"A gaunt Franciscan friar, with a wild bright eye, was our only guide down into this profound and dreadful place. The narrow ways and openings hither and thither, coupled with the dead and heavy air, soon blotted out, in all of us, any recollection of the track by which we had come; and I could not help thinking, 'Good Heaven, if in a sudden fit of madness he should dash the torches out, or if he should be seized with a fit, what would become of us!' On we wandered, among martyrs' graves: passing great subterranean vaulted roads, diverging in all directions, and choked up with heaps of stones, that thieves and murderers may not take refuge there, and form a population under Rome, even worse than that which lives between it and the sun. Graves, graves, graves; graves of men, of women, of little children, who ran crying to the persecutors, 'We are Christians! we are Christians!' that they might be murdered with their parents; graves with the palm of martyrdom roughly cut into their stone boundaries, and little niches, made to hold a vessel of the martyr's blood; graves of some who lived down here, for years together, ministering to the rest, and preaching truth, and hope, and comfort, from the rude altars, that bear witness to their fortitude at this hour; more roomy graves, but far more terrible, where hundreds, being surprised, were hemmed in and walled up; buried before death, and killed by slow starvation.

"'The triumphs of the Faith are not above-ground in our splendid churches,' said the friar, looking round upon us, as we stopped to rest in one of the low passages, with bones and dust surrounding us on every side. 'They are here! among the martyrs' graves!' He was a gentle, earnest man, and said it from his heart; but when I thought how Christian men have dealt with one another; how, perverting our most merciful religion, they have hunted down and tortured, burnt and beheaded, strangled, slaughtered, and oppressed each other; I pictured to myself an agony surpassing any that this Dust had suffered with the breath of life yet lingering in it, and how these great and constant hearts would have been shaken--how they would have quailed and drooped--if a foreknowledge of the deeds that professing Christians would commit in the great name for which they died, could have rent them with its own unutterable anguish, on the cruel wheel, and bitter cross, and in the fearful fire."--_Dickens._

"Countless martyrs, they say, rest in these ancient sepulchres. In these dark depths the ancient Church took refuge from persecution; there she laid her martyrs, and there, over their tombs, she chaunted hymns of triumph, and held communion with Him for whom they died. In that church I spend hours. I have no wish to descend into those sacred sepulchres, and pry among the graves the resurrection trump will open soon enough. I like to think of the holy dead, lying undisturbed and quiet there; of their spirits in Paradise; of their faith triumphant in the city that massacred them.

"No doubt they also had their perplexities, and wondered why the wicked triumph, and sighed to God, 'How long, O Lord, how long?'"--_Schonberg Cotta Family._

"And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled."--_Rev._ vi. 9--11.

In the valley beneath S. Sebastiano are the ruins of the _Circus of Maxentius_, near those of a villa of that emperor. The circus was 1482 feet long, 244 feet broad, and was capable of containing 15,000 spectators, yet it is a miniature compared with the Circus Maximus, though very interesting as retaining in tolerable preservation all the different parts which composed a circus. The circular ruin near it was a _Temple_ dedicated by Maxentius to his son Romulus.

"Le jeune Romulus, etant mort, fut place au rang des dieux, dans cet olympe qui s'ecroulait. Son pere lui eleva un temple dont la partie inferieure se voit encore, et le cirque lui-meme fut peut-etre une dependance de ce temple funebre, car les courses de chars etaient un des honneurs que l'antiquite rendait aux morts, et sont souvent pour cela representees sur les tombeaux."--_Ampere, Emp._ ii. 360.

These ruins are very picturesque, backed by the peaks of the Sabine range, which in winter are generally covered with snow.

The opposite hill is crowned by the _Tomb of Cecilia Metella_, daughter of Quintus Metellus Creticus, and wife of Crassus. It is a round tower, seventy feet in diameter. The bulls' heads on the frieze gave it the popular name of Capo di Bove. The marble coating of the basement was carried off by Urban VIII. to make the fountain of Trevi. The battlements were added when the tomb was turned into a fortress by the Caetani in the thirteenth century.

"About two miles, or more, from the city gates, and right upon the roadside, is an immense round pile, sepulchral in its original purpose, like those already mentioned. It is built of great blocks of hewn stone, on a vast, square foundation of rough, agglomerated material, such as composes the mass of all the other ruinous tombs.

