Milton is, alas! but too little read nowadays. Yet there is not only beauty, but wonderful truthfulness, in his descriptions. It was from Brundusium, or Naples, that the Eastern embassies made their way into Rome, and there can be no doubt of the substantial accuracy of his description.

The magnificent villa of the Quintillii was one of those that broke the majestic line of tombs along the Appian Way. It was a sumptuous palace. Its beauty and its splendour were fatal to its owners. The front to the road exhibited the portico of a Temple to Hercules and a noble vestibule, as may be seen in Canina's masterly restorations. Behind was a large space, including courts, baths, gardens, water-courses, and all that ministered to the luxury of a luxurious period. The brothers Quintillii appear to have been noble examples of union, ability, and success. One was consul in Achaia, and one in Pannonia, under the just rule of

the Antonines. They were together, too, in their deaths. On the discovery of some supposed conspiracy, the brothers were cut off by the order of Commodus, who confiscated the villa.

In the neighbourhood of the Capenian Gate was the arch of Drusus and the tomb of Romolus, son of the last Pagan Emperor of Rome. Maxentius had laid out near this a vast circus, a votive offering to Romolus, one of the last erections of Pagan magnificence. There, too, was the tomb of Geta, who fell by the hand of his brother Caracalla, and many of the freedmen of Augustus and of Livia were buried in the vicinity. One of the tombs in the neighbourhood of this gate must have been of extraordinary magnificence. It was that of Priscilla, wife of Abascantius, a favourite of Domitian. She seems to have been much beloved by her husband, and he spared no pains and no expense to render her burial a scene of marvellous display. Statius describes it in his usual stilted and exaggerated manner. He pictures pathetically the last moments of Priscilla, and goes on to tell us how all Rome poured forth along the Appian Way, on the banks of the Almo, near the temple of Cybele, to see the wonderful burial. Her husband could not endure to see her burned. Everything that wealth and luxury could supply, to make the procession imposing, was provided. The tomb itself was a marvel of architecture. Marble statues of Priscilla, in the garb and attitude of various goddesses, adorned the tomb, whilst Greece was laid under contribution to provide a building at once stately and imposing.

The valley and the fountain of Egeria were not far off, with all their venerable romance, their reminiscences of Numa, consecrated to the devout Roman by centuries of

hallowed tradition. Juvenal was indignant in his day at the profanation of the holy fane by miserable Jews, mean pedlars, defiling the soil and the waters of this sacred spot by their provision baskets and their pallets of straw. The Jews had long ere this been money-lenders and merchants of respectability in Asia Minor, but the thousands of Jewish slaves, sold after the wars of Titus, had made them a miserable and squalid community, disliked by the fashionable world of Rome, outcasts, speaking an uncouth language, with unpleasant habits, and professing a religion that appeared to the Roman to be both unsocial and illiberal.

Not far from Egeria, the temple of the Deus Ridiculus, marked the spot from which Hannibal is said to have looked down upon Rome. It is a rounded mound now, with a few stony fragments, marking out a spot that must ever be famous in the world's history. With what feelings did the Carthaginian General survey Rome from that mount? Ought he to have attempted its reduction? Had he the military machinery requisite to render such an attempt likely to succeed? With what feelings did he turn away from the spectacle, and what did he say to those about him, as he thus left the vantageground? He probably would not have succeeded had he attempted the siege, for he probably had neither the troops nor the munitions of war necessary. So much we partly know. But as to his feelings and his words history is for ever silent.

The colossal tomb of Cecilia Metella stands before us as we drive along the Appian Way, and close to it are the remains of the mediæval fortress of the Gaetani. Cecilia Metella! Some are known by deeds, some by words, some by their position. Cecilia Metella is known only by her tomb. Byron asks

The tomb itself served the purpose of a fortress for ages, but as for her to whose memory it was raised, her history or her family, we know nothing-hers is a name and nothing more.

Near the fourth milestone from the city we come upon the scene of the luxurious life, the miserable death, and the humble tomb of Seneca. Here were his gardens. He had all that wealth could give, all that luxury could invent-" too wealthy" was an epithet applied to him by the poet. It was in his villa here, called Nomentanum, that he received the message sent to him by Nero, through a certain centurion, that he must prepare to die. "Seneca heard the message," says Tacitus, "with calm composure." "I leave you," said he to his followers, "the example of my life, the best and most precious legacy now in my power." He was not permitted to will away his property. He took leave of his friends and attendants with manly resignation, and embraced his wife tenderly, exhorting her to bear her trial with equanimity. But she had resolved to die with him. Seneca reasoned with her, but in vain. Paulina was determined. Since you will have it so," he said at length," we will die together." These words were no sooner uttered than the veins of

both their arms were opened. "He called for his secretary," says Tacitus, " and dictated, whilst life was ebbing away, that farewell discourse which has been published, and which is in everybody's hands."

