ns alike named their
children Peter and Paul; when sculptors, painters, medallists,
goldsmiths, workers in glass and enamel, and engravers of precious
stones, all began to reproduce in Rome the likenesses of the apostles,
at the beginning of the second century, and continued to do so till
the fall of the empire; must we consider them all as laboring under a
delusion, or as conspiring in the commission of a gigantic fraud? Why
were such proceedings accepted without protest from whatever city,
from whatever community, if there were any other which claimed to own
the genuine tombs of SS. Peter and Paul? These arguments gain more
value from the fact that the evidence on the opposite side is purely
negative. It is one thing to write of these controversies at a
distance from the scene of the events, in the seclusion of one's own
library; but quite another to study them on the spot, and to follow
the events where they took place. If my readers had the opportunity of
witnessing the discoveries made lately in the Cemeterium Ostrianum,
and the Platonia ad Catacumbas; or of examining Grimaldi's manuscripts
and drawings relating to the old basilica of Constantine; or Carrara's
account of the discoveries made in 1776 in the house of Aquila and
Prisca, they would surely banish from their minds the last shade of
doubt.

Besides the works of Doellinger, Lightfoot, and de Rossi referred to
above, there are thirty or forty which deal with the same question, as
to whether S. Peter was ever at Rome. The list of them is given in
volume xviii. of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," p. 696, no. 1.

* * * * *

Two roads issued from the bridge called _Vaticanus_, _Neronianus_, or
_Triumphalis_, the remains of which are still seen at low water
between S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini and the hospital of S.
Spirito,--the Via Triumphalis, described in chapter vi., which
corresponds to the modern Strada di Monte Mario, and joins the Clodia
at la Giustiniana; and the Via Cornelia, which led to the woodlands
west of the city, between the Via Aurelia Nova and the Triumphalis.
When the apostles came to Rome, in the reign of Nero, the topography
of the Vatican district, which was crossed by the Via Cornelia, was as
follows:--

On the left of the road was a circus begun by Caligula, and finished
by Nero; on the right a line of tombs built against the clay cliffs of
the Vatican. The circus was the scene of the first sufferings of