o gratified their vengeance by
tossing it about like a football. Here, too, the wretched emperor
himself was first poisoned by a cup of wine given to him by his
favourite mistress Marcia, on his return weary and thirsty from the
Colosseum; and then, as the poison operated too slowly, was strangled
in his heavy drugged sleep by his favourite gladiator Narcissus. One
could not look upon the bare masses of ruins around without thinking
of the terrible orgies that took place there, and of the shout of
enthusiastic joy when the news reached Rome that the detested tyrant
was no more, and the empire was free to breathe again. The fate of
Ahab, who coveted the vineyard of Naboth, overtook him; and but for
the interference of his successor, the maddened populace would have
dragged his corpse through the streets and flung it into the Tiber.

A very extraordinary tomb arrests the attention near the ruins of this
villa. It looks like an inverted pyramid, or a huge architectural
mushroom. This appearance has been given to the monument by the
removal of the large blocks of stone which formed the basement,
leaving the massive superincumbent weight to be supported on a very
narrow stalk of conglomerate masonry. It is a striking proof of the
extraordinary solidity and tenacity of Roman architecture, defying the
laws of gravitation. It is called the sepulchre of the Metelli, the
family of Caecilia Metella; but this is a mere guess, as there is no
record or inscription to identify it. Next to this singular monument
are the remains of a tomb which must be exceedingly interesting to
every classical scholar. The inscription indicates that it is the tomb
of Quintus Caecilius, whose nephew and adopted son, Titus Pomponius
Atticus, as Cornelius Nepos tells us, was buried in it. This
celebrated Roman knight was descended in a direct line from Numa
Pompilius. Withdrawing from the civil discords of Rome, he took up his
abode in Athens, where he devoted himself to literary and philosophic
pursuits and acquired a knowledge of the Greek language so perfect
that he could not be distinguished from a native. At the Greek
capital, the then university of the world, he secured the devoted
friendship of his fellow-student Cicero, whose brother was afterwards
married to his sister; and to this intimacy we owe the largest portion
of Cicero's unrivalled letters, in which he describes his inmost
feelings, as well as the events going on around him. The uncle of