But Nero was not willing that popular enthusiasm should be excited by the heroic death of Paulina with her husband. He sent hurried orders to bind up her wounds. The flow of blood was stopped whilst she lay in a swoon. "She lived a few years longer, in fond regret, revering the memory of her husband to the end of her days." Seneca himself, finding the flow of blood but slow, took poison, but, finding that its effect was also slow, he had a warm bath prepared, and in that he died. His body, without any funeral pomp, was committed to the flames.

What a tragedy, and what actions! The philosopher and the tutor dying the death of a martyr, and the pupil living to be execrated as a tyrant and a murderer!

And here, all around us, between the third and the fifth miles from Rome, there are remains along this Appian Way, of wonderful monuments, once full of grace and beauty-a grace and beauty by no means inherent in the Roman, but taught to him by the Greek-a grace and beauty arising from that delicate sense of proportion which seems to have been intuitive in the Grecian mind-a grace and beauty characteristic of Grecian art and Grecian architecture, but which are seldom found in the art or architecture of other countries, except when they copied Greece.

Two of the mounds near the fifth milestone are shown as the tombs of the Horatii and Curiatii. Our modern historians smile at the traditions of ancient Rome. Niebuhr and Lewes have sought to discredit them altogether. But if there was no kingly period in Roman history,

before the times of the Republic, who raised those mighty fortifications on the Palatine, which even now astonish us by their size and strength, massive walls, foundations built for all time, rocks cut away, and gateways formed, that have plainly lasted for thousands of years? Call the kings local chieftains if you will, but the city that could rear such monuments must have been powerful and populous, even in those far-off times. These mounds then may or may not be the tombs of the Horatii and of the Curiatii, the legend itself may be more or less fabulous, but to the traveller, with a little imagination, they are interesting and suggestive notwithstanding.

The great circular tomb, known as that of Cotta, a little further on, was raised either to Valerius Messalinus Cotta, or to his greater father, Messala Corvinus. It covered at one time half-an-acre of ground, and, although much praised by many, bears now traces rather of size than of grace or beauty. But time is a sad defacer. The beautiful may have been destroyed by the lapse of ages, and the massive and the solid alone left.

He

Corvinus was one of the best and wisest councillors of Augustus, a friend of Horace and Tibullus, and probably of Virgil, and he was the nursing father of Ovid's poetry. A great general and a great statesman; he was also a poet, historian, grammarian, and an orator. was in high command at Philippi, and was one of the chief leaders at Actium. His son Cotta was a man of eminence, but the father Corvinus was a hero, and to this hero there can be little doubt the great tomb was raised, by a grateful, affectionate son.

Near the ninth milestone stood the tomb of the Emperor GallieIt is of this Gallienus that Gibbon says "he was a master of

nus.

several curious but useful sciences, a ready orator, an elegant poet, a skilful gardener, an excellent cook, and a most contemptible prince." The tombs of Licinius and others in this neighbourhood demand a passing record, but I have delayed long enough amongst the Pagan deadlet us turn now to the Christians.

From the first the Christians discountenanced cremation and fa

voured burial. In this respect they were probably only following Jewish custom, without any reference to symbolism, or mystic faith. Christian cemeteries therefore would naturally occupy much more space than those of Pagan Rome. But there was another point in which the contrast was more striking. The wealthy Roman might, as a favour, allow his freed men or his slaves obscure niches in the family mausoleum, but this concession was by no means common. The great mass of the vulgar dead were buried in vast pits, the purticuli, probably dug in different parts of the outskirts of the city, but of which the largest were those on the Esquiline Hill, referred to by Horace in his first Satire an accursed and infected spot, where the white bones cropped out of the loose black soil!

But the Christian faith recognized no such distinction between tenants of the lordly mansions, and the vulgar thousands who swarmed in the streets, lurked in the cellars, and nestled in the garrets of the great city. To the Christian the body of the slave or of the freed man was as holy as that of his master. He had the same hope of the resurrection, the same title to immortality.

