celerius_." I have left the two adverbs in their
original form; their exquisite feeling defies translation.

The following sentence is copied from the grave of a freedman:
"Erected to the memory of Memmius Clarus by his co-servant Memmius
Urbanus. I know that there never was the shade of a disagreement
between thee and me: never a cloud passed over our common happiness. I
swear to the gods of Heaven and Hell, that we worked faithfully and
lovingly together, that we were set free from servitude on the same
day and in the same house: nothing would ever have separated us,
except this fatal hour."

A remarkable feature of ancient funeral eloquence is found in the
imprecations addressed to the passer, to insure the safety of the tomb
and its contents:[125]--

"Any one who injures my tomb or steals its ornaments, may he see the
death of all his relatives."

"Whoever steals the nails from this structure, may he thrust them into
his eyes."

A grumbler wrote on a gravestone found in the Vigna Codini:--

"Lawyers and the evil-eyed keep away from my tomb."

* * * * *

It is manifestly impossible to make the reader acquainted with all the
discoveries in this department of Roman archaeology since 1870. The
following specimens from the viae Aurelia, Triumphalis, Salaria, and
Appia seem to me to represent fairly well what is of average interest
in this class of monuments.

VIA AURELIA. Under this head I record the tomb of Platorinus, which
was found in 1880 on the banks of the Tiber, near La Farnesina,
although, strictly speaking, it belongs to a side road running from
the Via Aurelia to the Vatican quarters, parallel with the stream. The
discovery was made in the following circumstances:--

A strip of land four hundred metres long by eighty broad was bought by
the state in 1876 and cut away from the gardens of la Farnesina, to
widen the bed of the Tiber. It was found to contain several ancient
edifices, which have since become famous in topographical books. I
refer more particularly to the patrician house discovered near the
church of S. Giacomo in Settimiana, the paintings of which are now
exhibited in Michelangelo's cloisters, adjoining the Baths of
Diocletian.

[Illustration: Ancient house in the Farnesina Gardens.]

These paintings have been admirably reproduced in color and outline by
the German Archaeological Institute,[126] but they have not yet been
illustrated from the point o