But, whatever might be the cause, it is in a far better state of preservation than they. On its broad summit rise the battlements of a mediaeval fortress, out of the midst of which (so long since had time begun to crumble the supplemental structure, and cover it with soil, by means of wayside dust) grow trees, bushes, and thick festoons of ivy. This tomb of a woman has become the dungeon-keep of a castle; and all the care that Cecilia Metella's husband could bestow, to secure endless peace for her beloved relics, only sufficed to make that handful of precious ashes the nucleus of battles, long ages after her death."--_Hawthorne, Transformation._

"There is a stern round tower of other days, Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone, Such as an army's baffled strength delays, Standing with half its battlements alone, And with two thousand years of ivy grown, The garland of eternity, where wave The green leaves over all by time o'erthrown;-- What was this tower of strength? within its cave What treasure lay so lock'd, so hid?--a woman's grave.

"But who was she, the lady of the dead, Tomb'd in a palace? Was she chaste and fair?

Worthy a king's--or more--a Roman's bed?

What race of chiefs and heroes did she bear?

What daughter of her beauties was the heir?

How lived--how loved--how died she? Was she not So honoured--and conspicuously there, Where meaner relics must not dare to rot, Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot?

"Perchance she died in youth: it may be, bow'd With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb That weigh'd upon her gentle dust, a cloud Might gather o'er her beauty, and a gloom In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom Heaven gives its favourites--early death; yet shed A sunset charm around her, and illume With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead, Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf-like red.

"Perchance she died in age--surviving all, Charms, kindred, children--with the silver grey On her long tresses, which might yet recall, It may be, still a something of the day When they were braided, and her proud array And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed By Rome--but whither would Conjecture stray?

Thus much alone we know--Metella died, The wealthiest Roman's wife: Behold his love or pride!"

_Childe Harold._

Close to the tomb are the ruins of a Gothic church of the Caetani.

"Le tombeau de Cecilia-Metella etait devenu un chateau fort alors aux mains des Caetani, et autour du chateau s'etait forme un village avec son eglise, dont on a recemment retrouve les restes."--_Ampere, Voyage Dantesque._

It is at Cecilia Metella's tomb that the beauties of the Via Appia really begin. A very short distance further, we emerge from the walls which have hitherto shut in the road on either side, and enjoy uninterrupted views over the Latin plain, strewn with its ruined castles and villages--and the long lines of aqueducts, to the Sabine and Alban mountains.

"The Via Appia is a magnificent promenade, amongst ruinous tombs, the massive remains of which extend for many miles over the Roman Campagna. The powerful families of ancient Rome loved to build monuments to their dead by the side of the public road, probably to exhibit at once their affection for their relations and their own power and affluence. Most of these monuments are now nothing but heaps of ruins, upon which are placed the statues and sculptures which have been found in the earth or amongst the rubbish. Those inscriptions which have been found on the Via Appia bear witness to the grief of the living for the dead, but never to the hope of reunion. On a great number of sarcophagi or the friezes of tombs may be seen the dead sitting or lying as if they were alive, some seem to be praying. Many heads have great individuality of character. Sometimes a white marble figure, beautifully draped, projects from these heaps of ruins, but without head or hands; sometimes a hand is stretched out, or a portion of a figure rises from the tomb. It is a street through monuments of the dead, across an immense churchyard; for the desolate Roman Campagna may be regarded as such. To the left it is scattered with the ruins of colossal aqueducts, which, during the time of the emperors, conveyed lakes and rivers to Rome, and which still, ruinous and destroyed, delight the eye by the beautiful proportions of their arcades. To the right is an immense prairie, without any other limit than that of the ocean, which, however, is not seen from it.

The country is desolate, and only here and there are there any huts or trees to be seen."--_Frederika Bremer._

"For the space of a mile or two beyond the gate of S. Sebastiano, this ancient and famous road is as desolate and disagreeable as most of the other Roman avenues. It extends over small, uncomfortable paving-stones, between brick and plastered walls, which are very solidly constructed, and so high as almost to exclude a view of the surrounding country. The houses are of the most uninviting aspect, neither picturesque, nor homelike and social; they have seldom or never a door opening on the wayside, but are accessible only from the rear, and frown inhospitably upon the traveller through iron-grated windows. Here and there appears a dreary inn, or a wine-shop, designated by the withered bush beside the entrance, within which you discover a stone-built and sepulchral interior, where guests refresh themselves with sour bread and goat's-milk cheese, washed down with wine of dolorous acerbity.

"At frequent intervals along the roadside, up rises the ruin of an ancient tomb. As they stand now, these structures are immensely high, and broken mounds of conglomerated brick, stone, pebbles, and earth, all molten by time into a mass as solid and indestructible as if each tomb were composed of a single boulder of granite. When first erected, they were cased externally, no doubt, with slabs of polished marble, artfully wrought, bas-reliefs, and all such suitable adornments, and were rendered majestically beautiful by grand architectural designs. This antique splendour has long since been stolen from the dead, to decorate the palaces and churches of the living. Nothing remains to the dishonoured sepulchres, except their massiveness.

