ad Bartoli's account[128] and examine
the twenty-two plates with which he illustrates his text, without
feeling a sense of horror at the deeds which those enlightened
personages were capable of perpetrating in cold blood.

He says that the thirty-four tombs formed, as it were, a small
village, with streets, sidewalks, and squares; that they were built
of red and yellow brick, exquisitely carved, like those of the Via
Latina. Each retained its funeral _suppellex_ and decorations almost
intact: paintings, bas-reliefs, mosaics, inscriptions, lamps, jewelry,
statues, busts, cinerary urns, and sarcophagi. Some were still closed,
the doors being made not of wood or bronze, but of marble; and
inscriptions were carved on the lintels or pediments, giving an
account of each tomb. These records tell us that in Roman times this
portion of the Villa Pamfili was called _Ager Fonteianus_, and that
the inclined tract of the Via Aurelia, which runs close by, was called
_Clivus Rutarius_. Bartoli attributes the extraordinary preservation
of this cemetery to its having been buried purposely under an
embankment of earth, before the fall of the empire. Since the
seventeenth century many hundreds of tombs have been found and
destroyed in the villa, especially in April, 1859. The only one still
visible was discovered in 1838, and is remarkable for its _painted_
inscriptions, and for its frescoes.[129] There were originally one
hundred and seventy-five panels, but scarcely half that number are now
to be seen. They represent animals, landscapes, caricatures, scenes
from daily life, and mythological and dramatic subjects. One only is
historical, and, according to Petersen, represents the Judgment of
Solomon (see p. 271). This subject, although exceedingly rare, is by
no means unique in classical art, having already been found painted on
the walls of a Pompeian house.

VIA TRIUMPHALIS. The necropolis which lined the Via Triumphalis, from
Nero's bridge near S. Spirito, to the top of the Monte Mario, has
absolutely disappeared, although some of its monuments equalled in
size and magnificence those of the viae Ostiensis, Appia, and Labicana.
Such were the two pyramids, on the site of S. Maria Traspontina,
called, in the Middle Ages, the "Meta di Borgo" and the "Terebinth of
Nero." Both are shown in the bas-reliefs of Filarete's bronze door in
S. Peter's (see p. 272), in the ciborium of Sixtus IV. (now in the
Grotte Vaticane), and in other mediae