e walls of the _tablinum_,--a fact
that is recorded only twice in the annals of Roman excavations.[101]
The house, seen and described by Manuzio and Ligorio, stood at the
corner of the Alta Semita and a side street called "The Pomegranate"
(_ad malum punicum_), and was profusely adorned with statues,
colonnades, spacious halls, etc. One of the bronze tablets, which was
saved from the ruins, and is now exhibited in the Gallery of the
Uffizi, at Florence, states that the municipal council of Ferentinum,
assembled in the Temple of Mercury, had placed the city under the
guardianship of Pomponius Bassus, A. D. 101. The patronage was accepted
by the gallant patrician, and _tabulae hospitales_ were exchanged
between the parties.

When his majesty king Humbert laid out a new garden, in 1887, on the
site of this house, I hoped to come across some of the ruins described
by Manuzio and Ligorio. But nothing was found, except a marble statue,
of no especial value, which is now preserved in the royal palace.

Another illustrious man lived near the Temple of Health,--Valerius
Martial the epigrammatist. He distinctly says so in his "Epigrams" (x.
58; xi. 1). Was the house his own, or did he dwell in it as a tenant
or guest? I believe he was the guest of his wealthy relative and
countryman G. Valerius Vegetus, consul A. D. 91, whose city residence
occupied half the site of the present building of the Ministry of War,
on the Via Venti Settembre.

The residence has been explored three times, at least; the first in
1641, the second in 1776, the last in the autumn of 1884. Judging from
this last exploration, which was conducted in my presence, and
described by my late friend Capannari in the "Bullettino Comunale" of
1885, the palace of Valerius Vegetus must have been built and
decorated on a grand scale. Martial, like all poets, if not actually
in financial difficulties, was never a rich man, much less the owner
of a private residence in a street and quarter in which the land
alone represented a fortune.

Between the two palaces just described, the Pomponian and the
Valerian, in the space now occupied by the Palazzo Albani and the
church and convent of S. Carlino alle Quattro Fontane, there was an
humbler house, which belonged to Flavius Sabinus, brother of
Vespasian. Here the emperor Domitian was born, October 24, A. D. 50.
The house which stood at the corner of the Alta Semita and the
"Pomegranate" street was converted by him into a