"Even the pyramids form hardly a stranger spectacle, or a more alien from human sympathies, than the tombs of the Appian Way, with their gigantic height, breadth, and solidity, defying time and the elements, and far too mighty to be demolished by an ordinary earthquake. Here you may see a modern dwelling, and a garden with its vines and olive-trees, perched on the lofty dilapidation of a tomb, which forms a precipice of fifty feet in depth on each of the four sides. There is a house on that funeral mound, where generations of children have been born, and successive lives have been spent, undisturbed by the ghost of the stern Roman whose ashes were so preposterously burdened. Other sepulchres wear a crown of grass, shrubbery, and forest-trees, which throw out a broad sweep of branches, having had time, twice over, to be a thousand years of age. On one of them stands a tower, which, though immemorially more modern than the tomb, was itself built by immemorial hands, and is now rifted quite from top to bottom by a vast fissure of decay; the tomb-hillock, its foundation, being still as firm as ever, and likely to endure until the last trump shall rend it wide asunder, and summon forth its unknown dead.

"Yes, its unknown dead! For, except in one or two doubtful instances, these mountainous sepulchral edifices have not availed to keep so much as the bare name of an individual or a family from oblivion. Ambitious of everlasting remembrance as they were, the slumberers might just as well have gone quietly to rest, each in his pigeon-hole of a columbarium, or under his little green hillock, in a grave-yard, without a headstone to mark the spot. It is rather satisfactory than otherwise, to think that all these idle pains have turned out so utterly abortive."--_Hawthorne._

Near the fourth milestone, is the tomb of Marcus Servilius Quartus (with an inscription), restored by Canova in 1808. A bas-relief of the death of Atys, killed by Adrastus, a short distance beyond this, has been suggested as part of the tomb of Seneca, who was put to death "near the fourth milestone" by order of Nero. An inscribed tomb beyond this is that of Sextus Pompeius Justus.

Near this, in the Campagna on the left, are some small remains, supposed to be those of a Temple of Juno.

Beyond this a number of tombs can be identified, but none of any importance. Such are the tombs of Plinius Eutychius, erected by Plinius Zosimus, a freedman of Pliny the younger; of Caius Licinius; the Doric tomb of the tax-gatherer Claudius Philippanus, inscribed "Tito. Claudio.

Secundo. Philippiano. Coactori. Flavia. Irene. Vxori Indulgentissimo;"

of Rabinius, with three busts in relief; of Hermodorus; of Elsia Prima, priestess of Isis; of Marcus C. Cerdonus, with the bas-relief of an elephant bearing a burning altar.

Beyond the fifth milestone, two circular mounds with basements of peperino, were considered by Canina to be the tombs of the Horatii and Curiatii.

On the opposite side of the road is the exceedingly picturesque mediaeval fortress, known as _Torre Mezza Strada_, into which are incorporated the remains of the Church of Sta. Maria Nuova, or della Gloria. Behind this extend a vast assemblage of ruins, which form a splendid foreground to the distant mountain view, and whose size has led to their receiving the popular epithet of _Roma Vecchia_. Here was the favourite villa of the Emperor Commodus, where he was residing, when the people, excited by a sudden impulse during the games of the Circus, rose and poured out of Rome against him--as the inhabitants of Paris to Versailles--and refused to depart, till, terrified into action by the entreaties of his concubine Marcia, he tossed the head of the unpopular Cleander to them out of the window, and had the brains of that minister's child dashed out against the stones. This villa is proved by the discovery of a number of pipes bearing their names to have been that of the brothers Condianus and Maximus, of the great family of the Quintilii, which was confiscated by Commodus.

"L'histoire des deux freres est interessante et romanesque.

Condianus et Maximus Quintilius etaient distingues par la science, les talents militaires, la richesse, et surtout par une tendresse mutuelle qui ne s'etait jamais dementie. Servant toujours ensemble, l'un se faisait le lieutenant de l'autre. Bien qu'etrangers a toute conspiration, leur vertu les fit soupconner d'etre peu favorables a Commode; ils furent proscrits et moururent ensemble comme ils avaient vecu. L'un d'eux avait un fils nomme Sextus. Au moment de la mort de son pere et de son oncle, ce fils se trouvait en Syrie.

