Atticus, the brother of his mother, whose family tomb we are now
examining, left him at his death an enormous fortune, which he had
amassed by usury. Atticus added greatly to it by acting as a kind of
publisher to the authors of the day--that is, by employing his
numerous slaves in copying and multiplying their manuscripts. He kept
himself free from all the political factions of the times, and thus
managed to preserve the mutual regard of parties who were hostile to
each other,--such as Caesar and Pompey, Brutus and Antony. He reached
the age of seventy-seven years without having had a day's illness;
and when at last stricken with an incurable disease, in the spirit of
the Epicurean philosophy, since he could enjoy life no longer he
starved himself to death, and was interred in his uncle's tomb on the
Appian Way. Almost side by side with this ruin is the sepulchre of the
family of Cicero's wife, the Terentii, who were related to Pomponius
Atticus by the mother's side. In all likelihood Terentia herself,
Cicero's brave and devoted but ill-used wife, was interred here with
her own friends, for her husband had divorced her in order to marry a
beautiful and rich young heiress, whose guardian he had been.

Passing on the same side of the road two or three tombs of obscure
persons whose names alone are known, we come at the sixth milestone to
one of the most extraordinary sepulchral monuments of the Appian Way,
called the _Casale Rotondo_. This monument marks the limit to which
most visitors extend their explorations. It is circular, like the tomb
of Caecilia Metella; but it is of far larger dimensions, being nearly
three hundred and fifty feet in diameter. In the fifteenth century
this colossal ruin was converted into a fortress by the Orsini family;
and of the remains of this fortification a farmhouse and other
buildings were constructed, and these now stand on the summit,
surrounded by a tolerably-sized oliveyard and garden, with a sloping
grass-grown stair leading up to them on the outside. Notwithstanding
their dislike of death and their horror of dead bodies, the modern
Romans have no more repugnance to the proximity of tombs than their
ancestors had. Shepherds fold their sheep and goats in the interior of
the old tombs, whose walls are blackened with the smoke of the fires,
and retain an odour of human and animal occupancy more disagreeable
than any which the original tenants could have exhaled; and it is by
no means