Within the walls of the city interment had been sternly forbidden from the earliest times, even by the Laws of the Twelve Tables, Vestal Virgins and a very few noble families alone excepted.

Hence the Catacombs. Greater space was required. The body was sacred. No interments were allowed within the walls; convenient spaces without the walls were already occupied. And hence, in the first in stance, that burrowing beneath the earth, which the Jews had already begun in order to dispose of their dead. Hence the Christian Catacombs. It must be remembered that the Jews had their Catacombs long before, not in Rome only, but in many of the cities of Italy.

It is quite a mistake to suppose that the Catacombs were originally quarries or sand-pits. Recent investigation has conclusively proved that they have been hollowed out for the purpose of sepulture originally, and then, during times of persecution, they were used by the Christians as places of concealment from their blood-thirsty enemies. Here in these narrow passages and gloomy vaults the members of the little community found a refuge, such as it was, from torture, persecution and death. Here, hunted like rats, they often lived for months together, carrying on the excavations secretly, so as to provide places of exit that might be unknown to the pursuers, if the original place of entrance were invaded by them. What a fearful life! What a living death rather, to be shut beneath the earth in these narrow gloomy passages, without light, and often with but little hope of ultimate safety!

Of the three kinds of deposit in the valley of the Tiber, on which Rome is built, the stony tufa, the granular or gravel tufa, and the sandy tufa, the two former were found convenient for hollowing out these burial vaults. From the first, the stony tufa, large quantities had been formerly excavated for building purposes, but the quarries were usually open to the light of day.

The Jews and the Christians found the gravelly deposit much more easy to work, and therefore the Catacombs were chiefly excavated in it. It was solid enough to make walls for long and intricate passages, or ambulacra; to be hewn into arches, vaulting over deep recesses, in which the coffins were arranged; and to support floor beneath floor, even as many as five floors, down to the lowest depth of that particular formation. With the cessation of the granular deposit, the Catacombs came to an end, either terminated by hard rock or dying off into the sandy tufa, where excavation was unsafe. But besides the proper kind of stratum, another consideration of vital importance had to be cared for-that is, that the Catacombs must be at a certain height above the level of the Tiber, and the smaller streams, such as the Anio and the Almone, or the whole would be in danger of being flooded.

Here and there more spacious excavations were possible, and were hollowed out accordingly, forming the lowly chapels still visiblechapels where the faithful crowded together, in darkness, in silence, and in terror, during times of persecution. And, running hither and thither through the volcanic tufa, narrow passages, lined with the resting places of the dead, sometimes on one side only, but more generally on both sides, stretched away for miles in an intricate network, a vast and complicated maze. A spider's web, seen through the glass of the naturalist, or rather four or five spiders' webs, one within the other, might give us some faint idea of the exceeding intricacy of these passages, all the threads spun out with infinite complexity, and converging towards a

common entrance.

It does not appear that Christian Catacombs had been excavated in the

time of Nero, as Tacitus, in describing the persecution during that reign, makes no mention of them, but we know that they existed in the time of Domitian. St. Paul is said to have suffered martyrdom near the Ostian road, where that magnificent church, S. Paolo fuori delle Mure, now stands; and St. Peter is said to have suffered and to have been buried where St. Peter's now stands. Both the bodies, according to the traditions of the early Church, were removed to one of the Catacombs on the Appian Way, where they remained until the times of persecution had ceased, and it was safe to take them back to Rome.

During the persecution in the reign of Domitian, there is ample proof that the Catacombs were used by the Christians not merely as places of sepulture, but as hidingplaces from their tormentors. From the accession of Nero to the middle of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, that is to say, from 96 to 166 A.D., it would appear that the Church in Rome was spreading in peace and quietness. We must not, therefore, suppose that during the early centuries the Catacombs were frequently or constantly hidingplaces. They were places of sepulture only, with very few exceptions, from the persecution of Domitian to that of Decius, which happened in the middle of the third century.

During the reign of Marcus Antoninus there were at first local persecutions, and there was an outbreak of Pagan zeal. The darkness of desolation seemed to be gathering round Rome. The Marcomannian war on the Danube, the Eastern war on the Euphrates, and, worse than war, the terrible plague which the victorious legions brought from the East, had raised a mad panic throughout the empire. Victims must be found to appease the angry, the deserted, and the