Pensant bien que le meme sort l'attendait, il feignit de mourir pour sauver sa vie. Sextus, apres avoir bu sang du lievre, monta a cheval, se laissa tomber, vomit le sang qu'il avait pris et qui parut etre son propre sang. On mit dans sa biere le corps d'un belier qui passa pour son cadavre, et il disparut. Depuis ce temps, il erra sons divers deguisements; mais on sut qu'il avait echappe, et on se mit a sa recherche. Beaucoup furent tues parce-qu'ils lui ressemblaient ou parce-qu'ils etaient soupconnes de lui avoir donne asile. Il n'est pas bien sur qu'il ait ete atteint, que sa tete se trouvat parmi celles qu'on apporta a Rome et qu'on dit etre la sienne. Ce qui est certain, c'est qu'apres la mort de Commode, un aventurier, tente par la belle villa et par les grandes richesses des Quintilii, se donna pour Sextus et reclama son heritage. Il parait ne pas avoir manque d'adresse et avoir connu celui pour lequel il voulut qu'on le prit, car par ses reponses il se tira tres-bien de toutes les enquetes. Peut-etre s'etait-il lie avec Sextus et l'avait-il assassine ensuite. Cependant l'empereur Pertinax, successeur de Commode, l'ayant fait venir, eut l'idee de lui parler grec. Le vrai Sextus connaissait parfaitement cette langue. Le faux Sextus, qui ne savait pas le grec, repondit tout de travers, et sa fraude fut ainsi decouverte."--_Ampere, Emp._ ii.

253.

On the left of the Via Appia, appears a huge monument, on a narrow base, called the Tomb of the Metelli. Beyond this, after the fifth milestone, are the tombs of Sergius Demetrius, a wine merchant; of Lucius Arrius; of Septimia Gallia; and of one of the Caecilii, in whose sepulchre, according to Eutropius, was buried Pomponius Atticus, the friend of Cicero, whose daughter Vipsania was the first wife of Agrippa, and whose granddaughter Vipsania Agrippina was the first wife of Tiberius.

Close to the sixth milestone is the mass of masonry sometimes called "Casale Rotondo," or "Cotta's Tomb," from that name being found there inscribed on a stone, but generally attributed to Messala Corvinus, the poet, and friend of Horace, and believed to have been raised to him by his son Valerius Maximus Cotta, mentioned in Ovid.

"Te autem in turba non ausim, Cotta, silere, Pieridum lumen, praesidiumque fori."

_Epist._ xvi.

This tomb was even larger than that of Cecilia Metella, and was turned into a fortress by the Orsini in the fifteenth century.

Beyond this are tombs identified as those of P. Quintius, tribune of the sixteenth legion; Marcus Julius, steward of Claudius; Publius Decumius Philomusus (with appropriate bas-reliefs of two mice nibbling a cake); and of Cedritius Flaccianius.

Passing on the left the _Tor di Selce_, erected upon a huge unknown tomb, are the tombs of Titia Eucharis, and of Atilius Evodus, jeweller (margaritarius) on the Via Sacra, with the inscription, "Hospes resiste--aspice ubi continentur ossa hominis boni misericordis amantis pauperis." Near the eighth milestone are ruins attributed to the temples of Silvanus and of Hercules,--of which the latter is mentioned in Martial's Epigrams, beyond which were the villas of Bassus and of Persius. The last tomb identified is that of Quintus Verranius. Near the ninth milestone is a tomb supposed to be that of Gallienus (Imp. 268), who lived close by in a villa, amid the ruins of which "the Discobolus"

was discovered.

From the stream called Pontecello, near the tenth milestone, the road gradually ascends to Albano, passing several large but unnamed tombs. At the Osteria delle Frattocchie it joins the Via Appia Nuova. Close to the gate of Albano, it passes on the left the tall tomb attributed to Pompey the Great, in accordance with the statement of Plutarch, and in spite of the epigram of Varro Atacinus, which says:--

"Marmoreo Licinius tumulo jacet; at Cato parvo; Pompeius nullo: quis putet esse Deus."

Among the many processions which have passed along this road, perhaps the most remarkable have been that bearing back to Rome the dead body of Sylla, who died at Pozzuoli, "in a gilt litter, with royal ornaments, trumpets before him, and horsemen behind;"[223] and the funeral of Augustus, who dying at Nola (A.D. 14), was brought to Bovillae, and remained there a month in the sanctuary of the Julian family, after which the knights brought the body in solemn procession to his palace on the Palatine.

But throughout a walk along the Appian Way, the one great Christian interest of this world-famous road, will, to the Christian visitor, overpower all others.

"And so we went toward Rome.

"And from thence, when the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii-forum, and the Three Taverns: whom when Paul saw, he thanked God, and took courage.

"And when we came to Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guard; but Paul was suffered to dwell by himself, with a soldier that kept him."--_Acts_ xxviii. 14--16.