all round the walls of the tomb, resembling the nests in a pigeon-house; hence the origin of the name. One tomb was thus capable of containing the remains of a large number of persons; no less than six thousand of the freedmen of Augustus being deposited in the Columbarium which bears their name. The entrance to these sepulchral chambers was from the top, descending by an internal stair; and the passages and walls were usually decorated with frescoes and arabesques, illustrating some mythical or historical subject. The names of the dead were carved on marble tablets fixed above the pigeon-holes containing the ashes. Columbaria being only used for dependents and slaves, were generally erected near the tombs of their masters; and hence all along the Appian Way we see numerous traces of them side by side with the gigantic monuments of the patrician families. The Columbaria near the tomb of the Scipios are three in number, and contain the cinerary urns of persons attached to the household of the emperors from the reign of Augustus up to the period of the Antonines, when the system of burying the bodies entire was again introduced. The last discovered Columbarium is the most interesting of the group. Being only thirty-three years exposed, the paintings on the walls and the vases are remarkably well preserved. This tomb contains the ashes of the dependents of Tiberius, the contemporary of our Lord. One pigeon-hole is filled with the calcined bones of the court buffoon, a poor deaf and dumb slave who had wonderful powers of mimicry, and used to amuse his morose master by imitating the gesticulations of the advocates pleading in the Forum. Another pigeon-hole contains the remains of the keeper of the library of Apollo in the imperial palace on the Palatine. A most pathetic lamentation in verse is made by one Julia Prima over the ashes of her husband; and an inscription, along with a portrait of the animal, records that beneath are the remains of a favourite dog that was the pet of the whole household—a little touch of nature that links the ages and the zones, and makes the whole world kin. The whole of this region, called Monte d'Oro, for what reason I know not, seems to have been a vast necropolis, in which not only Columbaria for their slaves and freedmen were built by the great patrician families, but also family vaults for the wealthier middle classes were constructed and sold by speculators, just as in our modern town cemeteries.
Very near the modern gate of the city the road passes under the so-called Arch of Drusus. It consists of a single arch, whose keystone projects on each side about two feet and a half beyond the plane of the frontage; and is built of huge solid blocks of travertine, with cornices of white marble, and two composite columns of African marble on each side, much soiled and defaced, which are so inferior in style to the rest of the architecture that they are manifestly later additions. The whole monument is much worn and injured; but it is made exceedingly picturesque by a crown of verdure upon the thick mass of soil accumulated there by small increments blown up from the highway in the course of so many centuries. It was long supposed that Caracalla had barbarously taken advantage of the arch to carry across the highway at this point the aqueduct which supplied his baths with water. But the more recent authorities maintain that the arch itself, so far from being the monument of Drusus, was only one of the arches built by Caracalla in a more ornamental way than the rest, as was commonly done when an aqueduct crossed a public road. This theory does away at one fell stroke with the idea so long fondly cherished that St. Paul must have passed under this very arch on his way to Rome, and that his eye must have rested on these very stones upon which we gaze now. It is hard to give up the belief that the stern old arch, severe in its sturdiness and simplicity as the character of the apostle himself, did actually cast its haunted shadow over him on the memorable day when, a prisoner in chains in charge of a Roman soldier, he passed over this part of the Appian Way, and it signalised a far grander triumph than that for which it was originally erected. We should greatly prefer to retain the old idea that under that arch Christianity, as represented by St. Paul, passed to its conquest of the whole Roman world; and passed too in character, the religion of the cross, joy in sorrow, liberty in bonds, strength in weakness, proclaiming itself best from the midst of the sufferings which it overcame.
Immediately beyond the Arch of Drusus is the Gate of St. Sebastian, the Porta Appia of the Aurelian wall, protected on either side by two semicircular towers, which from their great height and massiveness have a most imposing appearance. They are composed of the beautiful glowing brick of the ancient Roman structures, and rest upon a foundation of white marble blocks, evidently taken from the Temple of Mars, which once stood close by, and at which the armies entering Rome in triumph used to halt. The gateway was greatly injured in the sixth century during the Gothic War, but was repaired by Belisarius; or, as some say, by Narses. The most remarkable incident connected with it since that period was the triumphal entry into the city of Marco Antonio Colonna, after the victory of Lepanto over the Turks and African corsairs in 1571. This famous battle, one of the few great decisive battles of the world, belongs equally to civil and ecclesiastical history, having checked the spread of Mohammedanism in Eastern Europe, and thus altered the fortunes of the Church and the world. The famous Spanish poet Cervantes lost an arm in this battle. The ovation given to Colonna by the Romans in connection with it may be said to be the last of the long series of triumphal processions which entered the Eternal City; and in point of splendour and ceremony it vied with the grandest of them—prisoners and their families, along with the spoil taken from the enemy, figuring in it as of old. A short distance outside the gate, the viaduct of the railway from Civita Vecchia spans the Appian Way, and brings the ancient "queen of roads" and the modern iron-way into strange contrast—or rather, I should say, into fitting contact; for there is a resemblance between the great works of ancient and modern engineering skill in their mighty enterprise and boundless command of physical resources, which we do not find in the works of the intermediate ages.
Beyond the viaduct the road descends into a valley, at the bottom of which runs the classic Almo. It is little better than a ditch, with artificial banks overgrown with weeds, great glossy-leaved arums, and milky-veined thistles, and with a little dirty water in it from the drainings of the surrounding vineyards. And yet this disenchanted brook figures largely in ancient mythical story. Ovid sang of it, and Cicero's letters mention it honourably. It was renowned for its medicinal properties, and diseased cattle were brought to its banks to be healed. The famous simulacrum, called the image of Cybele—a black meteoric stone which fell from the sky at Phrygia, and was brought to Rome during the Second Punic War, according to the Sybilline instructions—was washed every spring in the waters of the Almo by the priests of the goddess. So persistent was this pagan custom, even amid the altered circumstances of Christianity, that, until the commencement of the nineteenth century, an image of our Saviour was annually brought from the Church of Santa Martina in the Forum and washed in this stream. In the valley of the Almo the poet Terence possessed a little farm of twenty acres, given to him by his friend Scipio Æmilianus.
After crossing the Almo, two huge shapeless masses of ruins may be seen above the vineyard walls: that on the left is said to be the tomb of Geta, the son of the Emperor Severus, who was put to death in his mother's arms by order of his unnatural brother. Geta's children and friends, to the number, it is said, of twenty thousand persons, were also put to death on the false accusation of conspiracy; among whom was the celebrated jurist Papinian, who, when required to compose a defence of the murder—as Seneca was asked by Nero to apologise for his crime—nobly replied that "it was easier to commit than to justify fratricide." But so capricious was Caracalla that he soon afterwards executed the accomplices of his unnatural deed, and caused his murdered brother to be placed among the gods, and divine honours to be paid to him. It was in this more humane mood that the tomb whose ruins we see on the Appian Way was ordered to be built. The tomb on the right-hand side of the road is a most incongruous structure as it appears at present, having a circular medieval tower on the top of it, and a common osteria or wine-shop in front; but the old niches in which statues or busts used to stand still remain. It was long supposed to be the mausoleum of the Scipios; but it is now ascertained to be the sepulchre of Priscilla, the wife of Abascantius, the favourite freedman of Domitian, celebrated for his conjugal affection by the poet Statius. Covered with ivy and mural plants, the monument has a very picturesque appearance.
The road beyond this rises from the valley of the Almo, and passes over a kind of plateau. It