th even under the mild and just rule of Hadrian. His name
was Calpurnius Licinianus, ex-consul A. D. 87. Having conspired
against Nerva, he, and his wife, Agedia Quintina, were banished to
Tarentum. A second conspiracy against Trajan brought upon him
banishment to a solitary island, and an attempt to escape from it was
the cause of his death.

Such was the fate of the seven occupants of this sepulchral chamber.
When I first descended into it, in November, 1884, and found myself
surrounded by those great historical names of murdered men and women,
I felt more than ever the vast difference between reading Roman
history in books, and studying it from its monuments, in the presence
of its leading actors; and I realized once more what a privilege it is
to live in a city where discoveries of such importance occur
frequently.

I wish I could tell my readers that my hands did actually touch the
bones of those murdered patricians, and the contents of their cinerary
urns. They did not, however, because the spell of adversity seems to
have pursued the Calpurnii even into their tombs, and there is reason
to believe that their last repose was troubled by persecutors, who
followed them to their graves. Their cippi were found broken into
fragments, their names half erased, and their ashes scattered to the
four winds.

The inscriptions, silent on the main point at issue, that of their
violent death, are worded with marvellous dignity, coupled with a sad
touch of irony. That engraved on the urn of Pompeius Magnus says:--

CN . POMP_eius_
CRASSI F . MEN
MAGNVS
PONTIF . QVAEST
TI . CLAVDI . CAESARIS . AVG
GERMANICI
SOCERI . SVI

"[Here lies] Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus, son of Crassus, etc., quaestor of
the Emperor Claudius, _his father-in-law_." When we remember that it
was precisely the alliance with the imperial family that caused the
death of the youth; that his death sentence was signed by Claudius,
who was his father-in-law, we cannot help thinking that the names of
the murdered man and his murderer were coupled purposely in this short
epitaph.

In a second and much larger chamber ten marble sarcophagi were
discovered, precious as works of art, but devoid of historical
interest, because no name is engraved upon them. Perhaps the
experience of their ancestors warned the Calpurnii of later
generations not to tempt obnoxious fate again, but to adhere to
obscurity and retirement, even